Frank Beacham's Journal

Preservation Hall, New Orleans, 1982

Photo by Lee Friedlander

George Carlin was born 84 years ago today

George Carlin was born 84 years ago today.

A stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, actor and writer/author, Carlin was noted for his black humor as well as his thoughts on politics, the English language, psychology, religion and various taboo subjects.

Carlin and his "Seven Dirty Words" comedy routine were central to the 1978 U.S. Supreme Court case FCC v. Pacifica Foundation, in which a 5 – 4 decision by the justices affirmed the government's power to regulate what they considered indecent material on the public airwaves.

The first of his 14 stand-up comedy specials for HBO was filmed in 1977. From the late 1980s, Carlin's routines focused on socio-cultural criticism of modern American society. He often commented on contemporary political issues in the United States and satirized the excesses of American culture.

Carlin was a frequent performer and guest host on The Tonight Show during the three-decade Johnny Carson era, and hosted the first episode of Saturday Night Live. His final HBO special, It's Bad for Ya, was filmed less than four months before his death. In 2008, he was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.

Born in Manhattan, Carlin was the second son of Mary (Beary), a secretary, and Patrick Carlin, a national advertising manager for the New York Sun. He was of Irish descent and raised a Roman Catholic. He called himself Irish Catholic.

Carlin grew up on West 121st Street, in a neighborhood of Manhattan which he later said, in a stand-up routine, he and his friends called "White Harlem," because that sounded a lot tougher than its real name of Morningside Heights.

Carlin spent many summers at Camp Notre Dame on Spofford Lake in Spofford, New Hampshire. He regularly won the camp's drama award, and specified that after his death a portion of his ashes be spread at the lake.

Carlin later joined the United States Air Force and was trained as a radar technician. He was stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base in Bossier City, Louisiana. He did not complete his Air Force enlistment.

Labeled an "unproductive airman" by his superiors, Carlin was discharged on July 29, 1957. During his time in the Air Force he was court-martialed three times, and also received many disciplinary punishments.

In 1959, Carlin and Jack Burns began as a comedy team when both were working for radio station KXOL in Fort Worth, Texas. After successful performances at Fort Worth's beat coffeehouse, The Cellar, Burns and Carlin headed for California in February, 1960 and stayed together for two years as a team before moving on to individual pursuits.

Within weeks of arriving in California in 1960, Burns and Carlin put together an audition tape and created The Wright Brothers, a morning show on KDAY in Hollywood. The comedy team worked there for three months, honing their material in beatnik coffeehouses at night.

Years later, when he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, Carlin requested that it be placed in front of the KDAY studios near the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Vine Street.

Carlin was present at Lenny Bruce's arrest for obscenity. As the police began attempting to detain members of the audience for questioning, they asked Carlin for his identification. Telling the police he did not believe in government-issued IDs, he was arrested and taken to jail with Bruce in the same vehicle.

In this period, he also perfected what is perhaps his best-known routine, "Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television," recorded on Class Clown. On July 21, 1972, Carlin was arrested after performing this routine at Milwaukee's Summerfest and charged with violating obscenity laws.

The case, which prompted Carlin to refer to the words for a time as "the Milwaukee Seven," was dismissed in December of that year. The judge declared that the language was indecent, but Carlin had the freedom to say it as long as he caused no disturbance.

In 1973, a man complained to the Federal Communications Commission after listening with his son to a similar routine, "Filthy Words," from Occupation: Foole, broadcast one afternoon over WBAI, a Pacifica Foundation FM radio station in New York City. Pacifica received a citation from the FCC for violating regulations that prohibit broadcasting "obscene" material.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the FCC action by a vote of 5 to 4, ruling that the routine was "indecent but not obscene" and that the FCC had authority to prohibit such broadcasts during hours when children were likely to be among the audience.

The controversy increased Carlin's fame. He eventually expanded the dirty-words theme with a seemingly interminable end to a performance (ending with his voice fading out in one HBO version, and accompanying the credits in the Carlin at Carnegie special for the 1982-83 season) and a set of 49 web pages organized by subject and embracing his "Incomplete List Of Impolite Words.”

Carlin hosted the premiere broadcast of NBC's Saturday Night Live, on October 11, 1975, the only episode to date in which the host did not appear (at his request) in sketches.

Carlin unexpectedly stopped performing regularly in 1976, when his career appeared to be at its height. For the next five years he rarely performed stand-up, although it was at this time that he began doing specials for HBO as part of its On Location series. He later revealed that he had suffered the first of three heart attacks during this layoff period. His first two HBO specials aired in 1977 and 1978.

Carlin had a history of cardiac problems spanning several decades. He twice underwent angioplasty to reopen narrowed arteries. In early 2005, he entered a drug rehabilitation facility for treatment of addictions to alcohol and Vicodin.

He died on June 22, 2008 at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California of heart failure. He was 71 years old.

Here, Carlin does his classic monologue “Who Really Controls America”

Burt Bacharach is 93 years old today

Burt Bacharach and Alice Cooper

Burt Bacharach is 93 years old today.

A pianist, composer and music producer, Bacharach is known for his popular hit songs and compositions from the mid-1950s through the 1980s, with lyrics written by Hal David, as part of the duo Bacharach and David. Many of their hits were produced specifically for, and performed by, Dionne Warwick.

Following on with the initial success of this collaboration, Bacharach went on to produce hits with Dusty Springfield, Bobbie Gentry, Jackie DeShannon and others. As of 2012, Bacharach had written 73 Top 40 hits in the U.S. and 52 Top 40 hits in the UK.

Born in Kansas City, Bacharach grew up in the Forest Hills section of New York City, graduating from Forest Hills High School in 1946. He is the son of Irma and Mark Bertram "Bert" Bacharach, a well-known syndicated newspaper columnist. His family was Jewish.

Bacharach studied music at McGill University, under Helmut Blume, at the Mannes School of Music, and at the Music Academy of the West in Montecito, California. His composition teachers included Darius Milhaud, Henry Cowell and Bohuslav Martinů.

Following service in the Army, Bacharach worked as a pianist, both as a soloist and as an accompanist for singers such as Vic Damone, Polly Bergen, Steve Lawrence, the Ames Brothers and Paula Stewart (who became his first wife). For some years, he was musical arranger for Marlene Dietrich and toured with her.

In 1957, Bacharach and lyricist Hal David were introduced while at the Brill Building in New York City, and began their writing partnership. Almost a year later, they received a significant career break when their song, "The Story of My Life," was recorded by Marty Robbins for Columbia Records. It became a #1 hit on the U.S. country music charts in late 1957.

Soon after, "Magic Moments" was recorded by Perry Como for RCA Records, and became a #4 U.S. hit in February of that year. These two songs were back-to-back #1 singles in the UK ("The Story of My Life" in a version by Michael Holliday), giving Bacharach and David the honor of being the first songwriters to have written consecutive #1 UK singles.

In 1959, their song "Make Room for the Joy" was featured in Columbia's film musical, Jukebox Rhythm, sung by Jack Jones. By the early 1960s, Bacharach had written over 100 songs with David. They became one of the most successful writing teams in popular music history.

Here, Bacharach performs a medley of his movie songs in 2008

In the early morning hours — 52 years ago today — Fairport Convention was in an auto accident that changed the band's future

As the summer of 1969 approached, the future looked bright for Fairport Convention, as their second album, What We Did on Our Holidays, expanded the band’s audience with a more rock-inflected version of their folk sound.

But an awful tragedy nearly destroyed the band just as all their hard work was starting to pay off.

In the early morning hours of May 12 — 52 years ago today — as the group traveled back from a celebratory gig in Birmingham shortly after wrapping up work on their next album, their van veered off the road. In the aftermath of the crash, Fairport Convention would never be the same.

The wreck killed drummer Martin Lamble, who was just 19 at the time, as well as fashion designer and magazine columnist, Jeannie Franklyn, who’d been dating guitarist, Richard Thompson.

Thompson suffered a broken shoulder and bassist Ashley Hutchings was sent to the hospital with assorted serious injuries, while guitarist Simon Nicol, who’d been sleeping on the floor of the vehicle when it went off the road, escaped with a concussion.

“Our road manager and sound guy, Harvey Bramham, did most of the driving although I’d do a bit to relieve him. On this particular gig, he’d been feeling peaky all day, quite unwell,” explained Nicol in a post on the Fairport Convention website.

“I had a bad migraine so I wasn’t in a seat. I was stretched out on the floor with a blanket over my head trying to sleep off this terrible headache. When I woke up, the van was doing things which didn’t involve the wheels being in contact with the ground. When it stopped moving, I was the only one left. All the gear had gone out of the back and all the people had gone out through the windows and doors.”

With the release of their next album mere weeks away, the members of the group had to decide whether they could even carry on as a unit.

“That was a big watershed, I think. In the aftermath, we thought a lot about what to do, whether to call it a day. It had been fun while it lasted but it took a definite effort of will to continue,” recalled Nicol. “It had given us a lot but now it had taken away a lot. Was it worth it if it was going to cost people their lives?”

“We were totally fractured, in more ways than one,” Hutchings told the Guardian. “It seemed like I was in hospital for months. When I woke up at the side of the M1, I thought I’d lost my sight. As it was, it was just that both eyes were terribly cut and bruised, and eventually, that improved.

“But I had a broken nose, broken cheekbone, a lot of head injuries, a broken pelvis, a bad ankle injury. All of those things took a long time to heal. People were asking us about the future, but we couldn’t conceive of planning one.”

“We were very traumatized,” added Thompson. “And there was this feeling: ‘Should we carry on? Has the stuffing been knocked out of us?’ But eventually, we made a conscious effort. We got together and said, ‘Yes, we are carrying on.’”

As Nicol put it, “We all felt psychologically traumatized as well as being damaged physically. But by the time Ashley’s face was back together and Richard’s bones were healing, we’d decided to rebuild the band and carry on.”

While Fairport Convention handled the last few bits of work to prepare their third LP, Unhalfbricking, for its July, 1969 release. DJ John Peel hosted a benefit concert featuring Family, Pretty Things and Soft Machine on May 25 to raise money for Lamble and Franklyn’s families.

While they soldiered on, the pall of the accident continued to loom. As Hutchings later told the Guardian, he can’t even look at the cover of Unhalfbricking without thinking about the tragedy.

“My memory of it is bound up with the terrible car crash. On the back cover we’re all eating around a table. The shirt and the leather waistcoat I’m wearing are what I had on when the crash happened. I can clearly remember them being bloodstained,” he explained. “You don’t forget things like that.”

In fact, although the group soon found a new drummer in Dave Mattacks and rebounded to create one of their most successful albums with Liege & Lief later that year, Hutchings was on his way out of the band.

“I believe the crash hung over the band in unseen ways,” mused Nicol. “I think it was one of the unspoken reasons for the next big change, when Ashley decided to leave the band later that year after we had recorded Liege & Lief and relaunched the band to some fanfare and acclaim.

“Whatever the upfront reasons about musical differences and wanting to concentrate on traditional material, I think the accident was the underlying reason why Ashley felt he couldn’t continue with us.”

Fairport Convention’s lineup would continue to change quite a bit over the years, but aside from a hiatus between 1979-’85, they’ve continued to tour and record steadily — and although Nicol is the only original member left, he wouldn’t mind seeing the Fairport name continue after he’s gone.

“I’d like Fairport to become the first band to be like a male voice choir, carrying on through changes of personnel but retaining its identity,” he wrote on the band’s site.

“After all, no one bats an eyelid about a brass band playing on long after all the original members are gone. Why shouldn’t there be a Fairport Convention in fifty or a hundred years?”

Thanks Ultimate Classic Rock!

Richard Thompson, a founding member of Fairport Convention, performs at the Beacon Theatre, 2016

Photo by Frank Beacham

Frank Stella is 85 years old today

Frank Stella is 85 years old today.

Stella is a painter and printmaker, noted for his work in the areas of minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. Stella continues to live and work in New York.

Born in Malden, Massachusetts, Stella’s early visits to New York art galleries influenced his artistic development and his work was influenced by the abstract expressionism of Jackson Pollock and Franz Kline. He moved to New York in 1958, after his graduation, and is one of the most well-regarded postwar American painters still working today.

Stella is heralded for creating abstract paintings that bear no pictorial illusions or psychological or metaphysical references in 20th century painting. In 2009, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President Barack Obama.

In 2011, Stella received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Contemporary Sculpture by the International Sculpture Center.

Above photo by Bob Berg

Spectralia, 1994

Lithograph by Frank Stella

James Purify, a member of the duo of James & Bobby Purify, was born 77 years ago

James Purify, a member of the duo of James & Bobby Purify, was born 77 years ago.

Purify died on January 22, 2021, in Pensacola, Florida, of complications due to COVID-19.

The R&B singing duo’s biggest hit was "I'm Your Puppet" in 1966, which reached #6 in the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and in a re-recorded version #12 in the UK Singles Chart (in April 1976), and "Let Love Come Between Us" in 1967, which reached #23 in the U.S.

The original "Bobby Purify" (Robert Lee Dickey) was replaced by a second "Bobby Purify" (Ben Moore) in the 1970s. Robert died in 2011.

The vocal duo of James Lee Purify and his cousin, Robert Lee Dickey, formed in 1965. Dickey had previously worked as a guitarist with the Dothan Sextet. The duo were signed by Don Schroeder to Bell Records in 1966, with Dickey taking his cousin's surname as a stage name.

They had immediate success with "I'm Your Puppet," written by Spooner Oldham and Dan Penn and produced by Penn at the FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The record, released in September, 1966, spent 14 weeks on the U.S. chart and sold over a million copies.

Although "I'm Your Puppet" was their biggest hit, they had several further successes on both the Hot 100 and R&B chart in the U.S. in the late 1960s, including a revival of "Shake a Tail Feather," originally by The Five Du-Tones, and "Let Love Come Between Us."

In 1998, Moore went blind from severe glaucoma and completely dropped out of the music industry. With the encouragement of Ray Charles, however, he returned to performing and recording. Following a new Bobby Purify album, the Dan Penn-produced Better To Have It in 2005, he joined the gospel band, Blind Boys of Alabama.

Here, James and Bobby perform “I’m Your Puppet,” 1966

Joe Maphis, the country guitarist, was born 100 years ago today

Joe Maphis, Virginia, early 1940s

Joe Maphis, the country guitarist, was born 100 years ago today.

Born Otis W. Maphis, he was one of the flashiest country guitarists of the 1950s and 1960s. He was known as The King of the Strings and was able to play many stringed instruments with great facility. His speciality was dazzling guitar virtuosity.

Born in Suffolk, Virginia, Maphis’s first band was called the Maryland Rail Splitters and he also played in the local (Cumberland) Foggy Mountain Boys as well as The Sonnateers before hitting the road in 1939. He played across Virginia until he landed a regular gig on the Old Dominion Barn Dance broadcast live on radio WRVA-AM and aired in 38 states.

In 1944, he went into the U.S. Army. His musical skills landed him a gig entertaining the troops around the world. Maphis was discharged from the Army in 1946. On his return to the states, he began playing on WLS radio in Chicago.

In the late 1940s, he returned to Richmond and the Old Dominion Barn Dance until the early 1950s. While in Virginia, he met singer/guitarist Rose Lee Schetrompf, his future wife. Maphis and Schetrompf were married in 1953.

Maphis' recording career took off after he was invited to come to Los Angeles in 1951 by Merle Travis. He made two LPs with Travis, recorded for countless country and pop stars and worked on many themes for television programs and movie soundtracks.

Later based in Bakersfield, California, he rose to prominence with his own hits such as "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)" as well as playing with acts like Johnny Burnette, Doyle Holly, The Collins Kids, Wanda Jackson, Rose Maddox and Ricky Nelson.

"Dim Lights" has become a honky-tonk standard with numerous artists recording versions on the tune. Maphis discovered Barbara Mandrell in the early 1960s. Before launching her own career, Mandrell toured with Joe and Rose playing pedal steel.

Maphis's playing was an influence on such greats as Merle Travis, Jimmy Bryant and Chet Atkins. He was known for his use of a double-neck Mosrite guitar, specially built for him by Semie Moseley, which was a boon to Moseley's fledgling career as a guitar builder. This guitar can be now viewed at the Country Music Hall of Fame in Nashville. It has two six-string necks, with the shorter neck tuned an octave higher than standard.

Maphis was a band member and featured soloist on Town Hall Party television broadcasts in southern California during the 1950s and a regular guest on the Jimmy Dean television show in the 1960s. Maphis and his wife, Rose Lee, performed on Austin City Limits in 1984.

Maphis was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1985. He died on June 27, 1986.

His guitar hero was Mother Maybelle Carter, matriarch of the Carter Family. Maybelle's daughter, June Carter Cash, and June's husband, Johnny Cash, so admired Maphis' guitar playing that Maphis is buried in a Hendersonville, Tennessee cemetery next to Maybelle, her husband, Ezra Carter, and her daughter, Anita Carter. The Cashes personally chose the spot, buried Maphis and covered his grave themselves.

Maphis' son, Jody Maphis, is also a musician. He has played drums or guitar for Earl Scruggs, Johnny Rodriguez, Johnny Cash, Gary Allan, Marty Stuart and many others.

Here Maphis performs the “Town Hall Boogie”

On this day in 1907 — 114 years ago — Katharine Hepburn was born in Hartford, Connecticut

On this day in 1907 — 114 years ago — Katharine Hepburn, who due to her performances in such films as The Philadelphia Story and On Golden Pond, would become one of the most celebrated actresses of the 20th century, was born in Hartford, Connecticut.

The daughter of New England intellectuals who stressed rigorous exercise and independent thinking, Hepburn studied at Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania and went on to become a stage actress. She first gained notice on Broadway in 1932, for her performance in The Warrior's Husband.

After a screen test, Hepburn signed with RKO studios and landed her first role, in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), starring John Barrymore and directed by George Cukor. Cukor would become Hepburn's frequent director and one of her closest friends. Critics and fans alike immediately took note of the young actress, with her unconventional beauty and upper-crust New England accent, as a fresh presence on screen.

For Morning Glory (1933), only her third movie, Hepburn won an Academy Award for Best Actress. It was the first of 12 Oscar nominations she would garner over the course of her career, a record that would stand until 2003, when Meryl Streep received her 13th nomination.

Hepburn would win three more Oscars — for Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), A Lion in Winter (1968) and On Golden Pond (1981) — but never attended the ceremony to collect any of them.

Hepburn's next few films with RKO had mixed results, and she became personally unpopular with many for her refusal to play along with the "rules" of fame and glamour that governed the industry. Fiercely independent and strong-willed, she wore trousers and no makeup, and refused to pose for pictures, grant interviews or sign autographs.

By then recognized as one of the most talented actresses in Hollywood, Hepburn also earned a reputation for being arrogant and self-absorbed on-set. She appeared more sympathetic in Stage Door (1937) and Bringing Up Baby (1938), although audiences failed to respond to the second film, co-starring Cary Grant and now regarded as a beloved classic.mThough her career was stalled, Hepburn refused to give up. Instead, she decided to change gears by buying out her contract at RKO.

The change gave her far more control than other performers — and especially other actresses — in the age of the studio system.

Hepburn returned to Broadway in 1938's The Philadelphia Story, written especially for her by Philip Barry. Hepburn's sometime lover, Howard Hughes, bought the screenplay rights for her, and she sold them to Louis B. Mayer at MGM on the condition that she star. With Grant and Jimmy Stewart signed on, the 1940 film was a huge hit.

In 1942, Hepburn played a political journalist who falls in love with a sportswriter in another hit, Woman of the Year. Her co-star in the film was Spencer Tracy, with whom Hepburn began a romantic relationship that would become one of Hollywood's most celebrated love stories.

A devout Catholic, Tracy was unwilling to divorce his wife, but he lived quietly with Hepburn for the next 27 years. The couple acted in nine films together, including Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952) and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967).

Tracy died just weeks after shooting was completed on the last film. Hepburn, who had withdrawn from filmmaking for a period of several years to care for her ailing lover, didn't publicly discuss the relationship until after Tracy's widow died in 1983.

She was married once, to the Philadelphia broker, Ludlow Ogden Smith, from 1928 to 1934. Hepburn continued to appear in films and on television through the 1970s, 1980s and into the 1990s, though she frequently announced that this or that performance would be her last.

She also returned to Broadway late in her career, winning praise for her roles in Coco (1969), A Matter of Gravity (1976) and The West Side Waltz (1981).

In 1991, she published a bestselling autobiography, Me: Stories of My Life, which impressed fans with its characteristic forthrightness and brisk candor. Hepburn made her final screen appearance in 1994's Love Affair, a remake of the classic 1939 film.

She died on June 29, 2003 at the age of 96.

Steve Winwood is 73 years old today

Steve Winwood is 73 years old today.

Winwood is an English musician and songwriter whose genres include blue-eyed soul, R&B, rock, blues-rock, pop-rock and jazz. A multi-instrumentalist, he plays the electric organ, synthesizers, bass, drums, guitar, mandolin, violin and other strings. A star performer for nearly 50 years, he has also done notable work as a producer.

In addition to his solo career, Winwood was a key member of The Spencer Davis Group, Traffic, Blind Faith and Go. He now lives in Nashville with his wife, Eugenia Crafton, a native of Trenton, Tennessee, whom he married in 1987.

They have four children — Mary-Clare, Eliza, Cal and Lilly — and also own a 300-year-old manor house in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire, England.

Here, Winwood joins Eric Clapton to perform “Can’t Find My Way Home” in 2007

Yogi Berra was born 96 years old today

Yogi Berra was born 96 years old today.

A former Major League Baseball catcher, outfielder and manager, Berra gained fame for his great mangled quotes. He played almost his entire 19-year baseball career (1946–1965) for the New York Yankees. As a player, coach or manager, Berra appeared in 21 World Series. He was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.

During Spring Training with the Yankees in Florida in the late 1970s, I sat with Berra, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford as they watched the younger players work out. Berra kept everyone laughing with what are now called “Yogiisms.” He was a very funny man, who could easily have been a comedian.

Yogiisms, pithy comments and witticisms, very often take the form of either an apparently obvious tautology or a paradoxical contradiction. More than as a baseball player, I liked him for his great quotes.

Here are a few:

• As a general comment on baseball: "90 percent of the game is half mental."

• On why he no longer went to Ruggeri's, a St. Louis restaurant: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

• "It ain't over 'til it's over." In July 1973, Berra's Mets trailed the Chicago Cubs by 9½ games in the National League East. The Mets rallied to win the division title on the final day of the season.

• When giving directions to Joe Garagiola to his New Jersey home, which is accessible by two routes: "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

• On being the guest of honor at an awards banquet: "Thank you for making this day necessary."

• "It's déjà vu all over again." Berra explained that this quote originated when he witnessed Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris repeatedly hit back-to-back home runs in the Yankees' seasons in the early 1960s.

• "You can observe a lot by watching."

• "Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours."

Berra quit school after the eighth grade. Simultaneously denying and confirming his reputation, Berra once said "I really didn't say everything I said."

Berra died at age 90 of natural causes in his sleep in West Caldwell, New Jersey, on September 22, 2015 – 69 years to the day after his MLB debut.

In the photo above, Berra on his 40th birthday

On May 12, 1963 — 58 years ago today — young and unknown Bob Dylan walked off the set of the Ed Sullivan Show after network censors rejected the song he planned on performing

By the end of the summer of 1963, Bob Dylan would be known to millions who watched or witnessed his performances at the March on Washington, and millions more who did not know Dylan himself would know and love his music thanks to Peter, Paul and Mary's smash-hit cover version of "Blowin' In The Wind."

But back in May, Dylan was still just another aspiring musician with a passionate niche following but no national profile whatsoever.

His second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, had not yet been released, but he had secured what would surely be his big break with an invitation to perform on The Ed Sullivan Show.

That appearance never happened.

On May 12, 1963 — 58 years ago today — the young and unknown Bob Dylan walked off the set of the country's highest-rated variety show after network censors rejected the song he planned on performing.

The song that caused the flap was "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues," a satirical talking-blues number skewering the ultra-conservative John Birch Society and its tendency to see covert members of an international Communist conspiracy behind every tree.

Dylan had auditioned "John Birch" days earlier and had run through it for Ed Sullivan himself without any concern being raised. But during dress rehearsal on the day of the show, an executive from the CBS Standards and Practices department informed the show's producers that they could not allow Dylan to go forward singing "John Birch."

While many of the song's lyrics about hunting down "reds" were merely humorous — "Looked up my chimney hole/Looked down deep inside my toilet bowl/They got away!" — others that equated the John Birch Society's views with those of Adolf Hitler raised the fear of a defamation lawsuit in the minds of CBS's lawyers.

Rather than choose a new number to perform or change his song's lyrics — as the Rolling Stones and the Doors would famously do in the years to come — Dylan stormed off the set in angry protest.

Or so goes the legend that helped establish Dylan's public reputation as an artist of uncompromising integrity. In reality, Bob Dylan was polite and respectful in declining to accede to the network's wishes.

"I explained the situation to Bob and asked him if he wanted to do something else," recalls Ed Sullivan’s producer, Bob Precht, "and Bob, quite appropriately, said 'No, this is what I want to do. If I can't play my song, I'd rather not appear on the show.'"

It hardly mattered whether Dylan's alleged tantrum was fact or reality. The story got widespread media attention in the days that followed, causing Ed Sullivan himself to denounce the network's decision in published interviews.

In the end, however, the free publicity Bob Dylan received may have done more for his career than his abortive national-television appearance scheduled for this day in 1963 ever could have.

Thanks History.com

Eric Burdon is 80 years old today

Eric Burdon, 2005, New York

Photo by Frank Beacham

Eric Burdon is 80 years old today.

The English singer-songwriter, known for his aggressive stage performance, is vocalist of The Animals and the funk band, War.

Burdon was lead singer of The Animals, formed during 1962 in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. The original band was the Alan Price Combo which formed in 1958. They became the Animals shortly after Burdon joined the band.

The Animals combined electric blues with rock and, in the U.S., were one of the leading bands of the British Invasion. Along with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Dave Clark Five and the Kinks, the group introduced British music and fashion.

Burdon's powerful voice can be heard in the Animals' singles "The House of the Rising Sun," "Sky Pilot," "Monterey," "I'm Crying," "Boom Boom," "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood," "Bring It On Home to Me," "Baby Let Me Take You Home," "It's My Life," "We Gotta Get out of This Place," "Don't Bring Me Down" and "See See Rider."

By late 1966, the other original members, including keyboardist Alan Price, had left. Burdon and drummer Barry Jenkins reformed the group as Eric Burdon and the Animals. This more psychedelic incarnation featured future Family member John Weider and was sometimes called Eric Burdon and the New Animals.

Keyboardist Zoot Money joined during 1968 until they split up in 1969. This group's hits included the ballad "San Franciscan Nights,” the grunge–heavy metal-pioneering "When I Was Young," "Monterey," the anti-Vietnam anthem, "Sky Pilot," and the progressive cover, "Ring of Fire."

In 1975, the original Animals reunited and recorded the album, Before We Were So Rudely Interrupted, released in 1977 and overlooked due to the dawning of punk.

In May, 1983, the Animals reunited with their original lineup and the album, Ark, was released in June, 1983, along with the singles "The Night" and "Love Is For All Time." A world tour followed and the concert at Wembley Arena, London, recorded on December 31, 1983 was released in 1984 as Rip It To Shreds. Their concert at the Royal Oak Theatre in April, 1984 was released in 2008 entitled Last Live Show.

The band members were augmented by Zoot Money, Nippy Noya, Steve Gregory and Steve Grant. The original Animals broke up for the last time at the end of 1984. Although the band Burdon formed in the late 1960s was sometimes called Eric Burdon and the New Animals, it wasn't until 1998 that the name Eric Burdon and the New Animals was officially adopted.

The 1998 band had bassist Dave Meros, guitarist Dean Restum, drummer Aynsley Dunbar and Neal Morse, on both keyboard and guitar.

In June, 2003, he formed another Eric Burdon and the Animals, with keyboardist Martin Gerschwitz, bassist Dave Meros, guitarist Dean Restum and drummer Bernie Pershey. They disbanded in 2005. During 2008, Burdon toured again as Eric Burdon and the Animals with a variable lineup of backing musicians.

On December 13, 2008, Burdon lost a three-year legal battle to win the name "The Animals" in the UK in a suit with drummer John Steel. Burdon was prevented from using the name "The Animals" in Britain while the case was under appeal. In 2013, Burdon won and can use the name "The Animals" in the UK.

During 1969, while living in San Francisco, Burdon joined forces with California funk rock band, War. The resulting album was entitled, Eric Burdon Declares “War,” which produced the singles "Spill the Wine" and "Tobacco Road."

A two-disc set, The Black-Man's Burdon, was released later in September, 1970. The singles from the double album, "Paint It, Black" and "They Can't Take Away Our Music," had moderate success during 1971.

During this time, Burdon collapsed on the stage during a concert, caused by an asthma attack. War continued the tour without him.

In 1976 a compilation album, Love Is All Around, was released by ABC Records, which had recordings of Eric Burdon with War and a live version of "Paint it Black" and a jam session called, "A Day In The Life." Burdon and War were reunited for the first time in 37 years, to perform an Eric Burdon & War reunion at the concert at the Royal Albert Hall London on April 21, 2008.

The concert coincided with a major reissue campaign by Rhino Records (UK), who released all the War albums, including Eric Burdon Declares "War" and The Black-Man's Burdon.

Burdon began a solo career in 1971 with the Eric Burdon Band, continuing with a hard rock funk style. In August, 1971, he recorded the album, Guilty!, which featured the blues shouter, Jimmy Witherspoon, and Ike White of the San Quentin Prison Band.

In 2013, Burdon came out with a new album, "Til Your River Runs Dry." The lead single off the album was called, "Water," and was inspired by a conversation he had with former Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev.

Here, Burdon performs “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” in Switzerland, 2006

Howard and Gloria Ott with Frank Beacham, 2005

The song "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" has been recorded hundreds of times, and not just by Eric Burdon. The back story is quite interesting.

Horace Ott is a noted composer, record producer, conductor and pianist. Although not formally credited (his wife, Gloria Caldwell, being credited instead), the song was actually written by Horace Ott, Bennie Benjamin and Sol Marcus.

Ott also arranged the Village People's hit, "Y.M.C.A.," and led the Horace Ott Orchestra. The song was originally written for the jazz singer/pianist Nina Simone, who first recorded it in 1964. Since then, "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" has been covered by many artists, including a 1965 blues rock hit by Burdon and The Animals.

Ott came up with the melody and chorus lyric line after a temporary falling out with his girlfriend (and wife-to-be), Gloria Caldwell. He then brought it to writing partners Bennie Benjamin and Sol Marcus to complete.

However, when it came time for songwriting credits, rules of the time prevented BMI writers (Ott) from officially collaborating with ASCAP members (the other two), so Ott instead listed Caldwell's name on the credits.

"Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" was one of five songs involving the writing of Benjamin and Marcus, presented for Nina Simone's 1964 album, Broadway-Blues-Ballads. There, it is taken at a very slow tempo and arranged around harp and other orchestral elements. A backing choir appears at several points.

Simone sings it in her typically difficult-to-categorize style. Ott's involvement did not end with his initial songwriting; he was the arranger and orchestral conductor for the entire album. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" was released as a single in 1964, but failed to chart.

To some writers, this version of "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" carried the subtext of the civil rights movement, that concerned much of Simone's work of the time. To others, the song was more personal — one that best exemplified Simone's career and life.

Decades later, a commercial for Christian Dior's perfume, J'Adore, starring Charlize Theron, featured Simone's version of the song, as did the final scene of the 2009 Polish film drama, Rewers.

The Animals' lead singer, Eric Burdon, would later say of the song, "It was never considered pop material, but it somehow got passed on to us and we fell in love with it immediately." The Animals sped up the tempo and started off with a memorable electric guitar-and-organ doubled riff from Hilton Valentine and Alan Price.

That was picked out and expanded from an element that originally appeared in the Simone recording's outro. This riff immediately led into Burdon's trademark deep, impassioned vocal line:

Baby, do you understand me now?
Sometimes I feel a little mad.
But don't you know that no one alive can always be an angel?
When things go wrong, I seem to be bad.
(group unison) But I'm just a soul whose intentions are good:
(just Burdon) Oh Lord! Please don't let me be misunderstood ...

The group gained a trans-Atlantic hit in early 1965 from their rendition, rising to #3 on the UK Singles Chart, #15 on the U.S. pop singles chart and #4 in Canada.

A version by Joe Cocker (from his 1969 debut album) played over the ending credits of the 2004 film, Layer Cake.

Artists who have recorded the song include The Moody Blues, Elvis Costello, Cyndi Lauper, John Legend, Lou Rawls and dozens of others.

Nina Simone performs “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”

Bruce Langhorne was born 83 years ago today

Bruce Langhorne was born 83 years ago today

A folk musician, Langhorne was active in the Greenwich Village folk scene in the 1960s, primarily as a session guitarist for folk albums and performances.

Born in Tallahassee, Florida, Langhorne’s father taught at the Florida Agriculture and Mechanical College for Negroes. From the age of four, he lived with his mother in Spanish Harlem in New York City.

Langhorne learned violin, but lost most of three fingers of his right hand as a child when lighting a homemade rocket. He was expelled from Horace Mann Prep School and later claimed that as a teenage gang member he was involved in a stabbing, following which he lived for two years in Mexico. He started playing guitar at the age of 17, and the loss of his fingers contributed to his distinctive playing style.

Langhorne began accompanying folk singer Brother John Sellers at clubs in Greenwich Village. He also worked with many of the major performers in the folk revival of the 1950s and 1960s, including The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem, Joan Baez, Richie Havens, Carolyn Hester, Peter LaFarge, Gordon Lightfoot, Hugh Masekela, Odetta, Babatunde Olatunji, Peter, Paul and Mary, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Tom Rush, Steve Gillette and Buffy Sainte-Marie.

He first recorded in 1961, with Carolyn Hester, which is when he met Bob Dylan. He later said of Dylan: "I thought he was a terrible singer and a complete fake, and I thought he didn’t play harmonica that well....I didn’t really start to appreciate Bobby as something unique until he started writing."

In 1963, he accompanied Dylan on The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, and in 1965 was one of several guitarists on the album, Bringing It All Back Home.

The title character of Bob Dylan's song "Mr. Tambourine Man" was inspired by Langhorne, who used to play a large Turkish frame drum in performances and recordings.

The drum, which Langhorne purchased in a music store in Greenwich Village, had small bells attached around its interior, giving it a jingling sound much like a tambourine. Langhorne used the instrument most prominently on recordings by Richard and Mimi Fariña. The drum is now in the collection of the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

In addition to inspiring the title character of "Mr. Tambourine Man," Langhorne played the electric guitar countermelody on the song. His guitar is also prominent on several other songs on Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home album, particularly "Love Minus Zero/No Limit" and "She Belongs to Me."

He also played the lead guitar parts on "Subterranean Homesick Blues," "Outlaw Blues," "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" and "Maggie's Farm." He also played the guitar for Dylan's television performances of "It's Alright Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" on The Les Crane Show in February, 1965, a month after the Bringing It All Back Home sessions.

Two years earlier, Langhorne performed on "Corrina, Corrina," on the album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and on the outtake "Mixed-Up Confusion," which was eventually released on Biograph. Years later, Langhorne played on tracks for Dylan's album, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.

Langhorne composed the music for the Peter Fonda western film, The Hired Hand (1971), which combined sitar, fiddle and banjo. He also provided the scores for Fonda's 1973 science fiction film, Idaho Transfer, and his 1976 vigilante movie, Fighting Mad. Other films featuring Langhorne's scores include Stay Hungry (1976), Melvin and Howard (1980) and Night Warning (1982).

In 1992 Langhorne founded a hot-sauce company, Brother Bru-Bru's African Hot Sauce. The hot sauce is unique for containing "African spices" and all-natural or organic, no-sodium or low-sodium ingredients.

After suffering a debilitating stroke in 2006, Langhorne eventually moved into a hospice and remained there until his death on April 14, 2017 in Venice, California.

Here, Langhorne’s score for Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand

Columbia Studio A, New York City, Sept. 29, 1961

(l-r) Bruce Langhorne, Carolyn Hester, Bob Dylan, Bill Lee

During the recording session for Hester’s “I’ll Fly Away”

Irving Berlin was born 133 years ago today

Irving Berlin was born 133 years ago today.

A composer and lyricist of Belarusian Jewish origin, Berlin was one of the greatest songwriters in American history. He published his first song, "Marie from Sunny Italy," in 1907 and had his first major international hit, "Alexander's Ragtime Band," in 1911.

"Alexander's Ragtime Band" sparked an international dance craze in places as far away as Berlin's native Russia, which also "flung itself into the ragtime beat with an abandon bordering on mania."

Over the years, Berlin was known for writing music and lyrics in the American vernacular: uncomplicated, simple and direct, with his aim being to "reach the heart of the average American" whom he saw as the "real soul of the country." He wrote hundreds of songs, many becoming major hits, which made him "a legend" before he turned thirty.

During his 60-year career, he wrote an estimated 1,500 songs, including the scores for 19 Broadway shows and 18 Hollywood films. His songs were nominated eight times for Academy Awards. Many songs became popular themes and anthems, including "Easter Parade," "White Christmas," "Happy Holiday," "This is the Army, Mr. Jones" and "There's No Business Like Show Business."

His Broadway musical and 1942 film, This is the Army, with Ronald Reagan, had Kate Smith singing Berlin's "God Bless America" which was first performed in 1938. Smith still performed the song on her 1960 CBS television series, The Kate Smith Show.

After the September 11 attacks in 2001, Celine Dion recorded it as a tribute, making it #1 on the charts.

Berlin's songs have reached the top of the charts 25 times and have been extensively re-recorded by numerous singers including Fred Astaire, Ethel Merman, Frank Sinatra, Ethel Waters, Judy Garland, Barbra Streisand, Linda Ronstadt, Rosemary Clooney, Cher, Diana Ross, Bing Crosby, Rita Reys, Frankie Laine, Johnnie Ray, Al Jolson, Nat King Cole, Billie Holiday, Doris Day and Ella Fitzgerald.

Composer Douglas Moore sets Berlin apart from all other contemporary songwriters, and includes him instead with Stephen Foster, Walt Whitman and Carl Sandburg, as a "great American minstrel" — someone who has "caught and immortalized in his songs what we say, what we think about and what we believe."

Composer George Gershwin called him "the greatest songwriter that has ever lived,“ and composer Jerome Kern concluded that "Irving Berlin has no place in American music — he is American music."

Berlin died in 1989 at age 101.

Here, is the complete 90-minute 100th birthday special of Irving Berlin from Carnegie Hall on May 11, 1988

On May 11, 1981 — 40 years ago today — Bob Marley, the soul and international face of reggae music, died in a Miami, Florida, hospital

In what would prove to be the next to the last concert of his tragically short life, Bob Marley shared the bill at Madison Square Garden with the hugely popular American funk band, The Commodores.

With no costumes, no choreography and no set design to speak of, "the reggae star had the majority of his listeners on their feet and in the palm of his hand," said New York Times critic Robert Palmer. "After this show of strength, and Marley's intense singing and electric stage presence, the Commodores were a letdown."

Only days after his triumphant shows in New York City, Bob Marley collapsed while jogging in Central Park and later received a grim diagnosis: a cancerous growth on an old soccer injury on his big toe had metastasized and spread to Marley's brain, liver and lungs.

Less than eight months later, on May 11, 1981 — 40 years ago today — Bob Marley, the soul and international face of reggae music, died in a Miami, Florida, hospital. He was only 36 years old.

Nesta Robert Marley was born on February 6, 1945, in rural St. Ann Parish, Jamaica, the son of a middle-aged white Jamaican Marine officer and an 18-year-old black Jamaican girl. At the age of nine, Marley moved to Trench Town, a tough West Kingston ghetto where he would meet and befriend Neville "Bunny" Livingston (later Bunny Wailer) and Peter McIntosh (later Peter Tosh) and drop out of school at age 14 to make music.

Jamaica at the time was entering a period of incredible musical creativity. As transistor radios became available on an island then served only by a staid, BBC-style national radio station, the music of America suddenly became accessible via stateside radio stations.

From a mix of New Orleans-style rhythm and blues and indigenous, African-influenced musical traditions arose first ska, then rock steady — precursor styles to reggae, which did not take shape as a recognizable style of its own until the late 1960s.

Bob Marley, Peter Tosh and Bunny Wailer performed together as The Wailers throughout this period, coming into their own as a group just as reggae became the dominant sound in Jamaica.

Thanks to the international reach of Island Records, the Wailers came to the world's attention in the early 1970s via their albums Catch a Fire (1972) and Burnin' (1973). Eric Clapton spread the group's name even wider by recording a pop-friendly version of "I Shot The Sheriff" from the latter album.

With the departure of Tosh and Wailer in 1974, Marley took center stage in the group, and by the late 70s he had turned out a string of albums — Exodus (1977), featuring "Jamming," "Waiting In Vain" and "One Love/People Get Ready;" Kaya (1978), featuring "Is This Love" and "Sun Is Shining;" and Uprising (1980), featuring "Could You Be Loved" and "Redemption Song."

While none of the songs was anything approaching a hit in the United States during Bob Marley's lifetime, they constitute a legacy that has only increased his fame in the years since his death on this day in 1981.

Here, Marley performs “No Woman No Cry” in 1979

Thanks History.com

Salvador Dalí, Spanish surrealist painter, was born 117 years ago today

Salvador Dalí, Spanish surrealist painter, was born 117 years ago today.

A skilled draftsman, Dalí is best known for the striking and bizarre images in his surrealist work. His painterly skills are often attributed to the influence of Renaissance masters. His best-known work, The Persistence of Memory, was completed in 1931.

Dalí's expansive artistic repertoire included film, sculpture and photography. He worked in collaboration with a range of artists in a variety of media. He attributed his "love of everything that is gilded and excessive, my passion for luxury and my love of oriental clothes” to a self-styled "Arab lineage," claiming that his ancestors were descended from the Moors.

Dalí was highly imaginative, and also enjoyed indulging in unusual and grandiose behavior. His eccentric manner and attention-grabbing public actions sometimes drew more attention than his artwork. This led to the dismay of those who held his work in high esteem and irritated critics.

Dalí has been cited as major inspiration from many modern artists, such as Damien Hirst, Noel Fielding, Jeff Koons and most other modern surrealists. His manic expression and famous mustache have made him something of a cultural icon for the bizarre and surreal.

Dalí produced over 1,500 paintings in his career in addition to producing illustrations for books, lithographs, designs for theatre sets and costumes, a great number of drawings, dozens of sculptures and various other projects, including an animated short film for Disney. He also collaborated with director Jack Bond in 1965, creating a movie titled Dalí in New York.

Dalí said of himself: "the only difference between me and the surrealists is that I am a surrealist."

Dali died in 1989 at age 84.

In 1941, American photographer Philippe Halsman met the surrealist artist Salvador Dalí in New York City and they began to collaborate in the late 1940s.

The 1948 work Dali Atomicus explores the idea of suspension, depicting three cats flying, water thrown from a bucket, an easel, a footstool and Salvador Dalí all seemingly suspended in mid-air.

The title of the photograph is a reference to Dalí's work, Leda Atomica. It can be seen in the right of the photograph behind the two cats.

Halsman reported that it took 28 attempts to be satisfied with the result. This is the unretouched version of the photograph that was published in LIFE magazine.

In this version, the wires suspending the easel and the painting, the hand of the assistant holding the chair and the prop holding up the footstool can still be seen. The frame on the easel is still empty.

The copyright for this photo was registered with the U.S. Copyright Office, but according to the U.S. Library of Congress was not renewed, putting it in the public domain in the United States and countries which adopted the rule of the shorter term.

Donovan is 75 years old today

Donovan is 75 years old today.

Born Donovan Phillips Leitch, he is a Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist. Initially labelled as an imitator of Bob Dylan, he developed an eclectic and distinctive style that blended folk, jazz, pop, psychedelia and world music (notably calypso).

Emerging from the British folk scene, Donovan shot to fame in the United Kingdom in early 1965 with a series of live performances on the pop TV series, Ready Steady Go!. Having initially signed with Pye Records in 1965, he recorded a handful of singles and two albums in the folk music vein, but after signing a new contract with U.S. CBS/Epic Records his popularity spread to other countries.

After extricating himself from his original management contract, he began a long and successful collaboration with Mickie Most, one of the leading British independent record producers of the era. He scored a string of hits in the United States, the UK, Australia and other countries.

His most successful singles in the 1960s included the early UK hits "Catch the Wind,” "Colours” and “The Universal Soldier” in 1965. "Sunshine Superman" topped the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, and "Mellow Yellow" reached U.S. #2 the following year, with "Hurdy Gurdy Man" reaching the Top 5 in both the U.S. and UK in 1968.

He was the first artist signed to CBS/Epic Records by Clive Davis, the then-new administrative vice president. Donovan and Most collaborated on a series of hit albums and singles between 1965 and 1970.

Donovan became a friend of leading pop musicians including Joan Baez, Brian Jones and The Beatles. He taught John Lennon a finger-picking guitar style in 1968. His commercial fortunes waned after parting with Most in 1969, and he left the industry for a time.

Donovan continued to perform and record sporadically in the 1970s and 1980s. His musical style was scorned by critics, especially after the advent of punk rock. He withdrew from performing and recording several times during his career, but he underwent a revival in the 1990s with the emergence of the rave scene in Britain.

In 1996, Donovan recorded the album, Sutras, with producer and long-time fan Rick Rubin. In 2004, came Beat Cafe, and, in late 2010, he released the double CD, Ritual Groove.

Here, Donovan performs “Hurdy Gurdy Man”

David O. Selznick, film producer, was born 119 years ago today

David O. Selznick, film producer, was born 119 years ago today.

Selznick produced Gone with the Wind in 1939 and Alfred Hitchcock’s Rebecca in 1940 — both earning him an Academy Award for Best Picture. His successes continued with classics such as The Garden of Allah (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), The Young in Heart (1938), Made for Each Other (1939) and Intermezzo (1939).

In 1949, he co-produced the Carol Reed picture, The Third Man, with Alexander Korda.

Selznick was an amphetamine user, and would often dictate long, rambling memos to his directors while on it.

The documentary, Shadowing The Third Man, relates that Selznick introduced The Third Man director, Carol Reed, to the use of amphetamines. This allowed Reed to bring the picture in below budget and on schedule by filming nearly 22 hours at a time.

The main reason I write of Selznick today is he wrote one of the best books I have read on film producing. Called “Memo from David O. Selznick,” the book is about an era when movies were good — very good — and how producers once did things other than raise money. It is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how great films and video are made.

Buzzed on Benzedrine, Selznick dictated his every thought to secretaries from 1916-1965, 2,000 file boxes' worth of priceless, unique inside information. "What we're given is a seat in his office," Roger Ebert once wrote, "the Nixon tapes of Hollywood's golden age."

Selznick tussles with Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, Tallulah Bankhead and many other stars in the book. "Would you care to brave the lioness' den?" he asks his secretary, suggesting that she contact Bankhead about a bit part after spurning her for the Scarlett part in Gone with the Wind.

Read this book if you read no other about filmmaking.

Selznick died in 1965 at age 63 after suffering several heart attacks.

Fred Astaire was born 122 years ago today

Fred Astaire was born 122 years ago today.

Astaire was a film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer, musician and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years — during which he made 31 musical films.

He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films. Gene Kelly, another major innovator in filmed dance, said that "the history of dance on film begins with Astaire.”

Beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers, Rudolf Nureyev, Sammy Davis, Jr., Michael Jackson, Gregory Hines, Mikhail Baryshnikov, George Balanchine and Jerome Robbins among them, also acknowledged Astaire’s importance and influence.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, Astaire was the son of Johanna "Ann" and Frederic "Fritz" Austerlitz (born September 8, 1868, as Friedrich Emanuel Austerlitz). His mother was born in the United States, to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace. His father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents, who had converted to Catholicism.

When his father suddenly lost his job, Astaire and his family moved to New York City in 1905 to launch the show business career of the children, who began training at the Alviene Master School of the Theatre and Academy of Cultural Arts. Despite Adele and Fred's teasing rivalry, they quickly acknowledged their individual strengths, his durability and her greater talent.

Fred and Adele's mother suggested they change their name to "Astaire," as she felt "Austerlitz" sounded as though it could be the name of a battle. Family legend attributes the name to an uncle surnamed "L'Astaire.”

They were taught dance, speaking and singing in preparation for developing an act. Their first act was called Juvenile Artists Presenting an Electric Musical Toe-Dancing Novelty. Fred wore a top hat and tails in the first half and a lobster outfit in the second.

As a result of their father's salesmanship, Fred and Adele rapidly landed a major contract and played the famed Orpheum Circuit not only in Omaha but throughout the United States. Soon Adele grew to at least three inches taller than Fred and the pair began to look incongruous. The family decided to take a two-year break from show business to let time take its course and to avoid trouble from the Gerry Society and the child labor laws of the era.

The career of the Astaire siblings resumed with mixed fortunes, though with increasing skill and polish, as they began to incorporate tap dancing into their routines. Astaire's dancing was inspired by Bill "Bojangles" Robinson and John "Bubbles" Sublett. From vaudeville dancer Aurelio Coccia they learned the tango, waltz and other ballroom dances popularized by Vernon and Irene Castle.

By age 14, Fred had taken on the musical responsibilities for their act. He first met George Gershwin, who was working as a song plugger for Jerome H. Remick in 1916. Fred had already been hunting for new music and dance ideas. Their chance meeting was to deeply affect the careers of both artists.

Astaire was always on the lookout for new steps on the circuit and was starting to demonstrate his ceaseless quest for novelty and perfection. The Astaires broke into Broadway in 1917 with Over the Top, a patriotic revue. The Astaires performed for U.S. and Allied troops at this time too. They followed up with several more shows, and of their work in "The Passing Show of 1918.”

By this time, Astaire's dancing skill was beginning to outshine his sister's, though she still set the tone of their act and her sparkle and humor drew much of the attention, due in part to Fred's careful preparation and strong supporting choreography.

During the 1920s, Fred and Adele appeared on Broadway and on the London stage in shows such as George and Ira Gershwin's Lady Be Good (1924), Funny Face (1927) and later in The Band Wagon (1931). They won popular acclaim with the theater crowd on both sides of the Atlantic.

After the close of Funny Face, the Astaires went to Hollywood for a screen test (now lost) at Paramount Pictures, but were not considered suitable for films. They split in 1932 when Adele got married.

Fred Astaire went on to achieve success on his own on Broadway and in London with Gay Divorce, while considering offers from Hollywood. The end of the partnership was traumatic for Astaire, but stimulated him to expand his range.

Free of the brother-sister constraints of the former pairing and with a new partner (Claire Luce), he created a romantic partnered dance to Cole Porter's "Night and Day," which had been written for Gay Divorce.

Astaire and Ginger Rogers were then paired by RKO and made ten films together, including The Gay Divorcee, Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937) and Carefree (1938). Six out of the nine Astaire-Rogers musicals became the biggest moneymakers for RKO. All of the films brought a certain prestige and artistry that all studios coveted at the time.

The Astaire-Rogers partnership elevated them both to stardom. "He gives her class and she gives him sex appeal," Katherine Hepburn said.

Astaire received a percentage of the films' profits, something extremely rare in actors' contracts at that time. He also got complete autonomy over how the dances would be presented, allowing him to revolutionize dance on film.

Astaire is credited with important innovations in early film musicals. He insisted that the (almost stationary) camera film a dance routine in a single shot, if possible, while holding the dancers in full view at all times. Astaire famously quipped: "Either the camera will dance, or I will."

Astaire maintained this policy from The Gay Divorcee (1934) onwards (until overruled by Francis Ford Coppola, who directed Finian's Rainbow (1968), Astaire's last film musical).

Astaire's style of dance sequences thus contrasted with the Busby Berkeley musicals, which were known for dance sequences filled with extravagant aerial shots, quick takes and zooms on certain areas of the body, such as the arms or legs.

Astaire was also adamant that all song and dance routines be seamlessly integrated into the plot lines of the film. Instead of using dance as spectacle as Busby Berkeley did, Astaire used it to move the plot along.

Typically, an Astaire picture would include a solo performance by Astaire — which he termed his "sock solo" — a partnered comedy dance routine, and a partnered romantic dance routine.

Astaire had a long and successful career. After announcing his retirement in 1946, he concentrated on his horse-racing interests and, in 1947, founded the Fred Astaire Dance Studios. He sold the enterprise in 1966.

Astaire never retired from dancing. In his last major musical film, Finian's Rainbow, he shed his white tie and tails to play an Irish rogue who believes if he buries a crock of gold in the shadows of Fort Knox it will multiply. His dance partner was Petula Clark, who portrayed his skeptical daughter.

Astaire continued to act into the 1970s, appearing on television as the father of Robert Wagner's character of Alexander Mundy in It Takes a Thief. He also appeared in The Towering Inferno (1974), in which he danced with Jennifer Jones. For that performance, he received his only Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Astaire died in June, 1987 at 88 years old.

Here, is Astaire and Rogers in “Swing Time”

"Mother" Maybelle Carter was born 112 years ago today

From the late 1920s all the way through the 1950s, she was a familiar presence on American radio and a powerful influence on the course of country music.

First as part of a trio in partnership with her cousin, Sara, and her brother-in-law A.P., and later alongside her own three daughters, Helen, Anita and June, she helped make the Carter family of southwestern Virginia the "First Family of Country Music."

Known universally by her affectionate nickname, "Mother" Maybelle Carter was born Maybelle Addington near Nickelsville, Virginia, on May 10, 1909 —112 years ago today.

Music was an ever-present part of Carter's childhood, as it was for so many popular-music pioneers born in the first half of the 20th century. Without any thought of music as a career path, Carter and other members of her extended family learned to play instruments and sing close-harmony and mastered a wide repertoire of traditional mountain folk songs.

It was not until technology and economics drove the massive growth of the American recording industry in the 1920s that a set of talents like Carter had any real commercial value.

In 1927, after performing together for several years at various local events, Maybelle, cousin Sara and Sara's husband, A.P. Carter — who became Maybelle's brother-in-law in 1926 when she married his brother Ezra Carter — answered an advertisement calling for interested local musicians to come and be recorded in nearby Bristol, Tennessee, by a visiting producer for the Victor Talking Machine Corporation.

"The Bristol Sessions," as they later came to be called, are often referred to as the "Big Bang of country music," not just for launching the career of the Carter Family, but also for capturing the first-ever recording of country-music titan Jimmie Rodgers.

Over the course of the next year, the Carter Family recorded a body of songs that are a significant part of the country and bluegrass canon — songs like "Wildwood Flower" and "Can the Circle Be Unbroken (By and By)."

Those recordings earned the Carter Family a shot at their first regular live radio program, and those live radio programs influenced an entire generation of country and rock-and-roll stars, including Maybelle's future son-in-law, Johnny Cash.

After A.P. and Sara's divorce in 1943, Maybelle carried on the Carter family name by bringing her three young daughters into the act. Under the new name, "Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters," this second incarnation of the Carter Family performed and recorded for the next 35 years, until Maybelle Carter's death on October 23, 1978.

Here, June Carter joins Mother Maybelle on a duet of “No Hiding Place Down Here” in 1971 on the Johnny Cash Show

Thanks History.com

On this day in 1877 — 144 years ago — President Rutherford B. Hayes had the first telephone installed in the White House

On this day in 1877 — 144 years ago — President Rutherford B. Hayes had the first telephone installed in the White House.

Installed in the mansion’s telegraph room, President Hayes embraced the new technology. Even so, he rarely received phone calls. The Treasury Department possessed the only other direct phone line to the White House at that time. The White House phone number was “1.”

Phone service throughout the country was in its infancy in 1877. It was not until a year later that the first telephone exchange was set up in Connecticut and it would be 50 more years until President Herbert Hoover had the first telephone line installed at the president’s desk in the Oval Office.

In more recent years, presidential phone recordings have given the public insight into the personalities and political maneuvers of the nation’s leaders. On such tapes, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and Harry Truman were frequently heard using profanity or openly criticizing political opponents without the constraints of being in the public eye or having to maintain a facade of presidential decorum.

Most of the time those on the other end of the White House phone line had no knowledge they were being taped.

Since 1990, the National Archives and Records Administration has released to the public presidential phone recordings regarding subjects such as Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis; Johnson’s increase in the number of U.S. troops sent to Vietnam and Nixon’s appointment of William Rehnquist to the U.S. Supreme Court.

American Radio Works reported that Nixon left behind more taped phone recordings than any other president, a fact that led to his political undoing in 1973 when Watergate investigators subpoenaed tapes and transcripts of close to 3,700 hours of Nixon s phone recordings.

Since Nixon’s administration, declassified transcripts or sound recordings have become increasingly available to the public in print and online.

Dave Mason is 75 years old today

Dave Mason is 75 years old today.

An English singer-songwriter and guitarist from Worcester, England, Mason first found fame with the rock band, Traffic. In his long career, he has played and recorded with many of the era's most notable pop and rock musicians, including Paul McCartney, George Harrison, The Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Michael Jackson, David Crosby, Graham Nash, Steve Winwood, Fleetwood Mac, Delaney Bramlett and Cass Elliot.

Mason's best known song is "Feelin' Alright," recorded by Traffic in 1968 and later by many other performers, including Joe Cocker, who had a major hit with the song in 1969. For Traffic, he also wrote "Hole in My Shoe," a psychedelic pop song that became a hit in its own right.

"We Just Disagree," Mason's 1977 solo U.S. hit written by Jim Krueger, has become a staple of U.S. Classic Hits and Adult Contemporary radio playlists.

Mason was a friend of legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix, whose career was launched in England in 1966. Hendrix first heard the song, "All Along the Watchtower," by Bob Dylan, at a party to which he was invited by Mason. He promptly decided to record his own version. That night he recorded the song at Olympic Studios, South West London, with Mason playing 12-string acoustic guitar.

According to the session engineer, Eddie Kramer, it took Mason about 27 takes to get his part recorded satisfactorily, because he had difficulty mastering the tricky rhythmic turnaround in the introduction. The song was released on the Electric Ladyland album in September, 1968.

Here, Mason performs “We Just Disagree”

Tony Garnier is 65 years old today

Photo by Frank Beacham

Tony Garnier is 65 years old today.

Both double bass and bass guitar player, Garnier has been an accompanist to Bob Dylan since 1989. He is Dylan's longest-running sideman and his musical director.

Many accounts claim that Garnier was born on August 18. However, that sprung from Dylan wishing Garnier a happy birthday as a joke during a performance. Garnier confirmed his actual birthday is May 10.

In addition to his work with Dylan, Garnier has recorded with Tom Waits, Loudon Wainwright III, Paul Simon, Marc Ribot and Eric Andersen. He was a member of Asleep at the Wheel (from 1976–78) and The Lounge Lizards.

He also played with Robert Gordon in the early 1980s, and was a long-time sideman for David Johansen in his Buster Poindexter persona. For a brief time, he was a member of the Saturday Night Live house band.

Garnier’s musical heritage descends from the Camelia Brass Band in New Orleans led by his grandfather, D'Jalma Garnier, (also spelled Ganier while with Camelia Brass Band), a legendary early jazz player noted on the Preservation Hall roster in the New Orleans French Quarter.

Garnier is one of numerous grandsons descended from D'Jalma Thomas Garnier, the New Orleans bandleader, trumpet player, pianist and violinist said to have taught Louis Armstrong at the New Orleans Boys Home for Colored Waifs.

Tony Garnier is the younger brother of D'Jalma Garnier (born in 1954), the fiddler, composer, guitarist and "pedestrian scholar" of Louisiana Creole fame. The two brothers are the only descendants of Papa Garnier to become professional musicians in the legacy of this significant New Orleans musical family. Both of their parents were musicians working with non-profits in California.

Before joining Dylan's Neverdending Tour Band in 1989, Tony added bass tracks to films by Jim Jarmusch, most notably Down by Law, filmed in Louisiana. He appeared in Bob Dylan's 2003 film, Masked and Anonymous. Garnier worked with Michelle Branch on her third studio album, Everything Comes and Goes, released in 2010.

Here, Garnier discusses hollowbody basses with Hansford Rowe

Tony Garnier on right with (L to R) Frank Beacham, Jonny Rosch and Steve Holley, 2010

On this day in 1964 — 57 years ago — Louis Armstrong, age 63, broke the Beatles' stranglehold on the U.S. pop charts with the #1 hit, "Hello Dolly"

Louis Armstrong eats a plate of spaghetti in Rome, 1949

Photo by Slim Aarons

Following the ascension of "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" to #1 in early February, 1964 the Beatles held the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for three and a half months — longer than any popular artist before or since.

Over the course of those months, the Beatles earned three consecutive #1 singles (a record); held all five spots in the top five in early April (also a record); and had a total of 14 songs in the Billboard Hot 100 in mid-April (yet another record).

But just when it seemed that no homegrown act would ever stand up to the British invaders, one of least likely American stars imaginable proved himself equal to the task.

On this day in 1964 — 57 years ago — Louis Armstrong, age 63, broke the Beatles' stranglehold on the U.S. pop charts with the #1 hit, "Hello Dolly." In a way, it was entirely appropriate that a titan such as Louis Armstrong would be the artist to end the reign of the first foreign group ever to take over the American pop scene.

It can be argued, after all, that Armstrong bears more responsibility for shaping the course of 20th century American music than Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra combined.

Louis Armstrong became one of jazz music's first individual superstars as a young trumpet player in the 1920s and 30s, but more than that, he revolutionized jazz itself by turning it into an individual improvisational art form.

The recordings Armstrong made with his Hot Five and Hot Seven combos between 1925 and 1927 are widely credited with creating much of the foundation for the future of jazz and blues performance and, by extension, of rock and roll. Armstrong's said himself "if it hadn't been for jazz, there wouldn't be no rock and roll."

Of course it wasn't Louis Armstrong the young revolutionary, but Louis Armstrong the late-career light entertainer who knocked the Beatles from the top of the pops.

By the early 1960s, Armstrong's most important and influential work was already behind him, yet his famous charisma and ebullient personality were still enough to lift a show tune like "Hello Dolly" to the #1 spot on the pop charts — and over the Beatles — on this day in 1964.

Here is Armstrong performing “Hello Dolly” in 1965.

Thanks History.com

Girl in Window

Photograph by Alexandr Kostygin

Billy Joel is 72 years old today

Billy Joel is 72 years old today.

Since releasing his first hit song, "Piano Man,” in 1973, Joel has become the sixth-best-selling recording artist and the third-best-selling solo artist in the United States. His compilation album, Greatest Hits Vol. 1 & 2, is the third-best-selling album in the United States by discs shipped.

Joel had Top 40 hits in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s — achieving 33 Top 40 hits in the United States, all of which he wrote himself. He is one of the world's best-selling artists of all time, having sold over 150 million records worldwide.

With the exception of the 2007 songs, "All My Life," and "Christmas in Fallujah,” Joel stopped writing and recording popular music after 1993's River of Dreams, but he has continued to tour extensively.

Born in the Bronx and raised in Hicksville, New York in a Levitt home, both of Joel's parents were Jewish. They divorced in 1960, and his father moved to Vienna, Austria. Billy has a sister, Judith Joel, and a half-brother, Alexander Joel, who is a classical conductor in Europe and was chief musical director of the Staatstheater Braunschweig from 2001 to 2014.

Joel's father was an accomplished classical pianist. Billy reluctantly began piano lessons at an early age, at his mother's insistence. His teachers included the noted American pianist, Morton Estrin, and musician/songwriter, Timothy Ford.

As a teenager, Joel took up boxing. He boxed successfully on the amateur Golden Gloves circuit for a short time, winning 22 bouts, but abandoned the sport shortly after breaking his nose in his 24th boxing match.

Joel attended Hicksville High School in 1967, but he did not graduate with his class. Rather than attend summer school to earn his diploma, Joel decided to immediately begin a career in music. "I told them, 'To hell with it. If I'm not going to Columbia University, I'm going to Columbia Records, and you don't need a high school diploma over there'."

Columbia did, in fact, become the label that eventually signed him. In 1992, he submitted essays to the school board and was awarded his diploma at Hicksville High's annual graduation ceremony — 25 years after he had left.

In 1996, Joel merged his long-held love of boating with his desire for a second career. He formed, with Long Island boating businessman, Peter Needham, the Long Island Boat Company. In November, 2010, Joel opened a shop on Oyster Bay, Long Island to manufacture custom-made, retro-styled motorcycles and accessories.

Here, Joel performs The Stranger, 1977

On this day in 1971 — 50 years ago — the last original episode aired of the The Honeymooners, starring Jackie Gleason as Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden

On this day in 1971 — 50 years ago — the last original episode aired of the The Honeymooners, starring Jackie Gleason as Brooklyn bus driver Ralph Kramden.

Although a perennial rerun favorite in syndication, The Honeymooners actually aired only 39 episodes in its familiar sitcom format, running for just one season in 1955-56. The show debuted on October 5, 1951, as a six-minute sketch on the variety show Cavalcade of Stars, hosted by Jackie Gleason.

Cavalcade of Stars evolved into The Jackie Gleason Show in 1952, and Gleason continued the sketches, playing the blustery Ralph Kramden. Regular cast member Audrey Meadows soon replaced the original casting choice, Pert Kelton, as Ralph’s long-suffering wife, Alice, who deflated his get-rich-quick schemes but often saved the day.

Art Carney played Gleason’s friend and sidekick, Ed Norton, from the beginning, and Joyce Randolph was the most memorable incarnation of Ed’s wife, Trixie.

In 1955, Gleason had tired of the hour-long variety-show format and wanted to try something new. He suggested creating two half-hour programs: The Honeymooners and Stage Show, a musical-variety show, which Gleason would produce. Among Stage Show’s many musical guests was the first-time TV performer, Elvis Presley, who visited the show in January, 1956.

In a departure from most TV shows of the time, The Honeymooners was filmed in front of a live audience and broadcast at a later date. To allow Gleason more time to pursue other producing projects, he taped two episodes a week, leaving him free for several months at the end of the season. Shows were taped at New York’s Adelphi Theatre in front of about 1,000 people.

Unfortunately, the two shows did not appeal to audiences as much as Gleason had hoped. He soon returned to his hour-long variety format, occasionally including Honeymooners skits. He sold the full Honeymooners episodes to CBS for $1.5 million, and they would go on to earn the network a windfall in syndication.

In 1966, Gleason began creating hour-long Honeymooners episodes, which he aired in lieu of his usual variety format. From 1966 to 1970, about half of Gleason’s shows were these hour-long episodes. In 1971, the episodes were rebroadcast as their own series, until May 9, 1971, when the final episode aired.

In the 1980s, Gleason reassembled the original cast for two additional Honeymooner’s show in Miami Beach, where he was retired. I did off-line edits for Gleason from those last two episodes.

Despite its brief life as a traditional sitcom, The Honeymooners remains one of the most memorable TV comedies of all time, rivaled only by I Love Lucy in its pioneering role in television history.

Here, is a scene on golf with Gleason and Art Carney, who plays Norton.

Thanks History.com

The Honeymooners — A Personal Remembrance

After the initial run of the Honeymooners in New York City, Jackie Gleason boarded a train and moved to Miami Beach.

It was 1964 and the reason was the Great One liked year-round access to the golf course at the nearby Inverrary Country Club in Lauderhill (where he built his final home). It was a sort of semi-retirement for Gleason.

Gleason did a lot of shows from the auditorium in Miami Beach while living in the area. In late 1977 and 1978, he decided to bring the original cast back together and do a couple of special versions of the Honeymooners. It would be the last two episodes of the legendary series.

Because I had a mobile off-line edit van in Miami, I got to work on the two shows with Gleason and his production company. We did an off-line edit of the two Honeymooners shows on Sony 3/4-inch U-Matic tape.

In the late 70s, the problem was editing accuracy. The format was originally designed for news. Entertainment programming required far greater precision in editing than news. Editing on U-matic tape at the time was accurate to plus or minus 30 frames per second. It would get much better in a year or so, but that was the situation at the time.

Gleason said that wouldn't work, because to judge the accuracy of his comedy — the purpose of the off-line edit — it had to be much more precisely cut than the U-Matic system was designed for.

Gleason told me we had to get the edit to within two to three frames of accuracy — a tiny fraction of a second — to determine if a comedy sketch worked. I was in a sweat and determined to make it work. I was incapable of saying "no" to Jackie Gleason.

So I took on the job anyway — against all good sense and reasonable judgement.

In the coming days, I spent hours repeatedly doing edits for those shows, seeking that random moment when the edit was close to accurate. That meant editing the same shot over and over until the stars aligned.

It was only a rough cut edit, yet a perfectionist like Gleason demanded that it be right. It was tortuous work that went on for days, but I finally got every edit within a couple of frames.

By then, my lifelong love of the Honeymooners had faded. I had seen the underbelly of the beast! But Jackie Gleason was happy and that was all that mattered to me.

Of course, the on-line editing, done later with the help of my "rough cuts," was frame accurate and done on equipment designed to do the job.

What I learned from Gleason during that experience is that timing is EVERYTHING — in comedy, acting, music and just about anything else in the creative arts. I had never fully appreciated that before. The experience gave me a new respect for what those great actors did on that tiny set.

That, of course, was also a key to Gleason's great comedic genius. As the years went by, I realized why Orson Welles nicknamed him, "The Great One."

And expanded version of this and many other stories are in my new book, The Whole World Was Watching: My Life Under the Media Microscope.

A Honeymooners episode is filmed with Jackie Gleason, foreground, and Audrey Meadows, Art Carney and Joyce Randolph in the background, circa 1955. That original set was used in our production.

Above photo from the Everett Collection

Swollen ankles which have been soaked in dressing room tub are rested as Jackie Gleason rehearses an episode of the Honeymooners with the cast

Photo by Leonard McCombe

Albert Finney, English actor, was born 85 ago today

Albert Finney, English actor, was born 85 ago today.

Beginning in the theatre, Finney was especially successful in plays by William Shakespeare before he switched to films. There, he achieved prominence in the early 1960s, his debut being The Entertainer, directed by Tony Richardson, who had directed him in theatre in earlier times.

Finney became a leading Free Cinema figure, and maintained a successful career in theatre, film and television.

He is known for his roles in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960), Tom Jones (1963), Miller's Crossing (1990), Big Fish (2003), The Bourne Ultimatum (2007) and Annie (1982). In 2012, he made the The Bourne Legacy and the James Bond film, Skyfall.

A recipient of BAFTA, Golden Globe, Emmy and Screen Actors Guild Awards, Finney was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor four times, for Tom Jones (1963), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Dresser (1983) and Under the Volcano (1984).

He was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Erin Brockovich (2000).

In May, 2011, Finney disclosed that he had been receiving treatment for kidney cancer. He died from a chest infection on Feb. 7, 2019 at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London. He was 82.

Above, Albert Finney is on the set of the only feature film he directed, Charlie Bubbles, in 1967

Dave Prater, half of the soul duo, Sam & Dave, was born 84 years ago today

Sam and Dave

Dave Prater, half of the soul duo, Sam & Dave, was born 84 years ago today.

Prater was a deep baritone/tenor vocalist who sang with Sam & Dave from 1961 until his death in 1988.

Sam & Dave were one of the most successful and critically acclaimed duos in soul music history. They brought the sounds of the black gospel church to pop music with their string of call-and-response hit records. Primarily recorded at Stax Records in Memphis from 1965 through 1968, these songs included "Soul Man,” "Hold On, I'm Coming" and "I Thank You.”

Other than Aretha Franklin, no other soul act during Sam & Dave's hitmaking Stax years (1966–1968) had more consistent R&B chart success, which included 10 consecutive Top 20 singles and three consecutive Top 10 LPs.

Nicknamed "Double Dynamite" for their energetic and sweaty, gospel-infused performances, Sam & Dave were also considered by critics to be one of the greatest live performing acts of the 1960s.

The duo has been cited as a musical influence by numerous artists, including Bruce Springsteen, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins and Stevie Winwood. The Blues Brothers, which helped create a major resurgence of popular interest in soul, R&B, and blues music in the 1980s, was heavily influenced by Sam & Dave. Their biggest hit was their Top 20 cover of "Soul Man,” and their act and stage show was patterned after Sam & Dave's.

The seventh of ten children, Prater was born in Ocilla, Georgia, where he grew up singing gospel music in the church choir, and was a veteran of the gospel group the Sensational Hummingbirds, in which he sang with his older brother, J. T. Prater.

Dave Prater met his future partner, Sam Moore, in the King of Hearts Club in Miami in 1961, signing to Roulette Records shortly thereafter. Sam & Dave released six singles for Roulette, including two songs that Prater co-wrote with Moore.

Prater was typically featured as the lead vocalist on these records, with Moore typically singing harmony and alternate verses. They were signed in late 1964 by Jerry Wexler to Atlantic Records, with an agreement that allowed them to record in Memphis with Stax Records.

All of their biggest hits were written and produced by Isaac Hayes and David Porter, who worked as songwriters for Stax. Sam & Dave's Stax records also benefited greatly from the backing of the Stax house band, Booker T. & the M.G.'s, and the Stax horn section, the Mar-Keys.

The duo broke-up in June, 1970. They reunited in August, 1971 and performed throughout most of the decade through 1981. They enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity due to the Blues Brothers's 1979 recording of "Soul Man.”

In 1982, Prater started touring with Sam Daniels. This duo was also billed as Sam & Dave. They performed together until Prater's death in 1988. Moore attempted to legally block Prater from using the group's name without his participation and permission, but was generally unsuccessful in stopping the act from performing.

The Daniels–Prater incarnation of Sam & Dave played as many as 100 shows per year, including gigs in Europe, Japan and Canada. Prater's last performance with Daniels was on April 3, 1988, at a Stax Reunion show at the Atlanta Civic Center, which also featured Isaac Hayes, Eddie Floyd and Rufus and Carla Thomas.

Six days later, on April 9, 1988, Prater died in a car crash in Sycamore, Georgia, while driving to his mother's house.

Here is the original Sam & Dave with the Mar-Keys performing, “Hold On, I’m Comin,” in 1967

Hank Snow was born 107 years ago today

Hank Snow was born 107 years ago today.

In a career that spanned nearly 50 years, Snow recorded 140 albums and charted more than 85 singles on the Billboard country charts from 1950 until 1980. This total includes the #1 hits "I'm Moving On,” "The Golden Rocket,” "I Don't Hurt Anymore,” "Let Me Go, Lover!,” "I've Been Everywhere" and "Hello Love.”

Snow was an accomplished songwriter whose clear, baritone voice expressed a wide range of emotions, including the joys of freedom and travel as well as the anguish of tortured love. His music was rooted in his beginnings in small town Nova Scotia where, as a frail, 80-pound youngster, he endured extreme poverty, beatings and psychological abuse as well as physically punishing labor during the economically depressed 1920s and 30s.

Through it all, his musically talented mother provided the emotional support he needed to pursue his dream of becoming a famous entertainer like his idol, Jimmie Rodgers, the country star.

The Hank Snow Museum in Liverpool, Nova Scotia celebrates his life and work in a province where his fans still see him as an inspirational figure who triumphed over personal adversity to become one of the most influential artists in all of country music.

In 1996, Snow experienced respiratory problems. On December 20, 1999, he died at age 85 from heart failure at his Rainbow Ranch in Madison, Tennessee.

Snow’s legacy has been extensive. Elvis Presley, The Rolling Stones, Ray Charles, Ashley MacIsaac, Johnny Cash and Emmylou Harris, among others, have covered his music. One of his last top hits, "Hello Love,” was sung by Garrison Keillor to open each broadcast of his long-running Prairie Home Companion radio show. The song became Snow's seventh and final #1 hit on the Billboard Hot Country Singles chart in April, 1974.

In Robert Altman's 1975 film, Nashville, Henry Gibson played a self-obsessed country star loosely based on Hank Snow. He was also mentioned in the film, Smokey and the Bandit. When Cletus Snow, making a collect call, gives his name, the operator's response is not heard, but Cletus replies, "No, I'm not Hank Snow's brother."

Here, Snow performs “I’m Moving On” in 1967

Richard Furay is 77 years old today

Richard Furay and Stephen Stills at an awards ceremony in Nashville, 2013

Photo by Rick Diamond

Richard Furay is 77 years old today.

Furay is a singer and songwriter who formed the bands Buffalo Springfield with Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Bruce Palmer and Dewey Martin, and Poco with Jim Messina, Rusty Young, George Grantham and Randy Meisner. He wrote "Kind Woman,” which was written for his wife, Nancy.

Before Buffalo Springfield, Furay performed with Stills in the nine-member group, the Au Go Go Singers (Roy Michaels, Rick Geiger, Jean Gurney, Michael Scott, Kathy King, Nels Gustafson, Bob Harmelink, Stills and Furay), the house band of the famous Cafe Au Go Go in New York City.

In the late 1960s, he formed the country-rock band, Poco, with Jim Messina (who produced albums and occasionally played bass for Buffalo Springfield) and Rusty Young. This band, while influential to many future country-rock acts, experienced uneven commercial success.

Furay's best known songs, "Pickin' Up The Pieces" and "Good Feelin' To Know,” however, have reached classic status and appear on many country rock compilations.

Furay left Poco in 1974 to form the Souther Hillman Furay Band. It was during this time that Al Perkins, the band's pedal steel guitar player, introduced Furay to Christianity. His newfound faith helped him rebuild his troubled marriage.

After moving from Los Angeles to Sugarloaf Mountain near Boulder, Colorado, Furay formed The Richie Furay Band with Jay Truax, John Mehler and Tom Stipe, releasing the album, I've Got a Reason, in 1976, which reflected Furay's newfound beliefs.

In 1983, Furay became senior pastor of the Calvary Chapel in Broomfield, Colorado, a non-sectarian Christian church in the Denver area. He continues to perform as a solo artist, and very occasionally with Poco.

In 2007, he toured with a new formation of the Richie Furay Band. At the Boulder and Bluebird Theatres in Colorado they recorded a double live album, Alive. The Alive set covers 29 songs of Furay's career. The Richie Furay band continued to tour through 2008 and 2009.

On October 23, 2010, he reunited with surviving Buffalo Springfield bandmates Stephen Stills and Neil Young for a set at the 24th annual Bridge School Benefit at Shoreline Amphitheater in Mountain View, California.

Richie regrouped with Buffalo Springfield for a 2011 tour, headlining 2011 Bonnaroo with them. From 2011 to 2015, Furay collaborated with The Piedmont Brothers Band as lead vocalist of some songs recorded on several albums.

In 2015, he released his latest album, "Hand in Hand.”

Here is Furay performing at Fur Peace Ranch

Happy Traum is 83 years old today

Happy Traum performs at the 50th anniversary of Gerde’s Folk City, 2010

Photo by Frank Beacham

Happy Traum is 83 years old today.

Traum is a folk musician who started playing music in the 1950s. He is best known as half of Happy and Artie Traum, a duo he began with his brother. They released three albums, Happy and Artie Traum (1970, Capitol), Double Back (1971, Capitol) and Hard Times In The Country (1975, Rounder).

After the death of his brother, has continued as a solo artist and as founder of Homespun Tapes, a series of music lessons.

Traum first appeared on record at a historic session in late 1962 when a group of young folk musicians, including Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, Peter LaFarge and The Freedom Singers, gathered in the studio at Folkways Records to record an album called Broadside Ballads, Vol. 1.

With his group, The New World Singers, Traum cut the first version of "Blowin' in the Wind" to be released in early 1963. Traum also sang a duet with Dylan, who performed under the pseudonym Blind Boy Grunt, on his antiwar song, "Let Me Die in My Footsteps."

These tracks were re-released in August, 2000 by Smithsonian Folkways as part of a boxed set, The Best of Broadside 1962 — 1988: Anthems from the American Underground.

Later that year, The New World Singers, which featured Traum, Bob Cohen and Gil Turner, recorded an album for Atlantic Records, with liner notes by Dylan. The album featured the first recording of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right."

In 1971, Traum once again joined Dylan in the studio, playing guitar, banjo, bass, and singing harmony on three songs, which appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II. Dylan also invited Traum to participate in a famous session with poet Allen Ginsberg, which resulted in the box set, Holy Soul Jelly Roll.

Traum is the founder and president of Homespun Tapes, a company that makes and sells music lessons. Originally these lessons were on analog audio tapes, copied from a master tape to a daisy chain of tape recorders, set up on the family dinner table — hence the name "Homespun Tapes." Now the lessons are computer downloads or on DVD.

Most lessons available are for acoustic guitar, many oriented at blues and folk music, but there are also lessons for several other instruments, e.g. fiddle, banjo and bass.

Here, Traum performs Brownie McGhee’s “Sporting Life Blues” at McCabe’s, 2014

Steve Katz is 76 years old today

Steve Katz is 76 years old today.

A guitarist and record producer who is best known as a member of Blood, Sweat & Tears, Katz was an original member of the The Blues Project and American Flyer. As a producer, his credits include the 1979 album, Short Stories Tall Tales, for the Irish band, Horslips, and the Lou Reed albums, Rock 'n' Roll Animal and Sally Can't Dance, and the Elliott Murphy album, Night Lights. He is married to Alison Palmer, a ceramic artist.

Katz's professional career started in the late fifties on a local Schenectady, New York television program, Teenage Barn. Accompanied by piano, he would sing such hits of the day as "Tammy" and "April Love." At 15, Katz studied guitar with Dave Van Ronk and Reverend Gary Davis. It was at this time that he met and befriended guitarist Stefan Grossman.

They would sometimes act as road managers for the Reverend Davis and, in so doing, met many of the great “rediscovered” blues men of an earlier era, such as Son House, Skip James and Mississippi John Hurt.

As a part of the Greenwich Village culture during this time, Katz, along with Grossman, Maria Muldaur, John Sebastian and David Grisman became interested in jug band music — the music of Cannon’s Jug Stompers and The Memphis Jug Band. They and other friends formed the Even Dozen Jug Band and recorded an album in 1964 for Elektra Records. Katz played washboard in the band.

After a brief sabbatical in college, Katz, while teaching guitar in Greenwich Village, auditioned for the Danny Kalb Quartet as a two-week substitute for Artie Traum. Traum did not return to the group and when Al Kooper joined, the Blues Project was formed.

They worked out of New York, and it was the mid-sixties, so the Blues Project experimented, dabbled in their own style and gave Katz an opportunity to showcase his own songs. The Blues Project recorded three albums while together in their first incarnation. "Steve’s Song," on the Projections album, was the first original song that Katz had recorded.

After two years as house band at the Cafe Au Go Go and Murray the K’s last “submarine race-watching” spectacular at the RKO 58th Street theater in New York, The Blues Project broke up, playing the Monterey Pop Festival as their last major engagement.

After the demise of the Blues Project, Katz, Kooper, Bobby Colomby and Jim Fielder decided to work up a set of music — mainly of Kooper’s new songs — for a benefit concert to raise money to send Kooper to London, where he wanted to live. Joined by Fred Lipsius on alto sax, the concert raised "enough money for a cab to the airport."

There was no choice but to start another band. Influenced by the Electric Flag and an album by The Buckinghams entitled Time and Charges, a horn section was utilized with rock arrangements that were a touch more sophisticated than most horn arrangements in rock up to that time.

Thus, Blood, Sweat & Tears was formed, a Columbia Records contract obtained, and the album, Child is Father to the Man, released. Recorded and mixed in only two weeks, the album sold moderately well but was a critical success. Katz sang one original song, “Megan’s Gypsy Eyes,” and "Morning Glory" by Tim Buckley.

Kooper left Blood, Sweat & Tears after only six months and while they were reorganizing, Katz wrote record reviews for Eye Magazine, a Cosmopolitan spin-off. Getting the record company to continue with the band without Kooper was difficult. Auditions were held and David Clayton-Thomas was hired as lead singer.

Their next album sold six million copies worldwide and fostered three #1 singles. Katz continued with Blood, Sweat & Tears for five years. In 1972, Katz met singer Lou Reed. After the commercial failure of Reed's album, Berlin, Katz produced Rock & Roll Animal and Sally Can't Dance.

In 1977, Katz became east coast director of A&R and later vice president of Mercury Records. In 1987, he became managing director of Green Linnet Records, a leading record label of traditional Irish music in America. Katz is also a professional photographer.

Here, Katz discusses his life with Blood, Sweat and Tears

Fifty-six years ago today, Bob Dylan eviscerated a Time Magazine reporter in a classic press conference that clearly demonstrated his views of the news media

Fifty-six years ago today, Bob Dylan eviscerated a Time Magazine reporter in a classic press conference that clearly demonstrated his views of the news media.

It was captured on film by D A Pennebaker in Dont Look Back, the Dylan documentary.

The news conference occurred just before Dylan’s show at Royal Albert Hall on May 9, 1965. That reporter found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Dancing by the jukebox, Chicago, 1962

Photo by Bruce Davidson

Gary Snyder, San Francisco Renaissance poet, is 91 years old today

Gary Snyder, Gainesville, Florida, 1975, the day he won the Pulitzer Prize for "Turtle Island"

Photo by Frank Beacham

Gary Snyder, San Francisco Renaissance poet, is 91 years old today.

Also an essayist, lecturer and environmental activist (frequently described as the "poet laureate of Deep Ecology"), Synder is a winner of a Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. His work, in his various roles, reflects an immersion in both Buddhist spirituality and nature. Snyder has translated literature into English from ancient Chinese and modern Japanese.

For many years, Snyder served as a faculty member at the University of California, Davis, and he also served for a time on the California Arts Council.

Born in San Francisco to a family of German, Scots-Irish and English ancestry, Synder’s family, impoverished by the Great Depression, moved to King County, Washington, when he was two years old. There they tended dairy cows, kept laying hens, had a small orchard and made cedar-wood shingles, until moving to Portland, Oregon ten years later. At the age of seven, Snyder was laid up for four months by an accident.

"My folks brought me piles of books from the Seattle Public Library," he recalled in interview, "and it was then I really learned to read and from that time on was voracious — I figure that accident changed my life. At the end of four months, I had read more than most kids do by the time they're eighteen. And I didn't stop."

Also during his ten childhood years in Washington, Snyder became aware of the presence of the Coast Salish people and developed an interest in the Native American peoples in general and their traditional relationship with nature. In 1942, following his parents' divorce, Snyder moved to Portland, Oregon with his mother and his younger sister, Anthea.

Their mother, Lois Snyder Hennessy (born Wilkey), worked during this period as a reporter for The Oregonian. One of Gary's boyhood jobs was as a newspaper copy boy, also at the Oregonian. Also, during his teen years, he attended Lincoln High School, worked as a camp counselor and went mountain climbing with the Mazamas youth group. Climbing remained an interest of his, especially during his twenties and thirties.

In 1947, he started attending Reed College on a scholarship. Here he met, and for a time roomed with the education author, Carl Proujan, Philip Whalen and Lew Welch. At Reed, Snyder published his first poems in a student journal. He also spent the summer of 1948 working as a seaman. He joined the now defunct Marine Cooks and Stewards union to get this job and would later work as a seaman in the mid-1950s to gain experience of other cultures in port cities.

Snyder married Alison Gass in 1950. They separated after seven months and divorced in 1953. While attending Reed, Snyder did folklore research on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in central Oregon. He graduated with a dual degree in anthropology and literature in 1951. He spent the following few summers working as a timber scaler at Warm Springs, developing relationships with its people that were less rooted in academia.

This experience formed the basis for some of his earliest published poems (including "A Berry Feast"), later collected in his book, The Back Country. He also encountered the basic ideas of Buddhism and, through its arts, some of the Far East's traditional attitudes toward nature.

He went to Indiana University with a graduate fellowship to study anthropology, (Snyder also began practicing self-taught Zen meditation). He left after a single semester to return to San Francisco and to “sink or swim as a poet.”

Snyder worked for two summers in the North Cascades in Washington as a fire lookout, on Crater Mountain in 1952 and Sourdough Mountain (both locations on the upper Skagit River) in 1953. His attempts to get another lookout stint in 1954 (at the peak of McCarthyism), however, failed.

He had been barred from working for the government, due to his above-mentioned association with the Marine Cooks and Stewards. Instead, he went back to Warm Springs to work in logging as a chokersetter (fastening cables to logs). This experience contributed to his Myths and Texts and the essay, Ancient Forests of the Far West.

Back in San Francisco, Snyder lived with Whalen, who shared his growing interest in Zen. Snyder's reading of the writings of D.T. Suzuki had in fact been a factor in his decision not to continue as a graduate student in anthropology. In 1953, he enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley to study Asian culture and languages.

Snyder studied ink and wash painting under Chiura Obata and Tang Dynasty poetry under Ch'en Shih-hsiang. He continued to spend summers working in the forests, including one summer as a trail-builder in Yosemite. He spent some months in 1955 and 1956 living in a cabin (which he dubbed "Marin-an") outside Mill Valley, California with Jack Kerouac.

It was also at this time that Snyder was an occasional student at the American Academy of Asian Studies, where Saburō Hasegawa and Alan Watts, among others, were teaching. Hasegawa introduced Snyder to the treatment of landscape painting as a meditative practice. This inspired Snyder to attempt something equivalent in poetry, and with Hasegawa's encouragement, he began work on Mountains and Rivers without End, which would be completed and published forty years later.

During these years, Snyder was writing and collecting his own work, as well as embarking on the translation of the "Cold Mountain" poems by the eighth century Chinese recluse, Han Shan. This work appeared in chapbook-form in 1969, under the title, Riprap & Cold Mountain Poems.

Snyder met Allen Ginsberg when the latter sought Snyder out on the recommendation of Kenneth Rexroth. Then, through Ginsberg, Snyder and Kerouac came to know each other. This period provided the materials for Kerouac's novel, The Dharma Bums, and Snyder was the inspiration for the novel's main character, Japhy Ryder, in the same way Neal Cassady had inspired Dean Moriarty in On the Road.

As the large majority of people in the Beat movement had urban backgrounds, writers like Ginsberg and Kerouac found Snyder, with his backcountry and manual-labor experience and interest in things rural, a refreshing and almost exotic individual.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti later referred to Snyder as “the Thoreau of the Beat Generation.”

Snyder read his poem, "A Berry Feast," at the poetry reading at the Six Gallery in San Francisco (October 7, 1955) that heralded what was to become known as the San Francisco Renaissance. This also marked Snyder's first involvement with the Beats, although he was not a member of the original New York circle, but rather entered the scene through his association with Kenneth Rexroth.

As recounted in Kerouac's Dharma Bums, even at age 25, Snyder felt he could have a role in the fateful future meeting of West and East. Snyder's first book, Riprap, which drew on his experiences as a forest lookout and on the trail-crew in Yosemite, was published in 1959.

Independently, some of the Beats, including Philip Whalen, had become interested in Zen, but Snyder was one of the more serious scholars of the subject among them, preparing in every way he could think of for eventual study in Japan.

In 1955, the First Zen Institute of America offered him a scholarship for a year of Zen training in Japan, but the State Department refused to issue him a passport, informing him that "it has been alleged you are a Communist."

A subsequent District of Columbia Court of Appeals ruling forced a change in policy, and Snyder got his passport. In the end, his expenses were paid by Ruth Fuller Sasaki, for whom he was supposed to work.

During the period between 1956 and 1969, Snyder went back and forth between California and Japan, studying Zen, working on translations with Sasaki, and finally living for a while with a group of other people on the small, volcanic island of Suwanosejima.

During this time, he published a collection of his poems from the early to mid '50s, Myths & Texts (1960), and Six Sections from Mountains and Rivers Without End (1965). This last was the beginning of a project that he was to continue working on until the late 1990s.

Much of Snyder's poetry expresses experiences, environments and insights involved with the work he has done for a living: logger, fire-lookout, steam-freighter crew, translator, carpenter and itinerant poet.

In the early 1960s, he traveled for six months through India with his wife Joanne, Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky. Snyder and Joanne Kyger separated soon after a trip to India and divorced in 1965.

In 1966, Snyder joined Allen Ginsberg, Zentatsu Richard Baker, Roshi of the San Francisco Zen Center and Donald Wolters, aka "Swami Kriyananda," to buy 100 acres in the Sierra foothills, north of Nevada City, California. In 1970, this would become his home, with the Snyder family's portion being named Kitkitdizze.

He continued to publish poetry throughout the 1970s, much of it reflecting his re-immersion in life on the American continent and his involvement in the back-to-the-land movement in the Sierra foothills.

His 1974 book, Turtle Island, titled after a Native American name for the North American continent, won a Pulitzer Prize. It also influenced numerous West Coast Generation X writers, including Alex Steffen, Bruce Barcott and Mark Morford.

In 1986, Snyder became a professor in the writing-program at the University of California, Davis. Here he began to influence a new generation of authors interested in writing about the Far East, including Robert Clark Young, whom he mentored. Snyder is now professor emeritus of English. Snyder's life and work was celebrated in John J. Healy's 2010 documentary, The Practice of the Wild.

In a 1974 interview at the University of North Dakota Writers Conference, Snyder said: “I never did know exactly what was meant by the term 'The Beats', but let's say that the original meeting, association, comradeship of Allen [Ginsberg], myself, Michael [McClure], Lawrence [Ferlinghetti], Philip Whalen, who's not here, Lew Welch, who's dead, Gregory [Corso], for me, to a somewhat lesser extent (I never knew Gregory as well as the others) did embody a criticism and a vision which we shared in various ways, and then went our own ways for many years.

“Where we began to come really close together again, in the late '60s, and gradually working toward this point, it seems to me, was when Allen began to take a deep interest in Oriental thought and then in Buddhism which added another dimension to our levels of agreement; and later through Allen's influence, Lawrence began to draw toward that; and from another angle, Michael and I after the lapse of some years of contact, found our heads very much in the same place, and it's very curious and interesting now; and Lawrence went off in a very political direction for awhile, which none of us had any objection with, except that wasn't my main focus.

“It's very interesting that we find ourselves so much on the same ground again, after having explored divergent paths; and find ourselves united on this position of powerful environmental concern, critique of the future of the individual state, and an essentially shared poetics, and only half-stated but in the background very powerfully there, a basic agreement on some Buddhist type psychological views of human nature and human possibilities.”

Snyder added: "The term Beat is better used for a smaller group of writers ... the immediate group around Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, plus Gregory Corso and a few others. Many of us ... belong together in the category of the San Francisco Renaissance. ... Still, beat can also be defined as a particular state of mind ... and I was in that mind for a while.”

Here is the trailer for Snyder’s “The Practice of the Wild”

On this day — 43 years ago — John Sebastian’s song, "Welcome Back," went hit #1 on the pop chart and inspired the name of the television show, Welcome Back, Kotter

John Sebastian, 2010

Photo by Frank Beacham

In 1975, John Sebastian, former member of the 60s group, The Lovin' Spoonful, was asked to write and record the theme song for a brand-new ABC television show with the working title, Kotter.

As any songwriter would, Sebastian first tried working that title into his song, but somehow the rhymes he came up with for "Kotter" — otter, water, daughter, slaughter — didn't really lend themselves to a show about a middle-aged schoolteacher returning to his scrappy Brooklyn neighborhood to teach remedial students at his own former high school.

So Sebastian took a more thoughtful approach to the task at hand and came up with a song about finding your true calling in a life you thought you'd left behind. That song, "Welcome Back," not only went on to become a #1 pop single on this day in 1976 — 43 years ago — but it also led the show's producers to change the show’s title to Welcome Back, Kotter.

What Sebastian's sweet, wistful and playfully nostalgic tune did not do, however, was influence the tone and content of the show. To listen to "Welcome Back," you'd think that Welcome Back, Kotter was a seriocomic slice-of-life program in the mold of, say, The Courtship of Eddie's Father — another 70s TV show with a theme song by Harry Nilsson, another 60s songwriter.

Instead, Welcome Back, Kotter was little more than a flimsy platform for catchphrase-spouting caricatures, albeit an insanely successful one.

Arnold Horshack's "Oooh, oooh, oooh," Freddie "Boom Boom" Washington's "Hi therrre," Vinnie Barbarino's "What? What?" and Gabe Kotter's "Up your nose with a rubber hose" were the pop-cultural coin-of-the-realm in 1975-76, and though they bore little relation in tone or spirit to the song that topped the charts on this day in 1976, the disconnect did nothing to hinder the popularity of all things Kotter-related.

Indeed, if you weren't wearing an Uncle Sam or King Kong T-shirt in the summer of America's bicentennial year, you were probably wearing one with a picture of "the Sweathogs" and a colorful phrase like "Off my case, toilet face" on it.

"Welcome Back" was the first and only television theme song that John Sebastian ever wrote.

Here, Sebastian performs his song, “Welcome Back” in 1976

Thanks History.com

Keith Jarrett is 76 years old today

Keith Jarrett is 76 years old today.

Jarrett is a pianist and composer who performs both jazz and classical music. He started his career with Art Blakey, moving on to play with Charles Lloyd and Miles Davis.

Since the early 1970s, Jarrett has enjoyed a great deal of success as a group leader and a solo performer in jazz, jazz fusion and classical music. His improvisations draw from the traditions of jazz and other genres, especially Western classical music, gospel, blues and ethnic folk music.

In 2003, Jarrett received the Polar Music Prize, the first (and to this day only) recipient not to share the prize with a co-recipient, and in 2004 he received the Léonie Sonning Music Prize.

Here, Jarrett performs a concert with the Keith Jarrett Standards Trio

Rick Nelson was born 81 years ago today

Rick Nelson, New York City, 1981

Photo by Lynn Goldsmith

Rick Nelson was born 81 years ago today.

Nelson was a singer-songwriter, instrumentalist and actor, starring alongside his family in the long-running television series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952–66). He also co-starred alongside John Wayne and Dean Martin in Howard Hawks's western feature film, Rio Bravo (1959).

Nelson placed 53 songs on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1957 and 1973, including "Poor Little Fool," which holds the distinction of being the first #1 song on Billboard’s then newly created Hot 100 chart.

Nelson began his entertainment career in 1949, playing himself in the radio sitcom series, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, and in 1952 appeared in his first feature film, Here Come the Nelsons. In 1957, he recorded his first single, debuted as a singer on the television version of the sitcom, and recorded a #1 album, Ricky.

In 1958, Nelson recorded his first #1 single, "Poor Little Fool," and in 1959 received a Golden Globe "Most Promising Male Newcomer" nomination after starring in Rio Bravo.

Nelson dreaded flying but refused to travel by bus. In May, 1985, he decided he needed a private plane and leased a luxurious, fourteen-seat, 1944 Douglas DC-3 for private use that once belonged to the DuPont family and later to Jerry Lee Lewis. The plane's history was plagued with mechanical issues.

In one incident, the band was forced to push the plane off the runway after an engine blew, and in another incident, a malfunctioning magneto prevented Nelson from participating in the first Farm Aid concert in Champaign, Illinois.

On Dec. 26, 1985, Nelson and the band left for a three-stop tour of the Southern United States. Following shows in Orlando, Florida and Guntersville, Alabama, Nelson and band members boarded the DC-3 in Guntersville and took off for a New Year's Eve extravaganza in Dallas.

The plane crash-landed northeast of Dallas in De Kalb, Texas less than two miles from a landing strip at approximately 5:14 p.m. on December 31, impacting trees as it came to the ground.

Seven of the nine occupants were killed: Nelson, 45, and his companion, Helen Blair; bass guitarist Patrick Woodward; drummer Rick Intveld; keyboardist Andy Chapin; guitarist Bobby Neal and road manager/soundman, Donald Clark Russell.

The cause of the crash was a gas-fueled heater that had caused in-flight problems. Records showed that DC-3s in general, and this aircraft in particular, had a history of problems with the cabin heaters.

Here, Nelson performs “Travelin’ Man” in 1961

Rick Nelson greeted by fans while on tour in Tulsa, Oklahoma

Photo by Ralph Crane

Thomas Pynchon, novelist, is 84 years old today

Thomas Pynchon, novelist, is 84 years old today.

A MacArthur Fellow, Pynchon is noted for his dense and complex novels. Both his fiction and nonfiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, styles and themes, including (but not limited to) the fields of history, science and mathematics. For his most praised novel, Gravity's Rainbow, Pynchon won the 1974 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction.

From Long Island, Pynchon served two years in the United States Navy and earned an English degree from Cornell University. After publishing several short stories in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he began composing the novels for which he is best known: V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), Gravity's Rainbow (1973) and Mason & Dixon (1997).

Pynchon's most recent novel, Bleeding Edge, was published September 17, 2013.

He is also known for being very private. Very few photographs of him have ever been published and rumors about his location and identity have circulated since the 1960s. He has carefully avoided contact with reporters for more than forty years.

Pynchon has revealed himself in his fiction and non-fiction as an aficionado of popular music. Song lyrics and mock musical numbers appear in each of his novels, and, in his autobiographical introduction to the Slow Learner collection of early stories, he reveals a fondness for both jazz and rock and roll.

The character McClintic Sphere in V. is a fictional composite of jazz musicians such as Ornette Coleman, Charlie Parker and Thelonious Monk.

Younger contemporary writers who have been touted as heirs to Pynchon include David Foster Wallace, William Vollmann, Richard Powers, Steve Erickson, David Mitchell, Neal Stephenson, Dave Eggers and Tommaso Pincio whose pseudonym is an Italian rendering of Pynchon's name.

A review of V. in the New York Times Book Review described Pynchon as "a recluse" living in Mexico, thereby introducing the media label with which journalists have characterized him throughout his career.

Pynchon's personal absence from mass media is one of the notable features of his life, and it has generated many rumors and apocryphal anecdotes. During the 1990s, Pynchon befriended members of the band, Lotion, and attended a number of their shows, culminating in the liner notes he contributed for the band's 1995 album, Nobody's Cool.

The novelist then conducted an interview with the band ("Lunch With Lotion") for Esquire in June, 1996 in the lead-up to the publication of Mason & Dixon.

More recently, Pynchon provided faxed answers to questions submitted by author David Hajdu and permitted excerpts from his personal correspondence to be quoted in Hajdu's 2001 book, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Fariña and Richard Fariña (Warner 2001).