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John Wesley Harding — the eighth studio album by Bob Dylan — began production 54 years ago today in Columbia's Studio A in Nashville

John Wesley Harding — the eighth studio album by Bob Dylan — began production 54 years ago today in Columbia's Studio A in Nashville.

After only three recording sessions, it was released in December, 1967 by Columbia Records. Produced by Bob Johnston, the album marked Dylan's return to acoustic music and traditional roots, after three albums of electric rock music.

John Wesley Harding shares many stylistic threads with, and was recorded around the same time as, the prolific series of home recording sessions known at the Basement Tapes. Those tapes, made with the Band, were released in 1975.

John Wesley Harding was well received by critics and enjoyed solid sales, reaching #2 on the U.S. charts and topping the UK charts.

The commercial performance was considered remarkable considering that Dylan had kept Columbia from releasing the album with much promotion or publicity.

Less than three months after its release, John Wesley Harding was certified gold. "All Along the Watchtower" became one of his most popular songs after it was covered by Jimi Hendrix the following year.

A Tribute to Edward Hopper

by Phil Lockwood

Bob Weir is 74 years old today

Bob Weir, Lockn’ Music Festival, Arrington, Virginia, 2013

Photo by Will Rawls

Bob Weir is 74 years old today.

A singer, songwriter and guitarist, Weir is best known as a founding member of the Grateful Dead.

After the Dead disbanded in 1995, Weir performed with The Other Ones, later known as The Dead, together with other former members of the Grateful Dead.

Weir also founded and played in several other bands during and after his career with the Grateful Dead, including Kingfish, the Bob Weir Band, Bobby and the Midnites, Scaring the Children, RatDog, and his newest band, Furthur, co-led by former Grateful Dead bassist, Phil Lesh.

During his career with the Grateful Dead, Weir played mostly rhythm guitar and sang most of the band's rock-n-roll tunes (Jerry Garcia sang The Dead's more melodic tunes).

He is known for his unique style of complex voice leading, bringing unusual depth and a new approach to the role of rhythm guitar expression.

On April 23, 2014, The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Here, Weir and friends perform a full two-hour concert at TRI Studios in San Rafael, California

Nico was born 83 years ago today

Nico was born 83 years ago today.

Born as Christa Päffgen, Nico was a German singer, lyricist, composer, musician, fashion model and actress. She initially rose to fame as a Warhol Superstar in the 1960s.

Nico is known for both her vocal collaboration on The Velvet Underground's debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), and her work as a solo artist from the late 1960s through the early 1980s.

She also had roles in several films, including a cameo in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls (1966), as herself.

Nico died in July 1988 at age 49, as a result of injuries sustained in a cycling accident while vacationing in Ibiza with her son.

Nico has influenced many musicians, including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Bauhaus, Stevie Nicks, Elliott Smith, Patti Smith, Morrissey, Björk, Coil, Jocelyn Pook, Fabienne Shine (who covered "All Tomorrow's Parties"), Dead Can Dance, Marcus Reeves as well as numerous contemporary goth bands.

Here, with the Velvet Underground, Nico performs “Femme Fatale,” 1975

Paul Strand, pioneering photographer, was born 131 years ago today

Wall Street, 1915

Photo by Paul Strand

Paul Strand, pioneering photographer, was born 131 years ago today.

Along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, Strand helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. His diverse body of work, spanning six decades, covers numerous genres and subjects throughout the Americas, Europe and Africa.

Strand was born in New York City to Bohemian parents. In his late teens, he was a student of renowned documentary photographer, Lewis Hine, at the Ethical Culture Fieldston School.

It was while on a field trip in this class that Strand first visited the 291 Art Gallery — operated by Stieglitz and Edward Steichen — where exhibitions of work by forward-thinking modernist photographers and painters would move Strand to take his photographic hobby more seriously.

Stieglitz would later promote Strand's work in the 291 Gallery itself, in his photography publication, Camera Work, and in his artwork at the Hieninglatzing studio. Some of this early work, like the well-known, "Wall Street," experimented with formal abstractions (influencing, among others, Edward Hopper and his idiosyncratic urban vision).

Other of Strand's works reflect his interest in using the camera as a tool for social reform. He was one of the founders of the Photo League, an association of photographers who advocated using their art to promote social and political causes.

Over the next few decades, Strand worked in motion pictures as well as still photography. His first motion picture, Manhatta (1921), also known as New York the Magnificent, is a silent film showing the day-to-day life of New York City made with painter/photographer, Charles Sheeler. Manhatta includes a shot similar to Strand's famous Wall Street (1915) photograph.

From 1932 to 1935, Strand lived in Mexico and worked on Redes (1936), a film commissioned by the Mexican government, released in the U.S. as The Wave. Other films he was involved with were the documentary, The Plow That Broke the Plains (1936), and the pro-union, anti-fascist, Native Land (1942).

In June, 1949, Strand left the United States to present Native Land at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia.

The remaining 27 years of his life were spent in Orgeval, France where, despite never learning the language, he maintained an impressive creative life, assisted by his third wife, fellow photographer Hazel Kingsbury Strand.

Although Strand is best known for his early abstractions, his return to still photography in this later period produced some of his most significant work in the form of six book ‘portraits’ of place: Time in New England (1950), La France de Profil (1952), Un Paese (featuring photographs of Luzzara and the Po River Valley in Italy, 1955), Tir a'Mhurain/Outer Hebrides (1962), Living Egypt (1969) and Ghana: An African portrait (1976).

Strand married the painter, Rebecca Salsbury, in 1922. He often photographed her, sometimes with uncommonly close compositions. After divorcing Salsbury, Strand married Virginia Stevens in 1935. They divorced in 1949. He then married Hazel Kingsbury in 1951 and they remained married until his death in 1976.

The timing of Strand’s departure to France is coincident with the first libel trial of his friend, Alger Hiss, with whom he maintained a correspondence until his death.

Although he was never officially a member of the Communist Party, many of Strand’s collaborators were either Party members (James Aldridge; Cesare Zavattini) or were prominent socialist writers and activists (Basil Davidson).

Strand died March 31, 1976.

Trailer, for the documentary, Paul Strand: Under the Dark Cloth

Paul Strand

The Family, Luzzara, Italy, 1953

Photo by Paul Strand

Oscar Wilde was born 167 years ago today

Oscar Wilde was born 167 years ago today.

An Irish writer and poet, Wilde — after writing in different forms throughout the 1880s — became one of London's most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams and plays, and the circumstances of his imprisonment which was followed by his early death.

Wilde's parents were successful Dublin intellectuals. Their son became fluent in French and German early in life. At university, Wilde proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. He became known for his involvement in the rising philosophy of aestheticism, led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin.

After university, Wilde moved to London into fashionable cultural and social circles. As a spokesman for aestheticism, he tried his hand at various literary activities. He published a book of poems, lectured in the United States and Canada on the new "English Renaissance in Art.” Then he returned to London where he worked prolifically as a journalist.

Known for his biting wit, flamboyant dress and glittering conversation, Wilde had become one of the most well-known personalities of his day. At the turn of the 1890s, he refined his ideas about the supremacy of art in a series of dialogues and essays, and incorporated themes of decadence, duplicity and beauty into his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).

The opportunity to construct aesthetic details precisely, and combine them with larger social themes, drew Wilde to write drama. He wrote Salome (1891) in French in Paris, but it was refused a license.

Unperturbed, Wilde produced four society comedies in the early 1890s, which made him one of the most successful playwrights of late Victorian London.

At the height of his fame and success, while his masterpiece, The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), was still on stage in London, Wilde had the Marquess of Queensberry, the father of his lover, Lord Alfred Douglas, prosecuted for libel, a charge carrying a penalty of up to two years in prison.

The trial unearthed evidence that caused Wilde to drop his charges and led to his own arrest and trial for gross indecency with other men. After two more trials, he was convicted and imprisoned for two years' hard labor.

In prison, he wrote De Profundis (written in 1897 and published in 1905), a long letter which discusses his spiritual journey through his trials, forming a dark counterpoint to his earlier philosophy of pleasure.

Upon his release, he left immediately for France, never to return to Ireland or Britain. There he wrote his last work, The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898), a long poem commemorating the harsh rhythms of prison life.

Wilde died destitute in Paris at the age of 46.

Wilde in 1882

Photo by Napoleon Sarony

Margaret Sanger opened the first birth control clinic on this day 105 years ago

On this day in 1916 — 105 years ago — a nurse opened a small storefront office in Brownsville, Brooklyn. She and her assistants handed out fliers in English, Yiddish and Italian reading, “Mothers, do not kill, do not take life, but prevent.”

The nurse was Margaret Sanger. The office, at 46 Amboy Street, was the nation’s first birth-control clinic. It served more than a hundred women on opening day.

In those days, spreading contraceptive information was a crime. Ten days later, the police raided the office, confiscated condoms and pessaries, and arrested Ms. Sanger.

She eventually served 30 days in jail, but her case paved the way for rulings that loosened restrictions on contraception.

Thanks New York Times!

Eugene O'Neill, playwright and Nobel laureate in literature, was born 133 years ago today

Eugene O’Neill and his dalmatian, Blemie

Eugene O'Neill, playwright and Nobel laureate in literature, was born 133 years ago today.

O’Neill’s poetically titled plays were among the first to introduce into American drama techniques of realism earlier associated with Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg.

His plays were among the first to include speeches in American vernacular and involve characters on the fringes of society, where they struggle to maintain their hopes and aspirations, but ultimately slide into disillusionment and despair.

O'Neill wrote only one well-known comedy (Ah, Wilderness!). Nearly all of his other plays involve some degree of tragedy and personal pessimism.

After his experience in 1912–13 at a sanatorium where he was recovering from tuberculosis, he decided to devote himself full-time to writing plays (the events immediately prior to going to the sanatorium are dramatized in his masterpiece, Long Day's Journey into Night.

O'Neill had previously been employed by the New London Telegraph, writing poetry as well as reporting.

During the 1910s, O'Neill was a regular on the Greenwich Village literary scene, where he also befriended many radicals, most notably Communist Labor Party founder, John Reed. O'Neill also had a brief romantic relationship with Reed's wife, writer Louise Bryant. O'Neill was portrayed by Jack Nicholson in the 1981 film, Reds, about the life of John Reed.

His involvement with the Provincetown Players began in mid-1916. O'Neill is said to have arrived for the summer in Provincetown with "a trunk full of plays."

Susan Glaspell describes what was probably the first ever reading of Bound East for Cardiff which took place in the living room of Glaspell and her husband, George Cram Cook, on Commercial Street. The house was adjacent to the wharf that was used by the Players for their theater.

Glaspell writes in The Road to the Temple: "So Gene took Bound East for Cardiff out of his trunk, and Freddie Burt read it to us, Gene staying out in the dining-room while reading went on. He was not left alone in the dining-room when the reading had finished."

The Provincetown Players performed many of O'Neill's early works in their theaters both in Provincetown and on MacDougal Street in Greenwich Village. Some of these early plays began downtown and then moved to Broadway.

O'Neill's first published play, Beyond the Horizon, opened on Broadway in 1920 to great acclaim, and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

His first major hit, The Emperor Jones, which ran on Broadway in 1920 and obliquely commented on the U.S. occupation of Haiti that was a topic of debate in that year's presidential election.

O’Neill’s best-known plays include Anna Christie (Pulitzer Prize 1922), Desire Under the Elms (1924), Strange Interlude (Pulitzer Prize 1928), Mourning Becomes Electra (1931) and Ah, Wilderness!, a wistful re-imagining of his youth as he wished it had been.

In 1936, he received the Nobel Prize for Literature. After a ten-year pause, O'Neill's now-renowned play, The Iceman Cometh, was produced in 1946.

The following year's, A Moon for the Misbegotten, failed. It did not gain recognition as being among his best works until decades later.

O’Neill died in 1953 at age 65.

Angela Lansbury, stage and screen actress, is 96 years old today

Angela Lansbury meets the crowd on the street in Times Square after a Broadway performance in her show, Deuce, in 2007

Photo by Frank Beacham

Angela Lansbury, stage and screen actress, is 96 years old today.

Born in London in 1925, Lansbury starred in the TV series, Murder, She Wrote, and earned Oscar nominations for her performances in such films as The Picture of Dorian Gray and The Manchurian Candidate.

In Hollywood, a place that prizes youth (particularly for its female performers), Lansbury became one of a rare breed of actresses who managed to carve out a lengthy, successful career.

After fleeing England with her family during World War II, Lansbury eventually ended up in Los Angeles. As a teenager, she earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her first feature film, the 1944 romantic-thriller, Gaslight, starring Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer and Joseph Cotten.

In Gaslight, which was directed by George Cukor and received a total of seven Oscar nominations, Lansbury played a maid who becomes involved in a man’s plot to drive his wife insane.

Lansbury’s next film, 1945’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, based on the Oscar Wilde novella of the same name, earned her a second Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Sibyl Vane, a woman who kills herself after she is betrayed by the movie’s title character, a man obsessed with staying young.

In 1962, she co-starred with Frank Sinatra in the spy thriller, The Manchurian Candidate, and earned her third Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role as the manipulative mother of a Korean War hero brainwashed into becoming a Communist assassin.

During the 1960s and 1970s, Lansbury starred on Broadway in a string of musicals and earned the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical for her performances in Mame, Dear World, Gypsy and Sweeney Todd.

She also continued to work steadily in film, appearing in Disney’s Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971), Death on the Nile (1978) and The Mirror Crack’d (1980), in which she portrayed Agatha Christie’s tweedy amateur sleuth, Miss Marple.

From 1984 to 1996, Lansbury played the role for which she is perhaps best known — the crime-solving mystery writer Jessica Fletcher on the TV series Murder, She Wrote.

“I did it for the money,” Lansbury recalled. “There comes a time in a theatrical life when you say to yourself, ‘Well I can’t make any money in the theatre’, so television was a very specific decision I made. When this came on the horizon I thought, ‘That’s interesting… I think I can make something of this’.”

Interestingly, Lansbury was touched to learn of one fan in particular, during a meal at legendary Los Angeles diner, Matteo’s.

“Frank Sinatra and his wife invited my husband and I for dinner,” she recalled. "He proceeded to ask me all about the show and how we put it together. It turned out he was a huge fan – I mean, Frank Sinatra! I was very touched to realize it gave him some sense of entertainment to watch this silly show.”

Lansbury received 12 consecutive Emmy Award nominations for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series for her performance as the friendly amateur detective from the fictional town of Cabot Cove, Maine, who constantly stumbled across dead bodies.

After the show ended, she reprised her role in four Murder, She Wrote made-for-TV movies.

In 1991, Lansbury memorably voiced the character of Miss Potts, the singing teapot, in Disney’s blockbuster Academy Award-winning animated feature Beauty and the Beast.

Lansbury also voiced the character of the Empress Dowager Marie in 1997’s Anastasia. In 2005, Lansbury appeared in Nanny McPhee, starring Emma Thompson, and in 2007, she returned to Broadway for Deuce, which earned her yet another Tony Award nomination.

In February 2017, Lansbury joined the cast of the upcoming movie Mary Poppins Returns. It is a sequel to the Academy Award-winning 1964 film, set 20 years later in Depression-era London. Filming began at Shepperton Studios that month and the film is due for release in December, 2018.

Thanks History.com

Here, Lansbury and other discuss the history of Murder, She Wrote

Young Angela Lansbury with a dog

John Mayer is 44 years old today

John Mayer is 44 years old today.

A pop and blues rock musician, singer-songwriter, recording artist and music producer, Mayer attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston. He moved to Atlanta in 1997, where he refined his skills and gained a following.

Now living in New York City, Mayer’s first two studio albums, Room for Squares and Heavier Things, did well commercially, achieving multi-platinum status.

Mayer began his career performing mainly acoustic rock, but gradually began a transition towards the blues genre in 2005 by collaborating with renowned blues artists such as B. B. King, Buddy Guy and Eric Clapton. He also formed the John Mayer Trio.

The blues influence can be heard throughout his 2005 live album, Try!, with the John Mayer Trio and his third studio album, Continuum, released in September 2006.

Mayer’s fifth album, Born and Raised, was released in May, 2014. He has sold over 10 million albums in the U.S. and 20 million albums worldwide.

Mayer recounted that in 2011 he happened upon a song by the Grateful Dead while listening to Pandora, and that soon the band's music was all he would listen to.

In February, 2015, while guest hosting The Late Late Show, Mayer invited Grateful Dead guitar player Bob Weir to join him in a studio performance. Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann (surviving members of the Grateful Dead) were preparing for their Fare Thee Well: Celebrating 50 Years of the Grateful Dead tour, and invited Mayer to join them. He began practicing the band's catalog of songs.

That August, they formed the group Dead & Company, along with Jeff Chimenti and Oteil Burbridge, and began a fall tour in the United States. The tour was well received (Billboard called it "magical"), and continued to tour the U.S. into 2016.

Here, Mayer performs “Free Fallin’” at the Nokia Theatre, New York City, 2008

The Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration at Madison Square Garden in New York City was held 29 years ago tonight

The Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration at Madison Square Garden in New York City was held 29 years ago tonight.

The concert is preserved in a live double-album release in recognition of Bob Dylan's 30 years as a recording artist.

Recorded on October 16, 1992, the recording captures most of the concert, which featured many artists performing classic Dylan songs, before ending with three songs from Dylan himself.

The house band for the show were the surviving members of Booker T. and the MG's: Booker T. Jones on organ, Donald "Duck" Dunn on bass and Steve Cropper on guitar.

Joining them was drummer, Anton Fig, filling in for the late Al Jackson, plus drummer, Jim Keltner. Longtime Saturday Night Live bandleader, G. E. Smith, served as the musical director.

The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, which reached #40 in the U.S. and went gold, was released in August, 1993 just before Dylan was about to deliver his second folk studio set inside of a year, World Gone Wrong.

The concert was dubbed "Bobfest" by Neil Young at the beginning of his "All Along the Watchtower" cover.

I watched every moment of that show in the audience. Here is “My Back Pages” from that memorable night

Cuomo Bridge, New York, 2018

Photo by Frank Beacham

Barry McGuire, singer-songwriter best known for the hit song, "Eve of Destruction," is 86 years old today

Barry McGuire, singer-songwriter best known for the hit song, "Eve of Destruction," is 86 years old today.

Born in Oklahoma City, McGuire moved to California in early childhood, when he was two years old. At age 16, he joined the United States Navy, but was discharged ten months later for being under age.

After working as a commercial fisherman, and then going on to become a journeyman pipe fitter, McGuire got a job singing in a bar. He formed a duo with Barry Kane (who died in 2013) called Barry & Barry. The new duo folk act performed their own brand of original folk arrangements at The Ice House, a small folk club in Pasadena, CA. before moving on to The Troubadour in Hollywood in the spring of 1962.

At The Troubadour, they both joined The New Christy Minstrels, a large folk group performing there. They continued to perform their separate duo act there as well as performing with The New Christy Minstrels.

They cut their first and only album as Barry & Barry — Here And Now. It contained songs such as "Gold Wedding Ring," "Land Of Odin," "Another Man," "Summer's Over," "You Know My Name," "Bull 'Gine Run" and "Far Side Of The Hill."

It also included "If I Had A Hammer," released three months after the release of the same song by folk trio, Peter, Paul and Mary. Here And Now, as an LP on vinyl, eventually went out of print. It has since been digitally remastered and re-released on CD.

As a folk rock solo singer in the 1960s, he was best known for his hits, "Eve of Destruction" and "Sins of the Family," both written by P.F. Sloan. The depressing message of “Eve of Destruction” was later answered by another hit song, “Dawn of Correction,” by The Spokesmen. "Eve of Destruction" sold over a million copies.

McGuire's LP, The Eve of Destruction, reached its peak of #37 on the Billboard 200 chart during the week ending September 25, 1965. That same week the single of that name went to #1 on both charts. McGuire was never again to break into the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100.

In the 1980s, McGuire left the music industry, and settled for a time in New Zealand with his New Zealand wife, Mari. She was the former secretary of McGuire's Agape Force associate, Winkie Pratney.

McGuire returned to the United States in the 1990s, teaming up with Terry Talbot and recording as Talbot McGuire. The duo released four albums between 1996 and 2000. McGuire did a brief stint with The New Mamas and the Papas in 1997-1998.

Here, Barry McGuire performs “Eve of Destruction” in 2011

The first draft card of the Vietnam War era was burned on this day in 1965 — 56 years ago

The first draft card of the Vietnam War era was burned on this day in 1965 — 56 years ago.

It occurred in a demonstration staged by the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam.

These demonstrations drew 100,000 people in 40 cities across the country.

In New York, David Miller, a young Catholic pacifist, became the first U.S. war protestor to burn his draft card in direct violation of a recently passed law forbidding such acts.

Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation later arrested him. He was tried, found guilty and sentenced to two years imprisonment.

Photo by Richard Blair

Marv Johnson, first artist on what would become the Motown label, was born 83 years ago today

Marv Johnson, first artist on what would become the Motown label, was born 83 years ago today.

An R&B and soul singer, Marvin Earl Johnson was born in Detroit. He began his career singing with a doo-wop group called the Serenaders in the mid 1950s. With budding talents not only as a singer but as a songwriter and pianist, he was discovered by Berry Gordy while Johnson performed at a carnival.

Gordy had already decided to form his first record label, Tamla, and Johnson's recording of their song, "Come to Me," became the label's first single in May, 1959.

The fledgling label did not have national distribution and so the song was released by United Artists. It reached #30 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. Johnson would co-write another four songs with Gordy.

Between 1959 and 1961, Johnson would issue nine Billboard Hot 100 singles including two Top 10s. The first of them was "You Got What It Takes," which reached #10 in the U.S. and #7 in the UK Singles Chart. It sold over a million copies and was awarded a gold disc.

"I Love The Way You Love" reached #9. He scored his final U.S. Top 40 single in 1960 with "(You've Got To) Move Two Mountains." It also sold a million copies, giving Johnson his second gold disc.

Johnson enjoyed many hits in Australia where he racked up a total of eight Top 40 hits, including three chart-toppers. "Come To Me" was released in Australia on EMI's London Records (as were most of his Australian releases) and reached #16 on the 2UE Top 40 in Sydney.

"You Got What It Takes" was his biggest Australian hit, topping the national charts for over 16 weeks in 1960.

After "I Love The Way You Love" became a national Top 10 hit in the mid 60s, Johnson flew to Australia to meet entrepreneur and Big Show creator, Lee Gordon, and performed in his September Big Show, "Twist It Up."

At the top of the bill were Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker and James Darren with Jackie Wilson, Johnson and Barry Mann. They were supported by Johnny O'Keefe, The Delltones and Col Joye.

After issuing his final Motown singles in the U.S. in 1968, Johnson remained with Motown working on sales and promotion throughout the 1970s. He also wrote songs for Tyrone Davis and Johnnie Taylor.

Johnson continued singing into the 1990s, releasing a solo album on the London based Motorcity Records label.

Johnson died of a stroke on May 16, 1993, in Columbia, South Carolina, at the age of 54.

Here, Johnson performs “You Got What It Takes”

Mario Puzo, author and screenwriter, was born 101 years ago today

Mario Puzo, American author and screenwriter, was born 101 years ago today.

Puzo is known for his novels about the Mafia, most notably The Godfather (1969), which he later co-adapted into a three-part film saga directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

He received the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay for the first film in 1972 and Part II in 1974.

Puzo also wrote the original screenplay for the 1978 Superman film.

His last novel, The Family, was released posthumously two years after his death at age 78 in 1999.

John Kenneth Galbraith, leading proponent of liberalism, was born 113 years ago

John Kenneth Galbraith, leading proponent of liberalism, was born 113 years ago.

Galbraith was a Canadian and, later, American economist, public official and diplomat. He was a leading proponent of 20th century American liberalism. His books on economic topics were bestsellers from the 1950s through the 2000s, during which time Galbraith fulfilled the role of public intellectual.

As an economist, he leaned toward Post-Keynesian economics from an institutionalist perspective. Galbraith was a long-time Harvard faculty member and stayed with Harvard University for half a century as a professor of economics.

He was a prolific author and wrote four dozen books, including several novels, and published more than a thousand articles and essays on various subjects. Among his most famous works was a popular trilogy on economics, American Capitalism (1952), The Affluent Society (1958) and The New Industrial State (1967).

Galbraith was active in Democratic Party politics, serving in the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson.

He served as United States Ambassador to India under the Kennedy administration. His political activism, literary output and outspokenness made him, arguably, "the best-known economist in the world" during his lifetime.

In the above photo, Galbraith with First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy at the U.S. Chancery, New Delhi in 1962.

A hurricane that changed music and culture...

Before the climate change-driven massive storms we are witnessing today, hurricanes and floods have long shifted society and its buildings. These major natural calamities also permanently shifted culture and music.

One occurred on Oct 15, 1954 — 67 years ago today. That was when Hurricane Hazel made landfall at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Hitting hard from Jamaica to Canada, Hazel killed more than 400 people and caused over $1 billion in damages.

Most of the old ocean-front homes in Myrtle Beach rented by young people in the summers were wiped out— and with them the era of early beach music and the dance, The Shag.

After leaving Myrtle Beach, Hazel moved along the U.S. coast to North Carolina and Virginia. Though coastal towns suffered the worst damage, even cities far from the ocean were affected.

In Raleigh, North Carolina, winds were recorded at over 100 miles per hour. In Wilmington, Delaware, a woman was killed when winds picked her up and slammed her into a trolley car.

The old homes in the Myrtle Beach area would be replaced by high-rise buildings and hotels, changing the nature of beach culture to this day.

Photo by Jack Thompson

Love of dance and the welcome atmosphere at Charlie’s Place, the black night club in 1950’s Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, attracted not only men but top white female dancers like Clarice Reavis

Love of dance and the welcome atmosphere at Charlie’s Place, the black night club in 1950’s Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, attracted not only men but top white female dancers like Clarice Reavis.

Reavis — later to become a much celebrated female show dancer often called the “Queen of Shag” — minced no words in telling me what drew her to black music.

“I like the nigger blues, honey. They are so slinky, low down.”

Then, concerned that I had interpreted her description of the music as racist, she grabbed my arm and whispered, “You can call it ‘black music’ if you want in your book — if it will make people feel better. When I called it ‘nigger’ music, they called it ‘nigger’ music. There’s more feeling in there.”

Lining the walls of Fat Harold’s Beach Club in North Myrtle Beach are letters and mementos of the pioneers of the Shag. Among them is an iconic image of the era —a seductive pose by Reavis, among the first inductees into the Shaggers Hall of Fame.

Reavis, naked and partially covered only by a small mink stole, is seated on a towel. It was a simple photograph, taken on a whim, but it became a powerful pin-up coveted by American soldiers at the end of World War II.

“She was voluptuous and beautiful and completely alluring, and a bunch of 17 and 18-year-olds fell in love with her,” writer Bo Bryan said of Reavis’s allure. “She was strong as train smoke. You take a deep breath, she’d knock you out.”

The photo was made one night in 1945 when Reavis and a female friend were clowning at her home.

While in the bathroom, Reavis said she grabbed the small mink “and just draped it around me…not even fixing it…but it just happened to cover everything. My friend backed out of the bathroom with the camera just so she could get all of me in the picture.”

In the area surrounding Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, Reavis said she gave away thousands of the photos to soldiers who had seen it at various USOs and wanted one for themselves.

“Those were just young boys,” she said. “I was going to send one to my husband, but then the thing (the war) ended in 1945 and I didn’t get around to sending it.”

Clarice Reavis is featured in “Charlie’s Place,” on the Ku Klux Klan’s attack on black music after World War II.

Charlie’s Place is featured in the fourth edition of my book, Whitewash: A Southern Journey Through Music, Mayhem and Murder.

On this day in 2006 — 15 years ago — CBGB, the legendary New York punk club credited with discovering Patti Smith and Ramones, closed after a final gig by Smith herself

On this day in 2006 — 15 years ago — CBGB, the legendary New York punk club credited with discovering Patti Smith and Ramones, closed after a final gig by Smith herself.

Blondie and Talking Heads also found fame after performing at the club, which helped launch punk music.

The venue first opened in December, 1973. It’s full name CBGB OMFUG stands for "country, bluegrass, blues and other music for uplifting gormandizers."

Photo: New York Times

P. G. Wodehouse, English humorist, was born 140 years ago today

P. G. Wodehouse, English humorist, was born 140 years ago today.

Wodehouse’s body of work included novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years, and his many writings continue to be widely read.

Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of a pre– and post–World War I English upper class society, reflecting his birth, education and youthful writing career.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by recent writers such as Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Douglas Adams, J. K. Rowling and John Le Carré.

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies — many of them produced in collaboration with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton.

He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934), wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote lyrics to Sigmund Romberg's music for the Gershwin – Romberg musical Rosalie (1928) and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928). He is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.

Wodehouse spent the last decades of his life in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1955, because of controversy that arose after he made five radio broadcasts from Germany during World War II, where he had been interned by the Germans for a year.

Speculation after the broadcasts led to allegations of collaboration and treason. Some libraries banned his books. Although an MI5 investigation later cleared him of any such crimes, he never returned to England.

Wodehouse died on February 14, 1975 in Southampton, New York at age 93.

Actor Robert Rockwell was born 101 years ago today

Actor Robert Rockwell was born 101 years ago today.

Rockwell was best known for playing the handsome, but awkward biology teacher Philip Boynton in the radio and television situation comedy, Our Miss Brooks, opposite Eve Arden.

He also starred in his own ABC western-themed television series, The Man from Blackhawk, in the 1959-1960 season. "Blackhawk" is an insurance company, and Rockwell, at thirty-nine, was cast as the company's key investigator, Sam Logan, who is assigned to weed out fraud in the payment of claims.

A native of Chicago, Illinois, Rockwell studied at the Pasadena Playhouse, from which he obtained a master's degree. After beginning his career as a contract player for Republic Studios, he began a 50-year acting career.

Rockwell appeared in more than 350 television episodes and, on stage, opposite José Ferrer in the 1946 Broadway production, Cyrano de Bergerac, and with Ginger Rogers during the 1960s in a San Diego production of Whitfield Cook's play, A More Perfect Union.

Rockwell was a founding member of the California Artists Radio Theatre. He played standard leads in a couple of anti-Communist-era features, including Republic's The Red Menace (1949), in which he is cast as a returning veteran of World War II, who is duped by communists.

In my radio drama, The Orangeburg Massacre, Rockwell played South Carolina attorney general Dan McLeod and the jury foreman. He was a pleasure to work with and a first rate professional.

Rockwell died in Malibu on January 25, 2003 at age 82 from cancer.

Above, Rockwell is shown in the late 1980s with James Whitmore performing in The Orangeburg Massacre.

Photo by Frank Beacham

Shoeshine, 1950s

Photo by Vivian Maier

On this day in 1947 — 73 years ago today — U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound

Chuck Yeager in the Bell X-1, in which he broke the sound barrier 73 years ago today. The “Glamorous Glennis” is named after his wife.

Photo by Jack Ridley

On this day in 1947 — 73 years ago today — U.S. Air Force Captain Chuck Yeager became the first person to fly faster than the speed of sound.

Yeager, born in Myra, West Virginia, in 1923, was a combat fighter during World War II and flew 64 missions over Europe. He shot down 13 German planes and was himself shot down over France, but he escaped capture with the assistance of the French Underground.

After the war, he was among several volunteers chosen to test-fly the experimental X-1 rocket plane, built by the Bell Aircraft Company to explore the possibility of supersonic flight.

For years, many aviators believed that man was not meant to fly faster than the speed of sound, theorizing that transonic drag rise would tear any aircraft apart.

All that changed on October 14, 1947, when Yeager flew the X-1 over Rogers Dry Lake in Southern California.

The X-1 was lifted to an altitude of 25,000 feet by a B-29 aircraft and then released through the bomb bay, rocketing to 40,000 feet and exceeding 662 miles per hour (the sound barrier at that altitude).

The rocket plane, nicknamed "Glamorous Glennis," was designed with thin, unswept wings and a streamlined fuselage modeled after a .50-caliber bullet. Because of the secrecy of the project, Bell and Yeager's achievement was not announced until June, 1948.

Yeager continued to serve as a test pilot, and in 1953 he flew 1,650 miles per hour in an X-1A rocket plane. He retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general.

Ironically, Yeager had to fly the mission with two cracked ribs because of a horseback riding accident. In an essay published in 1987, he described how it felt to fly past a barrier that some thought couldn’t be survived: “There was no buffet, no jolt, no shock. Above all, no brick wall to smash into. I was alive.”

He retired from the Air Force in 1975 with the rank of brigadier general and later wrote a best-selling autobiography.

On October 14, 2012, on the 65th anniversary of breaking the sound barrier, Yeager did it again at the age of 89, riding in a McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle piloted by Captain David Vincent out of Nellis Air Force Base in southern Nevada.

Yeager died at age 97 on Dec. 7, 2020.

Thanks History.com and the New York Times!

Cliff Richard is 81 years old today

Cliff Richard is 81 years old today.

A British pop singer, musician, performer, actor and philanthropist, Richard is the third biggest selling singles artist of all time in the United Kingdom, with total sales of over 21 million in the UK and has reportedly sold an estimated 250 million records worldwide.

With his backing group The Shadows, Richard, originally positioned as a rebellious rock and roll singer in the style of Little Richard and Elvis Presley, dominated the British popular music scene in the pre-Beatles period of the late 1950s and early 1960s.

His 1958 hit single, "Move It," is often described as Britain's first authentic rock and roll song, and John Lennon once claimed that "before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music."

Increased focus on his Christian faith and subsequent softening of his music later led to a more middle of the road pop image, sometimes venturing into gospel music.

Over a 50-plus year career, Richard has become a fixture of the British entertainment world, amassing many gold and platinum discs and awards, including three Brit awards and two Ivor Novello awards.

He has had more than 130 singles, albums and EPs make the UK Top 20, more than any other artist and holds the record (with Elvis Presley) as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all of its first six decades (1950s–2000s).

Richard has never achieved the same impact in the United States despite eight U.S. Top 40 singles, including the million-selling "Devil Woman" and "We Don't Talk Anymore,” the latter becoming the first to reach the Hot 100's Top 40 in the 1980s by a singer who had been in the Top 40 in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s.

Here, Richard performs “Devil Woman”

Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues is 75 years old today

Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues is 75 years old today.

An English singer, songwriter and guitarist, Hayward was born in Dean Street, Swindon, Wiltshire, England and educated at Shrivenham School, Berkshire and The Commonweal School, in Swindon.

When Hayward was 15, he was able to afford a Gibson guitar and a Vox amplifier through performing with local Swindon groups in clubs and dance halls playing mostly Buddy Holly songs.

One of Hayward's early groups was All Things Bright, which opened for The Hollies and Brian Poole and the Tremeloes.

At age 17, he signed a publishing contract as a songwriter with the skiffle artist and record producer, Lonnie Donegan, a move Hayward later regretted as it meant the rights to all his songs written before 1974 would always be owned by Donegan's Tyler Music.

In 1965, he answered an advertisement in Melody Maker and auditioned as guitarist for Marty Wilde and he went on to work with Wilde and his wife in The Wilde Three.

In 1966, after answering another ad in Melody Maker, this time placed by Eric Burdon of The Animals, Hayward was contacted by Mike Pinder of The Moody Blues after Burdon had passed on Hayward's letter and demo discs to Pinder.

Within a few days, Hayward had replaced departing Moody Blues vocalist and guitarist, Denny Laine. Bassist John Lodge replaced temporary deputy, Rod Clarke, who had stood in for departed bassist, Clint Warwick, at the same time.

After beginning by singing the old Blues inspired repertoire of The Moodies 1964-1965 era, Hayward's initial artistic contribution to The Moody Blues was his song, “Fly Me High,” which was a Decca single early in 1967. This song failed to chart but gave the revised band a new sound and direction, being more of an original contemporary track than the R&B sound they had been largely producing up to that point.

Hayward's driving rocker, “Leave This Man Alone,” was then used as “B” side to the next Moodies single on Decca, backing Mike Pinder's “Love And Beauty” (1967), the first Moodies record to feature the mellotron.

Hayward's and Lodge's integration into the Moody Blues along with Pinder's use of the Mellotron sparked greater commercial success and recognition for the band, transforming them into one of pop music's biggest-selling acts. Hayward says of Pinder, "Mike and the Mellotron made my songs work."

The 1967 album, Days of Future Passed, one of the first and most influential symphonic rock albums, spawned the Hayward-penned singles, "Tuesday Afternoon" and "Nights in White Satin.”

The latter record went on to sell over two million copies, charting three times in the UK (1967, 1972, 1979) and has been recorded by many other recording artists.

Hayward became the group's main onstage figurehead over the 1967-1974 period, the most prolific songwriter and composer of several big singles hits for the band.

The Moody Blues, with Hayward, Lodge and original drummer, Graeme Edge, continue to tour extensively and in a recent BBC World Service interview, Hayward and Lodge made it clear they have no plans to stop working, regarding it as "a privilege" to still be working in the music industry.

Here, Hayward and John Lodge perform “Nights in White Satin”

e.e. Cummings, the American poet, painter, essayist, author and playwright, was born 127 years ago today

Photo by Marion Morehouse

e.e. Cummings, the American poet, painter, essayist, author and playwright, was born 127 years ago today.

Cummings’ body of work encompasses approximately 2,900 poems, two autobiographical novels, four plays and several essays, as well as numerous drawings and paintings. He is remembered as a preeminent voice of 20th century poetry.

Born into a Unitarian family, Cummings exhibited transcendental leanings his entire life. As he grew in maturity and age, Cummings moved more toward an "I, Thou" relationship with God.

His journals are replete with references to “le bon Dieu” as well as prayers for inspiration in his poetry and artwork (such as “Bon Dieu! may I some day do something truly great. amen.”).

Cummings "also prayed for strength to be his essential self ('may I be I is the only prayer—not may I be great or good or beautiful or wise or strong'), and for relief of spirit in times of depression ('almighty God! I thank thee for my soul; and may I never die spiritually into a mere mind through disease of loneliness')."

Cummings wanted to be a poet from childhood and wrote poetry daily aged eight to 22, exploring assorted forms. He went to Harvard and developed an interest in modern poetry which ignored conventional grammar and syntax, aiming for a dynamic use of language. On graduating, he worked for a book dealer.

In 1917, with the first world war ongoing in Europe, Cummings enlisted in the Norton-Harjes Ambulance Corps, along with his college friend, John Dos Passos.

Due to an administrative mix-up, Cummings was not assigned to an ambulance unit for five weeks, during which time he stayed in Paris. He fell in love with the city, to which he would return throughout his life.

During their service in the ambulance corps, they sent letters home that drew the attention of the military censors, and were known to prefer the company of French soldiers over fellow ambulance drivers.

The two openly expressed anti-war views; Cummings spoke of his lack of hatred for the Germans.

On September 21, 1917, just five months after his belated assignment, he and a friend, William Slater Brown, were arrested by the French military on suspicion of espionage and undesirable activities. They were held for three and half months in a military detention camp at the Dépôt de Triage, in La Ferté-Macé, Orne, Normandy.

They were imprisoned with other detainees in a large room. Cummings' father failed to obtain his son's release through diplomatic channels and in December, 1917 wrote a letter to President Wilson. Cummings was released on December 19, 1917, and Brown was released two months later.

Cummings used his prison experience as the basis for his novel, The Enormous Room (1922), about which F. Scott Fitzgerald said, "Of all the work by young men who have sprung up since 1920 one book survives — The Enormous Room by e e cummings....Those few who cause books to live have not been able to endure the thought of its mortality."

Cummings returned to the United States on New Year's Day, 1918. Later in 1918, he was drafted into the army. He served in the 12th Division at Camp Devens, Massachusetts, until November, 1918.

During the rest of the 1920s and 1930s, Cummings returned to Paris a number of times, and traveled throughout Europe, meeting, among others, Pablo Picasso.

In 1931, Cummings traveled to the Soviet Union, recounting his experiences in Eimi, published two years later. During these years, Cummings also traveled to Northern Africa and Mexico and worked as an essayist and portrait artist for Vanity Fair magazine (1924 to 1927).

In 1926, Cummings' father was killed in a car accident. Though severely injured, Cummings' mother survived. Cummings detailed the accident in the following passage from his i: six nonlectures series given at Harvard (as part of the Charles Eliot Norton Lectures) in 1952–1953:

“A locomotive cut the car in half, killing my father instantly. When two brakemen jumped from the halted train, they saw a woman standing – dazed but erect – beside a mangled machine; with blood spouting (as the older said to me) out of her head. One of her hands (the younger added) kept feeling her dress, as if trying to discover why it was wet.

These men took my sixty-six-year-old mother by the arms and tried to lead her toward a nearby farmhouse; but she threw them off, strode straight to my father's body, and directed a group of scared spectators to cover him. When this had been done (and only then) she let them lead her away.”

His father's death had a profound impact on Cummings, who entered a new period in his artistic life. He began to focus on more important aspects of life in his poetry. He began this new period by paying homage to his father's memory in the poem "my father moved through dooms of love."

Cummings died of a stroke on September 3, 1962, at the age of 67 in North Conway, New Hampshire at a hospital.

Here, Laurence Fishburne recites e.e. Cummings’ “Freedom Is a Breakfast Food” on Craig Ferguson’s show in 2009

"Wake Up Little Susie" became the Everly Brothers' first #1 hit on this day in 1957 — 64 years ago

"Wake Up Little Susie" became the Everly Brothers' first #1 hit on this day in 1957 — 64 years ago.

Harmony singing was a part of rock and roll right from the beginning, but the three- and four-part harmonies of doo-wop, derived from black gospel and blues traditions, would never have given us Simon and Garfunkel, the Beatles or the Byrds.

To get those groups, you first had to have the Everly Brothers, whose ringing, close-harmony style introduced a whole new sound into the rock-and-roll vocabulary: the sound of Appalachia set to hard-driving acoustic guitars and a subtle backbeat rhythm.

One of the most important and influential groups in the history of rock and roll, the Everly Brothers burst onto the music scene in 1957 with their first big hit, "Bye Bye Love," which was quickly followed with their first #1 song, "Wake Up Little Susie," which topped the Billboard pop chart on this day in 1957.

Don and Phil Everly began performing together professionally in 1945 at the ages of eight and six, respectively, on their family's live radio show out of Shenandoah, Iowa. The Everly family resettled to Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1953, and two years later, 18-year-old Don and 16-year-old Phil began pursuing work as songwriters in Nashville.

As a songwriting duo, they had very little success, and in their first try at making a record of their own, they couldn't even crack the lowest level of the Country & Western chart.

A move to Cadence Records in 1957, however, changed the course of the Everly Brothers' career, bringing them into partnership with a production team that included legendary session man Chet Atkins and the songwriting team of Felice and Boudreaux Bryant.

"Bye Bye Love" was the first song by the Bryants to be recorded by the two brothers, establishing their trademark sound and peaking at #2 on the charts in the summer of 1957.

The follow-up single, "Wake Up Little Susie," reached the top spot on October 14, 1957, though not without stirring controversy in some parts due to lyrics that hinted at teenage sex.

Literally banned in Boston at one point, the Everly’s first chart-topper was taken at face value in most parts of the country as an insanely catchy song about two teenagers who have innocently fallen asleep at a movie only to awaken at 4:00 AM in fear of having ruined their good reputations.

The Everly Brothers would earn 25 Top 40 hits over the first five years of their hugely influential recording career, including two more #1s: "All I Have To Do Is Dream" (1958) and "Cathy's Clown" (1960).

Thanks History.com

Here, the Everly Brothers perform “Wake Up Little Suzie”

Personal Memories of Charlie Moore

Personal Memories of Charlie Moore

I was in the tenth grade of high school when I ventured one Saturday to the local radio station, WHPB, in nearby Belton, South Carolina. It was a few minutes drive from my home in Honea Path and I drove my old 1942 Willys army jeep to the station parking lot. 

Being the weekend, there was only one person there — the on-air DJ — who was doing his shift. Through the glass control room window facing the outer lobby, he motioned me inside.

I introduced myself. He was a friendly fellow and introduced himself as Charlie Moore. It was a quiet time at the studio and he engaged me in conversation. I told him I was in high school and wanted to work in radio part-time.

“How do I get a job here?” I asked.

Learn the ropes, Charlie responded. Then he handed me the opportunity of a lifetime. I was welcome to hang out and watch what he did. Maybe if I picked enough skills, I could get hired at the station. That’s all I needed to hear.

Every weekend in the following weeks, I joined Charlie Moore on his shift. I learned a few things about him that I used to my advantage. When he wasn’t working at the radio station, Charlie was on the road singing bluegrass music. 

Musicians made very little money performing in those days and Charlie needed the salary from the radio job, as well as the station’s studio facilities to record his music.

I also noted that Charlie was always tired and was taking amphetamine pills. I soon learned that if I could run the audio board and play the records, it would allow Charlie to lie on the couch and take catnaps between records.

I had found my entrée into radio. 

I became so proficient at letting Charlie sleep that I would often wake him just before he had to go on the air. I’d hold a microphone over him while he lay on the couch, and he’d introduce the next record.

I quickly won a friend in Charlie Moore, who appreciated a young kid doing all the dirty work while letting him catch a few winks. As I gained more skills, Charlie had me run the audio board and record his music in the studio.
 
Whether the station management knew or didn’t know about these recordings, I’ll never know. But on weekends, when no one else was around, the studio would suddenly fill with bluegrass musicians.

In the studio at WHPB, we had a classic RCA 44BX ribbon microphone in a small studio connected to an RCA audio board and Roberts and Magnacord reel-to-reel tape recorders. It was a similar set-up in that era to the Sun or Stax Studios where some great music was being recorded only a few hours away. 

Performers could stand all around the big microphone and sing, moving in and out as they did solo parts. I recorded hours of mono recordings of Charlie and his band members this way. 

It would be forty years later before I would learn that many of those players were members of Bill Monroe’s great band, the Blue Grass Boys. And the tapes I recorded then were made into records that are still played on jukeboxes to this day. Charlie told me very little about what was really going on.

I had completely lost touch with Charlie Moore when I began to look into his life. I was surprised at what I didn’t know. When we worked together, I knew nothing of his major musical and songwriting talent. I knew him only in the context of the radio station.

Searching on the internet, I discovered that Travers Chandler, a professional bluegrass musician whose band, Avery County, is based in the Asheville, North Carolina area, has written about Charlie Moore. In fact, Travers Chandler revers Charlie, crediting him as a major influence in his own career. I called Travers to ask about Charlie.

“When I heard him sing on Truck Drivers Queen, I knew I wanted to be a bluegrass entertainer, but even more importantly I wanted to SING like Charlie Moore,” Travers told me. 

In fact, Traver’s band, Avery County, was named as a tribute after a Charlie Moore album by the same name. Travers never knew Charlie personally, but his father did. They were drinking buddies.

When I worked with Charlie Moore at WHPB, he was in his late 20s. Only a year or two earlier, he had teamed with Bill Napier, a former member of the Clinch Mountain Boys. Moore and Napier signed a recording contract with King Records and began performing on television in Greenville and Spartanburg S.C., and in Panama City, Florida. 

I remember watching Charlie on television early in the morning before going to school. It was hard for me to grasp his grueling life and his constant working schedule. 

He would be up at 5 a.m. to do the TV show and then out in the evening to play personal appearances. On weekends, he would work at WHPB. At least I better understand why he was always tired and taking those pills.

Charlie never introduced me to the musicians I recorded, but there’s a good chance I also recorded he and Bill Napier. 

“I know there were lots of people who recorded in Belton at WHPB who were members of Bill Monroe's band. Many essential recordings of legends were made in places like Belton, and at little radio stations in Virginia and North Carolina,” Travers told me. 

“I know that Carl Story recorded some there in the 1960s and there’s a good chance that you recorded a bunch of stuff there that ended up on vinyl that people seek out today. I have to believe that Charlie had a hand in it, because Charlie and Carl were tight at one time,” Travers continued. 

“You didn't know then what you were part of. It was legendary. At that time, musicians were starving to death. The tapes recorded at the radio stations would be sent to the record labels by the artists they were working with and would be pressed and released. Typically as 45s. A lot of times, it was just a wink and nod with the stations. Sometimes the stations were fine with it.”

At the time a lot of bands were working out of radio stations. In the late 50s and early 60s, bluegrass music almost perished. If an artist was making a record, it was on a shoestring budget type deal where little or no money was provided for recording or expenses or anything else. 

Travers told me that even Bill Monroe didn't make much money in those days. “Bill was a stubborn man. He had a painful childhood. He was guarded in everything he did. He didn't trust anybody. And he was not a businessman. It wasn’t until the mid to late 1960s that he trusted someone enough to be his manager did he make any money. 

“As to his band, back in those days it was a lot of swap and go. In the early 60s, somebody would leave the Stanley Brothers and go to work with Charlie and Bill Napier. Then they’d go work for Monroe or Stanley, then they’d get tired of that and come back. That’s just the way it was.”

Charlie Moore was close friends with Carter Stanley, one of the Stanley Brothers. “Carter was Charlie’s idol. Charlie wanted to be just like Carter. Both went out the same way. Carter drank himself to death at 41. Charlie drank himself to death at 44,” Travers said.
 
“When Charlie and Bill Napier broke up in about 1968, Charlie went to radio full time and became an MC at bluegrass shows and festivals. Charlie remained tight with everybody. He was friends with Ralph Stanley.” 

Travers said he talked with Ralph Stanley about Charlie. “Ralph said my brother and Charlie Moore were the two greatest songwriters I've ever seen.” 

Ironically, the great James Brown, who was also on King Records, ran the audio board for Charlie and Bill Napier in the Cincinnati, Ohio studio in the early days. 

“Charlie would arrive at King and have to record 12 songs and wouldn't have any material,” Travers said. “Charlie was worn out. There was a coffee shop across the street and Charlie and Bill would go over there, sit down, and Charlie would write songs on a napkin. In an hour or so, he'd have 10 or 12 songs and they'd go the studio and work with the band. Bill Napier would come up with the melody and then they’d cut the record.”

In the mid 1970s, Charlie continued to struggle in the U.S. but began to find a following in Europe in places like Belgium, France and Holland. His luck, however, ran out. 

He began drinking heavily and looked old and frail by his early 40s. Charlie became ill on the way to a show in West Virginia. Taken to a hospital, he went into a coma. He died on Christmas Eve, 1979.

Ironically, Charlie Moore gave me an entry into an industry that became my life’s work, but I never knew his story until I hit my 60s. I only knew him as an incredibly nice guy who took the time to help a kid. Little did I know that he was a brilliant songwriter and musician and would leave behind stacks of unrecorded songs. 

Bluegrass musician Jimmy Martin told Travers Chandler that Charlie Moore was one of the greatest singers ever in bluegrass and country music. Charlie could have been a country star in the 1960s, Martin said, but he refused to stray from what called his old time “hillbilly” music.

“Charlie almost came along at the wrong time,” Travis noted. “There was money to be made in those days. But he was always a step behind. It was a hard luck career.”

My work at WHPB won me a South Carolina State Broadcasters Association scholarship to the University of South Carolina. It was my ticket out of the tiny town of Honea Path. 

After I left in 1966, I never spoke to Charlie Moore again. It took nearly 43 years for me to learn his story.

Charlie Moore

WHPB, the radio station

Frank Beacham at WHPB console

Charlie Moore performs “Over in Glory Land”

Video of Charlie Moore

Natalie Maines of the Chicks is 47 years old today

Natalie Maines is 47 years old today.

Maines is a singer-songwriter and activist who achieved success as the lead vocalist for the female alternative country band, The Chicks (formerly the Dixie Chicks).

Born in Lubbock, Texas, Maines considers herself a rebel who "loved not thinking in the way I knew the majority of people thought."

In 1995, after leaving Berklee College of Music, Maines was recruited by the Chicks to replace their lead singer, Laura Lynch. With Maines as lead vocalist, the band earned great acclaim and many awards.

On the eve of the Iraq invasion, while in concert in London for the 2003 Top of the World Tour, Maines commented that the Chicks were "ashamed the President of the United States is from Texas."

Negative public reaction in the United States to this comment resulted in boycotts by country music radio stations and death threats.

In 2006, with Maines still acting as lead singer, the Chicks released Taking the Long Way. The album subsequently won five Grammy Awards (including Album of the Year).

Maines released her solo album, Mother, on May 7, 2013. The album was co-produced by Ben Harper. The album contains Maines's interpretation of several cover songs, including Pink Floyd's "Mother," Eddie Vedder's "Without You" and Jeff Buckley's "Lover, You Should've Come Over." She also sings about motherhood, feminism and painful relationships.

Here Mains with Ben Harper discusses her solo work, Mother

Robert Parker, R&B performer, was born 91 years ago today

Robert Parker, singer and musician, was born 91 years ago today.

An R&B performer, Parker best known for his 1966 hit, "Barefootin’.”

Parker started his career as a saxophonist, playing with Professor Longhair on his hit, "Mardi Gras In New Orleans," in 1949. Over the next decade, he played with most of New Orleans' musicians, including Fats Domino, Irma Thomas and Huey "Piano" Smith.

By 1958, he had started recording solo, having a local hit with the instrumental, "All Night Long.” In 1965, he signed for Nola Records, and had his biggest hit with "Barefootin’.”

Although he continued to record, he failed to repeat his success in terms of sales, and his recording career effectively ended in the 1970s.

Parker died on January 19, 2020, at his home in Roseland, Louisiana, at the age of 89 of natural causes.

Here, Parker performs “Barefootin’” in 1966

Paris Cafe, 1950s

Photo by Kurt Hudson

Lenny Bruce was born 96 years ago today

Lenny Bruce at airport, New York City

Photo by John Lindsay

Lenny Bruce was born 96 years ago today.

A comedian, social critic and satirist, Bruce was renowned for his open, free-style, dangerous and critical form of comedy which integrated politics, religion and sex.

His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in New York state history.

His tumultuous private life marked by substance abuse, promiscuity — as well as his efforts to prevent his wife from working as a stripper — made him a compelling figure.

Bruce paved the way for future outspoken comedians, and his trial for obscenity, in which — after being forced into bankruptcy — he was eventually found not guilty is seen as a landmark trial for freedom of speech.

On August 3, 1966, Bruce was found dead in the bathroom of his Hollywood Hills home at 8825 W. Hollywood Blvd. The official photo, taken at the scene, showed Bruce lying naked on the floor, a syringe and burned bottle cap nearby, along with various other narcotics paraphernalia.

The official cause of death was "acute morphine poisoning caused by an accidental overdose." He was 40.

On December 23, 2003, 37 years after his death, New York Governor George Pataki granted Bruce a posthumous pardon for his obscenity conviction.

Bruce was the subject of the 1974 biographical film, Lenny, directed by Bob Fosse and starring Dustin Hoffman in an Academy Award-nominated Best Actor role. It was based on the Broadway stage play of the same name written by Julian Barry and starring Cliff Gorman in his 1972 Tony Award winning role.

The documentary, Lenny Bruce: Swear to Tell the Truth, directed by Robert B. Weide and narrated by Robert De Niro, was released in 1998.

In 2004, Comedy Central listed Bruce at #3 on its list of the 100 Greatest Stand-Ups of All-Time, placing above Woody Allen and below George Carlin.

Here, Bruce performs “The Meaning of Obscenity”

Lenny Bruce on Southerners, Religion, Racism, Obscenity, Law, Police, Politics, 1966

On this day in 1975 — 46 years ago — Charlie Rich set an awards envelope on fire at the Country Music Association

In a 35-year career that ran from the rockabilly genius of "Lonely Weekends" (1960) to the Countrypolitan splendor of "Behind Closed Doors" (1973), the versatile and soulful Charlie Rich earned eleven #1 hits on the Country charts and one crossover smash with the #1 pop hit "The Most Beautiful Girl" (1973).

The man they called the Silver Fox displayed a natural talent for pleasing many different audiences, but his non-singing performance before one particular audience in 1975 did significant damage to the remainder of his career.

On this day in 1975 — 46 years ago — the man voted Entertainer of the Year for by the Country Music Association of America one year earlier stood onstage at the CMA awards show to announce that year's winner of the Association's biggest award.

But a funny thing happened when he opened the envelope and saw what was written inside. Instead of merely reading the name "John Denver" and stepping back from the podium, Charlie Rich reached into his pocket for a cigarette lighter and set the envelope on fire.

Though the display shocked the live audience in attendance, John Denver himself was present only via satellite linkup, and he offered a gracious acceptance speech with no idea what had occurred.

In the aftermath of the incident, Charlie Rich was blacklisted from the CMA awards show for the rest of his career. But what point was he trying to make, exactly?

It was widely assumed at the time that Rich was taking a stand on the side of country traditionalists upset at a notable incursion of pop dabblers into country music at the time (Olivia Newton-John, for instance, had won the Most Promising Female Vocalist award in 1973, for instance).

But Rich himself was often accused of being "not country enough," so that may not have been his intent.

While it made better newspaper copy to suggest that he specifically resented John Denver's win, Rich was also — by his own admission — on a combination of prescription pain medication and gin-and-tonics that night.

As his son, Charlie Rich, Jr., has written of the incident: "He used bad judgment. He was human after all. I know the last thing my father would have wanted to do was set himself up as judge of another musician."

Rich died at 62 years old of a pulmonary embolism in his sleep on July 25, 1995 in a Hammond, Louisiana motel.

Thanks History.com

Art Tatum was born 112 years ago today

Art Tatum and Phil Moore at the Club Downbeat, New York City between 1946 and 1948

Photo by William P. Gottieb

Art Tatum was born 112 years ago today.

Tatum was jazz pianist and virtuoso who played with phenomenal facility despite being nearly blind since birth. He is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time and he was a major influence on later generations of jazz pianists.

Tatum was noted for the complexity and speed of his performances, which set a new standard for jazz piano virtuosity.

"Tatum's quick reflexes and boundless imagination kept his improvisations filled with fresh (and sometimes futuristic) ideas that put him way ahead of his contemporaries ... Art Tatum's recordings still have the ability to scare modern pianists,” Scott Yanow, a critic, wrote.

Tatum drew inspiration from the pianists James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, who exemplified the stride piano style, and from the more "modern" Earl Hines — six years Tatum's senior. Tatum identified Waller as his main influence.

A major event in his meteoric rise to success was his appearance at a cutting contest in 1933 at Morgan's Bar in New York City that included Waller, Johnson and Willie "The Lion" Smith. Standard contest pieces included Johnson's, "Harlem Strut" and "Carolina Shout," and Fats Waller's, "Handful of Keys."

Tatum triumphed with his arrangements of "Tea for Two" and "Tiger Rag,” in a performance that was considered to be the last word in stride piano. James P. Johnson, reminiscing about Tatum's debut afterward, simply said, "When Tatum played ‘Tea For Two’ that night, I guess that was the first time I ever heard it really played."

Charlie Parker (who helped develop bebop) was highly influenced by Tatum. When newly arrived in New York, Parker briefly worked as a dishwasher in a Manhattan restaurant where Tatum was performing and often listened to the legendary pianist.

Parker once said, “I wish I could play like Tatum’s right hand!”

Tatum died at Queen of Angels Medical Center in Los Angeles on Nov. 5, 1956 from the complications of uremia (as a result of kidney failure). He was 47.

Here, Tatum plays “Humoresque” by Dvorak

Charles Giordano, keyboardist and accordionist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, is 67 years old today

Charles Giordano, keyboardist and accordionist with Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band, is 67 years old today.

Giordano is known primarily for his work with Springsteen as an adjunct member of the E Street Band, playing keyboards and organ following the serious illness and subsequent death of original E Street organist Danny Federici in 2008 and as a member of Springsteen's The Sessions Band. He is also known for playing keyboards with Pat Benatar in the 1980s.

With Benatar he was usually billed as Charlie Giordano and played for five albums, beginning in 1983. He was identifiable by his glasses and distinctive array of berets, blazers and 1980s-style ties. He was also a member of The David Johansen Group and went on to perform with Buster Poindexter and The Banshees of Blue.

As a session musician, Giordano's playing has included Madeleine Peyroux's 1996 album, Dreamland, and Bucky Pizzarelli's 2000 album, Italian Intermezzo.

Giordano at the Triad, New York City, 2018

Photo by Frank Beacham

On this day in 1943 — 78 years ago — 26-year-old poet Robert Lowell was sentenced to jail for a year for evading the draft

On this day in 1943 — 78 years ago — 26-year-old poet Robert Lowell was sentenced to jail for a year for evading the draft.

Lowell refused to be drafted because he objected to saturation bombing in Europe and other Allied tactics. He served the sentence in New York's West Street jail.

Lowell was born to a venerable Boston family whose members included an ambassador to England, a president of Harvard and a prominent Boston minister who founded St. Mark's School, which Lowell attended.

Lowell rejected the family tradition and history, dropped out of Harvard after two years and went to Kenyon College in Ohio.

There, he studied with the poet, John Crowe Ransom, and joined the Roman Catholic Church.

He married novelist Jean Stafford in the 40s and in 1946 published a collection of poems called Lord Weary's Castle, which won a Pulitzer Prize. The poems included The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket.

In 1948, Lowell divorced his first wife and married writer Elizabeth Hardwick. Plagued by mental illness, he suffered a breakdown in the 1950s.

Lowell and Hardwick lived abroad for several years and returned to Boston in 1954.

In the late 1950s, Lowell heard readings by Allen Ginsberg and other Beat poets and incorporated their open, confessional style into his own more formal poetry.

He wrote about his breakdown, his struggle with mental instability and the unraveling of his marriages. He also released, Life Studies (1959), which won the National Book Award.

In the 1960s, Lowell became a champion of civil rights and a protester against Vietnam. Believing that the poet had a public responsibility, he was one of a group of writers who led a march to the Pentagon in 1967.

He released numerous books throughout his career. He was divorced from Hardwick in 1972, leaving her and their daughter and marrying Lady Caroline Blackwood.

For a while, he divided his time between England and Boston. He later returned to Hardwick and remained with her until he died of a heart attack in 1977.

Thanks History.com

Above photo by Alfred Einsenstaedt

Paul Simon is 80 years old today

Paul Simon performs with Joan Baez and Richard Thompson at the Beacon Theatre, January, 2016

Photo by Frank Beacham

Paul Simon is 80 years old today.

Simon is an award-winning musician whose talents in composing, performing and vocal harmony placed him at the forefront of the singer-songwriters on an international scale.

His fame, influence and commercial success began as part of the duo — Simon & Garfunkel — launched in 1964 with musical partner, Art Garfunkel.

Simon wrote most of the pair's songs, including three that reached #1 on the U.S. singles charts: "The Sound of Silence,” "Mrs. Robinson" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

The duo split up in 1970 at the height of their popularity, and Simon began a successful solo career, recording three acclaimed albums over the next five years.

In 1986, he released Graceland, an album inspired by South African township music.

Simon also wrote and starred in the film, One-Trick Pony (1980), and co-wrote the Broadway musical, The Capeman (1998), with the poet, Derek Walcott.

Simon was the first recipient of the Library of Congress' Gershwin Prize for Popular Song in 2007. In 1986, Simon was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Music degree from Berklee College of Music, where he currently serves on the Board of Trustees.

Here, Simon and Garfunkel perform “Kodachrome” and “Maybellene” in Central Park, 1981

Paul Simon performs "Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes"

Paul Simon, Beacon Theatre, New York City, Jan., 2016

Photo by Frank Beacham

Willie Foster, bluesman, Leland, Mississippi

Foster was born in the field on a nine-foot cotton sack when his mother went into labor while picking cotton. She was forced to work although nine months pregnant.

Photo by Bill Steber

Sam Moore is 86 years old today

Sam Moore, New York City, 2006

Photo by Frank Beacham

Sam Moore is 86 years old today.

A Southern soul and R&B singer, Moore was the tenor vocalist for the soul vocal duo, Sam & Dave, from 1961 to 1981.

Sam & Dave were the most successful and critically acclaimed duo in soul music history. Since then, Moore has achieved a distinguished 25-plus year career as a solo performing and recording artist.

In 2008, based on a poll of other musicians, Moore was named one of the 100 greatest singers of the rock era (1950s-2008).

Moore has performed in concerts, ranging from the Atlantic Records 40th anniversary party in 1988, to the New Orleans Jazz Festival and the SXSW Music Industry conference in 2006. He has also performed in various venues ranging from the tribute for Elvis Presley in 1994 to the Kennedy Center Honors in 2006 for Smokey Robinson.

Moore has also partnered with other famous recording artists, including Conway Twitty, Bruce Springsteen, Don Henley, Elton John, Phil Collins, Lou Reed and others on various live and recorded performances.

Sam Moore and Dave Prater were both experienced gospel music singers, having performed individually with groups the Sensational Hummingbirds and The Melionaires. They met in The King of Hearts Club in Miami in 1961, where they were discovered by regional producer, Henry Stone, who signed them to Roulette Records.

After modest success at Roulette, they were signed by Jerry Wexler to Atlantic Records in 1964, then being “loaned” out to Stax Records to produce, record and release their records.

The duo's November, 1965 single, "You Don't Know Like I Know," started a series of ten straight Top 20 Billboard R&B hits that included "Hold On! I'm Comin'" (1966), "You Got Me Hummin' (1966), "When Something Is Wrong with My Baby" (1967), "Soul Man" (1967) and "I Thank You" (1968).

Most of their hits were penned by Isaac Hayes and David Porter. In most recordings, they were also backed by Hayes on piano with Booker T and the MGs and The Memphis Horns.

The ending of their association with the Stax record label and their frequently volatile relationship contributed to their first break-up in 1970.

Sam & Dave performed throughout most of the 1970s through 1981, and enjoyed a brief resurgence in popularity due to The Blues Brothers's 1979 recording of "Soul Man.” Their last performance together was on December 31, 1981, at the Old Waldorf in San Francisco.

On April 9 1988, Prater died in a car crash in Sycamore, Georgia.

Here, Moore performs “I’ve Been Loving You” with the Blues Brothers Band at the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary concert in 1988.

Sam and Dave perform "Hold On, I’m Coming," 1966

Sam Moore, at a private party in New York City, 2006

Photo by Frank Beacham