Frank Beacham's Journal

Party time with Salvador Dali’s Aphrodisiac jacket, 1936

Odetta was born 91 years ago today

Odetta, New York City, 2007

Photo by Frank Beacham

Odetta was born 91 years ago today.

A singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter and a civil and human rights activist, Odetta was often referred to as "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement." Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz and spirituals.

An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she was influential to many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples and Janis Joplin.

Time included her song "Take This Hammer" on its list of the All Time 100 Songs, stating that "Rosa Parks was her #1 fan and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music."

Born in Birmingham, Alabama, Odetta grew up in Los Angeles, attended Belmont High School and studied music at Los Angeles City College while employed as a domestic worker. She had operatic training from the age of 13. Her mother hoped she would follow Marian Anderson, but Odetta doubted a large black girl would ever perform at the Metropolitan Opera.

Her first professional experience was in musical theater in 1944, as an ensemble member for four years with the Hollywood Turnabout Puppet Theatre, working alongside Elsa Lanchester. She later joined the national touring company of the musical, Finian's Rainbow, in 1949.

While on tour with Finian's Rainbow, Odetta "fell in with an enthusiastic group of young balladeers in San Francisco," and after 1950 concentrated on folksinging.

She made her name by playing around the United States, including stints at the Blue Angel nightclub (New York City), the hungry i (San Francisco) and Tin Angel (San Francisco). The Tin Angel is where she and Larry Mohr recorded Odetta and Larry in 1954 for Fantasy Records.

A solo career followed, with Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues (1956) and At the Gate of Horn (1957). Odetta Sings Folk Songs was one of 1963's best-selling folk albums. In 1959, she appeared on Tonight With Belafonte, a nationally televised special. Odetta sang “Water Boy” and a duet with Belafonte, “There's a Hole in My Bucket.”

In 1961, Martin Luther King, Jr. anointed her "The Queen of American folk music.“ Also in 1961, the duo Harry Belafonte and Odetta made #32 in the UK Singles Chart with the song “There's a Hole in My Bucket.” Many Americans remember her performance at the 1963 civil rights movement's March on Washington where she sang "O Freedom." She considered her involvement in the Civil Rights movement as being "one of the privates in a very big army."

Broadening her musical scope, Odetta used band arrangements on several albums rather than playing alone, and released music of a more "jazz" style music on albums like Odetta and the Blues (1962) and Odetta (1967). She gave a remarkable performance in 1968 at the Woody Guthrie memorial concert.

Odetta also acted in several films during this period, including Cinerama Holiday (1955), the film of William Faulkner's Sanctuary (1961) and The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974). On September 29, 1999, President Bill Clinton presented Odetta with the National Endowment for the Arts' National Medal of Arts.

In 2004, Odetta was honored at the Kennedy Center with the "Visionary Award" along with a tribute performance by Tracy Chapman.

In 2005, the Library of Congress honored her with its "Living Legend Award." The 2005 documentary film, No Direction Home, directed by Martin Scorsese, highlights her musical influence on Bob Dylan, the subject of the documentary.

The film contains an archive clip of Odetta performing "Waterboy" on TV in 1959, and we also hear Odetta's songs "Mule Skinner Blues" and "No More Auction Block for Me."

In November, 2008, Odetta's health began to decline and she began receiving treatment at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York. She had hoped to perform at Barack Obama's inauguration on January 20, 2009.

On December 2, 2008, Odetta died from heart disease in New York City.

At her memorial service in February, 2009 at Riverside Church in New York City, participants included Maya Angelou, Pete Seeger, Harry Belafonte, Geoffrey Holder, Steve Earle, Sweet Honey in the Rock, Peter Yarrow, Tom Chapin, Josh White, Jr. (son of Josh White), Emory Joseph, Rattlesnake Annie, the Brooklyn Technical High School Chamber Chorus and videotaped tributes from Tavis Smiley and Joan Baez.

Bob Dylan said "The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers — Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues — in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store.

“Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar, a flat-top Gibson. ... [That album was] just something vital and personal. I learned all the songs on that record."

Joan Baez who said "Odetta was a goddess. Her passion moved me. I learned everything she sang."

Odetta also influenced Harry Belafonte, who "cited her as a key influence" on his musical career.

Janis Joplin, who "spent much of her adolescence listening to Odetta, who was also the first person Janis imitated when she started singing."

Poet Maya Angelou said "If only one could be sure that every 50 years a voice and a soul like Odetta's would come along, the centuries would pass so quickly and painlessly we would hardly recognize time."

John Waters, whose original screenplay for Hairspray, mentions Odetta as an influence on beatniks. Carly Simon cited Odetta as a major influence and talked about "going weak in the knees" when she had the opportunity to meet her in Greenwich Village.

Here, Odetta performs “House of the Rising Son” in 2005

Odetta performs “Waterboy”

Henri Matisse was born 152 years ago today

Henri Matisse was born 152 years ago today.

A French artist known for his use of color and his fluid and original draughtsmanship, Matisse was also a printmaker and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.

Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture.

Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting.

His mastery of the expressive language of color and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.

Matisse died in 1954 in Nice, France.

Above, Matisse in 1933

Blue Nude (II), 1952

Painting by Henri Matisse

Dance, 1910

Painting by Henri Matisse

John Denver was born 78 years ago today

Henry John Deutschendorf, Jr. — known professionally as John Denver — was born 78 years ago today.

Denver was a singer/songwriter, activist and humanitarian. After traveling and living in numerous locations while growing up in his military family, he began his music career in folk music groups in the late 1960s. His greatest commercial success was as a solo singer.

Throughout his life, Denver recorded and released about 300 songs, about 200 of which he composed. He performed primarily with an acoustic guitar and sang about his joy in nature, his enthusiasm for music and relationship trials.

Denver's music earned him 12 gold and four platinum albums with his signature songs "Take Me Home, Country Roads," "Annie's Song," "Rocky Mountain High" and "Sunshine on My Shoulders." Denver starred in films and several notable television specials in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the following decades, he continued to record, but also focused on calling attention to environmental issues, lent his vocal support to space exploration and testified in front of Congress to protest against censorship in music.

He was known for his love of the state of Colorado which he sang about numerous times. He lived in Aspen for much of his life, and influenced the governor to name him Poet Laureate of the state in 1974. The Colorado state legislature also adopted "Rocky Mountain High" as one of its state songs in 2007.

Denver was an avid pilot, and died while flying his personal aircraft at the age of 53. Denver was one of the most popular acoustic artists of the 1970s.

Here, Denver sings “Rocky Mountain High”

Fred Carter, Jr., guitarist, singer, producer and composer, was born 88 years ago today

Fred Carter and daughter, Deana Carter, 1998

Photo by Alan Mayor

Fred Carter, Jr., guitarist, singer, producer and composer, was born 88 years ago today.

Raised in the delta country in Winnsboro, the seat of Franklin Parish in northeastern Louisiana, Carter grew up with the heavy musical influences of jazz, country and western, hymns and blues. Beginning his professional career in the 1950s, his first partner in music was another Franklin Parish native, Allen "Puddler" Harris.

Carter subsequently worked with Dale Hawkins of "Suzie Q" song fame, and then joined Dale's cousin, Ronnie Hawkins, in his band. In the early 1960s, Carter settled into the Nashville session scene. He spent two years with Roy Orbison during his heyday and also toured with Conway Twitty.

Carter was the principal guitarist for two of Joan Baez's albums in the late 1960s. He then worked on Simon and Garfunkel's, Bridge Over Troubled Water. He provided numerous memorable guitar performances including "The Boxer" by Simon and Garfunkel, "I'm Just An Old Chunk Of Coal" by John Anderson, "I've Always Been Crazy" and "Whistlers and Jugglers" by Waylon Jennings.

Carter also played guitar and bass on the Bob Dylan album, "Self Portrait," and on the Connie Francis hit single, "The Wedding Cake." Production credits for Carter include Levon Helm's American Son album on MCA Records and Bobby Bridger's "Heal in the Wisdom." He also helped Dolly Parton and Tanya Tucker land their first record deals.

Carter was a member of the band, Levon Helm and The RCO All-Stars. This band was composed of Levon Helm, Booker T. and the MG's, Steve Cropper, Donald "Duck" Dunn, Dr. John, Paul Butterfield and the NBC Saturday Night Live horns.
He also had small roles in several films including, The Adventures of Huck Finn, starring Elijah Wood.

Carter is the father of Deana Carter. He died in 2010 following a stroke.

Here, Carter performs “(You’ll have to) Come and Get It”

Donna Summer was born 73 years ago today

LaDonna Adrian Gaines — better known as Donna Summer — was born 73 years ago today.

A singer, songwriter and painter, Summer gained prominence during the disco era of the late 1970s. She was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach #1 on the U.S. album chart and charted four #1 singles in the U.S. within a 12-month period.

Summer has reportedly sold over 130 million records, making her one of the world's best-selling artists of all time. While influenced by the counterculture of the 1960s, she became the front singer of a psychedelic rock band named, Crow, and moved to New York City.

Joining a touring version of the musical, Hair, she left New York and spent several years living, acting and singing in Europe, where she met music producers, Giorgio Moroder and Pete Bellotte. She returned to the United States, in 1975 with mass commercial success of the song, Love to Love You Baby.

Over the following years, Summer followed this success with a string of other hits, such as "I Feel Love," "Last Dance," "MacArthur Park," "Heaven Knows," "Hot Stuff," "Bad Girls," "Dim All the Lights," "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)" and "On the Radio."

Diagnosed with lung cancer (not related to smoking), Summer died on May 17, 2012, at her home in Naples, Florida.

Here, Summer performs “MacArthur Park” in 1978

Jule Styne, British-American songwriter, was born 116 years ago today

Jule Styne, British-American songwriter, was born 116 years ago today.

Known for a series of Broadway musicals, which include several very well known and frequently revived shows, Styne’s most enduring song is "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!," co-written with Sammy Cahn in 1945.

Styne was born in London as Julius Kerwin Stein to Jewish immigrants from the Ukraine, Russian Empire who ran a small grocery. At the age of eight, he moved with his family to Chicago, where at an early age he began taking piano lessons. Styne proved to be a prodigy and performed with the Chicago, St. Louis and Detroit Symphonies before he was ten years old.

He attended Chicago Musical College, but before then he had already attracted attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating.

It was the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne composed in his career. In 1929, Styne was playing with the Ben Pollack band, and wrote the song, “Sunday.”

Styne was a vocal coach for 20th Century Fox, until Darryl F. Zanuck fired him because vocal coaching was "a luxury, and we're cutting out those luxuries" and told him he should write songs, because "that's forever."

Styne established his own dance band, which brought him to the notice of Hollywood, where he was championed by Frank Sinatra and where he began a collaboration with lyricist, Sammy Cahn. With Cahn, he wrote many songs for the movies, including "It's Been a Long, Long Time" (#1 for three weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1945), "Five Minutes More" and the Oscar-winning title song of Three Coins in the Fountain.

He collaborated on the score for the 1955 musical film, My Sister Eileen, with Leo Robin. Ten of his songs were nominated for the Oscar, many written with Cahn, including "I've Heard That Song Before" (#1 for 13 weeks for Harry James and His Orchestra in 1943), "I'll Walk Alone," "It's Magic" (a #2 hit for Doris Day in 1948) and "I Fall in Love Too Easily.”

In 1947, Styne wrote his first score for a Broadway musical, High Button Shoes with Cahn, and over the next several decades wrote the scores for many Broadway shows.

Those included Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, Peter Pan (additional music), Bells Are Ringing, Gypsy, Do Re Mi, Funny Girl, Sugar (with a story based on the movie Some Like It Hot, but all new music) and the Tony-winning, Hallelujah, Baby!.

His collaborators included Sammy Cahn, Leo Robin, Betty Comden and Adolph Green, Stephen Sondheim and Bob Merrill.

Styne died of heart failure in New York City at the age of 88. He was elected to the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972 and the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981, and he was a recipient of a Drama Desk Special Award and the Kennedy Center Honors in 1990.

Here, Dean Martin performs Styne’s hit, “Let it Snow! Let it Snow Let it Snow”

At the end of 1974 — 47 years ago — the original Max's Kansas City in New York City closed down

At the end of 1974 — 47 years ago — the original Max's Kansas City in New York City closed down.

The venue had been a launching pad for such musical artists as The New York Dolls, Bruce Springsteen and The Velvet Underground. Bob Marley & the Wailers opened for Bruce Springsteen at Max's, beginning Marley's career on the international circuit. Fashion designer, Carlos Falchi, and artist, publisher and filmmaker, Anton Perich, were busboys there. Deborah Harry was a waitress.

Tim Buckley, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Odetta, Dave Van Ronk, John Herald, Garland Jeffreys, Sylvia Tyson, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Elliott Murphy and Country Joe were among the musicians that played at Max’s.

Max's quickly became a hangout of choice for artists and sculptors of the New York School, like John Chamberlain, Robert Rauschenberg and Larry Rivers, whose presence attracted hip celebrities and the jet set. It was also a favorite hangout of Andy Warhol and his entourage, who dominated the back room.

Other versions of Max’s Kansas City opened in later years, but none lasted.

Rex Allen was born 101 years ago today

Rex Allen with Nudie Cohn, clothing designer, with a pair of boots in Nudie’s store

Rex Allen was born 101 years ago today.

Known as the Arizona cowboy, Allen was a film actor, singer and songwriter. He was the narrator in many Disney nature and Western film productions.

Born on a ranch in Mud Springs Canyon, 40 miles from Willcox, Arizona, Allen played guitar and sang at local functions with his fiddle-playing father until high school graduation when he toured the Southwest as a rodeo rider. He got his start in show business on the East Coast as a vaudeville singer, then found work in Chicago as a performer on WLS-AM’s National Barn Dance.

In 1948, he signed with Mercury Records, where he recorded a number of successful country music albums until 1952, when he switched to the Decca label where he continued to make records into the 1970s. Singing cowboys such as Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were very much in vogue in American film.

So, in 1949, Republic Pictures in Hollywood gave him a screen test and put him under contract. Beginning the next year, Allen starred as himself in 19 of Hollywood's Western movies.

One of the Top 10 box office draws of the day, whose character was soon depicted in comic books, Allen personified the clean cut, God-fearing American hero of the wild West who wore a white Stetson hat, loved his faithful horse Koko and had a loyal buddy who shared his adventures.

Allen's comic relief sidekick in his first few pictures was Buddy Ebsen and then character actor, Slim Pickens. One of Allen's most successful singles was "Don't Go Near The Indians," which reached #5 on Billboard magazine's Hot Country Singles chart in November, 1962. Produced by Jerry Kennedy, it features The Merry Melody Singers.

The song is a tale of a young man who disobeys his father's advice stated in the title. When the father finds out that he had developed a relationship with a beautiful Indian maiden (named Nova Lee), he decides to reveal to his son what he had kept secret for so long: The man's biological son was killed by an Indian (as stated in the lyrics) during a clash between the white man and a tribe, and in retaliation, he kidnapped the boy as a young baby and raised him as his son.

The other secret: His son cannot marry Nova Lee because she's the boy's biological sister. Allen wrote and recorded many songs, a number of which were featured in his own films.

Late in coming to the industry, his film career was relatively short as the popularity of westerns faded by the mid 1950s. He has the distinction of making the last singing western in 1954.

Rex Allen died on December 17, 1999, two weeks before his 79th birthday in Tucson, Arizona, of a massive coronary, causing him to collapse in the driveway of his home. He suffered additional injuries when his caretaker accidentally ran over him in the driveway.

Here, Allen does a duet on “The Trail of the Lonesome Pine” with Brenda Lee in 1957

Rick Nelson died in plane crash in De Kalb, Texas, on December 31, 1985 — 36 years ago today

Rick Nelson died in plane crash in De Kalb, Texas, on December 31, 1985 — 36 years ago today.

When the teenage Ricky Nelson launched his pop career in 1957 by picking up a guitar and singing at the end of an episode of The Adventures of Ozzie And Harriet, he established a template for pop-music stardom that inspired hundreds of imitators in the decades that followed.

But what Ricky Nelson had that so many other actors who failed as pop stars didn't was undeniable musical talent. 

Having the full weight of the ABC television network behind him at the start of his career certainly guaranteed that the younger son of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson would sell a few records, but it didn't guarantee that he wouldn't stink.

And Ricky Nelson didn't stink — not by a long shot.

Beginning with his double-sided hit debut single, "I'm Walkin" b/w "A Teenager's Romance" (1957), Nelson reeled off a string of 30 rockabilly-tinged top 40 hits in the next five years — more than any other artist in the same period save for Elvis Presley and Pat Boone.

Like Elvis himself, Nelson saw his commercial appeal take a major hit with the arrival of the Beatles in 1964.

Nelson would remain musically relevant over the next decade, though, even earning credit for helping inspire the California sound of artists like Linda Ronstadt and The Eagles with his country-inspired late 1960s work.

But after a brief revival in the early 1970s fueled by the #6 pop hit "Garden Party" (1972), Nelson's career as a recording artist essentially ended.

Nelson continued to tour frequently, however, and it was on one such tour that he boarded a chartered DC-3 in Guntersville, Alabama, bound for a New Year's Eve appearance in Dallas. Shortly before reaching Dallas, however, the cabin of Nelson's plane apparently filled with smoke due to a fire from malfunctioning heater.

While the two pilots of the plane would survive their attempted emergency landing in a field outside De Kalb, Texas, all seven passengers on board were killed, including the first pop star to cross over from the Nielsen charts to the Billboard chats.

Rick Nelson died at age 45.

In 1987, Rick Nelson was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — an honor no other former child actor has yet achieved.

Rick Nelson, New York City, 1981

Photo by Lynn Goldsmith