Frank Beacham's Journal

Rod McKuen, poet, songwriter, composer and singer, was born 89 years ago today

Rod McKuen, poet, songwriter, composer and singer, was born 89 years ago today.

McKuen was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s, though his work was largely panned by critics as being syrupy and second rate. He died January 29, 2015 at age 81.

Pulitzer Prize-winning U.S. Poet Laureate Karl Shapiro said: "It is irrelevant to speak of McKuen as a poet."

That said, as a 13-year-old kid growing up in the small town of Honea Path, South Carolina, I was excited to see this “famous poet” visit our tiny town of less than 3,000 people in 1961. He was promoting his big hit, “Oliver Twist,” at the time.

McKuen was at a car dealership and signed this card (below), which I kept through the years. He was 28 years old at the time.

Otis Rush was born 88 years ago today

Otis Rush was born 88 years ago today.

Born in Philadelphia, Mississippi, Rush was a blues musician, singer and guitarist. His distinctive guitar style featured a slow burning sound and long bent notes.

With similar qualities to Magic Sam and Buddy Guy, Rush’s music became known as West Side Chicago blues and became an influence on many musicians including Michael Bloomfield and Eric Clapton.

Rush was left-handed and, unlike many other left-handed guitarists, played a left-handed instrument strung upside-down with the low E string at the bottom. He played often with the little finger of his pick hand curled under the low E for positioning. It is widely believed that this contributed to his distinctive sound. He had a wide-ranging, powerful tenor voice.

After moving to Chicago in 1948, Rush made a name for himself playing in clubs on both the South Side and West Side blues scenes. From 1956 to 1958, he recorded for the Cobra Records and released eight singles, some featuring Ike Turner or Jody Williams on guitar. His first single, "I Can't Quit You Baby," in 1956 reached #6 on Billboard's R&B chart.

During his tenure with Cobra, he recorded some of his well known songs such as "Double Trouble" and "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)." After Cobra Records went bankrupt in 1959, Rush landed a recording contract with Chess in 1960. He recorded eight tracks for the label, four of which were released on two singles that year.

Six tracks including the two singles later came out on "Door To Door" album in 1969, a compilation also featuring Chess recordings by Albert King. In the 1960s, Rush began playing in other cities in the U.S. and also to Europe, most notably the American Folk Blues Festival. In 1969, the album, Mourning in the Morning, was released on Cotillion Records.

Recorded at the FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, the album was produced by Michael Bloomfield and Nick Gravenites (then of Electric Flag). The sound that incorporated soul and rock was a brand new direction for Rush.

In 1971, Rush recorded the album, Right Place, Wrong Time, in San Francisco for Capitol Records, but the label decided not to release it. The album was finally released in 1976 when Rush purchased the master from Capitol and had it released by P-Vine Records in Japan. Bullfrog Records released it in the U.S. soon after. The album generally has since gained a reputation as one of the best works by Rush.

In the 1970s, he also released some albums on Delmark Records and also from Sonet Records in Europe, but by the end of the decade he stopped performing and recording. Rush made a come back in 1985 making a U.S. tour and releasing the live album, Tops, recorded at the San Francisco Blues Festival.

In 1994, Rush released Ain't Enough Comin' In, his first studio album in 16 years. Any Place I'm Goin' followed in 1998. Though he has not recorded a new studio album since 1998, Rush continued to tour and perform.

In 2002, he was featured on the Bo Diddley tribute album Hey Bo Diddley — A Tribute! He performed the song, "I'm A Man," produced by Carla Olson.

Rush suffered a stroke in 2004, which kept him from performing.

In 2006, Rush released Live and From San Francisco on Blues Express Records, a live recording from 1999.

Rush died on September 29, 2018 from complications of a stroke.

Here, Rush performs “I Can’t Quit You Baby”

Lonnie Donegan was born 91 years ago today

Lonnie Donegan was born 91 years ago today.

A British singer, songwriter and musician, Donegan had more than 20 UK Top 30 hits to his name. He is known as the "King of Skiffle" and is often cited as a major influence on the generation of British musicians who became famous in the 1960s.

The Guinness Book of British Hit Singles and Albums says Donegan was "Britain's most successful and influential recording artist before The Beatles. He chalked up 24 successive Top 30 hits, and was the first UK male to score two U.S. Top 10s."

Born Anthony James Donegan in Bridgeton, Glasgow, Scotland, he was the son of a professional violinist who had played with the Scottish National Orchestra. In 1933, he moved with his family to East Ham, Essex (now in Greater London).

Donegan was evacuated to Cheshire to escape the Blitz in World War II, and he attended St. Ambrose College, initially at the school's original site in Dunham Road, Altrincham. In the early 1940s, he listened mostly to swing jazz and vocal acts and became interested in the guitar.

Country-western and blues records, particularly by Frank Crumit and Josh White, attracted his interest and he bought his first guitar at the age of fourteen in 1945.
He began learning songs such as "Frankie and Johnny," "Puttin' On the Style" and "The House of the Rising Sun" in the following years by listening to BBC radio broadcasts. By the end of the 1940s, he was playing guitar around London and visiting small jazz clubs.

Donegan continued to appear regularly in the UK charts until 1962, before succumbing to the arrival of The Beatles and beat music. He was unfashionable and generally ignored through the late 1960s and 1970s, although his "I'll Never Fall in Love Again" was recorded by Tom Jones in 1967. He then began to play on the American cabaret circuit.

Donegan suffered his first heart attack in 1976 while in the United States and underwent quadruple bypass surgery. He returned to the public's attention in 1978, when he made a record of his early songs with such figures as Rory Gallagher, Ringo Starr, Elton John and Brian May called Putting on the Style.

Donegan died in 2002 at age 71 after suffering a heart attack in Market Deeping mid-way through a UK tour and shortly before he was due to perform at a memorial concert for George Harrison with The Rolling Stones.

Paul McCartney said Donegan “was the first person we had heard of from Britain to get to the coveted #1 in the charts, and we studied his records avidly. We all bought guitars to be in a skiffle group. He was the man."

Brian May said "He really was at the very cornerstone of English blues and rock."

And Roger Daltrey said "I wanted to be Elvis Presley when I grew up, I knew that. But the man who really made me feel like I could actually go out and do it was a chap by the name of Lonnie Donegan."

Here, Donegan performs “Frankie and Johnny” in 1961

Duke Ellington was born 123 years ago today

Duke Ellington was born 123 years ago today.

A composer, pianist and big-band leader, Ellington wrote over 1,000 compositions. As a major figure in jazz, he stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular and classical.

His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, composing stage musicals and world tours. Several of his instrumental works were adapted into songs that became standards.

Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death and the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowed on him a special posthumous honor in 1999.

Ellington called his music "American Music" rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as "beyond category." These included many of the musicians who were members of his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the best-known jazz orchestral units in the history of jazz.

He often composed specifically for the style and skills of these individuals, such as "Jeep's Blues" for Johnny Hodges, "Concerto for Cootie" for Cootie Williams, which later became "Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me" with Bob Russell's lyrics and "The Mooche" for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley.

He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol's "Caravan" and "Perdido," which brought the "Spanish Tinge" to big-band jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained there for several decades.

After 1941, he frequently collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his "writing and arranging companion." Ellington recorded for many American record companies, and appeared in several films. Ellington led his band from 1923 until his death in 1974.

His son, Mercer Ellington, who had already been handling all administrative aspects of his father's business for several decades, led the band until his own death in 1996. At that point, the original band dissolved.

Paul Ellington, Mercer's youngest son and executor of the Duke Ellington estate, kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going from Mercer's death onwards. Today, it is managed and represented by A. C. Lichtenstein of Ideal Entertainment.

Here, Ellington performs “Take the ‘A’ Train” in the film, Reveille, 1943

Daniel Day-Lewis is 65 years old today

Daniel Day-Lewis is 65 years old today.

An English actor., holding both British and Irish citizenship, Day-Lewis was born and raised in London. He excelled on stage at the National Youth Theatre, before being accepted at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School, which he attended for three years.

Despite his traditional actor training at the Bristol Old Vic, he is considered to be a method actor, known for his constant devotion to and research of his roles. He often remains completely in character for the duration of the shooting schedules of his films, even to the point of adversely affecting his health.

He is one of the most selective actors in the film industry, having starred in only five films since 1998, with as many as five years between roles.

Day-Lewis is one of the most acclaimed actors of his generation and has earned numerous awards, including three Academy Awards for Best Actor for his portrayals of Christy Brown in My Left Foot (1989), Daniel Plainview in There Will Be Blood (2007) and Abraham Lincoln in Lincoln (2012).

Day-Lewis is the only male actor in history to have three wins in the lead actor category and one of only three male actors to win three Oscars (the other two being Walter Brennan and Jack Nicholson). He has also won four BAFTA Awards for Best Actor, three Screen Actors Guild Awards, three Critics' Choice Movie Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. In June, 2014, he received a knighthood for services to drama.

Day-Lewis last returned to the screen to star in Paul Thomas Anderson's historical drama Phantom Thread in December, 2017. Set in 1950s London, Day-Lewis played obsessive dressmaker Reynolds Woodcock, who falls in love with a waitress, played by Vicky Krieps.

Prior to the film's release, Day-Lewis' spokeswoman, Leslee Dart, announced that he was retiring from acting. Unable to give an exact reason for his decision, in a November, 2017 interview Day-Lewis stated, "I haven't figured it out. But it's settled on me, and it’s just there…I dread to use the overused word 'artist,' but there's something of the responsibility of the artist that hung over me. I need to believe in the value of what I’m doing. The work can seem vital. Irresistible, even. And if an audience believes it, that should be good enough for me. But, lately, it isn't.”

Carl Gardner, founder of The Coasters, was born 94 years ago today

The Coasters, 1958

From left: Billy Guy, Will Jones, Carl Gardner, Cornell Gunter and Adolph Jacobs

Photo by William Popsie Randolph

Carl Gardner, founder of The Coasters, was born 94 years ago today.

Gardner was known for the 1958 song, "Yakety Yak," which spent a week at #1 on the Hot 100 pop chart.

He was born in Tyler, Texas, to Rebecca and Robert Gardner. As a singer, his first major career success came with The Robins, a rhythm and blues group which had a big hit in 1955, "Smokey Joe's Café.”

After leaving that group, Gardner formed The Coasters with Robins' bass singer Bobby Nunn, Leon Hughes and Billy Guy in 1956, at the behest of the songwriting/producing team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. They had a two-sided hit,"Youngblood," in 1957 (on which Gardner sang lead) and "Searchin'."

With new members Cornel Gunter and Will "Dub" Jones, The Coasters went on to produce several enduring classics of 1950s rock and roll music including "Yakety Yak," "Charlie Brown"and "Poison Ivy."

Gardner's son, Carl Jr., officially joined The Coasters in late 2005, after Gardner semi-retired, although Carl Jr. had been touring with them since at least 1998.

Carl Gardner, Sr. died on June 12, 2011, after suffering congestive heart failure and vascular dementia. Carl, Jr., took over as lead singer, but was fired by Veta Gardner, Carl’s wife, who took over managing the group.

Together Carl Jr. and Thomas (Curly) Palmer vowed to keep the legacy alive by a version of the group called, "The Coasters featuring Carl Gardner Jr. and Thomas Curly Palmer.” Carl Jr. and Palmer both recorded with The Coasters before Carl Sr.’s death.

Veta Gardner owns the rights to the Coasters name and now manages a group, which contains no original or recording members.

Here, Gardner and friends perform “Young Blood”

Big Jay McNeely, rhythm and blues saxophonist, was born 95 years ago today

Big Jay McNeely, Los Angeles, 1951

Photo by Bob Willoughby

Big Jay McNeely, rhythm and blues saxophonist, was born 95 years ago today.

Inspired by Illinois Jacquet and Lester Young, he teamed with his older brother, Robert McNeely, who played baritone saxophone, and made his first recordings with drummer Johnny Otis, who ran the Barrelhouse Club that stood only a few blocks from McNeely's home.

Shortly after he performed on Otis's "Barrel House Stomp,” Ralph Bass, A&R man for Savoy Records, promptly signed him to a recording contract. Bass's boss, Herman Lubinsky, suggested the stage name Big Jay McNeely because his real name, Cecil McNeely, did not sound commercial.

McNeely's first hit was "The Deacon's Hop," an instrumental which topped the Billboard R&B chart in early 1949. The single was his most successful of his three chart entries.

Thanks to his flamboyant playing, called "honking," McNeely remained popular through the 1950s and into the early 1960s, recording for the Exclusive, Aladdin, Imperial, Federal, Vee-Jay, and Swingin' labels.

But despite a hit R&B ballad, "There Is Something on Your Mind," (1959) featuring Little Sonny Warner on vocals, and a 1963 album for Warner Bros. Records, McNeely's music career began to cool off.

He quit the music industry in 1971 to become a postman. However, thanks to an R&B revival in the early 1980s, McNeely left the post office and returned to touring and recording full-time, usually overseas.

His original tenor sax is enshrined in the Experience Music Project in Seattle, and he was inducted into The Rhythm and Blues Music Hall of Fame.

In 1989, Big Jay McNeely was performing at the Quasimodo Club in West Berlin the night the Berlin Wall came down, "and Cold War legend has it that Big Jay McNeely blew down the Berlin Wall in 1989 with his earth-shaking sonic sax torrents outside the Quasimodo Club in West Germany"

McNeely wore bright banana- and lime-colored suits, played under blacklights that made his horn glow in the dark, used strobe lights as early as 1952 to create an "old-time-movie" effect, and sometimes walked off the stage and out the door, usually with the club patrons following along behind.

At one point, in San Diego, police arrested him on the sidewalk and hauled him off to jail, while his band kept playing on the bandstand, waiting for him to return.

McNeely died in Moreno Valley, California on September 16, 2018 of prostate cancer, at the age of 91.

Here, McNeely and Detroit Garry Wiggins perform “High Rate of Speed”

Beatle John Lennon wins his deportation battle in New York City on this day 46 years ago

This week in 1972, New York City Mayor John V. Lindsay wrote a letter to Washington on behalf of an immigrant couple facing deportation. Their removal, the mayor wrote, would be contrary “to the principles of our country” and amount to “a grave injustice.”

The couple’s problems stemmed from the fact that one of them had pleaded guilty to marijuana possession in his native country.

His name was John Lennon.

Other prominent figures petitioned immigration authorities in support of Lennon and Yoko Ono. “Artisans and universal megagalactic entities,” wrote the poet, Gregory Corso. “Ergo, let my people go — stay — etc.”

Proceedings dragged on for years during the Nixon administration, but John and Yoko remained in New York.

In 1976, Lennon's U.S. immigration status was finally resolved favorably, after a years-long battle that included an FBI investigation — a full-scale effort involving surveillance, wiretaps and agents following Lennon around as he traveled. Lennon insisted that the investigation was politically motivated, a claim that was later proven true.

With the departure of Nixon from the White House, the administration of his successor, Gerald Ford, showed little interest in continuing the battle. At the end of the long ordeal, a reporter asked Lennon a question:

“Mr. Lennon, do you feel any antagonism toward the people who have attempted to have you deported?”

John Lennon responded: “Absolutely not. I believe time wounds all heels.”

Drive-in movie, Detroit, 1955

Photo by Robert Frank

Ann-Margret is 81 years old today

Ann-Margret dances with Elvis Presley

Ann-Margret is 81 years old today.

Ann-Margret Olsson is a Swedish-American actress, singer and dancer whose professional name is Ann-Margret. She is best known for her roles in Bye Bye Birdie (1963), Viva Las Vegas (1964), The Cincinnati Kid (1965), Carnal Knowledge (1971) and Tommy (1975). Her singing career spans five decades, like her acting career. She started in 1961.

Initially, she was billed as a female version of Elvis Presley. She had a minor hit in 1961 and a charting album in 1964, and scored a disco hit in 1979. In 2001, she recorded a critically acclaimed gospel album, and an album of Christmas songs from 2004 continues to be available.

And Here She Is: Ann-Margret, her debut album, was produced in Nashville with Chet Atkins on guitar, the Jordanaires (Elvis Presley's backup singers) and the Anita Kerr Singers. The liner notes were by her mentor, George Burns.

She had a sexy, throaty singing voice, and RCA attempted to capitalize on the “female Elvis” comparison by having her record a version of "Heartbreak Hotel" and other songs stylistically similar to Presley's.

She scored the minor hit, "I Just Don't Understand," from her second album, which entered the Billboard Top 40 in the third week of August, 1961 and stayed six weeks. It peaked at #17. In 1961, she filmed a screen test at 20th Century Fox and was signed to a seven-year contract.

Ann-Margret made her film debut in a loan-out to United Artists in Pocketful of Miracles with Bette Davis. It was a remake of the 1933 movie, Lady for a Day. Both versions were directed by Frank Capra. Then came a 1962 remake of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical, State Fair, playing the "bad girl" role of Emily opposite Bobby Darin and Pat Boone.

She had tested for the part of Margy, the "good girl," but she seemed too seductive to the studio bosses, who decided on the switch. The two roles mimicked her real-life personality — shy and reserved offstage, but wildly exuberant and sensuous onstage.

As she summed up in her autobiography, she would easily transform herself from "Little Miss Lollipop to Sexpot-Banshee" once she stepped on stage and the music began. Her next starring role, as the all-American teenager, Kim, from Sweet Apple, Ohio, in Bye Bye Birdie (1963) made her a major star.

The premiere at Radio City Music Hall, 16 years after her first visit to the famed theater, was a smash hit. It was the highest first-week grossing film to date at that venue. Life magazine put her on the cover for the second time and announced that the "torrid dancing almost replaces the central heating in the theater.”

She was asked to sing "Baby, Won't You Please Come Home" at President John F. Kennedy's private birthday party at the Waldorf-Astoria — one year after Marilyn Monroe's famous, "Happy Birthday."

Ann-Margret met Elvis Presley on the MGM soundstage when the two filmed Viva Las Vegas in 1964. She recorded three duets with Presley for the film, "The Lady Loves Me," "You're The Boss" and a duet version with Presley of his song, "Today, Tomorrow, and Forever."

Only "The Lady Loves Me" made it into the final film and none of which were commercially released until years after Presley's death, due to concerns by Colonel Tom Parker that Ann-Margret's presence threatened to overshadow Elvis. Ann-Margret introduced Presley to David Winters, whom she recommended as a choreographer for their film.

Viva Las Vegas was Winters' first feature film choreography job and was his first of four movies with Presley and his first of five films, including Kitten with a Whip (1964), Bus Riley's Back in Town (1965), Made in Paris (1966) and The Swinger (1966). He also did two TV specials with Ann-Margret.

While working on the film, Once a Thief (1965), she met future husband, Roger Smith, who, after his successful run on the private-eye television series, 77 Sunset Strip, was performing a live club show at the Hungry i on a bill with Bill Cosby and Don Adams. That meeting began their courtship, which met with resistance from her parents.

Ann-Margret starred in The Cincinnati Kid in 1965 opposite Steve McQueen. She also co-starred along with friend, Dean Martin, in the spy spoof, Murderers' Row (1966). Finally, she starred as the lead in The Swinger in 1966 with Tony Franciosa.

Her red hair-color (she is a "natural brunette") was the idea of Sydney Guilaroff, a hairdresser who changed the hair-color of other famous actresses such as Lucille Ball. She was offered the title role in Cat Ballou (1965), but her manager turned it down without telling her.

In March, 1966, Ann-Margret and entertainers Chuck Day and Mickey Jones teamed up for a USO tour to entertain U.S. servicemen in remote parts of Vietnam and other parts of Southeast Asia. She still has great affection for the veterans and refers to them as "my gentlemen."

During a lull in her film career in July, 1967, Ann-Margret gave her first live performance in Las Vegas, with her husband Roger Smith (whom she had married in 1967) taking over as her manager after that engagement.

Elvis Presley and his entourage came to see her during the show's five-week run and to celebrate backstage. From thereon until his death, Presley sent her a guitar-shaped floral arrangement for each of her Vegas openings.

After the first Vegas run ended, she followed up with a CBS television special, "The Ann-Margret Show," produced and directed by David Winters on December 1, 1968. The guests were Bob Hope, Jack Benny, Danny Thomas and Carol Burnett.

In 1971, she starred in Mike Nichols' Carnal Knowledge, playing the over-loving girlfriend of a viciously abusive Jack Nicholson and garnering a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.

On the set of The Train Robbers in Durango, Mexico, in June, 1972, she told Nancy Anderson of Copley News Service that she had been on the "grapefruit diet" and had lost almost twenty pounds (134 to 115) eating unsweetened citrus.

On Sunday, September 10, 1972, while performing at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, she fell 22 feet from an elevated platform to the stage and suffered injuries including a broken left arm, cheekbone and jawbone.

Husband Roger Smith flew a stolen plane from Burbank, California, to Lake Tahoe in order to get his wife to the surgeons at the medical center at UCLA for treatment. She required meticulous facial reconstructive surgery that required wiring her mouth shut and putting her on a liquid diet. Unable to work for ten weeks, she ultimately returned to the stage almost (some would say miraculously) back to normal.

Throughout the 1970s, Ann-Margret balanced her live musical performances with a string of dramatic film roles that played against her glamorous image.

In 1973, she starred with John Wayne in The Train Robbers. Then came the musical, Tommy, in 1975, directed by Ken Russell. For that film, she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress.

On August 17, 1977, Ann-Margret and Roger Smith traveled to Memphis to attend Elvis Presley's funeral. Three months later, she hosted Memories Of Elvis featuring abridged versions of the Elvis 1968 TV and Aloha from Hawaii specials.

In 1982, Ann-Margret co-starred with Walter Matthau and Dinah Manoff in the film version of Neil Simon's play, I Ought to Be in Pictures. That same year, she appeared with a six-year-old Angelina Jolie in Lookin' to Get Out, playing Jolie's mother.

She has been married to Roger Smith since May 8, 1967. Prior to this she was romantically linked to Elvis Presley during the filming of Viva Las Vegas. She rode a 500 cc Triumph T100C Tiger motorcycle in The Swinger (1966) and used the same model, fitted with a non-standard electric starter, in her stage show and her TV specials.

A keen motorcyclist, she was featured in Triumph Motorcycles' official advertisements in the 1960s. She suffered three broken ribs and a fractured shoulder when she was thrown off a motorcycle she was riding in rural Minnesota in 2000.

In the 2005 CBS miniseries, Elvis, she is portrayed by Rose McGowan, in which her affair with Elvis Presley (played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers) is depicted during the filming of Viva Las Vegas.

Here is Ann-Margret in the classic “beans and chocolate” scene from Ken Russell’s 1975 film, Tommy