Nat King Cole possessed one of the sweetest, smoothest voices of any American male singer of the 20th century. His tone seemed to carry warmth and genuine affection with effortless grace. If there were a contest among crooners, I’d place him firmly at the top. After all, I’ve long admitted to being a hopeless, sentimental romantic.
Some people attribute his tone and resonance to a rugged life that spared neither drinking nor heavy smoking (he died of lung cancer, in 1965, shortly before reaching age 46). That notion, however, misses the truth: Cole was genuinely gifted and dedicated to his craft. For proof, one need only listen to the polished, soulful voice of his daughter, Natalie Cole.
I have a Pandora station I like to play at low key get-togethers and quiet evenings that include, among other genres, some harmonica-based blues, ‘70s soft rock, ballads, bossa nova, and love songs. Cole’s voice comes up frequently. I’m never disappointed.
The year 1911 stood at the twilight of the Edwardian Era, ‘twixt the death of King Edward and the outbreak of The Great War. That year an amateur musician named Charles Dawes composed a little instrumental tune for violin and piano that he called, simply, “Melody in A Major.” Dawes was a self-taught pianist and flautist who composed merely as a hobby. The tune enjoyed modest popularity during his lifetime.
That Dawes found success in disparate fields surprised no one who knew him. Born in Ohio in 1865, just after the Civil War, he was the son of a decorated general from that nationally tragic and transformative conflict. After graduating from college and then law school, Dawes headed west to Nebraska—a frontier of opportunity. In Lincoln, he built a successful law practice and befriended both John “Black Jack” Pershing, the future commander of U.S. forces in World War I, and William Jennings Bryan, the famed champion of Free Silver who would earn the Democratic presidential nomination three times, serve as Woodrow Wilson’s Secretary of State, and later gain notoriety as a prosecutor in the “Scopes Monkey Trial.”
Dawes’s ambitions soon reached beyond the law. Seizing opportunities during the Panic of 1893, he moved to Evanston, Illinois, and began acquiring stakes in struggling companies—starting with a string of gas utilities—at bargain prices. His business success drew political attention, and in 1896 he managed William McKinley’s Illinois presidential campaign, opposing his old Nebraska friend Bryan. After McKinley’s victory, Dawes was rewarded with an appointment as the Treasury Department’s Comptroller of the Currency, where he helped recover millions in bank losses from the 1893 Panic.
Dawes resigned from the administration in 1901 to set up a run for Senator. He believed the timing was right, since he had McKinley’s support. But McKinley was assassinated at the World’s Fair in Buffalo in September of that year. The new president, Theodore Roosevelt, would not be supporting Dawes (this was before direct election of Senators). Dawes failed in his attempt to become Illinois’ 16th Senator to fellow Republican Albert Hopkins.
1901 Buffalo Worlds Fair, Electric Tower
Returning to private life, Dawes expanded into banking and investment management, forming the Central Trust Company of Illinois.
By the time he penned “Melody in A Major” in 1911, he was already an accomplished lawyer, businessman, banker, and former government official.
June 1, 2019 – Late evening in the Colorado mountains. My wife is working quietly on her laptop while I’m absorbed in Le Ly Hayslip’s memoir When Heaven and Earth Changed Places – subtitled A Vietnam Woman’s Journey from War to Peace.
Daughter and Father
We’re listening to the aforementioned Pandora station, when through the speakers comes a beautifully arranged father-daughter duet: When I Fall in Love (It Will Be Forever), sung by Nat and Natalie Cole. The 1997 Grammy-winning track was a technological marvel—Natalie’s voice paired with her father’s, though Nat had been gone for three decades.
I find myself wondering—does “falling in love” really last forever? It makes a lovely lyric, but…
I set the book aside. Le Ly’s life was marked by mostly disastrous relationships. Can someone truly be in love with more than one person at once—like Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) in Casablanca? Or Dr. Zhivago (Omar Sharif) in the film of the same name? And what about falling in love more than once—does that still count? What does it mean to “fall in love,” anyway? The date gives me pause: June 1, birthday of the young woman I fell for in 1978. I still remember so much—her smile, the way she moved, even her birthday. I carry a fond memory, a small corner of my heart still hers. But does that count? Probably not. Love, after all, isn’t love if it isn’t returned
Why do I even chase these thoughts? Maybe I’m simply a hopeless romantic.
Half a dozen songs later, Nat’s voice returns—this time with It’s All in the Game and its quietly wise refrain: “Many a tear has to fall, but it’s all in the game.” The “game,” of course, being love. No one ever promised it would be easy.
Cole’s silky smooth delivery is one of many covers—perhaps the best—of Tommy Edwards’ 1958 hit. Edwards’ rendition topped charts in both the U.S. and the U.K., though the melody was far older. In 1951, lyricist Carl Sigman had set words to an existing tune from 1911: Charles Dawes’ Melody in A Major.
A successful banker and businessman with a can-do attitude, Dawes was appointed chief of Procurement and Supply Management for John “Black Jack” Pershing’s American Expeditionary Force during the Great War. By the war’s end, he had risen to the rank of Brigadier General
After the war, he returned his attention temporarily to private business, only to be appointed to be the first ever Director of the Budget, in 1921 by President Harding. This is now called the Office of Budget Management. Dawes helped grow the bureau into one of the most important serving under the president: producing the president’s budget, tracking expenses against the budget, and evaluate the efficiency of the federal agencies.
By 1923, Germany was in severe economic crisis — hyperinflation, limited industrial capacity, and crippling reparations. Dawes was appointed to a commission tasked with finding a solution. Excessive war debts and the Allied occupation of key industrial regions had devastated the German economy, fueling political unrest and setting the stage for events like Hitler’s failed Beer Hall Putsch.
The commission’s plan, which came to be known as the Dawes Plan, called for complete re-organization of Germany’s national bank (Reichsbank) and a reset on their currency, to be anchored by a loan from the United States. Re-industrialization was begun as the French accelerated their withdrawal of the Ruhr district. Concessions from the French allowed for slower, more gradual, and less painful reparations.
The plan’s success earned Charles Dawes the Nobel Peace Prize in 1925.
Dawes’ political star was ascendant. At the June 1924 Republican convention, he was selected as Calvin Coolidge’s running mate. That fall, they won the election, and Dawes served the next four years as Vice President of the United States and president of the Senate.
Dawes also served in the Hoover administration, first as ambassador to England and, later, as head of the newly formed Reconstruction Finance Corporation to help fight the depression.
After leaving government, Dawes served on numerous industrial and banking boards while continuing to run his own banking enterprises from his Evanston home until his death in 1951. Shortly afterward, songwriter Carl Sigman — inspired by Dawes’ extraordinary career — wrote the lyrics that completed Melody in A Major, from a Melody to a song.
Charles Dawes led a remarkable life. And if you remember him for one thing, well, here’s something that might help you in a trivia contest: Dawes is the only person in history to have co-written a #1 musical hit, served as Vice-President of the United States, and been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
These sentimental romantic wishes you all a lifetime of fulfillment and requited love.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
I no longer have Pandora. I now prefer Spotify. Better product, a little pricier.
October 14, 1800, on a plantation near Savannah, Georgia: a boy named Jourdan is born to a slave woman named Judith. His father was a white man, whose identity was not recorded and, in fact, may not ever have been known. By law, this made the boy the slave property of his mother’s owner.
Savannah, GA
At this time Florida was again a territory of the Spanish Empire. As a Catholic nation, Florida was a “mostly” a free land: one of the destinations of the first underground railroads. [1]
Many slaves escaped there and formed their own communities of freemen, some near St Augustine, some 180 miles away from Savannah. Judith and her boy, Jourdan, did not.
In November 1813, the adolescent Jourdan and his mother were bought by Jean Chaumette, a slave trader. He transported them to New Orleans, Louisiana (a US state only since 1812). In June 1814 they were sold to Lt. John Noble (US Army 7th Regiment).
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Part of French culture and heritage, New Orleans had been part of “slave territory”, and remained that way, as part of the American south, into statehood; although many free people of color dwelt there. [2]
The United States was embroiled in war with Britain: the War of 1812. Recently acquired New Orleans lay in a highly leveraged position: for shipping, controlling the mighty Mississippi, and for defense. Surely a juicy target to national enemies. And it seemed vulnerable.
Painting of mulatto boy, early 19th century. William Henry Hunt
Perhaps it’s wishful thinking, but I’m imagining this was a per-arranged sale, thus sparing Jourdan and Judith the ignominy of going to the market square where slaves were displayed on pedestals, their health and virtues promoted, and then auctioned to the highest bidder. Either way, the experience must have been terrifying. But perhaps they were inured: just another shame that life had imposed upon them.
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The status of New Orleans — and the entire Louisiana Territory — had recently experienced a series of dramatic geopolitical changes. Initially claimed by France as “New France,” the territory then fell under Spanish control as “New Spain.” Near the end of the Seven Years’ War (1756-1763, known in America as the French and Indian War), France still held significant claims and settlements in the region, evident from place names that survive today, such as Saint Louis, New Orleans, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, and Louisiana — unmistakably French.
As it became clear that England would win the war, France secretly transferred the Louisiana territory to Spain, another Catholic nation. Shortly later, in the Treaty of Paris (1763) which ended the war, England permitted Spain to claim this vast landmass as compensation, unaware that Spain had already secured it through the secret transfer.
[Spain had joined late in the war on France’s side, although too late to change the outcome. This alliance cost Spain its claim to Florida.]
In another secret treaty (San Ildefonso, 1800), Spain, under pressure from Napoleon, ceded the Louisiana Territory back to France. In return, Spain received lands in Italy that Napoleonic France had conquered and a promise of peace.
Napoleon soon abandoned his New World ambitions, and the United States famously purchased the entire Louisiana Territory in 1803, an area spanning over 800,000 square miles (more than 2.1 million square kilometers—larger than two-thirds of all Western European countries combined). The official transfer in the northern Louisiana capital, Saint Louis, occurred in March 1804, while New Orleans, the southern capital, was transferred in December 1803.
Time line highlights
1673 – Pierre Joliet (Zholee-ay) and Father Jacques Marquette explore much of the Mississippi, canoeing from Montreal, French Canada
1682 – La Salle, traveled down the Mississippi, claiming it for France
1680-1700 France claims the land between the Appalachians and the Mississippi, establishing trading posts throughout the region.
1762 – Louisiana Territory to Spain
1763 – French land between Appalachians and the Mississippi are transferred to Britain – spoils of war. (And French Canada)
1783 – Land from Appalachians to the Mississippi added to US (US war of independence)
1800 – Louisiana transferred back to France
1800 – Jordan Noble Born
1803 – Louisiana sold to the US
1804 – Final transfer of Louisiana, March, in Saint Louis
1812-1815 War of 1812
1815 – Battle of New Orleans
1821 – Jordan Noble freed
Louisiana Purchase 1803, “Natural Earth and Portland State University”, 15 states eventually came from the territory. Dot on right is Savannah.
The American War for Independence (1775-1781) did not resolve all tensions with Britain. Suspicion and hostility simmered before erupting into another conflict. The British interfered with trade, forced American sailors into service in the British navy, and allied with Native tribes to thwart U.S. expansion and commerce.
As war loomed, the fledgling U.S. began eyeing British-controlled Upper and Lower Canada as potential territory to expand into. (British colonies: there were more than 13). That ambition failed.
Noble put Jourdan and Judith into service helping 7th Regiment officers in New Orleans with basic duties. By accounts, Noble was kindly, and officers generally regarded them well.
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In 1814, Napoleon was defeated, captured, and exiled for the first time. His disastrous 1812-13 invasion of Russia resulted in near complete annihilation of his Grande Armée. A grand coalition, led by Britain, easily subdued Napoleon. [3] Britain could now turn its full attention to the conflict in North America. They intended to hit the Americans at a critical location where it was weak – a location from where they could control nearly the entire interior of the US, from the Appalachians to the Rockies.
In anticipation, beginning on December 1, 1814, General Andrew Jackson marched his force of 1,500 men, mostly Tennessee Volunteers, to defend New Orleans, arriving in early January 1814. Ironically, the Treaty of Ghent had already been signed on December 24, 1814, effectively ending the war, but the news had yet to reach the U.S. and be ratified by the Senate. That happened in February. [Battle of New Orleans, by Johnny Horton]
Nevertheless, one can be sure Britain would have kept New Orleans, the key to the Mississippi – the entrance to the great fertile American mid-section, if they took it. The treaty had not been formalized yet, and they’d surely have asked for re-negotiations.
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Jackson’s 1,500 troops were not nearly enough. He needed the inhabitants of New Orleans to help defend the city. The British were coming, with reports confirming their forces massing along the coast near the mouth of the Pearl River, some 20 miles away. A skirmish had already occurred on December 23, resulting in casualties on both sides.
With little time and limited manpower, Jackson imposed martial law, requiring able bodied whites, Creoles, enslaved and free Blacks to fight. All firearms must be brought to the defense. Aristocrats, American Indians and even the famous pirate, Jean Lafitte signed on. Many residents didn’t yet truly identify as Americans. Most joined willingly: they recognized the dangers of British monarchical rule and joined the defense. [4] Over 4,000 civilian-soldiers in all.
Although only fourteen-years-old Jourdan Noble signed on, though not required to do so (my assumption). It is likely that during this enlistment, Jourdan adopted a last name, taking that of his master, Noble, and possibly adjusting the spelling of his first name to “Jordan.”
Jordan was assigned as a drummer for the military forces. It is believed that Louis Roquer, a drum major from a New Orleans garrison, mentored Jordan and taught him the fundamentals of military drumming.
Jordan’s drum marched them all to Chalmette, 7 miles downstream. Jordan beat his drum vigorously throughout the battle, a relatively short battle indeed: about two hours. Shocked by such a vigorous defense presented by the citizens, slaves and military (their intelligence had predicted little or no defense) the Redcoats were thoroughly routed.
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Jordan’s snare drum, from the Battle of New Orleans
Andrew Jackson emerged as a national hero, a major step on his path to the presidency 14 years later. The remarkable speed with which he assembled a coordinated army of volunteer soldiers, rag tag civilians, slaves, American Indians and pirates, along with the thoroughness of the preparations and complete victory, solidified his status. Think about it: So many different types of cultures, backgrounds, ethnicities, and even languages coming together. Coordinating a defense against the world’s most powerful nation, winning a major battle that significantly affected the future – all accomplished in just a few weeks. That’s remarkable. America was filled with pride.
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But young Jordan Noble was a hero too! The brave little drummer boy — a mulatto slave —who beat his drum all the way from New Orleans to the battle ground, and throughout the Queen City’s defense.
As the day of battle approached, Jordan’s drum woke the troops with reveille and signaled the end of each day. His drumming entertained and maintained a steady rhythm as soldiers and civilians built fortifications, prepared gunpowder, and readied their muskets and rifles.
On January 8, 1815, as the opposing armies mustered into formations across the Chalmette fields, his familiar drumbeat provided encouragement. One army in brilliant red matching uniforms, the other in whatever clothing they could find as they thought appropriate. Jordan beat out General Jackson’s orders to troops, his thumping resounding above the great noises of the clash!
Oh God how that boy could beat the drum, hour after hour, day after day, and throughout the decisive victorious battle!
Jordan was returned to duty, still a slave, at the military garrison.
It was 1817. Lieutenant John Noble lay near death. He transferred ownership of Jordan and Judith to his friend and cohort, Major Alexander White, of Jackson’s 7th Regiment. Both had been severely wounded in the initial skirmish on December 23, 1814, and from there they had formed an enduring friendship.
White eventually fell into financial ruin, and in 1821, his estate was liquidated. Judith and Jordan were sold to John Reed, another local military figure. Reed was an intriguing man who faced his own trials, including 50 lashes and imprisonment for desertion. A staunch abolitionist from Rhode Island, his beliefs and experiences fostered a compassionate empathy for enslaved people.
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Reed provided Jordan with significant freedoms and opportunities. Jordan studied music, of course drumming, gained an education, started a military career, married, and began a family. Extant records suggest that Reed retained legal ownership of Jordan to protect him. Reed gave Noble freedoms — freedom to pursue a full life, and soon freed him from slavery.
A 1880s postcard photo depicts an elderly Jordan Noble. Courtesy: Historic New Orleans Collections, 58-101-l.3
This all gave Jordan purpose. He continued drumming throughout his life, serving in the Seminole War, the Mexican War, and even during the Civil War (on both sides!) He drummed for the people of New Orleans, led parades, and became a beloved cultural figure. Every year, on the anniversary of the Battle of New Orleans, he and his drum led Black veterans through the streets of The Crescent City.
Jordan Noble became both a war hero and a cultural icon in New Orleans. The tradition of people of color, Creoles, and Cajuns marching through the city to the lively beat of music can be traced back to him.
Noble passed away on June 20, 1890. He is buried in New Orleans, at Saint Louis Cemetery #2.
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Every time a child beats something with a stick, plunks a keyboard, hums a tune, or plucks a string … magic can happen.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Note: I have to say that the presence of Native American Indians has been largely overlooked in history, and, here, by your humble author. All of land mentioned was already settled by many Indian Nations. It’s an oft overlooked black mark.
[1] Originally Spanish (not counting native Americans) Florida fell under British rule from 1763-1784 as a consequence of the Seven Years War. It was later returned to Spain in exchange for the Bahamas.
[2] Louisiana territory had been a Spanish possession from 1763 to 1800. Slavery was allowed here, but I’m not sure how extensive it was. Many blacks settled in New Orleans and were regarded as Free Men of Color.
[3] A large coalition indeed, including: Austria, Prussia, Russia, Sweden, and several German states (Germany was not a country until 1871)
[4] They’d been under French and Spanish rule for a long time, and had yet to adapt to being part of the US.
New Orleans is just a very feet above sea level. Thus, graves are above ground (to keep caskets from floating to the surface). Here is an image of the plaque that is mounted before Noble’s grave. And a photo of the wall that contains his grave.
It reads
Jordan B Noble, “Old Jordan” (1800-1890), Drummer, Veteran of Four American Wars
“On the memorable plains of Chalmette the rattle of his drum was heard amidst the din of battle”
Daily Picayune, June 21, 1890.
Jordan Noble was born in Georgia, October 14, 1800. an emancipated slave, he served a combined 9 years and 9 months in service to the country. At age 14, he served in the Battle of New Orleans (1815) under General Andrew Jackson as Drummer Boy – the only person of color in the United States 7th Regiment. His drumming was described as a “guidepost for the Americans in the hell of fire” and he received a personal compliment from General Jackson. He later served in the Everglades of Florida (1817) and in the Mexican-American War as musician of the First Regiment of Louisiana Volunteers (1847).
He was frequently called on to recreate his drum roll at events around the city. In 1854, he drummed the reveille at a commemoration of the Battle of New Orleans held at the St Charles Theater. In 1863, during the Civil War, he organized a Black command under General Benjamin Butler. In 1864, he was a platform guest in Congo Square during the city’s Emancipation Celebration. In 186, he was the Fourth District Representative for the Abraham Lincoln memorial service in Congo Square. In 1876, he was presented the national badge of the Veterans of the Mexican-American War and granted full membership in the Society. In 1884, he beat his drums at the Worlds Fair in New Orleans. He died on June 20, 1890, at home on Dryades St. between Seventh and Eighth Streets and was survived by three children.
Ballads tell stories. Often there are stories behind such stories.
Most boomers and the older among us will quickly recognize this 1971 song. It’s a narrative ballad, exposing a cycle of despair, hypocrisy, ostracism, and the shady underbelly of society. But it’s so-o-o well done. Many can still sing it today. If you haven’t heard it in a while, or ever, here’s the studio version (sorry if it becomes an earworm): Gypsys Tramps & Thieves.
I surmise that all such people can identify the young, talented and enchanting 24-year-old woman who performed it. The song itself is widely regarded as her signature song (although, later in her career, she made little secret of her contempt for it, singing it live only with lexical excisions).
Whatever the version, it begins eerily. And briskly – at 171 beats per minute, brisk for any ballad The original studio version begins with a few bars of mystical, even whimsical, sounding strings: a synthesizer emulating a sort of folksy fiddle, a bit harpsichord-ish, with a snare jumping in to emphasize the pace, and what sounds – to me – like some tambourines joining. A good job of setting the mood for a “Travelin’ Show.”
The bulk of the song is set in A-minor. [7] Minor keys are often used to set a mood of sadness. That mood is appropriate.
Cher and others have recorded several versions. Herein, I refer to Cher’s original studio recording.
BPM: Compare to some ballads of that era like Bonnie and Clyde (106 bpm, George Fame) If You Could Read My Mind (123 bpm, Lightfoot) She’s Gone (139, Hall & Oates) and Ode to Billy Joe (120, Bobbie Gentry) <link in song name to song review>
Cherilyn Sarkisian was born in El Centro [1], California on May 20, 1946. Her parents were young – around 20. Her father, John Sarkisian, of full Armenian ancestry (the -ian surname ending is a giveaway clue), worked as a truck driver. Her mother Georgia (born Georgia Crouch), only briefly married to John, was of English and German ancestry – lore has it she even had a splash of Cherokee descent. Thus, Cherilyn’s beguiling skin tone: a sense of the exotic. but something you can’t quite identify.
Georgia herself was born to a 13-yeal old mother in rural Kensett, Arkansas in 1926; and her mom was married young and several times, part a life of poverty and constant moving.
Cherilyn was 10 months old when her parents split. Her dad had serious drinking and gambling problems. Her mom, Georgia, a woman of high energy and curiosity, had many interests. She’d won contests of beauty and talent since she was a child. She was also a capable singer and song writer. Her dad had taught her music: singing and piano. How they ended up in El Centro is anyone’s guess. I found no reason. [5]
Georgia took Cherilyn away from the somewhat famous town of El Centro [at ~40 feet below sea level, probably the lowest elevation of any US city over 1,000 inhabitants; site of the first well measured earthquake, (1940) ]. They settled in Los Angeles, some 200 miles northwest of El Centro.
There Georgia worked on her own music and acting career while working various part time jobs. Through several of her mom’s failed marriages Cherilyn was moved across California and the southwest. She spent long periods in an orphanage when her mom was too ill, too broke, or too busy to care for her. Many times, she spent long periods with her maternal grandparents, who substantially raised her. These were difficult times for the young family, often close to destitution.
In 1961 it’s back to SoCal where Georgia wed Gilbert LaPierre. He adopted 15-year-old Cherilyn, and her younger half-sister, Georgann. Now going legally as Cheryl LaPiere, the girl now had the financial support to attend a private school, Montclair College Preparatory School. Here, she really took to performing – both acting and music. She was, in the words of all who knew her then, exceptional.
[LaPiere was Georgia’s 4th marriage. Cher’s half-sister Georgann, 5 years younger, was born to Georgia and her 3rd husband, John Southall. Georgann was also adopted by LaPiere. Georgia wed 7 times in all, to six different men, re-marrying Sarkasian for a cup of coffee in 1964].
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The 1st verse is a rich opening.
I was born in the wagon of a travelin’ show
My mama used to dance for the money they’d throw
Papa would do whatever he could
Preach a little gospel
Sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good
Travelin’ show. In line number one we’re told of a “Travelin’ Show.” This confirmation suggested by the title informs that we are to hear of a roaming “gypsies.”
Now referred to as Travelers, Romani or Roma, they usually drifted around, from place-to-place where they were generally neither welcomed nor appreciated, trying to eke out a living on whatever they could acquire – legally, or, if necessary, not. Many still do. [The term “gypsy” is now regarded as pejorative, and has been for quite a few decades. I’ll try to use this term only in the context of the song itself.]
With the synthesized show-fiddle, perhaps some harpsichord, accordion, and a calliope-like sound sprinkled in, we get the feeling of a show, … a traveling road show.
Mama danced, almost certainly exhibiting increasing exotic sexuality and progressing states of deshabille as the dance proceeds, thus coaxing the men to throw coins at her in lusty appreciation. Kinda yuck.
Preach a little Gospel. Travelers were adept at picking up local cultures, such as how to give a good fire-and-brimstone sermon in the deep south. Christian missionaries were active among the Romani, particularly in the US – and especially so in the south – hence they developed a sufficient grasp of how to implement that form of communication.
Doctor Good. Probably a variation of a mostly traditional cultural “homemade” Roma medicine of various ingredients. Some of which, if not all, probably had health benefit. Roma were known to use Juniper berries. Horrible tasting, they often rubbed it on their gums. This helped manage scurvy, both as prophylactic and as treatment, and generally keeping their mouths healthy.
As a “medicine” to non-Roma it was probably this juniper juice mixed with Gypsy Juice … and a good dose of distilled liquor. Easy enough to make. The horrible tastes (juniper + un-aged/un-barreled spirits) sort of canceled out, especially when mixed with ingredients like pureed spinach, celery, carrot, fruit juices, and honey.
Sometimes juices from soaking chopped garlic cloves in white vinegar were added. Possible further additions were sage, lemon zest, rose petals, calendula, rosemary … whatever was available and generally healthy, or at least benign. This mixing of ingredients had the “benefit” of making the “medicine” taste different from place to place, among various Roma groups, and as each band moved to new areas. [3]
[1] Some aficionados of music from that era may recall the line in Elton John’s Your Song (1970),
wherein he wonders: “If I a sculptor, no, or a man who makes potions in a travelin’ show.“
We hear the chorus for the first time. We sense a raw emotion – Sorrow? Worry? Revulsion? Loathing? She races into:
“Gypsies, tramps, and thieves!”
We’d hear it from the people of the town
They’d call us gypsies, tramps, and thieves.
But every night all the men would come around …
And lay their money down.
Lay their money down. This is clearly more than a casual suggestion of prostitution.
Chorus: Mama? You? One shudders to think ….
Not even to the 2nd verse yet, and we’re into hypocrisy and sex.
Romani peoples. Originating in northern India (and perhaps in or near Afghanistan), they were exiled. First heading to NW China around the end of the first millennium, they wandered westward across Asia. Always in caravans of families – a custom they carried into the west, even to the US – they reached Constantinople (~50 years before it became Istanbul) around 1400 AD, crossed the Bosporus, and arrived in Romania in the 15th century.
As in their original homeland, they were seldom, if ever, welcomed. And they were not welcomed in Romania. Maltreated and even enslaved, they were eventually freed and encouraged to leave. Spreading out across to central and western Europe, they were soon enough in most European countries. Any goodwill upon their arrival was always followed by rejection. They couldn’t or wouldn’t fit in culturally and were eventually regarded as thieves and scammers: perhaps many were. It’s tough to get by in lands where your type is not at all welcome. Waves of plague had swept humanity from China to Europe since the mid-14th century. People learned to be wary of wandering strangers, especially those from strange lands.
[It’s a mere coincidence that the group’s name Romani – or Roma – seems to match with their misperceived European origin in Romania. It’s simply a variation of the original Sanskrit language root, Rom (or Dom), meaning “man.” Romani is the feminine form of the noun. The term “gypsy” stems from a common misconception that they originated in Egypt.]
For the most part, they continued their traditional caravan traveling, and never quite getting acceptance wherever they went. Starting in Britain they picked up the name Travelers.
Not a lot of space in a travelin’ van
Europeans, especially the colonial powers like Portugal, began exporting Romani to the new world as slave labor. Much of Europe has had “anti-gypsy” laws at some point. And then there’s the mass exterminations of them by Nazi Germany 1933-1945. Shamefully, President Sarkozy deported them from France in 2010 – mostly to Bulgaria and Romania. All this and more encouraged many Romani to migrate to the US, particularly in the mid-19th century. Their reception there was mostly more of the same.
Los Angeles provided Cherilyn an excellent setting for beginning and growing her career. With her mother Georgia’s musical background (she appeared on several national shows and was a night club singer, composed songs, getting national recognition for “Honky Tonk Woman”). Cherilyn had the setting, the genes, the background, and maternal encouragement to begin an entertainment career.
Her mom had begun getting bit acting parts on TV and in movies – and was able to get some roles for her daughter, too.
At age 16 she left home and moved in with a friend. She took acting classes while working small club jobs and beating the pavement looking for entertainment jobs. That’s how she met Salvatore (Sonny) Bono. She was still just 16. He was an assistant to record producer Phil Spector at the time. Cherilyn’s talent and drive were apparent; he worked his contacts for her. She sang back-up vocals for several famous Spector groups’ recordings, including big hits: the Ronettes’ “Be my Baby” and the Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’”.
When Cherilyn’s friend moved out, stretching her thin finances too far, Bono agreed to take her in as his “housekeeper.”
Sonny & Cher 1971, funny angle, Sonnty at 5′-5″, was about 3″ shorter than Cher.
Perfectly able to perform solo – Sonny wanted her to do just that – but she was just a teenager and still suffered from stage fright; she’d only sing with Sonny. Their relationship turned romantic; they wed in the autumn of ’64. She was 18. Sonny was 29 and already once-divorced. Their first hit together was “I got you Babe” (to me always associated with the movie Groundhog Day). That’s when Cheryl/Cherilyn LaPiere became simply “Cher.” When they sang together it was clear that Cher was far superior to Sonny. To me at least.
They quickly rose to fame. Their unique chemistry – musically, in appearance and in personality – captured the public’s imagination. They performed as “Sonny & Cher” with a type of soft pop in singles and albums. But America’s tastes were changing rapidly, and around 1970 their popularity ebbed. So did their personal lives.
Cher began pursuing a personal career. Although they often still worked together, this grew less frequent as their lives diverged. [Their variety and comedy show, The Sonny & Cher Show, which promoted her rapidly growing solo singing career, ran from 1971-74]. They divorced in 1975.
Picked up a boy just south of Mobile.
Gave him a ride, filled him with a hot meal.
I was sixteen, he was twenty-one;
Rode with us to Memphis,
Papa woulda shot him if he knew what he’d done
What is south of Mobile (Alabama)? Isn’t that the ocean, the Gulf of Mexico? Wrong. Mobile is some 15 miles up north from the “mouth” of Mobile Bay. Along the banks of the Bay, particularly on the west, are some areas of open space and parks that could host a “traveling show.” A bit filled in nowadays with development, I’m thinking that in the ‘50s or so (where I tend to place this story historically, but could be earlier) it was quite open.
She’s 16 and probably knows very, very little about life outsider her Traveler community. So much to learn. And those funky hormones.
Why would a 21-year old lad be leaving the area? On the lam? Legal issues? Pregnant girlfriend? Evicted by his family? Military AWOL? In any case, by hooking up with Travelers he was probably venturing far out of his element. And taking a chance. He was desperate. They fed him and transported him north. What good fortune. He pressed his luck.
Papa woulda shot him. I take this literally. It seems quite likely that Travelers, particularly in the deep south, would have firearms. No one really liked the Roma or having them around. Any issues with locals that lead to malicious actions? The law would look away. They themselves, as Roma, were their own first, last and only line of defense.
The song returns to the chorus, but it’s no relief. Rejection, hypocrisy and prostitution. Oy.
1970. Cher’s career was waning too soon. She was too talented and ambitious to allow this. Yet, major changes had to come.
Why? 1960s America. As the decade drew to its conclusion, America grew ever more edgy, in music, sex, drugs, rock-and-roll. First JFK, then MLK Jr, followed shortly by RFK. Viet Nam. Cold War. Race riots. Sit-ins. Social justice rallies. Kent State, May 1970. “Edgy” isn’t strong enough. Prickly? Restless? Even Cantankerous? Confrontational?
Cher, with Sonny, sought a new path, a new direction. Seeing the need to leave their soft “I got you Babe” and “The Beat Goes On” image, and set out on her own, she hooked up with song writer Bob Stone and producer “Snuff” Garrett. They proposed a new and restless approach that fit Cher and the era. It clicked.
Edgy? Stone was a sound engineer and composer for Frank Zappa and his son, Dweezil.
Result? “Gypsys, Tramps and Thieves” was the feature song, and also the name of her first album, released on January 1, 1971. (Originally the album was to be named “Cher”; she changed it to the song title when was clear it would be a huge hit). Near as I can tell it was just a fantastic job all around. The lyrics? Captivating. Memorable. The production? Amazing. The mix of instrument sounds, the tempo changes, the key change, all impeccably intertwined. And the vocal delivery? Absolutely stellar. This one had to have taken a very long time to get right. Even today, over 50 years later, when you hear the music, you think of Cher. When you hear her voice, you think of the music. Her charisma and character come right through your speakers; they enchant you and grab you: listen to me!
The bridge. The tempo slows, yet the arrangement still gives us something of a carnival feel, or … like a traveling show. A key change to C-major suggests a mood change, and, here in the bridge, it sounds a bit more reflective. It’s a nuanced twist, part of telling a story that is emotionally complex.
Here, Cher’s ability to drop to a deeper voice provides a dramatic inside view of the story.
I never had schoolin’ but he taught me well
With his smooth southern style.
Three months later I’m a gal in trouble
And I haven’t seen him for a while, ..
I haven’t seen him for a while.
As a Romani child, of course, she had no schooling. The lad is trying to teach her. How to read? About the world? Language? Literature? Arithmetic? Doesn’t matter. The lass is enchanted: he has a “smooth southern style.” A romance ensues.
At three months she’s “showing.” The lad grows fearful. Pa has that shotgun, and I’m sure he’s seen it. He’s on the run again. She hasn’t seen him for a while. And never will again.
And here we get a subtle hint that the girl is still enamored with him, with her memory of him and the experience – even though this story is probably told much later. You can detect a slight moaning “o-oh” at the beginning and at the ending of the last line in the bridge. She misses him still. She still has feelings for him. She’s still a bit in love. And perhaps that’s why the bridge is in a major key.
The 1971 album and song rocketed to national attention and the top of the charts. Cher’s new style, with a new team of writer/producer of Bob Stone and Snuff Garrett, was electric.
Garrett was influenced early and mixed with a radio DJ career, produced dozens of songs, the edgy types, including, later, Cher’s Half Breed and Dark Lady, and Vickie Lawrence’s The Night the Lights went out in Georgia, and many for Bobby Vee and for Gary Lewis and the Playboys.
_________________________________________________
The final verse. The cycle continues.
She was born in the wagon of a travelin’ show.
Her mama had to dance for the money they’d throw.
Grandpa’d do whatever he could,
Preach a little gospel, sell a couple bottles of Doctor Good
Even a casual level of attention shows that it’s not a repeat of the first verse. How much changed?
Line 1 is rather obvious. With one word change we are back on the story’s track. The narrator/lass bears a daughter, at 16 or 17 years-old. The baby girl is born in a wagon – the same wagon of the same traveling show that the narrator herself was born in. The narrator has become the infant girl’s mother, strongly implying the baby – born in the same wagon – is destined to inherit the narrator’s circumstance in a repeating cycle. Just as she – the narrator – has become her own mother.
Dance for money, grandpa selling a concoction of Feel Good. Peeling back the onion now ….
In the very first verse we heard “my mama used to dance …” Now, later, with the narrator as the mother, it’s “her mama had to dance …” [6]
Two things.
One: the last verse, like the first, is also told in the past tense. Thus, this narrative could have occurred quite far into the future, well past “papa woulda shot him…”
Two: I do suspect the last verse is being told much later. Why? There is a difference between “had to dance” and “used to dance.” “Had to” implies that the dancing is imperative – it must be done to get enough money to survive. In verse 1 it’s only “used to dance.” Previously the dancing was optional, perhaps to generate a few extra dollars for auxiliary needs. The family financial situation has now deteriorated further. And here it’s HAD; that part of her life seems to be over.
The choice of “had” vs “has” suggests that she might even now be a woman decades beyond “I was 16.” She’s looking back at her life, musing about things as she remembers them: after all of the traveling, all the family crises, all the men coming around at night, and all the dancing is over. It’s all behind her now.
Or maybe she left the show traveling life, or was kicked out. Maybe she went on the lam, like the 21-year-old boy. The book is about to close, and the enigmatic story leaves us in mystery.
Oops, now it’s grandpa. So “papa,” has become “grandpa.” OK. If mama (the woman narrator) is now dancing for money … ewwww … where is the mama of verse 1? Why isn’t she now grandma? Did she not fit in this verse, or, as I gather here, she is no longer part of the story. Women travelers lived, on average, 10-15 years fewer than their menfolk. And men didn’t very live long either. Life was hard.
This last verse may be referring to a period in the past, but a couple of years after “papa woulda shot him” – the new young mama is now healthy enough, and – ahem – attractive enough, to dance for money and probably entertain the men who came around at night to “throw their money down.”
Overall the near duplication of the first verse is compelling. The clan of travelers, and this family, are stuck in a loop. Around the loop are despair, isolation, cultural rejection, hypocrisy, prostitution, strip teases, travel, travel, travel, eking out a living, sex without love, children born to struggling families.
Edgy, catchy, vibrant, quick and supremely performed, it is also one of the most emotional, gloomy and disturbing songs of my generation.
The use of the term “gypsy” was already considered pejorative by 1970. It was, and remains, a controversial choice for a title. The lyrics themselves show that each word was carefully selected. It’s no accident; the team intended to use “gypsy”. Some research suggests it was chosen in order to play upon the negative connotations the word still carries to today. These people weren’t simply wanderers; they were shunned – looked down upon with disdain. [the formal plural of gypsy is gypsies. I’m not sure why they all agreed on the ungrammatical Gypsys for the title. Perhaps to convey a sense that the story is told by an uneducated person?]
“Gypsys” was so successful that Stone and Garrett continued to write and produce Cher’s songs for over a decade. It was the top charting song for both Stone’s and Garrett’s career. [On the other side, Stone also wrote #1 country song Are Your Happy Baby?]
Cher’s and Sonny’s marriage ended in 1975. They remained somewhat close, mostly just professionally. But, it couldn’t last and they went their separate ways. He had helped her in her early career, and she was grateful. To me, at least, Cher needed to move past Sonny. It was the right time. [Sonny died in a violent ski accident in January, 1998. Cher gave a eulogy. He had entered politics and risen to be the mayor of Palm Springs, then a US congressman]
Cher 1975
Cher continued to be extremely popular and went on to successes in both theater and cinema. She has achieved a sort of Triple Crown: she’s won an Emmy, a Tony and a Grammy. That’s pretty dang amazing.
Now, at 78 she’s still performing live and drawing crowds in Las Vegas. Her tours have very heavy schedules, evidence of her enduring popularity and energy.
Cher drew from her own life’s experiences in her performance of Gypsys. You can feel the emotion coming through her delivery. She came from a very chaotic youth, peppered with poverty, a string of broken homes, and constantly moving from place to place. She had little formal education. She had (likely) her earliest romantic encounter at 16. And not unlike her own mother’s youth, and her grandmother’s youth, bearing children while still young (not 13 or 19, but at 21). Cher broke a generational cycle of poverty, rejection, and despair. From a hardscrabble youth – the lives of her shoes often extended by holding them together with rubber bands – Cher took her talents, her ambition, her dreams, her energy, her drive, and her opportunities to reach stardom.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] El Centro, perhaps best known for the very first digitally well-recorded and documented earthquake in 1940. The data were used to design CA buildings for decades. Other states too. Also, it’s likely the lowest elevation of US municipalities at -42 feet. It’s experienced many more shakes quite recently, although not very violent, but perhaps a portent of more and stronger earthshakes to come.
[2] Roma or Romani: somewhere near the end of the first millennium the Romani peoples were exiled from west India. Ethnically and culturally different they were not accepted. Whether cast out or of their own volition they left. Migrating ever westward, never fitting in, they moved through Persia, the Middle East and into Europe in the 14th century. Persecuted and shunned everywhere they went, locals gave them pejorative names, including “gypsy.” In their native language, which is traceable to Sanskrit, “Rom” means man, or person. Roma, or Romai, is the name they prefer for themselves: People. They spread over Europe, from the Balkans to the channel, and to England. Roma began coming to the New World in the 17th and 18th centuries, at first often as slaves (Portugal and France). Due to ever increasing social maltreatment and economic hurdles, many found ways to emigrate in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Some countries, like England, sent many across the ocean as way to get rid of undesirables.
[3] Doctor Good: plenty of things would have been available, and healthy. Options would have included juniper berries. This bitterness could be smothered with honey, pureed spinach, celery, carrots, minced garlic, sage, citrus zest, rose petals and rosemary. Even calendula which has been brought to the Americas. With such options, various versions of Doctor Good would taste and smell different from one traveling show to another. They were probably healthy and with a little “kick” made consumers “feel good.”
[4] Georgia went by Georgia Holt the last 4 or 5 decades of her life. Holt was the surname of her last husband. She also had an interesting life, as you had probably guessed. Many sources on-line.
[5] Some rumors have it that Sarkasian and a quite pregnant Georgia were passing through El Centro when baby Cherilyn decided it was time for her debut appearance. And they stayed there.
[6] The last verse is as quick-paced as the rest. The storyteller seems even a bit more breathless. But it sure sounds as if there might be a slight “error”. The official lyrics say “her mama had to dance.” But Cher seems to sing “my mama had to dance.” Surely the production team noticed it, if it’s there… and opted to keep it. If so, perhaps they thought it conveyed a moment of confusion, caused by the overwhelming emotion from re-visiting a painful story – the storyteller blends her own story with her child’s. Or, perhaps they were running out of studio time.
[7] Key changes in songs are common. Changes of perspective, mood, …
Two geniuses of the 20th century: William “Bill” Moog and Robert “Bob” Moog. They weren’t brothers, but they were closely related. [Bill did have a brother Robert, but the Robert of fame — one of today’s two protagonists — was Bill’s first cousin, once removed]. [1]
Despite their Dutch looking and sounding surname (“Moog” rhymes with “rogue”, not the “goog” in Google) they were of German ancestry.
Their most recent common ancestors were Georg Conrad Becker Moog and his wife, Anna Cathrina Lather, both from the small agricultural community of Winkbach, near Marburg, Hesse, in the Lahn Valley. Today this is only about a one-hour drive north from Frankfurt. (This is, coincidentally, quite near my mother’s family ancestral home – another wee hamlet only 20 twisty countryside miles away: Niederasphe.)
Georg was the only child of Jacob Moog and Juliane Becker, also from that region of Hesse. I don’t know how long the family had been there but judging from records of my family’s past they were probably there for centuries.
Like many other families, the young Moog couple emigrated to the United States in the early 1870s. It’s difficult to ascertain why with only internet searches. Here I will pull from my own family history lore and some knowledge of Germany history.
Also coincidentally, at about that time, one branch of my father’s family came to the US, from the wine country east of Stuttgart, along the Rems valley. Why? We can guess. Three dozen or so sovereign German states were becoming rather forcibly merged with Prussia under Hohenzollern rule; these became a single muscular militant state. Two wars at that time, one with Austria (1868) and one with France (1870-1), were fought as part of von Bismarck’s plan to unify Germany. So, my ancestors sought to avoid impressment and instead pursue a pacifist path, which led them to America. Perhaps the Moogs did too. [Another contributing reason could be Europe’s failed liberal revolutions of 1848; my mother’s ancestors, from Hesse, came to the US in the early 1850s].
Nonetheless, the young Moog couple, going by Annie and George, settled in New York. [the 1880 census shows them coming from Prussia, not Germany, and George with no occupation]. After deciphering census workers’ scrawling, I found they settled in lower Manhattan, near the corner of Hester and Essex, one block from both Grand and East Broadway. The neighborhood had a majority of residents with German ancestry; they bore names like Schutt, Opperman, Schroeder, Strobel, Kaiser. I guess they felt somewhat at home here.
The L-line ran down Essex, just a few yards away, probably horse drawn at first, as cable cars didn’t arrive in NYC until 1883. Transportation around lower Manhattan would have been somewhat convenient.
Jobs held by neighborhood residents included streetcar conductor, fish and oyster bar worker, plasterer, wood carver, carpenter, cigar packer, paper box maker, porter, mason … very few white collar jobs here. Salt of the earth.
Much of the neighborhood consisted of properties that would be condemned and razed in the early ‘90s; then, over a decade later – in 1903 — the city found the funds to do something with the land: it became Seward Park.
By 1900 the family had moved to a boarding house at 221 E 87th St. The elder Mr. Moog had died, in 1896, age 46. Sadly, most 1890 census records were lost in a fire in the US Commerce building in 1921, including New York’s, so we lose the thread for a while. This was, and is, a huge tragedy for historians and archivists, as 1890 lies within an era of massive immigration from abroad, and migration within the country. So, I can’t find if George ever found steady work.
George and Anna had three children, all born in Manhattan: (1) Anna Maria Elisabetha Moog b. 1875; (2) George Alfred Moog b. 1878; and (3) William Conrad Becker Moog, b 1885.
The third child, William Conrad Becker, had a son in 1915. William (Bill) C. Moog. We will return to the elder son, George Alfred, later.
America as the great melting pot has always been something of a fairy tale. Upon arrival and attempting to settle into their new homeland many immigrants were shunned and often treated with contempt; in such unfriendliness they naturally stuck together within their own ethnic enclaves – which likely exacerbated their treatment. Usually, a passage of a few generations was required before they found their footing, and their own ways, within America’s complex social, education, and economic systems.
First-generation American William Conrad Becker Moog and his wife, Minnie Moog (nee: Raabe), had three children. The eldest was William (Bill) C Moog, Jr, b 1915.
Bill, born across the river from New York, in Jersey City, NJ, studied Mechanical Engineering just down the road at Rutgers University. He made his way into and upward in the growing aircraft industry, working as an engineer for Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory, just outside Buffalo. There, in 1948, he invented the electro-hydraulic servo valve. Common in control systems now, the device – and the field of control mechanisms that it spawned – completely revolutionized automated control of complex systems. In fact, it helped create that very field of electrical signal-based controls engineering.
Although Cornell Labs (now Calspan) patented the invention, they couldn’t find anyone to make the servovalves. Moog stepped up and started a fledgling organization. Moog began building servo devices in his garage. Moog and his team soon fielded orders from other large companies, like Bendix and Boeing.
An older Bill Moog, evidently after a haircut
Moog started a company and secured the Labs’ rights to manufacture servos of many types. For decades he ran the company. Bill was a free spirit: No keeping track of hours, loose dress codes, and a free-wheeling creative atmosphere where employees are trusted to do a good job. Maximum informality in staff relations was encouraged. This, before Google and Twitter. Bill eventually wore his hair down to his shoulders. All went over well, and the company grew successful and famous over the decades.
Control of aircraft was just the beginning of what was possible. Servos didn’t have to just control hydraulic actuators; they can control motors using signal feedback with electrical current – of all sizes and sort.
Most engineers in the aeronautical and aerospace industries know of Moog and his company’s designs and products in high-performance systems control of aircraft, satellites, space launch vehicles, missiles, etc. Actuation control products, many by Moog, are found in numerous other fields too, especially robotics, from industry – machining, processing and assembly – to marine and agricultural hardware, and even medical devices.
Briefly, servos are devices that receive an electronic signal representing a physical quantity – usually position, speed or acceleration – process that signal, and generate a precise controlled action based on that signal. Mostly, that action includes changing components’ position or speed, or applying torques and forces.
As the world evolved, so did servos to … well … serve the world. Although Moog Inc is not in all these fields, the servo concept that Bill Moog pioneered can be found in CD & Blu-ray disk players, automobiles (especially cruise control), many automatic doors, including elevator doors, and even some vacuum cleaners. [2]
Bill Moog is an icon in the field of engineering. I suppose the servos would have eventually come along, but it’s hard to imagine how and when, and how the aircraft and aerospace industries would have advanced without his genius and drive.
Bill Moog’s dad had a brother, George Alfred Moog, mentioned earlier. George Alfred had two children, one of whom was George Curt Moog. Thus, George Curt Moog was Bill Moog’s first cousin.
George Curt Moog had one child, a son, Robert A. Moog, born in 1934, in Queens, NYC. (There seems to be a shortage of names in the family: Bill Moog had a brother named Robert, as well as this first cousin, once-removed: Robert Moog)
Robert Moog grew up in Flushing, a neighborhood in Queens, known today for tennis rather than any famous residents (count Barbara Bush among the few). His parents wanted him to get into music; he studied harp and piano while attending the Manhattan School of Music through elementary school. He then went on to a technical high school, the Bronx High School of Science (an early sort of magnet school); one supposes this was in large part on account of his father’s career. George was an engineer with ConEd (Consolidated Edison, the NY electric company) and also one of the first amateur radio operators. Papa Moog shared his knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, electronics with young “Bob.” His budding music and electronic interests merged. Robert soon got very interested in the theremin, a recent invention of Leon Theremin, a Russian scientist, a decade before. [3]
The theremin, a seemingly miraculous device, both then and now, allows a musician to play an electronic instrument without even touching it; but rather by moving their body (mostly arms and hands) within an electric field that is connected to a sound generating device. With a skilled operator/musician it can appear to the untrained observer as if the person playing the theremin is waving their arms and hands around like an orchestra conductor, and from some remote spot, mysterious instruments are creating musical sounds. [This is how many creepy movies create eerie sound effects; especially earliest scary films … Kids’ level description here; very cool video here, you should really watch the 4 minute demo in the previous link. Seriously].
By his mid-teens Bob had built his own such magical musical instrument. It became his hobby. Bob and his dad started a small business building and selling theremins in the basement of their Brooklyn home. Cool to be in business with your old man. In January 1954, still 19 years old, Bob’s article on how to construct a theremin at home was published in Radio and Television News.
Bob Moog, 1954, with his Model 351 Theremin
Bob went for simultaneous degrees in physics (at Queens College) and electrical engineering (at nearby Columbia), and then for a PhD in engineering physics at Cornell. While at Cornell he started a new company, his own, also to design, build and sell these strange electronic musical instruments.
Moog continued to experiment with electrical circuits, developing new ways to create musical sounds with electronics. Although this had been done before, Moog’s was the first advanced studio usable hands-on electronic music generating device – a musical “instrument.” Eventually he made them rather compact and mobile. The synthesizer was born.
Music of all sorts could be generated from a single electronic device. Relatively simple at first, by the mid-‘60s his synthesizers could produce the waveforms, overtones, attack (rise) and decay (drop) in power levels and “feel” of many instruments. By now, I suspect, it is every instrument. By the mid ‘60s the exploding music industry, drenched in pop and iconoclast culture, caught on to the endless possibilities of sounds in Moog’s electronic synthesizers. And the exotic ways it could make music sound. With computers integrated — first analog, and soon digital — there was no bounds to the complexity and sophistication of music that could be played. [4]
It seems likely that Mickey Dolenz of Monkees’ fame was the first to use a synthesizer (although a primitive one by today’s standards) in popular music in the mid ‘60s. Many groups soon followed, including The Beatles, The Doors and The Byrds. Some famous tunes with great synthesizer riffs include: Final Countdown; Light my Fire; Smile Like you mean it; the opening to Van Halen’s Jump; Eurythmics Sweet Dreams.
Many home “pianos”, even very economical ones, are simple electronic keyboards pre-programmed with a wide variety of instrument sounds and “moods” available — from organs to violins, and from tinny like a child’s toy to an orchestra in a concert hall. They are synthesizers.
Bob Moog revolutionized music. Bill Moog revolutionized control engineering. Both have earned awards, wide praise and recognition. And money. [4] Their names and accomplishments are still revered in the engineering and music fields today. Robert passed in 2005, age 71. Bill, passed in 1997, age 82. Both left a legacy, a Moog legacy, the kind of legacy that rhymes with “rogue”, not ” goog.”
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[1] As a rule, a story line can have only one single protagonist. However, in an ensemble of more than one separate “story”, each can have its own protagonist. Rules, rules, rules.
[2] Some “high tech” vacuums have servos. One type senses the speed of the brush roller, then lowers or raises the roller accordingly. Another type senses the speed (forward or backward) and gives the wheels a little boost to help the user move the vacuum cleaner over the carpet.
[2] Theremin is worthy of his own detailed essay.
[3] to this date there is still contention over which makes the better “synth”, analog or digital. Both have pros and cons, and their respective camps can be very adamant about their position.
[4] Bill Moog filed for personal Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 1992. This is probably attributable to a divorce, health issues (a stroke and recovery), his management style, philanthropy, and losing then re-gaining control of Moog Inc. [the company was not affected by the bankruptcy]
Bob Moog ran Moog Music until 1971, when he sold it; remaining an employee until 1977, when he founded a new company. Moog Music went bankrupt about 10 years later; the name and all rights, include trademark, were returned to Moog. His new company and Moog Music then merged, and do business as Moog Music.
Author’s notes:
These Moogs were contemporaries, but just barely; Bill was about a full generation+ older than Bob: 19 years. One would think that they not only knew of each other, but met often (“… hobnob with my brother wizards”), especially since they were both from the New York City area. However, I could find no evidence that they ever met, let alone communicated or acknowledged one another. [Wizard’s full departure scene and speech here]
The firmament is full of sun driven phenomena: inspiring sunrises, romantic sunsets, sun dogs, northern lights, brilliant Venus leading the sun across the sky at dawn, or chasing it at dusk.
There’s an unusual one I’ve seen only a few times: airplane contrails casting shadows onto clouds. Usually it’s from a fairly high-altitude flight: the sun is high, and the lower-level clouds are thin. The sun shines upon the contrail, and its shadow falls on the clouds below. If the clouds are translucent enough then the shadow is noticeable.
There is a rare twist to the geometry that can make this contrail-shadowing rather spooky. It happens once in a great while, when the sky is very clear; when a plane leaves a stable long-lasting contrail; and when the sun is very low, near the horizon – even a tad below. And two more important coincident parameters: the plane is flying directly away from the sun, and well above the plane, perhaps at 40,000 feet, there’s a faint veil of clouds, nearly imperceptible from the ground except for this phenomenon. [1]
Friday night, it was late, I was walking you home We got down to the gate and I was dreaming of the night Would it turn out right? How to tell you girl, I want to build my world around you. Tell you that it’s true. I want to make you understand I’m talkin’ about a lifetime plan.
With this rare conjunction, the contrail shadow appears directly in front of the plane. To an observer on the ground, it looks as if the path ahead of the plane — that is the path it is about to follow — has been painted as a straight line across the sky, showing where the plane is heading. [My feeble sketch attempt here]. Like a runway in the sky, showing the plane where to go. Beckoning. Come, follow me.
I’ve only seen this “path ahead” shadow twice. The first time – just after dawn at a high school cross-county track meet in 2008 – it took me a couple minutes to figure out what was causing this amazing sight. A plane precisely following a line that lay many miles ahead of it. I was amazed. I guess I’m weird, because no one else seemed to care. Well, there was a running event going on.
I’ve witnessed this extraordinary concurrence of parameters only once since. This optical treat, contrails showing where the plane is about to go, seems rather magical. [I’ve seen the Northern Lights three times. Unforgettable, and each was different.]
Summer of 1978. Or more accurately: the spring. I had just completed 8 semesters at Arkansas State University, in Jonesboro. Yet, I didn’t have quite enough credits to graduate with an engineering degree, despite taking super heavy loads of 19 credits the previous two semesters. This while working half-time at the City Engineering department.
There’s a backstory to my belated graduation; it has nothing to do with partying or girls. No, it was because I had so little confidence in myself in freshman year that I took light class loads, including a wasted math semester in what amounted to “remedial math for engineers.” [2] The longer story is maybe for another essay.
That’s the way it began, we were hand in hand Glenn Miller’s Band was better than before. We yelled and screamed for more. And the Porter tunes (Night and Day) Made us dance across the room. It ended all too soon. And on the way back home I promised you’d never be alone.
That’s the way it began, Glenn Miller’s band was better than before
So, 1978, I took aMaymesterand a June summer session – cramming two courses into 3 weeks in the merry month of May, then a couple more in jolly June.
I clearly remember two songs from that summer. Songs that touched me sentimentally. Both came out in June and charted through the rest of the year. Despite being super busy I caught them while studying in my non-air-conditioned dorm room. One song was the Commodores’ “Three Times a Lady”, composed and sung by Lionel Ritchie. A smash hit, it reached #1 on Billboard top 100 for several weeks, also hitting #1 on R&B charts, soul and even country charts. It also topped charts in Canada, Australia and the UK. It cracked the top 10 for the year, ending at #10. It’s a touching song of praise for a special woman, sung as a type of reminiscing about, and relishing, a long life of respect — together.
And the Porter tunes (Cole Porter)
The second song, literally and appropriately named “Reminiscing”, was by the Australian group “Little River Band.” It wasn’t nearly the smash hit as “Three Times”, but certainly was a hit for a while, peaking at #3 on the Billboard Hot 100. It ended at #65 for the year, 1978. So, not super popular, although you still hear this sentimental soft pop song in shopping areas and waiting rooms. [lyrics here:3 times a Lady and Reminiscing].
Both songs set remarkably similar moods and perspective. Basically, a very lucky guy, looking back a long life that he was lucky to share with a very special woman. My interpretation of Reminiscing is even more romantic: a guy also looking back at his younger self; and that younger self is imagining himself in the future, visualizing himself as a much older man who’s able to reminisce about a long life with that woman, and – indeed – reminiscing about the very moment he was in. At least that’s always been my take. That was kind of what I desired. Looking forward, pursuing a good path, and imagining myself looking back at that life, too.
I’m not just a sentimental romantic fool, I’m sentimental about a lot of older culture as well. Two of my favorite movies are Casablanca (1943) and the Wizard of Oz (1939). Maybe I was born a few decades too late (but I’d sure miss the internet)
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Hurry, don’t be late, I can hardly wait. I said to myself when we’re old. We’ll go dancing in the dark, Walking through the park and reminiscing.
Now that I’m in those golden years, at nearly 40 years of marriage, with grown kids and grandchildren, I suppose I have finally earned the right to some reminiscing.
The high-level contrails are certainly metaphoric for me. 1978 to ‘82 was morning, with dreams of following a path clearly laid out. (“Go west young man!” [3]) After a few false trails —and after moving west — finally, I met Audrey (Three Times a Lady) and soon enough we set out — together — along the path we saw ahead. Or so we thought.
Friday night, it was late, I was walking you home, We got down to the gate and I was dreaming of the night. Would it turn out right? … Now as the years roll on, Each time we hear our favorite songs, The memories come along. Older times we’re missing Spending the hours reminiscing.
Contrails, and the path their shadows lay out, don’t last very long. Circumstances inevitably change or dissolve them; the weather changes: tumult and twists and turbulence. Clouds – sometimes puffy, sometimes dark – come and go; the sun angle changes, winds are moody and shifty. The path that seemed so clear … just … fades … away.
Still we persist onward, looking for landmarks we’d heard of, trying to stay the course, or at least head in the right general direction, with the principles that got you so far. Together.
Now we approach the end of the day. The sun is setting. The shadow phenomenon can also occur – in reverse. Instead of showing the path ahead, the shadow shows the path completed. Farther to the east, across the firmament, behind the plane, the trail and shadows begin to break up; views of the earlier path are vague and fading. Yet, at the end of the day, a contrail shadow is not needed to see the path. The contrail itself – not a ghostly shadow – traces the past. Not too far behind, though, across the sky, even the longest contrails fade.
Hurry. Don’t be late, I can hardly wait. I said to myself when we’re old. We’ll go dancing in the dark, Walking through the park and reminiscing.
It’s better to reminisce while trails and shadows are still perceptible. I can see: It’s been a very good flight. We set a good course, we’ve muddled through disturbances, done the best possible, followed a good path, and had a most enjoyable flight. Together.
While reminiscing we’re chasing the sun to the horizon – and beyond. Together. I’m a lucky man.
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
[2] In sophomore year I was fortunate to have a math professor who got me back on track, and even ahead of schedule. I used his office hours liberally. I sometimes met a young high school student waiting patiently outside his office in the late afternoon. That boy was the professor’s stepson. And that “boy” is now my brother-in-law. Sometimes it’s a very small world indeed.
[3] Go west young man. Phrase attributed to Horace Greeley, who promoted westward settlement (Greeley Colorado is named for him), although he never went west himself. Famous newspaper man, one term congressman, ran for president in 1872, lost to Grant, and passed away weeks later (61) … just one month after his wife had also passed away.
Contrail shadow below trail; taken just after noon near Gravina, Italy. Sun is above and to right of jet plane, casting shadow on thin clouds below.
Random Droppings: Looking Back, Looking at Now, Looking Forward
Now, for something completely different (sorry Monty).
Looking Back.
First, a shout out to reader Dave R for suggesting that the title to my last blog/essay could have been: “Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Hair*(*But Were Afraid to Ask) – sorry Woody.” That’s brilliant. Thanks Dave.
Some readers did respond regarding the embedded cultural references in that essay. For closure, here they are.
“Sadly, Mr Lupner was born without a spine.” This from a series of Saturday Night Live (SNL) skits, circa late ‘70s, starring Bill Murray and Gilda Radner (RIP ☹ ) … sample skit here.
“Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.” A line said several times by the king in “The King and I”, a musical; composed by the famous team of Richard Rodgers (music) and Oscar Hammerstein (lyrics) [RIP 2x]
“Curiouser and curiouser”; a line uttered by Alice in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, written by Charles Dodgson (RIP) under the nom de plume Lewis Carroll.
“Any way the wind blows”; a line both sung and whispered in Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, mostly written by – and fantastically sung by – Freddie Mercury (RIP). It came out in 1974. Normally, it would have been considered excessively long be a hit, at 6 minutes duration; nonetheless, it became a huge hit and still a standard at parties and receptions as they reach their raucous crescendos. Also, a great karaoke song.
“Fred Astaire got no hair” and other rhymes about hair are taken from George Carlin’s (RIP) recited poem Hair. Sometime in the ‘70s. [Sample Carlin Hair Stand up act]
Gershwin Bros, George (L) and Ira (R) [Born Jacob and Israel Gershovitz]
Thanksgiving weekend. Although brief, it took me a while, in fits and starts, to complete this piece, so I’m a bit late. Still within the 4-day break: after Black Friday and before Cyber Monday.
What are you thankful for? Comment! My own list is long. At the top is my wife and her health. Somewhere in the list is you all, my readers, whether frequent or sporadic readers and commenters. Some are words of approbation, others of cogitation, some offer edits and improvements, or other tangents I could have flown off on (as if I need more temptation on tangents to drift away upon).
Thanksgiving mealtime! What makes mashed potatoes great? What is your secret ingredient? Chives? Cream cheese? Grated cheese can make it great. I think it’s butter. Butter makes everything better.
I was surprised to be reminded in my newsfeed last week that yams and sweet potatoes are nowhere near the same, neither genetically nor in taste, although the names are often used interchangeably. And sweet potatoes are not potatoes at all. In fact, my brilliant wife conducted an experiment a few decades ago that I had forgotten. She had all the kids visiting for Thanksgiving compare the tastes of them. [BTW: sweet potatoes make the best fries. Just sayin’.]
Found online … lightly edited …
Color: Sweeties are orange. But not all potatoes are white.
Myth: A sweet potato is an orange potato. Fact: Even though both the potato and sweet potato originated in Central & South America, they are actually not at all closely related. They come from different botanical families. Potatoes are in the nightshade family; sweet potatoes from the morning glory family.
Myth: Sweet potatoes are yams. Fact: Yams and sweet potatoes are not the same vegetable, and they have different tastes. Back in the 1930s, “yams” was used as a marketing term for sweet potatoes and, still to this day, you find the two mislabeled in stores. They’re also from different families; yams come from the same family as grasses (!).
Details, details
To make things a bit more complicated, Garnet Yams are not yams at all; they’re sweet potatoes. [read all about it]
You say potato. I say … Yams? “I yam what I yam.”
I’m glad this essay comes out after Thanksgiving, so you wouldn’t be tempted to bore your festivity guests with such trivia. But, hey!, it’s better than politics, right?
Looking forward
I have notes for some upcoming essays, so here’s a heads up on what to look for. No promises that any will get finished or released. Mostly a matter of finding time to pull them all together and polish them off. And staying focused.
These are not necessarily in order.
A look back at the recent election. This will be through the lens of the topic addressed in my essay Mr Gerry. Since the census was just completed in 2020, districts re-drawn in 2021, and elections based on those districts in 2022, I thought it would be interesting to see how “fairly” the districts were drawn by a mathematical model. (I put fair in quotes, since as adults we know the world is seldom fair, and fair is in the eyes of the beholder). I’m waiting until all the congressional races are decided.
Like the Gershwins (Ira and George) mentioned above, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at some famous brothers in history. This will probably be a trilogy, or more, to keep each reading session reasonably digestible in one sitting. As a side note, I think it’s interesting that fraternity (as well as sorority) are definitely Latin-based. And the words for brother and sister in Italian – clearly Latin-based – are fratello and sorella. We call such groups on college campuses by these Latin names, but we also call their “community” Greek Life, and the groups are known by Greek letters
I have notes on an essay on some fruits and the history of a famous American family. The task, as always, is to be interesting, relatively brief, and with several interwoven threads.
And I’m always prone to just march off on some new topic that pops into mind. Or a topic that a reader might suggest. Perhaps you!
Thank you for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
More cultural references.
1) Everything You Wanted to Know … A spoof on the hilarious 1972 movie Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But were Afraid to Ask), an anthology in 7 parts, screenplay written by, directed by and (in at least 2 segments) starring Woody Allen … including one wherein he plays a sperm. Wonderfully distasteful.
2) Let’s call the whole thing off. Written in 1937 by George and Ira Gershwin for the movie of the same year “Shall we Dance” … with a title like that of course it’s starring Astaire and Rogers.
3) Potatoe: Vice President Dan Quayle famously erroneously corrected an elementary student who had correctly spelled it potato, while visiting a 6th grade classroom. [video here]
4) I yam what I yam. One of several regular expressions of cartoon character Popeye (The Sailor Man); here (8 sec) and here (full length cartoon, 3 min, titled I yam what I yam) , for starters. Oh my gosh, the (unbelievable racist) crap we watched for entertainment as kids.
5) Of course, the first: Now for something completely different. That’s a Monty Python line. Google it yourself. Insanely goofy and funny.
Prologue. My wife and I planned a four-week trip to Italy and Bavaria for early this past autumn. Unfortunately, we had to cancel the trip at the last moment due to a false-positive covid test. Trust us, it was a false-positive and we’re fully vaxxed. To say the least, we were disappointed. Making lemonade from lemons during our 10 days of state-of-Colorado-imposed quarantine (unnecessarily) we outlined a ‘round the country driving tour to see and experience things we wouldn’t normally consider, leaving plenty of time for serendipitous discovery and exploration of the country’s lesser known and appreciated towns, highways and byways, as well as see some major cities and sites that were still on our list of places and things to see. [You can follow along in a photo album here]
4,255 Miles; follow the highlight
Thursday, September 30 – Depart home about 6:30 AM. Hit Kit Carson, CO to see the town and peruse the KC museum, which was closed. Very quiet, tiny and old town.
Headed to the Sand Creek Massacre Site. Lots of county dirt roads en route. Drove through herds of cattle on the roads. You really, really have to want to go there. Somber. Walk in brisk late morning air to overlook. Spoke with Ranger, asked a few questions and moved on.
Then to Ingalls, Kansas. Stopped in a cute, little and odd museum for a break. It said Santa Fe Trail Museum, but it’s really just all sorts of local history. Very local. Dusty old registers and accounting books, mostly for property taxes, going back over 100 years. Found an old Columbia gramophone. Learned about the attempted Soule Canal, an effort to irrigate this region with water from the Arkansas River.
Continue To Dodge City, Kansas. Saw lots of unharvested reddish-orange sorghum along the way. Great folks at the Dodge Visitor info center. Even gave us wooden nickels. Nice brewery in the afternoon. City history walking tour; Dodge City Trail of Fame. Learned about Bat Masterson, Doc Holliday, and Wyatt Earp. Yes, even James Arness/Matt Dillon, and many others, including actors in Gunsmoke.
Friday, October 1 – Delightful Boot Hill Museum. Reconstruction of the old Dodge City.
[Ingalls and Dodge City are both along the Arkansas River and Santa Fe Trail. Dodge has an Amtrak stop. Was named for the old Fort Dodge, 5 miles away to get around Army liquor restrictions at the Fort. Train station has two magnificent and large sun dial clocks for passengers to check time, one central time, one western. How large? Over 40 feet across. Each has their own analemma correction chart as well (although these are identical). Located almost exactly at 100 deg west latitude, which was the time zone boundary at the time, since the railroads instituted time zones in 1883, and also the artificial line between the dry west and the humid center of the country.]
Drive to Wichita. Where we stayed in a 1971 RV camper (cozy) adjacent and “hardwired” to a building for water, sewer and electric. Found 2 microbreweries, one with nice beers (Hopping Gnome) but on busy noisy Russel Street. There we met a delightful young couple. He’s an aerospace structural engineer and a glider (soaring) enthusiast who built his own trailer. She’s a teacher. The next (Central Standard Brewing) 2 blocks away with a quiet and enjoyable Biergarten. No chatty nice couples, though.
Saturday, October 2 – Explore Wichita, mostly the Old Town Farm and Art Market. Dodged a few raindrops at first but it stopped by 11AM. Learned about Coleman Lanterns, Mr Coleman and the World War II password code response “Coleman” to the query “lantern”. [Essay on Mr Coleman and his lanterns here].
It was train day! Old steam powered train engine was running. Right near a brewery. Third Place Brewing. Looked at old train stuff in the museum. Very small and cozy brew tasting room, near the old and restored rail station (no longer a station as before).
Stopped by the Kansas Aviation Museum on the way out of town, right next to the old airport, now McConnell AFB. It has a lot of cool stuff, but I’d say it’s a bit disorganized. Nice wing on Beech history, even a plaque for Ball. We saw it all in about 1.5 hours. It’s in the old Airport building, Art Deco from 1929.
Wichita is also on the Arkansas River, which sort of seemed to be our guide on and off for the first several days.
On to Claremore, OK.
Wow, what a great AirBnB. Gene was our host. He’s an architect who does house designs for both initial builds and remodels; he has really done a great job with this AirBnB. Even has a hottub. His brother, to whom he was very close, passed away while we were there. Sad. He reminded us of Fred Rogers. Quite possibly the best host we’ve ever had. Certainly, the nicest and one of the more inexpensive ones too. Remarkable, since he’s currently the only AirBnB host in Claremore.
Sunday October 3 – Will Rogers Museum, quite close to Gene’s AirBnB. Wow, definitely leave time for this one. Like several hours. Bring an extra layer, as they have the A/C cranked … they say to keep the humidity down and preserve some Rogers’ artifacts. Built in 1938 in just 6-1/2 months with private funds (Rogers perished in 1935 in a plane crash in northern Alaska).
Left for Fort Smith, Arkansas early afternoon. But we took a slight detour to see what it was like to be an Okie from Muskogee. Well, a rather sad town. Not much going on. A bunch of pot shops. Weird, since the famous Merle Haggard song begins with “We don’t smoke Marijuana in Muskogee.” Pot is only legal for medical treatment in Oklahoma, so I presume the region has a lot of very sick people who really need their medical Marijuana.
Rejoin and cross the Arkansas River to enter Arkansas at Fort Smith. The Arkansas River coincides with the OK-ARK state line here, and the quirky bend in the border needs to be investigated. Nearly all of Arkansas’ state boundaries are straight survey lines (with the exceptions of some little nicks that are partly defined by the Red and St Francis Rivers in the SW and NE corners; and of course the Mississippi River). How they arranged a kink in the north-south line for the boundary to be right on the river at Fort Smith must be an interesting story.
Walked the grounds of the Old Fort Smith (actual fort), walked along the river, nice amphitheater, and found a brewery, imagine that. Bricktown Brewery. Right near the old fort. The amphitheater was setting up for a big concert; presumably per our server it is quite a happening site for concerts.
AirBnB well to SE of town center. Not the best, but it did ok.
Monday, October 4. Not much more to see, as the Fort Smith History Museum was closed (Monday), so we wandered over to Miss Laura’s Visitors Center, which is actually a well-preserved bordello from back in late 1890s. It’s right near the river and the railroad tracks. Our tour was given by the most delightful lady, 91-years old. She absolutely loves being a tour guide in Ft Smith, even though she kept saying she’s an Okie from just across the river, in the flood plain.
Well off on to backroads again to Mount Nebo State Park, Arkansas. Along the way we stopped in Paris, Arkansas. They have a small park near the center of town with a very small-scale low-resolution replica of the Eiffel Tower (25 ft tall, vs the original, at 1,000 ft). So of course, we took selfies there.
Arrived at Mount Nebo, a hidden gem getaway on a mountain that rises abruptly up and out of the Arkansas River basin. We checked into our 1930s vintage cabin, built by the CCC 1933-35. Very cool. Watched sunset at Sunset Point at one end of the mountain. Great views of the valleys below, including, you guessed it, the Arkansas River.
Tuesday, October 5. Took the Ridge Trail hike around the crest of Mount Nebo. Scenic. Got a bit warm by the end. Glad we had our hiking poles. Kinda dicey for our old knees in places. A nice 2.5 or 3 mile hike which we took at a very leisurely pace.
Headed over to sister Beth and bro-in-law Doug’s place along backroads, avoiding interstates. Hit the edge of Jacksonville, AR, which reminded me of an old college buddy. I found his number and called. Left a message. He texted back. I texted him. We’ve chatted since. It’s been well over 40 years, but we have good memories to share.
Had a great time visiting Beth and Doug. Walked the yard, the garden. Very pleasant evening. Doug smoked some brisket. Mmmmm.
Wednesday, October 6. A little more visiting with Beth and Doug (Nice they were able to take the days off), and a nice breakfast.
Then off for Memphis. Over half the way along US-70 (not interstate) but did pick up I-40 in Forrest City. Crossed the Mississippi, finally leaving the Arkansas River watershed.
After checking into AirBnB on near east end, did the quick driving tour of downtown. Then a history walk (nice) and also up-and-down Beale Street (over rated) and through historic region on east end of downtown.
Thursday, October 7. Back into downtown for the National Civil Rights Museum at Lorraine Motel. Over 5 hours! And 5 stars! Fascinating. Lots of primary source history. We took a break in the middle to get some BBQ nearby (Central Que BBQ). A “must see” (the museum, not the BBQ).
We were told the Bass Pro Pyramid near the river is a “must see” also, so we did it. Well: wow. It’s huge. It’s got everything, even “cabin” hotel rooms. Pretty impressive place. Check it out: Big-cypress.com.
Then stopped at a hole-in-the wall (Cozy Corner Restaurant) and took some takeaway BBQ to our room .
Friday, October 8. Well, we hadn’t seen quite enough of Memphis yet, so back into town in the AM to see some older neighborhoods, like the Cooper-Young neighborhood, and some of the perimeter of Overland Park. One more spin through downtown and the famous St Jude’s Children’s Hospital area, then on I-40 toward Nashville. An hour or so along the route we cross into the Tennessee and Cumberland River basins.
About halfway to Nashville we got off I-40 for a detour over to Johnsonville State Historic Park, which has a nice little museum, and was the site of an important Civil War battle (and a skirmish). It was a post along a major supply line (on the Tennessee River) for the Blue Jackets. Hiked the battleground, lake front (river is now dammed) and hill where fort was located. Departing, we followed the old US-70 through some small towns, including Waverly. The devastation of the late August 2021 flood there was still evident, as we saw many tons of waste (sofas, carpeting, mattresses, drywall, etc – all damaged beyond repair) piled up along the highway and side roads. [Deadly Waverly Flood, Aug 2021]
Made it to west side of Nashville around 5:3PM0 to meet old grad-school buddy Bob Beall and his wonderful wife Leslie at a BBQ joint near them. A bit upscale for BBQ (Honey Fire BBQ), but very nice, and the company was terrific. So good to see them again. We had dropped in a few years ago for a visit. Great to stay in touch with such good people. Even if they were raised in Louisiana.
To a Days Inn east/southeast of town probably 20-25 minutes from dinner on the west end.
Saturday October 9 – Drive I-24 over the mountain (Mount Eagle). Kind of a pretty drive for an interstate. Got off to go into South Pittsburg (TN) to visit the Lodge Factory Store(think: cast iron). No bargains, but a pretty town along the Tennessee River. I-24 looked a bit clogged, so we took all back roads from there to Chattanooga.
Got to “Chatty” early enough to tour the Chattanooga Choo-Choo station, and take a local bus to the Tennessee River front area, and took a nice walking tour there along the river, and of downtown. Cool, hip, happening city. Who knew? Walked all the way back to car at Choo-choo station. Stopped at the Big River Grill near downtown for a bite and a couple brews. Stopped by their large Oktoberfest celebration area; ticketed entry, we passed after a couple of pictures. Then up Lookout Mountain (another civil war battle site) to see what we could see (seven different states, presumably), then duck into the cave to see Ruby Falls, which has, at about 130 feet, the supposed tallest underground waterfall in the world. Very cool, but gosh, that place makes a lot of money. Tourists lined up all day to see it.
Well, that’s Chatty. Now about 25 minutes over to Cleveland, TN our AirBnB, hosted by Dan & Nancy. Nice couple. He is a regional manager for the bakeries in Panera Bread; she’s a nurse. Like the nickname for nearby Chattanooga, they were rather chatty, but very pleasantly so. Eager to share stories and give us tips. But time to move on.
Sunday, October 10. Off to Asheville, NC, but no Interstate for us, at least to start. Followed US 64 & 74, which is generally along the Ocoee River, up in the Appalachian Hills and still part of the Tennessee River system. We stopped at the Ocoee Whitewater Center to hike a bit along the river and see the site of the 1996 Olympic whitewater events. I did not know there were so many dams along the Ocoee; I counted 3. Then along US-23 into Asheville.
After checking in late afternoon, almost in the center of downtown, we wandered over to the closest microbrewery (Hi-Wire) where we met a nice couple a tad younger than us (about 10 yrs), from near Chatty. Kevin and Tammy. We hit it off so well, we walked to another nearby micro-brewery (Wicked Weed) with them and hung out a bit. Then weariness set in and we crashed hard into bed.
Monday, October 11. Day to hangout in Asheville and not drive. Started out with a 2.5 hour guided walking history tour of Asheville. Tour guide Jess (I think). Good stuff. Founded 1797 along the French Broad River (part of the upper Tennessee system), and a convenient location approximately halfway between Raleigh and Chatty. Surrounded by hills. Spirits tasting at Cultivated Cocktails – local craft distiller. Quite nice. Good story behind the Grove Arcade, and why it’s only 3 stories tall. Then over the Asheville Pinball Museum, a “hands on” museum experience for a couple of hours. My hands and fingers were more than a bit sore.
/a>, which was sadly closed, we wandered over to Twin Leaf Brewing, as we had what were sort-of free drink tokens. Well, it was an okay deal, but the beer wasn’t great, but we did enjoy the environment and get to see a different part of town.
Then down to the riverfront to try and watch the sunset from some parks there. Mostly blocked by mountains. The parks seem to have recovered well after being inundated and swept over by floods back in August, some muddy soil debris was still evident.
We tried to see the Biltmore House area, but of course could not get anywhere near it. Seems kind of touristy and bourgeois anyhow. Drove through Biltmore Village, which is nice and has a different modern and dense feel than the rest of Asheville. Off to Trader Joe’s for some supplies and a good night’s rest. Tomorrow is a lot of driving.
Tuesday, October 12. Jumped on the Blue Ridge Parkway after stopping in the Visitor Center for tips and ideas. Cruised that scenic roadway for several hours. About 175 miles of the 469 total, or so. Gorgeous, especially in October. Can’t be in a hurry. It’s 50mph speed limit, tops, and quite twisty anyhow. We got off near the Virginia border right after hitting one last overlook and short hike, Fox Hunters Paradise and High Piney Spur. Some backroads through tiny places like Galax and Woodlawn, VA, then hopped on I-77 to I-81 and cruised into Edelweiss German Restaurant, just outside Staunton, VA, for some good wurst, schnitzel and spätzle.
Hotel, Days Inn, just a few minutes away. We could’ve taken I-81 but didn’t.
That was a lot of driving. Saw a lot of beautiful scenery. Crossed over into the Shenandoah/Potomac River basin.
Wednesday, October 13. Staunton, VA. Stopped in for tour of Woodrow Wilson’s birthplace. It’s called a library, but I didn’t see it that way. Sort of a WW museum. Good tour. Interesting perspective on history. Hit a coffee shop on the way out of town.
Hit I-81 for a short while (~15 min) then exited and took many state and county roads through the mountains. Passed through a crook of Maryland, and rested our butts for a while in Oakland, MD, mostly a thrift store there. I know Audrey bought something, but I can’t remember what. Old train depot has been totally repurposed. Nail and Beauty salon, accountants, and lawyers. I wandered by looking for something interesting and a lady asked me sincerely if I wanted a manicure. I caught her off guard. Her question caught me off guard. No time for my first mani now. Some US highways then finally caught I-68, just inside the MD Stateline and 20 or 30 miles from Morgantown, WV – our destination for today.
Entered Morgantown, which was much hillier than I expected, although it is the home to the Mountaineers, the nickname of UWVa. Went right to the Don Knotts statue (it’s his hometown) and snapped some photos.
Then off to check out the heart of downtown and the Monongahela River waterfront. (As a sign we’re about to head west again, the Monongahela feeds the Ohio River). First hit Morgantown Brewery, and we split a tasty burger. About 1 block off the river. Nice place, with a back deck and slight view of river. Trivia night. I couldn’t get a team together, so we went out to walk the river front. Met some really nice people chatting, one of whom was a city cop. That’s his beat, just cruising the river. Nice walkways, and amphitheater. Seemed like a pretty “high end” college town. Returned to the brewery to checkout Trivia Night. Stayed for a few questions. Two pretty difficult questions that I knew the answers to. Shared them with neighboring table, kind of hoping to get invited to join in. [e.g., in what bodies of water are each of these four islands: Isle Royale, Goat, Mackinac and Corsica? In what movie is the line “You may call me: Oh Captain, my captain” said?]
Time to get some sleep. La Quinta in, on the edge of town. More driving tomorrow.
Thursday, October 14. Turning seriously back west now, as Morgantown was our farthest east (also northeast). Cruising I-79 north into PA for a bit, picking up I-70 west then into Ohio. I-77 north until we stop in Canton to see the Pro Football Hall of Fame. Not as impressive as I’d hoped, but still pretty good and a bucket list item. Audrey passed it up to have some personal time with coffee.
We took OH-8 north, and just on the north side of Akron we found a park that the Cuyahoga River flows through and has cut a pretty deep and impressive gorge. Who knew? Took a nice hike there, I think it’s called Gorge Park in the town of Cuyahoga Falls. Somewhere near Canton we’ve crossed a divide, as the Cuyahoga feeds Lake Erie, not the Ohio River.
From there to our AirBnB on the outskirts of Cleveland … which is pretty sprawling when combined with all the little urban and suburban satellite communities. We stayed in Warrensville Heights. There is a light commuter rail station nearby. We found that, but parking was very minimal, and the rail seemed to be very lightly used. Covid? We did find a brewery in that entertainment district, which was fairly hopping. Locals suggested Lyft or Uber over light rail. Hmmm. Sad.
Friday, October 15. Well, that was our worst AirBnB experience so far, mostly because the bed was way too soft and noisy. Audrey got hardly a wink of sleep and Joe was restless. She ended up counting sheep on a sofa outside our bedroom. Sigh. So, we dumped our second night there and booked a room in the high-end Drury Plaza Inn downtown. Drove there, they let us check in very early and we were off to explore Cleveland. Very, very nice room. Complimentary happy hour with meals and breakfast, too.
We took a jagged crooked walk around downtown and ended up at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, right on Lake Erie. Very impressive. Overwhelming. Everything was terrific. The building, the displays, the presentations, the videos, everything. We spent 5 hours there. Then a bit more walking back to hotel by a different twisty route, which included going by the Browns football stadium (currently called First Energy) and a statue of Otto Graham.
Back to hotel for happy hour and dinner, which included bbq pulled pork. Mmmmm.
Friday, October 16. OK, time to start heading seriously west. But first one more cool thing to see, the West Side Cleveland City Market. Built in 1912 but starting out as a market exchange in the 1850s, it is the longest continually city-run market in the region. Cool building, very high arched ceilings. We bought some sausages and bread for road snacks. West Side and Ohio City seem to offer additional fun that we missed in downtown, so it’s on our “to do list” if and when we return.
On to Fort Wayne, IN. Wanting to take more backroads, we stayed on I-71 south (southwest-ish) a tad longer to get us into some real rural country. OH-95 to Mount Gilead, then US-231 up to and around Upper Sandusky, finally catching US 30 (AKA Lincoln Highway in many parts) and going almost directly west to Fort Wayne to meet up with an old work buddy for a beer in the old downtown. It’s actually quite nice. Fort Wayne. Who knew? Many historic beautiful buildings, some to the 1880s and ‘90s, including the magnificent Allen County courthouse.
Ft Wayne is at the confluence of the St Joseph and St Mary Rivers, forming the Maumee River, so we’re still in the Lake Erie watershed.
Highway IN-14 almost straight west to near the Illinois Stateline, then a zig and a zag and you’re in Kankakee, Illinois. It was getting pretty dark, so we went straight to our room, which was in Bourbonais, just north of Kankakee.
Sunday, October 17. Kankakee and surrounds ended up being great. Locals call it “K3.” We stumbled across a fall festival and trunk-or-treat related family event held downtown where the Farmers Market is held on Saturdays. (This was a Sunday). Saw a unicorn (ok, goofy) which kids loved, and a real good imitation of Dr Brown’s DeLoran-based time machine from Back to the Future, complete with Mr Fusion and dog named Einstein. There are two Frank Lloyd Wright Houses side-by-side, next to the Kankakee River. One is a museum, which was closed on Sunday, so we walked around and took some pictures. They have a nice train station, which appears to be some sort of museum as well (closed) and was surprised to find they also have Amtrak service.
Somewhere in Indiana we crossed a slight divide, as the Kankakee River feeds the Illinois and then the Mississippi River. We’re heading west for sure now.
Departing, took city roads to IL-102 up to Kankakee River State Park for a nice 3 mile hike through forest along the river. Leaf color season, and some interesting puff-ball mushrooms. Audrey picked up some black walnuts and chestnuts to bring home. Continued along 102 to Wilmington, IL when we were forced to get out when we found out it is along old Route 66, they have an antique store, a brewery (Route 66 Old School Brewing) and a local dam controversy.
Took a different IL highway from there, meandered to I-55, then to I-80, and started really cruising west. Across the Mississippi and into Iowa, near Davenport. Left I-80 near Iowa City; north on I-380 about half hour to Cedar Rapids. Check in to nice hotel, not in city center, in mall area.
Went into town in the old Czech village area and found Lion Bridge Brewing. Nice place. Learned a bit of local Czech history and about the Bridge of Lions, spanning the Cedar River. Good homework for tomorrow’s activity.
Monday, October 18. Cedar Rapids and the Czech and Slovak Museum and Library. Wa-a-ay more interesting than we expected. Took about 2 to 2.5 hours. Lots of Iron Curtain era stuff. Also, cultural costumes, famous people and emigrations, mostly to US, over the past 150 or so years.
Quite a Czech and Bohemian village area, adjoining each side of the Cedar River, just south of downtown. We cruised that area, stopping to take pictures of Wenceslas Church. And more pics of Bridge of Lions. Then through downtown. Nice quiet, clean town we’d like to maybe visit Cedar Rapids again.
Then west again, to Boone, Iowa. Saw some history and engineering. Birthplace of Mamie Dowd Eisenhower and side-by-side Old and New Kate Shelley High Bridges over the Des Moines River. Then over to the very tiny town of Moingona, to see the old train depot – which supposedly houses the Kate Shelley Museum, closed due to Covid – to which young Kate ran to save the Midnight Express (JG essay topic, 2020).
Both the Cedar and Des Moines Rivers flow generally north-to-south where we were, in Boone and Cedar Rapids, feeding the Mississippi.
Doubling back east a bit to Ames, Iowa much of it along the old Lincoln Highway (which has been replaced in many places by a parallel, slicker and safer US-30). Checked into a B&B called Iowa House, which is in a former Frat House that has been lovingly remodeled and cared for.
Toured around the Iowa State campus. It is mostly quite beautiful. Took some pics, which were right at dusk, so they turned out pretty nice.
Tried to find a brewery, but they were all closed! In a college town! Geepers, Mondays. Went to Boulder Tap House, where the beer was just OK, but we split a burger, again, one of our rare meals out. Nice college kids wait staff that we got to know a bit.
Back to B&B. Met some really nice co-guests, including a cool chatty grammy (Sally) and her daughter-in-law visiting grandson/son at ISU for a couple of days.
Maps are tricky, as globes don’t properly show up on flat maps. Turns out Boone and Ames were our farthest north on the entire trip. (I had thought it was Cleveland, OH). Anyhow, time to really head west, a bit south and home. A long day of driving ahead.
Tuesday, October 19. Up and out after a very nice B&B breakfast. Back south on I-380, then I-80 west. We did stop in downtown Lincoln, NE for about an hour. It was originally planned as our last overnight stop, but we had to squeeze a day out of our schedule for a couple reasons. Lincoln seems really worth re-visiting. Lady at the Visitor Center had loads of good info and was pretty persuasive. And it’s even a stop on Amtrak, direct from Denver. The old train station, as in Cedar Rapids, has been nicely re-purposed. Could be a future train-based trip.
Just out of Lincoln there was apparently a terrible crash resulting in fires. I-80 had been closed for hours. We took a detour way off I-80, up to US-34. It’s all part of the adventure. Added about 1.5 hours to our trip home, the traffic on all the detour roads was turtle paced. Got a feel for towns like Utica and Waco, NE. Interesting to see such small and rather out of the way (even if they are on US-34) Ag and Rail towns not decaying, like much else we’ve seen in out-of-the-way America, barely stayin’ alive. No reason to re-visit though. Finally, back on I-80 near York, NE , following the Platte River upstream on-off for a few hours, turning South West-ish onto I-76, and then back to good old Broomfield, Colorado, arriving so late I don’t even remember; but had time to unload the car and do language lessons before midnight.
Museums/Historical Sites visited (quite a few others were closed)
Sand Creek Massacre
Boot Hill (Dodge City)
Kansas Aviation Museum
Will Rogers Museum
Old Fort Smith
Miss Laura’s Visitors Center
Mount Nebo park and historic CCC camp
Civil Rights Museum at Lorraine Motel
Johnsonville State Historical Park (TN)
Chattanooga Choo-Choo Rail Station
Lookout Mountain
Ruby Falls (Cave)
Pinball Museum (Asheville)
Blue Ridge Parkway
Woodrow Wilson Library and Birthplace
Pro Football Hall of Fame
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
Czech and Slovak Heritage Museum & Library
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for newly published material by clicking here. Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
“There was a virus goin’ ‘round, Papa caught it and he died last spring. Now momma doesn’t seem to want to Do much of anything.” – From Ode to Billie Joe, by Bobbie Gentry
Introduction. Those lyrics popped into my head – I wonder why? – during one of my recent daily social-distancing long walks and bike rides that I’ve been taking during this time of coronavirus isolation. The lines are a couplet from the last verse of Bobbie Gentry’s 1967 smash hit, Ode to Billie Joe. [Note: if you haven’t heard the song in a while – or ever heard it – then maybe have a listen by clicking the link].
Album Cover: Bobbie Gentry’s Ode to Billie Joe
The tune became an earworm. I hummed it over-and-over to myself. Most of the melody and lyrics of the song came back to me – and of the story they told. The song remains as catchy and haunting as when it first came out. It mixes matter-of-fact family life in the Mississippi Delta with references to things mysterious and wrong, all packaged within a simple, non-distracting melody. The catchy, yet minimalist, musical arrangement even suggests naivety, such as an adolescent innocence.
“The hardest thing in song writing is to be simple and yet profound” – Sting, in the documentary “Still Bill”, about Bill Withers.
Well, the song “Billie Joe” is profound … if initial and sustained popularity are any measures. It’s simple. But it’s more. It’s memorable. It’s catchy. It sticks with you. It tells a story. It’s moving. A story that is both awkward and incomplete. As humans, we crave completeness. Closure. But in Ode to Billie Joe it’s not there … just out of reach. And so, we always want a little more.
“… a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.” – Winston Churchill, describing Russia during WW II.
Similarly, the mysterious story of Billie Joe McAllister, is wrapped inside the enigmatic life of author/singer Bobbie Gentry. We don’t ever get to know the “why?” of the story of Billy Joe. And Bobbie Gentry – reportedly still alive – simply disappeared four decades ago when she was still a culturally popular and gorgeous brown-eyed brunette. She hasn’t been seen or heard from since.
Tons of research and speculation about the song’s background and meaning have been published. Go ahead. Google “What happened to Billie Joe McAllister?” You’ll get a zillion hits. None has the answer. Almost as many hits for “what happened to Bobbie Gentry?” Again, there just really are no fulfilling answers.
Nonetheless, my analysis follows. Why? This is largely a product of this bonanza of extra time — thanks to the novel coronavirus. I’ve contemplated the details of the lyrics, in the context of Gentry’s life. The lyrics are richly textured. They reflect an uncommon authenticity, even for country songs.
The musings and reflections herein are based mostly on: my own memories from my years living in the South; my book-learnin’ for the Ag Engineering degree that I earned there; fading memories; a little internet research; as well as my thoughts and imagination.
It was the third of June – another sleepy, dusty Delta day. I was out choppin’ cotton, and my brother was baling hay. At dinner time we stopped and walked back to the house to eat. And mama hollered out the back door: “Y’all, remember to wipe your feet.”
Gentry was born Roberta Lee Streeter in northern Mississippi in 1944 (or 1942, depending on source). Her family moved a few miles west when she was young, to Delta cotton country. Not unlike eastern Arkansas, where I lived for four years: also Delta country. In the South, it’s not hard to imagine she was called “Bobbie Lee.” She lived in Mississippi until age 13, when a messy divorce took her and her mother to southern California to stay with family.
During those early years, her family reportedly had no electricity and no plumbing. It must’ve been a hard life. One that gave heartfelt credibility to songs like “Billie Joe.”
Analysis: In Ode to Billie Joe, verse one starts out as a set up. Seems like regular, work-a-day life in a hot, dusty early June in the deep South. I’m not a musician, but it’s neither a happy key, nor a somber key. It sets a mood of ambivalence and ambiguity. Not joy. Not sadness. As in: I’m just here telling a story.
The song is a first-person narrative (“I was out choppin’ cotton …”). We instantly suppose that there are some autobiographical aspects in the story. What details support that supposition?
— “Chopping Cotton”: This does not mean picking cotton. Picking is done in late summer to early fall. “Chopping cotton” is done shortly after the cotton plants begin to emerge; so, the June 3 date makes a lot of sense. Using a manual hoe, the “chopper” turns over the weeds among the small, vulnerable cotton plants. It takes a good eye to tell the weeds from the cotton – an eye that usually has sweat dripping into it.
Chopping Cotton: many weeds are herbicide resistant. Chopping requires a good hoe, sun protection, gloves and a strong back
Chopping also includes thinning the cotton plants if they are emerging too close together. It is back-breaking grueling work. Bent over, in the sunny Delta humidity, hour after hour, row after row, acre after acre. It’s obviously a labor-intensive task that is physically demanding and boring. Yet, it’s an important task you can screw up with a slight amount of inattention, or clumsiness. If Bobbie Gentry didn’t do chopping herself as a girl, one can surmise she saw others doing it.
“Brother” is baling hay. The June 3 date again makes sense. “Hay” is usually a grass or a legume (alfalfa). It is richest in nutrients when it is fully leafed, just as after it blooms; as it prepares for seed growth. Once pollinated, the plant puts ever more energy into its next generation: healthy seeds. So, it is cut, dried and baled before seeds can form, when its nutrition is dense. In fertile Delta country, “Brother” is harvesting the hay, probably the first hay harvest of the year. It’s not clear whether this is done manually or with a mechanized hay harvester/baler.
Whether the family has farm animals to feed is not clear. If they don’t, they would sell the hay to others in the area who do.
Mechanized cotton equipment slowly became more and more available, affordable, and prevalent in the decade or two after the 2nd World War. Since this is the 1950s, it’s likely that this family baled their hay – and picked their cotton – by hand. Perhaps with migrant workers, as in John Grisham’s novel A Painted House.
“At dinner time we walked back to the house to eat.” Clearly, this is southern-speak. Until several generations ago, across America, the mid-day meal was the main meal of the day, and hence called “dinner.” The evening meal was “supper.”
In most of America, “dinner” has become lunch; “supper” has become dinner, and the term supper … has just faded away.
In many ways the south is traditional and slow to such changes. Lunch is still quite often called “dinner.” I worked various factory jobs in Arkansas in the mid-70s; the mid-shift meal was always called “dinner break.”
[Close of the first verse, mama still speaking]
Then she said: “I got some news today from up on Choctaw Ridge. Today Billie Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Boom. Someone they all know has jumped off a bridge. A suicide. This is a sudden change. It’s not an everyday southern thing, like the song until now. You’re on edge the rest of the song: why?
Yet Bobbie continues in her matter-of-fact and I’m-just-telling-a-story-here tone of voice, strumming gently.
And papa said to mama, as he passed around the black-eyed peas, “Well, Billie Joe never had a lick of sense. Pass the biscuits, please. There’s five more acres in the lower forty I’ve got to plow.” And mama said: “It’s a shame about Billy Joe, anyhow. Seems like nothin’ ever comes to no good up on Choctaw Ridge. And now Billie Joe MacAllister’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Talahatchee Bridge, Mississippi
Roberta had shown a knack for music at a young age. She sang in the church choir and learned to play piano by watching the church pianist. Her grandparents encouraged her musical interests. They traded a milk cow for her first piano.
After the divorce, when she and her mother were in California, living at first with relatives, her life prospects improved. Especially after her mom re-married. She started writing and singing songs. She taught herself guitar, banjo and bass.
A promising music and entertainment career took her briefly to Vegas – with a new name, Bobbie Gentry – where she performed in shows as a dancer and backup singer. She returned to LA after a couple years and attended the UCLA Conservatory of Music, working side jobs to get herself through. There she learned, among other things: music theory, composition and arranging. She had been writing songs since she was a girl. Now she had all the tools to do something with it.
She was completely prepared in all aspects to be a star. Mature beyond her years, she could write, sing, arrange, produce and play the music for her own songs.
Summer, 1967: Ode to Billie Joe was recorded as a demo. The session took only 40 minutes. The song immediately took off. Bobbie Gentry, an unknown country singer, crossed over to pop, and bumped the royal much revered Beatles (“All You Need is Love“) off the top of the chart. Until now, virtually totally unknown … she’d soon be awarded three Grammys. She was an instant star. Her story would be the unbelievable stuff of fancy, if it weren’t true.
Analysis: the song now mixes more everyday life on a family farm with recent news. “Papa” is very calm and unmoved. He clearly doesn’t think much of Billie Joe (“never had a lick of sense”), then barely pausing for breath to ask for some biscuits.
“Lick of sense” is a southern and rural expression that has migrated to some other areas. “Lick” means less than the bare minimum and is used to refer to things like “give your hands a lick” instead of a wash. It’s merely a perfunctory effort. Less than sufficient. That’s what Papa thought of Billie Joe.
Biscuits and black-eyed peas. Again, this is a true southern experience. The mid-day dinner is meant for a good dose of calories to replenish what’s been worked off in the morning, and for the long afternoon in the hot sun ahead.
Black Eyed Pea stew, southern style
Black Eyed Peas are a staple of southern diets. They are easy to grow, especially in rich Delta country, healthy to eat, full of protein, and are quite good for the topsoil. Being a legume, they deposit nitrogen, leaving healthy and fertile earth for the next crop. So, it is often built into the regular crop rotation (as is hay). As southerners — whether share-cropping farmers or not — the Black-Eyed Pea would certainly have been a family diet staple.
And what southern meal would be complete without biscuits? Easy to make, and so tasty (calorie rich) when smothered in gravy.
Other thoughts and possible clues for Billie Joe’s fate. Black-Eyed peas came to the South with the slave trade. They are generally pale in color, with a small dark spot – the Black-Eye. Could there be a black-white thing between the narrator and Billie Joe? Many have surmised this. I think not. This was mid- to late-1950s Mississippi Delta country. Like “pass the biscuits”, the “Black-Eyed Peas” reference is just settling the listener into day-to-day southern life.
Whereas “Papa” doesn’t feel any pain for Billie Joe, “Mama” seems to briefly manage a modicum of pity: “It’s a shame about Billie Joe” and then she immediately minimizes even that by adding “anyhow.”
Finally, Papa must plow another five acres on the “lower forty”, meaning forty acres. That’s a lot of land, and it implies they have quite a bit more. Whether they own it, or just work it, we don’t know.
The lower forty is also an expression for “way out yonder.” And there’s a reason: the “lower 40” is the acreage that is on your lowest land; the house and farm buildings are built on higher ground. The “Lower 40” would probably be the last acreage plowed in the late spring, or early summer, as they’d have to wait for it to dry out from the winter and spring rains. You can plant that late in the South, in fertile Delta soil, and still get a crop. So yes, June 3rd again fits. And yes, it dried out: it’s a “dusty Delta day.”
In any case, it sounds like Papa has a tractor to pull the plow. So, they are not completely destitute.
Southern diet, southern language, southern rural farming workdays. The timing of chopping, baling and plowing. I conclude Gentry wrote from personal experience: both her own, and things she’d seen up close. This is authentic southern life. Her life. Not stuff you pick up from listening to stories and reading books. I judge this song to be largely autobiographical. Gentry has pulled back some veils from her history. _________________________________________________________
The 3rd verse:
And brother said he recollected when he, and Tom, and Billie Joe Put a frog down my back at the Carroll County picture show. And wasn’t I talkin’ to him after church last Sunday night? “I’ll have another piece of apple pie. You know, it don’t seem right.
I saw him at the sawmill yesterday on Choctaw Ridge. And now ya tell me Billie Joe’s jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge.”
Bobbie Gentry, on Music Hall TV, 1968
Bobbie Gentry worked her fame into a great career that must’ve been financially rewarding. She took personal control of virtually every detail of every tour, every show, every arrangement. The lighting, the sound, the production. And, she was very successful at it.
She returned to Vegas with her own show; she was a huge hit in Vegas. Her show ran quite a few years and always got rave reviews and a packed house of adoring crowds. I was lucky enough to see her Vegas show, August 1974. I was not quite 18 years old. I was blown away: Great show, beautiful woman, really good music. Just, wow.
Analysis: Brother – and the whole family for that matter – still has no name, but a new name pops up: Tom. I suspect this is only to give the line a more even meter. (As an Ode, it technically has minimal lyrical meter requirements — just a lick).
The “frog down my back” comment is, to me, very apropos. The kind of light, odd, funny comment someone would make at the wake of a deceased person. Or during a get-together after the funeral and burial. But … There is not going to be a wake, funeral, or get-together for Bille Joe. Or, if there is, no one from this family is going to attend.
“Brother” and Billie Joe were friends once, perhaps just a few years ago. This is a stunt one or two boys would dare their friend to do. I can imagine that Billie Joe had a crush on the boy and his friends have figured this out – they tease him about it and eventually dare BJ to put a frog down the back of her shirt. Wanting to fit in, he complies. Billie Joe is a bit of an outsider. He’ll put a frog down the shirt of a girl he likes just to show he “fits in.”
And what is a “picture show”? It’s another phrase that left most American lexicon long ago but remains in parts of the South. It’s just a word for “movie”, and “movie theater.” Carroll County is not very populated. Even now the entire county has only 10,000 scattered souls (although it has two county seats). So, it’s not hard to imagine that in the ‘50s there was but a single “picture show” in the entire county.
No doubt: This song has a reverberate ring of southern authenticity.
Why did “Brother” see Billie Joe at the sawmill up on Choctaw Ridge? I think this is a possible clue to the story. “Brother” could be there for two reasons: 1) he worked there (when he wasn’t baling hay on the family farm); or 2) he was buying lumber. #2 is rather unlikely (he’d probably go to a lumber yard in town), but in any case, he was there, at the mill. But: why was Billie Joe there? I suspect he was looking for a job. And he got turned down.
Conjecture: Billie Joe wanted a job to impress the narrator, or rather, the narrator’s father – who clearly disapproved of Billie Joe. Partly because he didn’t have a job. He’s not worth a lick.
And mama said to me: “Child, what’s happened to your appetite? I’ve been cookin’ all morning, and you haven’t touched a single bite.” That nice young preacher, Brother Taylor, dropped by today. Said he’d be pleased to have dinner on Sunday. Oh, by the way:
He said he saw a girl that looked a lot like you up on Choctaw Ridge, And she and Billie Joe was throwing somethin’ off the Tallahatchie Bridge
Mmmmm. Southern biscuits and gravy
Bobbie Gentry started slowing her career down in the mid-‘70s. She had a few TV specials, mostly for Canadian and BBC viewers. Appeared on some talk shows.
In kind of an odd twist – and very fitting for the song and story – she re-recorded the song in 1976. It was released again, and it made the charts.
But – she insisted – the title and words to the original song were incorrect. It should have been Billy Joe, not Billie Joe.
Bobbie Gentry, 1969, Show Promo Pic [citation below, fair use here]
Ode to Billy Joe was the last song she recorded to make the charts (peaking at 46 in Canada, and 65 in the US). That’s probably the only time in music history that a singer/songwriter’s last song to make the charts was the same as their first song to chart – and with different titles no less.
“Billie Joe” remained very popular in decades that followed. The song – and the mystery of what happened – was still so intriguing that it was made into a movie, in 1976. In fact, the song was re-recorded for the movie (see album cover).
Cover to soundtrack album for movie: Ode to Billy Joe
The movie, also called Ode to Billy Joe (like the re-released song), was produced and directed by Max Baer, Jr. He’s better known as Jethro of The Beverly Hillbillies – not authentic southern – and also the son of Heavyweight champion boxing champion, Max Baer.
Gentry was originally cooperative in helping with the movie. She worked with Herman Raucher on the screenplay, which has the lead female role named “Bobbie Lee.” If she agreed to that name (her own!), she clearly saw the song as autobiographical.
At some point Gentry pulled her support for the movie. Raucher and Baer seemed too attached to the idea of setting up the mystery, and then revealing it to the audience at the end – a la Sherlock Holmes. She might not have liked the movie’s purported reason for Billie Joe’s suicide (no plot spoiler here). But she was most disappointed that they failed to fully present the casual and unfeeling way that the family reacted to the suicide and her situation.
About the time of the movie’s release Gentry started to reduce the frequency of her public appearances. This, as she went through two marriages. One was short. The other – to another country music star, Jim Stafford of “Spiders and Snakes” and “Wildwood Flower” fame – was extremely short. Although she and Stafford did have one son, her only known child. I simply cannot imagine anyone who wrote and sang “Billie Joe” being married to someone who sang about Spiders, Snakes and Wildwood Flowers.
Anyhow, by 1981 she was twice-divorced and had completely vanished.
Analysis: Verse four is curious because it is all “mama” talking (as verse three was all “brother” talking). I suspect she is babbling nervously to fill space and mask her own discomfort.
There is only one verse left. You can tell the song’s almost over, because if it lasts much more than four minutes it would never have made it on the radio in 1967.
What can we tell here? The narrator is nauseous. She was well enough to chop cotton in the field all morning, walk up to the house and wipe her feet … but now she’s ill. Clearly, Billie Joe meant something to her. The news of his suicide has disturbed her. But even mama has missed her own daughter’s quiet emotional pain. She’s even offended that the girl isn’t eating: “I’ve been cooking all morning!” [more evidence that the mid-day meal, dinner, is the largest of the day: cooking all morning].
Worse, Mama calls her “child.” This is a truly southern term, and one that – to my understanding – is usually part of the Afro-American lexicon. Yet, whites use it too, especially when emphasizing that someone is not yet adult. Or they are a young adult, but not acting like it. As in: “Lordy, child! What’s gotten into you? Clean your hands before you come to this table.”
We don’t know any other details, but we can guess the girl is at least mid-teens, maybe a tad older, and had done something(s) recently that made mama (and papa) think she’s sliding back into childhood. Like maybe confiding to them that she thought Billie Joe (who doesn’t have a lick of sense) might be “the one” for her.
The narrator is hurting, yet mama is thinking of her as a petulant, unappreciative adolescent who can’t act proper. “Rub some salt in that wound for me, please, would you?”
Is it coincidence that the same day that Billie Joe jumps off the bridge, the “young preacher” stops by and announces he’d be “pleased to have dinner next Sunday” with the family? Dinner would be lunch to us non-southerners, and Sunday – especially in summer – is an all-day church-related series of events in many parts of the South and even Mid-South. Church all morning, Church in the evening, with a church-congregation-centric social dinner in between. [Recall in verse three, the narrator was talking to Billie Joe “after church just last Sunday night”].
So, Brother Taylor. He gets a name, and a title. He’s young. He’s nice. Does he have an interest in the narrator? And, since mama gives him a proper title and name, does Mama have an interest in the “nice young preacher” as a mate for her daughter? The inference is certainly there. Safe to assume that Gentry wants us to recognize it.
And what was he doing up on Choctaw Ridge? Doesn’t he have pastoral duties? In many small southern congregations preachers have a career outside of the church. These congregations tend to be small and poor; there’s not enough money to support a full-time preacher. Brother Taylor probably wasn’t up on the Ridge for work. Was he stalking the narrator?
Regarding the “Brother” title for a preacher: this is a form of address that many Christians, especially in the South, address each other with.
And the second biggest question of the whole song, besides “why did Billie Joe jump?” — What were they throwing off the bridge? Is this a clue to their relationship, and, hence, a clue to the whole mystery?
Ruminate on that while we tackle the final verse; the one that first popped into my head during that lovely spring afternoon.
[5th and final verse] A year has come and gone since we heard the news about Billie Joe. And brother married Becky Thompson; they bought a store in Tupelo. There was a virus going ’round. Papa caught it, and he died last spring. And now mama doesn’t seem to want to do much of anything.
And me, I spend a lot of time pickin’ flowers up on Choctaw Ridge, And drop them into the muddy water off the Tallahatchie Bridge.
So many flowers to pick
Well, papa died. Mama, sensitive soul that she is, has fallen despondent and unable to do anything. The narrator is left alone; her older brother got married and moved away. Who could blame him? This family is emotionally detached from each other. — Besides: farm work (and sawmill work) are hard labor. So, brother’s gone, probably after getting a small inheritance. It’s easy to surmise that “Papa” did not approve of Becky Thompson either. Given freedom by Papa’s death, “brother” marries Becky and runs away.
A little more insight into “Papa” is provided by another song on the very same album with “Billie Joe” — this one called “Papa, Won’t you let me go to Town?” [lyrics]. Papa is not a very nice man.
And in Billy Joe he’s not very nice either. I presume that – based on the messy divorce – her own dad wasn’t a nice man.
Oh, if Billie Joe had only waited a few more months – Papa would have been gone and then he could have courted our little darling narrator. Alas, things happen the way they do, and they can’t be undone.
The story’s narrator. Where is she? She’s not working the farm. Is anyone working the farm? It’s been nearly at least half a year. In fact, what is she doing?
She is up on the ridge, picking flowers. Then she wanders over to the bridge and drops them into the water. Apparently over and over.
Analysis: The narrator is as emotionally detached as the rest of her family, just like they were toward her and Billie Joe when he jumped. What goes around, comes around. With papa dead, Mama is clearly suffering; yet darling daughter is off alone, feeling sorry for herself. And Brother is off in Tupelo, with his new bride.
There’s a lot of theories about the song. What it was about? What really happened? The song’s real meaning – the why? – will always remain a mystery. Bobbie Gentry – mysterious, beguiling – has never really said.
Bobbie Gentry disappeared. At first she made sporadic appearances — ever the mystery woman, as if she had planned to deceive us all along. She appeared on a Mother’s Day special in 1981, then disappeared for almost one full year — until the next April, when she showed up at the Country Music Awards (CMA) in Nashville, Tennessee. [We were there during CMA week in 2018 — the town is really fun anytime, but super abuzz that week]. No one has seen or reported on her since.
Fruitless analyses of the song and her life have been going on for decades. We’ll never really know why Billie Joe jumped to his death, what was his relationship with the narrator, or what they were throwing into the muddy waters of the Tallahatchie River. Pressed hard for an answer during an interview once, Gentry finally answered, with practiced carelessness: “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe it was a ring.”
Endless research by inquiring reporters and fans have suggested that Gentry lives quietly in an upscale gated neighborhood near Memphis, not far from her birthplace and childhood Mississippi Delta roots. She takes no visitors and takes no calls. And the song? It’s meaning is left to the listener — which can change with mood and even time of day.
By many accounts, Jim Stafford is still in love with Bobbie Gentry. As a hopeless sentimental romantic, I sympathize. Alas, they simply weren’t meant for each other. In rare interviews, he is still probed about the meaning of Billie Joe. Through a lot of digging I have found one website, wherein a reporter claims that – in an interview through an alcohol lubricated night – Stafford suggested that Gentry one time shared some dark details of her youth with him. Details that fit with the story.
The details that Stafford recalled, and that the reporter recalled (hearsay), are all probably hazed, and the implied dark story are not worth repeating. [I lost the webpage, so I won’t tell the reporter’s text of Stafford’s take on the story.]
But I think the story/song is exquisite and sufficiently complete just the way it is. If Gentry had told us anymore, then it probably wouldn’t have been such a hit. Let alone a long-lasting hit. That’s the genius of good song writing. We’ve been hooked for decades just trying to figure it out. It still generates a regular healthy royalty check for her today.
Final analysis: Papa is a harsh man and stern head-of-the-household. He probably felt he had to be that way as the patriarch of a family working its own farm in 1950s Mississippi. Perhaps a WWII veteran and feeling the pain of the Great Depression. He didn’t want to lose his children (workhands) via marriage to some slackers who didn’t know the value of hard work. He was dismissive of his children’s yearnings to find a mate. Sadly, his emotional distancing set the tone for the family.
No one wanted to challenge Papa by expressing sympathy for Billie Joe, who’d committed suicide because of Papa. Nor did anyone dare show sympathy to the narrator, Billie Joe’s probable love interest.
Then, Papa got a virus and died. Probably between 35 and 45 years of age. Not old. Mama fell into depression and had to sell the farm. Whatever money “brother” got, he used to buy a store in Tupelo (Elvis Presley’s birthplace). He ran away with the girl Papa wouldn’t let him court. And all the narrator-daughter got was lots of free time to pick flowers.
In the end, the children were just like their parents. They didn’t know how to console others and show compassion in difficult times. Unable to respond to Mama’s and each other’s suffering …. they just ran away.
That’s sad. It’s a strong message. It’s a warning, delivered by a story, wrapped in a song.
With this virus “goin’ ’round” us now, and time on our hands, let’s remember what’s really important: family, understanding and support.
Thanks for reading. As always, you can add yourself to the notification list for Joe’s newly published material by clicking here . Or emailing joe@girardmeister.com
Afterthoughts & Things not included Ode to Billie Joe changed country music and paved the way for new heartfelt types of music, telling stories where something is quite wrong, like Tanya Tucker’s Delta Dawn and Jeannie Riley’s Harper Valley PTA.
The Tallahatchie Bridge is only about 20 feet above the muddy river waters. Jumping to one’s death there is unlikely. But it fit the song well, and rhymed with Chocktaw Ridge. So unlikely is fatality, in fact, that jumping off the bridge became quite common, due to the song’s popularity. You can’t jump off that bridge anymore. It collapsed in 1972 and was rebuilt. Jumping was made more difficult and a fine for jumping was imposed. Other hints. Bobbie Gentry’s original draft was said to have been eleven verses. It was cut to five verses for marketing, so it could fit on a 45rmp record, and manageable for radio airtime. Gentry donated her handwritten lyrics of the first page of draft lyrics to the University of Mississippi (see below). The only new information is in an alternate verse one, which starts out “People don’t see Sally Jane in town anymore.” Some have speculated that what they threw off the bridge might have been the body of Sally Jane.
Nat King
Cole had perhaps the sweetest and smoothest voice of all the 20th
century American male singers. His voice easily evokes feelings of warm,
genuine love. I’d vote him to the top of
that class of crooner. After all, I’ve admitted before that I am a hopeless,
sentimental romantic.
Nat King Cole, 1952 — as good looking as his voice
Some people attribute his tone and resonance to a rugged life that spared neither alcohol nor heavy smoking (he died of lung cancer, in 1965, shortly before reaching age 46). That is simply not true. Cole was truly gifted and worked hard at his craft. For evidence I submit the sweet and professional voice of his daughter, Natalie Cole.
I have a Pandora station that I like to play at low key get-togethers and quiet evenings that include, among other genres, some harmonica-based blues, ‘70s soft rock, ballads, bossa nova, and love songs. Cole’s voice comes up frequently. I’m never disappointed.
The year 1911 stood at the twilight of the Edwardian Era, ‘twixt the death of King Edward and the outbreak of The Great War. That year an amateur musician named Charles Dawes composed a little instrumental tune for violin and piano that he called, simply, “Melody in A Major.” Dawes was a self-taught pianist and flautist who composed merely as a hobby. The tune become somewhat popular in his lifetime.
That Dawes should have success in far-flung fields would not come as a surprise to anyone who knew him. Born in Ohio in 1865 just after the close of the Civil War, he was the son of a hero and general of that nationally tragic and transforming war. After college and then law school Dawes went off to Nebraska – a frontier land of opportunity. There, in Lincoln, he established himself as a successful lawyer and made friendships with both John “Black Jack” Pershing (who would go on to command all US forces in WW1) and Williams Jennings Bryan (who would go on to promote Free Silver – i.e. liberal monetary policy— and thrice secure the Democratic Party nomination for president of the United States, eventually serving as both Secretary of State under Woodrow Wilson, and, later, as prosecuting attorney in the famous “Scopes Monkey Trial”).
Dawes also
got interested in business. An
opportunist, he moved to Evanston, Illinois (just north of Chicago) during the
1893 Panic, and began acquiring interest in various companies at bargain
prices, beginning with a slew of gas companies. Success gained him attention,
and in 1896 he managed the Illinois presidential campaign of William McKinley
(against his Nebraska friend, Bryan). From McKinley’s win, he was rewarded by
being named Treasury Department’s Officer of the Currency. In this roll he was
able to recover many millions of dollars that banks had lost during the ’93
Panic.
Dawes resigned from the administration in 1901 to set up a run for Senator. He believed the timing was right, since he had McKinley’s support (who had been recently re-elected and was hugely popular). But McKinley was assassinated at the World’s Fair in Buffalo in September of that year. The new president, Theodore Roosevelt, would not be supporting Dawes (this was before direct election of Senators). Dawes fell in his attempt to become Illinois’ 16th Senator to fellow Republican Albert Hopkins.
He returned
to business, expanding into banking and investment management, forming the
Central Trust Company of Illinois.
When Dawes wrote “Melody in A Major” in 1911, he was already a successful lawyer, businessman, banker and government official.
June 1, 2019 – It’s late evening and my wife and I are relaxing in the Colorado mountains. She’s doing a little work on her computer. I’m reading Le Ly Hayslip’s autobiographical book, When Heaven and Earth Changed Places (subtitled: A Viet Nam Woman’s Journey from War to Peace).
We’re listening
to the aforementioned Pandora station, when a beautiful and well-arranged father-daughter
duet comes on: When I Fall in Love (it will be forever), sung by Nat and
Natalie Cole. That duet, which won a
Grammy in 1997, was made possible by the magic of technology, since Nat had
passed away some 30 years earlier.
I wondered
if it’s true. Does “falling in love” last forever? It makes a nice tune, but ….
I put the book down. Le Ly had mostly terrible luck with men. And more than just a few. Can someone be simultaneously in love with more than one person? Like Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Berman) in Casablanca? Or Dr Zhivago (Omar Shariff) in the eponymous movie? What about falling in love multiple times? Does that count? What does falling in love even mean? It’s June 1, the birthday of the young lady I fell for in 1978. I still remember so many details, even her birthday, and I still have many fond memories and a small place for her in my heart. Does that count? Probably not. No matter how far, or hard, you fall, it’s not love if it can’t be returned.
My one forever love is Audrey.
Why do I even ponder these things? Is it because I’m a hopelessly sentimental romantic?
A half dozen
songs later and Nat comes on again, this time with “It’s All in the Game” –
with the great lyrics “Many a tear has to fall, but it’s all in the game”— as
in the “game” of falling in love. No one
said it would be easy.
Cole’s smooth voice and recording is one of many covers – and perhaps the best – of a 1958 hit song by Tommy Edwards; others had recorded it as well, but the Edwards version made it to #1 on the charts in both the United States and England.
The song (often simply called “Game”) had actually been lying around since 1951. That’s the year that songwriter Carl Sigman put lyrics to a decades old melody with no words. It was a tune that had been lying around since 1911; a tune called “Melody in A Major.”
Established
as a successful banker and businessman with a can-do attitude, Dawes was made
chief of Procurement and Supply Management for “Black Jack” Pershing’s American
Expeditionary Force during the Great War.
He achieved the rank of Brigadier General by war’s end.
Charles Dawes
After the war, he returned his attention temporarily to private business, only to be appointed to be the first ever Director of the Budget, in 1921 by President Harding. This is now called the Office of Budget Management. Dawes helped grow the bureau into one of the most important serving under the president: producing the president’s budget, tracking expenses against the budget, and monitoring and tracking the efficiency of the many agencies that serve every president’s administration.
By 1923 Germany was in great economic distress: hyperinflation, vastly diminished industrial capability, unable to pay reparations. Dawes was assigned to a commission to figure out what to do for Germany. Excessive war reparations and allied occupation of industrial districts had ruined the economy. The situation led to social and political – as well as economic – instability; it inspired Hitler to attempt the Beer Hall Putsch.
The commission’s plan, which came to be known as the Dawes Plan, called for complete re-organization of the German national bank (Reichsbank) and a reset on their currency, to be anchored by a loan from the United States. Re-industrialization was begun as was acceleration of France’s de-occupation of the Ruhr district. Concessions from the French also allowed for slower, more gradual, and less painful reparations.
As a result
of the Plan’s success, Charles Dawes was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in
1925.
Dawes’ star
was shining. At the Republican convention
in June, 1924 he was chosen to be the running mate to Calvin Coolidge in that
fall’s election. He then served as Vice
President of the United States (and president of the Senate) for the next four
years.
Dawes also served in the Hoover administration that followed, first as ambassador to England and, later, as head of the newly formed Reconstruction Finance Corporation to help fight the depression.
After leaving the Hoover administration he served on many industrial and bank boards and continued running his own banking businesses from his home in Evanston, until his death, in 1951.
Not coincidentally, Sigman was inspired by Dawes’ lifetime of accomplishment and wrote the lyrics to complete Dawes’ “Melody in A Major” shortly after he learned of Dawes’ passing.
Charles Dawes had a remarkable life. And if you remember him for one thing, well, here’s something that might help you in a trivia contest: Dawes is the only person in history to have co-written a song that made it to #1 on the charts, served as Vice-President of the United States, and been awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.
This sentimental romantic wishes you all a lifetime of fulfillment and fully requited love.
“There’s no tick-tock on your electric clock,
But still your life runs down”
— Harry Chapin (song: Halfway to Heaven)
The Long Island Expressway is often called by its acronym LIE, and seldom by its assigned number ID: I-495. It is also often called the Long Island Distress-way, a tribute to its notorious snarly traffic jams that can go on for miles and miles and several hours each weekday.
Monday through Friday the expressway turns into a slothful snake, slithering on the cold concrete as it stretches from the Queens Midtown Bridge out east to Suffolk County. Late in the morning and early in the afternoon, the LIE wakes up. The traffic drops below a volume threshold, and — voila! — cars can often zip along at 65mph (105 kmh), sometimes even with a few car lengths between them.
I have a confession to make. During my high school and college years, I didn’t like the contemporary popular music as much as I let on. Sure, I learned the words to many of the more popular songs and was, thereby, able to fit in. I faked it.
The songs that attracted me were more earthy. Songs with words that could be understood; songs with words that told stories; songs where the words were more important than the music. The music was simply the walls upon which murals were painted; murals that told stories of a vast range of “ordinary” people, trying to do their best, survive the world’s vagaries, and just – somehow – get along.
Thirty or forty-five years ago a guy would rather die before admitting that Barry Manilow’s songs about a washed up show girl (Copacabana) or a man who mourns that he is no longer in love (Tryin’ to Get the Feeling Again) were his preference. Include Gordon Lightfoot’s saga of a doomed freight ship (Edmund Fitzgerald). Or maybe worse, “chick” songs: Judy Collins singing a ballad about someone who did all the right things in life, except the important things (Send in the Clowns), or acknowledging that everything important we think we know about life might be wrong (Both Sides Now).
At lunch hour the LIE offers an enticing route for mid-day errands. Clients to meet. Lunch with friends. Errands to run. Doctor appointments. In the summer, pick up or drop off kids at camp, make an early get away to – or late return from – the outer beaches. Trucks are out making deliveries and pickups. Noon hour traffic usually zips, but it’s a crap-shoot: sometime it’s a bit tight for 65mph, and – with just one accident, or breakdown, or a little precipitation – it can return to “the Distress-way”, slowing to a sudden and unwelcome complete stop.
Shoot, I even liked some ballads, like Marty Robbins’ cowboy ditty “West Texas town of El Paso” and Simon & Garfunkle’s “The Boxer.” Among the “story teller” singers and songwriters, by far I liked Harry Chapin the most. He wrote and arranged his own songs. His voice was just bad enough that anyone could convince themselves they could sing them. But the stories — the lyrics — captivated me.
Harry Chapin, Album cover: Heads & Tales
By Chapin’s own admission, he was a delusional dreamer. His first songs (he often joked) went something along the lines of “If only everyone could hold hands and hum along to the wonderful songs I am singing, the world would be a wonderful place and we’d have peace and friendship and boundless goodwill.”
Born to a musical and theatrical family, Chapin even made a brief yet successful foray into movie making, writing and directing a documentary for which he earned an Academy Award nomination.[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legendary_Champions]
Harry found his stride in music in his own form of ballad, telling stories of life. His breakthrough song, in 1972, was Taxi, a story about a taxi driver who has lost his life’s dream and purpose — and then, without warning one night, he picks up a fare who turns out to be a former lover needing a ride home. Her life has also not turned out so well. They briefly reminisce. Among his many studies:
Sniper – a confused and frustrated young man seeks notoriety ·
Better Place to Be – a midnight watchman fills his empty life for one night, and then, maybe, for the rest of his life. ·
WOLD – a washed up DJ is still trying to make something of his life and career
Mr Tanner – A dry-clean shop owner with a talent for singing ·
Corey’s Coming – an aged railroad worker still hangs out at the rail yard
What Made America Famous – Hippies living in a communal hovel survive the scare of a life [which he also wrote into a full length musical play,The Night that Made America Famous; it ran a full season at the Ethel Barrymore Theater in Manhatten]
Dance Band on the Titanic – title tells it all
30,000 Pounds of Bananas – a young truck driver negotiates the hills of eastern Pennsylvania
Dogtown – Life in the old whaling town of Gloucester, MA ·
Mail Order Annie – Life on the North Dakota Plains
Vacancy – A Motel Keeper’s Life
Six String Orchestra — Harry makes fun of his guitar abilities
Tangled up Puppet — A father’s love for his daughter is clouded by the mystery of transition from young girl to young woman
It was in telling the stories of simple salt-of-the-earth people’s lives that Harry made his mark, but it took a while before he made it really big. Most of his good songs were quite long, six to ten minutes. That makes good concert material, but doesn’t get you on the radio. After a few years, with the help of his wife, Sandy, he finally made it really big.
Sandy had already been in an unhappy marriage and divorced with three children – and nine year Harry’s elder – when they met. [Of course, Chapin adapted their meeting and falling in love to a song: I Want to Learn a Love Song]. When they married, Chapin adopted her children and became the loving father that they never had.
The Chapins’ marriage and coming together as a family began a happy story just as it ended a sad story for Sandy — a sad story she wrote into a poem … and Harry turned into a song. All at once the story describes both the relationship between her first husband and his father, as well as the relationship between her first husband and her children. The song was poignant, touching and of the right length, under four minutes. Harry had his only #1 hit with Cat’s in the Cradle. Now he wasn’t just famous and well off, he had a substantial cash flow.
______________________________________
There is a lot to do to set up a benefit concert. Especially when you have to — okay, maybe when you insist on — doing most of it yourself. Better leave plenty of time, just in case the LIE gets all jugged up. After a few hasty phone calls and a quick check to make sure that the contracts, music and guitars are all packed – oh, and a fast food lunch – it’s time to hit the road. The LIE is remarkably smooth. To heck with that silly 55mph speed limit, 65 is plenty safe. And besides, the oil crises are long over.
___________________________________________
Born exactly one year after the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, perhaps Harry Foster Chapin was destined to great things. He surely had great visions. Great aspirations. Harry was out to change the world. He received a commission to the Air Force Academy. But he dropped out: the military was certainly not his style. He transferred to Colgate in his home state of New York to study music and theater, through which he — of course — intended to change the world. He soon learned it wasn’t so easy. When his music couldn’t change the world, he figured out another way: he would use the money and notoriety that his musical success provided to change the world.
Among Harry’s many concerns were the inanity and the evil of Hunger. And not just hunger, but hunger on a global scale. Harry founded and funded the WHY (World Hunger Year, which is now called Why Hunger … http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Hunger_Year).
The foundational beliefs of WHY are: 1) that the world produces every year more food than we can all possibly eat and, yet, people suffer in hunger around the world, and 2) that most causes for hunger are local, and therefore can be solved locally. But he didn’t just think globally; he also founded the Long Island Food Bank.
Harry was in love with the human race; and wanted to make a huge positive impact.
_______________________________________________
I saw Chapin in concert only once — at Arkansas State University. I think it was April, 1977. He was alone. Perhaps one of his brothers Tom or Steve came out to do a few songs with him. He had a rather large band and following at that time, and I wondered why he was mostly alone. Well, it turns out that by this time most of the concerts Harry did were benefits, usually supporting a combination of local charities (philharmonics, theaters and food banks were often favorites) as well as his world causes. He was WAY ahead of his time; before FARM-AID and LIVE-AID he was putting together concerts with other save-the-world types like John Denver and Elton John. Turns out he often had a falling out with his band, and they wouldn’t perform with him – sure his causes were great, but they wanted to be paid. Harry didn’t care about the money and couldn’t figure out why they did.
At least two of his songs were views of his own life. One an overview: the appropriately named Shooting Star, in which a man lost in his own visions is given meaning to life by his wife. And another song was a portent: 30,000 lbs of Bananas, in which a young distracted driver must negotiate a potentially deadly situation while driving a truck.
______________________________________
Harry lived fast and hard, always on a mission. He wrote and performed constantly. Even with a large income, he gave so much money away that he had no idea how much money he had. He lived simply, driving a 1975 Volkswagen Rabbit, eating quickly and horribly. Nonetheless, he had the ear of President Jimmy Carter, and lobbied congress on the president’s behalf to get support and funding for the Commission on World Hunger.
____________________
The LIE is really moving now. Not much farther now. The concert will be just past the next exit; from there to East Meadow, near Levittown, the humble first post-war planned community — the one that set the model for suburban sprawl.
The 1975 Rabbit has moved to the center lane, preparing to exit soon, as it shoots down the expressway, when — suddenly — it slows from 65 mph to 50, then to 40, then to 30. The emergency flashers come on. Cars are whizzing by on both sides.
The driver is trying to make it to the right shoulder. Something is terribly, terribly wrong. It slows to 20, then 15 mph. Is there a chance to slide into the right lane? No, a car is there and the Rabbit nearly collides with it; the Rabbit’s driver over-reacts, veering to the left. It hits the car to its left. Careening and over-correcting again, it turns to the right, entering the right lane ahead of an 18-wheel tractor-trailer semi-truck, en route to a delivery at a Long Island supermarket.
__________________________________________
<updated> Thirty-six years ago this summer, on a glorious, sunny and beautiful Thursday noon hour, July 16, 1981, Harry Chapin made his way down the LIE, as he had so many times before. Heck, New York City was his hometown. Along the way he passed signs and exits (“that he should have seen“) for parks, buildings and humanitarian institutions that would one day bear his name.
He was a man with a big heart and big dreams. He had spent his adult life giving from his heart, sharing his dreams. Now, his big heart had little left in it; on that sunny afternoon Harry Chapin had a massive heart attack right there on the LIE, and at that moment it became, truly, a Distress-way.
His car came to a nearly complete stop, directly in front of a grocery store delivery truck. The truck was unable to stop. In a cataclysmic collision, the truck not only rammed the tiny Rabbit, it ended up on top of Chapin’s VW Rabbit. Ironically, he was under a truck carrying 30,000 pounds of groceries. Miraculously, brave passersby, together with the truck driver, were able to extract him from the car, through the window, just before it erupted into an inferno. To no avail. Harry left his heart and dreams behind and moved on, aged only 38.
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When I heard the news that night, where I lived with two friends in a rented house in West Seattle, I got physically sick. This was a punch to the gut. My intestines roiled and their contents emptied out. As was our custom, when someone famous died, we would have an Irish wake – which meant drinking. For me it was a drowning of sorrow. And at that time, I didn’t know the half of it. I just liked Chapin’s music. I had no idea of what a big dreamer and doer he was.
_____________________________________
I don’t think I would have liked his politics much. As a dreamer he had the opinion that every problem should be fixed with a big societal toolbox. He was hanging out with Michael Moore before he was famous, helping keep his little protest-print-shop in Flint, Michigan alive. I’m sure Harry would be touring the “Occupy” protests, going from city to city, country to country, putting on free concerts and offering encouragement.
But Harry was way better than that. He didn’t just demand that somebody else, or government, fix problems. He set out to do it himself. He poured himself into his beliefs and humanitarian causes. And THAT I admire.
My lessons from Harry:
Life is short, sometimes tragically short. Get over it.
Get a dream and just do it.
Tell your stories. Share your dreams.
Be in a bit of a hurry.
Enjoy the Music of Life, whatever it sounds like to you.
Make no excuses for whatever inspires you, no matter what others may think.
Pick causes greater than yourself
Listen to your wife
Don’t let this be you:
“Oh, I’ve got something inside me — Not what my life’s about. I’ve been letting my outside tide me Over ’til my time runs out”
(1) this essay’s title “Another Love Story” is derived from the title of Chapin’s Album: Sniper and Other Love Stories.
(2) Long Island Expressway: I don’t know why it is I-495. The rule is that the first digit (“4”) is supposed to indicate a loop or bypass to the nominal route (I-95). Not only is it not a loop, it is a spur and doesn’t even formally connect to the I-95. Those crazy New Yorkers.
(3) Disclosure: “Even though Chapin was driving without a license, his driver’s license having previously been revoked for a long string of traffic violations, his widow Sandy won a $12 million decision in a negligence lawsuit against Super Markets General, the owners of the truck.” — Wikipedia
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At the end of your life you will groan, when your flesh and body are spent. You will say, “How I hated discipline! How my heart spurned correction! I would not obey my teachers or turn my ear to my instructors. And I was soon in serious trouble …”
—Proverbs 5: 11-14
The 1973 song “Ooh, La, La” by the British rock group Faces has been covered many times, and gets
Folder of Folderol
resurrected from time to time in pop culture by inclusion in movies, TV shows and commercials. [1] No surprise, I suppose, since — in short select snippets — it has a pretty upbeat melody and palatable message:
“I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger.”
— Faces, 1973 (Lyrics by Ronnie Lane & Ronnie Wood)
In reality the song is bitter-sweet at best, its balance consisting of regret, remorse and wistfulness. It’s actually part of a big club; there’s a pretty substantial list of songs that sound pleasant yet can pain one’s heart when you listen carefully — or read the lyrics.
Consider Abba’s “Mama Mia”, the Spinners’ “I’ll be Around”, The Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes” and Elvis Costello’s “Allison.” Or even previously mentioned “Happy Anniversary, Baby.” These all come off OK as elevator music and even party music; but they all have a bittersweet and even dark side.[2]
I suppose Rod Stewart might want to have known in 1973 what he learned a few years later. When Faces cut their last album “Ooh, La, La” with the eponymously named single, well, Sir Stewart already had a very large and growing personal music career outside of Faces, even though he was also simultaneously lead singer for Faces for most songs.
Stewart and Faces were already falling out when he decided that “Ooh, La, La” was a crappy song and beneath his dignity. It would never go anywhere. Or so he thought. The producer insisted it stay on the album, and convinced co-writer Ronnie Wood to do the lead vocals.
The song was a winner, and has been ever since. It reached #1 in the UK, and #21 in the US. Stewart finally covered the song himself in 1998, and his raspy voice is often associated with it, although “Woody” did the original and classic version.
Simply read the lyrics and the song’s meaning is fairly clear, although open to some interpretation, as all good works of art are. My interpretation: a man is reflecting back on a chat session with his grandfather from very long ago. Grandpa seems bitter and gives him only a few hints about women, perhaps as a metaphor for life. Then gramps sort of stops and says something like: “oh, you won’t really listen anyhow. You’ll just have to go out and learn by yourself. I was the same way. Good luck with that. Be prepared. It will probably hurt.”
And then the man reflects: … wish I knew then what I know now … now that I’m older.
It is an old message. An old story. See Proverbs.
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I’m going through a lot of old “crap” that we’ve saved over the decades. This is partly to simplify my life, partly to make it easier for our kids when we move on, and partly to refresh some memories.
A few weeks ago I came across a sheet of paper that staggered me. Notes I’d made to myself a very long time ago.
I’ll try to shorten the backstory. But from 1969 to 1979 I was practically illiterate. Turns out that I had a rare form of epilepsy that, among other things, made it almost impossible to read intently for more than a few minutes at a time. I just learned to fake it, listen closely in class, and passed all my courses, although I recall “earning” a grade of D in one high school literature class. Mercy was in play. I tried to hang around the smarter kids in lit classes (usually girls) … if and when they would put up with my stuttering and facial ticks.
Coming out of grad school in late 1980, now treated with medication, I was determined to catch up. I read everything I could. Motivation? I felt culturally lost. I stayed up very late on many nights. Went through piles of books.
I picked up a faddish book of the time: Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. I really struggled with that book. What a waste of time. Or so I thought.
Several months later, in November of 1981 {when I thought there was still a chance with Miss Summer of ’81 (See Happy Anniversary, Baby)} I spent many hours in deep reflection and self observation. Revelation: Clearly Joe, you have some problems. But, what are they? And what would motivate me to dig critically deep and make some changes?
I scribbled some motivation. Growing old together. Just time at the mall, or on a beach. Sledding after a surprise snowstorm. Or lingering over a morning cup of coffee.
Now, dig Joe. Dig down where it hurts. For some reason some paragraphs from “Zen” came back to me. I went back to the book.
There is a section in “Zen” on Gumption Traps worthy of review. I copied some sentences. Then, as memory becomes clearer, I spent hours and days thinking about them. How could they be expanded and applied?
I really wanted to be worthy. In “Zen’s” words: exhibit Quality.
The Gumption lessons apply mostly to setbacks and struggles. Now slightly expanded, slightly edited and made more blunt by time, these can be simplified to:
Develop patience and fortitude — the good things in life are worth waiting and working for.
When there is a conflict or a setback: step back, mentally slowly walk 360 degrees around the issue to consider all points of view. (i.e. eliminate “rigid thinking“).
Be open to the possibility that others have a good reason (to them) for why they do what they do.
Make yourself a subject of study. Especially: Know your weaknesses and personality flaws. Then: manage your life and behavior appropriately. If you think you have no serious flaws and weakness — then pride is the first one to identify.
Seek and accept counsel of elders.
Be creative in finding things to be grateful for; and be creative in expressing gratitude.
[* By the way, most of these lessons were in play while courting the wonderful Miss Audrey soon thereafter, although I wasn’t a very good student
** I’ve always thought about the topic of candor, but haven’t included it. I’ll just say every relationship needs it, and from the beginning. Too much, too soon is dangerous. And too little too late is dangerous too; in fact, catastrophic. Be careful out there. It’s a timing thing.]
Portion of “Notes to Self”, mid-November, 1981
Sad, I suppose, but I have to keep re-learning all of these. I had only a vague recollection of even writing them down. I had stuffed them in a box with a bunch of other notes of folderol I was accumulating from all that reading.
I nearly wept upon finding them and the decades of memories they brought. How … could … I … always … be … so … dense?
And … of course … my wonderful mother had been telling me all of these lessons since my earliest memories.
Guess I’m just like the old proverbs, stories and songs: You’ll just have to go through life and learn it on your own. And oh, it will often hurt.
Q: “What words of wisdom can I give them?
How can I help to ease their way?”
A: “Now they must learn from one another …
Day by day”
— Tevye asks; Golda replies. From the song Sunrise, Sunset, from Fiddler on the Roof.
I’m also going through piles of stuff from my parents that have been haunting me in the years since they’ve moved on. Time to thin all this down too, for the same reason: our kids shouldn’t have to do this.
Came across one more gem from my mom’s collection of notes.
Be nicer to everyone than necessary — nearly everyone is fighting some kind of battle.
It’s now my tagline. The only really significant regrets I have are that I’ve hurt others.
Wishing you all peace and strength in dealing with your battles and foibles.
Footnotes
(1) “Ooh La La” has been featured in the following movies: Rushmore (1998); Without a Paddle (2004). In the following TV series: Grass (2003); Blackpool (2004), Entourage (HBO) and Californication. It’s also been used by Nike in a 2005 commercial that used images of a very young Tiger Woods playing golf.
(2) Some insightful lyrics [I’ve added the words in brackets that I think can be inferred] Mama Mia:
“Look at me now, will I ever learn?
I don’t know how but I suddenly lose control”
….
“Yes, I’ve been brokenhearted
Blue since the day we parted
[Oh] Why, why did I ever let you go?”
What a Fool Believes
“The sentimental fool don’t see.
Tryin’ hard to recreate what had yet to be created”
“No wise man has the power to reason away … [what a fool believes he sees]”
Allison
“Sometimes I wish that I could stop you from talking
when I hear the silly things that you say.”
“Oh, Alison, my aim is true.”
I’ll Be Around
“You made your choice, now it’s up to me To bow out gracefully”
and yet …
“Whenever you call me, I’ll be there
Whenever you want me, I’ll be there”
Happy Anniversary Baby
“…when I look back baby
…look back to what we had.
And I know I’m countin’ good times, But there were just as many bad.”
There are two successful and conspicuous songs from American music history that share a remarkable and unique coincidence — as well as several minor coincidences.
Each is so well-known that it would be difficult to find many adults raised in America who cannot at least hum along to one of them. Many could hum along to both, recite a few words, and drop immediately into a comfortable toe tapping when each chorus is struck up. Yet, hardly anyone knows the words to the songs; hardly anyone knows the story behind these songs, or knows the stories they tell.
On the other hand, the songs’ differences are stark.
The later song is rowdy and timeless; for six decades running it’s been a top choice at parties and gatherings, especially if there is a dance floor. And it seems destined to ride that fame indefinitely.
Fireflies at twilight
The earlier song is stuck in history, firmly planted in the first decade of the 20th century — the Edwardian Era. And yet it retains its popularity as a quaint reminder of perhaps simpler times: when powered flight and electric lights were new; when great enjoyment could be found in playing flat music records on a gramophone, or sitting on the porch in the company of a comfortable friend, sipping sweet iced tea, watching fireflies in warm summer twilight.
But that one remarkable unique coincidence: a man’s name, Louie, is repeated in both of the songs’ title and chorus.
_____________________________
There aren’t many finer men than my dear friend Kevin Shepardson. One month after surviving cardiac arrest, he is still in hospital. Finally out of ICU and moved to a hospital closer to his family, he’s still in need of great medical care, and all the love, prayers, good thoughts and wishes we can send his way.
Right up to this past New Year’s Eve day, when the “event” happened, Kevin published a daily newsletter via email, which he called “The Good News Today.” It came in two parts. The first was spiritual, connected to the scriptures of the daily office, with a short reflection by a staff member of Creighton University.
The second part was what he called his “ramble”, with whatever was on his mind, from weather to current events. The rambles frequently contained music tributes to some special event. Perhaps a birthday or anniversary of one of his many friends, or an approaching holiday. They were always appropriate and fitting. Kevin is a bit of a music expert (OK, music trivia geek), and you could tell he put care into selecting the proper songs, complete with Youtube links so we could hear them professionally performed.
If Kevin were to select a music tribute song for a celebration party (like his 60th, which is next week), or for a nostalgic commemoration of early 20th century America, he might have selected one of these two songs.
Or, maybe not.
___________________________
Part I
Singer/songwriter Richard Berry was a talented musician, and could perform early R&B as well as doo-wop. In 1955, aged only 20, he penned the lyrics to a song that may live forever.
It’s about a lovesick guy at a bar, talking to a bartender named “Louie.”[1] Berry claims he was inspired by a similar song — One for my Baby (and one more for the Road) — best sung by Frank Sinatra, where a lovelorn guy is pouring his heart out to a bartender named “Joe.” In “Louie Louie” the guy at the bar is talking about his girl back in Jamaica … a three day and night sailing trip away. And it’s time for him to go see her.
The song was finally recorded with his group, The Pharaohs, in 1957 as the B-side to “You are my Sunshine” on the Flip Records label. Their R&B version of “Louie Louie” was totally understandable and was pretty easy to follow. As a minor hit; it was soon re-released as an A-side. Richard Berry & The Pharaohs’ original version of Louie Louie is almost painful to listen to. That is, if you’ve been weaned on the later rock version. Their version of the song soon languished, maintaining some popularity on the west coast, from San Francisco to Seattle.
Album Cover – Richard Perry and the Pharaohs
Over the next few years, quite a few groups in the Pacific Northwest picked up the song, and played versions of it in concerts and small gigs. Some recorded it. In fact, to date, “Louie Louie” has been covered and recorded over 1,500 times. [2]
Well, moving to 1963, “The Kingsmen” were a new group in Portland, Oregon. They had been playing the song for months at parties and gigs, getting wilder and wilder with the song. No longer Rhythm and/or Blues, it was full raucous Rock ‘n’ Roll.
Ken Chase had a local radio show, and ran a teen night club where the Kingsmen played. After hearing them play the song live, he agreed to set up a recording session for the song. They did the song in one take, since they were tired from having just performed a Louie-thon. Or because they were cheap (the recording only cost $50). Or both.
Nonetheless, over the years, it’s the Kingsmen’s almost totally incomprehensible version of “Louie Louie” that has become the standard. Since the Kingsmen, it’s known more for the guitar instrumental bridge than its lyrics or story. It has been recognized by organizations and publications worldwide for its influence on the history of Rock and Roll.
In 2007, in Rolling Stone ranked it #5 in its list of 40 songs that changed the world.
In 2004 Mojo Magazine rated it #1 in “Ultimate Jukebox: The 100 Singles You Must Own”.
Mojo and Rolling Stone have rated it the #51 and #54 top songs of all time, respectively.
Stories and commentary on “Louie Louie” and the Kingsmen could fill volumes. For example:
The lead singer for the famous Kingsmen 1963 recording, Jack Ely, quit the group four months afterward over a disagreement. At the time only some 600 copies had been sold. Ely missed out on large royalties.
Washington State considered making it the state song.
The states of Washington and Oregon, and the cities of Seattle and Portland have declared “Louie Louie” days. [3]
There is an “International Louie Louis Day” [4]
The FBI investigated the song to determine if it was obscene [5](the lyrics are that incomprehensible), as it was so popular at raucous parties (as recreated in National Lampoon’s movie “Animal House” [6]).
Which is pretty laughable today, considering how “artists” like Barrack Obama’s good friend Jay-Z fill their “songs” with the F-word and the N-word – not to mention gratuitous violence, usually against women – and are rewarded with critical acclaim and Grammy awards. Not that most true music aficionados or anyone with common sense would give two BMs about that.
Interlude
Another somewhat famous song nearly shares this unique “Double-double” Louie coincidence. Each is named “Brother Louie”, wherein “Louie” is repeated in the song lyrics, but not in the title. One version was recorded by Hot Chocolate (in the UK), and was covered by the group Stories (US based). The Stories’ recording came in at #13 in the US for 1973; Hot Chocolate’s recording was #86 that year in the UK.
There is a second “Brother Louie” which is completely different, by Modern Talking (1986). It did not crack the top 100 for that year. I’m not familiar with this song, but it seems mildly annoying.
After Jack Ely had left the Kingsmen he soon realized he was going to miss out on those royalties. So he wrote and recorded several songs with his new group, The Courtmen, alluding to his “Louie Louie” connection, including “Louie Louie ‘66”. But it is really the same song, although this time easier to understand.
Subsequent lawsuits between the Kingsmen and Ely resulted in him getting paid $6,000 and label credit as the lead singer on future record pressings.
You can read much more about the history, mystery and saga of “Louie Louie” here, here and here. And about a zillion other sites.
________________________________
Louie, part deux
July 1848 was a seminal moment. The Seneca Falls Convention kicked off what could be called the Women’s Movements that still have modern-day repercussions. Historians have suggested that it was not so much a feminist movement or a woman’s rights movement – it was a wide reaching social movement. [7]
By the turn of the 20th century, it was women who had led the charge for founding the Red Cross (Clara Barton) and for humane treatment of severely ill mental health patients (Dorthea Dix). Women were becoming doctors and surgeons (not the same thing then). They supplied the energy and drive to reform labor: advancing stricter child labor laws, organizing unions to drive for better and safer working conditions (especially for garment workers), and for five day work weeks, instead of the usual seven days. And pushed for forty hour work weeks, instead of the usual 60 or 70, with paid overtime compensation.
Alcohol abuse – in fact downright drunkenness – was a huge problem in 19th century America. The temperance movement – based on the desire for a healthier family life – owes all of its early energy to Women.
Yes, women were feeling their oats and ready to do more. They were shockingly daring to smoke in public and demanded the right to vote (By 1900, several western states, — Wyoming, Utah, Idaho and Colorado — had already granted full women’s suffrage [12]).
In marriage, women grew less and less inclined to be totally subservient to their husbands. Yes, they loved their men and were devoted spouses and mothers, but – especially in the middle and upper classes – they were eager to get more out of married life than children and laundry.
Women, their influence and their interests, cut a wide swath across the social milieu as America approached the grandest, the largest, and the most extravagant World’s Fair in history: the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, to be hosted at Forest Park, in Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1904.
In 1890, Saint Louis was the nation’s second largest producer of beer. By 1904 they had dropped to number five, but that’s still a lot of beer. The big brewer Anheuser-Busch sold large quantities on the East Coast thanks to enhanced distribution via refrigerated cars they had helped pioneer on the nation’s ever expanding railroad capacity.[13]
Early in 1904, New York lyricist Andrew Sterling was trying to come up with a song to promote the upcoming World’s Fair in Saint Louis. Two stories of his inspiration for the earlier “Louie” song survive, although it is likely that each is apocryphal.
The first story claims that in New York, those Saint Louis beers (Budweiser and Busch) were often called “Louis”, pronounced “Lou-ee” —the same as the French Saint, King Louis IX, after whom the city is named. It seems that at a bar one night, Sterling hailed the bartender, whose name happened to be Louis (Louie). Wanting another beer, he called out, “Another Louis, Louis.” [8]
A second, similar, version of the song’s inspiration has Sterling and co-composer Kerry Mills (who wrote the music) sitting together across a bar from a bartender named Louie and ordering a mixed-drink called a Louie. [9]
In any case, it was the repeating of the name “Louis” — pronounced “Louie” — that caught on and inspired Sterling to pen the lyrics to the song “Meet me in Saint Louis, Louis.” He must have been feeling a bit jolly, since he wrote each half-verse and the chorus in the form of a limerick (A-A-B/B-A).
In the opening verse of the song, we find that Louis’ wife (Flossie) has left him, apparently without warning. She leaves a note with the line: Life is just “too slow for me here.” She’s perfectly willing to re-connect with him, but on her terms, as her note continues in the chorus:
Meet me in Saint Louis, Louis. Meet me at the Fair.
Don’t tell me the lights are shining anyplace but there.
We will dance the Hoochee Koochee. I will be your Tootsie Wootsie.
If you will meet me in Saint Louis, Louis; meet me at the Fair.
Billy Murray was a very popular singer of that era. In fact, his voice graces four of the top ten hits of 1904. His recording of “Meet Me in Saint Louis, Louis” was made in May of that year and was immensely popular. It was the #2 song of 1904 (behind Sweet Adeline, which actually had three different recordings make the billboard).
The Murray version is kept light and cheery – it skips a key verse that makes it quite clear that Flossie (Louis’ wife), is making an extreme act of defiance. She wants more out of this marriage.
The dresses that hung in the hall,
Were gone; she had taken them all.
She took all his rings, and the rest of his things.
The picture he missed from the wall.
“What? Moving?” The janitor said.
“Your rent is paid three months ahead.”
“What good is the Flat?” said poor Louis, “Read that!”
And the janitor smiled as he read.
Chorus: “Meet me in St Louis, Louis …”[10]
Flossie had not only left, she … took all of HIS things.
Further fixing the song firmly in a long ago era, Flossie’s note pledges “We will dance the Hoochee Koochee; I will be your Tootsie Wootsie.”
We might recognize Tootsie Wootsie from context, as it also appears in “In the Good Old Summer Time”, the #6 song of 1902 as recorded by William Richmond, charting at #1 for seven weeks.
You hold her hand and she holds yours
And that’s a very good sign
That she’s your Tootsie Wootsie
In the Good Old Summertime
“Tootsie Wootsie” is a sweetie pie: a boyfriend or girlfriend you can cuddle up to. And more.
The Hoochee Coochee was a dance that was considered very daring – even lewd – at the time. It was sexually provocative with lots of mid-section gyrations. It had become somewhat popular through exhibits at two earlier well-attended World’s Fairs in America; the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia and the 1893 Columbian Exhibition in Chicago.
The Hoochee Coochee was an “entertaining” dance to observe —usually men observing women with a bare midriff. Flossie says “we will dance” it — as in, together. Hmmmm.
If you think about it, Louis’ runaway wife, Flossie, really had a lot on her mind, and lot to offer. As Michael Lasser says in “America’s Songs II” — “It offers a tempting invitation: She promises him a good time at the Fair and afterwards. … the promise borders on sexual abandon.” [10]
So Flossie was not simply rebelling and running out on poor Louis. Her offer was all, or nothing. As in: All of her, or none of her. She was promising him some exciting “action” — connubial pleasure, if you will — if he would simply comply with her demand to leave home and…
“Meet me in Saint Louis, Louis. Meet me at the Fair!”
No wonder it was so popular!
Yes indeed! Marriage can be plenty interesting in a fun way if men would just take the time to listen to their wives once in a while!
Here’s hoping and praying that Kevin, and his Tootsie Wootsie Sue, can very soon run away and enjoy the delights of “hoochee koochee” as well.
Kevin and Sue Shepardson
Until then, I wish you all peaceful snuggling; or rowdy dancing. Or both. Your choice.
Final notes and thoughts, followed by footnotes and bibliography.
Neither Sterling nor Mills attended the Fair in Saint Louis.
The Song was revived in the 1944 movie starring Judy Garland “Meet Me in Saint Louis” (this time pronounce the American way: like “Lewis”), wherein the chorus is sung by quite a few excited folks in the opening scenes. [Plot flaw: this is mid-summer of 1903, and according the sources I cited, the song’s words and sheet music were not written yet, nor had it become popular]
My Friend Max Storm, founder of the 1904 World’s Fair Society, has his doorbell set up to play the chorus to “Meet me in St Louis, Louis” when it rings. His Tootsie-Wootsie, Shara, lovingly puts up with this, and much more.
The song is often shown without the second “Louis” and without the comma between. This is incorrect.
The Berry song “Louie Louie” is often shown with a comma between the two Louies. This is also incorrect.
[3] Washington, Oregon, Portland and Seattle “Louie Louie Day”. April 12, 1985 (Washington), April 14, 1985 (Seattle), April 2, 1986 (Oregon): http://www.louieday.org/default.htm
[4] April 11 (the birthday of Richard Berry) is celebrated as International “Louie Louie Day“ [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Louie_Louie_Day]. It is also listed by Chase’s Calendar of Events, and the National Special Events Registry
“Women were key players in the push for prohibition (meaning outlawing the sale and consumption of alcohol), improved housing standards, regulations of the food and drug industry and government inspections of factories. ”
