I post a weekly diary of the historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I featured this past week in "Cheers & Jeers". For example .....
As Bob Dylan sang, "We live in a political world" .... was it always ever thus ...
DISTANT COUSINS? - two Civil War presidents: US president Abraham Lincoln and Confederate president Jefferson Davis.
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
ART NOTES - the exhibit Manet in Black is at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Massachusetts through October 28th.
TV NOTES - the former "Avengers" star Diana Rigg and her daughter are to star in a Doctor Who adventure next year: the 50th anniversary of the show.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the film producer Richard Zanuck - whose career included Best Picture Oscars for "The Sting," and "Driving Miss Daisy," as well as such blockbusters as "Jaws," plus "The Verdict" - who has died at the age of 77.
TUESDAY's CHILDREN begin with Masyanya the Cat - a Russian kitteh rubbing heads with ... one of two baby Siberian tigers who were abandoned by their mother - and are now being nursed by a Shar-Pei dog named Cleopatra. A veritable menagerie ... and in a private home, too.
FILM NOTES - a Hollywood film festival began this week with a screening of It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World - including surviving cast members such as Carl Reiner, Mickey Rooney and Jonathan Winters - nearly 50 years after its premiere.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Boots the Cat - who appeared earlier in this space, when a judge allowed the setting-aside of an elderly Illinois woman's will specifying Boots to be euthanized (as she was afraid he wouldn't be cared for properly. Now, Boots has been adopted by a family in Missouri.
ALTHOUGH the Queen of Sheba is often used as a tagline: researchers have started to unveil the genetic heritage of Ethiopian populations, with striking similarities to those of populations in Israel and Syria ... and thus a potential genetic legacy of the Queen.
YESTERDAY will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Woody Guthrie - and celebrations around the world will mark his work, some forty-five years after his death.
ART NOTES - a retrospective on the subject of Beer In New York City is at the New York Historical Society through September 2nd.
THE PAST FEW WEEKS the police in Mumbai, India have been shutting down parties and confiscating bars’ music systems in a drive to regulate the city’s nightlife - based upon prohibition-era laws dating back to 1963 - which until recently were rarely enforced, yet never formally repealed.
END of an ERA - some of the world's wealthiest families send their daughters for six weeks at what school principal Viviane Neri describes as Switzerland's (and possibly Europe's) last finishing school - spending $20,000 in the process.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Misty the Cat - rescued after seven days in a tree by the Animal Rescue League of Boston.
HAPPY TRAILS to the veteran stage and film actor Peter O'Toole who is retiring just short of his 80th birthday.
AFRICA'S RICHEST MAN got that way from dealing in everything from cement and sugar to pasta and prayer mats - unlike the usual path via petroleum.
I NORMALLY AVOID these types of Separated at Birth when it doesn't involve two humans, but here ... well, I couldn't resist: former NewsCorp executive Rebekah Brooks and the latest Pixar heroine, Merida (from the film, "Brave.")
WHILE the European nation of Austria has had a checkered history when it comes to relations with Muslims - its 100-year-old Law on Islam gives Muslims the same rights as other officially recognised religions in Austria (such as Catholicism, Lutheranism, Judaism and Buddhism).
BRAIN TEASER - try the latest Weekly World News Quiz from the BBC.
FRIDAY's CHILD is Soba the Cat - a Texas kitteh reunited with her family after going missing for four years.
......and finally, for a song of the week ............... someone who was an important part of the 1960's folk revival was born with the last name Holmes ... but everyone simply knew as Odetta - an influence to many, and someone always part of the civil rights as well as peace movements; always willing to lend a hand to her fellow musicians and missed by many less than five years after her death.
The Birmingham, Alabama native moved with her family to Los Angeles at age six and began voice lessons at age thirteen. Her mother hoped she would be able to follow in the footsteps of singer Marion Anderson, but she first began performing publicly a year later with Hollywood's Turnabout Puppet Theater where she worked alongside Elsa Lanchester and whose marionette designer (Harry Burnette) later helped subsidize Odetta's voice lessons when her mother was struggling financially.
At age 19 she began a stage acting career, touring first with a Los Angeles production of Finian's Rainbow - and when she performed in San Francisco in a 1950 version of "Guys and Dolls", she discovered folk music as well as the acoustic blues of Sonny Terry, leading to her career change.
For a time she worked as a live-in housekeeper, while performing evenings as an opening act for stars such as Paul Robeson. After honing her stage performance and repertoire, her big break came in 1953: when she performed at New York's Blue Angel club (where Barbra Streisand later came to fame as well). Both Pete Seeger and Harry Belafonte became big supporters, leading to her recording her first album - playing such traditional tunes as "He's Got the Whole World In His Hands" and "John Henry". Frequently, she was accompanied on double-bass by Bill Lee - the father of filmmaker Spike Lee - who also accompanied Bob Dylan on "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."
Her music career began to build slowly, while her acting career continued: as she performed in 1955's Cinerama Holiday plus the 1961 adaptation of William Faulkner's Sanctuary - although her most noted film came later in 1974 - in the Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman starring Cicely Tyson.
After a 1959 TV appearance with Harry Belafonte, her music career (dovetailing nicely with the folk music revival) took off: as she released a total of sixteen albums during the 1960's. Her material ranged from traditional material ("Battle Hymn of the Republic", "Take this Hammer" and "She Moved through the Fair") to Woody Guthrie tunes ("Rambling Round Your City") to the blues (with Leadbelly songs "Midnight Special" and "Cotton Fields", plus LeRoy Carr's "How Long Blues"). And she was one of the performers at the 1963 civil rights march in Washington.
But she also sang contemporary songs by her colleagues: including one of the earliest Bob Dylan tribute albums. She also recorded songs by Lennon/McCartney, Jagger/Richards, Elton John, James Taylor and even some originals.
By the dawn of the 1970's, while she still could draw a concert audience, the folk music audience had dwindled in terms of record buying. Her decision to emulate Bob Dylan in using full back-up electronic instruments also contributed to the decline.
With that, she began shifting more towards jazz and blues into the 1970's. Over time, her voice changed as well: when she began, she was considered a coloratura soprano - in maturity, she became more of a mezzo-soprano. After 1977, she released only two albums over the next twenty years, as the disco era affected her as well as many other performers.
In 1999 she released Blues Everywhere I Go - her first studio album in fifteen years, and her best-selling (and critically received) in longer than that, for which she toured world-wide in support of the album. Her last recording, 2005's Gonna Let It Shine was an album of spirituals recorded at Fordham University, which received a Grammy nomination.
She had always been a sister to her fellow folk musicians: performing at the 1968 Woody Guthrie memorial concert (and were she still alive, I know she'd be at a 100th anniversary show for him) plus a memorial show for the Irish musician Liam Clancy in June, 2008 (whom she had befriended decades earlier). Fortunately, many performers gave her a tribute concert while she was around to see it in March, 2007. By this time she was performing in a wheelchair but still touring into her 70's.
Odetta died on December 2, 2008 - four weeks short of her 78th birthday and seven weeks before she hoped to perform at the Barack Obama inaugural. She received several awards in her lifetime: in 1999, Bill Clinton presented her the National Endowment for the Arts medal, she received the Kennedy Center honors in 2004 plus a Library of Congress award in 2005. And in Martin Scorsese's 2005 Bob Dylan documentary No Direction Home - Odetta has an important place in the film.
Odetta was an influence to many (Harry Belafonte, Janis Joplin, Joan Baez, Maya Angelou and Carly Simon, for starters) ... and let's leave the last word for Bob Dylan - who had begun performing rock music in Minnesota in the late 1950's:
The first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta. I heard a record of hers in a record store, back when you could listen to records right there in the store. That was in '58 or something like that. Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustic guitar, a flat-top Gibson.
One song by Leadbelly that Odetta made her own was the song Gallows Pole that was made popular when Led Zeppelin III was released in the autumn of 1970. It is representative of her 1960's folk songs, and below you can hear it.
Hangman, hangman, slack your rope
Slack it for a while
I think I see my mother coming
Riding many a mile
Mama, did you bring me silver?
Mama, did you bring me gold?
Or did you come to see me hanging
By the gallows pole?
I didn't bring no silver
I didn't bring no gold
I came to see you hanging
By the gallows pole