I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend.
ART NOTES - a collection of Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century paintings (in virtually all genres) in an exhibit entitled Northern Baroque Splendor is at the Cincinnati, Ohio Art Museum through September 20th.
CHEERS to seeing that in Sub-Saharan Africa, the death penalty has fallen out of use, with abolition on the rise.
OF NOTE - a northern New Hampshire editorial writer/blogger named Susan Bruce has chimed in thusly, post-debate:
Now that The Donald has insulted Megyn Kelly of Fox News, the women of the GOP are finally getting a little miffed at his misogyny. They've ignored it for years. Trumpelstiltskin has said a gazillion terrible things about women.
They didn't care when it was Rosie O'Donnell. They didn't care when it was NY Times writer Gail Collins. They didn't care LAST MONTH when he referred to a lawyer who needed to pump breast milk for her baby as "disgusting."
The doughty women of the GOP happily turned ignored all of it until he insulted a Fox News "reporter." All of a sudden the women of the GOP are outraged.
You let this happen, women of the GOP. You turned a blind eye - and now you're paying for it. You built this.
THURSDAY's CHILD is
Tilly the Cat - an Australian shelter kitteh whose head is at a 45° angle not out of puzzlement .... but who is believed to have suffered an attack in her youth.
It is also believed, though, that she is otherwise well: and up for adoption.
IN a PROFILE in the Guardian, the singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie speaks of her new album and tour, and of being blacklisted by the Nixon administration during the 1970's.
CHEERS to the Nordic nation of Finland - where a xenophobic member of Parliament (whose anti-immigration party is part of the governing coalition) wrote a scathing attack on multiculturalism in both Finnish and English - four years after the massacre carried out by the Norwegian far-right bigot Anders Breivik, who in his writings also condemned multiculturalism.
His countrymen responded with a massive rally in the capital city of Helsinki, with the slogan "We Have a Dream" (in Finnish).
FRIDAY's CHILD (shown in a grainy photo) is Felix the Cat - who doesn't appear to have a bag-of-tricks ..... but did manage to hiss and scream at Neiko the Tiger (on the opposite side of a fence) ... and eventually caused Neiko to just walk away.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the NFL Hall of Fame running back Mel Farr - who for a time had a chain of automobile dealerships - who has died at the age of 70 ...... and the English actor George Cole - who had a distinguished TV career in the UK and portrayed the (young) Ebenezer Scrooge in the beloved 1951 British adaptation of A Christmas Carol (outliving Patrick Macnee, who portrayed the young Jacob Marley, by less than 45 days) - who has died at the age of 90.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
YUK for today - from Kevin Drum's (long-running) lefty blog:
"You've seen ('Celebrity Apprentice') right? You're not one of those vegan, weenie lefties who lives in a bubble of art museums and Audubon meetings, unwilling to sully yourself with popular TV, are you? The kind who looks down on regular folks?
Oh hell, sure you are. So here's how the show works".
FATHER-SON? - the host of the long-running Bravo television series
Inside the Actors Studio,
James Lipton .... as well as
Walter Becker - one of the founding members of Steely Dan.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ............... while not a household name like that of rockabilly pioneer Ricky Nelson, nor prominently amongst rockers-who-died-young such as Buddy Holly: the name Eddie Cochran belongs prominently for his influence in the music that was soon to follow. In his short twenty-one years on this planet, he had some hit songs and a guitar style that many musicians who are household names cite as an inspiration.
Born as Ray Edward Cochran in Albert Lea, Minnesota in the autumn of 1938 (although he often said he was born in Oklahoma where his parents hailed from) - either way, his family wound up in California when he was twelve, where he played in the school band. At the age of 17 in 1955, he made two friends who would help launch his career. One was singer Hank Cochran with whom he formed the "Cochran Brothers Band" for a while (even though they were not related) that garnered attention in Southern California. The other he met at a record store: the twenty-six year-old lyricist Jerry Capehart who had some success as a songwriter previously and would (eventually) become Eddie Cochran's manager.
Hank Cochran in time headed out on his own, while Jerry Capehart was convinced he had found a star in Eddie Cochran and was able to land a contract for him at Liberty Records (when every label sought a 'new Elvis' to sign). His big break came when director Boris Petroff decided to use Cochran in his 1956 musical comedy film The Girl Can't Help It starring Jayne Mansfield. The film had numerous musicians (Little Richard, jazz singers Julie London and Abbey Lincoln) and Cochran became a star singing Twenty Flight Rock which has an interesting postscript. A year later, a 16 year-old John Lennon was quite impressed by another young lad's ability to play and sing this song just like Eddie Cochran did, who turned out to be one .... (James) Paul McCartney.
Eddie's first solo single was "Sittin' in the Balcony" and he went on to record prolifically for Liberty Records. Although he only released one album during his lifetime - and many tunes were crooning ballads that the label wanted - he excelled in up-tempo rocking numbers which he became known for. 1958 saw several songs of his reach the charts, including C'mon Everybody as well as Somethin' Else - both of which are now considered classics. He also had minor hits with "Weekend", "Teenage Heaven" and "Nervous Breakdown".
Eddie Cochran was, for someone of that era (and for a young musician, in particular) considered not only one of the first technically proficient guitar heroes - as he is considered one of the earliest power chord and string bending proponents in rock, and his Gretsch 6120 Chet Atkins model helped make it a top-selling model - but he also used overdubs at a time when it was utilized mostly by the likes of Les Paul, not young pop stars.
In the early months of 1960 he toured Great Britain for ten weeks along with fellow rocker Gene Vincent as well as songwriter Sharon Sheeley - Eddie Cochran's fiancée. At that time, kids in the UK rarely had a chance to see their heroes from the US, and the tour proved to be a huge success - one reason why Cochran is a much bigger name in Britain today than the US. After one show, Cochran handed his guitar to a thirteen year-old boy named Mark Feld, allowing him to carry it to the singer’s waiting limousine (who later became known as Marc Bolan of the band T-Rex).
Eddie and Gene enjoyed their time so much, they agreed to extend the tour by several weeks (after allowing for a two-week break to return to the US) following their last show in Bristol in April, 1960. But during their taxi ride back to London for their flight, the car smashed into a lamp post. Sharon Sheeley suffered a broken pelvis and Gene Vincent sustained injuries that would (eventually) shorten his career. But it was Eddie Cochran who was thrown through the windshield and died a day later, six months short of his twenty-second birthday. The driver was convicted of dangerous driving and spent six months in prison. Eerily, a song Cochran recorded shortly before his death was Three Steps to Heaven - a big hit in Britain when it was released posthumously.
Interestingly, one of the police cadets at the local constabulary (who was first on the scene of the crash) was named Dave Harmon, who says he first learned to play guitar by playing Eddie Cochran's guitar in the station the next few nights (before it was returned to Cochran's family). Harmon abandoned law enforcement, becoming the lead singer of the band Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich - and adopting the stage name Dave Dee.
Eddie Cochran has been cited as an influence by many musicians, besides the aforementioned ones: Pete Townshend of The Who, the Irish blues guitarist Rory Gallagher ... and most obviously in the Stray Cat guitarist Brian Setzer - who in the 1987 film La Bamba portrayed Eddie Cochran in a cameo role. Eddie Cochran songs have been performed by the likes of The Clash, Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Beach Boys, Buck Owens, Dion DeMucci, Tom Petty and Motorhead to name just a few.
His associates also went on to noted careers: old partner Hank Cochran became a premiere Nashville songwriter who passed away in 2010, fiancée Sharon Sheeley wrote songs for Mac Davis and Jackie DeShannon before her death in 2002 and his lyricist/manager Jerry Capehart later managed Glen Campbell as well as the actor Frank Gorshin before his death in 1998.
Eddie Cochran's nephew Bobby wrote a biography of the star's life in 2003, and there is a nice one-disc Somethin' Else compilation album of his music available.
Eddie Cochran's "C'mon Everybody" was listed by Rolling Stone as #403 in its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and Cochran was named as #84 in its 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 ... only its second year of existence.
And each June, his hometown of Albert Lea, Minnesota still celebrates Eddie Cochran Days - fifty-five years after his death.
Eddie Cochran's only Top Ten song in the US is also the one most performed by others. 1958's Summertime Blues is a succinct 2-minute song about teenage angst - as Jerry Capehart explained, "There had been a lot of songs about summer, but none about the hardships of summer". It was named #74 in Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and below you can hear Eddie's original version.
There have been several noted cover versions: Blue Cheer had the highest-selling version and others included the Beach Boys and country singer Alan Jackson. But perhaps the most notably different arrangement was by The Who on their 1970 Live at Leeds - with its famous "Crackling noises OK, do not correct" album label warning. Below you can listen to the re-mastered version, which today reads, "Crackling noises .......... have been corrected!"
I'm a-gonna raise a fuss
I'm a-gonna raise a holler
About working all summer
just to try and earn a dollar
Every time I call my baby
to try to get a date
My boss says, "No dice, son:
you gotta work late"
My mom and papa told me
"Son, you gotta make some money
If you wanna use the car
to go riding next Sunday"
Well I didn't go to work,
I told the boss I was sick
"Now you can't use the car
'cause you didn't work a lick"
I'm gonna take two weeks
gonna have a fine vacation
I'm gonna take my problem
to the United Nations
Well, I called my congressman
and he said, ~quote~:
"I'd like to help you, son:
but you're too young to vote"
Sometimes I wonder
what I'm a-gonna do?
'Cause there ain't no cure
for the summertime blues