Little by Little(hales)

What the F***! Department:

2012-01-23T16:39:00.002-05:00

Courtesy Confetta Ras, from a post by Ralph Carney:

Johnny Otis and Etta James

2012-01-21T12:18:00.000-05:00

Etta James (Jamesetta Hawkins, January 25, 1938 – January 20, 2012) was fourteen years old when she auditioned for Johnny Otis in a San Francisco Hotel.

She had written an answer song to Hank Ballard's "Work with Me, Annie" called "Roll With Me, Henry." She and her friends the Michell sisters had a girl- singer trio called the Creolettes, and the oldest, Abye, set up the audition.JohnnyOtis liked what he heard, and despite the girls' ages (Jean was also fourteen, her sister Abye, 23) took them under his wing, put them on the road and produced Etta's song, retitled, "The Wallflower."

On the road in the early days

He also changed their name to the Peaches, and Jamesetta Hawkins became Etta James, nicknamed Peaches. Johnny Otis (Ioannis Alexandres Veliotes, December 28, 1921 – January 17, 2012) was many things: vibist, drummer, arranger, songwriter, producer, talent scout, entrepreneur, bandleader, dee- jay and farmer. More, probably. The son of Greek immigrants, he grew up in Los Angeles and embraced Black culture. Much like the newspaperman and essayist Lafcadio Hearn, who after moving from New Orleans to Japan adopted the Japanese culture as his own, Johnny Otis pretty much became a black man, albeit a somewhat light- skinned one, probably darker though than Don Robey of Dallas, who really was African- American.

Like many zealous converts, he became an uber- black man: street king, hipster par excellence.He was famous for re-molding his discoveries: JamesEtta into Etta James, Johnny Watson into "Young" John Watson (later Johnny "Guitar" Watson), Gene "the Mighty Flea" Connors, "Pee Wee" Crayton- reinventing them as he went along, because, after all, wasn't he his own greatest reinvention? He produced their records, often wrote their songs, or at least got a co- credit, and booked them on the road. If you wanted to make it as an entertainer in black Los Angeles in the late '40's to mid '50's, you had to go through a swarthy Greek. He held the keys to that Kingdom for many years, and that's how Etta James started out.

Eventually, their lives diverged. Etta James went on to sign with Leonard Chess at Chess Records, had many hit records, recorded "At Last" (introduced by Glenn Miller in a 1942 movie), the theme song of "...every graduation, wedding and big event in this country," she said when I saw her at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2006.

At a later performance, after her massive weight loss

Otis never stopped playing, never stopped putting bands together or promoting new musicians, including his talented but troubled son Shuggie. He was featured briefly in Clint Eastwood's film, "Play Misty For Me" and the album of that performance, "Live at the Monterrey Jazz Festival" helped him get back into the public eye, albeit a whiter, younger eye than before. He maintained a high level of professionalism to the end of his performing days, and gained reknown as a painter and organic farmer, ever the classic renaissance man.

Fascinating lives, hard lives, intense lives, American success stories, real American success stories (as opposed to Horatio Alger, whoever he was). Etta, frustrated and proud to the end, unhappy with the President playing Beyonce's weak version of her song at the Inaugural. Johnny Otis, playing at his son's organic market on the weekends to sell- out crowds, despite the ultimate failure of the market itself.

Both gone now within seventy- two hours of one another. Starting together and somehow finishing together, with a lot of stories in- between.

What We Lost: Blues Deaths in 2011 or The One About Hubert Sumlin

2012-01-16T15:24:00.000-05:00

This comment was posted on the blog January 13th:

Steve M. said...: I check your blog mostly for the music stuff. Since Hubert Sumlin died, you haven't posted anything about him. will you? Thanks for all your other good posts on blues and jazz players.
January 13, 2012 2:05 PM

So true, Steve. I am remiss in not writing about Hubert Sumlin, the long- time guitarist for Howling Wolf and a favorite of mine. Thinking about Hubert started me thinking about what a devastating year 2011 was for many classic blues musicians.

A partial list:

Dave "Honeyboy" Edwards

Dave "Honeyboy" Edwards (June 18th- August 29th, 2011), a compatriot of Robert Johnson's and just about everyone else from the Mississippi Delta that ever played blues. His autobiography, The World Don't Owe Me Nothing is a fascinating book that I highly recommend.

Eddie Kirkland

Eddie Kirkland (August 16, 1923 – February 27, 2011), dead in a car accident at the age of 87. An indefatigable road warrior who must have played three hundred nights a year, year in, year out. I opened a show that Eddie headlined. He was a beautiful eccentric, with the most varied array of old solid state amps I'd ever seen, all wired together. He wore a kind of black gypsy outfit with a head scarf. He could have been a violinist in a Hungarian restaurant in Harlem. I got the impression that he could do anything, from wire a house to mesmerize an audience made up of people a third his age.

Mojo Buford on harmonica with Muddy Waters

George "Mojo" Buford (November 10, 1929 – October 11, 2011) , the harp player who could always come home again, if home was the Muddy Waters' Band. Buford played briefly with Muddy after Little Walter left, then again after James Cotton left, then again after Paul Oscher left and finally yet again when Jerry Portnoy left. While no one ever thought Buford was a great harmonica player, he was a very good one, who made a living as a solo performer in Minneapolis in- between his stints with Muddy. Simple, unadorned lines, and good timing coupled with a robust tone were the hallmarks of his playing.

Lacy Gibson, right, with Willie Black, left, and Freddie Below, center

Lacy Gibson (May 1, 1936 – April 11, 2011) was a Chicago mainstay who never liked to travel outside the city. His jazz- influenced guitar enhanced performances by musicians as varied as Junior Wells and Sun Ra, his one- time brother- in- law. In later years Lacy and his wife Ann ran an after hours club out of their basement, and were known for the block- parties they'd put together.

Big Jack Johnson © Bill Streber

Big Jack Johnson (July 30, 1940 – March 14, 2011), a Mississippi blues mainstay died at the age of seventy, way too early. He came to prominence with the Jellyroll Kings, an electrified Delta group featuring Sam Carr on drums and Frank Frost on keyboards and harmonica. Johnson later started the Oilmen. Along with R. L. Burnside and Paul "Wine" Jones, Johnson exemplified the contemporay Delta sound.

Pinetop Perkins

Joseph William "Pinetop" Perkins (July 7th, 1913- March 21, 2011) did the impossible: he filled Otis Spann's piano spot in the Muddy Waters' Band. In the course of his twelve years with Muddy, he made folks forget Spann (or at least not miss him so much) and became one of the most beloved figures in the blues. Prior to Muddy, "Top" played with Rice Miller on KFFA, Earl Hooker, Little Milton, and Albert King among others. I asked him one time about playing with Rice Miller. "Did he have names for the songs, like 'Eyesight to the Blind', or did he just say, 'Shuffle in G?'"

"Shuffle in G," Top laughed.

In the last year of his long life he won a Grammy for a record he made with Hubert Sumlin.

He loved MacDonald's food and lived to be 97.

Howard Tate, soul singer extraordinaire

Howard Tate (August 13, 1939 – December 2, 2011) was blessed with one of the most beautiful voices in the annals of Soul music: swooping falsettos, great mid- range tenor, incredibly passionate. In the late 1960's, he made a record so perfect, so realized that it immediately became a cult staple. If you had this record, then you knew! You just... knew.

Produced by the late Jerry Ragavoy, the record "Get It While You Can" spawned three top 20 hits and one of Janis Joplin's most memorable covers.

Tate never hit like that again.

Despite his great voice, follow- ups filled with inferior material failed to chart or even approach the greatness of that first transcendent recording. Tate turned to drugs in 1980, became homeless for a period and ultimately sought solice in the church, where, in 2001 he was rediscovered by a New Jersey disc jockey.

Numerous live performances followed, he travelled the world, made another pretty good CD with Ragavoy and a live performance DVD for the Shout Factory.

He died at the age of 72 from myeloma and leukemia.

A Young Hubert Sumlin with the Howling Wolf. Together they played history.

Hubert Sumlin (November 16, 1931 – December 4, 2011) played guitar with Howling Wolf for so many years that Wolf called Hubert his son. "I think he really thought Hubert was his son after awhile," said James Cotton.

Sumlin briefly joined Muddy Waters in 1956 after a money- related dispute with Wolf, but rejoined Wolf after getting into a fight with Muddy and Otis Spann. A deceptively sweet man, Hubert was not one to back down from a fight. He had his teeth knocked out by Wolf ("He just backhanded me and teeth went everywhere!") and dodged a motorcycle chain wielded by Otis Spann.

His beautiful guitar tone was partially the result of not using a pick. My particular favorite Sumlin break is the one on "Hidden Charms", after Wolf says, "Git it!" Hubert knocks out one of the truly great recorded guitar solos of all time! He is among a handful of blues guitarists whose sound is identifiable within one or two notes, and some of his licks, like the voicings on "Killing Floor" or the trance- like figure on "Smokestack Lightning" are among the most influential ever recorded.

After Wolf's death, Hubert began recording on his own, often with someone famous like Eric Clapton. His 2010 record with Pinetop Perkins, "Joined at the Hip" won a Grammy and he was a mainstay of Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festivals.

Much respected, much venerated, Hubert died quietly in Wayne, New Jersey of heart failure.

New Years Eve

2011-12-31T15:56:00.001-05:00

I'm playing the Blues tonight at the Zoo Bar in Washington DC. This is the 7th or 8th year my band has played NYE at the Zoo, and, truth be told, I'd be pretty sad if we weren't.

Every year brings about a certain amount of change, but, ultimately, it's the things that don't change that begin to mean more and more to me.

Like the beauty of a Robert Johnson recording, or a Rembrandt self- portrait, especially the later ones. There are so many things, I won't attempt a list.

So, Happy New Year, gentle readers, we'll meet in the future sometime soon next year.

Thanks to all of you.

Where You'll Be Spending the Rest of Your Life

2011-12-30T15:05:00.000-05:00

Windsor McCay, from Mr. Door Trees' site

As we approach the last of 2011, my thoughts seem to turn toward my old nemesis- the Future. Long- time L by L readers may recall my fixation with the Future, because it never seemed to arrive!

Here are some links:
http://bretlittlehales.blogspot.com/2009/12/future-is-now.html and http://bretlittlehales.blogspot.com/2010/03/future-isnt-now.html.

And now, on the eve of 2012, the year the Mayans supposedly predicted would be the planet's final one, I just keep thinking about the Future that never was, and how close we came to it.

I'm not talking about the total lack of anti- gravity belts; or cities in the clouds, or under glass domes, or on other planets (glass domes again, I guess.) Nor am I talking about controlling the weather, robot servants, and pills that turn into full plates of food! Rocket cars, highways made of clear, plexi- glassed tubed tunnels that never have traffic jams. Utopian societies w/ tunics that have space-age fins on the shoulders. Invisibility rays!

Well, you get the idea.

I'm talking about some things we used to have that can serve to remind us that the future was once right around the corner:

1. We went to the moon and played golf
I don't play golf, but if I were on the moon, I'd be happy to give it a few swings! The point being, of course, that instead of only one astronaut, all of us, by now, should be able to go to the moon and do some anti- gravity putting.In a glass- domed city. But we're not! And why not?

2. Monorails in department stores
My wife used to celebrate Xmas in Philadelphia, visiting her grandparents, and recalls riding in a monorail (hanging?- I'll have to ask) around Wanamaker's department store. This part of the future probably got litigated out of existence, a fate I imagine that curtailed a lot of the future.

<--- The Santa Land monorail, Meir and Frank's in Portland, Oregon, similar to the one in Wanamaker's.

3. Blimps and dirigibles
Oh, the humanity! Well before the explosion of the Hindenburg, blimps were a valid form of mass transportation. Unfortunately, prior to WWII, blimps were filled with highly flammable hydrogen, instead of stable but hard- to- find helium. Nowadays the only blimps we see are advertising blimps, a la the Goodyear Blimp (which, by the way, I rode in one time!)
Imagine this: it's a beautiful fall day, the leaves are changing and you and your honey decide to view the Skyline Drive from the air. You go to the nearby mooring station and take an elevator or escalator to the entrance floor where your Skyline Blimp is tethered, buy a ticket, maybe $2.00 tops, and rise quietly and majestically over the city to the Skyline Drive, your mouths full of "Oohs!" and Aahs!"

The more I think of it, the more the current view of the computer- dominated future seems physically static. Video games have replaced an actual reality, unfortunately. Virtual reality is seemingly without consequence, or so it may seem, and all the thought that would have gone into the time machine has gone into some current video game.

4. Contacting the Spirit world
Seem farfetched?
Not so! Back at the turn of the 20th century, huge amounts of people were confident that we could communicate with the dead. The Spiritualism movement was not unlike a religion, much like,say, Scientology today or the worship of angels as the benign messengers of Deities.
It wasn't until Houdini devoted much of the final years of his career to exposing mediums as frauds that the movement began to die out.
Actually it may be coming back. With the proliferation of television shows about Paranormal phenomena, I wouldn't be surprised if the movement makes a comeback.However, no one has patented a working communicating device that can reach the netherworld, wherever and whatever that may entail.
Strange when you think about it, isn't it? All those particons, and radio waves and we still can't drop a line to our nearest deceased and find out how they're doing? Vatican cover- up, anyone?

5. Anything Buckminster Fuller invented
For a smart guy, Buckminster Fuller seems woefully under- represented in our current future. Ever been inside a geodesic dome (answer: not since the late '60's)? A folding house? Driven an aerodynamically designed car? No? Not surprised. Very few have. But it all existed. And it looked cool too: a huge qualification of the future that also got ignored. How cool- looking is an IPad? It's an iPhone tray, for chrissakes! TV dinners looked cooler, especially on the box.

5. PF Flyers
Okay, so they weren't really shoes that could enhance your anti-gravity abilities, but at least they were thinking about it.

6. Anything in a Max Fleischer cartoon.
Anything...

7. Backyard Roller Coasters
I knew of a kid in Chevy Chase MD whose dad had built him a roller coaster in their backyard. Johnny Koehler and I snuck in once and actually played on it, but the dad caught us and threw us out.

8. Personal rocket packs and
9. Floating cars
They had 'em, I saw 'em- where are they now? Expedia has one, but, like the blimps, their usage seems limited to advertising.

10. All of these:
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2011/12/28/its-new-16/
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/04/27/motor-bikes-speed-home-repairs/
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2008/01/30/bizarre-eat-shops-built-to-lure-trade/
http://blog.modernmechanix.com/2011/09/22/robbie-and-gronk-mobile-robots/
and many, many more!

Let's not abandon our Steampunk vision of the future, please! Life is just morbidly dull and virtual enough as it is.

Long Live the Future- where you'll be spending the rest of your life!

Merry Christmas to All (and to All a Good Night)

2011-12-25T14:04:00.003-05:00


From animator Dan Glass, the Fleischer Studios, 1932 © Fleischer Collection

Santa Drinks Coke

2011-12-24T15:27:00.003-05:00

Haddon Hubbard "Sunny" Sundblom (June 22, 1899 – March 10, 1976) did not create the modern image of Santa Claus, but he certainly refined it. His Santa, created for the Coca Cola Company starting in the 1930's, entered the American consciousness, where it lives to this day. Virtually every commercial on television that has a Santa figure, from the Santa- bashing Best Buy ads to the pseudo- romantic Kay Jeweler spots, utilizes Sundblom's concept of Jolly Old Saint Nick.
Sundblom was also an accomplished pin-up artist whose 1972 Playboy cover probably inspired many of the costumes from my "Xmas in a Primitive Land" blog.

Thanks to Mr. Door Tree for these images- be sure to stop by his excellent blog, Golden Age Comic Book Stories.

Sunblom's 1972 Playboy cover- his final published work

Xmas in a Primitive Land

2011-12-11T19:37:00.001-05:00

New Orleans, or, as longtime L by L followers know it, America's Greatest City, never ceases to amaze me. Here we are, six years since a devastating natural disaster that, according to Alaska senator Ted Stevens, should have closed the city permanently. Instead, Senator Ted got shut down and AGC is stronger and more amoral than ever.

So, why would I be surprised when I see over a hundred people dressed in strange variations on the traditional Santa theme? I don't know, but it still floored me.

They paraded down Royal, past the galleries and antique stores, past the toy soldier store and past Brennan's, home of the world's most boring breakfast, Bananas Foster (the one they set on fire if you feel like waiting awhile.) Yes, they even passed the courthouse which was rocking an invitation- only Xmas Party. They finally reached their destination at the end of Royal, set up a beatbox and danced their asses off (some even wore artificial asses.)

After watching all the pulchritude, I finally saw a beautiful woman slinking shamefacedly away from the crowd. "Are you okay?" I asked her. "I'm dying for a cigarette," she replied. "I don't want anyone to see me smoking."

They're sisters!

Definitely naughty.


They did their eyes before they'd let me shoot.

Still sexy- smoking, that is.

This is what Santas do after the stores close

Still Naughty

Happy 176th Birthday, Mark Twain

2011-11-30T20:03:00.001-05:00

Wish you were here, Sam. Of course, you'd probably be the most dangerous man alive, but I think you'd be able to handle it.

What would you say about America now? I wish I knew.

Over 50,000 Page Views!

2011-11-26T14:56:00.001-05:00

Thanks everyone- 50,000 page views (49,999 of which may be from me- not really!) of this blog.

Some other interesting L by L stats: The London Eye post, http://bretlittlehales.blogspot.com/2010/12/london-eye.html, is the single most popular at 366 views. Next is Happy Birthday, Little Walter, http://bretlittlehales.blogspot.com/2011/05/happy-birthday-little-walter-1-may-1930.html, at 70 p. v.'s.

Why are these so popular? I have no idea. Really. I don't think it's only the subject matter, and I know it's not the writing, as much as I'd love to think that had something to do with it.

It's a mystery!

Hopefully there are folks who look at everything or a lot of things when they come here. That would be nice. It's certainly part of my intention, but hey- I'm just happy with 50,000 page views!

Thinking About Dwight Frye

2011-11-15T16:29:00.001-05:00

Dwight Iliff Frye (February 22, 1899 – November 7, 1943)

As "Karl" in The Bride of Frankenstein

And here's what I was thinking: whatever it was that he did, he did it better than anyone else. Ever.

Smokin' Joe

2011-11-10T09:39:00.000-05:00

Joe (right) and Marvis Frazier at Fight Night © Breton Littlehales

Joseph William "Joe" Frazier (January 12, 1944 – November 7, 2011) died of liver cancer, one of the few things he couldn't KO with his powerful left hook. He was only 67.

Frazier came of age as a boxer in the late afternoon of the fight game: early Don King, post- Sonny Liston and the obvious influence of the mob, and squarely in the last great years of boxing, the Muhammed Ali years. This I know, because although I've never followed sports, I knew who Joe Frazier was, just as I knew who George Foreman was, just as I, like almost every American male of my generation who saw Ali at the Norwegian Winter Olympics stand with his arm jerking uncontrollably, wept at the sight of the champ on his sad descent.

Joe Frazier was also a champ.

A relatively short but powerful man, Frazier was known for his devastating left hook, the partial result (it was said) of a childhood accident that permanently crooked his left arm. He came to national attention through the 1964 Olympics, where he won a gold medal, fighting his final opponents with a broken left thumb.

He defeated Ali in one of the greatest heavyweight bouts of all time, the so- called "Fight of the Century" in 1971, having secured the undisputed title by defeating Jimmy Ellis the year before. It was a fight that put both Frazier and Ali in the hospital. Frazier was 27, Ali 29.

In 1973 he was easily defeated by George Foreman in Jamaica. Although he would never be heavyweight champion again there was one more truly great fight left in him.

Dubbed the "Thrilla From Manilla", it was the fight that Ali said afterward made him think he was close to death. "They said you were through, Joe," Ali reportedly said during the fight. "They lied, pretty boy," Frazier shot back.

Frazier's trainer Eddie Fuch threw in the towel at the beginning of the fifteenth round, thereby giving the bout to Ali. Joe Frazier would fight again, but he was never able to recapture the glory he had achieved, even in defeat.

The fight left a permanent mark on Ali as well. His ring doctor Ferde Pacheco advised him to quit boxing. Pacheco felt the damage Joe had inflicted was too much on the charismatic fighter. "I told him to quit. I said he could really hurt himself if he kept boxing. But he kept boxing anyway."

Joe retired to Philadelphia, opened a gym and trained fighters, including his son Marvis. A brief comeback in 1981 convinced him to retire permanently and he was allowed, unlike, say, Joe Louis, or Sonny Liston, to age gracefully, mentoring young fighters happy to study with the champ.

I met him at Fight Night, an annual event here in Washington, DC. I was photographing for the Washingtonian Magazine, shooting portraits of the great fighters in attendance. Joe was gracious to a fault, and wore one of the best- fitting tuxes I've ever seen. The only time he bristled was when I mentioned (in a very neutral way) Ali. "He's doing magic tricks now. That's all he can do," he said. He had never forgiven Muhammed for the verbal invective Ali had spat out in the months prior to their bouts. The old rivalry was still alive in these two.

My generation, the so- called baby boomer generation, is losing its heroes at a rapid rate these days. This is nothing new- it was a tough time in which to grow up. Every time you heard a radio station at night play four songs in a row of the same artist, you could be sure they were dead, like Hendrix or Janis Joplin. Otis Redding, John Lennon, Elvis, even a manque like Jim Morrison, all went way too soon.

It may seem, in that context, that an icon like Joe Frazier lived a good full life but now, as I am sixty, it seems to me too brief, way too short. A tough man, a good man, a mentor, a father... these are all things to be celebrated. But a lot of guys are those things or at least some of them (I'm not so tough).

But how many guys get to be the champ?

I've Smelled That Gas Before

2011-11-03T18:21:00.000-04:00

Good old California.

As the Occupy Wall Street protest continues peacefully in New York City, police in Oakland, CA are hurling tear gas and arresting protesters. According to news reports, the mood remains festive (free barbecue and ice cream) and the smell of pot permeates the air. I love that last- the smell of pot and tear gas was THE smell of the California '60's- much like the smell of urine and Gauloise cigarettes in Paris during the same era.

Of course, that's what the press says, but it's probably true. In California it's less harmful and way less frowned upon to smoke a joint in public than a cigarette.

In a "Day of Mass Action" the Port of Oakland has been shut down in the general strike and banks have closed. ATMs were blocked by trash dumpsters and protesters smashed windows at Wells Fargo and Bank of America branches.

One woman was delayed in traffic fifteen minutes while marchers blocked the street. She honked her car horn in solidarity. However, a man driving a Mercedes tried to run his car (what a detail- of course it was a Mercedes!) into a group of protesters, injuring two. Or so it has been reported.

Maybe this is the beginning of the '60's again, just as the '60's were the beginning of the Beats again, etc., etc. I guess it really does go in cycles (or circles).

Wouldn't it be great if they do something about the music while they're at it?

Thanks to Time Magazine for these fine photographs.

My Favorite Photographs Department, pt. 3:

2011-11-01T17:10:00.001-04:00

Edward Henry Weston (March 24, 1886 – January 1, 1958)

My Favorite Photographs Department, pt. 2:

2011-10-28T15:32:00.000-04:00

Henri Cartier- Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004), Alicante, Spain (1933)

My Favorite Photographs Department, pt. 1

2011-10-13T08:22:00.002-04:00

Eugène Atget (February 12, 1857 – August 4, 1927), Organ Grinder (1898):

Hal Foster's Tarzan

2011-10-12T10:37:00.003-04:00

Edgar Rice Burroughs' most famous creation Tarzan of the Apes came in many forms: books, movies, radio and in the comics. I discovered Tarzan through a wonderful book my father had and passed onto me. The reason the book is so great is not just because of Burroughs' plot, which includes Tarzan's origin, but because of Hal Foster's drawings.

Foster (August 18, 1892 – July 25, 1982), who later became famous for "Prince Valiant", first drew Tarzan in January, 1929 for the comics section. He left the strip but came back In 1931 to draw only the Sunday episodes. An expert draughtsman and storyteller, Foster's panels read like storyboards for the best Tarzan movie never made.

Subsequent Tarzan artists (most notably Burne Hogarth) left their mark, but I never liked them quite as much.

Unfortunately, as in so much of the culture of the '30's, there are elements in these strips that I thought unconsciously racist and for that I apologize in advance. One hopes these elements will not hamper your enjoyment of Foster's line too much.

Years later I saw a copy of a Conan comic in which John Buscema inked his own pencils. There it was- that great Hal Foster look. Obviously John loved Foster's run on Tarzan as much as I did!

John Buscema channeling Hal Foster in Conan # 39

Goodbye, Mr. Jobs

2011-10-05T22:27:00.001-04:00

Stephen Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011): inventor, visionary, innovator, master showman, cancer survivor, cancer victim.

I've never owned a computer that wasn't an Apple. I still have, somewhere here in the chaos that is my basement office, one of the Macintosh models pictured above. I've kept it. It's not worth anything, and the software to run it is long gone, but I kept it because I felt that it was an important machine, and I'm not all that fond of machines. Yet there it is, sitting on a bookshelf, looking just like the ones in the picture.

My tiny I-Pod is in my car, waiting until I go to the gym tomorrow, when I'll plug it in my ears to ease the psychic pain of the elliptical trainer. I'm typing this blog on my wireless Apple keyboard, into my latest Mac: OS 10.6.8. It's about the size of a square paperback book.

Of course, I could go on and on.

Steve Jobs has touched the lives of billions around the world. His machines and inventions, like Pixar, have enriched society in such a global way that his name has become synonymous not just with commerce, but with the narrow world that embraces creativity and commerce, ideas and production, financial and aesthetic success.

Steve Jobs was somehow able to marry creative thinking with commercial success, beautiful design with titanic application. He was able to take on every challenge and solve them in the most elegant way possible.

Except the last one. He wasn't able to live long enough.

Ed Wynn

2011-09-28T18:44:00.000-04:00

Much like Joe E. Brown and Oliver Hardy, Ed Wynn had the kind of face that lent itself to caricature. His cartoon likeness turned up in Warner Bros.' "Shuffle Off to Buffalo", and his face graces a pot of jam in Max Fleischer's "Betty in Blunderland".

A successful vaudeville, radio and television comedian, he took on dramatic roles in the last decade of his life at his son Keenan's urging (although the two always seemed to be the same age to a dumb kid like me.)

A lot of things are sweet about this ad: it's originally done in watercolors, it's signed, there's a horse's nose in it, and it's about a fire- chief sponsored by a flammable product. I suppose Texaco water would have been a tough sell back then, certainly much harder to market and far less profitable.

Ironic Car Department

2011-09-26T08:43:00.000-04:00

And you thought the word "ironic" was only used in comics:

The Cult of Stupid

2011-09-17T10:11:00.001-04:00

I don't want to join the Cult of Stupid.

I don't want to assume vaccines lead to "mental retardation."
I don't want to call Social Security "a Ponzie Scheme."
I don't want to strap on my gun to attend a political rally or a townhall meeting.
I don't want to make less than $20,000 a year and still support lower taxes for the rich.
I don't want to condemn intellectuals.
I don't want to condemn homosexuals.
I don't want to condemn people who belong to non- Christian religions.
I don't want to hate black people or any other minority or majority for that matter.
I don't want to stop government grants and loans for college educations.
I don't believe the president was born anywhere else than Hawaii. I don't need to see his birth certificate any more than I need to see anyone else's.
I don't want America's aesthetic culture to decline any further.
I don't want to elect leaders who pretend to be stupid just to get votes.
I don't want to elect leaders who actually are stupid.
I don't want to join the Cult of Stupid.

But, hey, that's just me.

Honeyboy Redux

2011-09-07T16:17:00.001-04:00

The death of David Honeyboy Edwards last week (see post below) marked the end of the blues players who came up in the era of Delta- country blues: the first wave of blues, and also the blues that gave way to rock and roll, one of the most popular forms of music on the planet.

Honey, as his family called him, was born in 1915 in or near Greenwood MI, a town on the edge of the Delta and the edge of the Hill Country. By the 1920's, Charley Patton (b. 1891) had developed a large following in the Delta, playing a very raw, pure form of guitar- driven blues. Patton first recorded in 1929, and by the time Robert Johnson (like Edwards, a student of Patton) recorded in 1937, Delta and country blues were becoming diluted, thanks to the accessibility of radio and the emergence of the electric guitar. Both Honeyboy and Johnny Shines, who traveled with Robert, recall having to play the popular hits of the day, songs like, "Ain't She Sweet," and "Some of These Days."

Edwards grew up hobo-ing throughout the south, constantly moving from town to town, staying with whatever women would have him, gambling, drinking moonshine and playing his guitar and harmonica. In short, living the classic Delta bluesman life.The life that virtually no one of my generation who likes or plays blues can truly relate to, unless they were homeless and lived in a shelter.

But Honeyboy was rarely homeless, and rarely broke, because as long as he had his guitar, he could make some money playing on Delta streetcorners or jukes, or speakeasies.

And he was by no means unique: after the depression, a good- sized segment of mostly male and poor people rode trains in and under boxcars, hitched rides with strangers and ate whenever they could by doing odd jobs for people with the means to feed them.

Throughout his autobiography, The World Don't Owe Me Nothing, he refers to his early life as "great" and "lots of fun."

In the course of his 96 years, he met or befriended virtually every blues legend that ever played in the Delta, as well as Chicago, Memphis, St. Louis, Gary, Austin, Dallas and Houston. However, much like early jazz performers in New Orleans, like, for instance, Bunk Johnson, some of Honeyboy's stories seem somewhat apochryphal.

He's there to warn Robert Johnson about the evils of taking drinks from strange women in juke joints only days before Johnson does exactly that and dies. He's in Chicago when Sunnyland Slim pulls Muddy Waters off his truck- driving job to record with Leonard Chess (although he's definitely incorrect that Muddy drove the truck for one of Chess's businesses.) He already knows Muddy and Sunnyland from the Delta.

He knows everybody! If I had to list them all, this blog would stretch into the next three blogs, and it's already been continued from the last blog!

I have not heard much of Honeyboy's early recording, like the Lomax sessions he describes, but I have heard his Drop Down Mama from a great Chess collection by the same name issued in the late '60's . And Honeyboy is, well, good. Not great... not even neglected great, like Robert Nighthawk or Baby Face Leroy. Just good, as in not bad at all.

Ultimately it doesn't matter how good a blues musician he was, because his strength comes from his longevity. He was able to do what none of the others were able to do, save the recently deceased Pinetop Perkins. He was able to live for 96 years.

He was the last man standing in a ring full of genius and near- genius contenders. From what I know about him, he did it with grace, dignity, wry intelligence, talent and luck.

And that's pretty damn cool.

From left to right: Walter Horton, Honeyboy, Sunnyland Slim, Floyd Jones and Kansas City Red. Honeyboy is surrounded here by a few of his oldest and best friends.

w/ Michael Franks, his long- time manager and benefactor

Honeyboy's best friend, Little Walter Jacobs, playing guitar instead of harmonica

There are only two pictures of Charley Patton, and this is the better by far.

Honeyboy Edwards Says Goodbye After 96 Years

2011-08-29T16:59:00.001-04:00

From www.HoneyboyEdwards.com:
David Honeyboy Edwards
June 28, 1915 - August 29, 2011
RIP

David Honeyboy Edwards, the "Last of the Great Mississippi Delta
Bluesmen" has died. This morning Monday August 29, 2011, about 3 am
while resting peacefully at home, Honeyboy moved on to blues heaven. He
lived a long, full life, and he felt at peace. He loved to say, "The
world don't owe me nothing." Just shy of his 96th birthday, Honeyboy
played his last gigs at the Juke Joint Festival and Cathead
Mini-Festival in Clarksdale, Mississippi April 16 and 17, 2011.

Prior to his health turning for the worse in late April, Honeyboy was
scheduled to play numerous gigs in Chicago, across the USA and in
Europe, including today at Millennium Park in Chicago for the noon time
concert series. His manager Michael Frank had to cancel all those dates
due to Honeyboy's declining health. He maintained a strong spirit until
the end, telling stories and showing off his dexterity in his hands.

Visitation will be Thursday September 1 from 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm, with an
open mic for comments by his friends and fans from 7:00 to 8:00 pm at
the funeral home. Services will be private on Friday September 2.

McCullough Funeral & Cremation Services
851 E. 75th St.
Chicago, IL 60619
Phone: (773) 488-8900

David "Honeyboy" Edwards was, until 3AM this morning, the last man standing. And he knew it too.

Unlike Godot

2011-08-29T16:43:00.002-04:00

...Irene came and went, leaving us none the worse for wear. Lost power, got it back.

Lots of little twigs on the ground, some branches dented my wife's car, but all in all, we were very lucky and, for that, I am grateful.

Waiting for Irene

2011-08-27T06:38:00.000-04:00

6:10AM, Silver Spring, MD. My wife and I just dropped our youngest daughter at the Amtrak station so that she could catch a train back to Philadelphia and her husband. I'm about to put the seats back in the Caravan- the ones that have sat all summer on the front porch. I vacuumed out the French drain in the outdoor stairwell and got everything valuable off the floor in our flood- prone basement.

We'll lash the trash cans to the front porch railings with bungees, and I'll overturn our grill in the backyard to keep it from blowing away.

I'm counting on a power failure, so I've charged up my cell phone and my laptop, for all the good that will do me. If the power goes, so goes the WiFi.

Waiting for Irene.

This is a fraction of what my friends in New Orleans do almost every year since 2005 and Katrina. The Freeman- Archers (not their real names) have permanently packed boxes in the foyer under the stairs with candles, batteries and flashlights. I've seen them. In fact, I bet those boxes are there right now.

Irving Banister parked his car at the post office near his house in the Uptown section of New Orleans the night before Katrina broke the levees. When he returned a year later, his car was gone, along with everyone else's, stacked like brightly colored metal logs under the I-10 freeway.

Of course, it won't be that bad. Katrina was the storm of the century, at least to the people of the Gulf Coast, and certainly in terms of lasting impact to everyone in the United States.

But it will be more intense than I'd like. We'll be fine, along with the rest of DC. But what about my father, sitting in his house with my stepmother there in Keller, VA on the Bay? And my daughter in NYC, in her tiny apartment she shares with her fiance near Columbia. We asked her to come home, but she said she would be okay. I have no choice but to believe her. My sister asked my father to come stay with her in Charlottesville, but, again, he said they'd be okay. I wish I was that confident.

Waiting for Irene.

It's supposedly going to be sweet and sunny here by Sunday afternoon. We may be powerless by then but I bet the air will be wonderful- scrubbed clean by Irene, the chambermaid of hurricanes.

Just seems a little apocalyptic that we'd have an earthquake (really weird feeling, that) and then a hurricane. Like we're borrowing someone else's natural disasters. We are generally panicked, calm, unprepared and over- prepared.

Gotta get those car seats now. I'll let you know, gentle reader.

Waiting for Irene.

Photo Overflow

2011-08-20T11:32:00.000-04:00

Here are two pictures that did not make the POTD blog, but I liked them enough to publish them, so:


©2011 Breton Littlehales

Goodnight, Robert Johnson

2011-08-17T21:32:00.000-04:00

Robert Johnson, blues singer, composer, guitarist and enigma, died on August 16th in 1938, seventy- three years ago, in Greenwood, Mississippi. Many people believe he is buried in a pretty little cemetery just outside Greenwood proper, on the Money Road.

A river runs near his plot, and a large tree shelters it. Fans leave flowers and coins, mostly pennies, on the gravestone. The stone has a reproduction of a note he wrote to his sister before he died. The note says, "Jesus of Nazareth, King of Jerusalem, I know that my redeemer liveth and that He will call me from the grave."

This from a man who wrote songs in which he walked with the devil.

Whether Johnson is under the earth at this cemetery, or in any of the three other spots purporting to host his remains, is immaterial, really. What is important is that he did exist, that he wrote these songs which gained in popularity throughout the years, songs that arguably became the prototype for the Chicago blues movement and subsequently the birth of Rock music. "Dust My Broom", Sweet Home Chicago" and "Crossroads" among others, are probably being played in some roadhouse or bar in the world even as I write this. I visited an Amsterdam coffee house and heard his recording of "Hot Tamales" in the midst of hashish menus and faux Moroccan decor.

I felt right at home.

In an earlier blog I wished him a happy 100th birthday. Next year I'll wish him a happy 101. As long as I can listen to those incredible performances of those incredible songs, then I'll remain grateful that he was able to live those scant 26 years.

I Can't Remember

2011-08-09T17:18:00.000-04:00

...what I wanted to write about. It was brilliant, I remember that much. A great idea; came to me while I slept.

Oh well.

Joe E. Brown, the Human Caricature

2011-07-29T20:07:00.000-04:00

According to the never- wrong Mr. Door Tree, yesterday was Joe E. Brown's 119th birthday. Happy Birthday, Joe E.!

Best known (I'm guessing) for his role as the lovesick suitor of Jack Lemmon's character in Some Like It Hot, Brown was quite well known in Hollywood long before Billy Wilder's landmark comedy was released.

He could have been a professional ballplayer, but stuck with vaudeville and eventually made a series of incredibly popular films for Warner Bros.

I, like many of my generation, became familiar with his amazing face from cartoons, where he was frequently caricatured, such as Disney's The Autograph Hound. This makes complete sense, because Brown belonged to that generation of comedians (along with Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy and Buster Keaton) that looked like living human caricatures.

With his huge mouth and krinkly eyes, Brown was frequently drawn as having the biggest mouth in Hollywood, which may well have been true.

Last Word on Ventriloquists

2011-07-20T10:45:00.001-04:00

...is from Albert Brooks. This was funny when I first saw it, and it's funnier now:

Ventriloquists Are Just F****** Weird

2011-07-19T22:57:00.001-04:00

Remember Michael Redgrave in "Dead of Night"? Even back then in 1945, movie makers knew a good thing when they filmed it: the creepy ventriloquist!

I found these first at Boing Boing, then connected to a site called Public School which then sent me to a Flickr page where I found the following pictures. Most of them come from VVITCH, of whom I know nothing.

I have no idea who most of these are, and, I admit, I did pick them for their weirdness value.

Sir Michael Redgrave in Dead of Night

Ad for a ventriloquism school

There's a thin line between your dummy and your girlfriend

Found a lot of white ventriloquists with African American dummies

I can just imagine how offensive this act must have been

See caption re: dummy/ girlfriend

Sweet dreams

Dancing in the Moonlight Redux, Pt. II

2011-07-15T10:52:00.003-04:00

It's an Ithaca summer: first the reunion of the Salty Dog, chronicled here a few weeks ago, and now an evening of entertainment with Huey Lewis.

Connection? I knew Huey in 1969- 71, in Ithaca, NY, when we both struggling harmonica players/ bandleaders. I should mention that his name wasn't Huey Lewis back then and that he's not struggling anymore. In fact, he's probably the second highest paid harmonica player in the world. My guess is that Stevie Wonder is the first highest paid harmonica player. Guitarist Matt Kelley reminds me that Mick Jagger also plays harmonica, but I wonder if he's really a harmonica player.

Huey does seem to value old pre- News friendships and so when his annual performance at Wolf Trap rolls around, I call him and he leaves a pass and a seat ticket at the willcall window and I attend a little meet and greet in the bowels of the Filene Center.

This time, there were lots of attractive forty- to- sixty- year- old women, with well- coiffed hair, and colorful tops, their husbands/ boyfriends/ companions, also well- coiffed w/ golf shirts (Polo shirts?) and Cargo shorts, expensive watches and year- round tans, a smattering of band members, and, briefly, Huey himself.

He left quickly as his fans drank almost all the green room beer and ate almost all the green room salads and finger foods.

I found him with his cousin in another room and he asked me to sit with them. Huey has always looked good. Back in Ithaca he had shoulder- length hair and a ready smile. Lots of charisma. Time, of course, is catching up, but he's still slim, has a full head of hair (unlike myself- I have half a full head) and an unreal amount of charm.

We sat talking with his cousin and his wife, and then Huey's "facilitator" Lol came in and diplomatically moved us on. Meanwhile, of course, all the golfers are still munching crudites in the green room.

After the show, which, by the way was excellent- top notch band with a horn section and two fine back- up singers, I went back again and this time there were even more people. Younger women who had their picture taken w/ Huey. In fact, this is a large part of what Huey Lewis does. He shmoozes his fans. Onstage, offstage, backstage.

After awhile, Lol came back through and diplomatically did his thing.

Huey didn't let me leave, though. He took me back to the now- empty green room. We cracked open a couple of beers, and sat down.

"So," he said, "how was Ithaca?"

You never really leave Ithaca.

The author and his friend

Picture of the Day 7/10/2011: N. C. Wyeth

2011-07-10T22:11:00.001-04:00

Newell Convers Wyeth (October 22, 1882 – October 19, 1945), American painter, illustrator.

Thanks to Mr. Door Tree at Golden Age Comic Book Stories for this fine reproduction- the best I could find.

Nightfall (1945)

A Strange Case For Art: Chester Gould

2011-07-09T22:28:00.001-04:00

Right- so fat men be warned! These wise words from Chester Gould's protagonist Dick Tracy introduce a series of somewhat random panels culled from Dick Tracy dailies by Dr. Chris Mullen, the curator/ creator of an excellent blog, The Visual Telling of Stories.

Gould (November 20, 1900 – May 11, 1985) created Dick Tracy in 1931 for The Chicago Tribune. According to his Wikipedia site, he created the plots as he drew the strips. The result was a surreal view of law enforcement, populated by strange- looking villains and improbable situations.

One of my all- time favorite Gould creations was the spaceship powered by magnetism. It's inventor, Diet Smith, always cautioned the reader, "The nation that controls magnetism rules the world!"

Simpler times, gentle reader- simpler times.

A pig hit by a car

Yowsah!

One of those steam cabinets that reduces everything but your head

The legendary cut- away view

I ask myself this question all the time

My Politics

2011-07-07T10:15:00.004-04:00

I realized the other day that my politics are exactly like the conservatives and, at the same time, exactly like the liberals: I want the government to do what I want it to do, and I want to have lots of money, excellent health benefits and pay no taxes.

I want my aging parents taken care of and I want my grandkids to have the best education possible (I sure do love my grandkids) and I don't want to have to pay for it.

I want clean air and inexpensive, well- made manufactured goods.

I also wish music was as good as it used to be, and if there's anything out there that brings me pleasure that may be illegal, I want it legalized.

I also want to eat and drink as much as I want and not worry about my health and I'd like to weigh 180 pounds again, like I did in high school.

And I want government out of my life, unless, of course, they can do all of the above for me.

And I don't want to have to pay for it.

¿Quien Es?

2011-06-26T10:11:00.000-04:00

This photograph, believed to be the only authentic photograph of Billy the Kid (there are others, but they are disputed images, evidently) just sold in auction for 2.6 million dollars.

The Ideal Combination

2011-06-25T11:51:00.000-04:00

One of my favorite blogs is Little Hokum Rag, Amy Crehore's art/ ukulele shrine. That's right- Amy's a wonderful painter and illustrator who also plays and designs ukuleles. I highly recommend her site. Today she posted this picture:

It's a Graf Zeppelin harmonica. A very cursory observation leads me to believe that it has six holes, that the holes on top were used to add additional notes to the scale (like a recorder) and that the sound came through the Zeppelin part. It is made by Seydel, a rival of Hohner that resurfaced fairly recently after the fall of the Berlin wall. (I think Seydel still functioned in East Germany.) Unfortunately they don't make the Graf Zeppelin harmonicas anymore.

Amy included a link and I found more pictures.

This is Hohner's Aeroband Harmonica. It was in circulation from 1909 to 1924. It seems to be a tremolo type with a double set of holes for that "accordion- on- the- banks -of -the- Seine" sound. It probably sounded great in the airship when you stuck your hand out the window. I don't know who the figure is on the harmonica itself- the Kaiser maybe?, but he looks like he plays a mean harp.

Finally, there's this one:

The Los Angeles! I think this is another Seydel, probably made for the American market. The blog gaves the date as 1924. This is essentially a regular diatonic harmonica, ten holes, diatonic scale, like a Marine Band. I think the holes on top might be for what is nowadays called overblowing- that is, extra notes could be achieved, enabling the player to get a chromatic scale. Suzuki makes a harmonica like this now, called the Overdrive.

I can't think of anything more pleasurable than cruising in my personal airship, playing my Los Angeles harmonica, thinking about how great the future turned out. What an ideal combination! Quiet, efficient air travel and a beautifully crafted harp!

Maybe I'm even wearing a hat like the Kaiser there. Who knows?

I've said it here before and by golly, I'll probably say it again, but the future really didn't ever get here, did it? No airships, despite stable gases. When was the last time you saw the Goodyear blimp explode? No invisiblity rays, anti- gravity belts or time machines. No restaurants on the moon, nor even any kind of leisure space travel.

Just stupid video games, unemployment, racial hatred, starvation, natural disasters over which we have no control (where's the weather dome, damn it!), corporate greed, fuel shortages and an antiquated two- party system that is tearing the country apart.

I think I'll sit in my back yard and play my harmonica.

Dancing in the Moonlight Redux

2011-06-23T14:05:00.001-04:00

Then

Now

I thought I would be right back. I never thought it would take almost forty years.

But I knew I had to leave town to get my degree, so I applied to and was accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design. By the time I graduated I had met my future wife (thirty- five years so far) and settled back in my old hometown and we had babies and we raised them and I did the best I could as a husband and a dad.

And I never went back to Ithaca. Or, I should say, I gave up on ever going back to Ithaca.

And, after awhile, it really did seem like a dream. When I thought about it, I thought about being a musician and an artist (like now) and living the hippie life (not like now). We took drugs, we lived in communes, the women braided their men's hair and everyone wore tie-dye. (I never did, but everyone else did.) We bought R Crumb comix and read Herman Hesse.

One time hitchhiking up the big hill at Buffalo Street, I got picked up by Rod Serling! He was a visiting professor at Ithaca College. Nice guy- sounded just the way he did on TV.

Steve Fuld

Kim Stahl (now Buckingham)

The great Al Hartland

Brad Stahl- we were all in a band called Brute.

I worked in a record store, Debbie worked in a bar and then as a waitress in an Italian restaurant. I led a band and played with some great musicians and entertainers. Ricky Jay, the magician and the artist known as Huey Lewis (not his name then) were two.

Ricky Jay with Steve Fuld, the guitar player in Brute to his right. I'm just out of the picture.

Russell Barenburg was another. The guys in Orleans, plus a bunch of people who were easily just as good, but never made it past Lake Cayuga for one reason or another. We played in roadhouses and bars and ate breakfast at 2AM in the State Diner. Everyone knew everyone else in our community, or at least knew of everyone else.

At least, that's how I remember it. I don't think about how I felt when my appendix burst and we couldn't afford an ambulance. Or what it was like to be constantly overdrawn at the bank and not be able to pay rent, as I was until the record store job came through. I don't remember being really really cold in the winter, or stuck in snowstorms.

Boffalongo- the original line-up w/ Sherman Kelly on the right

Wells Kelly playing bass

I remember sitting in a bar with Sherman and Wells Kelly and singing "Dancing in the Moonlight" until the manager told us we had to go home.

That's what I remember the most- everybody dancing in the moonlight.

Sherman (right) and myself at the Salty Dog Reunion last Sunday

So... it is with genuine delight that I can report that last Sunday I returned to Ithaca, saw a bunch a old, close friends, and stood on a stage with Sherman Kelly and the guys from Orleans, including my old bass- playing friend Milton Jay, and sang "Dancing in the Moonlight" one more time.

I won't embarrass my friends by saying their names, but I found them unchanged, proving that, despite what Thomas Wolfe says, you can go home again.

Ithaca is different of course, but the spirit is unchanged, at least from the view here. There's a lot less hair and a lot more weight, although the women remain beautiful. The colors are mostly gone from the clothes. My friends own houses instead of renting them. There are fewer places to play and it costs a lot more money to live there. But then, so does San Francisco, or here in DC or anywhere for that matter. Ithaca is just keeping pace.

So, for a very brief time, I was able to set the Wayback Machine to 1971 and make some of my dreams into reality, even as I made some of my reality into a part of my dreams.

Thinking About William Klein

2011-06-16T13:39:00.002-04:00

When my recently married daughter Charlotte graduated from the Philadelphia's University of the Arts, the speaker that evening recalled her friendships with avant garde artists in 1950's New York City. Among the ones she mentioned was photographer, typographer and movie maker William Klein.

I spoke with her later and said, "I don't call him William Klein." She was puzzled. "What do you call him?"

"I call him the great William Klein," I said.

Here is a YouTube segment of Klein speaking about contact sheets and his approach to street photography:

I have another blog in which I try to publish a new photograph every day. Some are good. Whether the pictures are decent or not, I think about Klein's breathtaking street work constantly.

The great William Klein.

Rififi

2011-06-15T17:17:00.001-04:00

Jules Dassin, born in Middletown, Connecticut on December 18th, 1911, was a very American film director who reinvented himself as a very European film director in the mid 1950's with a brilliant film called Rififi.

He was able to do this through a fascinating combination of political victimization, luck, talent and accident.

After making several fine films for 20th Century Fox, including the brilliant Naked City with it's Weegee- esque scene settings, Dassin found himself shut out of Hollywood, a victim of the infamous blacklist. Director Edward Dmytryk, a member of the original "Hollywood Ten" labelled Dassin a communist, eventually forcing him to leave the country in search of work.

He ended up in France, and, in 1954 was asked by French producers to direct a film from a bad crime novel called Du Rififi Chez les Hommes. Dassin wrote a treatment in six days, using a translator to help him wade through the indecipherable slang of the novel. The treatment was made into a working script, low budget actors were recruited and Jules Dassin went to work for the first time since being blacklisted.

The resulting film, now titled Rififi (evidently an untranslatable French expression sort of meaning "rough and tumble" and applying to sexual relations) is clearly the work of a French auteur. One could hardly imagine it is really the work of an American- born, Harlem- raised guy named Julius.

With this one masterpiece, Dassin pulled himself out of the hell of the blacklist and into the flame of top flight European director. Subsequent films, like Never on Sunday and Topkapi were hailed as masterpieces. He married his Never on Sunday co-star Melina Mercourii 1966, settled in Greece and died at the age of 94.

Much like Pepe Le Moko, Julian Duvivier's crime masterpiece starring Jean Gabin, Rififi is, at its heart, a crime movie. Their world, however complete, is a limited one and all the characters, despite some semi- attractive character traits, are morally bankrupt.

It is a world best seen from the outside, in black and white, a story told in chapters without good guys- only bad guys and worse guys.

The centerpiece of Dassin's film is the execution of a meticulously planned robbery: thirty minutes of action told visually without dialogue or music. The crime is so well executed that genuine thieves in South America evidently used it as blueprint for a similar crime.

The sequence is brilliant and mesmerizing. One cannot look away. Dassin uses deep focus throughout and eschews close-ups. His visual style, so evident in Naked City (again, thanks somewhat to Weegee, from whom Fox had to buy the title) reaches a noir zenith here. He uses flashlight beams at one point as a single source of illumination. His dawn scenes actually look as if they were filmed at dawn and his night scenes look as if they were filmed at night as opposed to the annoying "day for night" technique of under exposing the film stock.

This is Dassin at his best as a storyteller. His ideas were used over and over again in caper movies ranging from Ocean's Eleven to Dassin's own Topkapi.

What is truly amazing though is the look of the overall film. The senes are longer than American film scenes. The locations have that naturalistic post- WWII look, and the women are attractively believable looking and of course, extremely sexy in a very non- Hollywood way. All the performances are astutely delivered, especially Jean Servais as Tony Le Stephanoise, the aging ex-con/ mastermind of the robbery.

One wonders if Jules Dassin's name had been, say, Joe Brown or Herbert Biberman, how successfully he would have been in reinventing himself in Europe and Greece.
Whatever the reason, he was able to carve out the type of life- long career that other directors could only envy.

The cast of crooks in Rifiifi with director Jules Dassin (third from left) as the safecracker Cesare.

What a Great Wedding! May 29th, 2011

2011-05-31T16:09:00.000-04:00

To my daughter Charlotte and son- in- law Phil:

What a great wedding: I know it presages a great life together!

Jeffrey Catherine Jones: January 10, 1944 – May 19, 2011

2011-05-25T09:31:00.002-04:00

When I knew her, she was Jeff Jones, visionary, painter, sculptor, comic book artist extraordinaire, father and ex- husband of a beautiful woman who subsequently married a close friend.

That was back in 1972 when I worked one winter at Neal Adams' Continuity Associates, a job that has influenced my life long after I left Manhattan.

Jeff was hanging out with one of the real eccentrics of comics, Vaughn Bode, of Cheech the Wizard fame. Vaughn liked to dress and present himself androgynously, and wore his long hair styled in curls, tight tops and black laced- up boots. He and Jeff made an arresting- looking pair every time they turned up at Continuity, which, at the time, was a kind of headquarters for comic artists.

Vaughn died later accidentally, more or less at the height of his considerable (for those times) fame, rumored to have hanged himself in an auto- erotic episode gone wrong.

Jeff, who, at that time, was very quiet and always kind of sad looking, was never really my friend. He seemed aloof, somehow, and his aloofness seemed appropriate, because, in a world of real talent, Jeff stood above. His work, mostly paintings at that time, was incredible. I thought, and still do, that it rivaled Frazetta's in terms of composition and technique.

So, evidently, did Frazetta.

Jeff's canvasses were done in oil paint washes, a favorite technique of illustrators, because the paint dries more quickly. Like Frazetta, he worked in the fantasy genre, using images from mythology and legend to create his paintings. Also, like Frazetta, he painted the most beautiful women, completely unattainable, wholly erotic and voluptuous.

I saw a sculpture of his that had the same qualities. "I didn't know Jeff sculpted," I remarked. "It's the only one he's done," said my friend.

Every once and a while he'd return to comics, his pen and ink style gracing publications like the National Lampoon, where he did his own strip Idyll, a lyrical series of illustrations of a beautiful woman.

He inked a page of Bernie Wrightson's Swamp Thing, and illustrated some of Bruce Jones' (no relation) stories.

In 1998, after years of denial, he began hormone therapy and officially changed his name to Jeffrey Catherine Jones. From his autobiography:

"Some of my early memories come from about the age of 4 or 5. By then I knew I wanted to be a girl. Maybe I was born with a kind of gender inversion-- some call it a birth defect. I know nothing of these things."

A nervous breakdown in 2001 left her without her home or studio, but by 2004 she began producing work again, lecturing and appearing at conventions.

Was there any real happiness? I don't know. I'm sure if I asked around I'd find conflicting answers. Jeffrey Catherine wore her depression on the outside as well as the inside, but she was able to continue to utilize her immense talent up to the end.

Funny Frazetta, From Barnyard Comics #19

2011-05-21T11:51:00.001-04:00

Prior to becoming the fantasy illustrator icon we all know, Frank Frazetta drew comic books- lots and lots of comics in lots and lots of different genres.

I've always loved his "funny animal" stories, which he drew beautifully (like everything else he drew or painted.) In fact, apart from the great Walt Kelly and of course auteur genius Carl Barks, Frazetta's funny animal illustrations are the best in the business.

Here are two Frank Frazetta stories from Barnyard Comics # 19, along with an ad for a book called "Free Grass", a title I couldn't resist:

Capitol Hill, 1935

2011-05-19T09:09:00.000-04:00

Shorpy's caption:
September 1935. Washington, D.C. "Front of Negro home near Capitol. Interiors of these homes vary little. A chair or two and a table, a bed and perhaps an extra mattress on the floor cares for six to ten people." 35mm nitrate negative by Carl Mydans for the Farm Security Administration.

Meditations on a Vermeer

2011-05-16T14:13:00.003-04:00

The Music Lesson (1662- 1665)

The Music Lesson- three years in the execution, layers of detail and a tour de force of textural reproduction.

Here we see several Vermeer trademarks: the windows on the left, presumably facing north, judging from the qualities of the light, the black- and- white tiled floor, and the familiar corner, present in so many Vermeers. The woman in the picture is reflected in the mirror behind the piano as her teacher looks on. A bit of tension there, I think. His arm is on the edge of the piano- a tiny violation of personal space.

His hand rests on a cane. I'm sure there's a reason for this, like pointing out a wrong note, but I think that mostly the cane is there to bring the teacher's other hand into the composition, much like the table is there so Vermeer can paint that incredible oriental rug and the pitcher on top.

Is that his cello? Have they been playing duets? if so, then why is the blue chair turned from the piano.? Wouldn't they have wanted to see one another as they played?
Or is she the cello player, checking a note to see if she's in tune? Or maybe she's the teacher and he's the student. If so, he's not a good one because he's paying more attention to her than to the note she's playing.

And who just throws down an expensive cello? Wouldn't she (or he) have rested the instrument carefully, against the chair maybe, before turning to the piano?

Unlike The Girl With the Pearl Earring, a very soulful painting, The Music Lesson is a virtuoso turn in which the artist crams as many textures and objects and mirrors into the painting as he can without ruining it.

Personally, I love all the Vermeers I've seen (most of them, actually), but the single figure ones appeal to me much more than the complex, kitchen sink efforts like this one or The Art of Painting, as fun as they are to look at.

We know so little about him that it is very tempting to read his personality into his paintings. This is dangerous, I think. He took years to finish a single painting, and even the simplest were painted slowly over long periods. Some are over- labored to be sure, but most are just remarkable, in composition and in his reproduction of that amazing Dutch light, which one can still see in Amsterdam, and probably Delft, although I've never been there.

One thing I do find interesting is the claim that Vermeer is easy to forge. All my life I kept hearing about the "great" Hans Van Meegeren, who could, they say, paint a "perfect" Vermeer in hours. I finally saw reproductions of some of the forgeries, like
Jesus Among the Doctors. And I have to say only a non- artist would be fooled by Meegeren's clumsy drawing, bad composition and total non- appreciation of the rules of light. I understand that the Nazi leader Goring claimed ownership of and was convinced he had a Vermeer that turned out to be a Van Meegeren, but that's no surprise, I think- it could fool a heavy- handed, culturally deprived fascist, maybe, but anyone else- impossible!

Vermeer is no more easy to forge than anyone else. I'm sure that he's forgeable- anyone is, including Leonardo or including Will Eisner. And I'm being serious here- there's not a big difference between great comic art and great "real" art. But if it took Vermeer three years, it would take a good forger three years as well.

Quality is kind of the same value no matter where it's application is evident. So let's just enjoy these incredible works of art. See them wherever you can, here in Washington, DC or wherever you find them.You will be a happier and smarter person afterwards!

Tomorrow Is Robert Johnson's 100th Birthday

2011-05-07T08:38:00.000-04:00

...and I think I'll listen to him ALL DAY!!!

I Love These!

2011-05-03T16:26:00.001-04:00

Copied from my desktop, ten minutes ago:

I've heard of this Tan Wong: he's an eccentric, internationally known financier, highly regarded, of course (how else could he have access to my email address) who brokers huge business deals involving lots of money.

Being based in Hong Kong allows him to move money quickly, mostly through the limitless coffers of the Communist Chinese regime. Every time the money is moved, Tan Wong makes another fortune.

Because of his immense riches and influence, the Chinese government has recently sought to limit his fortune, simply because they feel that it is obscene that an avowed communist makes so much money.

The plan they came up with is this: Mr. Tan must give away a set sum every 48 hours and that sum, based on one percent of the US debt to China, is exactly $24,500,000.00!

The gift must be made randomly, and must be made to an American born on 9/11. It's all very symbolic, you see. The Chinese are like that, evidently.

The idea is that Americans born on 9/11 had their birthdays snatched away from them by the late Osama bin Laden. I have to say that this is true- I haven't really been able to have a great celebration since 2000. The Chinese believe that by selecting someone born on this date they are restoring, slowly, a cosmic balance in the West, and are far more likely, therefore, to have their debt repaid, including interest.

Mr. Tan Wong has been selected as the agent of - what?- joss, perhaps (not Kharma, that's Buddhist) by the powerful ruling officials of China to restore this cosmic order.

And finally, I've been selected!

Of course, now everything changes. I'll no longer be humble Bret Littlehales, but now, multi- millionaire, ultra powerful Bret Littlehales. However, I promise I won't forget my really good, true friends, even as I wreak expensive vengeance on everyone who ever wronged me, like that maintenance guy at Johns Hopkins who claimed I scratched his crummy $4000.00 table or the guy in front of me at the traffic light near the Giant who wouldn't turn left on the left turn arrow no matter how much I honked and screamed.

Thanks to Mr. Tan Wong, those guys are toast.

Happy Birthday, Little Walter (1 May 1930- 15 February 1968)

2011-05-01T12:58:00.001-04:00

Little Walter was nothing more than the greatest blues harmonica player that ever lived or ever will live.

Hey- what about Rice Miller? Big Walter Horton? John Lee Williamson?

They're all great, every one of them- huge list- George Smith, Junior Wells, James Cotton- I'm going to stop listing right now, because, for certain, I've left off someone's favorite, and that's not what this is all about.

It's about Little Walter, a force of nature that blew through here a very short time, only thirty- seven years, rewrote the book on post- war Chicago blues and then, suddenly, violently and very predictably checked out.

Nowadays, pretty much every harp player who blows a note within the genre of blues owes Little Walter something, just for that one note.

Marion Walter Jacobs was born in Marksville, LA, May 1st, 1930 and was raised in nearby Alexandria, LA. At the age of twelve he ran away to New Orleans, and began a peripetetic journey that would eventually bring him to Chicago, where he was ultimately discovered by Muddy Waters.

At the time of Walter's arrival in Chicago, the reigning king of the harmonica was John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson, whose comment on Walter, given to Billy Boy Arnold, was, "He plays good, but he plays too fast."

Walter went on to tour with Muddy's band and record with it as well, mostly for Chess Records, the immigrant dream of two Polish brothers who had renamed themselves Chess, Leonard and Phil.

One day, during a session of Muddy's (the story goes), the brothers asked Walter to play an instrumental that the band used as a closer to their sets. If the evidence of the takes that remain today are valid, this theme was pretty liquid- the takes that survive the session are very different from one another, mostly because Walter was a tireless improviser, an intense wellspring of musical ideas who seemingly never played the same thing twice.

The Chess bothers named the instrumental "Juke" and issued it under Little Walter's name instead of as a Muddy Waters recording. The instrumental rose up the charts to number one on the Rhythm and Blues charts, Walter left Muddy's band and the rest is blues history.

Walter and Leonard Chess, surrounded by fans

Okay, so what's the big deal? First, Walter pioneered the use of the close, hand- held microphone to amplify and change the sound of the harmonica. He used several microphones throughout his career, but his early amplified tone is rough and slightly distorted. When it's played through an amplifier, the harp takes on the sound of the big city, perfect for the burgeoning combination of jump, swing and Delta- inspired music that was becoming the signature sound of Chicago blues.

Musicians who heard it couldn't at first believe they were hearing the harmonica.

Second, his rich improvisations transcend the limitations of the harp as it was played at that time. He based much of his playing on "jump" music, swing records that proliferated the charts. He developed his ideas the way a jazz musician would, choruses built on the chorus before it, all of it logical and fitting together like a cosmic jigsaw puzzle.

His sense of time and phrase, although "rushed" occassionaly, swung with such intensity that people who heard his band (called the Jukes, of course) couldn't help but dance. Compared to the music that Muddy was making (as great as it was and still is) Walter's concept had the sheen of newness. It bristled with youth and energy.

He went on to record many singles with the Jukes (at first Fred Below on drums with the Myers brothers on guitar and second guitar, then guitar virtuoso Robert Lockwood with Luther Tucker on second guitar) augmented in the studio by Willie Dixon on stand-up bass, almost all of which are classics. Last year Chess released a more or less definitive collection of Walter's recordings, complete with outtakes and false starts.

Missing would be the early Ora- Nelle and Parkways singles, as well as the incredible Chess Muddy Waters recordings with Walter's unsurpassed back- up harp playing.

But...

As Walter became more successful, he became more self destructive. He drank, he smoked pot, he partied constantly, he went through women like a bull in a pasture. He got into trouble with the police on many occasions, got beat up, and even shot himself in the leg twice.

Walter's forehead scar, the result of a police beating, shows clearly here

As the harmonica and blues lost stature in the African- American community, so did Little Walter, and if it didn't literally kill him, it ceertainly contributed to his untimely death.

Walter, like Charlie Parker, a musician who compares to Walter in many ways, was the ultimate imperfect vessel for the perfect talent. Their gifts seem limitless, almost supernatural (although people who knew both have reported that both played constantly- Bird practiced eight hours a day.) And yet they seem to be unable to nurture those gifts, or themselves.

Later recordings reflect his downward slide. His voice gets gruffer, his tone thinner and his time and improvisations sound sloppy. He had developed a reputation for stiffing his sidemen and could not get the kind of talent he needed for his music.

He lived in friends' apartments, or in his car, and seemed to be a target for mayhem and violence.

Finally, on February 14th in 1968, he got into a fight with some guys who were pitching pennies. According to Junior Wells, who said to me, "Now I wasn't there, I only heard..." Walter got beaten up while trying to pick up money he'd won. Perhaps it was because of all the prior injuries to the head, or just the severity of his beating, but he died shortly after at his girlfriend's apartment early the next morning.

Much like his predecessor, John Lee Williamson, a beating on the streets of Chicago caused his death.

Charlie Musselwhite has said in interviews that before Walter died, he had recovered his skills and was playing better than ever. Freddy Robinson said they had begun covering jazzier tunes like Canadian Sunset and Big Boy. A rare video has him playing with the ultimate primitive Hound Dog Taylor and Walter's chops are definitely intact. Most telling is a raw tape made by drummer Sam Lay of a performance shortly before Walter's death. Little Walter, hired that night as a sideman for about $17.00, plays with all the fire of his Muddy Waters days on four songs. That's all we have- just four songs.

Reportedly, Muddy wanted Walter back in the band, which was just beginning to curry a following among younger white audiences.

So clearly there was a future for Little Walter. But clearly he didn't really want to be around to enjoy it. Although chronologiocally only thirty- seven at the time of his death, he might as well have been a hundred years old, given the stress and general wear and tear he had put himself through.

Walter was done.

For more information on Little Walter, check out his definitive biography

Blues with a Feeling: The Little Walter Story by Tony Glover, Scott Dirks and Ward Gaines (Jun 28, 2002), available at Amazon Books.

How I Almost Got to Jazz Fest 2011

2011-04-30T09:32:00.002-04:00

It's that time again- the 2011Jazz and Heritage Festival in AGC, New Orleans, LA started yesterday.

Back in 2009, in this very blog, I wrote about what I considered the commercialization of Jazz Fest (as it's called) and how I wasn't attending. It was a kind of sour grapes review, where I made the point of disparaging such acts as Bon Jovi, a group of singing hairdressers from New Jersey.

Two years later, of course, everyone loves New Jersey. We are inundated with views of the New Jersey culture through television, that noble window on the world of Reality with a capital "R". They have real housewives there, and an upstanding group of young people living on or near the scenic Jersey Shore, among others. I've never seen these shows, but I'm sure they are excellent or they wouldn't be on television, which must maintain a standard of quality in broadcasting, as mandated by the ever watchful and incredibly discerning American public.

Finally, someone is always available to pump your gas in New Jersey, and the gas prices are still low, lower than they are here in Washington, DC, a town whose real housewives were not quite real enough for television.

Okay, enough about New Jersey. This is about another "new" place: New Orleans. And it's also about the power of dreams.

The last time I went to Jazz Fest was in 2008. I stayed with my friends, the Freeland- Archers (not their real names) in their baronial mansion in the Garden District. The Freeland- Archers (ntrn) had moved to AGC fr/ New Jersey (coincidence?) right after Katrina and have made a wonderful home there. They have opened their doors to their old friends and at the same time they have immersed themselves in the rich culture of New Orleans, which, in any other city in America would be regarded as counter culture.

When I stay there, I always sleep in the same room on the second floor of their turreted home. The main window, across from the bed, looks out on the sunrise. At first I tried to make the curtains blot this out, but after a few mornings I began to like it. Sometimes I go back to sleep, but other times it seems like a perfect way to wake up. The bed is large, and very ornate and the walls of the room are covered in a padded cloth material, a kind of brocade. In fact, the whole house looks like something out of Storyville, except that it is miles away from Storyville and also (I'm guessing) more tastefully decorated.

That's New Orleans for you: most people want a storybook house, but in New Orleans you can get a Storyville house.

Yesterday morning I was dreaming away in my own bed here in Silver Spring when I had a strange and curious dream. I dreamed I was in the bed at the Freeland- Archer house in New Orleans, surrounded by the plush cloth walls. It was one of those very real dreams and, for a moment, I thought I was really there, about to wake up and head to Jazz Fest with the Freeland- Archers. Then, suddenly, I was back in my own bed, but that was a dream inside the dream, because I woke up and, to my relief, was in New Orleans again. The sun had risen, the birds were singing and the dogs were barking. Then, just as suddenly, I woke up again and I was in Silver Spring, and the sun was shining and the birds were singing. (No dogs, though.) And just as I thought I was home, I woke up again in New Orleans!

I've never had a dream quite like this. For a long moment, I was lost between locations, caught up in a dream slipstream, like an astral traveller who has lost the astral map. I teetered between New Orleans and Silver Spring for a dream moment then finally came to in Silver Spring, where I am now.

Did I actually truly get to New Orleans, even for a tiny nano- moment? I think so, but I'll never know for certain. Just as I'll never know for certain whether I'm really back in Silver Spring.

One thing is for certain though- I won't be going to Jazz Fest again this year.

Weegee the Famous (redux)

2011-04-23T13:13:00.001-04:00

I couldn't resist sharing this photograph of Weegee. It's by Richard Sadler and I found it at the Hot Parade Blog.

As you can see, Weegee is using the Zenit 3M, a Russian camera. Today the Zenit 3M is worth about $150.00, according to this website- http://www.rugift.com/photocameras/zenit-3m-camera.htm

Why is Weegee using a Zenit? Is it a joke, or a statement on the Cold War? The photograph was made in 1964, so if the old Maestro is trying to tell us something, he's picked the right era.

Or maybe he just liked it. After all, Leicas were expensive even back then.

From Standard to Poor

2011-04-18T19:43:00.000-04:00

I just read that Standard and Poor, a top credit agency, has downgraded the United States from "stable" to "negative". Evidently the agency feels that unless our nation's lawmakers work together, we will eventually default on our loans. Words like "depression" are being flung about on CNN and MSNBC.

Oddly enough, at almost exactly the same time, I read that the following companies paid either NO taxes or fractional taxes for 2010:

1. Exxon/ Mobil
2. Bank of America
3. General Electric
4. Chevron
5. Boeing
6. Valero Energy
7. Goldman Sachs
8. Citigroup
9. Conoco/ Philips
10. Carnival Cruise Lines
[source: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT)]

Well, no wonder we're broke! My taxes just don't amount to enough to give Bank of America a trillion dollar bail- out.

If the richest corporations in America don't pay taxes, and the richest private citizens in America receive the deepest tax cuts, then who is paying for services in this country? Besides me?

You, probably, unless you fall into the categories I just mentioned.

America is broke. America is desperate. Anyone who is a citizen of this country and thinks it's ok to have legions of people living under the poverty line, or children and adults who are either starving or seriously malnourished, or seniors who can't get proper medical care, anyone who feels that way is not being a good American. It's as simple as that.

Because America is us. We are America.

Sure this country runs on capitalism- everyone knows that. But let me tell you, my fellow Americans, that unless you want to bone up on your Mandarin Chinese, you're just going to be harvesting rice with your Communist brothers way sooner than you think, if you think about it at all.

Write, call or email your senator and your congressperson and tell them what you feel should be done. You elected them, they're working for you. Let them know.

It's your America.

Letritia Kandle and the Kohala Girls

2011-04-13T11:54:00.003-04:00

Ah, the interweb. Sometimes I find stuff that seems so cool that I have to share it with you, even if you've already seen it.

I saw a wonderful picture in Amy Crehore's terrific blog Little Hokum Rag, which, if you haven't seen then stop reading this and go there now.

It was of a group of female musicians from Chicago called the Kohala Girls. Here's the pic:

Needless to say, I was intrigued (who wouldn't be?) so I did some interweb research and found some more pics, probably from the same session.

The guiding light of this visually remarkable ensemble was a woman named Letricia Kandle, seated second from left. An acknowledged steel guitar virtuoso, she later recorded and arranged with the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, playing a unique instrument called the "Letar", a steel guitar hybrid with four necks, each (presumably) in different keys.

Letricia with Paul Whiteman and the Grand Letar

According to one of her former music students, she was a natural musician, able to sight read and play classical music on the steel guitar. At one point she had sixteen guitar teachers working with her at her school in Chicago.

Ms. Kandle died last June at the age of 94. Apparently she was happy to be rediscovered, although she had stopped playing back in 1954.

Welcome Back, Lord Buckley (It's His Birthday!)

2011-04-05T10:21:00.002-04:00

My friend John Hostetter reminded me this AM that today is Lord Buckley's birthday.

Whew! First Sonny Boy Williamson I, then Muddy Waters and now Lord Buckley. The blog is turning into the Birthday Hall of Fame! But, well... it has to be done, Gentle Readers. We can't let Lord Buckley celebrate his birthday in silence, at least not here in L by L.

I first wrote about Lord Buckley here. I had been sent a rare and wonderful portrait (reprinted above) of his Lordship by Sir Wilhelm Freeland- Archer of New Orleans LA, which necessitated a blog entry right then and there.

At that time I didn't know how to put video in the blog, so this time we're going to actually get to see his Lordship in action! And some biography, although, as I said in the last blog, there's a lot of info on the interweb.

Born in California in 1906, Buckley's early years are somewhat sketchy. We do know that by the 1930's he was in Chicago, eking out a living on the fringes of show business, although he considered himself a vaudeville performer. He had a kind of acrobatic act, doing flips from a standing position, and hurling himself into the audience.He also worked as an emcee at dance marathons and even briefly ran his own club, Chez Buckley, reportedly bankrolled by Al Capone.

During World War II , he entertained the troops for the USO, where he met then- newspaper columnist Ed Sullivan. They became friends and Sullivan had Buckley on his television show several times, always with the same act: a living ventriloquism affair, called "the Four Chairs", where Buckley would pull up members of the evening's cast (including Sullivan) and do their the voices in a kind Amos and Andy dialog as he manipulated their heads. Kinescopes of the performances still exist (I've seen some) and, while it is embarassing to hear Buckley's thick version of black speech, there is a kind of energy to it.

Here's a clip from 1949 that gives an idea of Buckley's persona of the time:

An Armstrong impression, and a story, told in dialect, while wearing white tail and tails.

At the time of his final appearance on Sullivan, Buckley had found the voice that would make him immortal, the ultimate white hipster voice, the definitive Lord Buckley voice, the "hip- so- mantic" Saint voice.

He had recast Shakespeare's "Friends, Romans and countrymen," speech as a so- called "hip" eulogy, using jive as the language, cadenced in a ultra- theatrical manner, and calling it "Hipsters, Flipsters and Finger- Poppin' Daddies." Sullivan vetoed the Shakespeare piece, and yet one more "Four Chairs" performance took place. (Wish those were on YouTube.)

In doing "Hipsters, Flipsters", Buckley moderates the Amos and Andy cadences and uses his own voice, eliminating the "dese, dem, dose" mannerisms so offensive to the ear today. Although the origins are still African- American, his monologues, with the clipped syllables and rapid delivery are clearly Buckley's own.

Here's a video that I shot of John Hostetter doing "Hipsters, Flipsters":

And one of my favorites, Buckley's appearance on Groucho Marx's "You Bet Your Life," where you get a little taste of the Maestro himself doing "Hipsters, Flipsters":

I'm sorry to say I can't find any videos of Buckley in action doing any of his true classics, like the retelling of the life of Christ, called "The Nazz," or the amazing "Train", or "Governor Slugwell." Amazon lists several downloads, and at least one CD, including a concert at the Ivar theater in Los Angeles (an appropriately sleazy venue.)

Lord and Lady Buckley dancing during a show: ever the romantic

I recommend them all (I haven't heard the Ivar show), of course, or I wouldn't be writing this.

By the late 1950's, Buckley was doing the voice of the beatnik character on Beanie and Cecil, a cartoon show originating from Los Angeles, created by ex- Warners animator Bob Clampett. After his death, Scatman Crothers voiced the role.

In October of 1960, he traveled to New York for work only to have his cabaret card revoked because of a 1941 marijuana conviction. While fighting the revocation, he collapsed and died in a hospital there on November 12th.

Seven or so years later, in the Summer of Love, Buckley's recordings would be played on underground FM stations and interest in his pioneering lifestyle would be rekindled. Today there are Buckley- inspired festivals and gatherings, and several Buckley interpreters working professionally.

April may be the cruellest month, but it must also be one of the hippest: Muddy Waters and Lord Buckley. Look to the stars, my friends!

.

Muddy: Never Gone, Never Forgotten

2011-04-04T10:35:00.001-04:00

Happy 96th Birthday, Mr. Waters.

I'm playing at the Zoo Bar Thursday, stop on by and we'll do some tunes. I'll buy you a bottle of fine champagne and we can recall the good times. Have I thanked you enough for everything? I doubt it.

Thank you again, Mr. Waters.

Happy Birthday, Mr. Williamson

2011-03-30T12:44:00.006-04:00

How Getty can lay claim to a copyright on this is anyone's guess.

There were two Sonny Boy Williamsons.

That's the first thing you need to know. They were both great harmonica players. They were both interesting, soulfull singers. They were both excellent songwriters, so good, in fact, that their songs are still being sung on stages all over the world, and someone is probably recording one of them right now.

It's confusing.

If you go to the link in the title, you'll find a "Happy Birthday" piece I wrote on one of the Sonny Boys, the one whose name was really Aleck "Rice" Miler- no Williamson in there at all. He lived long enough to see blues embraced by an intellectual white audience and enjoyed fantastic success, mostly in Great Britain and Europe. He died in Mississippi in 1965 and had, by that time, numerous albums out, including a live recording with a very young Eric Clapton.

That's not the Sonny Boy whose birthday it is today.

John Lee "Sonny Boy" Williamson was born near Jackson, TN in 1914. His early story is similar to almost every rural musician of the time: poor, sharecropping family, began performing as a teenager, etc. He teamed up with Sleepy John Estes (another fine songwriter) and Yank Rachell, an extraordinary blues mandolin player, who went on to record extensively himself later on.

In 1934 he made his way to Chicago where in 1937 he began an extensive recording career, beginning with a song that's played even today: Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl. Along with his road buddy, Big Joe Williams, he recorded a number of sides, some of which were released in Big Joe's name. The early recordings include Sugar Mama, Black Gal and Early in the Morning, among others. He recorded Robert Johnson's Stop Breaking Down with his own additional lyrics.

As Williamson's fame grew outside of Chicago, Aleck Miller decided to capitalize on the fact that few people knew what Sonny Boy looked like. Like his namesake, Miller was also a harmonica virtuoso who could invoke John Lee's style, although Miller was evidently too individualistic to actually ape it perfectly, something he could have done, had he cared to. When I say both these guys were great, believe me, I'm not exaggerating.

Physically they were worlds apart. John Lee was short ("... shorter than me!" Junior Wells told me one night.) Rice Miller was about 6' 4". John Lee stuttered, Miller sang smooth. Rice's harmonica style is mostly based on lines, John Lee's later work is very chordal. Both have impeccable time and rhythm.

In Arkansas, where Rice Miller had a daily radio show on KFFA in West Helena, and Mississippi and Tennessee, Rice was encouraged to keep the name. In the north, however, it was a different story. John Lee Williamson was outraged. However, he was unable to do anything about it. The fact that Rice Miller did not record until after the death of John Lee probably kept any legal efforts at bay. Perhaps, had he recorded, the RCA/ Bluebird people would have interceded on their artist's behalf, but there is no evidence of this ever happening.

Robert Junior Lockwood maintained that John Lee Williamson did travel south to confront his spurrilous namesake, but if so, nothing came of it.

SBW I playing through an Astatic (I'm pretty sure)

Back in Chicago, Sonny Boy I was in huge demand on other people's records and in clubs. Billy Boy Arnold, who idolized him, claimed that John Lee was the first man to amplify the harp with a hand held microphone. Certainly he did amplify it- there's a picture of him holding either an Astatic or a Green Bullet. When I asked Billy Boy if it were true that Snooky Pryor was the first (as is Snooky's claim), he said, "If that's true, why was Snooky there night after night, sitting in the front row with his eyes glued to Sonny Boy?" Why indeed?

Junior Wells told me he learned everything from him. "He was the best," said Junior. "He was the first and best."

Even the greatest of the Chicago blues harmonicists, Little Walter Jacobs, based his first vocal recording for Chess on a Sonny Boy song, Black Gal, changing the words to "Ba-by".

Williamson was, by all accounts, a loyal husband, married to Lacey Bell, the star of his Bluebird Blues. He was hardworking and personable, accessible to the neighborhood children of whom Billy Boy Arnold was one.

But he was reportedly a mean drunk who liked his liquor. Muddy Waters took a backing gig with him soon after Muddy's arrival in Chicago. Muddy hated it. He claimed that Sonny Boy tried to get out of paying what he owed, and only used him because Muddy had a car. Although it can be endlessly interesting to speculate what the sound of the old Chicago- styled blues may have sounded like mixed in with the burgeoning new style, much like the famous lost recording of Rice Miller with Robert Johnson playing electric guitar (the Holy Grail of rumored sessions lost forever) we'll never know.

John Lee Williamson's final session had him backing Big Joe Williams in December of 1947.

On the night of June 1st, after leaving a gig at the Plantation Club, 31st St. and Giles Ave., John Lee Williamson was mugged and robbed on his way home at 3226 S. Giles, only a block and a half away. He made it to the front door and fell into Lacey Bell's arms. She called an ambulance, but he died shortly afterward. His last words were, "Lord have mercy."

Here's a video of Yank Rachell recalling that night:

Did he really take a cab for a mere block's walk? Yank thinks so.

And what happened to our friend Rice Miller?

After John Lee's death, Rice began recording, as Sonny Boy Williamson, for the Trumpet label in Jackson Mississippi. Trumpet's owner, Lillian McMurry, sold Sonny Boy's contract to Chess Records in Chicago, where he journeyed to make several of the finest blues records ever recorded. Was there a backlash from John Lee's friends, many of whom, Big Bill Broonzy, for instance, were still around?

The answer is no. Nothing happened. Had there not been a blues revival involving anal- compulsive fans, it's possible no one would have known or cared. And even when the old trickster was exposed, no one really flipped out.

Such is the world of blues.

Holi!

2011-03-27T13:43:00.001-04:00

The Hindu holiday Holi was celebrated Saturday March 19th (the same day the Mardi Gras Indians parade in New Orleans, see: http://bretphoto.blogspot.com/2011/03/meet-boys-on-battlefront.html) and 20th all over the world, wherever Hindus gather in large numbers.

Holi is the one where everyone throws colors onto everyone else. Colored powders, colored water, whichever. Everyone is fair game and children seem to enjoy it the most.

Once again, I recommend the always- fantastic coverage from the Boston Globe's The Big Picture.

Here are a couple to get your Holi juices flowing.

Happy Birthday, Harry

2011-03-24T11:02:00.000-04:00

Today is Harry Houdini's 137th birthday. Of course, Houdini's not here to celebrate it. He died of appendicitis, complicated by a punch in the stomach back in 1926. Halloween Day as a matter of fact.

According to one of the numerous legends that surrounded him, he would attempt to contact his wife, Bess from beyond, if it were possible. He never did.

Oddly enough, no one knew how impossible contact from beyond was more than Houdini. The latter part of his career concentrated on exposing spirit mediums, a trend that reached a peak in popularity after WWI, when so many young men died so quickly. The need for contact had never been so keen, and, apparently, organized religion fell short of assuaging that need.

Houdini, one of the last of the pre- Freudian mother lovers (not literally, of course) fell into an inconsolable funk after his mother died. She lived with him and Bess in their spacious Harlem brownstone (see L by L entry http://bretlittlehales.blogspot.com/2009/05/houdini.html). He constantly referred to his mother and his wife as his "two best gals," and there is evidence that Bess was not entirely happy about the relationship, or her place in it.

Houdini wanted to believe he could contact his mother, but the skeptic in him told him otherwise. Whether because of anger, frustration, compassion, ego or the usual combination of all of these, he set out to disprove that communication with the dead was possible. At all. And he pretty much single- handedly derailed what could have amounted to a large cult- ish religion, much to the anger and dismay of its millions of followers worldwide.

Houdini was, from all accounts, at best a mediocre stage magician. Aside from the escapes, which everyone agrees were terrific, his card work and illusions were ill- presented, compared to Kellar or Thurston. He lacked the grace and patter of Tommy Downs, the King of Coins, or the breathless skill of David Devant. What he had was a kind of immigrant bravura, a sense of confidence so huge as to dwarf those around him.

But it was his crusade to debunk spiritualism that is his most lasting contribution to to the culture of America. This, ultimately, is why Houdini is a truly great man. He risked his life, and his reputation for several years, right up until his premature death, in fact.

By the time Houdini died, he was worn out. He was in terrible condition, battered, scarred and beaten. His escapes had taken a terrible physical toll on hisi once impressive physique. But he was unable to retire; his essence just would not allow it.

Perhaps his death was the best possible for a mythic entertainer like Harry. He didn't die in failure, secrets exposed (although most were common knowledge within the tight- knit magicians' community.) He died on Halloween, at the height of his fame, just as stage magic was on the verge of being replaced by the wonders of talking pictures.

You know, in show biz, timing is everything.

Harry and Bess

Escape from jail. Often these escapes were done nude.

Demonstrating his seance expose methods

A mock fight with Jack Dempsey. Houdini had a genius for promotion.

Lizzie Comes Home

2011-03-23T14:45:00.000-04:00

Elizabeth Taylor (February 27, 1932 – March 23, 2011):

Vootie: It Never Gets Old

2011-03-20T13:13:00.000-04:00

Harvey Kurtzman, Jack Davis- Today Show Parody- J. Fred takes over and says...

Two Pictures of My Friend Junior Wells by My Friend Bill Allard

2011-03-18T22:17:00.002-04:00

Happy Birthday, Nat!

2011-03-17T13:15:00.001-04:00

Today is Nat "King" Cole's birthday. He' d have been ninety- two, had he not died of cancer in 1965.

Growing up in the 'fifties and 'sixties, I only heard the later, lush, overproduced Nat Cole. It wasn't until 1968 that I heard the great piano trio work, with Oscar Moore on guitar, that produced "Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You" and "Hit That Jive, Jack!" Once I did hear it though, I knew I had heard genius. That smokey voice (three packs of Kools a day!) and that great piano; Oscar Peterson used to say that no one comped behind their own singing as well as Nat, and of course, he was right.

A huge influence on the young Ray Charles, one can hear Nat's voice in Ray's first Swingtime and Atlantic work, songs like "It Should Have Been Me" and "Baby, Let Me Hold Your Hand."

He recorded with the unlikely grouping of Les Paul, Buddy Rich and Charlie Parker on a Jazz at the Philharmonic session. Nat and Bird's playing are the undeniable highlight of the concert.

Nat with Frank Sinatra

After his phenomenal cross-over success, Nat contended with terrible racial anger. He was beaten onstage at a show in Birmingham, Alabama, and a cross was burned on the lawn of his Los Angeles home in 1948. His primetime television series was cancelled prematurely due to a lack of sponsorship.

Unfortunately, it was the cancer that did him in, pretty much at the height of his success. He was at the top of his pop game in 1965 when the three- pack- a- day habit caught up with him.

To me, and to my aging hipster pals and cohorts, it will always be the early stuff, the original of "Sweet Lorraine" with that little stutter, the rare version of Mel Torme's "Christmas Song" before Johnny Mercer dubbed in the string section, or even the Cole/ Mercer duet on "Save the Bones for Henry Jones", Danny Barker's sweet novelty song.

In the Studio

A truly unique musical voice in the annals of American music, Cole died on February 15th, 1965 at the age of 42.

The Big Picture in Japan

2011-03-15T19:52:00.001-04:00

Last night, as my wife and I watched the mind- numbing videos of the destruction of Japan that seem to flow endlessly from CNN, I saw a devastatingly quiet series of still pictures showing people in a shelter looking at the lists posted of the missing, the found, the dead and the living.

And I thought, because I'm a photographer, this is incredible- I could actually take it in- moments, full of humanity, that told me more than the endless repetition of the same awful scenes, where one is shown everything and ultimately nothing.

So, if you are frustrated by the network coverage, and really want to see what's going on in a way that actually communicates what life is like in Japan at this time, please go to The Big Picture.

Incredible pictures, communicating tragedy, frustration, destruction of a way of life and also hope and the resilience of a nation.

A sampling of the photographs published by the Boston Globe on The Big Picture

Don't Eat the Brown Acid: Owsley is dead.

2011-03-15T15:36:00.001-04:00

"Bear" with overrated guitarist Jerry Garcia

Seventy- six years old, a virtual recluse in the Australian Bush, he died in a car crash, survived by his wife, who was in the car with him, but not fatally injured.

To those who actually remember the so- called '60's, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, or Owsley as he was known popularly, was the last famous chemist on the planet. He was responsible for the first really clean illegal LSD.

LSD- 25 was invented sometime in 1938 by a Swiss chemist named Albert Hoffman, who worked for Sandoz Chemists in Basil, Switzerland. In 1943, Hoffman took acid and, essentially, liked what he saw, as did writer Aldous Huxley, among others.

Albert Hoffman, inventor of LSD -25

The Army famously experimented with the drug, as did a pair of Harvard professors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. Harvard fired Leary and Alpert and the government took a beating on television's 60 Minutes for the experiments.

Owsley learned to synthesize the drug in 1965, and by 1967, it was illegal in this country.

But that, in many ways, is only the beginning of the story.

Owsley's acid became THE drug of the '60's, with terribly mixed results. In many ways it opened the doors to incredible bursts of creativity: Hendrix, the Beatles, R Crumb, Bob Dylan and others changed how we interpreted our own culture here in the West, and Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was written on LSD.

However, the Grateful Dead and other mediocre (to say the least) groups rode the same wave. Peter Green, the gifted guitarist and founder of Fleetwood Mac was dosed by members of the Dead and never really recovered. To a certain type of person, LSD was the gateway to permanent psychosis. And Owsley's version, famously potent, opened up a lot of minds. Some, however, never closed again.

According to the New York Times obituary, Owsley believed that there was going to be a new Ice Age, and so moved to the Australian Bush where he lived out his days.

The Tragedy in Japan

2011-03-12T15:23:00.000-05:00

Japan's Coastline February 27th, NASA Satellite Image


Japan's Coastline March 11, After the Tsunamai, NASA Satellite Image

The Japanese have a remarkable relationship with the physicality of their country. Their resilience in the face of physical disaster, whether man- made or natural, should be a model of behavior to all of us in the rest of the world.

In the wake of the earthquake and subsequent tidal wave that have killed over a thousand people, the images pouring from the tiny country have been overwhelming. Finally phone cameras are being used for something more than catching fatuous worthless celebrities partaking in fatuous stupid behavior.

Let us give our support to the people of Japan in whatever form we can, whether it's prayer, thoughts, aid or money. Let's keep them in our thoughts as they try to cope with this terrible disaster. Let us hope that the leaders of Japan handle this with much more intelligence and diligence than Washington did when Hurricane Katrina struck. No doubt they will.

The Day After

2011-03-09T10:29:00.000-05:00

At exactly midnight, Ash Wednesday, the first day of Lent, police ride through the French Quarter in a ceremonial parade, clearing revelers from alchohol- drenched Bourbon Street.

Clean- up after Mardi Gras is very important: political careers rise and fall over who gets the clean-up contract. Trash collection in AGC is no laughing matter. The issue dogged former mayor Ray Nagin, and delighted the Times- Picayune, who had a field day with it.

Most of these photos are from the Pic, and are taken by Michael DeMocker, one of their fine staff photographers.

Happy Birthday, Will Eisner (March 6, 1917- January 3rd, 2005)

2011-03-06T14:16:00.004-05:00

What a treat to open Google today and see this:

Yes, it's the great Will Eisner's 94th birthday, and Google felt it was important enough to give Mr. Eisner their special graphic treatment.

For those L by L readers not familiar with Will Eisner and his work (and I'm sure there are one or two, maybe), he was, along with Jack Kirby, Walt Kelly, Harvey Kurtzman and very few others, one of the finest purveyors of comic art and writing in the history of the medium. Words like influential, seminal and groundbreaking barely begin to describe Mr. Eisner's contributions. He was that good.

Most of his fame centers around his prewar creation The Spirit, which ran as an eight- page supplement in Sunday comic sections throughout the United States from 1940 until the mid 1950's.

A classic Spirit splash page

Eisner managed to tell fully developed stories week after week in only eight pages, utilizing progressive graphic techniques that showed the influence of the cinema (especially Orson Welles' Citizen Kane) in the storytelling, sound effects and the transitions from panel to panel. The Spirit usually began with a unique and eye- catching splash page, designed to draw the reader into the plot. The addition of beautiful and dangerous femme fatales, mysterious villains, lovable regulars and the working class invulnerabilty of the Spirit himself made for terrific Sunday reading.

The fact that The Spirit was published in newspapers rather than comics (along with several other features) gave the strip its unique quality. Everything happens fast in The Spirit.

Mr. Eisner was one of the rare artists who also excelled as a businessman, and after The Spirit's run he made a small fortune doing illustrations for a wide range of publications.

His comic work (or "sequential" work as he liked to call it) was rediscovered in the '60's and re-published in comic book form, which is how I first saw it. From the first story I saw, in a Harvey Comic anthology of classic Spirit strips, I was hooked. It was incredible work.

Mr, Eisner's life and times are the history of comics in this country. It makes for fascinating reading and I thoroughly recommend his website: http://www.willeisner.com/

The Art in the Snapshot

2011-03-05T16:12:00.001-05:00

From the archives of "If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger...", this other- worldly snapshot of Betty Grable:

Goodnight, Jane (June 21, 1921 – February 28, 2011)

2011-03-01T20:58:00.000-05:00

The Baby Dolls

2011-02-27T10:30:00.000-05:00

Mardi Gras is in full swing in New Orleans- there's a parade every day it seems, and the city is gearing up for Fat Tuesday as only AGC can. As a public service to lucky L by L readers, I've set up a camera on the parade route! Well, not really- but someone else has and here's the address: http://www.nola.com/paradecam/.

A quote from Gumbo Ya Ya, reprinted in Al Rose's invaluable Storyville, New Orleans:
"A crowd of Baby Dolls came along, all dressed up in tight, scanty trunks, silk blouses and poke bonnets with ribbons tied under dusky chins. The costumes were in every color of the rainbow and some that are not. They joined the crowd, dancing and shaking themselves."

The Baby Dolls, an African American all- female Krewe (for lack of a better term- I doubt there's a formal krewe) still parade during Mardi Gras, sometimes in conjunction with the Zulu celebration. The earliest known activity of the Baby Dolls is recorded in 1912, well prior to the closing of Storyville.

In 2003, the irrepressible Antoinette K- Doe revived the flagging Krewe. Under her tutelege, the Baby Dolls enjoyed a resurgence in popularity.

Antoinette K- Doe's Baby Dolls

In an article published in the Gambit shortly after Antoinette's death on Mardi Gras Day, 2009, she said, "The Baby Dolls had disappeared, and I brought the Baby Dolls back. I named them the Ernie K-Doe Baby Dolls. The reason I did that was to show the new Baby Dolls are career ladies. We all working ladies. The history of Baby Dolls, from years ago when I was a little girl, I thought they were baby dolls that I could play with.

"My grandmother told me, 'No, it’s ladies.' It developed into getting history on the Baby Dolls, because I was always fascinated by our culture. And I understood that the Baby Dolls was whores. I knew they had the Red Light District, the Baby Dolls here. So when I brought the Baby Dolls back, I didn’t want them to have the reputation they had before. I said, 'You know what? Let’s clean up the act.' So we made it career ladies."

Ms. K- Doe was due to lead the Baby Doll Krewe on the very day she died. They marched without her, knowing she'd want the parade to keep going.

This set of photographs, found in the excellent Louisiana Digital Library show the Baby Dolls circa 1942. There's no real caption information beyond that and the people in the pictures are not identified.

Portrait of the Artist Formerly Known as Young

2011-02-25T08:03:00.002-05:00

Circa 1970:

The Carmonica

2011-02-22T16:19:00.002-05:00

First there was this article, from the New Zealand Herald:

Naturally this made me curious, because I play harmonica. And know how to drive a car.

So then I found this:

This was interesting. The harmonicas are not only larger than your standard diatonic Hohner Marine Band, but they are completely unmarked. No branding whatsoever. They are also double reed harmonicas- the kind that invoke the image of cape- wearing gendarmes strolling along the Seine on a warm Parisienne night.

Further research uncovered this:

Well, gentle reader, you know me- when it comes to getting the low- down skinny for my loyal L by L readers, I leave no stone unturned.

Finally I found this:

So now we know. Three hundred and thirty harmonicas traveling at 100 km/h sounds sort of like the end chord of "Day in the Life" by the Beatles.

After listening to the video I can tell you that a) the harmonicas are, thankfully, all in the same key and b) if you were driving this car and needed to use the horn in a life or death situation, you'd be completely screwed.

Chinese Toilet Waterfall

2011-02-20T15:54:00.002-05:00

When I saw this, I couldn't help thinking of a Lowell Thomas- type travelog, "From deep inside mysterious China comes a hidden marvel all but incomprehensible to the Western mind and way of life!"

This is from the blog Damn Cool Pics, via Dinosaurs and Robots.

And I quote: "China always amazes world with weird and astonishing things. China’s Toilet Seat Waterfall is in South China’s Gunagdong Province. Its made from thousands of recycled toilet seats, urinals, and sinks. It is about 100 meters long and 5 meter tall.

"This art project is a part of local tradeshow for pottery and porcelain products. It attracts many visitors to take a look for this weird waterfall."

I'm sure the sound of all that water from all those toilets is very soothing, and talk about inventive recycling! My guess is this is only one of the many interesting things we'll be seeing in the coming years from our future Chinese masters.

Happy Birthday, Irma: February 18th, 1941

2011-02-18T15:36:00.010-05:00

It's the early stuff that really gets to me, the songs where she sounds on the edge of giving up or letting her despair wash over her. Songs like It's Raining, or Ruler of My Heart, or I Wish Someone Would Care. No one except Billie Holiday sings about emptiness better than Irma Thomas.

Those songs are a part of an extremely fortuitous relationship between songwriter/ producer/ pianist/ genius Allen Toussaint and Irma. Some of them were written in Toussaint's mother's living room, if legend is to be believed. The origin of It's Raining is as casual as a glance out the window at a weather- darkened sky.

The young Soul Queen

But it's way more than the compositions themselves. Just look at the rest of Toussaint's overtures from that era: Mother-in- Law for Ernie K-Doe, Lipstick Traces for Bennie Spellman, all the semi- forgettable Allen Orange songs. It's the life that Irma is able to breath into them. If Toussaint has had two great interpreters of his material, from the scores of singers that he's worked with, it would have to be Irma and Lee Dorsey. Those are his two voices.

But today's not Lee's birthday, or Allen's.

It's Irma's.

Irma's version of Time on My Side outdoes the Stones by a factor of about 5:1. And her Ruler of My Heart was so deep that Otis Redding recorded it, retitled it Pain in My Heart and scored his first big hit. (Otis claimed the writing credits, but Toussaint successfully sued.) Otis' version is a killer, for sure, but Irma's has that plaintive quality, along with a perfectly placed piano triplet from Toussaint.

I used to drive to New Orleans before it became much cheaper to fly, and the drive took two days with an overnight usually outside of Knoxville TN. I started that drive one time with It's Raining on my tape deck and pulled up in front of my hotel on Royal Street with the same song on WWOZ. And-- it was raining!

The story of Irma is the story of New Orleans, which is why she plays a free concert every mother's day, and why she still lives in AGC, and why, when our old friend Irving Banister describes a musician he admires, he simply says, "He played for Irma."

A living New Orleans' treasure, still beautiful (at 70!), still full- voiced and going strong. Irma Thomas, the Soul Queen of New Orleans.

And, as long time L by L readers know, as goes New Orleans, so goes the world.

The Latest From the Photoblog

2011-02-16T21:48:00.001-05:00

The newest posting in the photoblog, as promised in the previous entry here, has shattered the old viewing record!

Okay, it's not exactly viral, but it is pretty hot.

Check out "Life Is But a Drag". Then tell me what you think.

Thanks!

The Photo Blog

2011-02-15T17:22:00.000-05:00

This Thursday will mark the first thirty days of serious posting on my photo blog, found here: http://bretphoto.blogspot.com. I will have posted a picture every day since the 17th of January. Only eleven more months to go!

I've also posted a portfolio of pictures taken at this year's Auto Show. In the next few days, a new portfolio is going up. I won't say what it is, but if you check the blog around tomorrow afternoon, I hope you will enjoy what you see.

So far the reaction has been very encouraging, but I wish more people were tuning in. In the current climate, artistic self- expression, as opposed to waiting for an assignment, becomes more important than ever.

Well, that does sound a little pretentious, but, hey- I'm an artiste!

In the meantime, why not make my photoblog an everyday viewing habit. The Picture of the Day awaits!

Cairo- practical

2011-02-12T11:13:00.000-05:00

Mostly I'm writing this so I can use this title before someone else does.

I like Cairo- it's a truly great city, ancient and modern, primitive and sophisticated, breathtaking and heartbreaking.

Let's wish the Egyptian people the best in their efforts to join the twenty- first century.


©2011 Breton Littlehales. Cairo in 1978, shot on Kodachrome II.

Union Station Again

2011-02-09T13:34:00.000-05:00

I want to thank everyone who wrote in to comment on yesterday's post re: the police and Union Station. I received more comments on that entry than any other I've done.

I guess it touched a nerve.

Those of us who came of age in the mid- to- late 1960's may have felt a sense of deja vu- I know I did as it was unfolding. But to those readers who grew up before or after events during the misnamed "hippy era", perhaps all of the behavior described, mine included, may have seemed a tiny bit extreme.

Unfortunately, all of us in this post 9/11 world have to remember that heightened paranoia is merely another security tool these days. As inconvenient or humiliating as it may be, the times serve to justify this kind of behavior. Or so I was told yesterday, and perhaps it is so.

Anyway, thanks again- it's always nice to know someone's out there reading.

Union Station Update

2011-02-08T17:40:00.005-05:00

I went to Union Station here in Washington DC to update the beautiful architectural photograh from the last blog. I knew in advance that I would be disappointed with the current Station, but I was stunned to find out just how disappointed I could be.

Let's get right to it: in the course of photographing down there, I was reported to the DC police, detained, sniffed by a dog, told to hand over my driver's license, and made to tell my story (what story?) to three different cops.

When it turned out I was whom I claimed to be they let me go. They were clearly disappointed.

Let's get the updated pic out of the way:

Now, here's what happened: after I shot the pic, I went to the shops near to the gates to the tracks. I walked down the corridor to a hallway with a huge glass window, and I could see a couple of freight trains through the window. I walked into the hallway, which led to a bunch of nearby office buildings, including Kaiser Permanente, and fished out my little Canon Gll. At this point a young man came up to me and asked if I were an employee of the SCC. I said, no, and that I didn't know what the SCC was.

He said I wasn't allowed to photograph there. I said, OK and then he asked what I had been shooting. I said, the freight trains. He reiterated his warning (at this point I was walking away) and of course, rather than just letting it go, I said, "So I can't photograph the trains?" And he said, "No," and I went off to find a men's room.

As I walked down the corridor I noticed him pacing me, which I thought odd. As I approached the public men's room, a policeman with a dog stopped me. "Sir," he said, "this gentleman says you were photographing here by the trains." I said nothing.

He said, reasonably enough, "There is no photography allowed on this side of the station. In fact," he said, "you can't be here without a ticket. Are you a tourist or a sightseer?"

Another policeman arrived and glared at me.

I said I was sightseeing. He asked if I were a train buff. I said nothing. At this point I knew I was fucked. It was only a matter of how fucked.

He said, "May I see your license?" I gave it to him. Then a policewoman joined us. Now I was surrounded, literally, by the young gentleman from the train station, the policeman with the dog, the policeman without the dog and the policewoman.

As the dog policeman called in my name and address, the second cop began to question me. "What were you doing?" he asked.

"I was taking pictures."

"For who?"

"I have a photo blog." I kept thinking, they don't care, this is just boring.

"Why are you taking pictures here? Did you photograph the trains? Take your hand out of your pocket."

"No. I have a picture of the station from 1910. I wanted to show what it looked like now."

Meanwhile, we're all still waiting to find out if I'm from Silver Spring or here spying.

"No need to worry, sir- this is just routine," dog- cop said.

"I'm not worried." And I wasn't.

"No need for concern," he said.

"I'm not concerned."

"So, where were you taking the pictures?" asked the second cop. I thought of him as the bad cop. The dog cop was the good cop, the second was the bad cop and the third was there for the ride, I guess.

I said I had been down by the Kaiser Permanente entrance. I was going to photograph through the window.I was going to photograph a freight train.

The bad cop said, "Where's the Kaiser Permanente entrance?"

This question seemed to me to raise the fuck level. "What do you mean?" I asked.

Then he actually said, "I'll ask the questions." Wow... cool! I thought.

So he did. "Where's the Kaiser Permanente entrance?" And then the third cop said, "You know, it's--" at which point I cut her off.

""It's OK- he's testing me. He knows you know where it is." I turned from her and said, "It's down past the shoe shine stand... do you see that sign? It's past that sign..." Blah, blah, blah, etc, etc.

Then he asked me where I lived. I told him. Then he said, "Didn't you say you weren't photographing trains?"

Actually, no, I thought, but this guy really thinks he's onto something. I just said, "You got me."

At this point, the employee had gotten embarrassed by the whole thing. "I asked him to stop and he did. I'm sorry I said anything," he said. He left.

Meanwhile, dog cop was still waiting to confirm whether I'm really your faithful scribe Bret Littlehales or not.

Of course, it turned out that I am, which, gentle reader, we knew all along.

So they let me go. They were disappointed, yes, especially the bad cop, but hey- it's still the US and I live here so they had to let me go. The bad cop had a parting word for me though.

"I hope you learned your lesson," he said.

Well, maybe. If the lesson is that those new buses are a way better deal to NYC than Amtrak, then yes, lesson learned. If the lesson is I can still piss off authority as much as I could in the '60's and '70's, and therefore might not be as old as I feared, then, yes- lesson learned.

Was there something else? I guess not.

Another From My Home Town

2011-02-02T16:17:00.002-05:00

Good old Shorpy.

This pic, taken in 1910, shows the interior of Union Station, one of the grandest and most ignored buildings here in DC, relatively speaking.

Now filled with a second floor plus shops, the space bares little resemblance to the grand open vista one saw in 1910.

Preston Sturges' Great Moment

2011-01-29T12:27:00.005-05:00

Mr. Sturges at the top

In an earlier blog about Veronica Lake, I mentioned Preston Sturges' film Sullivan's Travels.

The film, which helped inspire the Coen Brothers' Oh Brother, Where Art Thou (along with the Odyssey by Homer), is vintage Sturges: witty, cynical, sentimental and completely original.

For a certain period in the history of cinema, all of Preston Sturges' movies were just like that. He was one of these rare talents that produced high quality material that resonated with the public. Kind of like the Beatles.

Preston (August 29, 1898- August 6, 1959) was born Edward Preston Biden in Chicago, Illinois. His father was a classic ne'er-do-well who deserted Preston and his mother, Mary Desti, then reappeared years later asking for reparations once Sturges became famous. Again, much like Beatle John Lennon's father.

His mother remarried and Sturges was raised by his stepfather Solomon Sturges, whose last name Preston took. Even after Solomon and Mary became estranged, Solomon continued to treat Preston as his son, and was really the only real father figure in Preston's incredibly perepitetic childhood.

His mother, a Bohemian Auntie Mame- type figure, is a whole other story in and of herself. She ran a beauty business- cosmetics, lipsticks, (Preston had invented a kiss- proof lipstick for her line) and powders, and fancied herself a kind of artistic grande dame. Her best friend was the impressionist dancer Isadora Duncan, and an early photograph shows a very young Preston unhappily dressed in a toga, and not as a costume either. She had an affair with (among others) the British magus Aleister Crowley and even collaborated on his book Magick (Book 4).

Mary took Preston with her everywhere and this most American of directors spent most of his formative years in Europe. He learned to speak fluent French, and perhaps that is also where he acquired his veneer of sophistication and his cheerful cynicism.

His mother's relationship with Isadora Duncan ended the day Mary Desti gave her friend a new scarf and waved goodbye as Duncan drove off in a car. The long scarf got caught in the spokes of the wheel and snapped the dancer's neck. Isadora died instantly.

Preston was in the States at that point, and had begun his own quest for success. With his unique background and strange blend of American and Continental sensibilities, he began writing a script for a Broadway play. The title was Strictly Dishonorable.

Strictly Dishonorable (what are your intentions, sir?, the proganist is asked. Strictly dishonorable, he replies) was a huge hit and set the mold for Preston's career.

Hollywood came next with a string of movies written and directed by Sturges for Paramount Studios. Beginning with The Great McGinty, he hit with a string of successes and pretty much invented a new genre- the so- called screwball comedy. In Sturges movies, men and women have affairs, women get pregnant, men falsify their war records, shoot guns on trains, lie about their marital status, bilk rich people out of their money and generally behave like banshees, in short, they do anything to acheive their goals.

Harold Lloyd with the great Jimmy Conlin

He used many of the same actors in every film, including William Demarest, Jimmy Conlin and Eric Blore.

Within a frantic five year period, 1939- 1945, he made his greatest films: McGinty, The Palm Beach Story, Christmas in July, The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero. Those years are Sturges' great moment in film. He owned a restaurant, the Players, a legendary hang- out for himself and his pals. He had affairs with beautiful women, including his secretary to whom he dictated his scripts, sometimes completing the next day's scenes only hours before the pages were to be filmed.

He won the very first Oscar given for Original Screenplay.

Joel McCrea and uber- hottie Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Trav

And then it all went downhill.

Like all riches-to-rags stories, it wasn't just one thing, it was a million things. His secretary left him, he left Paramount after they re-cut his serious bio- pic The Great Moment, for a partnership with Howard Hughes, already beginning his own descent into madness, in a venture called California Pictures. Hughes kept Sturges on a leash for several years, and despite one film, their partnership eventually withered and died. The Players hemorrhaged money and was eventually closed by the IRS.

Several films followed, one for Fox, Unfaithfully Yours, remade by Mel Brooks years later. (Unfaithfully Yours has undergone a critical reevaluation in recent years, and is thought of much more favorably now than it was on its release.)

Although Sturges' reputation continued to decline, he seemed always to be busy, working on a screenplay, an autobiography, television projects and plays. But his downhill spiral remained unchecked, and he died alone in a New York hotel room, while working on the autobiography, entitled, amazingly enough, The Events Leading Up to My Death.

Fortunately for us, all of the great Paramount movies are available on DVD, and the boisterous, larger- than- life work in them remains a delight even now. The witty dialogue delivered at breakneck speed by Sturges' able repertory company sounds as fresh as when he dictated years and years ago.

Several of his stars reached their comedic peak in Preston's films: Barbara Stanwyk, Veronica Lake, Eddie Bracken and Betty Hutton are never funnier in any of their other films. Sturges raises the art of the character actor to dizzying heights.

Hutton and Bracken in Miracle of Morgan's Creek

His approach to life in America forms the other half of Frank Capra's heartwarming sincerity and faith in the common man. Seen together, along with Ford's Westerns of the period, they form the cinematic hat trick of life in America. They are our story and still resonate with us today. For every noble man, there is an ignoble man, but he may, like Governor McGinty, have it in him to do one right thing in his life. In a Capra movie, George Bailey pays the bills. In a Sturges movie, McGinty has to leave the country to keep from going to jail.

That is the truth Preston Sturges saw and gave us. Hail the Conquering Hero.

New Photo Blog Address

2011-01-26T15:16:00.000-05:00

Please note that my photography blog can now be found at:
http://bretphoto.blogspot.com/

The old address seemed a little clunky.

A Man and His Blues

2011-01-26T11:43:00.007-05:00

Best Buddy ever?

George "Buddy" Guy (July 30, 1936) could be called the last man standing in that great third generation of Chicago Blues geniuses*. James Cotton is still very much with us but he's sitting down now, and doesn't sing, although his robust harmonica playing remains undimmed.

Buddy has assiduously courted the white blues audience as well as the more influential blues tastemakers, not the least of whom is Eric Clapton. Clapton called Buddy "the greatest", and that was all Guy needed to vault into the blues superstar status previously reserved for BB King. (There is no comparison between rock superstar status and blues superstar status. Let's just say Buddy probably doesn't have to drive himself to gigs anymore.)

Largely because of this, Buddy's shows had become increasingly tedious, even as the fans had become increasingly more enthusiastic, allowing him to not bother completing songs and saying, "Shee-it" a lot, like the Little Walter outtakes.

To be fair, I haven't seen him in a while, so perhaps the latest shaved head reincarnation of Buddy Guy is putting on a great act. Gentle readers, please let me know.

Enough of this- one may get the feeling that I don't like Buddy Guy. But to paraphrase Billy Gilbert in "The Music Box", I love Buddy Guy! I think he is truly one of the great bluesmen in history. Certainly he is a rare electric guitarist, one of a literal handfull plus one that can be identified in two notes, along with BB, T-Bone Walker, Guitar Slim, Albert King and Albert Collins.

The first time I saw him was in 1968 at the Newport Folk Festival. He was teamed with Junior Wells, and Fred Below and A. C. Reed were in the band. They were amazing- just what I wanted to see after wearing out my copies of Hoodoo Man Blues and It's My Life, Baby.

After that, it was hit or miss with those two- I saw some of the bravest, deepest blues shows ever and, unfortunately, some of the worst. They never seemd to really like each other, but they did seem to, on occasion, love each other. A strange dynamic, to say the least.

Around the time of Newport, Buddy released his finest recording: the uber- legendary A Man and His Blues on Vanguard records. No Junior, cool horns and an unbelievable performance from Otis Spann who almost steals the show, especially on One Room Country Shack. Check out Buddy's mumbled, "Git it, Spann," while Otis plays low note arpeggios. It's a sublime moment in a disc filled with sublime moments.

Bobby Bland's long-time guitarist and right hand man Wayne Bennett provides rock solid rhythm guitar. The horn section of three tenor saxes (Donald Hankins, Aaron Corthen aka A. C. Reed, and Bobby Fields) are subtle and never get in the way of the rest of the band. Jack Myers, the Hoodoo Man bass player, and no relation to the Myers brothers, repeats his role here. Below and drummer Lonny Taylor trade off on the drum chores, although my ear tells me that Below is doing most of the drumming.

Buddy takes Earl Hooker's Two Bugs and Roach instrumental, adds nursery rhyme lyrics and retitles it Mary Had a Little Lamb. Years later Stevie Ray Vaughn would turn this into a major hit. All the slow blues, and there are a few- it's right after BB's success with Live at the Regal after all, head into the late- night, after hours territory... lonely, sparse and very blue.

The album has an almost casual sound, and Buddy's guitar lacks the distorted overplaying that characterized his post- Hendrix work. In addition to his fine guitar on this disc, Guy's singing is great. He is at the top of his form, his sweet, high tenor perfectly expressing his feelings.

Nowadays blues audiences demand technique and pyrotechnics, but this recording is a throwback to the days of passion and deep feeling, especially in the interplay between Spann and Guy.

And that's why I love Buddy Guy.

*1st generation: Tampa Red, John Lee Williamson, et alia. 2nd generation: Muddy, Wolf, et alia. 3rd generation: Cotton, Otis Rush, Magic Sam, Buddy and Junior, et alia.

Keith Olbermann Says Goodbye

2011-01-24T22:33:00.004-05:00

I was caught by surprise Friday by Keith Olbermann's departure from MSNBC, as, I suspect, were many.

I'm not a student of ratings, so I have no idea how his show was doing, but as Howard Stern said about Doug Trachte, the Greaseman, when Trachte was fired from radio for racist statements, "If his ratings were better, they wouldn't have let him go."

So true.

Economics, ultimately, rule the commercial airwaves. It doesn't really matter how tasteless you are (and Keith always struck me as somewhat tasteful: the beautifully tailored suits, the $100.00 haircut), it only matters how much money you are making for your sponsors and your network.

I liked Keith's show at times. Of course it was unbalanced. Keith never claimed to be the voice of reason. If you want to hear that voice, tune in Rachel Maddow, whose show is probably the smartest on TV, besides NOVA.

Conservative pundits have a curious set of rules that govern what they can say. Even as he presents himself as a guardian of "family values" (whatever that means), Rush Limbaugh can mock Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Disease symptoms with total impunity.

Frankly, there's not enough liberals mocking anything these days as far as I'm concerned. Liberals are so afraid of offending some group or another that there's very little wiggle room for them to be pissed off publicly, but Keith managed to find that room and glory in it.

When Keith did get pissed off, he was very good at saying why he was pissed off. Interestingly, in the clip above he compares himself to Howard Beale, the "Mad as hell..." character in Paddy Chayevsky's script for the movie Network. But he never seemed quite that angry.

I recently read Roger Kahn's biography of Jack Dempsey. Kahn spends a lot of time writing about himself and his father and the times in which Dempsey thrived. Kahn is a sportswriter first and foremost, but he's a New Deal guy and he makes sure you know it.

That's how sports commentator and sports buff Keith Olbermann ran his show- like a sports writer. Not like a sports show (how much stupider can they get? The only worthwhile sports show is John Riggins', and that's because he hates Dan Snyder as much as I do, and says so), but like a classic Damon Runyun-eque sports column, the kind Philip Roth parodied so deftly in The Great American Novel.

So, I'm going to miss Keith. His labored attempts at humor (really, really dry), his liberal outrage (never that outrageous), the cut of his jib (whatever that means.) In these insipid, depressing times, Keith was refreshing. Not incredibly refreshing, just... refreshing. And now that's gone too.

A Shameless Plug

2011-01-20T09:50:00.002-05:00

Is there any other kind?

I'm shamelessly plugging my photography blog, as opposed to my online portfolio, www.littlehales.com.

I've been able to put up a picture a day recently, most of them shot with my Canon G11 point and shoot, a lovely camera that I highly recommend.

So far, so good, except no one knows about the site, so no one goes there. In droves.

Give it a try- the link is under the words "photography blog" and please let me know if you like it or hate it. Or in between.

At the Doctors' Office:

Blogging Tips and Tricks

2011-01-16T11:28:00.005-05:00

One of the first things I learned about maintaining a blog is that you have to keep blogging on a fairly regular basis. If I go to someone else's blog and see that the last entry was sometime in 2007, then I lose all respect for that blogger. That's right- all respect. Blogging is a very respectable past time.

However, because my blog does not detail my adventures with, say, my grandchildren or what I did today, I often run out of things to say in the context of the blog. In real life I just talk and talk, loudly, until everyone begs me to shut up.

What to do?

Here's a few tricks I've developed over the last year and a half:

1. Watch some pundit on television passing themselves off as an intelligent objective observer of current events. Fox News is is a sure thing. This usually makes me so angry that I'll write an ill- reasoned diatribe.

2. Check dates for birthdays. Especially musician's birthdays. This is very different from actually planning to write something on their birthdays, which I rarely do.

3. There are other blogs where someone else has done a lot of work or research and found some cool pic or video. Just re-publish (with credit of course) and there's your blog!

4. Make a list. Number it.

There you have it: four short blogging tricks. I'm sure other bloggers have their own shortcuts, but these are mine and I'm passing them to you, gentle reader. Blog on!

Finally, in the spirit of tip # 3, here's a very sweet pic from the great If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There'd be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats:

Here's Willie Dixon, Big Joe Williams and Memphis Slim sharing a laugh on the streets of Chicago. This is one of those photographs where I wish I had been there, a cosmic snapshot of three icons doing something they probably did everyday at that point of time.

After this all three would go their separate ways, Dixon back to the Chess Studios to record some future classic, Big Joe back down south to continue his career as the definitive itinerant nine-string- guitar- welding blues man and Memphis Slim ultimately to Paris where he lived out his life playing nightly in a high- priced bistro.

Luckily for us, on that day in Chicago, someone made this snapshot: Joe with his briefcase and champion belt- buckle, his hat at a rakish tilt and a lit cigarette in his left hand, Willie with his skinny tie and perennial white socks and Slim wearing his elegant slip-on loafers and wrinkled raincoat.

Compare their nonchalance with the uptight guy in the background and you realize immediately why it's better to be a great bluesman than to be almost anything else.

New Orleans Panoramic

2011-01-14T16:45:00.000-05:00

New Orleans Panoramic, 1919

The street in the approximate middle running toward the water is Canal and we're looking toward the Mississippi River, visible on the horizon.

Storyville, although closed by 1919, still physically existed and can be seen on the left, near the Regency Shoes' smokestack. The railroad was still there in 1919, on Basin Street. Tom Anderson's Saloon can be seen on the corner of Basin and Iberville.

Most of the French Quarter is obscured by the large white building at the middle left. Maison Blanche's sign can be seen in the background through the building.

Oddly enough, New Orleans still looks a lot like this.

This image is from the Library of Congress collection, and was photographed by George Prince.

Welcome to 2011 or Not, and the Special K Challenge

2011-01-11T10:33:00.003-05:00

When we last communicated, gentle readers, it was atop the London Eye with its sweeping view of that great city. Or was it the DC Eye, with its graceful panorama of the Potomac and the monuments?

Well, now it's 2011 and time to get back to the business at hand, whatever that may be. For me, it's photography and music, neither of which will make me a millionaire, but who wants to be a millionaire. I do, of course, we all do. However, short of going on a quiz show (probably rigged) or winning a lottery (need to buy a ticket), it ain't gonna happen.

As I write this, U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords lies in critical condition, the result of a terrible shooting incident that left a little girl dead, as well as Rep. Gifford's Chief of Staff and others. In custody is a man of questionable mental stabilty. Representative Giffords had been literally targeted by Sarah Palin in a map advising her followers how to vote.

Needless to say, the media is having a field day trying to implicate Ms. Palin (who has taken the target map off of her website) in the shooting.

Her staff has referred to the crosshairs as "surveyor's marks", which makes about as much sense as heaping all the blame for this tragedy on a misguided, ex-beauty pageant participant from Alaska with a penchant for flamboyant opportunism somewhere between, say, Roseanne in the '80's and Paris Hilton in the '00's. (The zeros? Can we call it that?)

According to the more responsible members of the press, the suspect is extremely delusional. Even David Korn of Mother Jones pointed this out on Keith Olbermann's show, until Keith cut him off.

Can we blame Sarah Palin for any of this? Sure, if we want to grossly oversimplify the situation. Certainly if the shoe were on the other foot, Sarah Palin would blame the President, the Democrats and the "liberal media" and anyone else who might help her make more money.

However, as in all of life, it's more complicated than anyone on television would care to admit. I mean, it's not impossibly complicated, like string theory, it's just more complicated than a sound bite or a movie pitch.

Ultimately, one hopes that instead of pointing fingers, which is fun, we begin to rebuild the informational structure and think more for ourselves, which is not as much fun. We need to access more real information, as opposed to weighted opinion dressed as objective reporting, and make up our own minds. Our opinions are just as valid as anyone's in the media- we have access to the same information as radio/ television personalities, although not as quickly, and are still allowed to come to our own conclusions.

Remember- Sarah Palin is a former politician. She is not an office holder of any kind. She is not in service to this country in any way. She, like Paris Hilton, is a media construct, a personality exploiting a broken system in order to accrue lots and lots of wealth and fame. Unlike Paris, who charged money to go to private parties, Sarah goes to all the parties with a figurative sign around her neck: "Look at me!" it says. "Hel-lo!"

Now, the Special K Challenge: my daughter Emilie writes a blog listed to the left there called I Came to Run. She does run, every day, and has participated in marathons and other endeavors that make me tired just typing about them. Recently, she wrote a perspicacious (yeah, I said it!) entry about the Special K Challenge. The blog was picked up by Jezebel and has garnered over ten thousand hits on Emilie's blogsite.

I could reprint it here, and spike up my own readership, but instead let's get more folks to Emilie's original entry, found here.

Instead of taking the Kelloggs folks' word for it, she researched their so- called challenge, added up the facts and wrote about her own conclusions and the research behind those conclusions.

Need I say more?

Note: Since I wrote this, I've heard that Ms. Palin has not removed her target from her Facebook page.

The London Eye

2010-12-30T13:18:00.001-05:00

The Ferris Wheel made its debut at The Chicago World's Fair (or World's Columbian Exposition) in 1893. Since then it has been a mainstay of amusement parks and county fairs all over the world. One would think that the Ferris Wheel, named after its inventor, George Ferris, would be passe- certainly not an earth- shattering attraction or an economical revitalizer. I mean, hey- it just goes round and round, right? Like a vertical Merry- Go- Round, right?

George Ferris's Original Wheel, Chicago, 1893.

Well, yeah, but....

Let's not forget the power of the wheel. The original Ferris Wheel saved the Chicago Fair from bankruptcy, despite the fact that there were hundreds of incredible exhibits there, as well as an advanced architectural concept that still fascinates today.

Which brings us to 2010, on the eve of 2011, and the London Eye. The Eye is a modern- day Ferris Wheel, the creation of husband/ wife architectural team David Marks and Julia Barfield. Begun in 1999, it opened in 2000 as the Millennium Wheel, under the primary aegis of British Airways. Soon after it became known as the London Eye.

Situated on the Thames, the Eye has become the United Kingdom's biggest tourist attraction. It has changed the landscape of London, and is a major focal point for movies and TV shows. Thirty two air-conditioned (and presumably heated) capsules hold twenty- five people each. The Eye revolves slowly and apparently, doesn't stop as people get on on and off.

The capsule, which comfortably holds twenty-five

I don't know about you, but I find this amazing. In 2011, the number one attraction in Great Britain is a Ferris Wheel. Never mind the Tower of London or the changing of the guard or the Queen's Dollhouse or Abbey Road or whatever- let's go to the Ferris Wheel, which uses no new technology (unless you think air conditioning is new) and has been around since 1893.

So- how come there aren't more? One reason is that the Eye has not yet turned (get it?) a profit. Patience, Eye- watchers- it will!

Here in Washington, DC, we have a beautiful river, the Potomac. Some of the most famous sites of the city are on or near the river: the Washington Monument, the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, the Smithsonian, not to mention Arlington Cemetary and the Pentagon.

There's a great park, Haines Point, right there, on the river! Perfect location for the DC Eye. The city is always whining about revenue- let's build an Eye! A sultry summer's evening, a stroll to the park and a ride on the DC Eye.

I can't wait.

Okay- I know it's DC, the home of nothing (except the government- so, close to nothing), the city well- known as the enemy of creativity, graciousness, beauty, etc. but this seems like a no- brainer, even for the morons who run this town. As long as we can keep the Dan Snyders and their ilk out, we could probably get it right within, oh- a good ten or so tries, including bankrupt construction companies, graft, greedy lawyers, corporate indifference, unpaid bills and shoddy construction.

Seriously- the Eye has it!

A Really Good Question Deserves a Really Good Answer

2010-12-29T15:09:00.001-05:00

From Super Magician Comics #3:

This one's for the Freeland- Archers (not their real name).

Merry Xmas and Happy Holidays, Everyone

2010-12-25T09:19:00.002-05:00

This drawing by Leonardo Da Vinci is in the National Portrait Gallery in London, England. Viewing it is always the highlight of my visits to Great Britain.

10,000 Page Views!

2010-12-20T16:21:00.000-05:00

I guess that counts for something. Either one person has visited here 10,000 times (me probably), or some bunch of people have visited here over 10,000 times. Or some combination of the two.

Whatever the reason, there have been over 10,000 views of this blog, so... many, many thanks!

A Pretty Good Norman

2010-12-19T13:33:00.000-05:00

From 1940, courtesy of Golden Age Comic Book Stories: