Month: February 2009

The Day The Music Died

I feel as though I “knew” Buddy Holly. I’ve owned and listened to his songs by him and the Crickets


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and also through the cover versions by the Beatles (Words of Love), Linda Ronstadt and lots of others. Little wonder that Paul McCartney snatched up the rights to Buddy’s songs. I also saw the The Buddy Holly Story with Gary Busey in the lead.

I felt as though I was familiar with Richie Valens,


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between the Los Lobos cover of La Bamba and the movie La Bamba with Lou Diamond Phillips.

I have little feel, though, for The Big Bopper. I know that his son had him exhumed under some bizarre paranoid theory that the Big Bopper survived the plane crash but was shot and killed going for help. But other than the one slightly randy hit Chantilly Lace, he’s a mystery.

Of course today mars the 50th anniversary of the deaths of these three musicians in an Iowa plane crash. I was alive but too young to remember the event first hand.

At the end of my 35-year high school reunion, someone had everyone stand around to sing. I had no idea what it’d be. Turned out to be American Pie, which I thought was kind of weird, in as much as it came out after we all graduated. Some people knew some parts, misremembered others. Here are the lyrics, along with one interpretation of same, not all of which I ascribe to. And here’s Don McLean singing it. I saw him in the late 1970s – I’m thinking in Dutchess County, NY, around Poughkeepsie – and of course he HAD to perform it. I wonder if he ever tires of it?
LINK.

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ROG

Only in America

I’ve been pondering all the analysis about the significance of the Obama Presidency. Some say it’s the downpayment of the Dream, while others suggest it’s the fulfillment of the Dream. I tend toward the former category. I worry that “ah, we have a black President – all of our racial issues are solved!” Also, I would hate for Obama 44 to be the fulfillment if it turns out that he – using a word my wife hates – SUCKED as President. I mean, he’s done well out of the gate, but it’s not even two weeks out of 208. Also, racial disparities still exist, the Colin Powells and Barack Obamas notwithstanding.

All of this reminded me of a treacly song called Only in America by Jay and the Americans. It was a seemingly innocuous love song by Leiber/Stoller/Weill/Mann.

Only in America
Can a guy from anywhere
Go to sleep a pauper and wake up a millionaire
…
Only in America
Land of opportunity, yeah
Would a classy girl like you fall for a poor boy like me

Only in America
Can a kid who’s washin’ cars
Take a giant step and reach right up and touch the stars

Only in America
Could a dream like this come true
Could a guy like me start with nothing and end up with you

But it was the second couplet that caused a bit of controversy:
Only in America
Can a kid without a cent
Get a break and maybe grow up to be President

As done by the Americans, this was fine. But this song was originally written with the black vocal group, the Drifters, in mind. I’ve read that either Atlantic Records wouldn’t release it because it would be too controversial, or the group wouldn’t because the lyrics had been watered down.

Regardless, maybe the kid without a cent CAN “get a break and maybe grow up to be President”.

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WayneJohn’s post about time reminded me of another song, also somewhat appropriate in this context:
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The Chambers Brothers – Time Has Come Today
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ROG

Jack Johnson


When I was a kid, I was fascinated by boxing. I think this was a function of my paternal grandfather’s interest in watching it on television; boxing was on primetime TV from 1946 to 1964 on four different networks, including Dumont. It was a mix of admiration and horror, I think. I knew all the heavyweight boxing champions, and their approximate reign from John L. Sullivan to Jersey Joe Walcott to Joe Louis – the Brown Bomber to the undefeated Rocky Marciano to Cassius Clay Muhammad Ali.

No one, though, intrigued me more than Jack Johnson. Perhaps it was because he was the first black heavyweight champ, but more than likely it was because he seemed to annoy so many with his unforgivable blackness. He won the title in a brutalizing fight; I suspect that he fought that way as payback for being denied even the opportunity to fight for the crown for five years for reasons of race.

From the Wikipedia post: “[R]acial animosity among whites ran so deep that even a socialist like Jack London called out for a ‘Great White Hope’ to take the title away from Johnson — who was crudely caricatured as a subhuman ‘ape’ — and return it to where it supposedly belonged, with the ‘superior’ white race.” His 1910 “Fight of the Century” victory over former undefeated heavyweight champion James J. Jeffries lead to riots by the white public, often leading to near lynchings of blacks.

Jack Johnson was the first person persecutedprosecuted under the United States White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910 which not only prohibited white slavery, but also banned the “interstate transport of females for immoral purposes.” You may know it better as the Mann Act, which was so broadly worded that courts held it to criminalize many forms of consensual sexual activity. Charlie Chaplin and Chuck Berry were charged under it and Eliot Spitzer might have been.

I remember that my girlfriend at the time, her late father and I saw the movie The Great White Hope, starring James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, both Oscar nominated, when it came out in 1970. We were all mesmerized and enthralled, though like many movies made from plays, it was more like the filming of a play than a true theatrical experience.

Last September, Congress, with the strong support of, among others, John McCain, passed a resolution to recommend that the President grant Johnson a “pardon for his 1913 conviction, in acknowledgment of its racist overtones, and in order to exonerate Johnson and recognize his contribution to boxing.” I can find no record suggesting that such a pardon was ever granted.

There’s an online comic book called The Original Johnson. The description: “Trevor von Eeden introduces the first really free black man.” It was just over a century ago, December 26, 1908– “ironically enough, Boxing Day in many countries– Jack Johnson beat Tommy Burns to become both the heavyweight champion of the world, and the most notorious black man on the planet.”

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