October 2015 - Page 5 of 7 - Ramblin' with Roger

Sam Moore of Sam & Dave is 80 (tomorrow)

Sam Moore was blown away, and uttered “Play it, Steve” spontaneously.

Samuel David Moore (born October 12, 1935) and the late Dave Prater (May 9, 1937 – April 9, 1988) comprised, inarguably, the most successful and critically acclaimed soul-singing duo, Sam & Dave, from 1961 to 1981. They are members of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1992) and the Vocal Group Hall of Fame. Sam Moore has continued his career as a solo performing and recording artist.

They had a complicated recording situation, signed to Atlantic Records, but leased to the soul label Stax for a time in order to get the Memphis feel. Their working relationship was also strange; “according to Moore, they did not speak to each other offstage for almost 13 years.”

A Place Nobody Can Find, written by David Porter, was their first STAX single, b/w Goodnight Baby (Isaac Hayes/Porter), both sides featured Dave Prater singing lead. It failed to chart. That would soon change.

Many of the song description narratives are from the great book Soulsville U.S.A.: The Story of STAX RECORDS by Rob Bowman. Links to all songs.

10. I Take What I Want (Hayes/Mabon Hodges/Porter), 1965 – another early song that failed to chart. Note that many of these songs were written by the team of Isaac Hayes (of “Shaft” fame), and David Porter, who also produced these and many future songs. They also wrote hits for other STAX artists.

9. You Got Me Hummin’ (Hayes/Porter), #77 pop, #7 r&b in 1967 – such nice rhythmic humming, it wasn’t the bawdy song that the writers had envisioned.

8. You Don’t Know Like I Know (Hayes/Porter), #90 pop, #7 r&b in 1965 – their first hit, due in no small part to the promotional skills of STAX’s Al Bell. It was inspired by the gospel song You Don’t Know Like I Know What the Lord Has Done for Me. Sam Moore hated the song, and about half the tunes presented to him at STAX because Hayes and Porter made him sing high in his vocal range. Dave sings the first verse, then they trade lines. Instead of a solo, Hayes and Porter put in a horn ensemble, inspired by Otis Redding’s In the Midnight Hour.

7. You Don’t Know What You Mean to Me (Eddie Floyd/Steve Cropper) #48 pop, #20 r&b in 1968 – I’m not a great fan of talking in pop songs. But when Sam & Dave do it – “Eddie FLOYD wrote the song” – it’s different. Steve Cropper is best known as the guitarist of the Stax Records house band, Booker T. & the M.G.’s.

6. Soothe Me (Sam Cooke), the live version went #56 pop, #16 r&b, #35 UK – smooth like Sam Cooke was.

5. Soul Man (Hayes/Porter), #2 pop for three weeks, #1 r&b for seven weeks, 24 UK in 1967. A Grammy Hall of Fame song. Isaac Hayes suggested Steve Cropper play a slide guitar lick, and Cropper, not having a proper slide, used a cigarette lighter. Sam Moore was blown away and uttered “Play it, Steve” spontaneously, which was kept in the mix. The success of the Blues Brothers’ cover, for some reason, made me irritable.

4. Wrap It Up (Hayes/Porter) – B-side of I Thank You, 1968. The lead vocals were recorded in Paris while the duo was on tour, because the label thought, correctly, that the A-side was going to be a big hit.

3. I Thank You (Hayes/Porter), #9 pop, #4 r&b, #34 UK in 1968 – more talk that works. Sam’s “I want everybody to get off your seat, And get your arms together, And your hands together, And give me some of that old soul clapping” sounded like church, especially the word “old.” Also love the clavinet, played by Hayes. It features background vocals by Ollie and the Nightingales.

2. Hold On, I’m Comin’ (Hayes/Porter), #21 pop, #1 r&b in 1966 – the first Sam & Dave song I was aware of. Hayes had yelled to Porter to hurry, and finish up in STAX’s washroom. Porter responded, “Hold on, man, I’m coming.” Sam is on lead vocals from the start. Little mistakes, such as Wayne Jackson missing a trumpet entrance, were left in. Often covered, never surpassed.

1. When Something is Wrong with My Baby (Hayes/Porter), #42 pop, #2 r&b in 1967 – this song, a rare ballad for the duo, is gorgeous. Inspired by Porter’s bad marriage and his fantasies about what would feel like to be in love. Sung primarily by Sam, with harmonies by Dave. Also covered a lot, notably by Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville.
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Coverville 1096: The Villes are alive with the sound of Covers. And Sam & Dave. And Indie Hodgepodge!

Music Throwback Saturday: Jackie Blue

Jackie Blue reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and #10 in South Africa in 1975.

It was really annoying. One Saturday, I was listening to a radio being broadcast within some retail store or restaurant when I heard a song I recognize. I could identify it in three notes.

“That’s ‘Jackie Blue,'” I said aloud, to no one in particular. But then I was stumped. Who SANG it?

I even own the song on a CD compilation of Southern rock. This was maddening.

Obviously, I COULD look at the CD, or Google the song. Stubbornly, I refused to do so.

Then frankly, it slipped my mind… until the following Tuesday morning, when I woke up, and thought, “Ozark Mountain Daredevils,” an “American Southern rock/country rock band formed in 1972 in Springfield, Missouri.”

“Jackie Blue is a single by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils from their 1974 album, It’ll Shine When It Shines. The song reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the U.S. and #10 in South Africa in 1975. The song was sung by the group’s drummer, Larry Lee.”

LISTEN to Jackie Blue:
the album cut; also, here
the single version
a live version
the 45 rpm version played at 33 rpm, just because

John Lennon would have been 75

Both the first verse of the song The Word and the first verse of John, chapter 1, begin with the words, “in the beginning…”

My friend Dan sent me this article How did the Beatles Get Their Name? Any Beatles fan worth his or her salt has heard the Flaming Pie story:
Many people ask what are Beatles? Why Beatles? Ugh, Beatles, how did the name arrive? So we will tell you. It came in a vision–a man appeared in a flaming pie and said unto them “From this day on you are Beatles with an A.” “Thank you, Mister Man,” they said, thanking him.

Flaming Pie, not coincidentally, is the name of a 1997 Paul McCartney album.

In the book The Gospel according to the Beatles by Steven Turner, it’s clear that John, far more than any of his cohorts, grew up with religious training. He was living with his Aunt Mimi (Stanley) Smith, who grew up Anglican, though neither she nor her sisters attended church as adults.

Still, Mimi and her sisters made sure their children were sent to Sunday school. John was a chorister and member of a Bible class. “For a time, he was attending events at the church four days a week.”

It was that respectable, impersonal, “bourgeois” version of Christianity that John eventually rejected. Still, the lessons he heard seeped into his thinking. The structure of the flaming pie story, Turner opines, is based on Acts 10:11, and/or Genesis 17. John himself called the flaming pie story “imitation Biblical stuff.”

“Mimi’s religion could be summarized by a stanza she framed on her wall:
However black the clouds may be
In time they’ll pass away
Have faith and trust and you will see
God’s light make bright your day
Compare these to the lyrics from Tell Me What You See, from the UK version of the Help! album.

The first time I heard The Word, from Rubber Soul, it reminded me of the beginning verses of the Gospel according to John. Both the first verse of the song and the first verse of chapter 1 begin with the words, “in the beginning…” John acknowledged to Jann Wenner of Rolling Stone magazine that The Word was the first song he’d written to impart knowledge. (“This could be a Salvation Army song,” said Paul at the time.)

Girl, also from Rubber Soul, is a response to a book John read called Masochism in the Modern Man by Theodor Reil, who suggested that the command to love one’s enemies and pray for those who persecute us is masochistic. “In John’s hands, those ideas led him to question whether the ‘girl’ had been raised to believe ‘that pain would lead to pleasure…’ Did the girl believe those who told her “that a man must break his back to earn his day of leisure’?”

Turner said that The Beatles “were skeptical, even dismissive of the church, but yet many of the core beliefs… were secularized versions of Christian beliefs.” All You Need Is Love would be a prime example.

There’s a lot more in the book, both involving the Beatles’ philosophy as a group and individually, but this is enough for now.

John Lennon would have been 75 today. And his son Sean turns 40!

Tell Me What You See: Lyrics, and Song
The Word: Lyrics, and Song
Girl: Lyrics, and Song
All You Need Is Love: Lyrics, and Song

From Where the Lion Roars: The Hunt for an American Education in Binghamton

Dr. Kitonyi’s grandmother took him to a school run by missionaries at the age of 9 and it was then that he began to view education as key to his future.

A library friend of mine asked if I were familiar with a book called From Where the Lion Roars: the hunt for an American education in Binghamton by Peter N. Kitonyi. It is in the Local History room of the Albany Public Library. From the book information, Kitonyi attended Binghamton North High School, the “other” public high school besides Central in my hometown, back in the 1960s.

I was not familiar with the surname or the book. But I posted the information on a few Binghamton-based Facebook pages, and while no one remembered him, one person found an article in the Ithaca Journal, Ithaca being a small city about 50 miles from Binghamton, about how the American Civic Association helped him, as it has assisted immigrants for many years.

The ACA was familiar to me. My late father spent time volunteering there, and sometimes the family would be with him. My 16th birthday party was at that venue. And unfortunately, it was the site of one of those terrible mass killings in 2009.

The article read:

Kitonyi…was a teenager living in Kenya when he came across a letter in a magazine from a Binghamton resident, a letter that discussed the need for better education programs for disadvantaged children.

Kitonyi wrote to the author, expressing his desire for an American education. The ACA, along with the Rotary and Lions clubs and local churches, rallied around the cause, and Kitonyi came to the United States in 1961 at age 17.

The ACA worked with Kitonyi even while he was still in Kenya to find a host family for him.

“The ACA was instrumental; they really played a role,” said Kitonyi, who works in Albany in correctional education. “Because of their experience in knowing how to place families or children or refugees, they were in a position to help the Rotary Club and Lions Club to determine what neighborhood was good for me, what family would be good for me.”

Once he arrived in New York, the ACA continued to assist, helping with his paperwork and providing a social environment where he could meet other immigrants coping with adapting to life in the United States.

“Being an immigrant, it doesn’t matter what nationality you are – we were all undergoing the same assimilation process,” he said.

Even though Kitonyi dived into his studies, that process of assimilation wasn’t always easy. About a year after he arrived, he felt homesick; he missed his parents. Sometimes when he was feeling down, he’d go to the ACA. There, he’d talk with a volunteer – the same woman who signed the very first letter he’d received from the organization, back when he lived in Africa.

“It was a place to go if my chips were down,” he said. “I could go there and say what was going on. The door was open … and everybody knew I was Peter.”

I Googled the book title, and found several references to it, apparently out of print. But then I came across a RESOLUTION COMMEMORATING BLACK HISTORY MONTH 2013 AND HONORING THE EXTRAORDINARY CONTRIBUTIONS OF AFRICAN-AMERICANS TO THE NATION AND THE CITY OF ALBANY. This is something that has happened annually here, though I don’t know for how many years. On page 17, I come across this:
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WHEREAS, residents of the 7th Ward are proud to nominate and honor Dr. Kitonyi during Black History Month for his many years of exemplary community service. Dr. Kitonyi’s remarkable story begins with his childhood in the 1950’s and early 1960’s in Kenya, Africa. During this period, Kenya was a British colony that practiced racial discrimination. Many Africans worked on coffee and sisal plantations in deplorable conditions.

A civil war, the Mau Mau Rebellion, was underway in the 1950’s and according to Dr. Kitonyi, many innocent people were unjustly incarcerated or killed. He and his family lived in fear for their safety. Dr. Kitonyi’s grandmother took him to a school run by
missionaries at the age of 9 and it was then that Dr. Kitonyi began to view education as key to his future. Child labor was the norm in Kenya, however, and Dr. Kitonyi was working full time by the time he was a young teen.

He would stop at a U.S. Information Service Library in Nairobi on his lunch break from work and it was then, browsing American publications, that he learned about life in America. Dr. Kitonyi’s native language is Swahili and, though his English was limited, he began corresponding with individuals from Binghamton, N.Y….

Though Dr. Kitonyi only had the equivalent of a fifth grade education and spoke limited English, he persevered, graduating from high school in Binghamton and then, college, at the State University of N.Y. at Delhi. Dr. Kitonyi studied agriculture while in college and after completing his associate’s degree went back to Kenya for five years to assist people in his homeland by teaching basic, subsistence farming skills in rural areas.

Dr. Kitonyi returned to the United States, to work and go back to school. He received a bachelor’s degree from the State University of New York at Oneonta and pursued both master’s and doctorate degrees at the State University of New York at Albany. Dr. Kitonyi’s long career in public service in New York State included years at the Division for Youth, the Department of Education, and the Department of Corrections, retiring in 2012. During his years of public service, Dr. Kitonyi taught vocational skills to incarcerated youth and adults, and administered numerous educational programs…

Dr. Kitonyi continues to assist people in his homeland through programs such as Eyes for East Africa, a program that helps destitute individuals with various medical afflictions to their eyes, and programs that improve access to water in impoverished and drought-stricken areas of Africa.

Dr. Kitonyi and his wife Yolanda are proud parents of four adult children. Their two sons are police officers in the Albany Police Department. Residents of the 7th Ward are grateful for Dr. Peter Kitonyi’s many years of service to our community and believe he is most deserving of this honor…
***
OK, so this guy spent time in Binghamton; maybe my father even knew him. He’s lived in Albany for a number of years, which explains why the book is in the ALBANY collection, but, despite his accomplishments, I was totally unaware of him.

I’ve reached out to this man through some Africans in the area; it’s a tight-knit community, even though they came from a number of countries, to see if anyone knows him. Whether or not I meet him, I need to read that book.

Endangered skills?

I find it online banking so much easier than the paper version.

When you know you’re going to be unavailable, and you want to write ahead, you do list thingies. Thanks to fillyjonk:

20 Skills Facing Extinction
According to a survey, “younger generations have a lack of interest in things like reading maps, tying knots and remembering phone numbers. They don’t know how to knit, use a compass, darn a sock or write in cursive. Here are the following 20 skills facing extinction.”

1. Reading a map: Yes, I can do this; I often serve as a navigator, going back to my childhood. What I CAN’T do, apparently, is refold a road map properly. But I have loved maps since my grandfather gave me maps from his National Geographic magazines; still have a few of them.
2. Using a compass: I have, but haven’t had much need.
3. Tie a specific knot: Depends. I was excruciatingly slow learning to tie my shoes; I wore penny loafers until I was nine. On one particular job, I had to tie boxes in bundles of 20, and I had a bear of a time; I quit after two weeks. Ah, let’s say no; literally, I was no Boy Scout.
4. Darn socks: I never have.
5. Looking something up in a book using an index rather than ‘Googling it’: I AM a librarian, and in my office is a shelf of reference books, which I find not only easier to use than Google, but far more reliable.

6. Correct letter-writing technique: I DO know this, but haven’t much need of late.
7. Understanding pounds and ounces: I know a ton about this.
8. Knowing your spelling and grammar: Despite the typos in this blog, I really am quite good at this. I’ve even been known to offer correction to others, and they correct me.
9. Converting pounds and ounces to grams and kilograms: 2.2 pounds is a kilogram; knew without looking it up.
10. Starting a fire from nothing: Well, I’ve done it with a piece of glass and dried grass, but not in a long while. But NOTHING nothing? No.

11. Handwriting: I know the rules, but the truth is my handwriting is terrible. Thank goodness for the computer.
12. Understanding feet and inches: It helps to have a young daughter who is learning this anew, but yes, and fathoms, and furlongs, and miles.
13. Knitting: No, nor any of those other fine arts, such as crocheting.
14. Remembering a friend or relative’s phone number. Several of them, if they haven’t changed, including both of my sisters. The problem is that people get cellphones, and get new numbers. Then I NEVER remember the new numbers.
15. Remembering a partner’s phone number. I know The Wife’s cellphone number. I also remember her Social Security number.

16. Identifying trees, insects, flowers: Not my strength, except for the really obvious ones. Ah, a purple flower…
17. Touch typing. I’m a terrible typist.
18. Baking bread from scratch. I’ve done it, don’t particular enjoy it.
19. Taking up trousers. No.
20. Wiring a plug. A qualified no. I’ve actually done it from modeling another, but not my strength.

I also have changed a car tire, though it’s been years. I can figure out square root by hand and occasionally do so, just as a mental exercise. I hate automatic bowling scoring because I’d rather do it myself.

They also apparently listed “10 essential skills for modern life”

1. Searching the Internet: Evidently, I have figured this out, and not just Google.
2. Using/ connecting to WiFi: Done that. It’s fun traveling on a bus and finding the goofy hot spot names.
3. Using a smartphone. Rarely have done this. And I so seldom use my dumb phone.
4. Online banking. Actually, I find it so much easier than the paper version.
5. Knowing about privacy settings online: I probably should do more.

6. Searching and applying for jobs online; I’ve actually been on the other side of this, on search committees. Don’t much like it, but it’s “efficient.”
7. Being able to turn the water off at the mains. Haven’t had the need.
8. Using and following a sat-nav: You mean GPS? I’m inherently suspicious of it, ever since I was in my brother-in-law’s car some years ago and we literally drove around in circles. I like road signs, directions, maps. Mark Evanier has a good example of blind reliance on GPS.
9. Updating and installing computer programs. I’ve done it. There’s usually something wrong, and I have to reinstall.
10. Working a tablet: I like them. I can work them. The problem is that I tend to kill them.