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Hot Country Singles of 1964

Roger Miller

Billboard dropped the W designation, as in Western, from its charts in late 1962. So it was the Hot Country Singles of 1964. These topped the charts but did not cross over to lead the pop, RB, or nascent adult contemporary charts.

Once A Day – Connie Smith, eight weeks at #1. Her name is the only one I don’t recognize from the list.

I Guess I’m Crazy – Jim Reeves, seven weeks at #1

My Heart Skips A Beat – Buck Owens, seven weeks at #1. I never owned any of his music, but I knew he was on Capitol Records because the inner sleeves of my Beatles albums featured him, Nat Cole, Al Martino, and several others.

Understand Your Man – Johnny Cash, six weeks at #1. I didn’t own this at the time, only in the late 1990s, when I was getting his American Recordings did I purchase the greatest hits of his Columbia recordings.

“Sugar is sweet and so is maple syrple”

Dang Me – Roger Miller, six weeks at #1. When I was a member of the Capitol Record Club, c. 1966, I failed to return the negative option card in time. I received his Golden Hits on Smash Records. It included the 1965 crossover hit King of the Road, but also a bunch of other songs I grew to love. I think it was the Roger thing. BTW, the first two videos I found were versions he rerecorded for stereo; it’s not as good.

I Don’t Care (Just As Long as You Love Me) – Buck Owens, six weeks at #1. Owens was considered one of the most successful artists of the Bakersfield sound, “defined by its influences of rock and roll and honky-tonk style country, and its heavy use of electric instrumentation and backbeat. It was also a reaction against the slickly produced, orchestra-laden Nashville sound, which was becoming popular in the late 1950s.”

Saginaw, Michigan – Lefty Frizzell, four weeks at #1

Begging To You – Marty Robbins, three weeks at #1. I got a Robbins greatest hits CD from my late FIL’s CD collection.

Together Again – Buck Owens, two weeks at #1. The only time I regularly watched the country-laden variety show Hee Haw, which he co-hosted with Roy Clark from 1969 to 1986, was in the spring of 1975 when I was shivering in my grandmother’s old house and had only one channel, WNBF, Channel 12 on the VHF dial.

B.J. the D.J. – Stonewall Jackson, one week at #1

Media Matters on Project 2025

I thought Americans didn’t want a king

A LOT of folks I know IRL have said, online and occasionally in person, that we all need to know more about Project 2025. I agree. My first mention was in a link in August 2023, but it bears repeating.

Check out the Media Matters website.

“The initiative is backed by a coalition of over 100 organizations and individuals, at least two-thirds of which receive funding from the Koch network or conservative philanthropist Leonard Leo. The project is also heavily promoted by MAGA-connected media figures such as Steve Bannon, who has called it the ‘blueprint’ for Trump’s second term on his War Room podcast.”

The presumptive Republican nominee claims, “I know nothing about Project 2025. I have no idea who is behind it. I disagree with some of the things they’re saying, and some of the things they’re saying are absolutely ridiculous and abysmal. Anything they do, I wish them luck, but I have nothing to do with them.”

Or, less politely, he lies.

This is – let me think of a kind way to put this – disingenuous. Just before he went to prison for a few months, Bannon told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl that he had regularly been in touch with djt. “John McEntee, former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office and one of Trump’s most trusted aides, is a senior adviser for the project. McEntee said in April that the Trump campaign and Project 2025 plan to ‘integrate a lot of our work’ this summer, according to the liberal watchdog Media Matters.”

Peter Navarro, Ken Cuccinelli, Stephen Moore, Christopher Miller, Roger Severino, and others who worked in his administration are all involved in Project 2025. In other words, he has implausible deniability.

A fundraising email from the Heritage Foundation also lays it on thick. “The Biden campaign has declared an all-out war on The Heritage Foundation and our Project 2025 initiative.

“The social media feeds for the campaign, and all their surrogates are filled with lies about our work. Their website even has a page dedicated to attacking Project 2025.

“They are terrified of Project 2025 because they know it will save our country from the radical Left’s destructive agenda.”

Here’s a video dispassionately explaining Project 2025, noting five criticisms of the program. It’s the type of resource that tries to be nonpartisan.

Immunity

Project 2025 is made more threatening by SCOTUS’ decision regarding immunity.

Once again, the Heritage Foundation says that Biden lied. “‘For all… practical purposes, today’s decision almost certainly means that there are virtually no limits on what a president can do,’ Biden claimed.” He also suggested “that ‘the power of the office will no longer be constrained by the law, even including the Supreme Court of the United States. The only limits will be self-imposed by the president alone.’ This accusation is objectively false.”

The prevarication belongs to the Heritage Foundation. The generally apolitical The Legal Eagle notes WE’RE F*CKED. In the description: “This is one of the worst SCOTUS decisions ever.” Trump Is Immune. He argues that djt’s “limited immunity,” in practical terms, is anything but limited.

New Civil Rights Movement: “Two hundred and three days after Special Counsel Jack Smith’s first request, the U.S. Supreme Court in a 6-3 decision along partisan lines… ruled an American President has ‘absolute‘ immunity from criminal prosecution if his actions are ‘official acts’ of Office.

Frank S. Robinson wrote in The Supreme Court, Presidential Immunity, and the Implacable Tide: “The court unnecessarily pronounced [an overly broad] doctrine of presidential immunity. Practically deeming the president above the law, saying one can’t be prosecuted for any ‘official acts’ — only for stuff done in their ‘private capacity.’ Quite a limited carve-out. Worse yet, the Court’s majority, having promulgated a standard, failed to take the next step and apply it to the facts at hand.”

The Weekly Sift guy: “Roberts and the conservative majority have embedded a time bomb in the Constitution. That bomb could sit peacefully for decades until it is disarmed by some future Court, or it could go off as soon as next January.”

Am I scared? Yes, I am. Will I vote for whoever has the best chance of beating djt in November, even if he’s 81 and arthritic? I absolutely will.

Nonet and nonnet

No, No, Nanette

Here is a word association piece involving the words nonet and nonnet.

I was reading a flyer from the Music Haven in Central Park, Schenectady and it was promoting a group called the Slavic Soul Party! (The exclamation point is part of the name.) It describes them as “A nonet of fiery Balkan brass, throbbing funk grooves, Roma Gypsy accordion wizardry, and virtuoso jazz representing the vast cultural expanse of Southeastern Europe promises to engage house and hill in a raucous dance party. It’s taking place on Sunday, July 21st at 7 pm.

I was taken first by the word gypsy. I thought was no longer considered appropriate. The Merriam-Webster definition: “Though still frequently encountered in English, use of the term Gypsy to refer to Roma people or their language is increasingly regarded as offensive because of negative stereotypes associated with that term. Although Gypsy is sometimes used as a neutral or positive self-descriptor, it is recommended that those for whom it is not a self-descriptor use Roma or Romani/Romany instead.” So perhaps the description came from the Slavic Soul Party.

Next, I was curious about the pronunciation of nonet. I figured it would be similar to quartet, quintet, sextet, septet, and octet and it’d be Na-net. But, no. It’s pronounced like no net.

Poetry

But there is a word nonnet, which IS pronounced Na-net. Or I think there is. My spellcheck doesn’t like it, and neither does M-W. It is a nine-line poem with 9 syllables in the first line, 8 syllables in the second line, et cetera until it gets down to 1 syllable in the ninth line.

However, I find more references to this poetic device as nonet, such as here.

BTW, there’s also non-net, a UK adjective: “(of an amount) including tax and other sums in addition to the net amount.”

Nonet reminded me of the musical No, No, Nanette. My wife played clarinet in a pit band in high school for the musical, but I don’t even know the storyline. It is the source for the song Tea For Two.

Nanette reminds me of the actress Nanette Fabray (1920-2018) who was very popular when I was growing up, notably on Hollywood Squares and One Day at A Time. Her niece Shelley Fabares was in the Donna Reed Show, Coach, and many other programs.

Why Juneteenth?

Galveston

I received a series of questions from an old friend, the underlying theme is Why Juneteenth?

Hi Roger—

I’m thinking about Juneteenth today: it’s being described as “the newest holiday” but I’m not sure whether it counts as an actual holiday.

Per the Pew Research Center via MSN: “Some 28 states and the District of Columbia made the date a public holiday, analysts revealed. State workers were given the day off with full pay, and state government offices were closed in Alabama, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington and West Virginia.”

So the banks were closed, and the mail wasn’t delivered. There have always been holidays, including Presidents Day and MLK Day, where states and private entities have chosen not to participate.

The implication is that it’s something to celebrate

Truth is always something to, if not celebrate, then to honor.

1/1/1863

What I’ve heard suggests that it’s about slaves being kept in the dark about emancipation for a couple of years before anyone bothered to tell them.
Somehow, it seems unlikely that something so big could be kept secret for so long.

“A couple of years” goes back to the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. As the National Archives notes: “Despite this expansive wording, the Emancipation Proclamation was limited in many ways. It applied only to states that had seceded from the United States, leaving slavery untouched in the loyal border states. It also expressly exempted parts of the Confederacy (the Southern secessionist states) that had already come under Northern control. Most importantly, the freedom it promised depended upon Union (United States) military victory.

“Although the Emancipation Proclamation did not end slavery in the nation, it captured the hearts and imagination of millions of Americans and fundamentally transformed the character of the war. After January 1, 1863, every advance of federal troops expanded the domain of freedom. Moreover, the Proclamation announced the acceptance of black men into the Union Army and Navy, enabling the liberated to become liberators. By the end of the war, almost 200,000 black soldiers and sailors had fought for the Union and freedom.”

The bona fides of June 19, 1865, are well documented. Also, I’ve been to Galveston, TX, which is on a barrier island.

Wars are complicated

So, formalities aside, wasn’t it all over, literally, but the shouting?

“It would be easy to think so in our world of immediate communication, but as Granger and the 1,800 bluecoats under him soon found out, news traveled slowly in Texas. Whatever Gen. Robert E. Lee had surrendered in Virginia, the Army of the Trans-Mississippi had held out until late May, and even with its formal surrender on June 2, a number of ex-rebels in the region took to bushwhacking and plunder.

“That’s not all that plagued the extreme western edge of the former Confederate states. Since the capture of New Orleans in 1862, slave owners in Mississippi, Louisiana, and other points east had been migrating to Texas to escape the Union Army’s reach.”

Also: “Without the forceful appearance of Union soldiers, Black Texans had remained imprisoned within the convulsive clutches of a dying Confederacy.” So even if people had heard the news, it “held little practical meaning so long as the state remained under Confederate control.”

I’m not sure what there is to celebrate about waiting as long as possible to let the enslaved know they were “free.”

This is people owning their own freedom. “The year following 1865, freedmen in Texas organized the first of what became the annual celebration of ‘Jubilee Day’ on June 19. Juneteenth commemorations featured music, barbecues, prayer services, and other activities in the ensuing decades. As Black people migrated from Texas to other parts of the country, the Juneteenth tradition spread.” This Daily Kos piece addresses some of this.

So its tradition predates MLK Day, or Black History Month, which began as Negro History Week in 1926.

What if

I also wonder what Lincoln might have been thinking about the Emancipation Proclamation: Did he realize how complicated it was? Did he know but just put off the details for later and leave nearly everything else as it was?

That’s a more layered question. Would the Freedmen’s Bureaus have existed longer under Lincoln? Would there have been more punitive actions against the Confederate states before re-entering the Union to prevent them from essentially going back to the status quo, with Jim Crow replacing slavery? There are probably more books about Lincoln than anyone, save maybe Jesus Christ.

I think the Library Of Congress piece is pretty straightforward. Obviously, freedom is not a straight line. The struggles of the 1940s, 1950s, and later were a direct result of freedom denied.

As many have noted, we are to form a “more perfect union.” It ain’t finished yet, and probably never will be. It operates in fits and starts with two steps forward and one or three steps back (see women’s reproductive rights, voting rights, etc., etc., etc.)

I spend less time thinking about what could have been done in the 1860s and 1870s because we can’t change it. Only the future we can change. Maybe.

Here’s a cartoon that may be too much on the nose.

Overanalyzing my good deeds

give blood

One of my many failings is overanalyzing my good deeds. I seem to have this bizarre need to check out my motivation.

I’m pretty sure I mentioned this one before. I’m at the CVS at 613 New Scotland in Albany. As is too often the case, there is only self-checkout easily available, and only one of the two machines was working. The person in front of me had too little money, and in change, to buy whatever it was they wanted.

After their repeated failed attempt, I said, “May I pay for that?” And I did. It was a huge $6.78. But was I doing that to be nice or so I could finish my transaction? Of course, the rational brain, “Can’t it be both?” The rational brain doesn’t always rule.

The last Friday in June, I had an appointment to donate blood at the Albany Public Library, Washington Avenue branch. Of course, I recall that made my first blood donation in 1971(!) so I could get out of work for an hour. The fact that I’ve now donated 178 times doesn’t get as much traction in the psyche. Or that I have donated 100 “points”, whatever that means, back to the American Red Cross.

BTW, only two folks donated including me when the staff said they had to shut down because one of their workers became ill. I put that fact on Facebook. But later, I discovered that they managed to call in someone and it was restarted. I hate giving out bad information.

Free ice cream!

After the library, I went to Stewart’s to get milk and a free pint of strawberry ice cream the Red Cross gave me for donating. Some rewards, such as T-shirts and ice cream, I will accept.

On to the Price Chopper to buy bananas and Bisquik. The woman in line ahead of me was having some complicated transaction with her EBT (food stamps) card. By the end, she was going to void the sale. I said, “May I buy this?” It was two containers of apple juice for her inarguably cute child with her. And it was only $3.13. After the woman thanked me and left, the cashier said, “You did a good thing today.” Somehow, I found that disconcerting. I don’t mind doing nice things, but I’m oddly uncomfortable with someone pointing it out, especially such a minimal deed. I like to do my good works in secret, I guess.

Unrelated to good deeds, but at APL Washington Avenue, two people took an extraordinarily long time using the bathrooms. I made some passing comments to the others waiting.

Finally, I got my chance. When I exited, one of the people still in the queue said, “Do you always talk to yourself?” Ah. I thought we were having one of those collective momentary experiences. My bad. I replied, “Why yes, I do. I find myself utterly fascinating.” That was untrue but I was so taken aback, it was the first thing that came to mind.