birthday Archives - Page 37 of 49

Irwin Corey is 100

Professor Irwin Corey regularly panhandles on the streets of NYC, not for himself, but for a cause.

Professor Irwin Corey, as I noted five years ago, is an in-law of an in-law of mine, who I’ve met on a few occasions. My maternal grandmother Gert, whose brother Ernie had married Charlotte, whose sister Fran had married Irwin, was SO excited when Irwin would show up on the talk shows hosted by Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and others. Not sure she understood what he was saying, and I’m fairly positive I didn’t always. But her attraction to this tenuous connection to celebrity was very strong. So we’d always watch when we read in the TV Guide, “Irwin’s going to be on!”

And I guess I’ve become my grandmother, keeping track of Irwin sightings:

Before I began blogging myself, I was reading the now frozen-in-time blog of my friend Fred Hembeck, who has a picture of him with some other creative folks. (2004)

Mark Evanier wishes him a happy 90th. (2004)

Evanier links to Irwin speaking at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York party in 2007 to commemorate the birth and life of Lord Buckley (1906-1960). Some content on the coarse side, and, unsurprisingly, unkind about George W. Bush. (Posted 2008)

An appreciation by Frozen Justice who makes an interesting connection to Sarah Palin (2009). Has a link to the Smothers Brothers show (c. 1966), which I almost certainly watched.

Professor Irwin Corey screwed up the Soupy Sales funeral! Which I can totally believe. And it wasn’t out of disrespect for Soupy. “[He] had to be removed from the podium after his eulogy turned into a diatribe about health-care reform…” (Althouse, 2009)

Evanier links to a 2010 interview on a cable access show.

Irwin regularly panhandles on the streets of NYC, not for himself, but for a cause. (New York Times, 2011)

Happy Birthday to the World’s Weirdest Comic: Professor Irwin Corey, the Gibberish Maven. (Huffington Post, 2012)

An Interview with the Professor Irwin Corey. (CLASSIC TELEVISION SHOWBIZ– Kliph Nesteroff, 2013)

A story about Gilbert Gottfried, featuring Irwin. (Lowbrow Reader, 2014)

Sorry, Leslie

It’s sister Leslie’s birthday.

I have mentioned my particularly lousy March 2014 HERE and especially HERE. About St. Patrick’s Day, give or take 24 hours, sister Leslie called and asked how I was, and I told her.

Unfortunately, I was more than a tad short of patience. When she started giving me advice, which I found to be well-meaning but frankly unhelpful, I petitioned to get off the phone. When she insisted I stay on the phone… well, I don’t really remember much after that, because I had departed the conversation emotionally at that point.

What WAS evident, even in my stressful state, was that she was feeling hurt, when all she wanted to do was help. I feel bad about that. And we haven’t talked since then, although we’ve had brief Facebook encounters.

It is, however, her birthday, and I always try to call her on that day. So I need to practice that apology speech…

#1 songs on my birthday, 1953-1963

There are TWO versions of Young Love, and it’s the Sonny James version that I’ve always known.

Since I had decided that I would repurpose some of my 2014 posts for Round 15 of ABC Wednesday, I needed another weekly exercise. My friend Dan Van Riper sent me this list of all the #1 songs since August 4, 1958, which was Ricky Nelson’s Poor Little Fool, signifying the debut of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. Prior to that (and indeed for a few months after that), there were multiple charts, including what was playing on the jukeboxes and what the radio disc jockeys were spinning.

That fact explains why, as I decided to post the number #1 song for my birthday, and the song before and after, you’ll occasionally find multiple tunes. Obviously, since I was born before 1958, I had to augment the website with something called… let me check the spelling there… “books,” specifically Joel Whitburn’s Top Pop Singles, and Pop Hits 1940-1954.

I have links only to the middle tune, the song of my birthday (with a couple of exceptions this week). If I’ve heard it, I won’t play it again. If I’ve never heard of it, I’ll play it once. But I won’t listen to the adjacent tunes. My goal: am I happy with THAT choice to celebrate my birthday? Or (as will be the case in the latter stages of the game), I have no idea? You can go to the website, starting with 1959, and hear the other contenders.

1/10/53 Perry Como with The Ramblers – Don’t Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes
2/14/53 Teresa Brewer – Till I Waltz with You Again
3/21/53 Patti Page – The Doggie in the Window

Don’t know the Como. The Brewer song is quite pleasant. You probably know the Page song, it’s become almost ubiquitous, in an irritating way. I’d pick the Brewer song.

1/2/54 Eddie Fisher – Oh! My Pa-Pa (O Mein Papa)
2/27/54 Doris Day – Secret Love.
3/13/54 Jo Stafford – Make Love To Me!

The Fisher song got played a LOT when I was growing up, and I own it on a compilation, but the Stafford song I know not at all. I guess I stay with Doris Day, though I prefer the movie version from her Oscar-winning song from Calamity Jane.

2/5/55 The Fontaine Sisters – Hearts of Stone
2/12/55 The McGuire Sisters – Sincerely
3/26/55 Bill Hayes – The Ballad of Davy Crockett

Davy Crockett, I heard A LOT growing up. I’ll stick with the lush harmonies of the McGuires, which I have on that same compilation.

2/18/56 Rock and Roll Waltz – Kay Starr OR The Platters – The Great Pretender
2/25/56 Nelson Riddle – Lisbon Antigua
3/17/56 Les Baxter – The Poor People of Paris

I own both 2/18 songs. I’m picking the Platters. If I have heard Lisbon Antigua, I don’t remember it, and it might take a few listens to appreciate it more fully.

2/9/57 Pat Boone -Don’t Forbid Me OR Young Love – Sonny James
2/16/57 Tab Hunter – Young Love
3/30/57 Butterfly – Andy Williams

My friend Fred Hembeck is a big Andy Williams fan, so I do own Butterfly. Don’t know the Boone song. But there are TWO versions of Young Love, and it’s the Sonny James version, which I linked to, that I’ve always known. I listened to the Tab Hunter version, the longer reign at the top of the charts for the guy primarily know as an actor, and there’s no contest to my ears. Sonny James!

2/17/58 The McGuire Sisters – Sugartime
2/24/58 The Silhouettes – Get A Job
3/17/58 The Champs – Tequila

Either of the latter two songs I know well, and enjoy.

1/19/59 The Platters – Smoke Gets In Your Eyes
2/9/59 Lloyd Price – Stagger Lee
3/9/59 Frankie Avalon – Venus

Finally, a week I know all the songs. Stagger Lee is a murder ballad, and even as a kid found disturbing. (But not as disturbing as the Nick Cave song of the same name.) I’d opt for the Platters, again.

2/8/60 Mark Dinning – Teen Angel
2/22/60 Percy Faith and His Orchestra The Theme From A Summer Place
4/25/60 Elvis Presley With The Jordanaires – Stuck On You

Those death songs like Teen Angel I never much liked. I suppose I could pick Elvis, but when I was seven, I always enjoyed Theme from a Summer Place. Radio, in the day, would segue to the news, with an instrumental in the background, and it was often this one.

2/13/61 Lawrence Welk and His Orchestra – Calcutta
2/27/61 Chubby Checker – Pony Time
3/20/61 Elvis Presley With The Jordanaires – Surrender

When I played Pony Time, I thought, “Oh, I HAVE heard this.” Terribly derivative of his other songs, so I’ll pick Elvis this time.

1/22/62 Joey Dee & the Starliters – Peppermint Twist (Part 1)
2/17/62 Gene Chandler – Duke Of Earl
3/10/62 Bruce Channel – Hey! Baby

Another one where I know them all. I’ll stick with the Duke.

2/9/63 Paul and Paula – Hey Paula
3/2/63 The 4 Seasons – Walk Like A Man
3/23/63 Ruby and the Romantics – Our Day Will Come

I know these too, though I always thought Hey Paula was dorky. I think seeing Jersey Boys on stage a couple of years ago has helped me appreciate Frankie Valli and his colleagues a bit more.

The techno learning curve

The Wife DID come up with the solution for fixing our printer that said it was jammed.

I know I go kicking and screaming over learning new technologies. But, sometimes, my (somewhat younger) wife is as old-fashioned as I am. Possibly more so.

I am on Twitter and Facebook, albeit grudgingly; she is not, though she plans to start with the latter. She is one of the few people I know who still has an AOL account; actually, I do too, but I seldom use it.

She’s still using her bank register to check for charitable contributions at the end of the year. I just go to the bank online. I’m not even sure she uses her ATM card.

However, she DID come up with the solution for fixing our printer that said it was jammed; rebooting actually did the trick. She’s clearly more mechanically inclined than I, since, if there are four possible ways of doing something, I will have tried the other three first, while she intuits that stuff a WHOLE lot better.

Since she’s a teacher, she has the summer off. (“Off” being a relative term, since she’s got to get the contractor to finish the bathroom, and to watch The Daughter on the weeks she’s not at summer camp, and do SOMETHING with that former pool area in the back yard…) Plus she has to sort through all the stuff in the home office to decide what would make good lesson plans for the fall, and what has become outdated.

But she’s also pegged this summer as a time for discovery. Perhaps by the end of the summer, she’ll be reading on that Kindle she got a while back.

Happy birthday, sweetheart.

Ray Davies of the Kinks is 70

The Kinks Ultimate Collection showcased the songs I always associated with other bands: Dandy, which I own by Herman’s Hermits, and Stop Your Sobbing, covered by the Pretenders;

ALSO for ABC Wednesday, Round 15, D is for Davies

I loved the early Kinks hits, but I didn’t buy many singles, of anyone. After buying Muswell Hillbillies and the subsequent Everybody’s In Show Biz LPs, I STILL had no Kinks hits collection, and I just don’t know why, because there were plenty of them out there. Got a couple albums from the early 1980s (Give the People What They Want and State of Confusion), and Lost & Found, a live album from 1991.

It wasn’t until early in the 21st century when I finally got The Ultimate Collection. Not only did it have the hits I knew, but it also showcased the songs I always associated with other bands: Dandy, which I own by Herman’s Hermits, and Stop Your Sobbing, covered by the Pretenders; the Pretenders’ lead singer Chrissie Hynde was going out with the chief singer/songwriter of the Kinks, Ray Davies, for a time, and they had a daughter together.

He was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame just last week.

Here’s my post about Ray Davies from five years ago. Listen to the first 75 minutes of Coverville 1034 for 19 Kinks covers, a couple featuring the birthday boy himself.

Favorite Kinks songs

The ones cited as MH were linked previously; the ones starred (*) are linked here.

25. Skin and Bones, from MH

24. Give the People What They Want, from Give the People What They Want (1981) – a kicking song about consumerism, and how the people get harder to please.

23. Holiday, from MH

22. Better Things from GtPWTW – an optimistic ending to an angry album.

21. (Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman, from Low Budget (1979) – hey, I had to have the comic title on here, did I not?

20. Complicated Life, from MH

19. Where Have All the Good Times Gone, from The Kink Kontroversy (TKK) (1965)

18. Who’ll Be the Next In Line, b-side of Ev’rybody’s Gonna Be Happy single.

17. Oklahoma U.S.A., from MH

16. Don’t Forget to Dance, from State of Confusion (1983). I think this is quite the sweet song.

15. I’m Not Like Everybody Else, b-side of Sunny Afternoon single (1966). I didn’t know this song until I bought the greatest hits collection.

14. Destroyer from Give the People What They Want (1983). Story is sequel to Lola, and borrows from a couple more Kinks songs as well.

*13. Tired of Waiting for You’ From: Kinda Kinks (KK) (1965)

12. Apeman, from Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One (1970). There’s a song called The Monkey, by Dave Bartholomew, and in different ways, it seems to be the same message.

*11. ‘Till the End of the Day’ from TKK

10. Come Dancing, from SoC.

*9. Lola, from LVPatMPO

*8. Waterloo Sunset, from Something Else by the Kinks (1967)

7. Alcohol from MH

*6. Victoria, from Arthur (Or the Decline and Fall of the British Empire) (1969)

*5. Sunny Afternoon, from Face to Face (1966)

*4. You Really Got Me, from Kinks (1964)

*3. A Well Respected Man, single (1965)

*2. Celluloid Heroes, from Everybody’s in Show-Biz (1972)

*1. All Day and All of the Night, single (1964)

Will the Kinks re-form? Maybe.
***
Gerry Goffin died. He wrote a lot of songs you know.