Tag: Les Green

Les Green, painter

Les Green.bridge
My sister Marcia posted this on Facebook a few months ago:

Though the Binghamton memorial bridge is similar, the story behind the Green family painting of a bridge goes as follows: a young married couple with 3 children, saw a painting/print in a store window. Not having extra income, that talented renaissance father/husband/man made the canvas by hand and painted this painting for his lovely wife. Dad always worked in acrylic paints, as it dried much faster and was easier to work with and cheaper than oils.

See his signature trees at the Roberson event. He also had this bridge painting on display and always joked that if he ever sold it, that he would be in for a Divorce. I am sure that our father could have been inspired by the Binghamton memorial bridge, as he kind of had a “things for bridges…and roller coasters.
Les Green.painting.newsp

The bridge painting was in my parents’ bedroom when I grew up. It is now at my sister Marcia’s house in North Carolina.

Les Green – Dad – would have been 89 tomorrow.

That Les Green song: Two Brothers

Tomorrow would have been Dad’s 88th birthday.

LesGreenThere is this Civil War song called Two Brothers. I woke up from a nap several months ago thinking about it. Here’s someone’s reflection on the song.

Here are the lyrics, written by Irving Gordon, who may or may not have written “Who’s On First” for Abbott and Costello. And here’s the sheet music.

This version by Georgianna Askoff is appropriately plaintive, whereas Anna Coogan and Joy Mills are a bit too festive for my taste. It was popularized by The Lettermen, though I never heard their version, the B-side to Allentown Jail, until much later.

And I was thinking about it because my father, Les Green, used to perform it. His version seems the most authentic. I can still hear his guitar as he sang: “All on a beautiful” – he’d pick out so, so, si, la, ti -“morning”, with “morn” on a four-note melisma. Wish you could have heard it.

If memory serves – and it so often does not – he sang it far less at the point my sister Leslie and I performed with him as the Green Family Singers, mostly because it was really a solo piece for him. You see it listed on his early playlist.

This is the 15th anniversary of Dad’s death; I scarcely can believe it. Obviously, even my subconscious still thinks about him.

Music Throwback Saturday: Who Drank My Beer and Bargain Days

Dad also owned a version by someone performing Who Drank My Beer (While I Was In The Rear), written by a guy named Billy Austin.

who drank my beer.chuckA few years back, I was musing about my father’s 45s record collection. For those of you too young, a 45 was a single vinyl record played on a “record player,” that had a turntable that rotated at 45 revolutions per minute.

For some reason, I was thinking about them again recently on a particularly poor night of sleep (someone talking on speakerphone next door, two dogs barking, and a stiff neck from sleeping on the sofa to avoid the aforementioned, et al.)

Bill Carlisle and the Carlisles performing Bargain Days (Half Off) was released in 1955. You can listen to it HERE or HERE, and read the lyrics, written by Bill Carlisle, to boot. If I wanted to buy it on eBay, I probably could. The B-side was Nine Have Tried (and Nine Have Died), “and you’re gonna make it ten.”

As I noted previously, Dad also owned a version by someone performing Who Drank My Beer (While I Was In The Rear), written by a guy named Billy Austin, according to the label, though All Music attributes it to singer Dave Bartholomew. I didn’t know who performed it when I looked a few years ago, but I knew it wasn’t by Bartholomew [LISTEN], whose version is much bluesier; the one in my head was more country, and more comedic. It also was not the Tommy Duncan version [LISTEN].

I’m now positive that Dad’s 45 version was the one by Chuck Murphy from 1952, which you can LISTEN to, along with its B-side, Oceana Roll on CORAL 60800. The label was similar to the one shown, except it was orange. If I had any doubt, it was sealed when I heard the last line asking the bartender for “one on the house.”

None of the versions charted on either the pop charts or rhythm & blues charts, but I don’t have access to the country charts. Nor do I know which version, if any, was the original, though I’m guessing Bartholemew’s. This song has also been covered by Tom Ball & Kenny Sultan, and by Buster Poindexter. If any of you (meaning Dustbury) have any insight, I’d love to hear it.

A picture of two relatives

classroom.mom.malcolm
My sister Marcia posted this picture of my mother. I assume it’s Daniel Dickinson school in Binghamton, NY. Can you find her?

But it was the black youth in the back row that intrigued me. He looked familiar. Specifically, he looked like a Walker, my paternal grandmother’s people.

My dad’s cousin Ruth confirmed that it was indeed Malcolm Walker, son of Melissa Walker Jackson. Melissa was the sister of my grandmother, Agatha Green, but she died when I was very young. He is first cousin to my father (Les Green), Sheldon Walker, Sydney Bullett, Gene Walker and Ruth Lewis.

Oh, my mom is in the third row, on the far left.

So this is a surprising piece of my genealogical puzzle. At some point, Dad’s first cousin went to school with my mom. It’s not shocking, but I never knew this.

BTW, yesterday was my Grandma Green’s birthday. When she died in 1964, she was the first significant person to die in my life.

Rehearsing with Leslie

As far as we know, there are not any recordings of Dad, Leslie and me singing.

Leslie.littleMy sister Leslie and I don’t talk that often on the phone, but when we do, it usually goes on for a while.

Recently when we were chatting, she noted that she has figured out the difficulty with singing in the various musical groups she has led or has sung with, over the years and currently.

It’s that, when we were growing up, singing with our father, it felt as though we never rehearsed. That was actually untrue: in singing in the car, at the dinner table, in the living room, and at the campgrounds, we WERE rehearsing all the time. It just didn’t FEEL as though it was rehearsing, because we never had to set time aside to do so.

One of the sad truths is that, as far as we know, there are not any recordings of Dad, Leslie, and me singing, or even of Dad solo when we were still living in Binghamton, NY in the 1960s.

She thinks that we, plus perhaps her daughter Rebecca Jade, ought to get together and work on some musical thing. The family being bicoastal – they live in the San Diego, CA area – I’m not sure how that would work. I did note that, if I get out there, and we were going to try to record something, we would – alas! – have to actually rehearse.

Happy birthday to the middle child.

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