RIP, Jerry Burns

He had a hell of a run. And there was never any doubt he loved #@*@#! Bob Schnelker and @*#(#&@! Rich Karlis, either. Video is, obviously, NSFW:

 

RIP, Rush Limbaugh

 It's on his site:

Sui generis

I didn't listen to Rush that much -- he was on the air while I was at work and the only times I would hear him was if I had a day off or was in transit as part of something I was doing on the job. It would have been impossible to work and listen to him at the same time, because he would command your attention.

When I first became of aware of Limbaugh and his program, I assumed he would be destroyed, labeled a modern-day Father Coughlin, driven from the airwaves and polite company generally. He was driven from ESPN, but that was a side gig. He always engaged a massive audience with his microphone and his show was appointment radio for tens of millions of listeners for over 30 years. 

I am friends with two guys who are weekend talk show hosts and bloggers here in the Twin Cities, Mitch Berg and Brad Carlson. I've been on Brad's show several times over the years, mostly to talk about football and a few times to discuss Catholic issues. Doing radio well is hard work -- you have to engage your audience every time or you'll be gone soon. Even as a guest, it's a challenge. You have to be able to present your ideas quickly and cogently and keep things moving. The list of successful long-time talk show hosts is short, precisely because it's so tough to do. Rush Limbaugh made it seem effortless, but it wasn't. He had to be able to buttress every utterance he made. He had enemies who spent three decades trying to chase him from the air. He had to be on guard every moment. And he pulled it off. He towered over his enemies and challengers. No one was ever close to him.

Rush leaves the microphone at a parlous time. His detractors control the executive and legislative branches and they are in a hurry to change the world. These same detractors are eager to control discourse; wokeness is loose upon the land and hatred is in the saddle. Our voices may not be as authoritative or engaging as Rush Limbaugh's, but we have to make our voices heard.

It was always Mary Ann

 RIP, Dawn Wells:

2020 has sucked in so many ways.

70s Icons leaving the scene

 They were contemporaries on the pop charts and they left this mortal coil on successive days. Helen Reddy, best known for her feminist anthem "I Am Woman," died yesterday at the age of 78. "I Am Woman" was a smash hit, but it's actually fairly polite and with a moderately brassy arrangement typical of the time:

She had a few other hits over the years, but as a practical matter she disappeared by the end of the decade. Her later hits were somewhat weirder, like this one:

That was yesterday. Today, word came that another familiar face from the early 70s, Mac Davis, had passed away. Davis had one foot in the pop world and another in country, and first made his name as a songwriter. He wrote this one for Elvis Presley:

Not exactly a social justice move, but certainly of the period. About a year later, Davis had his largest hit with this song:

"Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me." It was a smash hit. And I hate this song with every fiber of my being. It's horrible and smarmy, a cautionary tale told by a cad. But it sold a lot of records and since Davis was a reasonably handsome dude, he managed to have a decent career, including a year or two with his own television variety show, in a time where the networks were so in love with the concept that they gave one to a pair of mimes. This might be the most 70s video of all time:

Then again, this is likely the most 70s video of all time.

Yeah, I digress more than a little. But all these years later, the common thread is that entertainers were interested in entertaining, even if they were a little mixed up on their concepts. I don't miss the 1970s, but I am glad we can visit.

Under the Hood, or Perotmandias

Ross Perot, RIP:

Ross Perot, a self-made billionaire business magnate who twice ran as a third-party candidate for president, died Tuesday at his home in Dallas surrounded by family.

He was 89.

"In business and in life, Ross was a man of integrity and action," a statement from his family said. "A true American patriot and a man of rare vision, principle and deep compassion, he touched the lives of countless people through his unwavering support of the military and veterans and through his charitable endeavors."

I suppose that's true enough. At the time, particularly in 1992, he was seen as the guy who siphoned off enough votes from George H. W. Bush to allow Bill Clinton into the White House. That's debatable, and frankly not that interesting. The Bushes present their own issues.

Once Perot lost his second race, back in 1996, we didn't hear much from him any more. I don't see that the issues he was most concerned about have been addressed. Government has grown under Clinton, W, Obama, and Trump. Perot's concern about the national debt? Pshaw. Perot liked graphs. Here's one:

Spending fools

These debts will never be repaid, of course. You can blame presidents for spending, but Congress holds the power of the purse and it hasn't mattered one bit -- they all spend like there's no tomorrow. Tomorrow will arrive eventually. But the reckoning? Who knows?

As for Perot, he's as relevant now as any of his other third-party predecessors were. He might as well be Fighting Bob La Follette or Strom Thurmond in his Dixiecrat phase. We don't have anyone who is seeking to repair our government any more. Trump is simply trying to forestall worse ideas than what we've seen and endured already.

Round the decay/Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare/The lone and level sands stretch far away.

RIP, Bart Starr

A great Packer, but a better human being.

In action against the Fearsome Foursome

I only got to see him play at the very end of his career, after the glory days were done. He is one of the most important players in NFL history. But his legacy is more than his exploits on the gridiron. He also helped countless at-risk young men through his Rawhide Boys Ranch program, which continues to this day. He was a legend on the gridiron, but he left footprints well beyond that space. RIP.

Doris Day, RIP

97 years old. Quite a run.

"My last picture for Warners was Romance on the High Seas. It was Doris Day's first picture; that was before she became a virgin."

-- Oscar Levant

A world long gone. RIP.

Peter Tork, RIP

I remember watching old episodes of the Monkees television show in reruns, usually on Saturday mornings, but I was a bit too young to see them when they originally aired in the 1960s. Even if you've never seen an actual episode, the music was ubiquitous and you can easily hear a Monkees song any day on an oldies station.

Peter Tork was generally the bassist for the group and would occasionally show up on keyboards. Tork died yesterday, at the age of 77. Tork and guitarist Mike Nesmith were both talented musicians on the L.A. scene; Tork hung out a lot with Stephen Stills and it wouldn't be difficult to construct an alternate history in which Stills passed his screen test and had been a Monkee instead, with Tork becoming a member of Buffalo Springfield.

The Monkees were, as a band, pretty good. They had some of the era's best songwriters at their disposal and often had the services of the Wrecking Crew, the great L.A. session musicians, to help fill out their sound. It's easy to bag on the Monkees for being the creation of television producers, but their music is really a triumph of craft. Consider one of their better songs, "Pleasant Valley Sunday," written by Carole King and Gerry Goffin:

After a while, the Monkees tired of being mostly actors and eventually started doing more of the actual performing. And they did some nice work later in this later period as well:

 

Was it brilliant? Not particularly, but it was always tuneful and fun. That's an element of 60s music that's often forgotten; even the schlock was often well-done. A contemporary of the Monkees who had a lot of hits in the era was Johnny Rivers. He did a lot of covers, including this cover of a Willie Dixon blues standard, which includes some fun musicianship and a weird milieu of beautiful California girls carrying odd cargo:

At least in my own mind, I tend to add another group of 60s hitmakers to this collection. That would be Tommy James and the Shondells, who came out of Michigan and hit the charts repeatedly, always pressing the fun button:

This music lives on, and will continue to live on, because craftsmanship has its virtues.

The Seventies are disappearing right before our eyes

It doesn't happen every day, thank goodness, but yesterday we lost three people who were, in their own ways, fairly prominent figures in the entertainment world of the 1970s and 1980s.

The first one we heard about was "Mean" Gene Okerlund, who started out here in the Twin Cities working with Verne Gagne's American Wrestling Association as an announcer/interviewer, who then parlayed that gig into fame and fortune with Vince McMahon's various wrasslin' empires. Okerlund didn't have a lot of dash; I always thought he looked like a claims adjuster. But it's difficult to imagine the wrestling world without him. Here is an example of his early work in Minneapolis, featuring the one, the only, Da Crusher:

It's actually subtle -- he lets Da Crusher bluster on, occasionally giving the audience a somewhat worried expression, yet his "questions" invariably lead the viewer where Mean Gene wants the interview to go. Professional wrestling is all about stagecraft and narrative and Mean Gene was a one-man Greek chorus.

Later in the afternoon, we found out that Bob Einstein, best known (I think) as Super Dave Osborne, passed away. Einstein started out his career with the Smothers Brothers, playing an absurdly by-the-book officer named Officer Judy. This bit with another dude from Milwaukee, Liberace, is hilarious:

I loved the Super Dave shtick, which started out as a goof on Evel Kneivel but became something far more amusing. Einstein did a bunch of these Super Dave bits; this one is a personal fave. It's essentially an elaborate setup for an obvious sight gag, but it's a lot of fun a long the way. Trailers for sale or rent:

Einstein's genius was never breaking character -- he was as good at deadpan comedy as anyone I'd ever seen. What was even more amusing and amazing? His younger brother, Albert Brooks, is a master of the neurotic comedy style. Einstein also played the Marty Funkhouser character on Larry David's "Curb Your Enthusiasm" series; those bits are often hilarious but most of them are NSFW, so I'll let you head to YouTube for those on a separate visit.

Finally, we learned that Daryl Dragon, best known as the "Captain" in his musical pairing with his wife Toni Tennille. This song was unavoidable in 1975:

Dragon and Toni Tennille had a five-year run through the back half of the 1970 where their music was regularly part of the Top 40. He was also a well-known session musician who did extensive work with the Beach Boys. We haven't seen much of these two in recent years, but they were able to draw an audience long past their heyday.

We are now 40-45 years past many of these performances, so it's not surprising that the performers are leaving the stage. Still, it brings me up short.

George H. W. Bush, RIP

Time waits for no one

We're all a mixed bag, I guess. George H. W. Bush certainly was one. He served his country in a variety of ways. We read his lips. He lost the presidency to an outright scoundrel. I always had a tough time getting the stench of his time at CIA out of my nose. Thousand points of light. Voodoo Economics. The Wall came down on his watch, but his predecessor was largely responsible for that. He was personally as gracious a man as ever occupied the Oval Office, but he could be a vicious politician when he had to be. His son became president and was even more of a muddle than he was.

Sorting out 41's legacy will be a challenge for historians. I think we're still too close. My sense right now -- his time was a wasted opportunity, but there's this -- of the presidents in my lifetime (Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush 41, Clinton, Bush 43, Obama, Trump), he's clearly the second best one. That's damning with faint praise, I guess.

Mostly open thread

There's not as much news right now and one might expect. While it's evident that Bad Orange Man is not pleased with Robert Mueller, that's not really news. The fires in California are horrifying and tragic, but until they are extinguished, there's not much to report beyond the sadly burgeoning death toll. Republicans are feckless, Democrats are reckless -- you knew that.

So again it's a mostly open thread, although I'd like to post video of the great Roy Clark, who passed away yesterday at the age of 85. Clark is mostly remembered today for his many years on the syndicated variety show "Hee Haw," where he held court with Buck Owens and a cast of Nashville Grand Ole Opry performers and cornfed cuties. You got glimpses of Roy Clark's brilliance on the show, but he was an amazing guitarist who could play anything. If you want evidence, consider this performance from about 1975, when Clark was a guest on "The Odd Couple":

RIP.

In Hamm, Luxembourg

Over 5,000 Americans have their final resting place here, including Gen. George S. Patton:

A number of my uncles served in World War II. They all made it back. My grandfather served in World War I. He made it back. Many did not. We remember them today.

Tom Wolfe, RIP

Tom Wolfe was one of the great writers and chroniclers of the American scene. He passed away yesterday at the age of 88. Most people know him from Bonfire of the Vanities, or The Right Stuff, but one of my favorite pieces remains his sly look at the bien pensant New York of 1970, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers:

. . . and now, in the season of Radical Chic, the Black Panthers. That huge Panther there, the one Felicia is smiling her tango smile at, is Robert Bay, who just 41 hours ago was arrested in an altercation with the police, supposedly over a .38-caliber revolver that someone had, in a parked car in Queens at Northern Boulevard and 104th Street or some such unbelievable place, and taken to jail on a most unusual charge called “criminal facilitation.” And now he is out on bail and walking into Leonard and Felicia Bernstein’s 13-room penthouse duplex on Park Avenue. Harassment & Hassles, Guns & Pigs, Jail & Bail—they’re real, these Black Panthers. The very idea of them, these real revolutionaries, who actually put their lives on the line, runs through Lenny’s duplex like a rogue hormone. Everyone casts a glance, or stares, or tries a smile, and then sizes up the house for the somehow delicious counterpoint . . . Deny it if you want to! but one does end up making such sweet furtive comparisons in this season of Radical Chic . . . There’s Otto Preminger in the library and Jean vanden Heuvel in the hall, and Peter and Cheray Duchin in the living room, and Frank and Domna Stanton, Gail Lumet, Sheldon Harnick, Cynthia Phipps, Burton Lane, Mrs. August Heckscher, Roger Wilkins, Barbara Walters, Bob Silvers, Mrs. Richard Avedon, Mrs. Arthur Penn, Julie Belafonte, Harold Taylor, and scores more, including Charlotte Curtis, women’s news editor of the New York Times, America’s foremost chronicler of Society, a lean woman in black, with her notebook out, standing near Felicia and big Robert Bay, and talking to Cheray Duchin.

Cheray tells her: “I’ve never met a Panther—this is a first for me!” . . . never dreaming that within 48 hours her words will be on the desk of the President of the United States . . .
This is a first for me. But she is not alone in her thrill as the Black Panthers come trucking on in, into Lenny’s house, Robert Bay, Don Cox the Panthers’ Field Marshal from Oakland, Henry Miller the Harlem Panther defense captain, the Panther women—Christ, if the Panthers don’t know how to get it all together, as they say, the tight pants, the tight black turtlenecks, the leather coats, Cuban shades, Afros. But real Afros, not the ones that have been shaped and trimmed like a topiary hedge and sprayed until they have a sheen like acrylic wall-to-wall—but like funky, natural, scraggly . . . wild . . .
These are no civil-rights Negroes wearing gray suits three sizes too big—

—no more interminable Urban League banquets in hotel ballrooms where they try to alternate the blacks and whites around the tables as if they were stringing Arapaho beads—

—these are real men!

Not much has changed over the last 48 years. I don't know about the Panthers, but Tom Wolfe was a real man. RIP.

Tom Petty, RIP

It was easy to take Tom Petty for granted. He was the rock and roll equivalent of a Honda Accord -- always reliable, comfortable, capable. His songbook is one of the deepest of the rock era. He may not have had the moments of sheer brilliance that you get from Bruce Springsteen, or Prince, or Dylan, but he was consistently listenable. As word spread of his heart attack and death, with reporting retracted and then confirmed, the radio filled with his songs. And there were a lot of them. A few favorites, then -- first out of the gate, a well-executed emulation on the Byrds:

Then some straight-ahead rock and roll:

A collaboration with fellow titans Roy Orbison, Dylan, George Harrison and Jeff Lynne:

A moody reflection on madness and love presumably lost:

Another straight ahead rocker:

And finally, where we are:

You probably have your favorites, too. RIP.

UPDATE:  Mitch Berg offers a heartfelt tribute of his own.

Hugh Hefner, RIP

It was a hell of a party. Most parties don't last for more than 60 years:

Playboy founder Hugh Hefner died Wednesday, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. announced. He was 91.

"Hugh M. Hefner, the American icon who in 1953 introduced the world to Playboy magazine and built the company into one of the most recognizable American global brands in history, peacefully passed away today from natural causes at his home, The Playboy Mansion, surrounded by loved ones," Playboy Enterprises, Inc. said in a statement Wednesday night.

It wasn't just Playboy magazine, which started way back in 1953 with a nekkid Marilyn Monroe. He had Playboy Clubs all over the country and had television shows like Playboy After Dark, which featured memorable music performances, too -- here's Deep Purple:

Back in 1984, I had a summer job working as a shipping clerk for a small ink company. The company shared space in a large American Can facility in Neenah, Wisconsin. Another company operating out of the facility printed the centerfolds for Playboy, so for that summer I got to see the centerfolds a few months before they appeared on the newsstands. At the time, it seemed like a real cool deal. Here's a picture of Miss August (don't worry, it's safe for work) that year, a woman named Suzi Schott:

There was more to the picture

Those big blue eyes were staring at me the whole summer. Hundreds of beautiful women posed for Hugh Hefner's cameras. The joke, as always, was that people would get Playboy for the articles. That wasn't completely false, because there were often interesting features in the magazine -- Kurt Vonnegut, Norman Mailer, Shel Silverstein, even Roald Dahl graced its pages. And reading the Playboy Interview of various members of the Sandinistas was revelatory -- that inteview, meant to be sympathetic, made it clear to me that evil was afoot. But it was mostly about pictures of nekkid women.

It's been nearly 20 years since I've looked at a copy of Playboy; you have to grow up eventually and girlie magazines don't help you get there. We can debate the larger meaning of Hefner's career, and the glittering wreckage he left in his wake. But I'll always remember those big blue eyes and that come hither stare.

Walter Becker, RIP

If you were a guy entering adolescence in the mid 70s, you probably would have heard "Rikki Don't Lose That Number" on the radio, but you might have preferred "Rock and Roll All Nite." It's an oversimplification, but as I think about the passing of Walter Becker, I'm reminded of those days.

Steely Dan was simultaneously accessible yet difficult to get with. You had to listen to the lyrics carefully to pick up on the subtext of the lyrics, although you didn't have to pay attention to enjoy the music, which usually used more than three chords. You didn't have to know that Steely Dan took its name from William S. Burroughs, although the smart kids with older siblings might catch the reference. KISS was never about subtlety, unless you count "Beth," which really wasn't that subtle. It was all theatricality with them. Steely Dan, to be clear, couldn't have cared less, as this picture from their early days demonstrates quite conclusively:

I feel pretty

We're 40 years on from the heyday of both bands. You're much more likely to hear a Steely Dan song on the radio now. This song was on the radio in the summer of 1977, 40 years ago, as I moved from junior high to high school:

Fleetwood Mac also owned the airwaves that year, but there were things happening elsewhere that changed my view of music substantially later on. I didn't know about the Clash yet, or the Sex Pistols, or Talking Heads, but they were all getting started then. I didn't realize hip hop was already beginning to develop out of the d.j. shows in the Bronx. Disco was on the radio and would explode the following year. Still, I found myself noticing Steely Dan. The voice you heard on their records was Donald Fagen, but the sensibility of their music was the department of Walter Becker. Becker was quiet and obscure, but the music he made with Fagen remains a big part of our musical landscape all these years later.

Weekend

The news cycle has been simultaneously eventful and boring lately. No one has made a point for or against Trump in months that has moved the needle. Those who love Trump still do and those who hate him still do, but with greater intensity and more lunacy. I don't see any groundswell of support for Nazis or Nazi sympathizers, although I see the Antifa charm offensive continues apace.

The other big news over the weekend was the loss of two major figures of midcentury comedy, Dick Gregory and Jerry Lewis. Both of them were comics with larger agendas -- Gregory became a major figure in the civil rights movement, while Lewis devoted much of his life to charitable endeavors. Gregory's old comedy bits aren't plentiful on the internet, but he was very sharp, and he was a tireless voice of activism for nearly half a century. I wasn't a fan of Jerry Lewis, especially the idiot comic persona that made him so popular in Europe, but there's no disputing he brought a lot of joy to the world and his 40+ years at the helm of the Muscular Dystrophy telethon were instrumental in raising many millions of dollars for medical research and treatment.

I've been reading about midcentury entertainment and entertainers recently; I've just started reading a biography of Peggy Lee, who went from being a small-town North Dakota girl to one of the best singers of her era. You can still hear the crackle of her voice on her signature number, the Little Willie John classic "Fever":

Things went off the rails, quite badly, later in her life, but she was pretty great.

Glen Campbell, RIP

His heyday was long ago, but he left a lot of wonderful music in his wake, especially in the late 60s. A taste:

He also played on some big hits as a session guitarist, including this:

And this:

And this:

A tremendous career. RIP.

RIP, Don Rickles

Very late to the party on this one. Rickles was hilarious and he had a great run. Some of his best moments were on the old Dean Martin roasts, which are astonishing to see these days -- so many legendary performers -- just look at the people assembled on the dais in this clip, in which Frank Sinatra and everyone within a five-mile radius is a target of Rickles's brilliant shtick. A sample of the master at work:

RIP, Mr. Warmth.

RIP, J. Geils

I always enjoyed their music -- frontman Peter Wolf is one of the more memorable singers of the rock era. Just when the J. Geils Band finally hit the big time, it all fell apart. But they left a lot of good music in their wake. A sample:

RIP.