I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES — a career retrospective entitled Between Worlds: The Art of Bill Traylor— who was born into slavery (1853-1949) and only began artwork after retiring as a sharecropper — is at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. until March 17th.
At the Smithsonian in D.C.FILM NOTES — a film entitled Street Survivors: The True Story of the Lynyrd Skynyrd Plane Crash— which had been blocked from release due to a dispute among the surviving band members and the estates of the deceased — can now be released, due to the ruling of an appeals court in New York.
xThe United States at night from space, 2012: #NASApic.twitter.com/y9kEKe3HVf
— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) October 14, 2018YUK for TODAY — when soldiers barged-into the Ethiopian prime minister's office to demand a pay rise, Abiy Ahmed defused what could have been a nasty situation by …. demanding they drop and give him ten…. push-ups (which he joined them in, causing widespread laughter), then promising to look into their situation.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Bobby the Cat— a Montana kitteh who wandered more than 900 miles to Nevada (his family thinks he hopped a freight train, as they live near the tracks) a year-and-a-half ago — reunited due to his microchip.
Bobby the CatALTHOUGH IT DECLINED to join NATO after its founding (or since), the nation of Sweden is inching closer to doing so — holding joint exercises with Finland and Norway, for example — because as one official put it, “Crimea was not a passing storm ... but climate change”.
LOOKING FORWARD to a Cheers & Jeers luncheon in Portland, Maine this coming Sunday …. and to see our man-of-the-hour, as well as a few other attendees.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Vasya the Cat— a Russian kitteh who was cleared by a judge in Siberia of wrongdoing after its owners accused it of running up their electric bill … by tearing the seal off an electricity meter in their attic.
Vasya the CatBRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
YOUR WEEKEND READ is a lengthy yet comforting essay about where the Mueller investigation is likely to play out, by Ryan Casey.
OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS? — OK, it’s a stretch ….. yet this is among the more humorous S-a-B’s that I’ve seen: film star Hugh Grant as well as former SNL star (and current TV talk show host) Seth Meyers.
Hugh Grant (born 1960) Seth Meyers (born 1973)...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… last year on the cable TV Music Choice blues channel, I heard this song that couldn’t make me stop tapping my foot …. come-to-find-out the singer was Guy Davis— the son of actors/activists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee (who were 2004 recipients of the Kennedy Center honors). He has been flying-under-radar for too long: having TV, Broadway and recording experience …. in some small way, I’d like to help remedy the situation.
Born in 1952, he grew up in NYC hearing his parents’ tales of the South, and seeing Buddy Guy as a thirteen year-old gave him an appreciation for the blues. He learned the banjo from Pete Seeger’s brother at a camp in Vermont, and had among his role models were Sonny Terry/Brownie McGhee plus Taj Mahal. Attending Hunter College in Manhattan, one of his professors was the jazz bassist Milt Hinton.
He released a (rather) forgotten first album on Moe Asch’s Folkways label in 1978, but he concentrated in his twenties on acting. He had a lead role in the 1984 film Beat Street (opposite Rae Dawn Chong) and from 1985-86 as Dr. Josh Hall in the soap opera One Life to Live. His Broadway debut was in the 1991 performance of Mulebone— written by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes — which featured the music of Taj Mahal.
In 1993, he had the lead role in an Off-Broadway production of Robert Johnson: Trick the Devil (which won him a W.C. Handy acting award). The next year he combined acting and his own music to produce/star in a one-man-show (also Off-Broadway) entitled In Bed with the Blues: The Adventures of Fishy Waters.
Talk about collaborating: in 1995 he worked with his parents on a project entitled Two Hah Hahs and a Homeboy— that same year, he won an Emmy for his score for a telefilm To Be a Man.
Yet it was late in 1995 that he decided to focus on his music career, releasing his debut album Stomp Down the Rider. And he has recorded steadily ever since, including his 2000 album Butt Naked Free (with guest performer Levon Helm) with his 2003 album Give In Kind impressing Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson so much, he asked Guy Davis to be their opening act on tour.
In addition to his own albums, Guy has appeared on compilations and tribute albums — such as for Putumayo Records compilations, tribute albums to Nick Lowe (Labour of Love), Bob Dylan (A Nod to Bob) and along with Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and Bruce Springsteen in a Pete Seeger tribute album (Where Have all the Flowers Gone). He says, “I was on Pete’s last official tour in 2008, witnessing with my own eyes something I’d heard since I was a child. Folk music was the doorway that I came into the blues from”.
He is most proud of a project he contributed the title track to, I Will Be Your Friend: Songs and Activities for Young Peacemakers— part of the Teaching Tolerance campaign.
His most recent recording is 2017’s tribute to the aforementioned duo he admires, Sonny & Brownie's Last Train— recorded in Milan with Italian harmonica player Fabrizio Poggi.
At age sixty-six, he is currently on tour in western Canada, which will be followed by European dates, before beginning in the eastern US in January.
He sums up his musical identity this way:
“To me, a bluesman is somebody who has to carry a knife or a gun and enter dangerous situations and sometimes fuel it with alcohol — that’s not who I am. I call myself a blues musician, and to me the blues is a broad title. I include some ragtime, I make a nod to New Orleans, and a nod to the fife and drum players. And I always include things that make you want to dance.”
Guy Davis in the 1980's ……. ….. and in more recent yearsThat song I heard on Music Choice was the title track from his 2015 album, Kokomo Kidd— an apocryphal story of a coal deliveryman in Washington D.C. stretching from the 1920’s to the 21st Century. And below you can hear it.
Back when prohibition was the law of the land Politicians knew we didn't understand That drinking was the way that laws got made They got laid and bribes were paid When the white bootleggers got sent to jail Nobody couldn't come go their bailNow when liquor got cut down The government almost shut down They needed a bagman who looked like a ragman Who better than a black man to come serve the white man His Gucci-fied liquor a whole lot quicker than a white bootlegger could do?
Washington insiders want drugs and sex It ain't about who’s rich but who connects You gotta know the ropes and who to go-to Who did you favors and who do you owe to? Now office-to-office, I can hack your e-mail Find out if you like male or female I keep secrets ... if you say so But everybody knows you gotta pay mo'
I've calmed all of Washington's fears I've kept the Supreme Court high for years I've got governors, senators even representatives Waiting for my drop off, medicine for a bad cough I got a meeting at three, I've gotta bring coke to the GOP
They call me Kokomo … Kokomo Kidd
x xYouTube Video