Odds & Ends: News/Humor (with a "Who Lost the Week?" poll)

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 Laramie, 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 of the late artist in an exhibition entitled Margaret Kilgallen: that’s where the beauty is will be at the Aspen, Colorado Art Museum through June 16th.

In Aspen, Colorado to June 16

SAD CHEERS to an excellent essay in the New Yorker by Jill Lepore about the fate of newspapers— and how some are managing to survive.

DESPITE EFFORTS by Binyamin Netanyahu to throttle a free press — helped in that regard by Sheldon Adelson funding a lapdog free publication — he has not succeeded in the way that Viktor Orban has in Hungary, most reporters have their editor’s backing and law enforcement has been carefully examining his methods.

THURSDAY's CHILD is among six kittens (and their mom) found in an Iowa dumpster … but were found in time, and are doing well.

Council Bluffs kittehs - safe

HAIL and FAREWELL to Jacqueline Steiner— who wrote the lyrics for a 1949 protest song (about a Boston transit fare increase) intended for a Progressive Party mayoral candidate that she was certain would be ‘a toss-off, an occasional song that would soon be forgotten” — who has died at the age of ninety-four.

Instead, the Kingston Trio helped ensure that Charlie on the MTA would become a perennial bar band call-and-response song (“Did he ever return?”) and now, the Boston transit system uses a Charlie Card  for riders to pay fares.

FRIDAY's CHILD is named June the Cat— an upstate New York kitteh who was believed lost in an apartment fire … yet was located two weeks later.

           June the Cat

BOOK NOTES — the recent Davos conference highlights a recent book by Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All— where wealthy CEO’s relentlessly try to cut wages/benefits of their employees (while pressing for lower taxes on themselves) and then — complaining that governments are not ‘doing enough’ after cutting services — offer themselves as just the right-men-for-the-job …. which the author notes is a vicious cycle.

CHEERS to a nice Cheers & Jeers meet-up arranged by Bill in Portland Maine — yesterday in Kittery, Maine (just across the border with New Hampshire).

Bill/Common Sense Mainer at table to the right, yours truly the geezer in foreground

The cold temps broke in-time for our gathering, and a good time was had by all, with nice food and drink and some old (OK, a lotta old stories). This time, I hope the expense report that I sent to George Soros will result in reimbursement.

BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.

SEPARATED at BIRTH — MSNBC evening host Chris Hayes …………….

    Chris Hayes (born 1979)

… and Alexey Komov, a key employee for a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

From a photo w/Ben Carson

....... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… while many think of him as an avuncular gent singing on Christmas cartoons — and true enough, he had few 20th Century peers in singing children’s tunes — the career of Burl Ives is much more wide-ranging. He was a giant of the pre-1960’s folk boom (and respected its later practitioners) plus having an acting career that included an Academy Award, roles in theater and radio hosting duties. He had a sad part in the McCarthy scare of the early 1950’s, yet in this one-hundred-tenth anniversary of his birth …. he deserves a fresh look. 

Born in 1909 in southern Illinois, he received a banjo at age seven and began to sing in church. Having been a standout football player, he enrolled in Eastern Illinois Teachers College (now Eastern Illinois University) to become an athletic director, while singing on local radio and joining a church quartet. That church required him to take voice lessons, and his French-born teacher encouraged him to find his way to New York at some point.

Not for nothing did Burl Ives become known as a story-teller: many different stories he told about himself, including how he left college in 1930. One tale had him realize he was bored with Beowulf and just walked-out in mid-lesson. Another was that he was expelled for fraternizing in a women’s dorm, and still another had the college president telling him his grades would not make him a good teacher, and his restless, wanderlust soul should lead him to seek his path elsewhere. Today there is a Burl Ives Art Studio on campus — in time, all was forgiven.

And wander he did … becoming a railroad hobo doing odd jobs, busking with his guitar and banjo before reaching New York in 1933. He found work in summer stock, singing in madrigal groups and studying voice with a Julliard instructor (whom he credited with overcoming a sinus blockage) and who encouraged his folk-singing career. He sang at shows for Jewish refugees and to support the government of Spain against the Franco forces.

In 1938, Ives recorded with fellow actor Will Geer (years later in The Waltons) at the Library of Congress and made his Broadway acting debut that same year in the Rodgers & Hart musical The Boys of Syracuse — and one year later, roomed with the show’s star (and fellow Illinois native) Eddie Albert (later of Green Acres) in its Los Angeles run.

Ives broke into radio in New York in 1940, naming his own show Wayfaring Stranger— after the popular folk song (which was later the title of his autobiography). He began to make a name for himself on radio and in shows before being drafted into the Army in 1942, remaining stateside. He appeared in Irving Berlin’s This is The Army and broadcast on Armed Forces Radio yet was given a medical discharge several months later.

After his 1943 discharge, he roomed with future Dragnet/MASH star Harry Morgan while working in local theater before returning to New York to resume his radio career. His appearance in the 1945 Broadway play Sing Out, Sweet Land helped launch his recording career, being signed to Decca Records. His 1947 single of Blue Tail Fly (with the Andrews Sisters) was his first hit. He also landed Hollywood roles as a singing actor, appearing in Audie Murphy’s 1950 film Sierra and his rendition of the 17th Century English tune Lavender Blue received an Academy Award song nomination in 1949.  

After his Top Ten hit On Top of Old Smokey in 1951, he ran into the most troubling period of life. After signing the petition protesting the congressional anti-Communist inquisition (HUAC) of the Hollywood Ten (along with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and John Huston), he was blacklisted from performing and agreed to testify to rescue his career — and is believed to have named names, leading to a rift with Pete Seeger and other fellow performers in 1952 that lasted for years.

He went on to more success in theater and films: Tennessee Williams wrote the character of Big Daddy in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof for him, and he performed it on Broadway and in the film version. He appeared in Show Boat, East of Eden and won a Best Supporting Oscar for his role in the 1958 film Big Country (starring Gregory Peck and Jean Simmons). He also appeared in the 1962 Disney film Summer Magic with Hayley Mills.

In the 1960’s he turned his attention to country music, with one tune (1962’s Funny Way of Laughing) winning a Grammy Award. He also appeared on television, starring in Pinocchio and, of course, as the singing snowman in the 1964 cartoon Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. He also had a serious role as Senator Arthur Justin in the 1977 Alex Haley mini-series Roots.

Yet he never abandoned singing, and he fully embraced the 1960’s folk revival, singing Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are a Changing while still continuing to release books and anthology recordings — releasing a grand total of ninety-nine albums in his lifetime. Fortunately, he made peace with those in the folk community he became estranged with during the McCarthy era, and he and Pete Seeger sang together in 1993 — when Burl Ives was wheelchair-bound.

A longtime pipe and cigar smoker, Burl Ives died of oral cancer in April 1995 (exactly two months short of his eighty-sixth birthday) and is buried in Jasper County, Illinois where he was born. His distinct tenor voice was described by folklorist Alan Lomax as “Sweet and full, high and clear …. and it moved people”. No less than Carl Sandburg described him as “the mightiest ballad singer of this or any other century” … and in 1969 when I heard the Zager & Evans hit In the Year 2525 ... I wondered if the singer Rick Evans had been influenced by Burl Ives?

A clean-shaven young man

.. and Burl Ives years later

In 1974, Glen Campbell had a television special (with many guest stars) entitled  Musical West— and it only seems fitting to end with Burl Ives singing this classic Pete Seeger tune.

x xYouTube Video