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— an exhibition entitled John Singer Sargent: Portraits in Charcoal— the first exhibition of Sargent’s portrait drawings in over fifty years (with many of them from private collections and rarely exhibited) — will be at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. through May 31st.
WHAT DIGBY SAID, Vol. 97— in his visit to India this week, the increasingly authoritarian prime minister Narendra Modi— flabbergasted back in 2017 that the Trumpster thought that his country did not share a border with China (it does, over 2,500 miles) despite having more business there than any other country outside North America — realized how to butter-him up … and just did so.
YOUR WEEKEND READ is this essay about the busboy behind the Woolworth lunch counter (in Greensboro, North Carolina) in this iconic protest photo taken in February, 1960 — who at age eighty-two tells the back-story behind that day.
IN A CHANGE with the past: the just-concluded Carnevale celebrations in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil are now featuring plus-size elite samba dancers — whereas before they were covered from head to foot and relegated to sections of the parades in which their bodies were not on display.
THURSDAY's CHILD is listening to what can best be described as cat music— "melodic lines based on affiliative vocalizations and rewarding sounds”— which researchers claim (based on vet’s office field tests) that cats appeared to be less stressed during the exams when played the cat-specific music, compared with both classical music and silence.
ELECTION NOTES— while in the West, the wealthy tend to vote more than the poor, it is the opposite in much of Africa— as tax collection practices are so inefficient, the wealthy are unlikely to pay more (regardless of who is elected) and the rural poor can be browbeaten to vote (by ruling parties) via threatening aid cutoff and gerrymandering districts so their votes count more than urban ones.
FRIDAY's CHILD is the late Oreo Armstrong the Cat— who ruled-the-roost at the Armstrong Hotel in Fort Collins, Colorado (long after a temporary mousing task) for fifteen years, even high-fiving guests — who has died at the age of nearly sixteen.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with a look at our long-serving national expert on infectious diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci— trusted by both Republican and Democratic administrations …. until this one.
OLDER-YOUNGER SISTERS?— Academy Award winner Jennifer Lawrence and model Bella Hadid.
......and finally, for a song of the week ............... he never made it big during the folk revival of the early 1960's - or, as he put it, "the Folk Scare of the 1960's" - as he was not a prolific songwriter (when one was expected to write their own material), his voice was gruff and he was overweight ... but Dave Van Ronk was everybody's friend in Greenwich Village from the mid-50's on. He crashed at others' places (or returned the favor), befriended Tom Paxton and Phil Ochs, and helped mentor the young and newly-arrived Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell. Not for nothing was he known as The Mayor of MacDougal Street.
The Brooklyn native grew up in Richmond Hill, Queens and always described himself as "more Irish than Dutch" - with a stoneware jug of Tullamore Dew whiskey on-stage with him. A high school dropout, he began bringing his guitar into Greenwich Village's noted hangout Washington Square Park ... until as he noted, it was "overtaken by the bongo players". As noted in his memoirs, he scrounged for meals and board, eventually joining the merchant marines in order to earn a nest-egg.
While he is remembered as a folkie: he pointed out that he learned (and performed) with Dixieland jazz bands in the 1950's and - while that style faded in Manhattan during the decade - it remained a valuable part of his sound. Eventually settling-in as a solo performer, he adapted ragtime tunes to the guitar, and also became a devotee of Kurt Weill, and of Woody Guthrie and traditional folk tunes.
But it is fair to say that his music is more based upon the blues than any other style, adapting the songs of Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt and especially the Reverend Gary Davis. In the 1950's, few white musicians were playing these tunes, which made his adaptations stand out. And so songs such as Twelve Gates to the City and "Cocaine Blues" - which the Rev. Gary Davis eventually stopped playing to focus on religious music - became a Van Ronk standard.
He also performed songs by the young musicians he helped out, such as Bob Dylan's "All Over You", and Joni Mitchell's Chelsea Morning, and eventually began writing some of his own songs (Sunday Street and Gaslight Rag). But that came too late in his career to help him join the burgeoning singer-songwriter movement.
After trying to scrape out a living in the mid-50's New York coffeehouse scene - still a few years away from the explosion - Van Ronk talks about hearing encouraging words from the folksinger Odetta, who promised to bring a tape to tell the Chicago club owner Albert Grossman about Van Ronk. Van Ronk then ventured to Chicago to audition for Grossman at his famous Gate of Horn - but who never received the tape and was unimpressed, anyway.
His career began in earnest with his 1959 release on Moe Asch's legendary Folkways Records label - which he felt was more authentically folk music than, say, the Kingston Trio (whom he disliked) - and his first album garnered some notice. But he had more success in the 1960's when he was signed to Prestige Records - the jazz label owned by the legendary producer Bob Weinstock - when it opened itself to folk music in the early 1960's, with much better distribution channels. They released perhaps his most noted solo album - Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger - in 1963. Just a few years earlier, that great "folk scare" had finally arrived, years after it was forecast. Van Ronk was largely overlooked by it, later saying:
If there was ever any truth to the trickle-down theory, the only evidence of it I've ever seen was in that period of 1960 to 1965. All of sudden they were handing out major label recording contracts like they were coming in Cracker Jack boxes.
But it almost didn't pass him by: Albert Grossman - by then, Bob Dylan's manager - had grown fonder of Van Ronk's singing and asked if he was interested in joining the trio he was forming. And when Van Ronk declined, it was Noel Paul Stookey who became the third partner in Peter, Paul & Mary - which Van Ronk realized he would have been horribly suited for .... yet from time-to-time pondered his bank balance and wondered .....
His wonderful memoirs are entitled The Mayor of MacDougal Street - completed by its ghostwriter after his death - and only continue until the end of the 1960's, as he wanted less of a true bio, and more of the “'end of an era” accounting. It turns out that he had come out of the old Lions Head Pub to see what the loud commotion he heard was about ... and wound up in the middle of the Stonewall Riots of 1969, erroneously charged with having thrown an object at the police.
But though his time in the limelight had faded, his career lasted another thirty years, recording over thirty albums and now mentoring a new group of musicians (with The Roches and Christine Lavin in particular).
And he supported left-wing politics all his life ... just not via songwriting (as he felt that Phil Ochs had pigeon-holed himself needlessly). And when you listen to the early acoustic Hot Tuna recordings, you hear many songs that Dave Van Ronk had popularized a few years earlier.
Dave Van Ronk died in February, 2002 at the age of 62, after battling colon cancer. A few months later, a live recording of his last concert was released.
His legacy includes an ASCAP Lifetime Achievement Award (in 1997), a two-disc compilation album and part of Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village renamed Dave Van Ronk Street in June, 2004.
And just this past decade, it received an (indirect) nod — when the Coen Brothers filmmakers released the 2013 film entitled Inside Llewyn Davis .... about a composite folksinger of the early 1960’s, yet had as its main inspiration the life of Dave Van Ronk.
Of all of his songs, it is a traditional tune (naturally) with its own interesting heritage called Hesitation Blues - also performed by musicians ranging from W.C. Handy to Janis Joplin to Willie Nelson to Doc & Merle Watson - that is my favorite.
YouTube VideoThe eagle on the dollar says, 'In God we trust' A woman says she wants a man But wants to see that dollar first
Ain't never been to heaven But I've been told: St. Peter taught the angels How to jelly roll
Tell me how long do I have to wait? Can I get you now Or must I hesitate?