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. While mixed results on the elections …. we got Job #1 done.
AS A HISTORY BUFF — whatever your opinions are of these folks: I am ecstatic as to their (amending) the words of General Eisenhower's famous cable that he sent … when Germany surrendered in May, 1945.
ART NOTES— although a native Floridian: the television shows of this late artist were filmed at the PBS station in Muncie, Indiana — and twenty-five years after his death, a permanent exhibit entitled the Bob Ross Experience has opened of his studio, paintings, fan mail, videos and memorabilia — with expanded painting workshops to follow (with fans often attending wearing wigs with a perm).
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1: this essay in The Atlantic by Annie Lowrey entitled Why the Election Wasn’t a Biden Landslide (i.e., not being punished for the economy).
UNTIL YESTERDAY yours truly was rather melancholy about the elections … even though it looked like we might prevail in the Electoral College, the fact that it was even close, that the Senate majority that looked eminently reachable now looks like a long shot, plus some disappointing state house results were all-too sobering. Here in New Hampshire: while both of our US House Democrats (and Democratic Senators) were re-elected, we lost both our state house majorities.
Then when the news came — and I so wish it had come from the Cook Political Report’s election analyst Dave Wasserman with his trademark projection ….
…. I did allow myself the opportunity to celebrate. Goodness, last night I stayed up to watch the entire SNL, and often do not have a good night’s sleep afterwards from staying up that late. But not this time.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is named Franklin the Search Dog— an Oregon mixed Dachshund/Beagle trained to detect the scent of lost felines ... and thus helping to reunite them with their human wildfire evacuees.
JEERS to governments in Africa who arrested prominent adversaries: (in Uganda) Bobi Wine, a pop-star politician, after he registered as a candidate for the presidency, (in Tanzania)Tundu Lissu, the main opposition leader, and (in Zimbabwe)Hopewell Chin’ono, a journalist who has exposed corruption linked to the ruling party.
THURSDAY's CHILD is one of eighty orange kittehs/tabbies rescued from a single home in Ohio … and are now up for adoption.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with an Elections Open Thread— letting off steam on the elections — along with a mini-focus on the election analyst of our time.
YUK for TODAY #1— this Irish discount airline addresses your-friend-and-mine.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2: this report from Olivia Nuzzi on The Final Gasp of Donald Trump’s Presidency— where he finally realizes that he could lose.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC (my first-ever doughnut score) ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz (some common subjects; no real common answers).
YUK for TODAY #2— the transit system of Berlin, Germany weighed-in:
SEPARATED at BIRTH— they can both say, “I’m responsible for all of these lives!”
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… while Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey were more famous, another female singer of the Blues Era of the 1920's was Ida Cox - whose career lasted until the 1940's, leading Paramount Records to to declare her to be the "Uncrowned Queen of the Blues". And unlike many of her contemporaries: she was in charge of much of her own career and material.
Born as Ida Prather in Toccoa, Georgia in 1896 (the daughter of sharecroppers) she began singing in church before leaving at age 14 to sing in vaudeville shows. Making a name for herself, she eventually joined the Rabbit Foot Minstrels - whose success had helped Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey before. While life on this circuit was not easy for its performers, Ida Cox became well-known enough to escape it in the 1920's.
She was married three times, first in 1916 to trumpeter Adler Cox, who died during World War I. The second time (briefly) was to Eugene Williams, with whom Cox had her only child. In 1927 she married Jesse Crump - a pianist (ten years her junior) who helped manage her career before they split during the late 1930's.
It was the success in 1920 of Mamie Smith's Crazy Blues - part of the National Recording Registry - that opened-the-door to the Blues Era. Ida Cox performed with Jelly Roll Morton before receiving her own recording contract in 1923 at the age of twenty-seven: where she recorded a total of 78 singles for Paramount Records before the decade was out.
Ida Cox had several noteworthy distinctions as a female black performer: (a) most others sang songs written by men: she wrote (or co-wrote) much of her own material, adding a woman's touch to her material, (b) she often used as a pianist/bandleader Lovie Austin - unusually, a female instrumental accompanist to another female performer, (c) she managed or co-managed her own career and (d) her songs touched on themes of female independence, feminism, unemployment during the Depression, death and sexuality ... rarely explored in detail like she did.
As the Blues Decade began to wane with the onset of the Depression, she and Jesse Crump founded a travelling tent show revue named Raisin' Cain - which performed at Harlem's Apollo Theater at a time when other blues singers faltered. Her troupe was eventually re-named the Darktown Scandals which had an interesting sidenote: a young tapdancer in the troupe was New Orleans native Earl Palmer - a future Rock & Roll Hall of Fame member as a session drummer.
In 1939, she had a chance to perform at the concert that John Hammond arranged at Carnegie Hall entitled From Spirituals to Swing - a tribute show to Bessie Smith who had died a year earlier - and the success of the soundtrack album helped Ida Cox gain new audiences.
One tune of hers that became noted (and which she sang at that concert) was "Fore Day Creep" - about adultery 'before day(light)' - that seems to be a (female) mirror-image of the song by Blind Joe Reynolds entitled Outside Woman Blues - which the supergroup Cream popularized in 1967. Over the years, Ida Cox's song title morphed into "Four Day Creep" - and which she was credited for when it was performed on the landmark live album by Humble Pie in 1971, yet which sounds nothing like how Ida Cox performed it at this link herself.
She performed with many jazz performers (such as Lionel Hampton and Charlie Christian) and big bands into the 1940's. All along, Ida Cox's vocal range was limited (not much more than an octave) yet her phrasing was what won over audiences, as well her persona: often appearing in a tiara, cape and with a rhinestone wand.
Her career ended when she suffered a stroke on-stage in Buffalo, New York in 1945, and she retired to her home in Knoxville, Tennessee with her daughter. Yet in 1959, she was sought out once again (twenty years later) by John Hammond: this time with an ad in Variety magazine. Hammond persuaded her to make one final recording, which was released in 1961. And while critics noted her voice had suffered (not only due to the stroke but by turning age 65) they did praise her delivery, making Blues for Rampart Street a success ... (of course, having musicians such as Coleman Hawkins and Roy Eldridge helped).
Ida Cox suffered another stroke in 1965, and died in 1967 at the age of seventy-one.
While Wild Women Don't Have the Blues is her best-known tune (and at this link you can hear her final 1961 rendition, with a cleaner sound and a mature voice), I am also partial to a song she and her husband wrote, Last Mile Blues from 1940 - a look at capital punishment, and while lynchings were still going on.
You wonder why I'm grieving and feeling blue? All I do is moan and cry With me you'd be in sympathy, if you only knew And here's the reason why:Have you heard what that mean old judge has done to me? He told the jury not to let my man go free There I stood with my heart so full of misery He must die on the gallows, that was the court's decree
I walked the floor until his time was through The judge he said there's nothing you can do He must die on the gallows, by his neck be hung He must pay with his life when that there trap is sprung
He refused folks to talk until it was too late He gave his life to satisfy the State When they pull the black cap over my daddy's face Lord I beg the sheriff to let me take his place
Now everyday I seem to see that news I cry to hide my tears, but what's the use? Thirteen steps with his loving arms bound to his side With a smile on his face: that's how my daddy died