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 works by the Belgian artist in an exhibition entitled Isabelle de Borchgrave: Fashioning Art from Paper— with life-size trompe l’œil paper costumes (replicating historical garments found in European masterworks) spanning nearly 500 years — will be at the Speed Museum of Art in Louisville, Kentucky through August 22nd.
YOUR WEEKEND READ#1 is this essay by Adam Serwer in The Atlantic— having as its central thesis, “The future of American democracy depends on the president’s ability to show that even when the Republican Party loses ... Americans who vote Republican do not”.
WITH ALL the HYPOCRISY-PHONINESS in big-time college sports … this satisfies:
Her Loyola of Chicago team won its first match on Friday, will face a very difficult in-state rival Illinois today.
QUOTE for TODAY— at a party given by a billionaire, Kurt Vonnegut asked Joseph Heller about the fact that their host had (perhaps) made more money in a single day than Heller had earned from “Catch-22” over its whole history. Heller’s reply:
“I’ve got something he can never have … the knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Jessie the Hermaphrodite Cat— an Idaho kitteh brought to a shelter as a stray, and was born with both male and female sex organs and genitalia, making it quite a rarity … now up for adoption.
YOUR WEEKEND READ#2 is this essay by the Never-Trump policy editor of The Bulwark, Mona Charen: noting that when J.D. Vance first wrote Hillbilly Elegy, he thought the Trumpster would be bad for the working class …. and yet now that he is having thoughts of running for the U.S. Senate from Ohio, has joined his camp and is “positioning himself as QAnon-adjacent”.
FRIDAY's CHILD is the late Phoebe the Cat— an English kitteh who went missing twenty years ago, found in a field by a shelter — yet due to her microchip was able to be reconnected with her family for two days before she had to be euthanized (as she was suffering from a brain tumor).
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz (no common questions).
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with a look at a maligned athlete (over one pitch he threw) in the 20th Century, Ralph Branca… yet whose character and reputation were richly redeemed at the dawn of the 21st Century, with revelations that (1) his opponents had an unfair advantage, (2) that he had unknown Jewish ancestry and that (3) his little-known role in welcoming Jackie Robinson (that helped advance race relations) became more widely known.
Reader suggested UNIBROW DESCENDANTS (from Maudlin) — NBA basketball player Anthony Davis (who teased his fans about shaving it in 2018) and the late Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… if you are a fan of the electric blues – and especially the Chicago version – then someone whose work has shaped your enjoyment was Walter Jacobs …. better known as Little Walter– on harmonica. Tired of being drowned-out in accompanying an amplified guitarist, he cupped a microphone to his blues “harp” and plugged-it into his own amplifier. He was not the first to ever do so, but was the first to do so regularly. And he was the first musician – period – to drive-up his Silvertone amplifier (intentionally) to distortion levels, which had long been avoided by musicians. Although he also played guitar and sang: he is the only person inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame on the strength of his harmonica playing alone.
Born as Marion Walter Jacobs on the first of May, 1930 in rural Louisiana, he was a somewhat unruly child who made his way as a twelve year-old to New Orleans. And like many future blues musicians: he made-his-way up the Mississippi River to Chicago (although unlike others, he settled in places like Memphis and St. Louis for a time before reaching the Windy City in 1946).
He fell into the Maxwell Street blues scene, eventually performing with another Delta emigré – the more well-known Muddy Waters – in 1949. For three years, the two (along with a rhythm section) became one of the hot nightclub acts in town, signing with the Chess record label. And it was on Muddy’s 1951 recording of Country Boy that Little Walter was first recorded with an amplified blues harp.
Little Walter left Muddy Waters in 1952 to start his own band – although the two sounded so good together, label owner Leonard Chess always asked Walter to be a sideman on Muddy Waters’ future recordings. Thus, if you have never listened to any Chess recordings other than Muddy Waters (such as Hoochie Coochie Man and Trouble No More) … you probably have heard the sound of Walter Jacobs, anyway.
Signed to the Chess subsidiary label Checker in the early 50’s, Little Walter recorded a #1 (on the R&B charts) song entitled Juke– the first (and only) harmonica instrumental to top the R&B charts. His back-up band became known as The Jukes: whose members over the years included future blues stars such as Robert Jr. Lockwood and Luther Tucker on guitar. Other songs that he had hits with were Sad Hours, Blues with a Feeling… and the 1955 Willie Dixon song My Babe– based upon the Gospel tune This Train – that is among his best-known songs by the rock and roll generation (as it even reached #106 in the pop music charts). In fact, from 1952 through the end of the decade, Walter had fourteen Top Ten hits on the R&B charts … more than Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf and any other Chess Records hitmaker.
Alas, the advent of the 1960’s would prove to be the downfall of Walter Jacobs. In part, this was no different for other blues and R&B artists (as the British Invasion and Motown explosion ate into their audience). But while many were able to have a renaissance (years later) after successive generations re-discovered their music … Walter Jacobs was not around to benefit from it.
And that is because Little Walter had (a) an alcohol problem, and (b) a short temper …. which led to (c) street fighting and (d) bouts with the law. He became an unreliable performer (with his face showing the scars from his fighting) and it affected his once-prodigious abilities both in concert and on recordings. He was invited to perform on two European blues tours in 1964 and 1967 (although reports that he opened for the Rolling Stones are untrue). This helped boost his star among many future British blues-rock band members, but most critics deem his post-1960 recordings – even one in 1967 with both Muddy Waters and Bo Diddley– as of lesser achievements.
It was such a street fight in early 1968 – on a break during a Chicago performance – that a fight injured him enough to aggravate prior injuries, and Walter Jacobs died in February, 1968 at the home of a girlfriend … at the age of only thirty-seven.
His influence can be heard in the sound of many blues harmonica players (such as Junior Wells, James Cotton and Carey Bell) to more modern blues-rock performers (such as Charlie Musselwhite, Kim Wilson, Paul Butterfield and John Popper of Blues Traveler).
His songs have been recognized by the Blues Hall of Fame (Juke and My Babe) with the Grammy Award foundation also recognizing Juke… as well as awarding his posthumous compilation album Chess Masters 1950-1967 a Grammy for Best Historical Album. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Little Walter forty years after his death in 2008 (as a sideman) and Rolling Stone named his Best of Little Walter as #198 on its 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list. A biography of Walter Jacobs entitled Blues With a Feeling was published in 2002.
His daughter Marion today runs the Little Walter Foundation– dedicated to supporting music education and helping to preserve the blues. There have been several annual editions of the Little Walter Festival held in his native Louisiana, and a documentary film on his life – entitled Blue Midnight– has long been a work-in-progress of Boston film-maker Mike Fritz (with help from an NEA grant).
The Chicago blues guitarist Buddy Guy in his 2013 autobiography summed-up Little Walter thusly:
No one could put pain into the harp and have it come out so pretty. No one understood that the harmonica – just as much as a trumpet, a trombone, or a saxophone – could have a voice that would drop you in your tracks, where all you could say was “Lord, have mercy.”
And more than fifty years after his death, Walter Jacobs continues to influence. The 2008 film about the Chess label entitled Cadillac Records saw him portrayed by Columbus Short, and the 2009 novel Under the Dome– by Stephen King – had a character named Little Walter Bushey, named after the musician.
Fortunately, if one views his grave in the town of Evergreen Park, Illinois– you will see a headstone that was paid for by music fans in 1991 – thus ennobling a grave that had gone unmarked for twenty-three years.
If you’d like to hear his breakthrough song, here is a link to his 1952 hit Juke– but of all of his work, my favorite is another song that blues-rock fans will recognize.
Key to the Highway– written by Charlie Segar and (the more well-known) Big Bill Broonzy – was first performed in 1940 … and Little Walter’s version reached #6 in the R&B charts in 1958. It has subsequently been performed by a multitude of blues and rock stars – among them The Band, B.B King, the Derek Trucks Band, John Lee Hooker, Steve Miller and Eric Clapton. And below you can hear Little Walter Jacobs sing it ….. and, of course, play the blues harp.
I got the key to the highway Billed-out and bound to go I’m gonna leave here running Because walking is much too slow
I’m going back to the border Where I’m better known Because you haven’t done nothing but Drove a good man away from home
When the moon peeks over the mountains I’ll be on my way I’m gonna roam this highway Until the break of day