A look at three old stories I recently read, after-the-jump ……….
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Sometimes you come across an aspect of someone’s life that makes you take notice. Or, a recent story that I profiled here led to the discovery of a similar situation. Either way, three vignettes for this evening.
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When a performer decides to retire, I always appreciate those who return to their roots for a final performance. In February 2017, the band Black Sabbath concluded its final tour: and while three of the four founding members live in greater Los Angeles today, their final show was in their hometown of Birmingham, England. One month later, the jazz vibraphonist Gary Burton— realizing he was having ‘senior moments’ on-stage — announced a short final tour, including shows in New York and Boston …. yet concluded in his home state of Indiana. Recently, the anniversary of the death of a stage icon reminded me of this.
The career of the stage/film star Helen Hayes is too long to recount briefly — but she became the "First Lady of American Theater", as well as winning two Oscars (in both 1931 and 1970). Not only a Broadway theater, but also a noted rehabilitative hospital are named for her.
Born in 1900, she began as a child actress at the age of five at the National Theater in her hometown of Washington, D.C. and went on to a Broadway stage career that ended with her role in the short 1970 revival of the play Harvey— opposite Jimmy Stewart.
The next year — sixty-six years after her first stage appearance — she ended her stage career in her hometown: portraying Mary Tyrone in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night at the Hartke Theater. And I recall listening to her autobiography (on Audio Books) that made me smile:
“I liked the idea of a circle being completed. My (stage) career had begun in Washington and it would end there”.
In my recent retrospective on Ralph Branca — the baseball pitcher who had led an exemplary life, yet saddled by many for one play (that wasn’t all his fault) — it reminded me of a different athlete who was also burdened over one play. Not anywhere near the scale that Ralph Branca was, mind you — yet a bit unfairly, too.
Jethro Pugh was a defensive lineman for the Dallas Cowboys (from 1965-1978) yet it was in his third season that he became known for just one play: the critical end of the NFL championship game on December 31, 1967 at Green Bay, Wisconsin (where the winner would advance to the second Super Bowl). Forever known as the Ice Bowl— on a frozen field — I watched on TV as an eleven year-old. One of his Dallas teammates remembered the wake-up call he received from the operator at the Green Bay Holiday Inn the morning of the game:
"Good morning. It's 8 a.m. It's 15 below zero, and there's a 20-mile-per-hour wind coming out of the northwest. Have a nice day."
I’ll spare you the brutalities of this game, other than one example: the referees couldn’t use their whistles without pain, so just shouted out “Down”.
Suffice it to say that Dallas led Green Bay 17-14 with Green Bay having a 3rd and goal inside the Dallas one-yard line … with only sixteen seconds left. Green Bay had no time-outs left, and if they ran the ball and did not score: on fourth down, they may not have been able to run another play. Thus, quarterback Bart Starr called for himself to keep the ball and follow a block to get in. And as offensive lineman Jerry Kramer had said he could block Jethro Pugh, Starr followed him.
The touchdown scored gave the Packers the league championship, and they would go on to defeat Oakland in Super Bowl II, concluding a championship run of five NFL titles in seven years.
Jethro Pugh, though, was long blamed as the “The guy who got blocked by Jerry Kramer” by fans in Texas. Nowhere near what Ralph Branca went through, as unlike Branca: Jethro Pugh had a long career (with two Super Bowl championships of his own) and at the time of his retirement: he had played in a (then) league-record twenty-three playoff games.
Yet at many of those playoff games, sportswriters asked him ... about one play.
Twenty-nine years later in 1996 …. he got some absolution.
First, a digital re-vamping of game film (by NFL Films) seemed to indicate that a feeling that Jethro Pugh (at that game moment) had may have been correct — that Jerry Kramer moved early on the play. “I was shocked when I didn’t see a flag. I kept looking around for one.” Even Kramer (in his 1968 best seller, Instant Replay) wrote: “I wouldn’t swear that I didn’t beat the center’s snap by a fraction of a second. I wouldn’t swear that I wasn’t actually offside on the play.”
Alas, I cannot locate a slow-motion video of it online (which existed on NFL Films home videos; perhaps they remove it from YouTube?) and in recent years Kramer and many of his teammates now maintain he did not move early.
Even if not: while Jerry Kramer took credit for not only devising the play yet also executing it — which helped him earn induction in the Pro Football Hall of Fame— over the years, it has been recognized that he did not block Pugh by himself.
Rather, it was the young Green Bay center Ken Bowman who helped double-team Jethro Pugh, a difficult task for anyone to handle. Pugh’s teammate Bob Lilly later observed, “If they had (both) run over me, they would have scored, too.”
Bowman in 1996 also felt that Kramer had moved early, yet was more upset at not receiving any credit:
“He said, ‘Kenny, let an old man have his moment in the spotlight. You have 10 more years to be here,’” Bowman said. “I was so young and dumb, I believed him. I believed I would make another block and be involved in a big play like this again.
Again, I cannot locate this online: but in reading about Jethro Pugh’s 2015 funeral, the revelation of the possible false-start (and that it took two players to block Jethro Pugh) was a break for his son Trey. I recall reading that some of his former classmates from 1967 sought him out and apologized for teasing the young man about his father: especially as it took a two men to move an immovable object.
Finally, during the years of 1959-1964 … after the Day The Music Died and before the arrival of The Beatles in America … what I call the Musical Interregnum saw so many types of music compete for the US charts. And one category was the type of music later to be dubbed Easy Listening— which I considered to be my father’s music(!) then (and now).
Yet there were several European bandleaders who had either single (or album) success during those years and beyond, including the Italian musician (Annunzio) Mantovani,France’s Paul Mauriat plus two Germans, James Last … and also Bert Kaempfert— who had a knack for developing kitschy themes that wound their way into TV shows, and also had two other interesting aspects of his career.
Born in Hamburg in 1923, he played in Navy bands (even spending time in a Danish POW camp during WW-II) and learned to appreciate swing music, playing at US officer’s clubs after the war. Eventually, he formed his own orchestra in Hamburg and did some recordings which had limited appeal at home. He was especially proud of an instrumental which (in English) later became known as Wonderland by Night— that went nowhere in his native land in 1960.
The solution? Visit New York, where he sought out the record producer Milt Gabler— the uncle of Billy Crystal, who had the courage to release Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit on his Commodore Records (which her Columbia label balked at). Gabler heard its appeal and upon its release: it became a hit in 1961 and Bert Kaempfert’s career was launched world-wide. Some other songs that he wrote the music for (with others supplying English lyrics later) you probably know better: Strangers in the Night (for Frank Sinatra), Danke Schön (for Wayne Newton) and L-O-V-E (for Nat King Cole) — all of which helped him earn induction into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Bert Kaempfert also did record producing as a sidelight … which led to a discovery. As with many Englishmen who found success in the thriving bar scene of Hamburg, guitarist/singer Tony Sheridan was performing there and wanted to record a 1961 album of songs with the title track My Bonnie (Lies Over the Ocean). Kaempfert auditioned and decided to hire a foursome of musicians he would dub the Beat Brothers, who backed Sheridan on a few songs.
That record went nowhere, yet on October 28th: a man walked into a Liverpool record shop owned by Brian Epstein, looking for the Sheridan disk. Epstein didn’t have it but upon learning it had Liverpool musicians on it was intrigued …. and tracked-down the musicians who (as you may have guessed) were The Beatles.
Let’s close with two tunes those of you (of a certain age) may recognize from TV — they are not my music …. but dang, I feel like a kid hearing them. One is That Happy Feeling (which the Sandy Becker Show used as its theme music).
And if you ever watched The Match Game in its earlier incarnations — you’ll recognize A Swingin’ Safari.
Now, on to Top Comments:
(Nothing from the field came in this evening).
From Ed Tracey, your faithful correspondent this evening ........
In the front-page story about the first Biden/Harris cabinet meeting— without the “We’re not worthy!” fawning from the lackeys of the previous administration in its first cabinet meeting — saugatojas goes back to Elizabethan times to cite what is expected of the new cabinet members.
TOP PHOTOSMarch 31st, 2021 Next - enjoy jotter's wonderful *PictureQuilt™* below. Just click on the picture and it will magically take you to the comment that features that photo.
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And lastly: yesterday's Top Mojo - mega-mojo to the intrepid mik ...... who rescued this feature from oblivion:
2) 😂😂ὠ2;😂😂 … by Lady Courtney +1463) Thank you Greg. Chauvin trial by Denise Oliver Velez +13311) … by Denise Oliver Velez +9914) America needs a reset button. JHC by jackandjill +8824) I think we’re gonna need a bigger bag…. by stevemb +7425) [image] by PvtJarHead +7128) On Morning Joe: by HalBrown +68