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 upcoming week. Looking even further ahead: a happy/safe holiday weekend.
ART NOTES #1— a photography exhibition entitled Dawoud Bey: An American Project will be at the Whitney Museum in NYC through October 3rd.
PROGRAMMING NOTE #1 — there will not be an Odds & Ends posting next Friday (nor a full-fledged Sunday diary) — as I will have my first long-weekend traveling in many months for the Memorial Day weekend. Will resume the first Friday in June.
SPORTING NOTES— the NBA has sponsored a new league outside of North America: and the Basketball Africa League just began its 2021 season with twelve franchises.
INTERESTINGLY…. it is Mickey Dolenz with the head covering (not Mike Nesmith).
ART NOTES #2— historically, museums have avoided selling their works — a practice known as de-accessioning— to cover operating expenses, rather than to finance new acquisitions. Now as a result of the pandemic (and vastly reduced revenues) the Association of Art Museum Directors, a rule-setting body, has allowed it for reasons other than acquisition until April 2022.
THURSDAY's CHILD is a British Columbia kitteh who …. chased a coyote out of a parking lot— and local police confirmed the coyote left the area (with the cat returning back safely).
YOUR WEEKEND READ is this essay from the American Prospect, on how the state of Kentucky was the only GOP-controlled legislature in the country that crafted an improvement in voter access over the state’s existing (and very restrictive) laws.
CONGRATULATIONS to a winner in this week’s elections in Chile to draft a new constitution (erasing the Pinochet-era one) that left-of-center candidates did well in. Although her name is Giovanna Grandón, she campaigned publicly as:
QUOTE for today: an associate editor of Commonweal magazine cited the 2008 documentary (Boogie Man) on Lee Atwater, with this quote from Mike Dukakis:
If you could find a (military) uniform and pair of sunglasses and said you were anti-communist …….... the Reagan administration would support you.
FRIDAY's CHILD is Oriole the Cat— an English mama kitteh who has raised her litter in a …. bird’s nest (maybe this is what the late sportscaster Red Barber meant by “catbird’s seat”) and an animal protection agency noted that a tomcat named Willet stayed with her after the birth of the kittens.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.
PROGRAMMING NOTE #2 — although I will not have a full-fledged diary next Sunday, I will have a Trump-World poll next week — with not only FormerGuy but also his acolytes — available for my readers. Thus, this week’s poll is clearing-the-decks of all other choices and (I suspect) there’s more Trump-world news coming.
SEPARATED at BIRTH— a January 6th insurrectionist …. and TV star Chuck Norris.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… someone who made her name during the rockabilly era yet had a long career due to adaptability is Wanda Jackson— whose sixty-plus year career only ended (due to health reasons) in 2019 at the age of eighty-one. Earning the nickname “Queen of Rockabilly”, she was able to maneuver between several genres of music and musicians, became an uncommon fashion statement in her era and even recorded in different languages, enabling her to stay relevant long after many of her peers.
Born in 1937 in Oklahoma, her family moved when she was age four for an eight-year stint in Bakersfield, California — where she saw shows by the likes of Tex Williams and Bob Wills — prophetic, as the Bakersfield Sound influenced her later career. Back in Oklahoma City, she won a local talent show and was given a short segment on a radio station throughout her high school years, bringing her to the attention of country bandleader Hank Thompson, who recorded duets with her.
Insisting on finishing high school, she began a solo career as a singer/guitarist at age eighteen in 1955, with her father as manager. She wanted to sign with Hank Thompson’s label Capitol, but producer Ken Nelson declined, saying “Girls don’t sell records”… so she signed with Decca Records instead.
She was placed on a bill with Elvis Presley, who encouraged her to enter the newly-burgeoning rockabilly genre. Her stage outfits were designed by her mother Nellie — and chose very stylish outfits (compared to the gingham dresses worn even two decades later by many women in country music), leading Wanda Jackson to declare that she was the first woman to “put glamour into country music”.
Her initial success led to Capitol eventually buying out her Decca contract, with the very same Ken Nelson now helping her to a very successful tenure until 1970. She deftly would record both a rockabilly and a country song on one 45, gaining a foothold in both genres (with a then-unknown Buck Owens on guitar). From her debut in 1955 to 1960, she also appeared on the ABC program Ozark Jubilee.
In the 50’s, she had some limited success on the country charts … and so to diversify, in 1958 she recorded the song Fujiyama Mama which reached #1 in Japan … and began ensuring a foreign audience for her music. She married an IBM executive named Wendell Goodman in 1961 and — unlike as for most female performers of the era — it was he who gave up his career (to help manage hers).
Her breakthrough came from 1960-65 (to the end of the rockabilly era) with songs on both the pop and country charts with ballads such as If I Cried Every Time You Hurt Me, In the Middle of a Heartache, Right or Wrong and her break-out 1960 rocker Let's Have a Party— and named her back-up band The Partytimers. In her rotating line-ups was a (then-unknown) guitarist named Roy Clark.
When the rockabilly era faded by the mid-60’s, she moved into country music, with hits such as Box it Came In and Both Sides of the Line… yet showed her versatility with an answer record to Jimmy Webb’s By the Time I Get to Phoenix and even a country version of Pete Seeger’s If I Had a Hammer (unusual in 1969). At this time, she began recording foreign-language versions of some of her tunes in German, Dutch, even Japanese … further extending her foreign concert opportunities.
In the 1970’s, she and her husband became evangelical Christians and she recorded almost exclusively Gospel tunes — not because she wanted to be limited solely to that, but because Christian labels of that era were inflexible.
Beginning in the 1980’s there was a rockabilly revival — and she was poised to take advantage of it, with widespread touring. In addition to country stars such as Rosanne Cash and Pam Tillis, many rock performers who had discovered her old material wanted to work with her — with both Cyndi Lauper and Joan Jett telling her that she was an influence — and Wanda Jackson was only too happy to, with her 2003 album Heart Trouble featuring both Elvis Costello and The Cramps (whom I featured in this space recently). In 2011, she worked with Jack White (of the White Stripes fame) to produce The Party Ain’t Over— her highest-charting pop album of all-time — and at age seventy-three, she beat out Mae West (by one year) as the oldest female vocalist to make the album charts.
Her last album (produced by the late roots music musician Justin Towns Earle) was Unfinished Business— which had some originals yet also covers of songs by Woody Guthrie, Etta James, Bobby Womack and others. With unceasing versatility, she also participated in a VH-1 tribute concert to Amy Winehouse.
From 2016-18 she had numerous ailments — knee replacement, a staph infection and double pneumonia — yet wanted to work “right up until the point that I couldn’t”. Then after a stroke (that she said she made it to the hospital in time for) led her to say in March 2019, “That point has been reached”.
She has been inducted into the Oklahoma and Rockabilly Halls of Fame, with Roseanne Cash introducing her for her 2019 induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (in the Early Influences category). She has a 2017 autobiography Every Night is Saturday Night and a 2000 compilation album of her classic rockabilly hits.
On her collaboration with Jack White in 2010-2011, she recorded her version of Shakin’ All Over— originally written and performed by the English rocker Johnny Kidd & the Pirates in 1960, with a 1965 cover version by the Guess Who and a memorable 1970 cover version by The Who on their Live at Leeds album. Here she performs it live in Nashville, just a month short of her …… seventy-fifth birthday.
When you move in right up close to me That's when I get the shakes all over me Just the way that you say goodnight to me Brings that feeling on inside of meQuivers down my backbone I got the shakes down my knee bone Tremors in my thigh bone Shakin' all over