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 traveling exhibition entitled Titian: Women, Myth & Power— its last stop after London and Madrid, and which includes a series of six canvases known as “poesie” (painted poems) not seen together for nearly 500 years — will be at the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum in Boston, Massachusetts to Jan 2nd.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this Vanity Fair account on how much of right-wing media already relocated to the Palm Beach area — FormerGuy merely changed addresses — and yet how two old stalwarts have been cast out, with Ann Coulter sending the author a text: “Drudge and I are both leaving Florida … and we’re not telling anyone where we’re going this time.”
MEDICAL NOTES— with effective vaccines available and hospital admissions soaring: Forbes reports that many private heath care providers are no longer waiving out-of-pocket costs for Covid treatment (as they did earlier in the pandemic) with higher resulting bills for the un-vaccinated.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Topper the Cat— who has joined the family of the governor of Indiana.
QUOTE for today— the Baby Blue Cherub (a/k/a Atrios, t/n Duncan Black) suggests an acid test for those only now expressing solidarity with Afghans (and especially women) is to see how receptive they are to accepting refugees:
The US is a big country: we could take a few million easy and would barely be noticed most places. It would be a big program requiring resources & organization ... but Joe MAGA wouldn't be too likely to bump into one of these furriners.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the author James Loewen— a professor emeritus at the University of Vermont and whose 1995 book Lies My Teacher Taught Me (taking on the previous sanitized version of US history) presaged the debate on school history curriculum of today — who has died at the age of seventy-nine.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Piran the Hero Cat— an English kitteh whose constant meowing led rescuers (searching for a missing eighty-three year-old woman) to a seventy-foot ravine where she had fallen into … and she is now recovering.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with some random items— the effect of climate change on the Coachella Valley in California, an effort to promote flag football (rather than tackle football) before high school, and Josh Marshall’s take on the gamble that red state governors made … which only six weeks ago seemed it just might pay off … until the Delta Variant arrived.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC (one is a gimme) ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz (no common questions).
DAUGHTER-MOTHER?— TV star Angie Harmon and film star Ali McGraw.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… I would have a devil of a time coming up with my favorite dozen tunes in the Motown songbook ... yet my favorite is easily Tears of a Clown - with music by Stevie Wonder and Motown producer Hank Cosby. That is what appealed to me as a child; the driving rhythm underneath made it an early favorite of mine.
Later, it was the lyrics that cemented my appreciation - I mean, what pop song would reference the opera figure Pagliacci (a sad clown)?!?
Well, it would ..... if it were penned by the lyricist William 'Smokey' Robinson - who also became a noted performer. I have always thought that in terms of rock music's early singer-songwriters: Chuck Berry's lyrics were the best for many years, and other than Brian Wilson (whose music I felt was more imposing than his lyrics) Chuck had little competition until Bob Dylan and Smokey Robinson came along. Indeed, there is a tape of Bob Dylan being asked about his favorite poets ... and listing Smokey Robinson as being one of them.
The song was recorded on a 1967 Smokey Robinson & the Miracles Make It Happen album, but was not released as a single .... as the label thought it was 'too odd' for any chart success. For example: besides the legendary Funk Brothers back-up band performing the music, it also featured .... a bassoon, performed by Charles Sirard of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra.
Then, it hit the big time .... three years later .... in Britain, with an interesting back-story:
Karen Spreadbury was a 21-year-old secretary at EMI Records in London and was also the head of the British fan club for Motown (as EMI was Motown's distributor in the UK). She was asked by John Reid, the label’s marketing head in the UK (and later Elton John's manager) to find a hit single on the 1967 album.
That request came because Smokey Robinson and the Miracles had a difficult time gaining chart success in Britain (relative to other Motown performers), hence the label's "What have we got to lose?" decision to turn to Karen Spreadbury for help:
I thought: you’re the product managers, that’s your job" she said. "But I said OK, and they tossed me the Make It Happen album." She was puzzled; the LP was three years old and there had been four(!) Miracles albums released since.
But Spreadbury immediately zeroed in on the LP’s last cut. "It stuck out, it was so different. I actually said, 'That’s a #1 record.’"
Skeptical, but needing product: EMI scheduled the song as the Miracles' next single, with "Who's Gonna Take The Blame," the most recent U.S. hit, on the B-side. "Tears" entered the UK charts on August 1, 1970 and stayed there for more than three months, reaching number one. Karen Spreadbury telephoned the Motown office in Detroit with the news and the receiver was passed to Smokey. "You’ve got a No. 1!" she shrieked into the line.
Smokey was taken aback for not-so-obvious reasons: he had planned to get off the road and leave the group. Instead they were met with a rush of offers—and growing sales for the song back home.
The song was then re-released as a single on Motown in the USA ... and it, too, reached #1 in late 1970. The rest is history, as Smokey Robinson has enjoyed a steady (if not always major) performing career ever since. That is in addition to his responsibilities as a songwriter, producer and VP at Motown from the early 1960's to its demise in the 1980's.
Smokey Robinson was inducted in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1987 as well as the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1990. His most recent studio recording was 2014’s Smokey and Friends - an album of duets of his most familiar songs, performed with singers as diverse as James Taylor, Mary J. Blige, Randy Jackson, Elton John, John Legend and even Aerosmith's Steven Tyler.
At age eighty-one, he recovered from a two-week bout with Covid last December, with his current tour including a stop in San Diego this Saturday. And in the new biopic of Aretha Franklin entitled Respect— with Jennifer Hudson in the title role — Smokey will be portrayed by the actor Lodric Collins.
Listen for the bassoon in the original recording … which underpins the song.