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— an photography exhibition entitled Outside the Lorraine: A Photographic Journey to a Sacred Place— the motel where Dr. King was shot, and the reactions of people seeing the remaining remnant (which was truly a moving moment for yours truly to behold) is at the National Civil Rights Museum (which incorporates the Lorraine) in Memphis, Tennessee to April 4th.
YOUR WEEKEND READ is this essay in The American Prospect about a nursing home in West Virginia named after Joe Manchin’s father … and an in-state battle by GOP officials to cut costs … from an already weak health care system.
SIGN of the APOCALYPSE — many residents of Seattle are proud to tune their car radios to public radio station KUOW— but for some Mazda drivers, a switch in infotainment technology has caused them to be … unable to change the channel.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Ashes the Cat— a Maine kitteh who went missing seven years ago, just now located in Florida (due to her microchip) and will be reunited with her family after medical clearance.
CHEERS to learning that a teacher that I had in my senior year of high school in 1974 … is now teaching a college psychology class forty-eight years later, with one of his students being … my twenty-one year-old niece Rebecca.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Fergus the Cat— a Scottish kitteh who went missing eleven years ago … reunited (some eighty miles away) due to his microchip.
THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with an update of three previous essays of mine: 1) Seamus Heaney's play (that was cited by both Joe Biden and Lin-Manuel Miranda), 2) Perhaps a final update on the 1989 "Hillsborough Disaster" - a UK soccer stadium tragedy with (virtually) no accountability, and 3) — a search for the 1914 shipwrecked vessel The Endurance off the coast of Antarctica ... part of the greatest seafaring escape of the 20th Century.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz (one BBC question will provide an NYT answer).
OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS?— TV’s David Spade and country star Keith Urban.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… last year, we lost a star musician in the 1950’s R&B field who also found success in the field of business, Lloyd Price - who might have been an even bigger star had not a draft notice arrived in his mailbox. Unlike many of his contemporaries: "Mr. Personality" (as he became known) wrote nearly all of his own material, and had a six-decade career.
Born in the New Orleans suburb of Kenner in 1933, he had trumpet and piano lessons as a child and sang in his mother's Gospel choir. He and his brother formed a band while in their teens, after being inspired by hearing early R&B stars such as Louis Jordan and Amos Milburn on the jukebox at their mother's fish-fry restaurant. And from her, he also developed a life-long interest in food preparation (and the business practices necessary to sustain that) in general.
His big break came when he was heard by another New Orleans legend, the bandleader Dave Bartholomew (who had Fats Domino in his band at the time). Rather than recommend Price to the label he was signed to (Imperial Records) during a time he had a dispute with them: he instead touted Price to Art Rupe - the visiting head of Specialty Records in Los Angeles (and who is still alive at age one hundred and four). Rupe signed the nineteen year-old Price, to be backed by Bartholomew's band.
And Lloyd Price hit #1 in the R&B charts with 1952's Lawdy Miss Clawdy - a song that Price himself had wrote. While not considered by historians to be a true rock and roll song: it was a preview of rock, and has since been performed by everyone from Elvis Presley to John Lennon to Elvis Costello.
He had a few more singles with Specialty, including Oooh, Oooh, Oooh and Restless Heart - before he was conscripted into the Army in 1954 and sent to Korea. One wonders what his career might have been during the advent of rock and roll had he not been away for three years, as upon his return he discovered that he had been dropped for Little Richard, and that his driver Larry Williams was now also recording for Specialty.
Now forming his own band, Lloyd Price's group featured a rocking horn section (with Merritt Dalton as lead saxophonist) and back-up singers that became a model for others in just a few years. He then founded Kent Record Company (KRC) with Harold Logan and began recording again. His single Just Because gained some popularity, and Price leased it to ABC-Paramount (to gain national distribution). This led to much success from 1957 to 1959, with songs such as I'm Gonna Get Married, Come Into my Heart and Personality - which reached #2 on the pop charts and spawned his nickname. And he did so while retaining the rights to his music - thus retaining control of his own music.
In 1962, he ended his relationship with ABC in order to found a new label Double L - also with Harold Logan (and which was the first label for Wilson Pickett). When the hit singles dried up after the British Invasion and the rise of Motown, he opened a Manhattan restaurant/club named Lloyd Price's Turntable (which he had wanted to do in homage to his mother's restaurant).
But the 1969 murder of his business partner Harold Logan (and the changing fortunes of the record business) led him to sell his businesses and relocate to Africa. In the 1970's, he helped boxing promoter Don King promote two legendary Muhammad Ali bouts (in Zaire and Manila). He returned to the US in the 1980's, but delved into building construction in his adopted metropolitan New York City. Thus, he had been out of music for the entire 1970's and 1980's, resisting calls for him to perform on the oldies circuit.
He finally agreed to a 1993 European tour (with Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and Gary U.S. Bonds) which rekindled his interest at the age of sixty. And he remained active (with a nine-piece band) from time-to-time, often appearing at his hometown New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival. He toured in 2005 (with fellow stars Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler and Ben E. King) billed as the Four Kings of Rhythm and Blues - with a PBS special/DVD resulting.
In his later years, he appeared on (and sang in) the first season finale of the New Orleans-themed Tremé on HBO and also focused on running his Icon Food Brands company, producing Southern specialties named after some of his hit songs.
Lloyd Price died in May, 2021 at the age of eighty-eight (from complications due to diabetes). There are two definitive compilation albums available: one from his earlier (and grittier) days at Specialty Records and the other from his later ABC-Paramount recordings. In 2009, he released his autobiography and for years worked on producing a play— now, a year after his death: it is set to premiere in Philadelphia. He was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1998, into the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame in 2010 on his 77th birthday, and his hometown of Kenner named Lloyd Price Avenue after him.
Of all of his work, my favorite was one that he did not write, but instead re-worked from the old New Orleans folk-blues standard Stack-O-Lee. Entitled Stagger Lee - it reached the top of both the R&B and pop charts in early 1959, and one might find two different versions in various compilations.
That is because the violence hinted at in the lyrics (and at this link is more about the back-story) was deemed unacceptable to be heard on TV shows such as American Bandstand, thus a re-worked version was released.
Below you can hear the original version - named by Rolling Stone as #456 on its list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list.
I was standing on the corner when I heard my bulldog bark He was barking at the two men who were gambling in the dark It was Stagger Lee and Billy, two men who gambled late Stagger Lee threw seven, Billy swore that he threw eightStagger Lee told Billy, "I can't let you go with that" "You have won all my money and my brand new Stetson hat" Stagger Lee started off going down that railroad track He said "I can't get you Billy, but don't be here when I come back"
Stagger Lee went home and he got his forty-four Said "I'm going to the barroom just to pay that debt I owe" Stagger Lee went to the barroom and he stood across the barroom door He said "Nobody move" and he pulled his forty-four