Odds & Ends: News/Humor (with a "Who Lost the Week?" poll)

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 Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.

ART NOTES — more than fifty works in an exhibition entitled Picasso: The Great War, Experimentation and Change are at the Columbus, Ohio Museum of Art through September 11th.

    Now in Columbus, Ohio

PROGRAMMING NOTE — unless my plans change, I expect to be travelling over the upcoming Labor Day weekend. If so, there will not be an Odds & Ends next weekend …. and I will return the following weekend.

HAIL and FAREWELL to the Minnesota resident Donna Wold — who (six decades earlier) turned down one marriage proposal (in order to marry a different man) … and wound-up being the elusive Little Red-haired Girl in the Peanuts comic strips drawn by the (spurned) Charles Schulz — who has died at the age of 87 …..… to the Belgian musician extraordinaire Jean-Baptiste ‘Toots’ Thielemans— whom you hear on harmonica for the Sesame Street theme, plus whose use of a Rickenbacker guitar on a 1959 European tour led John Lennon to buy one … and twenty-five years later, Toots played his nonpareil harmonica on Julian Lennon’s Too Late for Goodbyes  — who has died at the age of 94 …….. and to someone that the All-Music Guide considers the most important recording engineer in the history of jazz, Rudy Van Gelder— who recorded Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins (just for starters) and who until 1959 was an optometrist by day, an engineer by night — who has died at the age of 91.

THURSDAY's CHILD is the late Little Andrew the Cat— a kitteh in failing health who appeared to “hold hands” with family members on his final trip to the vet.

The (late, great) Little Andrew the Cat

TV NOTES — Rolling Stone offers a list of the forty Greatest TV Villains of all time — although it is almost entirely from the last twenty-five to thirty years (and thus, no Eddie Haskell or Sue Ann Nivens).

WITH THE CLOSING of a location in Bangor, Maine …. that leaves only one of the formerly iconic Howard Johnson’s restaurants still operating — fortunately, in a (thriving) Lake George, New York location.

YUK for TODAY #1 — in December, 1967: a lucrative fee enticed my favorite band of all time (Cream) to accept a gig to perform at …. a Debutante’s Ball … really. Here is a photo montage of it … and the expression on the oldsters’ faces is priceless.

                             (“Oh, Calvin … John …… please DO something!”)

ENGLISH-SPEAKING NATIONS in the Caribbean still have Victorian-era anti-sodomy laws on their books … but a recent decision by the Supreme Court of the nation of Belize— declaring their laws unconstitutional — have given gay-rights supporters in the region new hope.

YUK for TODAY #2 — in particular for Mainers. Charlie Pierce regularly refers to Gov. Paul LePage as “the human bowling jacket” and once said that voting for him was comparable to “electing the weekend fill-in host at your local talk radio station”. The other day …. Charlie used the talk radio analogy again, in referring (with a Pine Tree State reference) to the governor’s latest gambit:

One-fiftieth of the United States is being governed by a guy who wouldn't get by the call screener on a 30-watt station in Jackman.

FRIDAY's CHILD is a NYC kitteh in 1925— as a police officer halted traffic as she carried her kittens across Lafayette Street in Manhattan (although “latter-day analysts have written that this scene was a reenactment staged by a photographer who arrived after the fact”).

Mama cat .. w/kitten by scruff of neck

YUK for TODAY #3 — in reading of the latest allegations of sexual harassment at Fox — and especially when lodged by Andrea Tantaros, who seemed like the most loyal of soldiers — of all of the things she alleges Roger Ailes said to her about her colleagues (lewd, crude or just plain snide) I gotta confess: one made me recall the final spoken line in Fahrenheit 9/11 (by the film’s director, about George W) .....

Roger Ailes - (referring to the former Nixon aide Monica Crowley): “If I ever had to go on a date with her ... I’d jump out the window.”

In the words of Michael Moore …….. "For once: we agree".

HAPPY TRAILS to the veteran CBS News personality Charles Osgood— who will end his twenty-two year tenure at CBS Sunday Morning on September 25th (although he will continue his CBS radio commentaries) and who I thought did an admirable job replacing Charles Kuralt.

BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.

THE OTHER NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary with a look at two 19th Century pioneers of computing… and the different fates they met with.

SEPARATED at BIRTH — former acting CIA director (and current Hillary Clinton supporter) Michael Morell and “Back to the Future” star George McFly (as portrayed by Crispin Glover). 

Former CIA acting director Glover as “George McFly” 

...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… in looking at the American folk music scene: if there could be said to be a linchpin between the old guard (Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, The Weavers and Leadbelly) and the modern era (Bob Dylan. Peter, Paul & Mary, Judy Collins, Tom Paxton and the others to follow) it might well be Bob Gibson– no, not the baseball pitcher, but someone who for a brief time was on top of the folk world. And although he did not remain there for long (due to substance abuse and having a style that was soon to be surpassed) he had an influence on many to come, was happy to showcase up-and-coming talent and when Gibson began recording in the mid-1950’s: there were few other guitar-based folk musicians for the emerging baby-boomer set.

Born in 1931, the Brooklyn native met Pete Seeger as a 22 year-old (at a time when Pete was just beginning to be informally banned from TV and many concert halls) and Gibson decided to become a folk musician after learning both the banjo and guitar. After performing around the East, he made his way to Chicago where his big break came when he (a) was discovered by Albert Grossman - who showcased him in 1956 at his landmark club the Gate of Horn and later became his manager, (b) met-up with the Playboy Club cartoonist Shel Silverstein– who became his long-time lyricist – and (c) found that Grossman had given a key to Gibson’s apartment to folksinger Bob Camp, as he was certain the two should become a duo.

Well, all of this worked. Grossman had hired Gibson to open for other performers at the Gate of Horn …. and eleven months later, Gibson had become a headliner. And while he was taken aback to see a stranger in his flat, he and Camp eventually did become a duo (working separately, then with more and more collaborations) into a success. By 1958 at age 27, Bob Gibson had become a father of three, a regular on the Arthur Godfrey Show and had released four albums as well as help launch the Hootenanny scene in New York.  In 1961, the pair recorded folk music’s first gold record – Gibson and Camp at the Gate of Horn– and this live recording was cited as an influence by future stars such as John Lennon, Gordon Lightfoot, Roger McGuinn, Paul Simon, Leo Kottke, Tom Paxton and John Denver.

Many other performers passed through Grossman’s club, such as Josh White, Glenn Yarborough, Odetta and Joan Baez– whom Bob Gibson chose to accompany him to the 1959 Newport Folk Festival, introducing her to the folk world (and he would do the same for Judy Collins in Chicago). In the meantime, Grossman – who had become the manager to Bob Dylan – had some success with a pair of New York folksingers named Peter Yarrow and Paul Stookey. It was at that time that Grossman suggested to Gibson & Camp that they add a female voice to their act, which was nixed by both. As you might have guessed, Albert Grossman realized that idea by encouraging Mary Travers to join Stookey and Yarrow, and thus was born Peter, Paul & Mary– but for which Peter Yarrow always said, "When you listen to PPM, you are hearing Bob Gibson".”

Among the songs that Bob Gibson wrote or popularized were an updated version of "This Little Light", plus  "Abilene", "I Come For to Sing", "You Can Tell The World", “To Morrow” as well as John Riley - later recorded by The Byrds. At this link are he and Joan Baez singing "We Are Crossing the Jordan River".

But Bob Gibson’s career went on hiatus for nearly fifteen years, beginning around 1964. First, his partner Bob Camp reverted to his original name Hamilton Camp– and left to begin a successful acting career in Hollywood. Then Bob Gibson became a major substance abuser - of speed and heroin - having to move his family out of Greenwich Village as a result. The British Invasion was to make the folk music boom begin to fade for most folk performers: who either had to go electric, or go bust.

Yet even if all-of-the-above had not been true: the All-Music Guide’s Richie Unterberger wrote that Bob Gibson was "a little too retro for big-time folk success in the '60s, anyway. He was older than most of the performers on the scene, and his approach too tame and clean-cut, even though he and similar performers had helped created the sparks of the folk boom just by playing such material to begin with".

Bob Gibson tried to re-start his career many times, but was unsuccessful until he was able to overcome addiction (at age forty-seven) in 1978. Although his headlining days were behind him, he did embark on a second period of productive activity. He recorded some albums, taught songwriting at several universities, opened a restaurant on Clark Street in Chicago, became a record producer - especially for his friend Tom Paxton– and toured with Paxton in a trio named Best of Friends (with Anne Hills). And thus Bob Gibson actually formed that '2-guys-and-a-girl' group Albert Grossman had recommended to him years earlier.

In addition, Gibson wrote a musical play entitled The Courtship of Carl Sandburg and also wrote for children: with albums, performances and an Uncle Bob television show earning him a Grammy nomination. Newly re-married and beginning a new family, he approached the 1990’s with high hopes.

Yet he began to suffer the effects of a neurological disease known as PSP – progressive supranuclear palsy– which affects the balance of only about 20,000 people in the US each year, and so was un-diagnosed until 1993. It ended his career and he invited friends to a farewell Chicago concert in September, 1996 – only to be too weak to perform, and he died a week later at the age of 64.

He does leave a legacy of recordings, a compilation album from his youth, as well as a final album Makin' a Mess: Bob Gibson Sings Shel Silverstein– recorded just a few months before his death. His importance was underscored by Emmylou Harris who said, "Bob Gibson was there at the forefront of the folk movement and he was (and is) a modern day troubadour".

And fittingly, Gibson reunited back in the 1980’s with (Bob) Hamilton Camp for the live recording Horn...Revisited– which (when released in the 1990’s) served as an excellent completion of the circle just before his death, nearly twenty years ago.

     A young Bob Gibson … … and later in the 1990’s

Of all of his work, it is a blues-based tune that Gibson and Camp sang at the 1960 Newport Folk Festival entitled Well, Well, Well that is my favorite. At this link you can hear them sing it at a reunion performance near the end of their lives - and below is their vintage recording.

God told Noah to build him an ark Build it out of hickory bark The rain starred falling and the water start to climb God - send a fire, not a flood next time!

Well, Well, Well  … Who's that calling?    Well, Well, Well … Hold my hand … Well, Well, Well … Night is a-falling … Spirit is a-moving all over this land

x YouTube Video