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 and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Alice Coltrane, Monument Eternal— featuring works by contemporary American artists paired with ephemera from her personal archive (handwritten sheet music and unreleased audio recordings) — opens at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, California on February 9th, running through May 4th.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this interview in the Columbia Journalism Review with Paul Krugman— noting that his leaving the NY Times OpEd pages was partly a matter of wanting to expand his writings, yet also some heavy-handed editing by the newspaper management staff in just the past few years.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Petra the Cat— a New Mexico barn kitteh who has been adopted by a farm’s flock of thirty chickens.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this (gift article) essay in The Atlantic by retired Naval War College professor Tom Nichols, worried that Pete Hegseth will be seen favorably by our enemies …. and untrustworthy by our allies.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Chewie the Cat— an English kitteh who went missing but after ten days was located thirty miles away … in a McDonald’s parking lot.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.
A NOTE on TODAY’s POLL– Pretty soon, the Felon-in-Chief and his ilk will be back in the poll … and it may be very soon (we’ll see how RFK & Tulsi fare, and the reaction to tariffs by Big Business). Just not yet (due to cowardice on the part of the GOP and a lack of resolve on the rest of the Beltway contingent, including the press). In the meantime, I’ve focused on the J-6 miscreants.
SEPARATED at BIRTH… now believed to be likely, HALF-BROTHERS— stand-up comedian Bill Burr and Smashing Pumpkins guitarist Billy Corgan.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… in my annual profile of the folksinger Tom Rush’s rendition of the (Joni Mitchell-written) song Urge for Going— I always note the accent guitar on the song performed by the late Bruce Langhorne. Yet as someone who was a first-rate accompanist to many musicians including Bob Dylan (and the inspiration for Mr. Tambourine Man) — yet relatively unknown to the general public — his career deserves a closer look.
Born in Tallahassee, Florida in 1938, his parents divorced when he was four and he grew-up in Spanish Harlem. He studied the violin yet had a troubled childhood: losing three fingers on his right hand at age twelve (when a cherry bomb blew-up in his hand), was expelled from the prep school he attended (due to suspected gang activity) and he later claimed that he had stabbed someone, fleeing to Mexico for two years. He began playing guitar at age seventeen.
He became friends with musician Brother John Sellers, who was the MC at the legendary Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, accompanying him first … then when others took to his playing, many others: including Richard and Mimi Baez Farina in 1965. He also accompanied the folksinger Odetta at the famous 1963 March on Washington.
It was while recording a 1961 album with folksinger Carolyn Hester (who just turned age eighty-eight this week) that he first met a young Bob Dylan, along with double bassist Bill Lee (the father of filmmaker Spike Lee). Bruce did not think much of Dylan initially, saying:
I thought he was a terrible singer and a complete fake, and I thought he didn't play harmonica that well ... I didn't really start to appreciate Bobby as something unique until he started writing.
Among the other instruments that Langhorne used in live shows was a large Turkish frame drum fitted with tiny bells (which is now in the Bob Dylan Center museum in Tulsa, Oklahoma). Dylan later said:
He had this gigantic tambourine he was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind. He was one of those characters … he was like that. If you had Bruce playing with you, that’s all you would need to do about anything.
Langhorne appeared on the albums The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan and Bringing It All Back Home: notably on the songs She Belongs to Me, Subterranean Homesick Blues and Maggie’s Farm. And while Bruce was at the legendary 1965 Newport Folk Festival (where Bob Dylan “went electric”) — he performed instead with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band.
Missing those fingers necessitated a unique style of playing on his part (not unlike the Belgian jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt), usually playing contra notes to the musician he accompanied (and often using rapid-fire triplets). And based upon a technique he saw Roebuck “Pop” Staples use, he made use of the tremolo function on the amplifiers he used.
Later in his career he worked on film scores (several for Peter Fonda, plus Jonathan Demme’s 1980 film Melvin & Howard), with his final effort a song for a 2012 documentary on Walden Pond. He also helped run a recording studio and (after being diagnosed with high blood pressure) created a no-salt product (Brother Bru-Bru’s African Hot Sauce) that was successful.
He suffered a stroke in 2006, and died from kidney failure in 2017 at the age of seventy-eight. Among the musicians he performed/recorded with or produced (besides those already listed): John Sebastian, Joan Baez, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, The Clancy Brothers w/Tommy Makem, Judy Collins, Gordon Lightfoot, Hugh Masakela, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Noel Harrison and Peter, Paul & Mary. There is also a 2017 tribute album to him entitled The Hired Hands (named after a 1971 Peter Fonda film that Bruce Langhorne scored).
The only solo album he ever released was 2011’s Tambourine Man— in which he sang with a Caribbean accent, as demonstrated on this tune.