Author: Roger

I'm a librarian. I hear music, even when it's not being played. I used to work at a comic book store, and it still informs my life. I won once on JEOPARDY! - ditto.

The Les Green 45s collection

There was also a country version by someone performing Who Drank My Beer While I Was In The Rear.

Some months back I was listening to a TIME-LIFE collection of songs from the 1950s. One of the tracks was The Impalas – Sorry (I ran all the way home)- (listen) And it reminded me of my father.

I remember his LP collection. It was full of mostly serious artists such as Wes Montgomery, Enoch Light, Harry Belafonte, Miriam Makeba, Leadbelly, Pete Seeger, plus some other folk artists, primarily from the early 1960s.

But his singles collection, which probably predated his albums by a half-decade or so, were filled with sillier fare:

Listen to The Ivy Three – Yogi; and here are the lyrics of the song performed by three dudes from Columbia University.
Listen to The Four Tophatters – 45 Men in a Telephone Booth; I bought a compilation CD of Cadence Records once primarily for this song.
Listen to The Playmates – Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler). My sister Leslie and I STILL know most of the words.
Listen to the Everly Brothers – Bird Dog. (This version is a demo of the actual recording, but a pretty close approximation.) It was backed with the lovely Devoted To You (listen).

There was a country single by the group called Carlisles: Nine Have Tried (and Nine Have Died), with Bargain Day, Half Off, the lyrics of which can be found here.

There was also a country version by someone performing Who Drank My Beer While I Was In The Rear. I can’t find out who did it, though Dave Bartholomew (listen) performed a bluesier version.

My sister Leslie recalls The Ventures – Walk Don’t Run, in the collection, which I don’t. The records themselves are long lost to the ages.

Anyway, it’s almost the 12th anniversary of my father’s death, and thinking about him and music was therapeutic.

D is for Death Penalty

Unfortunately, in 1944 South Carolina, George Stinney wasn’t afforded the same opportunity.

Questions: Who was the youngest person executed in the 20th century in the United States? And whatever possessed me to think about that?

Let me take the second question first. A friend and colleague recently saw the 1994 Oscar-nominated film Heavenly Creatures, directed by Peter Jackson. “Based on the true story of Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker [Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey, both first-time movie actresses], two close friends who share a love of fantasy and literature, who conspire to kill Pauline’s mother when she tries to end the girls’ intense and obsessive relationship.”

Would it be a spoiler to note that the girls succeeded? You can read about the Parker-Hulme murder in New Zealand here. From that source:

The trial was a sensational affair…The girls were convicted on August 30, 1954, and each of them spent five years in prison. [Apparently, they were not subject to the death penalty.] They were released with the condition that they never contact each other again.

After her release from prison, Juliet Hulme traveled to the United States and went on to have a successful career as a historical detective novelist under her new name, Anne Perry. She has been a Mormon since about 1968. She now lives in Scotland.

Pauline Parker spent some time in New Zealand under close surveillance before being allowed to leave for England… She has become a Roman Catholic and for many years Parker had refused to give interviews surrounding the murder of her mother and expressed strong remorse about having killed her.

In March 2006, Perry said that while her relationship with Pauline Parker was obsessive, they were not lesbians.

The key point here is that, despite this terrible crime, there was a chance for redemption for these young murderers, and they seemed to have made the most of it.

Unfortunately, in 1944 South Carolina, George Junius Stinney Jr. wasn’t afforded the same opportunity, as he “was, at age 14, the youngest person executed in the United States in the 20th century. The question of Stinney’s guilt and the judicial process leading to his execution remain controversial.” To say the least; from his arrest to his execution by an ill-fitting electric chair device took less than three months.

As it turns out, no state has executed a minor since the 1976 ruling reinstating capital punishment in the United States. There have been juvenile offenders executed, but they were not minors by that time.


ABC Wednesday, Round 9

The Rolling Stone Top 10 Albums of the 1980s

There are plenty of Richard Thompson solo, usually live, versions of most, if not all of these songs.

There was a period, before such lists became ubiquitous, that I actually looked forward to Top 10 or Top 100 musical lists. Such was the case with “Rolling Stone – The 100 Greatest Albums Of The 80s”, which someone kindly listed here.

1. London Calling – The Clash
2. Purple Rain – Prince & The Revolution
3. The Joshua Tree – U2
4. Remain In Light – Talking Heads
5. Graceland – Paul Simon
6. Born In The U.S.A. – Bruce Springsteen
7. Thriller – Michael Jackson
8. Murmur – REM
9. Shoot Out The Lights – Richard And Linda Thompson
10. Tracy Chapman – Tracy Chapman

By the early 1990s, I had nine of these albums, all except #9. So one year, probably for my birthday, but possibly for Christmas, I received Shoot Out The Lights from my workmates. It has to be the least well-known album of the bunch.

Here’s the Wikipedia telling about the tortured history of the album, involving the late Gerry Rafferty. “Richard and Linda Thompson’s 1982 masterpiece, Shoot Out the Lights, is a celebration of love gone sour. Like all great works, its themes are at once specific and universal.”

Side one
Don’t Renege on Our Love – 4:19
Walking on a Wire – 5:29
Man in Need – 3:36
Just the Motion – 6:19
Side two
Shoot Out the Lights – 5:24
Back Street Slide – 4:33
Did She Jump or Was She Pushed? – 4:52
Wall of Death – 3:43

There are plenty of Richard Thompson solo, usually live, versions of most, if not all of these songs on YouTube.

Summer Song: Summer Breeze

I had a LOT of Seals and Crofts albums for a while. My college girlfriend even got me to see the duo live in New York City, on the birthday of Bahá’u’lláh, in 1971.

Summer Breeze entered the charts on 9/9/1972, spent 16 weeks on the charts, getting to #6. (S&C had three songs get to #6, including 1973’s Diamond Girl and 1976’s Get Closer), which is as high as they ever charted on Billboard.

Anyway, here’s the record and here’s a live version, with narrative on the scroll which could have been put in the notes.

Part of the info was that the Isley Brothers had a UK hit with the same song in 1976, which you can hear HERE.

Peace, Peace, There Is No Peace

Obama’s not a yahoo, he’s a Constitutional scholar, and his defense of his actions is disingenous.

My great disappointment with the Obama administration is not merely the fact that he has maintained indefinite detention of terrorists, rendition, and [so-called] Patriot Act surveillance. It is that, by his previous statements, the public had reason to believe that his actions would end those practices. Except for waterboarding, I’m not seeing the CHANGE I expected.

While the Iraq war is seemingly winding down, the Afghanistan war is ramping up. I must say, I’m not sure to what end.

But I’m most disappointed about our war in Libya. There is this peculiar thing in the Constitution that says that Congress declares war. The War Powers Act gives the President 90 days to submit a request to Congress after fighting begins. Yet he claims it’s not a “real” war, even though we have a “real” military there, and we’re spending “real” money to stay there.

I’m not saying one couldn’t make the case for going into Libya. I AM saying that if another President acted that way, and he was, say, a US Senator, he might complain about the incursion without Congressional authority; wait, wait, he DID do that, and rightly so, re GWB’s war in Iraq. Obama’s not a yahoo, he’s a Constitutional scholar, and the defense of his actions is disingenuous.

Is there any way he can give BACK his Nobel Peace Prize?
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Find out about BlogBlast For Peace aka The Peace Globe movement, launched in 2006, a movement built by bloggers, and perhaps become a peace blogger yourself, by reading the group’s Facebook page.

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