Music: Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’

I got a letter today, just about noon
she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon”

black santaAs you may know, Stax Records was the great record label out of Memphis, TN. Motown may have been “The Sound of Young America,” But Stax was “Soulsville U.S.A.”, the title of a tremdous book by Rob Bowman.

For this holiday season, I decided to reprise some songs from the Complete Stax/Volt Soul Singles box sets I have. But I had forgotten that there are THREE box sets of nine CDs each. I only bought the first two. So the third set is new to me, and possibly to you.

Volume 3: 1972-1975

What Do The Lonely Do At Christmas – The Emotions; OK, you don’t hear a lot of sad Christmas songs that make the playlist

Season’s Greetings – Cix Bits; totally unfamiliar with this group

Santa Claus Wants Some Lovin’ – Albert King; what it says

Volume 2: 1968-1971

Who Took The Merry Out Of Christmas – Staple Singers; a downer, social justice song – no airplay for you

Black Christmas – Emotions; the trio returns with a song that won’t make most seasonal playlists

The Mistletoe And Me – Isaac Hayes; I contend that this is a GREAT Christmas song, which I’ve never heard on the radio

Volume 1: 1959-1968

Jingle Bells – Booker T. and the M.G.’s; this actually got to #20 on the Xmas charts in 1966, a special designation that Billboard has had on and off. Of the songs listed here, it’s probably the one you’ve most likely heard in December

Winter Snow – Booker T. and the M.G.’s; I love, LOVE this song. Yes, it is melancholy, but it’s an instrumental

Every Day Will Be Like A Holiday – William Bell; this song, written by Bell and Booker T. Jones, actually made #33 on the R&B charts in 1968. Not strictly a holiday song, it would be a fine addition to a playlist

Everyday will be like a holiday
When my baby, when my baby comes home

Now she’s been gone
for such a long time
ever since she’s been gone,
she been on my mind

I got a letter today,
just about noon
she said, “Don’t worry, I’ll be home soon”

Advent as Lent-lite?

“I’m not a Christian but I used to have a very strong respect for what they stood for.”

liturgical cycleIt seems that Advent, the season we’re in now, doesn’t bring me as much joy as it does for others. Someone, I don’t remember who, recently suggested that Advent is Lent-lite.

And I submit it may be true. Just as the Lent precedes the Easter Resurrection, so too is the waiting for the birth. The songs can be somber and in minor key.

It may be Seasonal Affective Disorder, “a type of depression that reoccurs during the winter months and typically lasts until the spring or summer.” The early snow did not help.

Back in the 1980s, I used to go visit my parents’ house in Charlotte, NC January, around Martin Luther King’s birthday. The perfect timing was mandated by doing seasonal music at church and the heavy retail period at the store I worked, FantaCo, followed by doing inventory just after the first of the year.

But I reckon that I also become despondent over how the season has been taken over. Mark Evanier said, “I’m not a Christian but I used to have a very strong respect for what they stood for,” and I knew too well what he meant.

When Christianist apologists act Unchristian, when they “show that on immigration, race, and poverty, white evangelical Protestants have surrendered moral judgment and social responsibility, ” it makes me somewhat angry, but mostly incredibly sad.

Alternet suggests the so-called “war on Christmas” for a proxy war for white supremacy. And it sounds about right.

Then Christmas Eve arrives. It still involves waiting, but it is now of a very short duration. The music that we sing generally has a special magic.

The service has some of the structures of the previous years, yet it always has something new. I trick myself into believing that, for a short while at least, all IS right with the world.

Ted Nugent turneth 70

The rocker Ted Nugent turns 70 today and I’m conflicted. On one hand, the vile, racist, sexist, homophobic, anti-animal rights, anti-environmentalist musician should be called out, yes?

On the other hand, as my late mother always said, “If you don’t have something good to say about someone, don’t say anything.” I could write that and leave the rest of the page blank. Which would make the statement, I suppose, and it would be REALLY easy to write, to boot. But it wouldn’t be that interesting to read.

I find him so contemptible that when I saw this faux headline a couple years back Millions Mourn As Rocker/Activist Ted Nugent, Age 68, Found Alive, I’m only mildly embarrassed to admit that I laughed out loud.

His continual disdain for Barack Obama goes back years. “At a concert on August 22, 2007, while wielding what appeared to be automatic rifles, Nugent said in reference to Obama, “suck on my machine gun.”

Naturally, last year, the current resident of the White House “invited Nugent to visit along with right-wing politician/pundit Sarah Palin and rock-or-country musician Kid Rock. The three invitees posed for a picture under the official portrait of First Lady Hillary Clinton — to mock her.”

This year: “Classic rocker and NRA board member Ted Nugent has attacked Parkland’s teenage school shooting survivors-turned-gun control activists, calling them ‘mushy brained’ and ‘soulless’ liars. In an appearance on The Joe Pags Show…, Nugent apparently forgot about his promise to stop using ‘hateful rhetoric’ after last year’s congressional shooting in Virginia.”

He also has, it appears intentionally, obfuscated whether he dodged the military draft.

And yet there is one old song of his with the Amboy Dukes I actually really like. And I enjoy it much more because “Nugent, an ardent anti-drug campaigner, has always claimed that he had no idea that this song was about drug use.”

I would never want to journey into the center of his [string of invectives] mind.

Kennedy Center: Cher, Glass, McEntire, Shorter

Wayne Shorter has a 2018 magnum opus, Emanon

Kennedy Center Honors 2018

“On December 2, 2018, the Kennedy Center held its 41st annual national celebration of the arts — The Kennedy Center Honors.” For the second year in a row, the guy in the White House won’t be there.

“The 2018 Honorees include singer and actress Cher, composer and pianist Philip Glass, Country music entertainer Reba McEntire, and jazz saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.”

I wrote at length about Cher on her 70th birthday a couple years ago. SINCE then, she continues to do concerts, received the Billboard Icon Award, co-starred in the romantic musical comedy film Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again and put out a hit album of ABBA covers called Dancing Queen.

She’s now the subject of “The Cher Show, a jukebox musical based on Cher’s life and music, [which] officially premiered at the Oriental Theatre, Chicago, on June 28, 2018, and had its Broadway debut on December 3, 2018.”

Philip Glass (b. 1937) is a minimalist composer. Some soundtrack of his used to drive an old girlfriend of mine crazy when I played it. I have two of his CDs; one is The “Low” Symphony, based on the music of David Bowie.

The other is Songs from Liquid Days, “a collection of songs composed by… Glass with lyrics by Paul Simon, Suzanne Vega, David Byrne, and Laurie Anderson… The recording features performances by Bernard Fowler, the Kronos Quartet, Janice Pendarvis, Douglas Perry, The Roches, Linda Ronstadt…” Listen to Forgetting.

Reba McEntire (b. 1955) is one of the most successful country artists ever; if I have any of her songs, it’s on a random compilation. But she shows up in films, on TV and even on Broadway. She’s ubiquitous.

Wayne Shorter (b. 1933) is a major jazz saxophonist. He played with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and Miles Davis’ jazz quintet in the 1960s. I know him best from the jazz-fusion group Weather Report.

He has a 2018 magnum opus, Emanon. “Encompassing three discs of music (just over two hours) and an original sci-fi graphic novel, the project is a grand statement that seeks to blur distinctions between the premeditated idea and the spontaneous gesture, or between ‘classical’ and ‘jazz’ as they’re usually framed.”

“This year, the co-creators of Hamilton — writer and actor Lin-Manuel Miranda, director Thomas Kail, choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler, and music director Alex Lacamoire — received a unique Kennedy Center Honors as trailblazing creators of a transformative work that defies category.”

Though I’ve not yet seen Hamilton, about first Treasury Secretary, I’m in that group that has heard so often that I know the songs as well as I’m familiar with On the Street Where You Live, even though I’ve never seen My Fair Lady.

The writers of JEOPARDY! use Hamilton references a lot, to mixed results: “This musical includes the song ‘The Room Where It Happens'” was a missed Daily Double. No one knew “In the entrance hall of Monticello Jefferson placed a bust of himself opposite one of this Cabinet secretary & rival.”

“The Honors Gala will be broadcast on the CBS Network for the 41st consecutive year as a two-hour primetime special on Wednesday, December 26 at 8 p.m. ET.” 2017 Honoree Gloria Estefan hosts.

Woe, weeping: San Francisco, November 1978

Harvey Milk, the subject of a 2008 film starring Sean Penn , graduated from New York State College for Teachers in Albany in 1951.

The events of November 1978 were terribly difficult for the city of San Francisco.

The The Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ… was “a new religious movement founded in 1955 by Jim Jones” in Indianapolis, IN. “Jones used the Peoples Temple to spread a message that combined elements of Christianity with communist and socialist ideas, as well as an emphasis on racial equality.” The Peoples Temple had moved a few times, relocating to San Francisco in the early 1970s.

In 1974, the Peoples Temple rented land in Guyana and “created the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, or, informally, ‘Jonestown.’ It had as few as 50 residents in early 1977.” After Jim Jones left for Guyana in 1978, under increasing media scrutiny, he encouraged Temple members to follow him there.

“On November 17, 1978, Leo Ryan, a U.S. Congressman from the San Francisco area investigating claims of abuse within the Peoples Temple, visited Jonestown. During Ryan’s visit, a number of Temple members expressed a desire to leave with him, and, on November 18, they accompanied Ryan to the local airstrip.”

They were intercepted by “self-styled Temple security guards who opened fire on the group,” killing Ryan, NBC News journalist Don Harris, NBC cameraman Bob Brown (who filmed the shooters), San Francisco Examiner photographer Greg Robinson and defecting Temple member Patricia Parks. “The murder of Congressman Ryan was the first and only murder of a Congressman in the line of duty in the history of the United States.”

That evening, in Jonestown, Jim Jones ordered his congregation to drink a concoction of cyanide-laced, grape-flavored Flavor Aid . In all, 918 people died, including 276 children, mostly from the Bay Area. I remember an ashen Mayor George Moscone announce Rep. Ryan’s death, and soon thereafter, the massacre.

Then, on November 27, Moscone and San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk were shot and killed in City Hall by former Supervisor Dan White. “White was angry that Moscone had refused to reappoint him to his seat on the Board of Supervisors, from which he had just resigned, and that Milk had lobbied heavily against his reappointment.”

I watched then-Board President Dianne Feinstein weep as she announced the murders of Moscone and Milk, almost certainly the most prominent gay politician in the United States of that time.

Harvey Milk, the subject of a 2008 film starring Sean Penn , graduated from New York State College for Teachers in Albany in 1951, the predecessor of my alma mater, UAlbany. Feinstein became the first female mayor of San Francisco and eventually U.S. Senator for California.

Some believe the two events are even more related, because some politicians gave early support to the charismatic Jones, including Moscone, Milk, governor Jerry Brown and state Assembly leader Willie Brown (no relation).

Most of this I remembered reasonably well, given the fact that it took place 40 years ago. One piece I did not know was that Jackie Speier , a congressional staffer for Ryan, was shot five times at the Guyana airstrip and waited 22 hours before help arrived. She survived and now is a member of Congress representing much of the district that Ryan, her mentor, served.

For ABC Wednesday

Ramblin' with Roger
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