birthday Archives - Page 18 of 50

Boxer George Foreman turns 70

With this historic victory, George Foreman broke three records.

George Foreman There was a time in the United States when most people could name the current heavyweight boxing champion. My paternal grandfather McKinley Green probably could have named them all, from John L. Sullivan through Jack Johnson, Jack Dempsey, the undefeated Rocky Marciano to Floyd Patterson.

In 1967, Muhammad Ali was stripped of his title that he’d won in 1964 (as Cassius Clay) by beating Sonny Liston. This was due to his refusal to be inducted into the military during the Vietnam War. “Smokin'” Joe Frazier eventually won the confusing alphabet soup of titles when he defeated Jimmy Ellis in 1970. Frazier then beat Ali, who was by then allowed to make his comeback, in the “Fight of the Century” in 1971.

On January 22, 1973, Frazier lost his title when he was defeated for the first time professionally by George Foreman. Foreman had won a gold medal in the heavyweight division at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. He turned professional in 1969. After he beat Frazier, he had two successful title defenses.

Foreman’s lost the title in his first professional defeat, to Muhammad Ali, in “The Rumble in the Jungle” in October 1974 in Zaire. George retired from boxing after a loss to Jimmy Young in 1977 and had a religious conversion. He became an ordained minister and opened a youth center in Houston, TX.

In 1987, at the age of 38, George announced he was returning to boxing to raise money for his youth center. From the Wikipedia: “By 1989, Foreman had sold his name and face for the advertising of various products, selling everything from grills to mufflers on TV….his public persona was reinvented, and the formerly aloof, ominous Foreman had been replaced by a smiling, friendly George.” In fact, it was the George Foreman Grill that made him far more money than he made in his boxing career.

Still, in 1994, he fought a guy named Michael Moorer. “With this historic victory, Foreman broke three records: he became, at age 45, the oldest fighter ever to win the World Heavyweight Championship; 20 years after losing his title for the first time, he broke the record for the fighter with the longest interval between his first and second world championships; and the age spread of 19 years between the champion and challenger was the largest of any heavyweight boxing championship fight.” He eventually ceded the title.

He has a dozen kids. “On his website, Foreman explains, ‘I named all [five of] my sons George Edward Foreman so they would always have something in common. I say to them, ‘If one of us goes up, then we all go up together, and if one goes down, we all go down together!'”

Donna Summer would have been 70 (NYE)

Donna Summer claimed a top 40 hit every year between 1975 and 1984

Donna Summer Those of you too young to remember the days of disco may not understand how truly reviled it was. The teenage son of a friend of mine mocked the fact that I bought, owned and played the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack.

But not everyone thought disco sucked. Another friend bought me the Donna Summer album Live and More, a two-LP collection that featured, on side three, in order, live versions of Love to Love You Baby, I Feel Love, and Last Dance.

Then on side four, there was a 17-minute studio version of the MacArthur Park Suite, starting and ending with the Jimmy Webb song with One of a Kind and Heaven Knows mixed there.

The woman born LaDonna Adrian Gaines was one of the most significant artists in her time. “A five-time Grammy Award winner, Summer was the first artist to have three consecutive double albums reach number one on the United States Billboard 200 chart and charted four number-one singles in the US within a 12-month period.

“Summer earned a total of 42 hit singles on the US Billboard Hot 100 in her lifetime, with 14 of those reaching the top-ten. She claimed a top 40 hit every year between 1975 and 1984, and from her first top-ten hit in 1976, to the end of 1982, she had 12 top-ten hits (10 were top-five hits), more than any other act during that time period.”

Donna Summer had “nineteen Number One dance hits between 1975 and 2008 (second only to Madonna).” Her “success continued throughout the Eighties and into the Nineties. In 1992 Summer was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.”

In 2013, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, described as the Queen of Disco and the Mother of Modern Dance Music. Unfortunately, it was the year after she died of lung cancer in May of 2012.

Listen to multiple versions of Donna Summer songs, shortest take first

@Love to Love You Baby – #2 pop for two weeks, #3 R&B in 1976 – here or here

@I Feel Love – #6 pop, #9 R&B in 1977 here or here or here

Last Dance – #3 for two weeks pop, #5 R&B in 1978 here or here

MacArthur Park – #1 pop for three weeks, #8 R&B in 1978 here or here

Hot Stuff – #1 for three weeks pop, #3 for three weeks in 1979; here; it also won her a Grammy for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance, the first time the category was included.

@Bad Girls – #1 for five weeks pop, #1 R&B in 1979 here or here

No More Tears (Enough is Enough) – with Barbra Streisand – #1 for two weeks pop, #20 R&B in 1979; here or here; four Number One pop hits in a little over a year.

@She Works Hard for the Money – #3 for three weeks pop, #1 for three weeks R&B in 1983 here or here

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

@ co-written by Donna Summer

Donna Summer would have been 70 on New Year’s Eve.

Actor Samuel L Jackson turns 70

There’s a 2012 article in the New York Times which tries to explain How Samuel L Jackson Became His Own Genre:

“Jules was the moral center of Pulp Fiction because he carried himself like a professional. Before Jules, my characters were just ‘The Negro’ who died on Page 30.” Look at his early credits in IMDB, he’s not wrong.

“After Jules, I became the coolest [expletive] on the planet. Why? I have no clue. I’m not like Jules. It’s called being an actor.” However, it was Spike Lee’s movie Jungle Fever that broke him, “well before Pulp Fiction made him a household name. His role as a crackhead son of a minister came literally weeks after his own rehab, and changed everything.”

Maybe, as some speculate, it’s his bald head and youthful demeanor that allows him a chameleon-like quality. Regardless, he’s now EVERYWHERE. In credit card commercials on TV. As Nick Fury, agent of SHIELD, in a slew of movies in the Marvel Universe. He’s in two other franchises, Star Wars, and the animated Incredibles; he’s also appeared in a number of Quentin Tarantino’s other films.

From the Wikipedia: Samuel Leroy Jackson “grew up as an only child in Chattanooga, Tennessee. His father lived away from the family in Kansas City, Missouri, and later died from alcoholism. Jackson was raised by his mother, who was a factory worker… and by his maternal grandparents and extended family.

“Between the third and 12th grades, he played the French horn and trumpet in the school orchestra. Jackson also played the flute and piccolo.

“Initially intent on pursuing a degree in marine biology, he attended Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia. After joining a local acting group to earn extra points in a class, Jackson found an interest in acting and switched his major.

“In 1969, Jackson and several other students held members of the Morehouse College board of trustees hostage on the campus, demanding reform in the school’s curriculum and governance. The college eventually agreed to change its policy, but Jackson was charged with and eventually convicted of unlawful confinement, a second-degree felony.

“Jackson was then suspended for two years for his criminal record and his actions. He would later return to the college to earn his Bachelor of Arts in Drama in 1972.” To make ends meet, he sold hot dogs, burgers and fries at Atlanta Falcons’ football games.

“In 1980, Jackson married actress and sports channel producer LaTanya Richardson, whom he met while attending Morehouse College. The couple has a daughter, Zoe (born 1982).”

Samuel L Jackson has been such a diverse array of films that, according to Rotten Tomatoes, he’s been in movies lauded by all the critics – Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004) and by none of them – Kite (2014).

Jackson “has achieved critical and commercial acclaim, surpassing Frank Welker as the actor with the highest-grossing film total of all time in October 2011.” Also, “he enjoys collecting the action figures of the characters he portrays in his films, including Jules Winnfield, Shaft, Mace Windu, and Frozone.”

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.

Tom Petty: the End of the Line

According to his wife, Dana, Tom Petty endured the pain of a fractured hip throughout a 40th-anniversary tour with his longtime band, the Heartbreakers.

petty Usually, music brings me joy. But sometimes it feeds into my melancholy. As I was reading about how Tom Petty’s death is still a hard reminder for aging rockers about the downside of life on the road, I was reminded of that phenomenon.

Back in 2015, he acknowledged that he was a heroin addict in the ’90s, “something he had sliced out of Peter Bogdanovich’s four-hour documentary, 2007’s ‘Runnin’ Down a Dream.'”

How does a 50-year-old become a junkie? He talked about it to Warren Zanes in a biography, unauthorized only because Petty didn’t want to dictate what Zanes could or could not write

Addiction happened “when the pain becomes too much and you live in a world, in a culture, where people have reached in the direction of heroin to stop the pain. He’s a rock and roller. He had had encounters with people who did heroin, and he hit a point in his life when he did not know what to do with the pain he was feeling.”

Then in 2017, “Tom Petty was rushed to a hospital… in full cardiac arrest… Weeks later, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner’s report confirmed what many family members, friends and fans feared: Petty had accidentally overdosed.

“Among the combination of sedatives, anti-depressants and painkillers found in Petty’s system was the opioid fentanyl, the same drug on which Prince overdosed in 2016. According to his wife, Dana, Petty endured the pain of a fractured hip throughout a 40th-anniversary tour with his longtime band, the Heartbreakers.”

Here are three songs:

Gainesville, a new song with the Heartbreakers about his hometown area, about which he had mixed feelings.

Free Fallin’, the first song on my favorite Tom Petty album, the “solo” disc Full Moon Fever (1989)

Possibly my favorite. The End of the Line. I love the “happy accident” that was the Traveling Wilburys. On this track, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison, and Roy Orbison sing the choruses, and Petty sings the verses. In the video, Roy is recently deceased, as only his framed picture in a rocking chair appears. George, of course, died in 2001. With Petty gone, the song makes me wistful.