birthday Archives - Page 38 of 50

#1 songs on my birthday, 1984-1993

I remember talking with my friend Fred Hembeck and we agreed that Straight Up, the one Paula Abdul song he ever put on a mixed CD, was probably her only good one.

My friend Dan Van Riper sent me this list of all the #1 songs since August 4, 1958.

I have links only to the middle tune, the song of my birthday. You can go to the website and hear the other contenders. If I’ve heard it before, I won’t play it again. If I’ve never heard of it, I’ll play it once. But I won’t listen to the adjacent tunes. My goal: am I happy with THAT choice to celebrate my birthday? Or (as will be the case in the latter stages of the game), I have no idea?

2/4/84 Culture Club – Karma Chameleon
2/25/84 Van Halen – Jump
3/31/84 Kenny Loggins – Footloose

I own all three of these; this may be the last time that’s true. Footloose is fun, and I like the Boy George song, but this is probably my favorite Van Halen tune, certainly my favorite of their hits.

2/2/85 Foreigner – I Want To Know What Love Is
2/16/85 Wham! feat. George Michael – Careless Whisper
3/9/85 REO Speedwagon Can’t Fight This Feeling
Continue reading “#1 songs on my birthday, 1984-1993”

#1 songs on my birthday, 1974-1983

I share a birthday with Peter Wolf (b. 1946) of J. Geils.

My friend Dan Van Riper sent me this list of all the #1 songs since August 4, 1958.

I have links only to the middle tune, the song of my birthday. You can go to the website and hear the other contenders. If I’ve heard it before, I won’t play it again. If I’ve never heard of it, I’ll play it once. But I won’t listen to the adjacent tunes. My goal: am I happy with THAT choice to celebrate my birthday? Or (as will be the case in the latter stages of the game), I have no idea?

2/9/74 Love Unlimited Orchestra – Love’s Theme
3/2/74 Terry Jacks – Seasons In The Sun
3/23/74 Cher – Dark Lady

Don’t particularly remember the Cher song. Unfortunately, I DO remember the drippy Seasons in the Sun, which I HAVE heard by someone else, to better effect. So, I pick yet another instrumental.

2/22/75 Average White Band – Pick Up The Pieces
2/29/75 Eagles – Best Of My Love
3/8/75 Olivia Newton-John – Have You Never Been Mellow
Continue reading “#1 songs on my birthday, 1974-1983”

Sophia Loren is 80

Sophia Loren was the first performer to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance.

When I was growing up, there were women who were supposed to be most beautiful: Marilyn Monroe, Bridget Bardot, among them.

Somehow, though, I was most fascinated by Sophia Loren, the poor Italian girl who became a star. Long before I ever saw her in a full-length film, I’d catch her on some part of a Saturday afternoon movie on TV and was captivated. And I still am.

In Binghamton, there were “art films” at the Robinson Center when I was a teenager, and I’m sure there was a Loren film or two, though I don’t recall specifically which ones.

She was the first performer to win an Oscar for a foreign-language performance, Best Actress in 1962, playing Cesira in Vittorio De Sica’s Two Women.

Here are some links:

Ahead of her time?

A series of photos of Sophia Loren at the height of her fame — made by her great friend and LIFE photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt.

She sings Zou Bisou Bisou.

She dances flamenco.

The movie Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, directed by her husband, the late Carlo Ponti.

Her IMDB page.

Her life and career, from oscars.org.

A documentary – from biography.com.

Timeless beauty Sophia Loren, 79, stuns in chic pantsuit as she arrives hand-in-hand with son Edoardo Ponti to film screening.

#1 songs on my birthday, 1964-1973

I’m passing on a great Sly song, and a Beatles anthem, to pick one of the greatest pop performances ever, in my mind.

My friend Dan Van Riper sent me this list of all the #1 songs since August 4, 1958.

1/4/64 Bobby Vinton – There! I’ve Said It Again
2/1/64 The Beatles – I Want To Hold Your Hand
3/21/64 The Beatles – She Loves You

Maybe it’s because She Loves You was on a minor label (Swan) that finally became a hit in the US only after the Capitol Records marketing machine took IWTHYH to the top, but I always had the greater affection for it.

2/20/65 Gary Lewis and the Playboys – This Diamond Ring
3/6/65 The Temptations – My Girl
3/13/65 The Beatles – Eight Days A Week

All songs I own. I’ll pick that middle song, written by Smokey Robinson.

2/26/66 Nancy Sinatra – These Boots Are Made For Walkin’
3/5/66 Barry Sadler – The Ballad Of The Green Berets
4/9/66 The Righteous Brothers – (You’re My) Soul And Inspiration

The staff sergeant’s song was #1 for FIVE weeks, two weeks longer than any song that year. It wasn’t my type of record, let’s say, yet I knew all the words. Still, for my week, I’d take either of the other songs. Boots is iconic, though I never actually owned it, so I’ll pick Bill and Bobby.

2/18/67 The Buckinghams – Kind Of A Drag
3/4/67 The Rolling Stones -Ruby Tuesday
3/11/67 The Supremes – Love Is Here And Now You’re Gone

Own all of these, too. A tossup. All decent songs, none my favorite by the artist. Supremes, I suppose.

2/3/68 The Lemon Pipers – Green Tambourine
2/10/68 Paul Mauriat and His Orchestra – Love Is Blue (L’Amour Est Bleu)
3/16/68 Otis Redding (Sittin’ On) The Dock Of The Bay

Tough choice! I actually really liked Love Is Blue, the only performance by a French artist ever to top the Billboard Hot 100. “Its five-week run at the top was second-longest of any instrumental of the Hot 100 era next to 1960s Theme From A Summer Place,” which I was also fond of.
Then you have a song with GREEN in the title.
But I’ll opt for what I recall is the first posthumous #1 pop single, as Otis had died in a plane crash.

2/1/69 Tommy James and the Shondells – Crimson And Clover
2/15/69 Sly & the Family Stone – Everyday People
3/15/69 Tommy Roe – Dizzy

Did my sister own the Tommy Roe single? Heard it a lot. I’ll pick Sly, but I really also like how Crimson and Clover changes key near the end.

2/14/70 Sly & the Family Stone – Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)
2/28/70 Simon and Garfunkel – Bridge Over Troubled Water
4/11/70 The Beatles – Let It Be

I’m passing on a great Sly song, and a Beatles anthem, to pick one of the greatest pop performances ever, in my mind.

1/23/71 Dawn – Knock Three Times
2/13/71 The Osmonds – One Bad Apple
3/20/71 Janis Joplin – Me And Bobby McGee

This is an easy pick. Donny trying to sound like Michael Jackson; nope. Tony Orlando; nope. Yet another posthumous #1, a great song written by Kris Kristofferson; yup.

2/12/72 Al Green – Let’s Stay Together
2/19/72 Nilsson – Without You
3/18/72 Neil Young – Heart Of Gold

Another tough choice. I love Neil, and this is perhaps cousin Al’s greatest song. But Without You, I felt viscerally.

2/3/73 Elton John – Crocodile Rock
2/24/73 Roberta Flack – Killing Me Softly With His Song
3/24/73 The O’Jays – Love Train

Mediocre Elton (given his other output from that period), decent Roberta, but anthemic (and geographically-based) O’Jays win out.

Irwin Corey is 100

Professor Irwin Corey regularly panhandles on the streets of NYC, not for himself, but for a cause.

Professor Irwin Corey, as I noted five years ago, is an in-law of an in-law of mine, who I’ve met on a few occasions. My maternal grandmother Gert, whose brother Ernie had married Charlotte, whose sister Fran had married Irwin, was SO excited when Irwin would show up on the talk shows hosted by Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, and others. Not sure she understood what he was saying, and I’m fairly positive I didn’t always. But her attraction to this tenuous connection to celebrity was very strong. So we’d always watch when we read in the TV Guide, “Irwin’s going to be on!”

And I guess I’ve become my grandmother, keeping track of Irwin sightings:

Before I began blogging myself, I was reading the now frozen-in-time blog of my friend Fred Hembeck, who has a picture of him with some other creative folks. (2004)

Mark Evanier wishes him a happy 90th. (2004)

Evanier links to Irwin speaking at the Bowery Poetry Club in New York party in 2007 to commemorate the birth and life of Lord Buckley (1906-1960). Some content on the coarse side, and, unsurprisingly, unkind about George W. Bush. (Posted 2008)

An appreciation by Frozen Justice who makes an interesting connection to Sarah Palin (2009). Has a link to the Smothers Brothers show (c. 1966), which I almost certainly watched.

Professor Irwin Corey screwed up the Soupy Sales funeral! Which I can totally believe. And it wasn’t out of disrespect for Soupy. “[He] had to be removed from the podium after his eulogy turned into a diatribe about health-care reform…” (Althouse, 2009)

Evanier links to a 2010 interview on a cable access show.

Irwin regularly panhandles on the streets of NYC, not for himself, but for a cause. (New York Times, 2011)

Happy Birthday to the World’s Weirdest Comic: Professor Irwin Corey, the Gibberish Maven. (Huffington Post, 2012)

An Interview with the Professor Irwin Corey. (CLASSIC TELEVISION SHOWBIZ– Kliph Nesteroff, 2013)

A story about Gilbert Gottfried, featuring Irwin. (Lowbrow Reader, 2014)