Tag: birthday

Petula Clark is 80

Petula Clark recorded the song This Is My Song, written by Charles Chaplin, not only in English but in French, German, and Italian.

Dustbury kindly reminded me about a month ago that Petula Clark, who most Americans know from her 1964 song Downtown [listen], and her subsequent hits, was actually about a decade older than the Beatles and the others from the British invasion.

She had hits on the British charts going back to 1954. Her 1961 song Sailor not only went to #1 in the UK, it went to #2 in South Africa, and #12 in Belgium. Another hit from that same year was Romeo [listen], which was a hit in Australia and Norway, to name a couple places.

Love this Wikipedia post about her song, This Is My Song [listen], written by Charles Chaplin. (Yes, THAT Chaplin.) “Clark recorded the song not only in English but in French [listen]…, German…, and Italian… In fact, Clark did not wish to record the song in English as she disliked the deliberately old-fashioned lyrics which Chaplin refused to modify; however, after the translated versions of the song had been recorded there happened to be some time remaining on the session…

“Clark had assumed her recording… would only be used as an album track; on learning of Pye Records plan to release the track as a single she attempted to block its release. Instead, she found herself atop the UK charts for the first time in six years…” She didn’t dislike the song, merely thought it wasn’t commercially viable.

Dustbury also promised some links to her tunes. I integrated some above. Also:
The Cat in the Window
You’re the One
UPDATE: Dustbury’s day of post.

Petula Clark turns 80 today.

Isaac Hayes would have been 70

Isaac Hayes was undoubtedly best known for composing and performing music for the soundtrack of the film Shaft


Isaac Hayes was one of those behind-the-scenes guys at the Memphis-based Stax Records in the 1960s. He co-wrote songs with David Porter for Sam (Moore) and Dave (Prater), Carla Thomas, and others. He was a producer and session musician.

Some of their songs for Sam & Dave (LISTEN!):
You Don’t Know Like I Know
Soul Man
When Something Is Wrong with My Baby
Hold On I’m Comin

Hayes himself became a recording star, with his second album, almost out of commercial necessity.  The label was reeling from the death of its big star, Otis Redding, in a plane crash in December 1967. Stax had leased some of its songs to Atlantic Records, for wider distribution, but somehow lost all of its back catalog to Atlantic in early 1968. Some labels might have decided to pick a small number of albums to release and promote; instead, Stax wanted a couple of dozen albums, in a throw-them-against-the-wall-and-see-what-sticks methodology.

From the Wikipedia:
[Hot Buttered Soul] is noted for Hayes’ image (shaved head, gold jewelry, sunglasses, etc.) and his distinct sound (extended orchestral songs relying heavily on organs, horns, and guitars, deep bass vocals, etc.)… Hayes re-interprets Walk On By (listen)… into a twelve-minute exploration. By the Time I Get to Phoenix (listen) starts with an eight-minute long monologue before breaking into song, and the lone original number, the funky Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic (listen) runs nearly ten minutes…

But he was undoubtedly best known for composing and performing music for the soundtrack of the film Shaft. “The title theme (listen), with its wah-wah guitar and multi-layered symphonic arrangement, would become a worldwide hit single, and spent two weeks at number one in the Billboard Hot 100 in November” 1971.

Here’s my Stax post from five years ago.

Unfortunately, the singer “was found unconscious and unresponsive in his home located just east of Memphis on August 10, 2008, ten days before his 66th birthday,” and died of an apparent recurrence of a stroke.

I remember Ike.

The recovery, at least in my tribe

Happy birthday, middle child.

My sister Leslie was employed at a company when her workload virtually doubled, responsible for the safety at 51 drug stores, rather than 26. This is, unfortunately, a rather common scenario in corporate America; one is given so much work that the only way one could possibly fulfill the obligations is to work 60 or 70 hours a week and get paid for only 40. Ultimately, her company was purchased by another company, and she lost her job a couple of years ago.

She survived primarily on short-term, part-time work, and the fact that she had one rental property, which at least allowed her to not end up on the street.

Earlier this year, she got a new job. I’d describe it more fully, except that it’s not entirely clear to me. I DO know that involves her being a safety coordinator. In one scenario, she had to get someone to get rid of bees that attached themselves to a newsstand. She didn’t have to deal with the insects herself, but she did get some city workers to remove the bees, then to ascertain who should get the bill, in this case, the newsstand owner.

Possibly not coincidentally, my father was the vice-president in charge of safety for the construction company for which he worked for a couple of decades. (Hmm – I’m the fire marshal for my office, and took training to use a defibrillator a couple of years back.)

I took her new employment as a sign that the economy recovery, however slow, is coming along.

Happy birthday, middle child.

The Wife turns…another year older

Lots of people ask if my wife speaks another language besides English. She does – Spanish – but it isn’t used much since almost everything in ESL is taught in English.

It’s always interesting, talking about other people while endeavoring to respect their boundaries. The Wife has never said, “Don’t put my age in your blog.” But I’ve been reluctant to anyway. I have noted that she is younger than I (which is far less revealing than if I were to say that someone was older than I.) One CAN assume she’s over 31 since we’ve been married for over 13 years.

Every year on this date, I write something about her, but I have no idea whether she ever reads it. And I used to TELL her I was writing something.

One of the things I have alluded to is the fact that she is a teacher of English as a Second Language. She works for an entity called BOCES which provides all sorts of training to several school districts in a given area. For five years, she was teaching entirely in two schools in one school district. This year, however, that district decided to hire its own ESL teacher, which means that the Wife had a new assignment, which ended up being three schools in two school districts in two different counties. Suffice to say, taking public transportation for her job has become impossible, unlike mine, which is at one place almost every day.

ESL seems to be misunderstood. Lots of people ask if my wife speaks another language besides English. She does – Spanish – but it isn’t used much since almost everything is taught in English, the lingua franca. It is often assumed that the first language for most of her students is Spanish, when in fact she’s had a lot of kids who speak Urdu (pictured, via Wikipedia) or Chinese.

The Wife went back to school in 1999 and graduated in 2002. Going back to school was scary, I imagine (it was for me!), but she excelled at it.

I suspect that one day she’ll be an administrator – she’s taken subsequent courses to that end – though I suspect she’d miss the day-to-day activity of the classroom.

Well, that’s enough for this year. Happy birthday, dear.

Woody Guthrie would have been 100

The centennial of Woody Guthrie’s birth has turned out to be more significant to me than I would have thought 20 or 30 years ago.


As I have noted, my father was a singer of folk songs when I was growing up in Binghamton, NY. I did not usually know the source of the tunes that he performed, though I have subsequently have been discovered some of this information.

Back around 2002 or 2003, The Wife and I went to see Woody Guthrie’s American Song at Capital Rep Theatre, when this brace of songs, Worried Man and Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way came up. Both of them were in my father’s repertoire, especially the former. This was a couple of years after my father died, and I just lost it. The Car Song was also a Woody tune my dad sang, I’ve come to realize.

Of course, I was a big fan of This Land Is Your Land, mostly the versions by Guthrie’s good friend Pete Seeger. But it wasn’t until later when I learned all those great verses that one didn’t usually hear, such as those about No Trespassing, and the relief office.

But in the 1960s and 1970s, I was probably more a fan of Woody’s son Arlo, of Alice’s Restaurant fame. Woody had died in 1967 and was a remote figure to me.

Woody came alive again for me, though, because of a pair of albums that came out at the end of the last century, Mermaid Avenue, volumes 1 and 2, where Billy Bragg and the band Wilco completed song fragments by Woody. The albums have been re-released with additional material.

The centennial of Woody Guthrie’s birth has turned out to be more significant to me than I would have thought 20 or 30 years ago.

Woody singing:
Jesus Christ
Do Re Mi
This Land Is Your Land

Coverville 884: The Woody Guthrie Cover Story

Michael Eck’s Top 10 Woody Guthrie Collaborations

Woody Guthrie at 100 by Jim Hightower

Woody Guthrie at 100: The Return of a Pariah by Billy Bragg. “Woody Guthrie was shunned by his home state. Now Oklahoma can finally embrace the singer-songwriter’s work.”

Where’s Woody when we need him? He’s right there, inside each of us.

Ramblin' with Roger
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