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Music throwback: Red Hot + Blue

There were approximately 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2016.

From the Wikipedia: “Red Hot + Blue is the first in the series of compilation albums from the Red Hot Organization… It features contemporary pop performers reinterpreting several songs of Cole Porter, and the title of the album comes from Cole Porter’s musical Red, Hot and Blue.

“Released in 1990, it sold over a million copies worldwide and was heralded as one of the first major AIDS benefits in the music business. The accompanying ABC television special [which I watched at the time] featured music videos for the songs. The clips portrayed the societal effects of AIDS.”

Yes, a good cause, to be sure. But also great music. It made my list of the top 25 albums previous 25 years back in 2010.

Lest you think the AIDS crisis is over: According to UNAIDS:

“There were approximately 36.7 million people worldwide living with HIV/AIDS at the end of 2016. Of these, 2.1 million were children (under 16 years old).

“An estimated 1.8 million individuals worldwide became newly infected with HIV in 2016 – about 5,000 new infections per day. This includes 160,000 children (under 16 years).”

Here are some US stats.

There were several followup albums to Red Hot + Blue. These are just the ones I own:

Red Hot + Dance (1992)- features three new songs by George Michael

No Alternative (1993) – alternative rock
Sexual Healing – Soul Asylum

Red Hot + Country (1994) – music from the classic country and rock genres performed by seasoned old and new country music artists, often together
Teach Your Children – Suzy Bogguss, Kathy Mattea, and Crosby, Stills and Nash
The T.B. is Whipping Me= Wilco and Syd Straw

Red Hot + Rio (1996) – a contemporary tribute to the Bossa nova sound, especially the music of Antonio Carlos Jobim
Use Your Head – Money Mark

Red Hot + Rhapsody (1998) – celebrating George Gershwin
Summertime – Bobby Womack and The Roots
A Foggy Day In London Town – David Bowie and Angelo Badalamenti

By George (& Ira): Red Hot on Gershwin (1998) – compilation of previous cuts

Red Hot + Riot: The Music and Spirit of Fela Kuti (2002)
By Your Side – Sade

16 songs (plus two ringers) of the 20 songs from Red Hot + Blue HERE.

November rambling – We are not the enemy

Tips on how to endure the 18+ hour flight

Cease fire Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers

The American civil war didn’t end, and we have a Confederate president

The First Family of Fraud

Fox and Friends: If the Media Doesn’t Want to Be Called ‘The Enemy’They Should Report the Story How He Wants

Amy Biancolli: We are not the enemy

John Oliver: Migrant Family Separation and Drain the Swamp

Why Is It So Hard to Vote in America? Voter turnout lags in the world’s most powerful democracy? and Cost of Voting in the American States

A Legislative Agenda for House Democrats

What Republicans fear most of all

A man who survived a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017 was among those killed in the 2018 mass shooting in Thousand Oaks, CA

There’s very little known about the thousands of victims who survive deadly shootings

Tammy Marshall – My Breast Implants Almost Killed Me – The Truth About BII

The US just elected 9 new scientists to Congress

The Ancestor Hunt: Historical Jewish American Newspapers Online

Why are the Spanish living so long?

Ken Levine interviews media consultant, Valerie Geller – Tell the truth, make it matter, never be boring: Learn the keys to successful communication

Ntozake Shange, Who Wrote ‘For Colored Girls,’ Is Dead at 70

Former San Francisco Giants first baseman Willie McCovey’s presence was one of a kind

In Conversation: Alex Trebek The Jeopardy! icon on retirement, his legacy, and why knowledge matters

Dan Crenshaw (R-TX), a former Navy SEAL, representative-elect: SNL mocked my appearance; here’s why I didn’t demand an apology

Jimmy Kimmel: Trumpy bear

John Boehner: Washington Needs to Legalize Cannabis – NOW, he says it

The Crazy Contentious History Of Taco Tuesday

Scott McCartney, travel writer for WSJ, taking world’s longest flight — Newark to Singapore; tips on how to endure the 18+ hour flight

The cheapest ways to get to the center of Manhattan from the three airports that serve the Big Apple

Esquire Fiction: Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah – Annual holiday super sale? Or zombie apocalypse?

Video tour from the forties Los Angeles side-by-side with the same route in 2016

It slices, it dices, and it’s older than me

This image has exactly 12 dots, but it’s impossible to see them all at once

Now I Know: The Problem With Anonymous Lottery Winners and The Cat’s Meow, Instrumentalized

Fabulous German words with no English equivalent

MUSIC

Take the A Train – Roy Clark And Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown; Roy Clark, country guitar virtuoso, ‘Hee Haw’ star, dies at 85

Above The Law – The O’Jays

BE A DJ: Kathy Buckley – 10/30/18 (WDST, Woodstock, NY)

Snippets of Hey Red! B/W We’re Not Going Steady – Herb London on Buzz Records; London, Conservative Thought Leader and occasional political candidate in New York State, died at 79. (HT to Dustbury)

Solid Rock is now a cultural part of Australian music history

Alexander Borodin’s String Quartet No 1, performed by the Moscow String Quartet

Recording of a warning chime recorded by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra – In all, Lincoln commissioned six different non-critical warning chimes from the orchestra, covering 25 vehicle functions

Careless Whisper – Train, ft. Kenny G

Happiness is just around the bend – Brian Auger

Anything You Can Do – Voctave

9,999,999 Tears – Dickie Lee

Alice Cooper in a Dodge commercial

Music: Loving You Has Made Me Bananas

Oh, your red scarf matches your eyes
You closed your cover before striking

Music throwback: Loving You Has Made Me Bananas I can’t believe – or maybe I CAN believe – that I failed to note the 50th anniversary earlier this year of the release of Loving You Has Made Me Bananas by Guy Marks. Marks, born Mario Scarpa on Halloween 1923 in South Philadelphia, PA, was one of 11 children, nine who lived to adulthood, born to Italian immigrants.

“He had a natural gift for mimicry, and his impressions of celebrities such as Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, Boris Karloff, and many others were considered among the best. However, he also could imitate a housefly on a slippery oil cloth, neon signs, alligators, driftwood furniture, rubber bands, frozen chickens, frogs, praying mantis, and — his favorite — an ostrich, all of which found their way into his act or in characters he played on TV.”

Marks “made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on May 29, 1960. From that point on he appeared dozens of times throughout the 1960s and 1970s on popular variety shows. His big break came when he was cast as a regular on the 1962–63 season of The Joey Bishop Show.”

Loving You Has Made Me Bananas is an odd song in that I rarely heard it when it first came out – it only reached #51 on the Billboard pop charts, though #19 on the adult contemporary list, in 1968 – but when I did, I assumed it was some oldie I had somehow managed to have missed. It hit the Top 30 in the UK in both 1968 and 1978.

In the day, everyone knew 3/4s of the chorus:

Oh, your red scarf matches your eyes
You closed your cover before striking
[something something something] blues
Loving you has made me bananas.

But what was that third line? I never knew until recently:
Father had the shipfitter blues

Guy Marks died November 28, 1987 at the age of 64.

Listen to the single:

Loving You Has Made Me Bananas here or here

Forgive Me My Love here

Music Throwback: To Sir With Love

To Sir With Love was, the best-selling single of 1967 in the US

I was watching the 31 October 2017 edition of JEOPARDY! a few days later. There was a category in the second round called FILMS OF THE 1960s. The $1600 clue: “British pop singer Lulu had a small role in this 1967 film & also sang the title song.”

None of the contestants rang in, but then again, none of them appeared to have been born before 1970. Naturally, I knew, instantly, that it was To Sir With Love. At the time of the show’s airing, the song was in the midst of the 50th anniversary of its five-week run at #1 on the US Billboard charts. Interestingly. it also got to #9 on the US soul charts.

Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie was born 3 November 1948 in Glasgow, Scotland. Tony Gordon, who would eventually manage Culture Club, discovered the 14-year-old performer. Tony recommended to his sister, Marian Massey, that she should manage the singer.

It was Marian who came up with a new name for Marie. “She actually gave up, and then said, ‘I’ll tell you one thing, she’s a real lulu of a kid,'” Lulu explained.

Marian’s sister Felice tipped off Marian about the script for To Sir With Love. Director James Clavell saw Lulu perform at a Beach Boys concert, and she got the film role and got to sing the title song.

In June 1967, Epic Records released The Boat That I Row, a Neil Diamond song. The song from the film was relegated to the B side. American DJs flipped the record. But To Sir with Love never made the UK charts and it was never even nominated for an Oscar.

Lulu has been an active performer on TV in the UK for decades and was married to Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees from 1969 to 1973.

LISTEN to:

Shout – Lulu & the Luvvers, #7 UK, #94 US (1964); #96 on (1967 re-release)

The Boat That I Row, #6 in the UK, #115 in the US (1967)

To Sir With Love, the best-selling single of 1967 in the US

The Man Who Sold the World, produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson; the former wrote, played saxophone, provided back-up vocals. #3 UK (1974), Top 10 hit in several European countries, did not chart in US

I Could Never Miss You (More Than I Do), recorded in 1979, but not properly released as a single until 1981. #18 pop US, #2 US Adult Contemporary chart, only #62 UK

If I Were You, #44 US (1982)

Independence, #11 UK (1993)

Rebecca Jade: Cold Fact, Jade Element, et al.

Rebecca Jade will be celebrating a birthday that’s divisible by five tomorrow.

My eldest niece (my sister Leslie’s daughter) Rebecca Jade has been quite successful in the San Diego area the past few years with various duos, trios and groups, so many I can’t keep track. I know she has an album with Peter Sprague, doing Cole Porter songs.

She was on a pair of seven-day cruises with Dave Koz and his musicians, going from Copenhagen, Denmark to Stockholm, Sweden; then to Tallin, Estonia; St. Petersburg, Russia; and finally to Helsinki, Finland before heading back to Copenhagen. And on the second leg of the trip, her mom joined her. At one point, mother and daughter jammed while Larry Graham thumped his bass!

In the past several months, she’s been singing backup with Sheila E. at various gigs all over the country including in August 2017, when my family saw her in NYC. Sheila E. and Morris Day & the Time performed in 7 degree F weather in Minnesota as a tribute to Minnesota native, and their mentor, Prince as part of Super Bowl Opening Night.

Rebecca Jade.Lynn Mabry.Sheila E

When she’s in town, she participates at Seaside Center for Spiritual Living in Encinitas. Rebecca Jade and the Cold Fact will be having a CD Release this fall; I saw them in July in San Diego. She’ll be involved in a two-day New Year’s Eve event through the SD Smooth Jazz Festival.

She and husband moved this spring after living in their place for over four years, and about 12 years in the same city. But perhaps her greatest challenge was coordinating the helpers after Leslie’s June 4 bicycle accident. She missed one or two gigs, but much of that early period she ended up sleeping in the hospital after a performance. She’s a great daughter and a fine niece.

Rebecca will be celebrating a birthday that’s divisible by five tomorrow. Visit her Facebook page or her website.

Love you, niece!

Rebecca Jade, Leslie Green, 2018