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Music Throwback Saturday: I’m Your Puppet

They were cousins James Purify and Robert Lee Dickey

Usually, I pick a song that just came to me in this feature. But this time, I decided to look at the Billboards Hot 100 singles charts for 50 years ago, November 19, 1966

1. You Keep Me Hangin’ On – The Supremes, Last Week: 7
The song was at 27 the week before its rise to the Top 10. After going to 1, it went 3, 5, 5 then out of the Top 10

2. Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys, Last Week: 4
The song was at 17 the week before its rise to the Top 10. It stayed another week at 2. behind Winchester Cathedral, before going to 1 on December 10, then down to 3, 8, and out of the Top 10

3. Winchester Cathedral The New Vaudeville Band, Last Week: 6
The song went from 24 (November 12) to 6, 3, 3, 1, 3 (behind Good Vibrations and Mellow Yellow), then back to 1 for two weeks, before its slow slide 3, 4, 8, out of the Top 10
LISTEN here or here

4 Last Train To Clarksville -The Monkees, Last Week: 2
It entered the Top 10 on October 8, after being 18 the week before, then from 6, 4, 3, 2, 1 (November 5), 2, 4, 7, 10. But after a one-week hiatus, the Monkees were back in the Top 10 with future 1, I’m a Believer

5. Poor Side Of Town – Johnny Rivers, Last Week: 1
On October 15, it was 11, then 7, 4, 3, 1 (November 12), 5, 5, 9, and out
LISTEN here or here (truncated version)

6. Devil With A Blue Dress On & Good Golly Miss Molly -Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels, Last Week: 9
On November 5, it was 18, then 9, 6, 4 for four weeks(!), 5 and off. Mellow Yellow and the Top Three songs here kept it at 4 for so long.
LISTEN here or here

7. I’m Your Puppet – James & Bobby Purify, Last Week: 10
On November 5, 11, then 10, 7, 6, 6, then off the Top 10
They were cousins James Purify and Robert Lee Dickey (d. 2012), from Florida, who had three more Top 40 hits.
LISTEN here or here
Rerecorded in 1976 and became a hit in the UK. LISTEN here

8. 96 Tears -? (Question Mark) & The Mysterians
Last Week: 3
Back on September 17, it was 25, then 8, 6, 3, 3, 2 (behind Reach Out I’ll Be There – Four Tops), 1 (October 29), 2, 3, 8, and out of the Top 10
LISTEN here or here

9. If I Were A Carpenter -Bobby Darin, Last Week: 8
On October 29, 11, then 8, 8, 9 and out of the Top 10
LISTEN here or here

10. Rain On The Roof – The Lovin’ Spoonful Last Week: 15
Its only week in the Top 10

(Yes, I didn’t link to artists I’ve likely will link to, or have already done so in the past.)

November rambling #1: Theodosia Burr

I have a lot of Leonard Cohen songs, Hallelujah, Suzanne, and Bird on a Wire, among them, that others have covered.

Analytical Grammar: Homophone graffitil — Analytical Grammar: Homophone graffiti

Why many Americans don’t see Donald Trump as racist

So You Want to Wear a Safety Pin

1st woman elected to Congress, in 1916

John Oliver: School Segregation and Multilevel Marketing

6 Million Lost Voters: State-Level Estimates of Felony Disenfranchisement, 2016

Do You Understand the Electoral College? You should read all of AmeriNZ’s posts this past week, e.g. Fixing the Electoral College, which mentions my favorite fix, Instant Runoff Voting

Trump was unfamiliar with the scope of the president’s job when meeting Obama

Prince Ea: I JUST SUED THE SCHOOL SYSTEM and Dear Future Generations: Sorry

How Teens In The Balkans Are Duping Trump Supporters With Fake News

How Andy Borowitz explained the election to his six-year-old daughter – (NOT fake news)

A 1922 New York Times article about Adolf Hitler catastrophically misjudged the authenticity of his anti-semitism

Writer too strong to live, about sports, sexism and alcohol (HT to Jaquandor)

Deepika Padukone on depression

The men feminists left behind

A Teaching Moment on Sexual Assault and It’s hard to talk about, but it happens to so many women and Reasons So Many Guys Don’t Understand Sexual Consent

Top African American environmental leader faces racial incident in Adirondacks – Aaron Mair, who I have met, is the president of the Sierra Club

Gwen Ifill, longtime PBS news anchor, died after a battle with cancer – she was 61 – made me feel surprisingly devastated

Four-color Christ Jesus

Glenn Beck tries decency

Amy Biancolli interview in Widows and Widowers Magazine

The Dramatic Life and Mysterious Death of Theodosia Burr. The fate of Aaron Burr’s daughter remains a topic of contention

Race-Conscious Casting and the Erasure of the Black Past in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton

This black woman rode across America in 1930. On a Harley. In spite of rampant racism, she was ‘very happy on two wheels’

Trevor Noah wasn’t expecting liberal hatred

You’ve Just Crossed Over Into … the Rod Serling Gazebo

Ira Gobler and the Star Wars Toys That Never Were

Norman Rockwell Museum Presents Hanna-Barbera: The Architects of Saturday Morning, through May 29, 2017

My Poetic Side: favorite war poets, each related to a different war and ordered chronologically, from The American Civil War to the Iraq War.

Presidential candidates in comic books

Robert Vaughn, Man from UNCLE actor, dies aged 83. I used to play the spy show with sister Marcia. I played Napoleon Solo, the Vaughn role.

Now I Know: Fool Me Twice, Plane on You and Going to Venus in Peace and May The Force Be Costumed and Smell Ya Later?

Doing the Write-In Thing (ROG reference)

Music

Jean Sibelius and the virtual national classical music work of Finland; here’s Finlandia

Mozart Requiem

K-Chuck Radio: Draw that bow, my son…

Jazz ‘Hot’: The Rare 1938 Short Film With Jazz Legend Django Reinhardt

Bohemian Rhapsody performed by excerpts from 260 different movies

An Hour of Jeopardy Think Music

16 Albums That Changed The Music Business

Master Recordings — From Abbey Road to Born to Run — Could Be Lost Forever, Without Archivists’ Help

Copland’s Fanfare: The making of a musical monument

Leonard Cohen died at the age of 82 and hugely influential singer and songwriter’s work spanned nearly 50 years; his 2008 induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame; two of of my favorites are this and this

Leon Russell died – His 2011 induction to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

The Greatest Invention of One Thousand Years Ago

The 10 Greatest Double Albums In Rock History – you WILL guess most of these

The “432 Hz vs. 440 Hz” conspiracy theory

The Upper Crust of Music

Music Throwback Saturday: Then Came You

Then Came You became Warwick’s first ever single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and also became her highest-charting R&B record.

Periodically I have mentioned in this blog how irritated I was that certain black musicians were considered “not black enough” because of their genre. Charlie Pride singing country, or Jimi Hendrix doing rock and roll – and isn’t rock just blues and country mixed together? And I took some heat for listening to it.

Dionne Warwick got grief for being an MOR (middle of the road) artist, singing mostly Burt Bacharach/ Hal David tunes. So I was glad that she briefly got that particular monkey off her back when she teamed up with the legendary Spinners to sing Then Came You.

“Released during a time that Warwick’s chart fortunes were at an ebb after moving to Warner Bros. Records in 1972, the Philadelphia soul single was a rare mid-1970s success for the singer. Sung as a duet with Spinners main lead singer Bobby Smith and the Spinners, who were one of the most popular groups of the decade, the song became Warwick’s first-ever single to reach number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and also became her highest-charting R&B record reaching number two on that chart. It was also the first number-one pop hit for the Spinners. Spinners member Phillippe Wynne took over lead duties at the very end of the song.”

Dionne spelled her last name with an E at the end during this period but switched back.

Here are songs by the Spinners, who are NOT in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and, though nominated the last couple of years, not even up for consideration this season:

I’ll Be Around -#3 for two weeks pop, #1 for five weeks soul in 1972, here or here

Could It Be I’m Falling In Love – # 4 pop, #1 soul in 1973 here or here

One of a Kind (Love Affair) #11 pop, #1 for four weeks soul in 1973 here or here

Mighty Love, Part 1 – #20 pop, #1 for two weeks soul in 1974 here or here

Then Came You – #1 pop, #2 soul in 1974 here or here

They Just Can’t Stop It (Games People Play) – #5 pop, #1 soul in 1975 here or here

The Rubberband Man – #2 for three weeks pop, #1 soul in 1976 here or here; long, album version here or here

Music Throwback Saturday: The Snake

“Everybody tells me not to hit back at the lowlifes that go after me for PR–sorry, but I must. It’s my nature.”

From, interestingly, The New Republic:

Is Donald Trump the fabled Snake?

In his speeches, Trump often recites the lyrics of the 1968 Al Wilson song “The Snake,” written by Oscar Brown, Jr. [in 1963]. A variation of the fable “The Scorpion and the Frog,” the song tells the story of a naive woman who takes in a wounded snake, only to be betrayed by the predator who bites her and says, “You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in.”

From the point of view of Trump and his supporters, the meaning of the song is this: The United States can’t let in Muslim refugees because they are irrevocably hostile and will turn on those who help them.

But [recently], an old Trump tweet was recirculated that offers a new layer of meaning to his use of the story.

Donald J. Trump

✔

@realDonaldTrump

Everybody tells me not to hit back at the lowlifes that go after me for PR–sorry, but I must. It’s my nature.

11:27 AM – 19 Nov 2012

Obviously, I need to listen to the Donald’s stump speeches more often. Right.

This was Wilson’s biggest hit. The song got to #27 pop, and #32 rhythm & blues, in the summer of 1968 in the US, and a mild hit in the UK some seven years later. If I had heard this song before, I’m not remembering.

Singer/drummer Al Wilson was born in Meridan, MS in 1939, and was a member of a group called The Rollers in the early 1960s. He died of kidney failure in 2008 at the age of 68.

Here are the lyrics to The Snake.

Listen to Al Wilson’s version of The Snake here or here.
***
Trump’s Offer to Christians Is Same Offer Devil Made Christ

Cubs, Cronkite, and Halloween

Wet leaves on wooden inclined plane = nearly horizontal person, somewhat in pain.

I swear I read a number of people who treated the baseball World Series win by the Chicago Cubs as, “Oh, that’s nice,” rather than the astonishing event that it was. Heck, even Arthur wrote about it, not once, but twice. He noted that “Some things transcend all of that, and sport can, for some, be one of those things.”

And the stories I read about fans remembering parents, or grandparents, who loved the Cubs, but never had the joy of seeing them win the National League pennant (last time, 1945), let alone the whole enchilada (1908, 108 years ago; 108, like the number of stitches on a baseball). This was touching, for example.

I was rooting for them, once the New York Mets were quickly eliminated. General Theo Epstein, who got the long-suffering Boston Red Sox fans a pennant in 2004 and 2007, may be a miracle worker.

Apparently, there were a number of people who predicted the Chicago Cubs would win the Series this year.
***
Today would have been the 100th birthday of Walter Cronkite of CBS News. I’ve remembered his natal day since about 1980 when I realized it coincided with the date the hostages in Iran were taken a year before.

So much in the news has changed since his heyday, the 24-hour news cycle, and competing with the TMZs of the world, not to mention Facebook and Twitter as news sources.

I read his autobiography and reviewed it here.
***
Monday, I decided to ride my bike to work. But the front tire was light and failed to inflate, so I stuck it back into the shed, locked the door, turned around, and, as I wrote in Facebook about 45 minutes later:
Wet leaves on wooden inclined plane = nearly horizontal person, somewhat in pain. I’m hobbling to work now…

Managed to hit my head to the right of my left ear, and my left shoulder, and my back (wearing the backpack), and turned my left ankle. It happened so fast, I didn’t have a chance to put out my hand to try to save myself, which, I suppose was a good thing. No lasting damage, but I was sore for a couple of days, especially my back.

Got a very angry IM on Facebook that evening about something I wrote which a person believed was a mischaracterization of their feelings, and was quite possibly friendship ending, which made me both sad and exhausted, as I tried to explain my POV. I had a nice IM exchange from an old friend about something else I had written.

The highlight of the day had to be, when I was handing out Halloween candy, a half dozen College of Saint Rose students Halloween caroling of this Thomas Tallis piece. I even sang along on the repeated section.

That’s when I could still sing because subsequently, I’ve lost my voice; hope I can shake whatever bug is irritating my vocal chords, or my vocal cords.