Category Archives: Media

Heckle and Jeckle ► Saturday Morning Cartoons

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Heckle and Jeckle are 2 wisecracking magpies from Paul Terry, whose Terrytoons also produced Mighty Mouse and Deputy Dawg, among a host of other cartoon characters.

Terry — credited with over 1300 cartoons in 40 years — started in media in 1904 as a newspaper cameraman, where he also drew comic strips. Inspired to go into animation by Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur, he drew his first cartoon Little Herman, which he sold. After a 2nd cartoon he was hired in 1916 by the J. R. Bray Studios, where he created and made 11 cartoons starring Farmer Al Falfa. He was able to take that character with him when he left in 1917 to start his own studio. Paul Terry Studios lasted for 9 more cartoons, only one with Farmer Al, before he joined the army to fight in WWI.

On his return he partnered up with the improably named Amedee J. Van Beuren to form Fables Studios, where they produced a successful series of cartoons based on Aesop’s Fables. In 1928 they released Dinner Time, the first cartoon with synchronized sound. It was released several weeks before Disney’s Steamboat Willie, often incorrectly credited as the first cartoon with sound. Watch:

Ironically, Terry and Van Beuren split up over the issue of sound, so Terrytoons was launched in New Rochelle, New York, where Terry had sold his first cartoon to Thanhouser film. That’s where Heckle and Jeckle were hatched just after WWII.

No less an authority than the Wiki tells us:

Paul Terry was quick to adopt techniques that simplified the animation process, but resisted “improvements” that complicated the production. He was one of the first to make use of “cel animation” including animation of separate body parts. His studio was slow to switch to synchronized sound tracks and to color. While this may have sometimes prevented his films from achieving the technical excellence of Disney or Fleischer Studios, he did manage to keep his studio profitable, while others went out of business. Terry was once quoted as saying, “Disney is the Tiffany of animation. I’m the Woolworth.”

Keep in mind that these were the days when cartoons were made to be shown between the movies in theaters. Television had been invented, but was not yet a commonplace household item. It would still be a decade before most homes had a tee vee.

However, Paul Terry cashed in when television came calling, but that didn’t go so well at first. As the Wiki also tells us:

Terry became the first major cartoon producer to package his old films for television. In 1955, Terry sold his animation studio and film library to CBS for $3.5 million and retired.[2] CBS appointed Gene Deitch, who replaced the old characters with new ones such as Sidney the Elephant, Gaston LeCrayon, Foofle, Clint Clobber, and John Doormat. Deitch departed after three years. After Deitch’s departure, Mighty Mouse and Heckle & Jeckle returned, as well as new characters such as Deputy Dawg. CBS made the Terrytoons library of films a mainstay of its Saturday morning programming and continued operating the studio making both new theatrical films and series for television until the late 1960s. -Today Terrytoons are most fondly remembered by Baby Boomers who grew up watching them on TV.

That’s my generation and I loved Heckle and Jeckle. I even had two gal pals, who were sisters, that Pops called Heckle and Jeckle. I saw both at his funeral in December.

Here are some more Heckle and Jeckle cartoons, starting with this dubious subject matter from ’47:







The Last Beatles Concert ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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It was 48 years ago today when The Beatles gave their last live performance, although no one knew that at the time. It’s come down through history known as The Rooftop Concert.

John, Paul, George, and Ringo — at that point the most famous musicians in the world — had been filming the recording of their ‘back to basics’ LP, that was supposed to do away with overdubs and studio trickery. The idea of a movie started out as a tee vee documentary ending with a live concert, before it morphed into a major motion picture.

Originally the album was to have been called “Get Back,” but was eventually released as “Let It Be,” the same name as the eventual movie and the biggest hit on the soundtrack.

The recording sessions were fraught with tension, with the Beatles bickering with each other.  Even the level-headed and Transcendental Meditationizer Harrison had enough. He also quit the band for a period. When he returned he did so with Billy Preston to play keyboards, correctly guessing that the presence of a musician they all respected would cut down on the fighting.

According to the WikiWackyWoo:

Harrison recalled that when Preston joined them, “straight away there was 100% improvement in the vibe in the room. Having this fifth person was just enough to cut the ice that we’d created among ourselves.”[14]

While most of the bickering was left on the cutting room floor, this clip was left in the final cut of the movie:

They were stumped for a location for the ending of the movie. The documentary was always going to end with a live show, but they were stumped where to hold it. Suggestions ranged from an ocean liner, to the pyramids, to Pompeii. However, logistically those shows would have been difficult. At almost the last minute, as time was ticking away before Ringo had to start filming The Magic Christian, the decision was made to perform on the rooftop of Apple Corps, the Beatles’ own building on tony Savile Row.

The 42 minute concert was the last time The Beatles played for an audience. However, they would go on to record one more LP, Abbey Road, actually released before the movie and Let It Be album. By the time the movie was release, The Beatles were history.

The songs performed on the roof that day were Get Back (five versions), I Want You (She’s So Heavy), Don’t Let Me Down (two versions), I’ve Got A Feeling, One After 909, Danny Boy, Dig A Pony (two versions), and God Save The Queen.

Also cut out of the movie was all of the genesis for the song that eventually became Get Back. It started off much differently than the song you hear now and could NEVER have been released in this form:

The Beatles have been criticized for these 2 songs once bootlegs started to appear, but it’s clearly a protest song of sorts, condemning the racism that they had been seeing at home. It’s just not a very subtle character study, like Elanor Rigby, f’rinstance.

Ironically, the session tapes of Let It Be were eventually given to Phil Spector, who laid all kinds of overdubs on the songs. This appalled Paul McCartney, who had been outvoted. Eventually, in 2003, Let It Be… Naked was released, without all the sweetening in a form that McCartney could live with.

The movie Let It Be was briefly available to purchase on VHS, Betamax, or LaserDisc, however the 1981 release was the first and last time it was available legally. There are reports that the entire movie was remastered by Apple in 1992. Apparently there was another remastering in 2003, including outtakes and bonus material, that was to have been released with the Naked CD, but that never happened either.

“Some people say” it’s Paul who has held off release of the movie because he comes off looking like a dick. The Wiki has something to say about that, too:

In February 2007, Apple Corps‘ Neil Aspinall said, “The film was so controversial when it first came out. When we got halfway through restoring it, we looked at the outtakes and realised: this stuff is still controversial. It raised a lot of old issues.”[43]

An anonymous industry source told the Daily Express in July 2008 that, according to Apple insiders, McCartney and Starr blocked the release of the film on DVD. The two were concerned about the effect on the band’s “global brand … if the public sees the darker side of the story. Neither Paul nor Ringo would feel comfortable publicising a film showing the Beatles getting on each other’s nerves … There’s all sorts of extra footage showing more squabbles but it’s questionable if the film will ever see a reissue during Paul and Ringo’s lifetime.”[44] However, in 2016, McCartney stated he doesn’t oppose an official release, stating, “I keep bringing it up, and everyone goes, ‘Yeah, we should do that.’ The objection should be me. I don’t come off well.”[45]

Maybe one day we’ll finally get to see this movie again. Until then, enjoy some bootleg recordings of the Rooftop Concert while they’re still on the YouTubery.

ENJOY!!!

Little Nemo In Slumberland ► Saturday Morning Cartoons

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Click HERE for larger size

Little Nemo In Slumberland is not really a Saturday morning cartoon, but a weekly comic strip created by famed artist Winsor McCay, sometimes called The Father of American Animation.

If Nemo were his only creation, McCay would still go down in history. However, Zenas Winsor McCay was also the artist behind 1914’s Gertie the Dinosaur, considered the first example of true character animation. The WikiWackyWoo also tells us:

Although Gertie is popularly thought to be the earliest animated film, McCay had earlier made Little Nemo (1911) and How a Mosquito Operates (1912). The American J. Stuart Blackton and the French Émile Cohl had experimented with animation even earlier; Gertie being a character with an appealing personality distinguished McCay’s film from these earlier “trick films”. Gertie was the first film to use animation techniques such as keyframes, registration marks, tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer, and animation loops. It influenced the next generation of animators such as the Fleischer brothers, Otto Messmer, Paul Terry, and Walt Disney. John Randolph Bray unsuccessfully tried to patent many of McCay’s animation techniques and is said to have been behind a plagiarized version of Gertie that appeared a year or two after the original. Gertie is the best preserved of McCay’s films—some of which have been lost or survive only in fragments—and has been preserved in the US National Film Registry.

Little Nemo began his life as a comic strip, running in the New York Herald from 1905 to 1911. Hired away by William Randolph Hearst — in an early dispute about Intellectual Property — the Herald won the rights to the Little Nemo name, but McCay was able to move the characters he created to the New York American, where they reappeared under the name “In the Land of Wonderful Dreams.”

McCay led a fascinating life. During his time with the Hearst papers, he also debuted a vaudeville act, where he would produce drawings at a rapid pace. He would also appear with his animated creation Gertie in an interactive show. A live McCay would command the animated figure, who would comply.

It was a box office hit in much simpler times.

Eventually, Gertie toured the country in the form seen above, without the live segments, using intertitles instead.

Hearst, who seemed to think he owned McCay, objected to his vaudeville career because he thought the strip suffered. When he couldn’t reach McCay because he was on stage, Hearst ordered his papers not to run advertising for the stage show. Eventually the artist was forced to limit his stage appearances and, in the end, Hearst got McCay off the stage almost completely. However, he also agreed to pay McCay more to make up for the loss of the box office income.

In the ’70s I became interested in comic strips that came before my time. Starting with what’s considered the Golden Age of Superheroes, I worked backwards.

I fell in love with Little Nemo the second I found him. He’s been my favourite comic strip character ever since. I’ve bought large coffee table books filled with Slumberland comics and return to them often.

Little Nemo is simply gorgeous to look at. Each viewing brings out details not noticed before. While McCay created much of the later vocabulary of the graphic artist, no other comic strip before, or since, looks this way. Cartoonists ever since have tried to imitate him, but nobody has ever come close.

However, it’s appeal to me is based on more than that. Little Nemo has always appealed to both the child and the cynic in me: Dreaming big but waking up in the same mundane world day after day no matter how exciting a night I may have had.

Apparently there was a crappy animated movie made in 1989 called Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland. From all reports I’m glad I missed it.

The images for this post came from (were swiped at) The Comic Strip Library, a wonderful source. Here are a couple more full size:

 

1st Rock and Roll Hall of Famers ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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The Not Now Silly Newsroom is still waiting for the musical movers and shakers to correct a grievous oversight and FINALLY induct Harry Nilsson for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Regardless, let’s take a look back at the first field of RnRHoF inductees, announced on this date in 1986.

As everyone knows, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was built in Cleveland, Ohio — aka the mistake on the lake — because … well … err … Alan Freed! However, the decision to drop it there may have had more to do with money than because Cleveland was the location of what’s generally accepted as the first Rock and Roll concert ever: the Moondog Coronation Ball. As always, the WikiWackyWoo tells all:

Cleveland may also have been chosen as the organization’s site because the city offered the best financial package. As The Plain Dealer music critic Michael Norman noted, “It was $65 million… Cleveland wanted it here and put up the money.” Co-founder Jann Wenner later said, “One of the small sad things is we didn’t do it in New York in the first place,” but then added, “I am absolutely delighted that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is in Cleveland.”

The Rock Hall didn’t open until 1995, but the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation started inducting Rockers and Rollers in 1986, soon after it incorporated. Mike Greenblatt at Goldmine tells us:

New York, New York. By all accounts, it was a night to remember. Despite nobody yet knowing where the museum would be constructed, and Bill Graham on hand to argue long and loud that it deserved to be built in San Francisco, the First Annual Rock ’n’ roll Hall Of Fame Induction Ceremony took place in the Grand Ballroom of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City. More than 1,000 music bizzers and invited guests dined on smoked river trout and fruit sorbet, drank California wine and witnessed a glittering array of rock stars dressed up and getting down with the kind of all-star jam one could only dream about. (The Harlem Blues & Jazz Band performed during pre-show cocktails and hors d’oeuvres.)

[…] Then came the jam.

Paul Shaffer led the house band which featured saxophonist David Sanborn, guitarist Sid McGinnis, bassist Will Lee and drummer Steve Jordan. Their rousing ceremony-starting overture featured the signature tunes of all 10 inductees. At one point, towards the end of the night, Chuck Berry, Keith Richards and Hank Williams Jr. stood side-by-side wielding guitars while Billy Joel, Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis shared two pianos for a balls-to-the-wall ragged-but-right jam on Berry’s “Roll Over Beethoven.” “Johnny Be Goode” had Berry with John Fogerty, Neil Young, Ron Wood and Richards playing guitar. Berry took over for “Little Queenie” and even sang a duet with Julian Lennon. Joel and Steve Winwood shared a piano, Winwood switching to organ in blasting out “Gimme Some Lovin’,” the song he recorded as a teenager with The Spencer Davis Group. Berry did some blues. Chubby Checker materialized to sing and dance “The Twist.” Fogerty let loose with “Proud Mary” to close the night, the first time he played the song in public in 14 years.

The first class of inductees set the mark for the years to come:

Chuck Berry

James Brown

Ray Charles

Sam Cooke

Fats Domino

The Everly Brothers

Buddy Holly

Jerry Lee Lewis

Little Richard

Elvis Presley

Here are some of the performances and acceptance speeches from that first induction ceremony:

Rock and Roll is here to stay!!!

‘Merkin ‘Ceptionalism – An Experiment In Democrazy ► Another Manifesto

If we learned anything from The Roman Empire it’s that great civilizations can destroy themselves. Welcome to Emperor Romulus’ Trump’s 2017, aka An Experiment in Democrazy.

Unless Bob Newhart or Pam Ewing dreamed the whole thing, tomorrow at noon an unprepared, inconceivable, unpresidented [sic] tweeting, lying, braying reality show host, and bankrupt businessman will take the oath of office for — I still can’t believe I have to type this — The President of the United States. That says everything about the current direction of ‘Merka in the 21st century.

She’s swirling the bowl, folks, and only a industrial Roto-Rooter is going to get this orange piece of shit to go down the pipes of Democracy. This is why treatment plants were invented.

My treatment? I’m only slightly less contemptuous of Emperor Trump voters than those who are still defending him and the media outlets trying to normalize his behaviour. [I’m not even including anyone on his payroll or nominations list, because they’re clearly not objective. They’re whores.] Next up for my righteous condemnation is everyone who stayed home on November 8th. Then my disdain encompasses every Stein and Bernie Bro’ voter, who refused to see the threat of Demagogue Donald. You are all culpable as we watch the country go down the drain. I’ve no sympathy for any of you.

I do, however, empathize with those who voted for Hillary Clinton or actively agitated against this monster.  They saw this coming and tried to save the world.

“Every nation gets the government it deserves” is most often attributed to Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859), but was first said by Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821), who had the good breeding to say it in French: Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle mérite. Yet, despite the fact that de Tocqueville plagiarized his countryman, he did originate the idea of American Exceptionalism, and he didn’t exactly mean it as a compliment.

Who else doesn’t believe in American Exceptionalism? Other than Stalin, I mean. Emperor Trump, that’s who! As MoJo‘s David Corn tells us:

In late April 2015, a month before Trump officially announced his candidacy, he spoke at an event called “Celebrating the American Dream” that was hosted in Houston by the Texas Patriots PAC, a local tea party outfit. The mogul sat in an oversized leather chair and fielded questions from Jim “Mattress Mack” McIngvale, a prominent local businessman. About an hour into the program, McIngvale posed Trump this query: “Define American exceptionalism. Does American exceptionalism still exist? And what do we do to grow American exceptionalism?”

Trump didn’t hesitate to shoot down the premise of the question, saying he didn’t “like the term.” He questioned whether the United States was “more exceptional” and “more outstanding” than other nations. He also said that those who refer to American exceptionalism were “insulting the world” and offending people in other countries, such as Russia, China, Germany, and Japan. It is “not a nice term,” he said, maintaining it was wrong to equate patriotism with a belief in American exceptionalism. He derided politicians who use the phrase.

Explaining his negative reaction to this idea long cherished and promoted by Republicans and Democrats, Trump said, “perhaps that’s because I don’t have a very big ego, and I don’t need terms like that.” Audience members laughed in response. Trump added, “I want to take everything back from the world that we’ve given them. We’ve given them so much.” He suggested that were he to become president, he would make the United States exceptional.

People wouldn’t even take him seriously back then. Yet, he was still elected.

Buckle up, Chicolinis. Here comes the “E” Ticket you paid for.

Lookit! I’ll admit that somewhere, in the dark recesses of my heart, I still choke up when I hear The Star Spangled Banner. Some patriotic displays will still make that muscle ache.  That’s where the Pledge of Allegiance can still be recited by heart. No matter what nationality I may have subsequently embraced, I am, after all, a born ‘Merkin. Naturally I received the usual indoctrination before I moved to Canada.

I suspect my feelings are not all that different from those of Leah Remini, who escaped Scientology to make a 10-part documentary exposing its secrets.

I had been brainwashed, just like in any cult. The childhood programming was powerful stuff, but 35 years in Canada (almost) completely obliterated it.  There I learned how blind ‘Merkins can be to their own foibles and colonialist misdeeds around the world and at home.

‘Merkin ‘Ceptionalism. Manifest Destiny.

One of the things I came to learn during my 3 and a half decades living outside ‘Merka is that elsewhere around the world all that jingoistic sloganeering and flag-waving was dismissed as manifestations of The Ugly ‘Merkin.

My country, right or wrong! Love it or leave it!

I returned to the States 11 years ago with a jaundiced eye toward the country that birthed me. My time here has not made me feel any better about this place. I’ve had people say the most incredibly racist things to me unsolicited. They — somehow — automatically believed I belonged to the same White Skin Club™ because we had a similar pigment.

Then President Obama was elected and it only got worse. Only in a racist country would the first Black president be blamed for all the racism that reared its ugly head after he was elected.

After 2008 the number of people who felt they could get away with using the word “nigger” in my presence increased, as did my arguments with these people because I’ve never allowed racism to pass unremarked. But, of course, it’s all Obama’s fault.

Who can dispute this truth? At her core, this country is racist. It’s baked into the Constitution, despite the all men are created equal bullshit they shoehorned in there. The Founding Fathers declared Black people only 3/5th of a person; created the 2nd Amendment’s “well regulated militias” to guard against slave revolts; and birthed the Electoral College, designed to keep the hands of The Great Unwashed — Black and White — off the levers of Democracy.

While slavery is Lady Liberty’s original sin, now Emperor Trump has made a lie of her venerated words carved right into her base:

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me:
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

In TrumpWorld — ‘Merka’s new Bemusement Park — this translates to:

“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

And, assholes voted for him. Some, I assume, are good people. But, yannow what? Who cares? He admitted to grabbing women by the pussy and people still voted for him!! He lied over and over and people still voted for him!!!

Over the MLK memorial weekend he was Twitter-hating on Civil Rights icon John Lewis. He’s losing supprt by the day. At last count almost 70 Democratic lawmakers have said they plan to sit out the urineation [sic] because of the illegitimacy of his election, with Russian fingerprints all over it.

Speaking of Stalin and ‘Merkin ‘Ceptionalism, in the longer article “A Lesson For Trump From Stalin: Lies Work, Right Up Until The Point When They Don’t” (it’s well worth your time to read the whole thing) Slate‘s M. T. Anderson doesn’t mince words:

It’s important to remember this: A regime can work a population so that they don’t object to even the most bald-faced lie. There is no safety in numbers, even vast numbers, if no one speaks up. Before we fall into the fantasies of liberal dystopia, however, it’s worth pointing out that Stalin had at his disposal an absolutely captive nationalized press. All information in print had to be sanctioned by the Party, which accommodated the complete pulverization of the real. There was a hoary Soviet joke about the nation’s two big papers, Pravda (“Truth”) and Izvestiya (“News”): “There is no truth in News, and there’s no news in Truth.”

It’s vitally important that this is still not the case in our American situation—though at the same time, we should recall that Trump has threatened the suppression of the press. Insofar as he has a plan for accomplishing this, it’s apparently through restricting official access, even within press conferences themselves, and perhaps more potently, plunging the press into financially exhausting litigation. Of course, any attempt to curb the free press would meet with stiff constitutional opposition. On the other hand, a captive press was not necessary to convince thousands of American leftists in the 1930s to take Stalin at his word and resolutely ignore evidence of the purges taking place within the USSR; nor has a restricted press been necessary to convince Trump’s followers to ignore fact in favor of slapdash fiction. (Recently, for example, more than half of Republican voters told pollsters they believed he’d won the popular vote in a “massive landslide,” though he lost by nearly 3 million votes.)

Putin’s Russia, meanwhile, still has one of the most stifled and policed press cohorts in the world. Putin’s regime doesn’t merely use the noose of crony capitalism to purchase and strangulate opposition; there is a terrifyingly high fatality rate among Russian journalists, and it seems likely that many of the contract killings, mysterious blows to the head, and spontaneous tumbles out of closed windows that they die from can be traced back to the regime. Trump has defended his pal Putin on this count, as on so many others. When asked to condemn Putin’s likely involvement in the killing of journalists, Trump essentially shrugged it off. He replied glibly, “Our country does plenty of killing also.”

And now Emperor Trump — not to mention the GOP — is siding with Vladimir Putin over their own country, which is a total reversal of how the Reich Wing behaved over the last 75 years.

Toute nation a le gouvernement qu’elle
mérite is the new Experiment in Democrazy.

Read my previous Manifesto: Not My President — Not Even My Country.

Jazz At Carnegie Hall ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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Benny Goodman Carnagie Hall Jazz ConcertOn this day in 1938: Jazz officially entered the mainstream. That’s when The Benny Goodman Orchestra played for the swells at Carnegie Hall, one of the most prestigious venues in the entire country.

Goodman was a relatively young man at 29 when the famed Carnegie Hall concert took place. However, he was already a music veteran. At 11 he was playing clarinet in Chacago pit bands and when he was 14 Goodman quit school and joined the American Federation of Musicians for a lifetime in music. Just a few years later he was hired to play his licorice stick for Ben Pollack, moving to Los Angeles for the next four years. He left Pollack’s band to move across the country to New York, then considered the hub of entertainment with radio shows and recording studios.

Benny GoodmanHis official biography picks up the story:

Then, in 1933, Benny began to work with John Hammond, a jazz promoter who would later help to launch the recording careers of Billie Holiday and Count Basie, among many others. Hammond wanted Benny to record with drummer Gene Krupa and trombonist Jack Teagarden, and the result of this recording session was the onset of Benny’s national popularity. Later, in 1942, Benny would marry Alice Hammond Duckworth, John Hammond’s sister, and have two daughters: Rachel, who became a concert pianist, and Benji, who became a cellist.

Benny led his first band in 1934 and began a few-month stint at Billy Rose’s Music Hall, playing Fletcher Henderson’s arrangements along with band members Bunny Berigan, Gene Krupa and Jess Stacy. The music they played had its roots in the Southern jazz forms of ragtime and Dixieland, while its structure adhered more to arranged music than its more improvisational jazz counterparts. This gave it an accessibility that appealed to American audiences on a wide scale. America began to hear Benny ‘s band when he secured a weekly engagement for his band on NBC’s radio show “Let’s Dance,” which was taped with a live studio audience.


One of the most famous Benny Goodman numbers,
with a great arrangement by Fletcher Henderson

The Jazz Age, the name given to the era in which Swing became popular, was another of the generation gaps that seems to always pit the young versus the old over the issue of music. Adults were still shaking off the Victorian Era, while Jazz was shaking society from the foundation to the rafters.

Benny Goodman - Palomar BallroomJazz was considered a just a teenage fad until one fateful day…

The new swing music had the kids dancing when, on August 21, 1935, Benny’s band played the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. The gig was sensational and marked the beginning of the years that Benny would reign as King: the Swing Era.

Teenagers and college students invented new dance steps to accompany the new music sensation. Benny’s band, along with many others, became hugely successful among listeners from many different backgrounds all over the country.

During this period Benny also became famous for being colorblind when it came to racial segregation and prejudice. Pianist Teddy Wilson, an African-American, first appeared in the Benny Goodman Trio at the Congress Hotel in 1935. Benny added Lionel Hampton, who would later form his own band, to his Benny Goodman Quartet the next year. While these groups were not the first bands to feature both white and black musicians, Benny’s national popularity helped to make racially mixed groups more accepted in the mainstream. Benny once said, “If a guy’s got it, let him give it. I’m selling music, not prejudice.”

By the time Benny Goodman played Carnegie Hall, he’d already been crowned The King of Swing by TIME Magazine.  There’s a lot more to Goodman’s story (and many good online sources). However, let’s just listen to the music from the day Jazz went mainstream at Carnegie Hall:


[APOLOGY: Sound quality varies]

Felix The Cat ► Saturday Morning Cartoons

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Forget Mickey Mouse. The earliest cartoon I can remember is Felix The Cat, which premiered on tee vee when I was just a year old.

However, Felix The Cat is a lot older than that. In fact, he’s one of the very first stars of the silver screen, going all the way back to the Silent Era in 1919. Among his mysterious beginnings is that way back then Felix went by the nom de mouse of Master Tom. Why? What was he trying to hide?:

Master Tom left behind his former life with a name change for his 3rd movie, “The Adventures of Felix.”

Another mystery: From which back alley did he come from. The WikiWackyWoo has that story:

Felix’s origins remain disputed. Australian cartoonist/film entrepreneur Pat Sullivan, owner of the Felix character, claimed during his lifetime to be its creator. American animator Otto Messmer, Sullivan’s lead animator, has also been credited as such.[3] What is certain is that Felix emerged from Sullivan’s studio, and cartoons featuring the character enjoyed success and popularity in the popular culture. Aside from the animated shorts, Felix starred in a comic strip (drawn by Sullivan, Messmer and later Joe Oriolo) beginning in 1923,[4] and his image soon adorned merchandise such as ceramics, toys and postcards. Several manufacturers made stuffed Felix toys. Jazz bands such as Paul Whiteman‘s played songs about him (1923’s “Felix Kept On Walking” and others).

By the late 1920s, with the arrival of sound cartoons, Felix’s success was fading. The new Disney shorts of Mickey Mouse made the silent offerings of Sullivan and Messmer, who were then unwilling to move to sound production, seem outdated. In 1929, Sullivan decided to make the transition and began distributing Felix sound cartoons through Copley Pictures. The sound Felix shorts proved to be a failure and the operation ended in 1932. Felix saw a brief three-cartoon resurrection in 1936 by the Van Beuren Studios.

Felix cartoons began airing on American TV in 1953. Joe Oriolo introduced a redesigned, “long-legged” Felix, added new characters, and gave Felix a “Magic Bag of Tricks” that could assume an infinite variety of shapes at Felix’s behest.

This is the Felix I remember from my childhood and this may have been the first song I knew by heart:

I loved the cartoons that featured Poindexter and The Master Cylinder.

Sadly, most of the Felix The Cat cartoons now found on the innertubes have these horrible wraparound segments. However, if you can last out that first 60 seconds, there’s still a classic Felix The Cat cartoon at the chewy center:

This year the big news from Tinsel Town was that all is forgiven and Felix The Cat — one of the very first balloons — would return to the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Just enjoy:

Roy Head ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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Monday Musical Appreciation - Roy HeadRoy Head — yes, that’s his real name — will always and forever be known as an entry on the list of One Hit Wonders, but what a musical hit!!!

“Treat Her Right” raced up the charts in the fall of 1965 due to its pulsating beat, driving horn riff, and a tune matched perfectly to a singing voice. However, Roy Head appears to be one of the worst lip-syncers in all of musical history and a terrible gymnast besides:

Despite the lack of subsequent hits, the Roy Head Wiki page is longer than some musicians’ pages that have far more chart toppers. It clocks on at 2195 words, not including Discography and reference links. However, it’s well worth reading to see how Head continued to reinvent himself and to adapt and change in order to continue his 60-year career in Show Biz. Here’s a highlight:

Monday Musical Appreciation - Roy Head

Head achieved fame as a member of a musical group out from San Marcos, Texas known as The Traits. The group’s sponsor landed their first recording contract in 1958 with TNT Music in San Antonio while they were still in high school. The Traits performed and recorded in the rockabilly, rock and roll and rhythm and blues musical styles from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. Though landing several regional hits between 1959 and 1963 on both the TNT and Renner Record labels, Head is best known for the 1965 blue-eyed soul international hit, “Treat Her Right” released by Roy Head and the Traits. After going solo, Head landed several hits on the Country and Western charts between 1975 and 1985. During his career of some 50 years, he has performed in several different musical genres and used a somewhat confusing array of record labels, some too small to provide for national marketing and distribution. Roy Head and the Traits held reunions in 2001 and 2007 and were inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame in 2007. One of the most gifted performers of his era, Head’s extraordinary dancing and acrobatic showmanship are legendary, often compared to the likes of Elvis Presley or James Brown.

CanCon Corner: Here’s Roy Head singing on the stage, and writhing on the floor, backed up by The Danny Marks Band at the Cadillac Lounge in Toronto 6 years ago.

 ROCK and ROLL is here to stay!!!

Rocky & Bullwinkle ► Saturday Morning Cartoons

The dirty little secret of The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show is that the animation was outsourced to Mexico.

Originally conceived as a cute little group of woodland animals that run a tee vee station [shades of SCTV?], by the time The Frostbite Falls Revue went on the air in 1959, it was called Rocky and His Friends. After the first 2 seasons it got the name The Bullwinkle Show. Then it became known as The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show and Friends.

Before it went on the air it needed a sponsor and cereal killer General Mills stepped up. It wanted the show to air in the afternoon to better target kids. Also, according to The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars:

“In an effort to reduce costs, the advertising agency that had the General Mills account invested in an animation studio in Mexico,” recalled director Bill Hurtz. “Then they made a contract with Jay which agreed that we’d write the stories, direct them, design them, and assemble them, but that the animation was the backgrounds and inks would be done in Mexico… This was nothing that Jay was particularly fond of.”

Even though some of the Ward staff, including Hurtz, were periodically sent down to Mexico for quality control, problems arose. “We found out very quickly that we could not depend on Mexican studios to produce anything of quality,” remembered Bill Scott. “They were turning out the work very quickly and there were all kinds of mistakes and flaws and boo-boos… They would never check… Moustaches popped on and off Boris, Bullwinkle’s antlers would change, colors would change, costumes would disappear… By the time we finally saw it, it was on the air. It went directly from Mexico to airing… As a result, we tried to pull as much of the work as possible up North.” Reportedly, at one point to avoid customs problems, people would bring some of the completed episodes back across the border in their suitcases as home movies.

Whether that was why the writers bit the hand that fed them, but:

The second story that first season was “Box Top Robbery” which only lasted a dozen installments. The global economy is threatened by counterfeit cereal box tops. It was a satirical jab at General Mills and its cereals who were sponsoring the show.

One of the things kids loved about Rocky and Bullwinkle were the reoccurring gags that changed over time, so you were never sure what to expect. Such as:

The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show was about a lot more than a flying squirrel and dim-witted moose. There was also Fractured Fairy Tales:

Peabody’s Improbable History:

 Aesop and Son, which was so similar to Peabody’s Improbable History that it used the same opening theme music.

And, Dudley Do-Right of the Mounties:

But, it was Moose and Squirrel that held our interest.




The Weavers ► Monday Musical Appreciation

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Before and after

On this day in 1962 The Weavers — Ronnie Gilbert, Lee Hays, Fred Hellerman, and Pete Seeger — took a stand that almost ruined their careers.

You may not have heard of them, but there’s no denying their influence in ‘Merkin popular music. The Weavers were one of the most important groups of the ’50s and ’60s, despite being a mere Folk group that only lasted a few years. They subsequently influenced every folk who ever folked a Folk song.

According to This Day In History:

The importance of the Weavers to the folk revival of the late 1950s cannot be overstated. Without the group that Pete Seeger founded with Lee Hays in Greenwich Village in 1948, there would likely be no Bob Dylan, not to mention no Kingston Trio or Peter, Paul and Mary. The Weavers helped spark a tremendous resurgence in interest in American folk traditions and folk songs when they burst onto the popular scene with “Goodnight Irene,” a #1 record for 13 weeks in the summer and fall of 1950. The Weavers sold millions of copies of innocent, beautiful and utterly apolitical records like “Midnight Special” and “On Top of Old Smoky” that year.

The Weavers had grown out of an earlier Folk group, The Almanac Singers, which had been founded by Millard Lampell, Lee Hays, Pete Seeger, and Woody Guthrie in the early ’40s. The Almanac Singers were an overtly political group, as the WikiWackyWoo tells us:

As their name indicated, they specialized in topical songs, mostly songs advocating an anti-war, anti-racism and pro-union philosophy. They were part of the Popular Front, an alliance of liberals and leftists, including the Communist Party USA (whose slogan, under their leader Earl Browder, was “Communism is twentieth century Americanism”), who had vowed to put aside their differences in order to fight fascism and promote racial and religious inclusiveness and workers’ rights. The Almanac Singers felt strongly that songs could help achieve these goals.

However, the Red Scare and Entertainment Blacklists of the era put an end to their dream of influencing ‘Merka through song:

In 1942, Army intelligence and the FBI determined that the Almanacs and their former anti-draft message were still a seditious threat to recruitment and the morale of the war effort among blacks and youth.[17] and they were hounded by hostile reviews, exposure of their Communist ties and negative coverage in the New York press, like the headline “Commie Singers try to Infiltrate Radio”,[18] They disbanded in late 1942 or early 1943.

In 1945, after the end of the war, Millard Lampell went on to become a successful screenwriter, writing under a pseudonym while blacklisted. The other founding Almanac members Pete Seeger and Lee Hays became President and Executive Secretary, respectively, of People’s Songs, an organization with the goal of providing protest music to union activists, repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, and electing Henry A. Wallace on the third, Progressive Party, ticket. People’s Songs disbanded in 1948, after the defeat of Wallace. Seeger and Hays, joined by two of Hays’ young friends, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman, then began singing together again at fund-raising folk dances, with a repertoire geared to international folk music. The new singing group, appearing for a while in 1949 under the rubric, “The Nameless Quartet”, changed their name to The Weavers and went on to achieve great renown.[19]

However, the country would not let The Weavers free to be. Wiki has that, too.

During the Red Scare, however, Pete Seeger and Lee Hays were identified as Communist Party members by FBI informant Harvey Matusow (who later recanted) and ended up being called up to testify to the House Committee on Un-American Activities in 1955. Hays took the Fifth Amendment. Seeger refused to answer, however, claiming First Amendment grounds, the first to do so after the conviction of the Hollywood Ten in 1950. Seeger was found guilty of contempt and placed under restrictions by the court pending appeal, but in 1961 his conviction was overturned on technical grounds.[4] Because Seeger was among those listed in the entertainment industry blacklist publication, Red Channels, all of the Weavers were placed under FBI surveillance and not allowed to perform on television or radio during the McCarthy era. Decca Records terminated their recording contract and deleted their records from its catalog in 1953.[5] Their recordings were denied airplay, which curtailed their income from royalties. Right-wing and anti-Communist groups protested at their performances and harassed promoters. As a result, the group’s economic viability diminished rapidly and in 1952 it disbanded. After this, Pete Seeger continued his solo career, although as with all of them, he continued to suffer from the effects of blacklisting.

In December 1955, the group reunited to play a sold-out concert at Carnegie Hall. The concert was a huge success. A recording of the concert was issued by the independent Vanguard Records, and this led to their signing by that record label. By the late 1950s, folk music was surging in popularity and McCarthyism was fading. Yet the media industry of the time was so timid and conventional that it wasn’t until the height of the revolutionary ’60s that Seeger was able to end his blacklisting by appearing on a nationally distributed U.S. television show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, in 1968.[6]

By 1962, The Weavers had already broken up and reformed. On January 2nd, they were booked to play The Jack Parr Show, the precursor to the Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. However, their appearance was cancelled by after they refused to sign a loyalty oath.

Here is a wonderful documentary on the life and times of The Weavers followed by a personal favourite:

Before Emperor Trump reestablishes Loyalty Oaths, let’s take a moment to remember The Weavers, who refused to kowtow to government interference, just like the Constitution teaches.