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Bear Keane....by Bob Sanders

 

The postcard received two weeks after Christmas displayed a lonely Santa Claus wearily walking along a mist-shrouded deck.  Slung Sinatra-like over his right shoulder was the jacket to his Santa attire.

Brief and touching copy accompanied the card:

Bear was Santa for 35 years,

Lots of joy--lots of tears.

His Santa days are over and gone,

But his Santa heart beats on and on.

 

I met Thomas "Bear" at the San Juan Island Jazz Festival in 1990, 11 years after a group of island Dixie lovers decided to honor the music while doing local merchants a favor.  The population then was around 5,000 and isn't much more now.  My volunteered first assignment was to co-manage the venue by the ferry dock.  Bear was my co-manager and we liked each other immediately in spite of our differing attitudes toward the music; Bear was ardent about Dixie while my tastes were and are more progressive.  As a newly-arrived resident, I soon became a member of the Festival board and was instrumental in bringing a Chicago group, the Ellington Dynasty, to the event.  Bear, who lived hard by the ferry dock in Mukilteo, volunteered for every fest, originally billed as the San Juan Island Traditional Jazz Festival.

Running four days most of its existence, the event was always held the fourth weekend of July, a wise scheduling based upon knowledge gleaned by one of the original board members who determined that the July dates were the most rain-less in what has become known as "the banana belt."  But one day in close to 80 was rained out.  Among the features of the event were: a Jumping the Gun Thursday night opening; a Friday afternoon promenade of bands down Spring Street (The Rainbow Lady always led the Parasol Ladies accompanied by jazzers dressed in 1920s fashion); a Saturday morning show for children plus a Sunday morning gospel service.

The Jazz Fest survived but never prospered as Bear and I partnered from 1990 until 2002 when the board decided to end the event.  It was a strange decision partly arrived at because but two of 12 board members had any knowledge of or interest in jazz.  I was one of the two and a lone voice in keeping the project alive.  The Board President, former County Commissioneer and Friday Harbor Mayor Bill LaPorte, wanted to sell off Festival holdings that included a storage home worth about $150,000.  The money was used to create scholarships for Friday Harbor high school graduates, certainly a noble cause.

Bear and I ate a lot of hotdogs and drank a bunch of beer as we worked the various venues that for a couple of years included Roche Harbor, like Friday Harbor a postcard pretty place.  The bands came from all over and included: the regional Updown Lowdown Jazz Band; Rosie O'Grady's Good Time Jazz Band from Orlando, Florida; and the Palm Springs Yacht Club headed by Conrad Janis, a trombone player whose earlier acting careers were in radio, stage and film.  

Bear Keane, whose quick wit suggested he had kissed the Blarney Stone on more than one occasion, often acted as venue emcee.  He knew a great deal about the event's regular musicians who more and more tended to come from the Pacific Northwest.  Bear and wife Char were inveterate attendees of jazz fests with Jan and I once meeting them in nearby Victoria, B.C. for a few sessions.

During those Festival days inn Friday Harbor an understandable cloud hung over the event and it was early recognition that created name changes.  The audience was graying and our T- shirts (each volunteer received one plus free admission to events) began reflecting our consternation.  We switched back and forth from calling the music "classic" to the old standy "Dixieland."  Meanwhile, according to Dixie fanatics, there occurred far too many "intrusions" of groups who played musical sins including swing.  One of the outstanding jazz singers who played the gig was Rebecca Kilgore who came up from Portland leaving musical partner Dave ("Van Lingle Mungo") Frishberg behind.  I think that was in 1993 and Kilgore, an enormously appealing singer, has a career in full flight today while appearing at such august watering holdes as Feinstein's in New York.

The Sanders worked out an arrangement with Bear and Char for them to house sitduring trips to such places as Italy, the UK, Spain and Thailand.  "The Bears," as we came to call them, loved San Juan Island and we were delighted to have a former member of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms keep a professional eye on the place.

Health problems forced the Sanders to leave Friday Harbor for Bellingham in 2004 but we remained in touch with The Bears who would meet us at various restaurants halfway between Mukilteo and Subdued City.  There was always at least one meeting with Bear giving hirsute evidence around August that the Christmas season would agin find him playing Santa Claus.  No one played Santa better than Bear, a large man with a perfect demeanor for the role.  His belief in the role was just a snowball's circumference this side of Edmund Gwenn's deep conviction in "Miracle on 34th Street."

The Bears began going to Palm Springs for a chunk of winter about 20 years ago and it was that way this year until we received the card displaying a dejected Santa of dispirited gait.  It was difficult to believe a Santa of 35 years was no more.  I failed to reach Char because of a disconnected phone, then could not connect by e-mail.  I turned to the internet, but a search for Mukilteo and Palm Springs obituaries produced nothing.  Bear was gone.

But wait, as they say in the infomercial biz.  The phone rang the other day and Caller I.D. indicated it was from Thomas Keane.  My first thought was that Char would have to change that I.D.  I answered and couldn't believe the voice at the other end.  It was a boisterous Bear and my thoughts ran to Mark Twain's line about words of his death being highly exaggerated.

Bear's reaction to an obvious question  was that "like at least nine others," neither Jan nor I hadd read the Santa card correctly.  "His Santa days now over and gone, but his Santa heart beats on and on."  Santa's are much better at ho-ho-hoing rather than rhyme-rhyme-rhyming.

The Sanders and at least nine others had been had by a waggish Santa.  We'll meet soon at, maybe, Burlington Bob's and rejoice midst some understandable snickering by The Bears.  Perhaps Bear, who has lost a lot of weight the past couple of years and appears rather svelte-like, later this year will return in a reincarnation of sorts: Peter Pan

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Frank: The Voice....A review by Bob Sanders

 

I finally caught up with James Kaplan's ring-a-dingdingally good Frank: The Voice and, once again, became intrigued by the two Sinatras; one, a singer of remarkable sensitivity able to communicate in thoroughly entrancing fashion, the other an often highly immature, nasty, selfish oaf who fraternized with hoodlums in an apparent attempt to further a reputation for being tough. 

The book, of more than 700 pages,  while largely a re-write of many of the tomes about the entertainer, is a penetratingly good one comprehensively researched.  Like Gary Giddons' examination of Bing Crosby (A Pocketfull of Dreams), it takes the reader up to the break-through moment in the life of a musical sensation.  The Crosby book ended with his entry into films having concentrated on his development as an artist in addition to stories of palship with such notables as Hoagy Carmichael, Bix Beiderbecke, the Rhythm Boys and other members of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra who enjoyed a drink or ten.  Unlike, Sinatra, Crosby was regarded favorably by the public thanks to astute public relations and The Groaner's ability to confine his shortcomings largely to the home.  He was, by nearly all accounts, a complete antithesis of the merry, nice guy next-door screen presence.  Kaplan devotes considerable space in the Sinatra book to Crosby and for good reason.  It was Sinatra's worship of Crosby that inspired a career built on a lot of talent buoyed by intense determination.

Kaplan takes a warts and all approach to the finger-snapping singer from Hoboken, NJ in a kind of hip, semi-wise guy fashion--particularly when telling of gangster connections, piggish behavior and insensitive endings of relationships with women including Ava Gardner.  Yes, Ava is there along with Lana Turner, Marilyn Maxwell and women of less notoriety.  Actually, Ava, according to Kaplan, drove Sinatra up a lot of walls including one time in Palm Springs when the two of them had serious spat #187 (or whatever) with Sinatra taking off for the desert community presumably to resume a relationship with Turner.  Gardner, a good friend of Turner, beat Sinatra to Palm Springs as another Hollywood tale unfolded.  Good reporter Kaplan takes us through a number of versions of that overly-reported story including Kitty Kelley's His Way.  A bibliography of 127 suggests how much digging the author did to come up with what is, above all, a fair look at a most complicated performer.

Many of the musicians who played roles in Sinatra's early days as a band singer are there.  Jo Stafford and the Pied Pipers, Jack Leonard (he preceded The Voice as the boy singer in Tommy Dorsey's band), Harry James & The Music Makers, song writer Jimmy Van Heusen (worth a book himself), Dick Haymes, Alec Wilder (the vastly underrated, eccentric, self-taught composer) and drummer Buddy Rich, a Sinatra nemesis whether it was women or tempos.  Anecdotes of musicians and their lives on the road are particularly effective while providing enormous insight.  The reader gets a vivid sense of what the Rustic Cabin was like when Sinatra waited on tables in the New Jersey joint and sang for his supper while learning his craft before discovery by James. 

One of the book's delights involves the circumstances of some of the 1,300 songs recorded by Sinatra.  Kaplan is particularly adroit at analyzing Sinatra's style revealing small but significant differences between the live and recorded singer.  "Four nights later, on an NBC radio broadcast from the Astor Roof, Sinatra sang 'I'll Never Smile Again' to another houseful of upper-crusters.  The air check of the number reveals a small but striking difference from the recording: on the radio version's out chorus (the last words sung in the song) as Sinatra sings 'Within my heart, I know I will never start/To smile again, until I smile at you,' he uses the vocal trick he'd discovered back at the Rustic Cabin, a breathy little catch in his voice, in this case before the initial h of 'heart.'  It's a small thing, a showman-like touch that would have made no sense on a recording but all the sense in the world before a live crowd--a naked play for the hearts of the rich girls in the audience.  Calculated, and thoroughly effective."

A fan of the Pied Pipers, I once sat next to Jo Stafford on the dais of a Kansas City Advertising Club luncheon where Stafford was a special guest, not the main speaker she should have been.  What a delight.  She was funny, a great teller of stories, totally engaging and the best lead singer of vocal groups I ever heard.  We spoke of Sinatra and her comments about him were almost word-for-word what Kaplan got from her some 50 years later.  "When you sing with a group, it takes a certain amount of discipline, and Frank was excellent at it," Stafford said.  "You can't wander off into your own phrasing.  You've got to do exactly the same thing at exactly the same time.  Very few solo singers can do that.  He could.  When he sang with us, he was a Piper, and he liked it, and did it well.  I don't know any other solo singer, solo male singer especially, that can do that."

Some of Sinatra's not so supporting players come off worse than others.  Hardly surprising, Louis B. Mayer is his usual suspicious, small and vindictive self while being critical of his MGM singer/actor property during a period when Mayor's mistress was former Kay Kyser singer, Ginny Simms.  Simms, vivacious and appealing, was something less than beautiful and some thought her a bit horse faced.  Sinatra had fun with that one.  Seated one day in the MGM commissary, someone threw him a provocative line: "Hey, did you hear about L.B.'s accident?"  Not missing a beat, Sinatra replied: "Yeah, I hear he fell off of Ginny Simms."  The incident immediately preceded the actor's leaving the studio.

Earl Wilson, whose Sinatra: An Unauthorized Biography gets heavy usage by Kaplan, comes off as a guy desperately wanting to be considered a Sinatra intimate.  His column items reflecting various stages of the singer's career--particularly the seemingly never-ending series of Gardner/Sinatra fights--suggests he asked a lot of dumb and self-serving questions.

A typical Wilson/Gardner scene occurred shortly before the actress filmed "Mogambo."   She and the columnist met "in a large eatery run by a large eater" (probably Toots Shor's) and the column item suggests an editor had complainted about Wilson plugs for "eateries."  Continue Wilson, "I happened to mention her Herculean husband whom she considers has negleted her, which--if it's true--makes him this century's man of iron."  Wilson then asks if he can be an intermediary and the onslaught of drivel continues.  

There has always been an understandable disconnect between segments of the public and artists whose personal lives are less than exemplary.  There's the Charlie Chaplin of all his cinematic triumphs and The Tramp's suggested but never proven communist sympathies.  The right's disenchantment with Hollywood goes back to Chaplin.  He was the first movieland "enemy" and it wasn't long before McCarthyism began doing damage to a bunch of people who didn't deserve it.  Kaplan's telling of the Sinatra saga includes the singer's early liberalism but, because the book ends with the career-changing Best Supporting Oscar for his role in From Here to Eternity (1954), we don't learn of his switch to conservatism because of what he felt was a social slight by John F. Kennedy.

Mitch Miller, who produced Sinatra's largely disappointing recordings at Columbia Records, comes off better than expected.  It was Miller who tangled with the singer over such fare as "Mama Will Bark."  The recording, possibly the worst of Sinatra's career, was done at the depths of his career.  The "Mama" on the record was Dagmar (her straight name was Virginia Ruth Egnor) whose description as a "tall, eye-poppingly buxom West Virginia blonde" is not nearly sufficient.  According to Kaplan, Sinatra did not squawk when Miller broached the tune.  The author also reveals that Sinatra, Rosemary Clooney, Stafford and others had to pay for their own recording sessions.

If there's a hero in the book, it's George Evans, a brilliant PR guy who guided Sinatra's career through nearly all the time covered in the book.  Evans was enormously creative, far seeing, loyal, and of tremendous energy.  It was Evans who gave Sinatra the tag that never left him: The Voice.  Evans invented the bobby sox hysteria that provided the singer such overwhelming attention which, nevertheless, brought a great deal of grief to the publicist; Sinatra was not an easy going employer.  Evans, more than a savvy PR practitioner, somehow worked his success in a quaint era where such a thing as bad publicity actually existed; he painted the singer as mostly a family man in spite of reality's red flags.  No one thus far has been named the inventor of spin, but George Evans' name has to be right up there should such a determination be pursued.

While there is little new in Sinatra: The Voice, the writing is crisp and the research exhausting.  James Kaplan has succeeded in giving us a much better understanding of an American icon who dramatically changed popular culture.   

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Boy Meets Girl....by Bob Sanders

 

It was one of those boy meets girl things.  Their convergence was decidedly cute and not long after such scenes had become cinematic necessities.

The year was 1987 and he had lost the second of two wives to cancer.  That was three months prior to the invitation to attend a Christmas party at the Chicago Gold Coast home of a pal of his.  Cher, also in public relations, was often identified, like the actress/singer, by the singular name.  There were others of one name in that media hip crowd including Hef (Hugh Hefner), Kup (columnist Irv Kupcinet) and Margie (Korshak who ran a PR firm).  If you didn't know Chicago Cher (last name Patric) in those days, chances were good you didn't work in the media.

The girl he met cute at the party also was coming off a bummer.  Mother of three grown children, she was a working woman whose husband had become one of those American gurus who attempt to inspire troubled people to dramatically improve their lives, often through cant and slogans; unfortunately, a large percentage of them look for an overnight short cut rather than concentrate on the long haul.  Far too much of his time was devoted to the more fragile of those in need.  To the surprise of few, the marriage detonated and she had gone to work for Culligan, the water filtration company where she became known as "Culligan Jan," a capitalization on the firm's highly recognizable advertising copy line, "hey, Culligan man."

The boy in our story arrived early at the party, kicked things around with Cher, then was introduced to Nancy, an absolute knockout who, for about an hour, would not leave his side.  Figuring her for about 35 (she was 40), our hero began wondering what the hell was going on?  Then 61, he was astonished at her seeming fascination in everything he said.  Even a mundane subject, a purposeful selection on one occasion, produced an eagerness to hear more.  What an audience!  He could have read her the Chicago phone book in Rogers Park Chicagoese and she would have panted for more numbers.   What was going on?

The lengthy conversation moved to a couch located some 30 feet from the front door as the boy became convinced he had lucked onto one of the all-time couch tomatoes.  Suddenly, the door opened and a blonde vision in red made an entrance and what an entrance it was.  With a heavily bandaged index finger pointed ceiling-ward, she acknowledged Nancy, then started toward them.  The boy's comment caught her attention: "Hey, if there's anything I like, it's a woman attempting an obscene Italian gesture."

The introduction of boy to the girl by Nancy provided him with understanding about Nancy's seeming attachment to him.  The vision in red turned out to be Nancy's mother.  Cher and Nancy had conspired to make certain they met and cute it was.  The finger had been injured by an un-cooperative car door.   

The girl and the boy chatted for, maybe, 45 minutes.  Near the end, talk of dinner came up but the boy begged off reluctantly explaining he had a dog at home needing attention.  The girl was impressed by such responsibility and so they parted but not before indicating she soon would be leaving for Hawaii.

A week later the mail brought a postcard from The Aloha State.  In it, she professed interest in seeing him upon her return.  Christmas came and went and the girl returned to her apartment located in a northwest suburb.  She phoned the boy, they talked cute, and had dinner at a tiny place on Waukegan Rd. located in front of a Glenview condo development whose star tenant was Chicago Cubs third baseman Ron Santo.

One thing led to another and it wasn't long before the girl moved into the boy's Glenview home and soon they decided to see China.  The trip was by way of Hawaii where they stayed a few days with Gary (the girl's son) and Cyndie Quinn on Oahu's North Shore.  Flight attendants for United Airlines, they had bought rather sensationally run-down beach property and turned it into Santa's-by-the-Sea--an outstanding bed and breakfast.

The flight to Beijing, by way of Tokyo, was very damp thanks to word given fellow United employees.  The couple also learned of the high regard United had for the Quinns.

Beijing, the Great Wall and all the other tourist destinations were captivating.  Of great help was "Michael," a young man who became their guide.  The highlight of his efforts occurred at the Emperor's Summee Palace, where the world's largest imperial garden is located.  Pointing to the famed Marble Boat, a lakeside pavilion where reviews of the "navy" were conducted, Michael giddily announced: "And now look what that crazy Emperor did."

Shanghai, reached by an overnight train, was next with the boy and girl staying at the Peace Hotel in The Bund on Nanjing St.  The blonde girl attracted a great deal of attention on the streets of Shanghai.  Smiling children, fascinated by someone who looked so different, gathered in groups around her.  The boy and girl loved Shanghai, particularly the Old Jazz Bar on the eighth floor where a sextet, once banned by Mao, entertained travelers and locals by playing American pop tunes of the 40s with a particular emphasis on the Glenn Miller book.  Requests, read to the band in very serious fashion by its leader, included one by the boy and girl whose "Chicago" was honored.  It was at the Old Jazz Bar that the boy asked the girl to marry him.  The temporary engagement ring was a petite United napkin number, evidence the boy had been thinking ahead. 

They decided to wed in Hong Kong, next stop on the trip.  Weddings in China are not easily accomplished as they learned by visiting City Hall where intentions to do so must be posted 10 days prior.  Scanning a wall mottled with planned marital events, they saw an extremely attractive woman burst into tears when she spotted the name of a loved one.  What an opening film scene that would make in the telling of a love story.

The boy and girl who met cute were in trouble.  They didn't have 10 days to hang around Hong Kong because of Chicago jobs; their running joke was that, had they time, a plot development might find the boy putting a move on the lovely lady of City Hall tears, a liaison threat that could, again, produce posted wedding plan grief similar to what had been witnessed on the wall of marital intent.  

They decided to marry themselves on Victoria Peak, more than 1,800 feet above the Pearl of the Orient.  First, however, had to come wedding attire shopping, a marathon pursuit of what Hong Kong is so much about.  The girl was measured for a dazzling and decidedly Asian black gown with red trim.  The boy was fitted for two suits, one for the wedding day.  Pickup for him was at Very Good Tailor 24 hours later.  Those Hong Kong fingers can really fly.

To get to the Peak, they took five forms of transportation: cab, ferry boat, rickshaw, funicular railway, and their legs.  Fog, not thick enough to blot out Hong Kong lights below, curled around them as they read passages from Khalil Gibran's The Prophet.  While the religious narrow might disapprove of such an exchange of marital vows by the couple approaching advanced age, their love surely had to overwhelm any cautionary thoughts.

Hey, wait a minute.  How about announcements?  Not to worry.  To the rescue came a very personable and funny public relations employee of their hotel who handled off-beat ideas with Chinese aplomb.  Among them: the page one inclusion of a non-threatening dragon ("make him funny") since it was The Year of the Dragon.  Copy celebrating the March 26 event was to be set in Cantonese with a page three translation in English including a final line: At Home Some Day.  Rough copy to view would be available later that day and final product two days later.  Both promises were kept--further evidence why Hong Kong hotels are the best in the world.

Returning to Chicago, the boy and girl settled into married life, then decided their marital state needed some authenticity.  And so it was that they got married legally on New Year's Eve of that year (1988).  The ceremony, conducted by Pastor Michael Stangal of a North Shore church, was held among a large outcropping of rocks on a picturesque beach very close to the Quinn's B&B, hard by the Banzie Pipeline.  Unlike the Hong Kong wedding, there was no shopping.  They wore swim suits.  

As you may have guessed by now, the boy and girl in the story are my wife, Jan, and I.  She has been diagnosed as having a relatively early stage of Alzheimer's, has difficulty remembering things told her mere seconds before, and knows there is no cure for what she has.  She asked me to write this story because of fear that, one day, it will be just another piece of information hidden from her by a deadly Alzheimer curtain.  She wants to be sure that the story of our meeting and the engagement/wedding happenings, never before told in total accuracy, are in readable form and close at hand.  Memories are so much of what all of us have and holding onto them is ammunition in un-winnable battles.  Caregivers quickly learn that glimpses through the developing Alzheimer's murk are always fresh though momentary.

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Moontunes....by Bob Sanders

I guess I could blame it on the moon.

Like most people, I'm inclined to take celestial matters with a grain of exotic particles or whatever it is that floats up there.  Too much is going on down here including the nuclear problems in Japan, the war in Libya, an Africa that never seems to get a break, the world's economy, cancer and other threats that could end this, otherwise, best of no host parties.

Immediately prior to last Saturday I had felt a bit guilty about not paying reasonable attention to a moon that was about to come closer than anytime in the past 18 years.  At a distance of 221,566 miles, it would be 17,291 miles closer than the 338,857 average as it apogees much like an old "Rip" Sewell Blooper Pitch.  Further, it would be 30% brighter and appear nearly 15% larger.

A very unusual thing happened shortly after 3 a.m. as the moon neared its greatest brilliance.  I'll call it both strange and wondrous and it happened after I had taken a look at the moon having awakened for who knows why?  It may have been Costco's Minh pork and vegetable egg rolls.  Without question, what followed easily qualifies as the most unusual thing to ever happen to me and I've been around the track more than a couple times.

First, you should know that I'm a frustrated non-musician.  By that, I mean I can't read music while firmly believing that I should have pursued such a career.   When you've been around nearly 85 years, you get to understand yourself.

People who know me are inclined to be impressed by the amount of popular music and lyrics I can hum and quote.  I won't bore you with for instances, but take my word.  I guess the most impressive thing musically I can tell you about myself is that I fathered an outstanding musician, tenor saxophonist Brian Sanders, good enough to play in the bands of Woody Herman and Glenn Miller.  Maybe something of me rubbed off? 

At any rate, I looked at the moon's impressive grandeur, then went back to bed.  I couldn't sleep, a common occurrence, then fell back on the tried and true: running music through my head.  Very often, I find quiescent success through the artistry of Duke Ellington with a heavy emphasis on his brilliant co-creator, Billy Strayhorn.  Among my favorites are "Chelsea Bridge," "Lotus Blossom," "Day Dream," "Passion Flower," and any of the suites written with Ellington including The Queen's Suite, The Far East Suite, and Such Sweet Thunder.  Working almost 30 years in near-anonymity as Ellington's collaborator, Strayhorn, who died in 1964, is now being recognized as one of the great figures of jazz.

It was David Hajdu who, in 1996, published the definitive book about Strayhorn.  Titled Lush Life, it's the story of Ellington's relationship with him, the young man's difficulties involving being gay, and his long-running love affair with singer Lena Horne.  It's sad, yet full of triumphs.  When Strayhorn died, Ellington said: "Billy Strayhorn was my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head, my brainwaves in his head, and his in mine."

Continuing my attempt to return to slumber, I went straight to a lesser composition, "Something to Live For," a tune Strayhorn submitted to Ellington shortly after meeting him in 1938 and five years after he had begun its writing.  Ellington hired him on the basis of it.  Recalling Dick Hieronymus, a San Juan Island musician friend who eight years ago based a relatively short and gorgeous piece on the chords of J. Fred Coots' "You Go to My Head," I determined to explore "Something to Live For" to see what I could "compose" using the tune as a musical canvas.  My goal was to turn it into something classical.  What followed I can only describe as an experience of another world.  I was astonished to hear a remarkable series of variations first on the seven title notes plus the next 11 assembled gems.  What was startling was the flow of it all totaling three movements, the third beginning as a pizzicato that involved far more violins than Frank Sinatra ever dreamed demanding of Tommy Dorsey when the singer realized he was selling more tickets than the trombone-playing bandleader.

The three movements totaled something like 30 minutes and were better than damn good.  While composition ideas were expanded upon, there were no repeats.  It just went on and on in a kind of seamless Strayhorn-going-for-Debussy fashion.  While my recollections of past recordings have almost always been note-for-note (a good example would be Dave Lambert and Buddy Stewart's "What's This?" with the Gene Krupa band), my prior musical adventures had largely been a matter of "copying" rather than "writing" original material.  My overwhelming challenge in "hearing/composing" original stuff is that it would last for, maybe, a half-minute or so only to lapse into something that had already been written.

Eerily, and this is important, the music quickly produced the overwhelming feeling that this wasn't "my" music nor was I anything more than the recipient of it.  I simply let it wash over me figuring I had to have been gifted by someone or some thing that far exceeded anything I could accomplish even blessed with the kind of composition smarts I don't have.  Had the classically-trained Billy Strayhorn ever expanded upon "Something to Live For" calling upon knowledge first gained at the Pittsburgh Musical Institute?  Maybe he did after the tune was recorded in 1939 by what is considered the greatest of Ellington bands, an accolade of near unanimity by jazz aficionados.  The major factors: outstanding musicians and the elegance Strayhorn brought to the orchestra.

If this was something defying logic, why had I been singled out?  As a kid I used to search for Ellington records in a black-owned record shop in Cleveland.  Then, while majoring in journalism at Ohio University, I had used Duke's "Take the A Train" (written by Strayhorn) as a theme on my WOUN jazz record show called "Swing Express."  Could those facts and a great love over the years for Ellington's music been enough?  How did the moon and my look at it figure into what, obviously, was paranormal?

Mankind has always been fascinated by the moon and songwriters have taken their shots through various uses of the lovely lunar.  The brilliant but brittle Dorothy Parker came up with lyrics to "I Wished on the Moon" for the film, Big Broadcast of 1936 while Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini's "Moon River" was nearly excised from Breakfast at Tiffany's by a tone deaf Paramount Pictures president.  Chevy Chase, always going for a laugh, whistled Mercer's tune while having his rectum examined in Fletch (1985).  "Moon River" by the way, was originally titled "Blue River."  There's a river outlet near Mercer's home in Savannah, Goergia.  It's now named after the song.     

The moon has been declared looney ("Oh, You Crazy Moon"), invasive ("The Moon Got in My Eyes"), voodooish ("Old Devil Moon"), and a means of offering contrast (Moon Over Buffalo).  The latter is a very funny Ken Ludwig play starring Carol Burnett.  The play's title suggests Buffalo is hardly Miami as in "Moon Over Miami" and, it's logical to question, can chicken wings possibly be compared to flamingos?  Two song writers, Fred Ahlert and Leslie Edgar, even declared "The Moon Was Yellow" and you are under firm orders to catch up with Ethel Ennis' 1963 recording of that one.

Lyricist Lorenz Hart had a different color in mind when he wrote "Blue Moon," a song with four lives.  Based in Hollywood, Hart and Richard Rodgers experienced the tune stricken from two films.  The second was Manhattan Melodrama (1934) when what eventually became "Blue Moon" was called "It's Just that Kind of Play."  Re-worked, the song then became "The Bad in Every Man" and was sung by Shirley Ross in blackface.  A deserved failure, the song was dismissed, then rescued by MGM executive Jack Robbins who licensed the song to "Hollywood Hotel," a popular radio show.  Hart was talked into writing a fourth set of lyrics and that's how "Blue Moon, I saw you standing alone" finally came to be.

All of the above is exactly how it happend in its "Twilight Zone" way.  Just what produced my momentary "possession" of what I am convinced is Billy Strayhorn's extended development of "Something to Live For" is for greater minds than mine.  Perhaps music is something that never dies even after all the sheet music, vinyl records, tapes, CDs, DVDs, YouTubes, I-Pods, and whatever else is down the road no longer exist.  Maybe it will always be out there waiting for someone fortunate enough to hear it.

Oh, yes.  Thanks, Billy, for your gift.  I hope there's a next time.

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Egyptian Conniption....by Bob Sanders

While it might be considered questionable taste to find humor in something as serious as the events unfolding in Cairo, there have occurred moments when laughter is not only possible but, even, irresistible.  Such humor, prompted by television, is but a mind goose from the not-so-little screen.  And now that Mubarak has finally left office, we'll soon find out if 18 days of protest in search of "democracy" will have created any degrees of separation from the benevolent Egyptian Army?

It must have been a case of seeing one too many rocks or Molotov cocktails tossed near the Nile River that nudged one of my right-brain neurons.  I began thinking about sports franchises and the scouts who find tomorrow's great athletes.  Memory produced thoughts of the late Bob Feller whose recent summons to baseball's great bullpen in the sky recalled discovery of the corn-fed fire-baller by a scout who saw him pitch in Van Meter, Iowa, then signed the 16-year-old for $1 and a ball autographed by the Cleveland Indians.  Feller's finder was named Cyril C. Slapnicka, a name I've enthused about for more than 70 years.

Suddenly, I was wondering if any scouts for major league baseball or the National Football League, viewing those Mubarak protesters in Tahrir Square, had witnessed an arm of potential professional sports greatness.  This prompted satirical thoughts of film including recollections of a very early (1936) Judy Garland movie titled "Pigskin Parade" whose plot involves the discovery of a hayseed farmhand (Stuart Erwin) who helps propel melons to the market place by throwing them into a net held 50 yards or so away by kid sister Garland in her feature debut.  Quite naturally, he becomes a passing sensation, his team (Texas State University) defeats mighty Yale and, as Casey Stengel used to say: "You could look it up."

Alas, I watched TV for many hours as Egyptians threw awkwardly whatever they could get their hands on before I arrived at an obvious conclusion: Egyptians may have worse arms than the French.  With the French, it appears to be all in the wrists that are, well, inclined toward pronounced limpness.  About the most conspicuous French athletic accomplishment has been watching memorable bicycle pileups at the Tour de France. 

Let's assume, as an excuse to create this column, a superior arm did arise from the street ruble.  Further, let's give the arm's owner a name: Tutankhamon Isu Ismahbaba who, concurrent with the uprising, is a student at the Institut Francais d'Archeologie Orientale (IFAO) where his singular interest in sports has been as a member of the varsity badminton team.  Young Tut's only experience throwing anything into the air other than shuttlecocks occurs during summer vacations when he feeds tourist-transporting camels from a very safe distance.

Our story begins with the Cairo revolt and discovery of Tutankhamon by Sisyphus Slapnicka, the great grandson of Cyril C. Slapnicka, the aforementioned finder of Rapid Robert Feller.  Sisyphus, as founding father of the International League of Uphill Stonerollers, had come upon difficult times prior to the fortunate sighting of Tut.  Only the Manilla Folders, one of six teams in the ILUS, had been able to acquire any real spectator interest largely because of topographical home field advantage and Slapnicka was at wit's end--easily reached in Cairo by passing Cheops, grabbing a left at Chaphren, and taking a right at Mycermus.

It is during scenes of scuffling at Tahrir Square that we learn through flashbacks the sad story of young Tut's interest in archeology having been forced upon him.  His father, the renowned Neferkaher Isu Ismahbaba, had pushed the lad, then five, into a life of grime in excavation hell when he demanded the boy dig practice potholes in the streets of Cairo in preparation for a life of searching in ancient ruins.  By the time Tut was 13, the command to please his father had resulted in diggings so large that the fishing community transformed Tut's vast handiwork into ponds commodius enough for impressive quantities of Nile perch (Latos Nicoticus often called African snook).  Nile perch grow to as much as 440 lbs. and young Tut eventually found himself the subject of much Cairo conversation; it was about then that he enrolled at IFAO where he vowed participation in more modest digs after going cold turkey regarding what his father had prompted.

Having seen on CNN that Tut was capable of throwing a Molotov cocktail 400 feet, Slapnicka, a part-time scout for the New York Mets, arranges for the team to sign the youngster on Oprah's channel despite Regis Philbin's plaintive plea that Tut, lacking major league experience, was not ready for the big leagues and should spend some time pitching for the Notre Dame varsity.    

Naturally, there's a love interest in the story.  It's the CNN reporter, Daisy Diaphanous, and who can ever forget her iconic remark about one-time Mets pitcher Tom Seaver that sets so much in motion?  "I haven't seen an arm like that since Tom Terrific" became a comment that reverberated throughout baseball's hallowed halls and the Mets suddenly became Tut's destiny.

The press, of course, has a field ay with the pitching phenom who, like the early Feller, at first has control problems while notching as many walks as strikeouts.  It is after a momentary falter in which he sets a nine-inning record for bases-on-balls that a New York Post headline screams: "Sphinx Stinks."  Tut's being drafted by the Mets is referred to an an "Egyptian conscription," his message to the baseball world ("I flip, you zip") is called an "Egyptian encryption" and his wondrous 105 mph fastball the "Egyptian Conniption" because of the fits it gives hitters.  David Letterman, citing an "Egyptian prescription" as "good for what has long ailed Mets fans," describes the hurler's most successful pitch location as being "right corner low, swift, and un-hittable."  Time magazine even solves a lagging circulation problem by getting Tut involved in an Egyptian subscription promotion.

Mets management, in a highly-critized move, makes a Charlie Finleyan attempt to get Tut to change his name thus recalling the story of the Kansas City Athletics' owner who once offered pitcher Vida Blue $10,000 to trade his first name for True.  The Mets ask Tut to switch his name to King Tut and Egyptian officials, already vexed trying to figure out how to make democracy work, get into an uproar over lobbyists representing Egypt's greatest tourist attraction amidst accusations of "pyramid schemes." 

A further plot development occurs when Brooklyn-based baseball birthers claim that Tut is really a Jew born in Flatbush and is the love child of Dodger great Sandy Koufax and entertainer Barbra Streissand.

Streissand, re-united with Koufax, makes Egyptian travel plans to reprise her "Yentl" character and writes, produces, directs, edits and makes chicken soup for the cast of "Gentle, Dental, Yentl," a film of many conflicts.  Yentl, confused about her identity as a dentist, is torn between her first love, root canals, and wisdom teeth extraction.  Interested in what may be more than a transitory relationship between her calling and methods employed during Egyptian excavations, the intellectually curious Yentl/Streissand arrives in Cairo and finds time to do a film promotion concert among the tombs and palm trees.  Our final scene finds a celebratory Streissand performing her concert whose musical numbers include: (the closely-associated-with Lady Gaga) "Teeth," "The Toothbrush Song" ("Brush, Brush, Brush Your Teeth" sung to "Row, Row, Row Your Boat") and "All I want for Christmas Are My Two Front Teeth."

Hit of the multi-media show is a 3-D version of Steve Martin's classic "Dentist Song" from "The Little Shop of Horrors."  In great demand, it continues to be shown on the sides of rotating pyramids in the Land of the Pharoahs.  When last seen, the highly-reclusive Koufax was hiding among the shadows of Cheops.

To be continued some time.  

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Amadeus Riffs....by Bob Sanders

There's something about living in an area where by law dancing and drinking at the same time are prohibited in a town nearby to Bellingham where a high level of that old devil jazz is performed on once-a-month Sundays at an intriguingly-named venue.  It's called The Amadeus Project with jazz but one of its many offerings.  Beer is served on a tip jar basis and the pretzels are fabulous.

Were he among us, Mozart would probably giggle about Lynden terpsichorean matters and enthuse regarding Amadeus Project goings on.  The odds are pretty good that Mozart never thought that dancing was anything other than a distraction from his music.  On the other hand, an article in Personality & Spirituality wonders if Michael Jackson was the reincarnation of Wolfgang Amadeus.  I guess we'll never know.  Jazz-wise, I do recall that Artie Shaw abhorred dancing and let's not forget Miles Davis who turned his back on just about everything but did manage to grope an occasional groupie.

Jazz, that seemingly always threatened species, got off to a roaring good start this year thanks to a magnificent performance by the Dave Peck Trio.  This great and good fortune was presented by The Jazz Project, a dedicated enthusiasm of Jud Sherwood who brings to B'ham performance opportunities for local, regional, national, and international jazz musicians.  Peck and his cohorts are are decidedly among the latter.

Highly inventive, pianist Peck is lyrical and of impeccable taste as he ventures inside tunes (Sunday's examinations averaged 15 minutes per tune) reaching successfully for impressionist harmonies that lead to further discoveries.  His mastery of the familiar ("Embraceable You") and the barely re-called ("Never Let Me Go") display a brilliant inventiveness that sets him apart while recalling such musical first cousins as Bill Evans, Andre Previn and Herbie Hancock at his most introspective.  Yes, Peck is that good.

Born in Tacoma, Peck became interested in jazz while in high school when he heard Miles Davis and connected with the trumpet.  Interestingly enough, it was a dentist who created an embouchure problem when he closed up an impressive air hole by extracting braces, then implanted a couple of teeth.  Up to that point, Peck had the greatest set of fangs this side of Transylvania.  Peck's appearance was enhanced, but gone was his ability to produce even one note.  Such are the vagaries of life.  That was in McMinnville, Oregon where Peck's family had moved.  He then took to the piano, whose acquaintance he had made while composing, and soon he was in Seattle.

From 1978 to 1996, Peck performed as a sideman for such jazz greats as Chet Baker, Joe Williams, Sonny Stitt, Lee Konitz, Freddie Hubbard, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and, most notably, Bud Shank.  The 15-year association with the latter resulted in a series of CDs including: "Tales of the Pilot," "Bud Shank Plays the Music of Dave Peck," "Live at Jazz Alley," and "The Lost Cathedral."  As if he isn't busy enough, the former Associate Professor of Music at Cornish College of the Arts in Seattle currently maintains a private teaching studio where he inspires Jazz Composition, Repertoire, Improvisation and Piano.

Of considerable assistance in Peck's Bellingham appearance were bassist Jeff Johnson and drummer Eric Eagle.  Seattle-based, Johnson is an exquisite player, a perfect companion to Peck's inventive flights as is Eagle.  Drummers appear to fall into two categories: noisy and subdued.  Eagle is of the latter--certainly while playing with the ballad-prone Peck.  Under such circumstances, let's somewhat hesitantly put Eagle in the Zutty Singleton School of Subtlety and hope he doesn't play hooky.  There are few indulgences more banal than an overly-extended drum solo whose contribution is mostly sheer noise and whose baseball equivalency is the long foul ball.

There can be little doubt that Sherwood has established himself as Bellingham's "Mr. Jazz."  His Jazz Project 2011, already off to such a fine start, will offer 10 more gigs this year involving such personages as: the Western Washington Faculty Jazz Collective featuring Mike Allen (April 24); the John Moak Trio with the lustrous guitarist Christopher Woitach (August 28); and the Jovino Santos Neto Quartet (November 27).  

Sherwood's musical imprints are all over this part of the Fourth Corner and include twice-monthly Boundary Bay Jazz Jams (second and fourth Tuesdays starting at 8:30 p.m.) in the BB taproom.  Then, there is the somewhat exotic sounding Twilight Songstress Series being held in Blaine's historic Loomis Hall.  It's one down and three to go with what used to be called chick singers.  Jennifer Scott was her usual solid self on January 15, and we're looking forward to: Gail Pettis, backed by the always swinging Randy Halberstadt (April 16); Greta Matassa (July 9); and Cheryl Hodge (September 17). 

Oh, yes Sherwood is keeping his drumming chops in shape as he helps back the chirpers of the dusk.  (As a heartfelt observation, it's nice these days to have total control of what one writes.  There was a journalistic time when typesetters had the last word and chirpers of the dusk might have wound up as chippies of the dusk or chippies of the duck).

Not to extol the virtues of the seemingly omnipresent Sherwood ad infinitum, but there's more.  In addition to Underwriter Projects, the Bellingham Youth Jazz Band, the Medical Fund, and the Scholarship Lesson Fund, there is something totally charming in the Sherwood jazz arsenal called the Piano Liberation Organization, now having freed 82 of them from attics, basements, garages and, to be sure, Fairhaven Piano Races.  While 88 ivories are key to the project (there's that word, again), other instrumental donations are accepted so that poor kids can get a break.

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"The Cream in Woods Coffee"....by Bob Sanders

As readers of this space are aware, I have a determined desire to make the rest of the world aware of Bellingham blemishes.  The decision was made a few years ago when this country became awash with media praise suggesting Fourth Corner utopia awaited 15 miles south of the Canadian border.

Something had to be done and it had to be more than an extensive use of the city's nickname, The City of Subdued Excitement, to keep hordes of invaders, including Canadians, outside the boundaries of Whatcom County.  Mere name-calling is insufficient as proven by the failure of bumper stickers warning against Californicating our state.

Prior suggestions by your humble scribe have included: the development of a wide open White Neck Riviera north of town, a new motto, Tony Soprano's Kinda Town; and the creation of a first class public relations team whose mission would be to make America aware of, among other failings, Bellingham's excessive mopery based upon a lack of vitamin D due to insufficient sunshine.  We'll get back to that one later.

The remarkable number of Subdued City hosannas sung by the press continues.  Just the other day came word that Bellingham is now ranked seventh among small emerging markets in terms of being attractive to quick service restaurants.  Quick service is restaurant speak for what we used to call fast food until that term fell into disrepute when caloric counts were connected to our national obesity problem.  It grieves me deeply to inform the survey folks that B'ham is already over-crowded with quick service giants.  Two of them, I-HOP and Dairy Queen, recently shut down.

One means of making people think twice about moving here would emphasize the use of pop culture in creating determent.  As with every community, there are sinister forces at work whose detailed presence should be cornerstone of a rallying call of warning.  Personal attack is most effective when used in a humorous vein so let's do parodies about those who screw up our lives in Subdued City.  Popular culture, including books, songs, and film, is a great way to bring attention to people like Sam Crawford.  Chairman of the Whatcom County Council, Sam recently was described by Cascadia Weekly wit Alan Rhodes as the "Developers Homeboy and Mother Nature's Nemesis."

One obvious Crawford put down would be use of the great Budd Schulberg epic, What Makes Sammy Run?  Since many of us know what a barrel of laughs Crawford can be, let's get someone at our Idiom Theater to do a little lampooning titled: What Makes Sammy Fun?  Perhaps a writer of one of the theater's marathons might work in Say It, Again, Sam? with apologies to Bogie, Dooley Wilson, and all the cast member of Casablanca.

Politics and politicians, of course, are logical targets of our program of derision for would-be future Subdued City residents with Bellingham mayor Dan Pike offering particular opportunity.  Let's take a grand old Irish tune and turn it into Danny Oy to be heard from glen to glen and down the mountainside.  This might even make a campaign tune for the mayor should he choose to run again although his recent intransigence toward Paul Leuthold and Parks & Recreation suggest otherwise.  Then, there's impressive satirical potential in Guys & Pols.

How about Trillium Corp., the once mighty firm whose footprints are all over B'ham--particularly the north side?  Not many people today are aware of Groucho Marx's comedic eloquence when he sang "Lydia, the Tattooed Lady" in At the Circus.  Not that "Yip" Harburg's brilliant lyrics could be improved upon but "Oh, Trillium, oh, Trillium, have you seen oh, Trillium?"should work if only to beg the obvious: Where in hell is Trillium these days?  Included in such a shot across the bow of invading hordes is Bellingham's plethora of tattooed ladies.  I'm not sure plethora is really the right word when referencing the plural of such adorned women.  If many lions are a pride and dogs a pack, perhaps a body of tattooed ladies would be more appropriate.

The Bellingham penchant for tattoos, of course, is accompanied by a propensity for body piercing--often in unlikely places.  Think of the attention to be gained by holding both tattoo beauty contests and body piercing competition in the City of Subdued Excitement.  Think of impaled bodies being assessed by well-named judges who could include Pierce Brosnan, Boston Celtic Paul Pierce, or retired Chicago White Sox pitcher Billy Pierce.

For purposes of sheer melodrama, let's call one of our opuses "Brett Bonner Lies Over the Ocean."  This plot might involve the driven former KGMI announcer, a mainland outcast, reduced to broadcasting his messages of conservatism from a boat located beyond the 12-mile limit.  Bonner bears minor league resemblance to Tim Eyman, the initiative-happy Seattleite, and may be recalled as the guy who led the charge to defeat a teen-tiny sales tax increase that resulted in no Sunday bus service for the old and infirm.  Way to go Brett!

Bellingham's lack of sunshine and abundance of rain could be recognized sardonically both in song and book.  "Shady Side of the Street" sings volumes and provides publicity opportunities involving race, always sure-fire.  "Shady Side" is about a professional black basketball player who passes for white in order to further his career.  A guy with his blues on parade, he's a rover who crosses over.  Just as Mark Twain's use of the n word in Huckleberry Finn suggests to some the book's expulsion from libraries, Jimmy McHugh's re-worked original (lyrics by Dorothy Fields) will get even further scrutiny as narrow minds again range from over-reaction to fulmination.

Certainly, our over-abundance of rain-producing moss promises unique means of thwarting teeming invaders.  If the Equality State (Wyoming) can be accorded a book, The Green Grass of Wyoming, then Subdued City should be acknowledged as having The Green Moss of Bellingham.  There is no denying that moss is to Bellingham what rust is to Hawaii or South Georgia, for that matter.

Then, there's the fascinating case of the Bellingham Herald's staff shrinkage and the newspaper's executive editor filling Sunday space with something called "Out and About."  Such titles take one back to journalism's Golden Age, columns like the New Yorker's still-published "Talk of the Town" and even the Leonard Bernstein musical, "On the Town."  According to Bellingham's up and aroundsters who know about such things, there have been precious few sightings of the editor outside her transom-equipped office.  In honor of Julie Shirley's journalistic triumph (admittedly weighted by bake sales), let's create the first media musical.  Call it "Con the Town."

And because the Pacific Northwest is coffee country, we could decry caffeine evils awaiting newcomers by way of a whiz-bang Mt. Baker Theater extravaganza with the catchy tune, "You're the Cream in Woods Coffee."  Sung to a cow by a dairy farmer whose land is being swept away by home developers, "You're the Cream in Woods Coffee" is a likely hit for the show, "Dutch Courage."  The plot involves a Whatcom County first line of defense as Canadians swarm across the border to be met by a gin-swigging Lynden population given the kind of liquid valor provided English soldiers during the Thirty Years' War.

Let the parody games begin.

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More Minnie....by Bob Sanders

Last week's column about the Grand Ole Opry piece I wrote for TV Guide in 1956 included references to comedienne Minnie Pearl who was a big help.  The assignment had been made by the magazine's editor, Merrill Panitt. 

The aptly-named journalist had been radio/TV critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer prior to moving to the  Walter Annenberg-owned sister publication, established in April, 1953.  Annenberg was the son of Moses L. Annenberg whose life is worth a Google or two.  Moses L. was an exceedingly rough-and-tumble sort whose origins were the Chicago newspaper circulation wars.  His employers included the Chicago Tribune plus papers owned by William Randolph Hearst who called him a "circulation genius."  Annenberg, whose genius was mostly muscle that prompted close association with America's then reigning mobsters, eventually was sent to prison for neglecting to pay nearly $10 million in unpaid taxes including interest and penalties.  Son Walter never forgot as he walked an exceedingly straight-and-narrow while preferring to believe that his father's prison time was the result of a Franklin D. Roosevelt political contributions vendetta.  Republication enthusiasts sometimes climb on board through the darndest of circumstances. 

TV Guide's origins go back to the late 40s and New York City where Lee Wagner started a purely local publication based upon the obvious: TV viewers needed help determining what they would watch.  By 1953, there were seven stations in the Big Apple (included was a channel assigned to Newark, N.J.) and there was no doubt that such a relative glut of viewing possibilities required a guide.

It was Wagner who recognized the potential so believe not the Russian history accounts promulgated by Annenberg and others who have failed consistently to acknowledge Wagner's creativity so enhanced by an understandable reluctance by newspapers to carry detailed program listings.  Some papers did an about face but, by then, TV Guide was entrenched.

Give Annenberg credit.  It was he who bought Wagner's product seeing it as the keystone of a national magazine.  When I worked for TV Guide, it was common knowledge that a vice-presidential minion named Joe Furst initially suggested the magazine's feasibility.  More than 50 years and three ownerships later (the scary Rupert Murdoch was one), TV Guide is but a slim shadow of what it once was.  Highly accurate program listings, once the heart of the publication, have been enormously reduced largely because of the vast number of viewing outlets.  The magazine's gushing character is today more suggestive of People with inane stories about stars now the focus.  During my 13 years with TV Guide, we were considered the Dutch uncle of the industry with Panitt the writer of tough and incisive editorials.  Not having TV Guide was like living in Chicago and not reading Mike Royko.

Panitt, a graduate of the University of Missouri's fine School of Journalism, had a no-nonsense attitude based on a deeply-held conviction that TV Guide's success was mostly a matter of providing accurate program information.  Also, he was determined that the National Feature Section, a wrap-around common to all editions (they eventually numbered more than 225) would never become a fan magazine.  When TV goofed, Panitt was there to chastise the recalcitrant child.

By the time of my Opry assignment, the program had been testing the TV waters as a monthly show--as unsure of its TV audience as it was certain of its radio followers, faithful since November 28, 1925 when the show began on WSM-AM.

Proof of the Opry's TV trepidation in 1956 was the rather remarkable first show booking of Tony Bennett who sang Hank Williams' "Cold, Cold Heart."  Here we are 54 years later and Bennett is still a major entertainer and the Opry likely to return to TV after a devastating flood this past spring.

Following publication of the story in the April 7, 1956 edition of TV Guide, Minnie Pearl and I corresponded.  That summer, wife Betty and I decided to visit her mother in Bristol, Virginia.  Invited by Minnie to stop by, we did so.  It was a stop of martini significance.  Arriving at her home shortly before noon, the pride of Grinder's Switch announced that we would be eating chicken prepared by the Cannon cook.  Husband Henry was off flying a client to a gig and Minnie broke out the Beefeater's and vermouth and put on some George Shearing records.  It turned out Shearing was her favorite jazz artist.  Minnie and I really hit it off and a torrent of verbal communication ensued.

Betty, pretty much a teetotaler, was please to meet Minnie and, as I remember, called upon by her getting-happier-by-the-moment husband to sing "Git Along Mule" whose second line runs: "don't you roll them eyes."  Betty had utilized her country repertoire during PI Beta Phi social events at Ohio University.  She and Minnie sang backwoods material as the Beefeater's level plunged.

Almost to the day Betty died, my observant wife claimed I drank 12 martinis that day and it's difficult to discredit her account.  I did read a year later of a guy who perished after consuming 15 so it's understandable why I've never threatened the Nashville record.  The chicken went untouched.

I kept in touch with Minnie over the years.  She was elected to the Country Music Hall of Fame in 1975.  The plaque honoring her achievement reads: "Humor is the least recorded but certainly one of the most important aspects of live country music." 

After suffering three attacks of breast cancer that led to double mastectomy surgery in 1985, Minnie returned to the Opry making her final appearance June 14, 1991.  During a routine with Acuff, she forgot her lines although Acuff effectively covered for her.  Minnie ran offstage shouting to her husband: "Henry, we've got to go home."  Her 51-year association with the show ended three days later when a stroke left her partially paralyzed.  Admission to a retirement home followed and her condition slowly worsened.  Minnie received the National Medal of Arts from President George Bush the Elder in 1992 and two years later was inducted into the National Comedy Hall of Fame.  She died March 4, 1996.

Every so often I hoist a martini to Minnie Pearl.  Never 12.

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Kay Lorraine....by Bob Sanders

Last week's look at Fourth Corner jazz singer Trish Hatley produced for me a series of memories about what we used to call "chick singers."  Having worked in the media for such firms as TV Guide, Playboy, Public Television, Field Enterprises (Chicago Daily News & Sun-Times), and Chicago Tribune, it's not surprising that my associations included singers Julie London, Carol Burnett ("I Made a Fool of Myself Over John Foster Dulles" was an early success), Sheila McRae, Helen O'Connell, Marilyn Maye, and Kay Lorraine.  

It was early on with TV Guide that I met Lorraine at a party to herald the arrival of the magazine in St. Louis.  That was in the fall of 1954.  I had joined the magazine in Cleveland by way of a recommendation from Maurice Condon, Cleveland Edition manager and a guy I had met while a reporter/columnist on the nearby Lorain Journal./  Morrie, then still referred to as "The Voice of Cleveland," had gone into station management and was running a Lorain/Elyria radio station (WEOL) when we became acquainted.  TV Guide would eventually become television's Dutch uncle while gaining a weekly circulation of more than 20 million.

The magazine moved me immediately to St. Louis where significant circulation challenges awaited.  Key to the success of any edition of the publication was the number of station signals available and St. Louis had but two VHF (very high frequency) channels plus a UHF (ultra high frequency) outlet whose Class A coverage reached but 25 miles.  When it came to program selection, viewers had little need for TV Guide.

My move to St. Louis did enable me to resume a friendship with Jack Buck who, in 1954, had begun broadcasting Cardinals games with Harry Caray.  Buck and I had played baseball together in Lakewood, Ohio where we grew up living a block away from each other.

We flew in a couple of Chicago TV personalities to dress up the party.  Mary Hartline, star of "Super Circus," was one, singer Johnny Desmond the other.  Kay Lorraine, a former band singer, was a local girl (from the heavily German south side, her straight name was, I believe, Schultz) who had made good in New York at storied radio station WNEW where such DJs as Martin Block ("Make Believe Ballroom") and William B. Williams held forth.

Kay, a recent DJ hire by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch-owned KSD radio, and I hit it off partly because I had been a DJ at WOUN while a student at Ohio University.  I had a heightened awareness of pop and jazz recording artists and she began calling me at the TV Guide office for tips about what to play on her afternoon gig.

Two years went by during which I was moved to Kansas City where, among other things, I started the Oklahoma Edition, then was moved back to St. Louis where I ran into Lorraine at the Bismarck Restaurant located hard by the Post-Dispatch and broadcast chattels KSD and KSD-TV.  The early October occasion followed a late afternoon Veiled Prophet Parade honoring the Veiled Prophet of Khorassan, dressed in a costume eerily reminiscent of Ku Klux Klan attire.  The parade, now held each July 4, was followed by the crowning of a Queen of Love and Beauty at a debutante cotillion.  The Queen sometimes was not particularly attractive and the word was that many were daughters of heavy corporate hitters who gave the most money to the event.  Two social notes: A woman dramatically unmasked the Veiled Prophet in 1972 (her car later bombed and home ransacked) and the Veiled Prophet people admitted their first back in 1979.

Having wandered into the Bismarck after viewing part of the parade, I was halfway through dinner when I spotted Kay entering the restaurant and motioned her to join me.  She sat with devastating results.  The chair collapsed, she fell injuring her back, the maitre d' shouted: "Get that damn chair out of here" and I became a witness in what would be a long-running lawsuit.

The lawsuit followed me to Atlanta, Rochester, NY, Davenport, and Kansas City--all further stops along the way during my 13 years with TV Guide that eventually produced eight transfers.  There were three things I could always count on while moving around TVland: At least one channel in a given market claimed that the prototype for the Ted Baxter buffoonish anchorman character in the "Mary Tyler Moore" show had once worked at the station; there was an inordinate number of farm reporters named Al Pigg and Fred Farmer; and I always was contacted by a lawyer representing the Bismarck Restaurant.

I lost contact with Kay who had been treated by Dr. Robert Hyland, a famed osteopath whose specialty was sports medicine (he was Cardinals' team physician) and whose son, Bob, was a highly successful general manager of KMOX radio.

I never learned what Kay Lorraine's payoff was as a result of my invitational wave.  The Bismarck is no more and I know not why.  I suspect the maitre d' spent the rest of his career paying a lot of attention to the condition of chairs in all restaurants affording him employment.  Perhaps his minions called him "His Chairness."

Through the magic of the computer, I tracked Kay coming up with references to her having performed on WNEW with Merle Pitt's Five Shades of Blue.  I also downloaded a 1943 Soundie of her singing "I Don't Want to Walk Without You."  Soundies were film jukeboxes that, for a dime, offered rear screen projections of often awkwardly-plotted musical numbers in addition to already established big band hits by such orchestras as those led by Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway, and Johnny Long.

During conversations with Kay, she occasionally made fleeting references to Frank Sinatra who recorded broadcasts at WNEW.  She told how DJ Williams gave the singer the show business "title" associated with him the rest of his long career.  Suggesting that if Benny Goodman was the "King of Swing" and Edward Kennedy Ellington "The Duke," then it was logical that Sinatra be referred to as "The Chairman of the Board."

I soon ran out of Kay Lorraine Google opportunities.  I wonder what became of her?   

Jazz Singer Trish Hatley....by Bob Sanders

Finding jazz in the Fourth Corner where I live is a sometimes thing and it has been largely a matter of diminishing returns during my more than 20 years here.  While there's a fair amount in Seattle and Vancouver, Bellingham's size (population 80,000) work against such opportunities.

The search for jazz here has pitfalls.  One involves the definition of the word which means different things to different people.  An early warning was offered by Louis Armstrong and, all too often, credited to Dizzy Gillespie.  Armstrong, asked "what is jazz?," replied: "If you have to ask, then you'll never know."

There are two prominent promoters of jazz in Bellingham.  One is Mark Kelly, a reed man who teaches kids, directs the Bellingham High Jazz Band, and plays in groups including Sasquatch.  The other is a dedicated Jud Sherwood who runs The Jazz Project, brings occasional names to monthly sessions, and plays a variety of gigs as a much too loud drummer.  The traditional version of the art form here is barely alive, a condition mirrored by its adherents.  

The jazz experience in Bellingham is often a matter of attending Jazz Project gigs, stumbling upon the great American invention in places like Skylarks, a Fairhaven restaurant, seeking tips from friends, or exploring beyond city limits; communities like Blaine, a small Canadian border town (it has a summer jazz fest while B'ham can't put one together), and Anacortes to the southwest come to mind.  Billing itself as the Gateway to the San Juan Islands, Anacortes is the home of Trish Hatley, an uncommonly good jazz singer.

A lot of singers like to think they are jazz singers.  They often have impressive collections of jazz records and tell stories about jazz greats as they talk the talk.  Sometimes, they marry well as did pop singer Theresa Brewer ("Music, Music, Music") whose second husband, Bob Thiele, produced an album of hers backed by the Count Basie Orchestra.  The Aflack duck could record with a band like Basie and come off pretty good and Brewer' gig, while surprisingly acceptable, did not make of her a jazz singer.  As Armstrong once put it: "We all do 'do, re, mi' but you have to find the other notes for yourself."

Hatley, a commanding presence, has been around the track more than a couple of times while acquiring an authenticity rare among singers.  During the past year, I've caught her four times and each of the occasions has been a further revelation.  When Hatley tells a story about the challenges and vagaries of life as in "Cry Me a River" or "Body and Soul," you get the feeling she has been there, done that.

A significant chunk of Hatley's effectiveness involves the musical company she keeps.  Her usual partners in time, pianist Hans Brehmer, and bassist Larry Holloway, are not only superb musicians but blessed with senses of humor that bring out the best in the charismatic singer.  Brehmer, in particular, has an elfin approach to matters comedic and does his best to break up Hatley--sometimes succeeding as the fun mostly skirts what can be the dark corridors of little understood musicians' humor.

There are two Trish Hatleys.  One is the consummate performer of gigs at such venues as: Semiahmoo, a resort near Blaine; Rockfish Grill in Anacortes; The Farmhouse in La Conner; and the Eagle Haven Winery near Sedro Woolley, a town whose name I can't hear without thinking of "Bull Durham" and the film's Tim Robbins singing his version of "Try a Little Tenderness" whose lyrics are kicked off with: "She may be wooley..."

The other Hatley is the recording one whose most recent disc, "On the Quiet Side," was again arranged and conducted by Seattle's Darin Clendenin.  All the tunes are ballads with the exception of Dave Frishberg's "Zanzibar;" the album includes such gems as "Lush Life," "That's All," and the haunting "So Many Stars."  The latter is Hatley at her reflective ballad best bringing back memories of the pensive Margaret Whiting.

Even better is Hatley's ability to swing. Think tunes like "Fascinatin' Rhythm" And "Shiny Stockings."  Hatley is a very precise musician yet part of her charm is to make the audience feel that the artistry is a casual bit of magic.  In working an audience, Hatley is reminiscent of Kaye Stevens who used to appear at the Riviera in Las Vegas back in the 60s.  Stevens, statuesque like Hatley, was a redhead who looked a great deal like Lucille Ball at her MGM loveliest.  Audiences and critics were captivated by Stevens' ability to control audiences.

The gig in August at the winery was a lot of fun.  With the venue tucked into the foothills of the North Cascade Mountain Range five miles east of Sedro Woolley, the day was warm with a nice welcoming breeze able to glide through a newly-built mostly roof structure that somehow, thanks to the musicians, became a club-like atmosphere of 50 years past despite the outdoor locale.  The $5 admission brought with it a wine tasting, the grape could be purchased for as little as $10 a bottle, and there was good food available. 

Trish Hatley and a bottle of wine.  Tough to beat.

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