ART NOTES #1 - a survey of the career of Shauna Cook Clinger is at the University of Utah's art museum through February 15th.
FAMILY NOTES - the French Justice Minister Rachida Dati has come under fire from women's groups for returning to work just five days after giving birth.
YUK for today - seeking to curb public urination, the town of Feldkirch, Austria has 10 pubs and restaurants that make their toilets available for non-customers. The sign on the toilet doors publicizing this policy? Why, "Yes, you can!"
WEDNESDAY's CHILD #1 has to be Lupin die Studio Katze - the German kitty who walked onto a TV weather report from Jörg Kachelmann, who picked him up to finish his forecast.
Just in case you haven't seen it: this link has the entire (adorable) video.
MUSIC NOTES - the 90 year-old pianist Marian McPartland will celebrate 30 years of "Marian McPartland's Piano Jazz" radio program with a free performance at the Trinity Wall Street Church later this month.
MUSIC NOTES - the 21-year-old Irish singer Laura Izibor - the daughter of an Irish mother and Nigerian immigrant father - opened for Aretha Franklin in New York recently and is seeking to break into the US pop market.
BROTHER-SISTER? - soon-to-be Senator Al Franken and surgeon/ author/TV medical correspondent Dr. Susan Love.
 
FINANCIAL NOTES - Harry Markopolos, the accountant who spent the better part of a decade (unsuccessfully) trying to convince the SEC that Bernard Madoff had to be running a shady outfit - is now (uncomfortably) in the limelight himself.
ANOTHER CONTESTANT in the cult-of-personality world is the King of Morocco about whom criticism is illegal.
WHILE the ORIGINAL Polaroid instant cameras are now out of production: their digital print camera comes out this spring; the company's logical successor.
SEPARATED at BIRTH #1 - TV star Richard Karn and TV pitchman Billy Mays.
 
ELECTION NOTES - the Netherlands' first immigrant mayor is being hailed as 'Obama on the Maas (River)'.
FASHION NOTES - a fashion columnist examined the criticism that designer house Prada endured when one of its male models wore a corduroy suit at a show recently. But declaring that it's not only for 1970's liberal arts professors: he noted Clark Gable wearing one in "It Happened One Night".
BIRD NOTES - Australia's Environmental Protection Authority believes poisoning is behind the deaths of 60 parrots at a school in the state of Queensland. Sixty ex-parrots?!? Where's John Cleese when ya need him?
SCIENCE NOTES #1 - new research indicates that the Milky Way is 50% larger than previously thought.
HERO PET - although he has gone missing, Fluffy the Cat - despite being just a neighborhood kitty - alerted a family to a house fire (that their smoke detectors did not).
CULTURE NOTES - the German festival association DSB wants Munich's Oktoberfest to be added to the UNESCO's list as an Intangible Cultural Heritage element (like the pyramids of Giza, the Taj Mahal or Stonehenge).
SCIENCE NOTES #2 - two space probes on the planet Mars have been in service more than five years and counting - much longer than the three month life-span they were expected to have.
SCIENCE NOTES #3 - researchers in Britain are investigating if installing a home water softener can relieve childrens' eczema symptoms.
IN a PROFILE of the noted character actor Philip Seymour Hoffman - who is soon to play the role of Iago on-stage soon - he says, "To my mind, Iago actually loves Othello. And it's hard not to think of Obama when you read Othello now."
ART NOTES #2 - a retrospective of the works of realist painter Stephen Tanis are at the University of Delaware art museum through March 8th.
A RECENT cartoon by Tom Tomorrow looks at the supposed Post-Partisan Era.
MUSIC NOTES - with the 200th anniversary of the birth of classical composer Felix Mendelssohn just a few weeks away: documents suggest that as a married man in 1847, he asked Swedish soprano Jenny Lind to elope with him to the United States.
WEDNESDAY's CHILD #2 is named Sammy the Cat - an Alabama post-office kitty about whom a resident claimed should not be allowed inside because "he doesn't pay taxes".
But local residents (including former Auburn football coach Pat Dye) have rallied to Sammy's support, even buying him ... his own post-office box.
The BRITISH GOVERNMENT is placing on-line that nation's 1911 census that reveals details about authors Virginia Woolf as well as J.M. Barrie (the author of Peter Pan) listing himself as married in the return, despite having divorced in 1909.
INAUGURATION NOTES - buses carrying people to next week's inauguration are coming from Canada as well as places in the US.
SEPARATED at BIRTH #2 - Politico.com's Meagan Bond and Washington Times reporter Kara Rowland.
 
.......... and for a song of the day ......................................................... ...last week being the 8th of January: it seems appropriate to feature a song commemorating an event that took place 194 years ago. The Battle of New Orleans (fair-use extract below) was an unlikely "saga song" that wound up as #1 on the pop charts and even won a Grammy Award in 1960. And it all started from a schoolteacher's desire to make American history more interesting; an even more unlikely genesis to a hit song.
He was born James Morris in Arkansas back in 1907, but the world came to know him as Jimmie Driftwood (photo left) which became his stage name, then legal name later. A graduate of Arkansas Teacher's College, he began writing songs as a means to entertain his high school students about the teaching of history - a subject which I agree is all-too-often taught in a dry, rote-memory way. Eventually, he composed over 5,000 songs about some aspect of American history. As Bruce Eder of the All-Music Guide notes, the only comparable songwriter was Lee Hays of The Weavers who - because of his activism - never got the opportunities that Driftwood did ... like performing for Nikita Krushchev on his first U.S. visit, for example.
One of those songs was about a battle during the nearly-forgotten War of 1812 (that took place on January 8th, 1815 in fact). Driftwood wrote it in 1936, in the course of writing many others. With the folk music boom of the 1950's, Driftwood found his work being spoken of by scholars, and he received offers to speak at colleges. Don Warden (a pedal steel player for Porter Wagoner's band) had begun a publishing company, and helped him win a contract from RCA Victor in 1957.
His album Newly Discovered Early American Folk Songs even had backing from Chet Atkins on guitar. It sold modestly but got little airplay due to the use of the words ...... "hell" and "damn". While he continued to write and record, his story might have ended there.
Enter the Los Angeles-born (but Texas raised) singer Johnny Horton (photo right) who had become a success recording songs such as "Honky Tonk Man" in 1956 and becoming popular on the rockabilly circuit. After a few more hits, his luck had begun to dry up before a 1959 hit "When It's Springtime in Alaska (It's Forty Below)" revived his career - and then he was given a copy of Jimmie Driftwood's album and decided to record it later in 1959.
The rest is history as - in this five-year period after the Day the Music Died and before the advent of The Beatles - songs that may not have broken through on the pop charts before (or after) now had a golden opportunity. Horton appeared on TV shows, and reached #1 on both the country and pop charts. Sadly, Johnny Horton died the next year (November, 1960) in a car crash in Texas.
Meanwhile, Jimmie Driftwood became popular as a result of the song's success and had to leave teaching (much to his dismay). After the success of "The Battle of New Orleans", five other tunes of his (including "Tennessee Stud", "Sailor Man" and "Wilderness Road") were covered by people from Eddy Arnold, Odetta, Homer and Jethro and his fellow Arkansan Johnny Cash, and made the charts. Driftwood moved to Nashville, appeared at Carnegie Hall as well as the Grand Ole Opry and the Louisiana Hayride.
Eventually he left the music business (other than free shows at schools) and devoted himself to two local pursuits: beginning the Ozark Folk Center (which exists today as part of the Arkansas State Park system) and helping to prevent the damming of the Buffalo River, which led to his appointment as head of the Arkansas Parks and Tourism Committee, as well as an adviser to the Kennedy Center in Washington.
Jimmie Driftwood died in July, 1998 at the age of 91. His work helped influence a generation of performers and won several Grammys for his lifetime work.
 
The Battle of New Orleans ....
... was voted into the Grammy Hall of Fame as its #333 "Song of the Century".
And at this link you can hear Johnny Horton sing it.
In eighteen and fourteen we took a little trip
along with Colonel Jackson down the mighty Mississip
We took a little bacon and we took a little beans
And we caught the bloody British
near the town of New Orleans
We fired our guns and the British kept a'comin
There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago
We fired once more and they began to runnin'
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico.
Old Hickory said we could take 'em by surprise
if we didn't fire a musket 'til we looked 'em in the eyes
We held our fire 'til we seen their faces well
then we opened up with squirrel guns and really gave a yell!
They ran through the briars and they ran through the brambles
They ran through the bushes where a rabbit couldn't go
They ran so fast the hounds couldn't catch 'em
down the Mississippi to the Gulf of Mexico
|
Bumper Stickers & MORE
