DIG THIS WITH BILL MESNIK AND RICH BUCKLAND- THE SPLENDID BOHEMIANS

Buck Owens (August 12, 1929 – March 25, 2006), and Dwight Yoakam (b. October 23, 1956) :  two master navigators of a very unique tributary along the stream of popular music, inspired and learned from each other - one, being the progenitor of the "Bakersfield Sound", and the other his adopted musical progeny.  

"The Streets of Bakersfield," originally recorded by Buck Owens in 1973, was revived as a duet between the two men in 1988, becoming  a chart hit and a popular video.  

Buck, whose career had gone dark after losing his friend and musical partner, Don Rich in 1974, was sparked back to life when Dwight came into his life.  Here Bill and Rich attempt to connect some of the musical catalogue and biographical dots  of these two musical giants.

The singer-songwriter’s singer- songwriter; the Americana artist’s Americana artist, John Hiatt doesn’t get anywhere near the respect he deserves. From way back in 1974, when 3 Dog Night made a hit out of “Sure as I’m Sittin’ Here”, up to today, Hiatt has written and recorded more classic songs than most, and although his voice sounds like vinegar on sand paper, I love his unique vocalizations. He is one of my favorite singers. 

Born in Indiana, just like that other heartland rocker-poet John Mellencamp, Hiatt represents a no frills, tell it like it is approach - (but with consummate lyrical style) - and, always with a wink. Even when he makes me cry with lines like,  from “Icy Blue Heart”: “To melt your icy blue heart, Should I start - To turn what's been frozen for years Into a river of tears?” - I smile, appreciating his unerring craftsmanship.

Hiatt provided a ligature in the sinew of my marriage. Chemayne and I met in ’87 in Atlanta - and the album Slow Turning accompanied our journey northward to New York City. We saw him at the Bottom Line, sitting at a front row table, and when he asked for requests, I suggested Feels Like Rain, because we had made love to it. He obliged. Later, in ’95, after we’d moved to L.A., Chemayne dispatched me to Starbucks (of all places), where Hiatt was making a personal appearance, to get his new CD autographed. When he handed back the disc to me, he called me “Sir”. A true Gentleman Road Warrior. 

"MY HEART TOOK A LEAP - THE POETIC INNOCENCE OF THE SHANGRI-LAS" -

RICH BUCKLAND'S EPIPHANY NOTEBOOK

Like so many pre teens growing up in the sixites I slept with a transistor radio under my pillow. That receiver was the best friend a 12 year old could possibly have. It told me only what I wanted to hear and unlike the parental tunes regulary dispensed, I could slide the dial to another frequency and change the feel and tempo. 1964 was an extraordinary year for popular music and youthful urges. My wireless companion delivered the sound of pleading voices reciting urgent love calls through the night air. The first feminine intonations that whispered directly to my adolescent hunger ariived through The Supremes in June of that year.  I would wait anxiously through the bedtime darkness to hear the DJ conduct another spin of the salvation revealed  within a Diana Ross plea requesting an explanation to what would become the eternal question of  "Where Did Our Love Go".  I was fully captured by the gentle elocution each conflicted tone incited.  She was conducting a sorrowful inquest, the meaning of which I was not experienced enough to comprehend and yet fully accepted.  It felt like a sensual revolution emanating from the magic of a wireless, spiritual trasmission, but more importantly a glorious awakening having nothing to do with sexual messaging. It was my initiation into the significance of lonliness. And then it became more complex. In August of that same period, a  group calling themselves The Shangri-las, dispatched a 45 revelations per second record titled "Remember (Walking In The Sand )"  It ignited something  dark and dramatic. This was my first migraine heartache and I understood the origin. It was the voice of Mary Weiss, the groups teen vocalist from Queens NY, the very  borough I lived in. She was singing  a story of such anguish,  I just wanted to embrace her and make it better. 

"Oh, no, Oh no, Oh, no, no, no, no, no. Remember (Walking In The Sand)".  

The song and it's production were the child of a music business misfit named George "Shadow" Morton"  But it was the urgent hurt of Mary Weiss that has lived within me going on 55 years. 

I recall ruminating, " If this is 12, what the hell will 13 be like." 

 I began to find out when the next Shangri-las recording was released in December.  The melancholy of "Remember"  surrendered to another George Morton composition sung as only Mary and her partners could. It was called "Give Him A Great Big Kiss" and made me feel better about our fate and the abyss she had us both falling into only four months earlier.  Teendom was just around my Queens, NY street corner.  Hope and the sound of rock and roll transmitted by Murray The K,  wrestled with the gusty winds which flowed beneath the Throgs Neck Bridge where my friends and I spent long summer days.

In retrospect Mary Weiss was my first true infatuation. The emotions were real, especially for a kid who cried over Jackie Wilsons "Lonely Teardrops" at age 7.  Rock and Rhythm and Blues produced awakenings and sensations with no age restrictions.

After 4 marriages I still have similar questions posed by The Shangri-las and The Supremes . 
 I owe a great debt to those remarkable women and their sacred voices. If we are fortunate, the eternal flame of yearning begs new understanding with each sunrise. Just give the one you love a Great Big Kiss and always Remember. 

Always.

Call it “dream logic”; call it a time-collapsing mind meld. It came to me in a dream: a snatch of nonsense lyric and melody, an ear-worm summoned up from 60 years in the past. I didn’t know what it was, why it was teasing me, or precisely where it came from, but there it was… “and, so on, so on, so forth…” What was it? 

I googled just that much, and up it came: “The Hut-Song,” sung by the eponymous elephant in Horton Hatches an Egg, a cartoon that I had watched as a toddler. And, digging back a bit further, I discovered that preceding that animated Dr. Suess adaptation, The Hut-Sut Song was a monster pop hit, with several cover versions - the most popular being Freddy Martin’s. Thereby, not only did I jump start my memory, but I made a new discovery, as well. So, here we are: A Sunny Song from the deep recesses of my sub-conscious. I’m including both versions because the pop hit has a whole backstory to explain the indecipherable lyrics.

I think the genesis of this whole mission was that I recently became a grandfather, and had been thinking about what books I’d like to read to the child. I was trying to remember the ones I read to my kids, and the ones that were read to me. I loved all the Dr. Suess books, especially “If I Ran the Circus”, and later, cogitating about what to include in the next round of Sunny Songs, this ditty bubbled up from deep within my gooey grey matter, and would not be denied. 

So, my next question would be: Why was Horton the Elephant singing that song? It’s a house of mirrors.

Bayside High School in Queens, New York began an early celebration of its 80th anniversary, making it one of the oldest public schools in the five boroughs.

At a ceremony Saturday, U.S. Rep. Grace Meng (D-Flushing), state Assemblyman Ed Braunstein (D-Bayside) and state Sen. Tony Avella (D-Bayside) gathered with students, staff and alumni of the storied school to mark the occasion. The lawmakers presented proclamations declaring the importance of the school and the significance of the anniversary.

Opened in 1936, and built during the Great Depression, Bayside High School was the first in the city to be constructed with federal funds from the New Deal-era Public Works Administration. The school cost $2.5 million.

Gregg Sullivan, chairman of the Friends of Bayside High School, ran through many of the great historical events the school had borne witness to.

“This school takes us through a number of great human events,” he said. “The Great Depression, World War II, the Korean and Vietnam wars and the J.F.K. assassination.
The school was also home to the very first Folk and Rock Concert to benefit education in Native American schools in the United States as produced by student Rich Buckland.

The historical significance of the school, and its 80 years as a single entity, were themes each speaker touched on.

“You have to love what Bayside has been and is for the community,” Avella said. “It is a historic school.”

Principal Michael Athy, speaking about his vision of the school—past, present and future—said the success of Bayside is due to its legacy as one of the most rigorous and community-oriented schools in the city.

Buck Owens (August 12, 1929 – March 25, 2006), and Dwight Yoakam (b. October 23, 1956) :  two master navigators of a very unique tributary along the stream of popular music, inspired and learned from each other - one, being the progenitor of the "Bakersfield Sound", and the other his adopted musical progeny.  

"The Streets of Bakersfield," originally recorded by Buck Owens in 1973, was revived as a duet between the two men in 1988, becoming  a chart hit and a popular video.  

Buck, whose career had gone dark after losing his friend and musical partner, Don Rich in 1974, was sparked back to life when Dwight came into his life.  Here Bill and Rich attempt to connect some of the musical catalogue and biographical dots  of these two musical giants. 

How does one define Romance in the era of "me, too"?  

Bill and Rich, The Splendid Bohemians, wrestle with this question as they examine the work of the man who was dubbed "France's Frank Sinatra."

Charles Aznavour (22 May 1924 – 1 October 2018), one of Armenia's favorite sons, was a cultural force as a singer, writer-composer, actor, and artistic diplomat around the world. His catalogue is voluminous.  For much of the 20th century, Aznavour promulgated what the ideal of romance should be.  Jean Cocteau once said:  "Before Aznavour despair was unpopular".  His voice describes the longing of desire, and the pain of regret. Can these emotions ever be considered out of date?

Getz and Gilberto - an immortal pair of musical lovers - The Czar and Czarina of sexy insinuation. The coolest purveyors of cool jazz, swinging sweetly with a Portuguese inflection. Just try to listen to them without moving involuntarily -  you can’t. Before you know it, your shoulders will be swaying gently in the fragrant summer breeze that perfumes the air all around you with longing and lust. 

This cut represents the epitome of what a Sunny Song should be: you can literally feel the warmth from old Sol on your face as you picture brown bodies frolicking along Rio’s beaches. It may have emerged specifically out of the time and place of Brazil’s Bossa Nova craze of the early 60s, but it’s timeless. The sound, the feeling, the groove - immutable. 

Rich and I covered The Girl From Ipanema on a previous episode of Put On a Stack of 45s, so I won’t rehash the particulars of Stan Getz and Astrud Gilberto’s biographies. Let the music suffice to tell their story - and, It’s so compelling that it leads one to wonder: were they, or were they not lovers? It doesn’t matter, there is no mistaking the true meeting of the minds and loins in their melodious connection. 

On Aug. 18, 1969, legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix stepped onto the stage at the Woodstock, N.Y., Music Festival and embarked upon an uninterrupted set lasting nearly two hours--one of the longest performances of his career.

FOUR MONTHS LATER...........

Fillmore East, New York Two Shows Prior to their two concerts later that evening, Hendrix and his Band Of Gypsys held an afternoon sound check and rehearsal at the Fillmore East. Later that evening, before a sold out crowd of 2,639, Hendrix rang in the New Year and new decade with two unforgettable performances. The evening’s festivities opened with a spirited set by the Voices Of East Harlem, an enthusiastic young gospel ensemble. With the anticipation of the sold out Fillmore audience heightened to fever pitch, Hendrix led his trio through a scintillating, seventy-five minute opening performance. None of the eleven songs presented had yet to grace an Experience album. In the place of signature songs like “Purple Haze” and “All Along The Watchtower” were confident renditions of “Izabella” and “Hear My Train A Comin’”. At midnight, Kip Cohen, the venue’s master of ceremonies, rang in the new year and decade buffeted by Guy Lombardo’s “Auld Lang Syne”. Never one to be upstaged, Jimi and company greeted the joyous house with their own inspired reading of the holiday staple. For Amalie Rothschild, the Fillmore East’s house photographer, the experience was an unforgettable one. “Then there was the countdown at midnight. It was the countdown that was a real scream. We’re talking about the end of the Sixties. December 31, 1969 turning into January 1, 1970–.A new decade. This was significant. After all, we were living through it and we knew that the Sixties were the Sixties. We had this big countdown on the [Joshua White] light show screen with this big clock 10, 9, 8, 7, 6…and everybody is yelling together. Then the light show screen pulls up and everybody is on stage–all the crew and the musicians. Hendrix, who is now on stage, launches into this amazing rendition of ‘Auld Lang Syne’ and I filmed it [excerpts of Rothschild’s color film footage can be seen in the VHS/DVD Band Of Gypsys]. This was history in the making. You could not miss this. His performance was just so inspired. It was just terrific and I can’t find the words to describe it.” The recordings which make up both Band Of Gypsys and its two disc sequel Live At The Fillmore East certainly bear out Rothschild’s remembrances. Jimi’s celebrated work with the Band Of Gypsys stands among his most impressive and lasting achievements. After the show, Ian Dove of Record Mirror interviewed Jimi Hendrix for the January 10, 1970 edition of the British paper. Later that night, Hendrix retreated to The Café Caliph (previously known as The Café Au Go Go) in Greenwich Village where he joined The James Cotton Blues Band on stage for a jam.

Starting with the salutary opening voice over: “The Sir Douglas Quintet is back, we’d like to thank all our beautiful friends all over the country and all the beautiful vibrations, we love you…” - this Tex-Mex, flower-power rave up let’s you know that you’re in for a groovy ride. Doug Sahm’s Tejana inflected combo from the borderlands broke up after their weed bust, and he relocated to the Bay Area where his head was turned around by the Hippies up there. Inspired by what he was experiencing, he re-recruited 3 of his original compatriots, including his childhood friend, the sizzling Vox organist, Augie Myers, and they produced this powerful tribute to the Northern California scene. 

I didn’t know much about this group, and what I did know was fabricated. They were dubbed The Sir Douglas Quintet by their record producer in order to capitalize on the British Invasion juggernaut that was happening in ’65, and their first single, She’s About a Mover struck gold. That’s all I knew until I heard this anthem with its indelible organ riff, and then my radar was properly installed. Years later, when Sundazed released The Mono Singles ’68-’72 I immediately bought it and it overstimulated my CD player. What a collection! Every cut is a gem.

The one time child prodigy who appeared with Hank Williams at the age of 12, before the Hillbilly Shakespeare met his untimely fate, also died too young. Doug Sahm was only 58 when he passed, but he left behind a trove of unforgettable music.