Sound Beat

Ernest Thompson Seton was a wolf-trapper, artist and writer. He helped found the Boy Scouts, and you might even say he wrote the book on ‘em. The Boy Scout Handbook, published in 1910, drew from his earlier work and that of Lord Baden Powell, the father of scouting.

But his most popular work was 1898’s “Wild Animals I have Known”. One of the stories in the collection details his tracking of a fierce, and fiercely intelligent, wolf named Lobo. “The Wolf That Changed America” is a documentary on Seton and Lobo. See it right here.

Image: Lobo (The King of Currumpaw), from Ernest Thompson Seton’s Lobo, Rag and Vixen, illustrated by the author. This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1923.

“Born” about 20,000 BC and “died” May 2, 2003. Well, he had a good run.

You’re on the Sound Beat.

The Old Man of the Mountain was a series of granite slabs on Cannon Mountain in New Hampshire. Viewed from the side the slabs gave the cumulative effect of a man’s face, leading to its other nickname: “The Profile”. “He” became the state’s unofficial emblem, and was immortalized by both Daniel Webster and Nathaniel Hawthorne, the latter of which called it “a work of Nature in her mood of majestic playfulness.” Sadly, the old man succumbed to thousands of years of erosion in 2003, and the slabs tumbled to the ground below.

You’re listening to “Old Man of the Mountain” by Cab Calloway, a Melotone  record from 1933. The song was used in a Fleischer cartoon that year featuring Calloway and Mae Questel as Betty Boop. Wanna see it?

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SoJkxNa6v14

Youre listening to Sitting On Top OfThe World, recorded by The Sheiks in 1930. The song graced the Grateful Dead’s eponymously-titled first album, released in 1967. The Dead were sitting on top of the Haight-Ashbury scene at the time, where they established a dedicated following. Their followers would eventually come to be called deadheads, following the band around the country, leaving their parents’ broken hearts in their wake.

Forget all your pre-conceived notions of deadheads. Tony Blair was a big fan, and so was Bill Clinton (though he must’ve held his breath whenever he listened). But the “celebrity deadhead” award goes to Bill Walton. The ginger-haired basketball legend saw an estimated 650 shows, earning him the nickname “Grateful Red”.

You’re listening to La Mer, a Columbia 78 from 1948 and you’re on the Sound Beat.

A man as prolific as Charles Trenet (850 songs published over a 60 year career) probably doesn’t rest much, even on the train. It was on one such trip that he wrote this song La Mer, in 1943, basing the music on the contemporary hit and piano student standby “Heart and Soul”. Legend has it that he penned it on toilet paper liberated from the restroom.

Musicologists put songs like this in the nouvelle chanson category, which is basically a French song with a more lyrical emphasis. The broader chanson tradition goes back to French literature’s very beginnings at the end of the eleventh century.

Jack Lawrence later rewrote the song, and rewrote is the word. Instead of Trenet’s ode to the majesty of the sea itself, the new lyrics gave Bobby Darin the lost love angle that he took to #6 on the charts in 1959.

You’re listening to Nat Wills with “If a Table at Rector’s Could Talk” from the 1913 Ziegfield Follies.

In 1850, there were 19 millionaires in the US. But by the Gay Nineties, there were over 4,000. The champagne flowed and extravagant shows of wealth were par for the course.

Charles Rector opened his restaurant in Manhattan in 1899. It became popular with the Broadway crowd, but its most well-known patron, especially with those working for tips, was Diamond Jim Brady. Diamond Jim made his money in railroads, but cemented his legacy at the dinner table. As well as lunch, breakfast and snack tables. Catering to Brady’s stomach was, apparently, worthy of investment. Upon hearing of his fondness for the buttery, poached sole Marguery, Rector allegedly pulled his son from his third and final year of Cornell Law School to go to Paris and master the technique.

Click for more on Brady’s eating exploits.

Image: Seafood Display by Petr Kratochvil

You’re listening to Artie Wayne with Freddy Martin and His Orchestra and…

You’re on the Sound Beat.

While Howard Hughes’ aviation career is popularly associated with “The Spruce Goose”, the Hughes H-1 Racer set the landplane air-speed record in 1935, and it occupies a place in history that exists now, and may very well forever. Speaking of that, you’re listening to Now and Forever, from Tchaikovsky’s Sixth Symphony. It was used in the 1943 film, “The Outlaw”, which Hughes produced.

As for  particular place in history: when the H1 broke the record by travelling at 352 mph, it was the last civilian plane to break it.

As we know from Leonardo Dicaprio, and researchers, of course, Hughes was a man consumed with success. Upon crash-landing the H1 in its initial test run, he stepped from the downed plane and announced “We can fix her; she’ll go faster”.

Ok, young teens sneaking into the Navy might make you question the standards of 1916 recruitment offices, but look, it happened, and Eddie Peabody got through it all okay. As a matter of fact, he went on to a long career in show business, earning the nickname “King of the Banjo”. Granted, they may have given out the nickname a bit early, and definitively. This song serves as a perfect exemplar of his other nickname, “The Happiness Kid”, attributed for his perpetually sunny disposition. Here’s “Painting The Clouds With Sunshine”, a Regal recording from 1929.

He specialized in the plectrum banjo, a smaller version with 4 instead of 5 strings. And he helped develop variations on the instrument, like the Vegavox and the banjoline.

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/epiclectic/

You’re listening to Roy Acuff and his Smoky Mountain Boys with Mule Skinner Blues and…

You’re on the Sound Beat

A muleskinner’s job was not quite as…grim as it sounds. They were mule-drivers, or, in the cheeriest sense, muleteers! However, the skinner part of the title does refer to their ability to whip the animals so hard that the skin was broken. So still kinda grim.

The muleskinner became a sort of a folk icon, like a cowboy. Ok…probably not as cool as a cowboy. But you want  an icon? Roy Acuff highlighted the emergence of the lead singer in country music, settled in for a four decade run as a cornerstone of the Grand Ole Opry,  and was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame while still alive, the first to ever receive that honor.

There are a couple different definitions for a blue moon, both of them kind of rare, and neither of them have to do with color of any sort. You’re on the Sound Beat.

So the most common definition of a blue moon is a second full moon in a month. As the moon orbits around the Earth every 29 days or so, those extra days in a month accumulate.  As such, every 2 or 3 years we get an extra full moon slipping into a calendar month. There’s also another definition for a “seasonal” Blue Moon: the third of four full moons in one season. And believe it or not, this definition predates the other.

You’ve been listening to the incomparable Mel Torme backed up by Pete Rugolo and his orchestra on a Capitol 78 from 1949. Blue Moon was never a rarity when Mel sang: indeed, it was one of his signature songs.

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Mel Blanc brought to life some of the most popular characters in animation history. It might be bad radio to recite the list, but, we’re going to do it anyway…it’s that impressive. There was Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Yosemite Sam, Foghorn Leghorn, Marvin the Martian, Pepé Le Pew, Speedy Gonzales, the Tasmanian Devil, Barney Rubble,  Mr. Spacely…And, talk about a house divided…he also voiced both Sylvester and Tweety Bird, heard here in…ahem…“I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat”from 1951.

The record would go on to sell 2 million copies, but that was small potatoes. At the time of Blanc’s death in 1989, it’s estimated that 20 million people a day heard his voice.

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