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correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 3 | 43 | https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/81733-10-things-you-probably-didn-t-know-about-c-s-lewis.html | en | 10 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About C.S. Lewis | [
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] | null | [] | null | Including: Lewis gave away his royalties and how he helped Tolkien write 'The Lord of the Rings.' | en | /apple-touch-icon.png | PublishersWeekly.com | https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/tip-sheet/article/81733-10-things-you-probably-didn-t-know-about-c-s-lewis.html | In the meticulous biography Becoming C.S. Lewis, the first of a planned trilogy, Harry Lee Poe chronicles Lewis’s first 20 years: it is the death of Lewis’s mother, when he was nine years old, that Poe asserts caused Lewis (1898–1963) to ponder life’s big questions and the problem of suffering. Poe closely examines Lewis’s education, starting with two years at Wynyard School in England—a miserable place known for beating its students—then short stints at other schools, before, at age 14, studying under William Kirkpatrick, who influenced Lewis’s atheist beliefs (Lewis’s conversion to Christianity didn’t occur until his 30s). This excellent work will have readers eagerly anticipating the next volume. Poe shares some little-known facts about the writer.
C.S. Lewis gained acclaim as a children’s author for his classic series The Chronicles of Narnia. He also gained acclaim for his popular apologetics, including such works as Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. What is more, he gained acclaim as a science fiction writer for his Ransom Trilogy. Furthermore, he gained acclaim for his scholarly work in Medieval and Renaissance literature with The Allegory of Love and A Preface to Paradise Lost. Many writers have their fleeting moment of fame before their books become yesterday’s child – all the rage and then has-been. Remarkably, Lewis’s books in all of these areas have remained in print for seventy, eighty, and ninety years. Over the years, the print runs have grown.
Even though several movies and stage plays have told the story of Lewis, along with a handful of biographies, many people who know of his work may be surprised by the Lewis they do not know.
1. Lewis was not English. He was Irish. Because of his long association with Oxford University, and later with Cambridge, many people assume he was English. When he first went to school in England as a boy, he had a strong Irish accent. Both the students and the headmaster made fun of young Lewis, and he hated the English in turn. It would be many years before he overcame his prejudice against the English.
2. Lewis could not play team sports. Perhaps it would be better to say that he could not succeed at team sports. One of the features of human anatomy that separates us from the lower primates is the two-jointed thumb, which helped us enormously in the development of technology and civilization. Lewis and his brother Warnie had only one joint in their thumbs which left them hopeless at throwing, catching, or hitting balls. As a result of his failure on the playing field, young Lewis was subjected to ridicule and abuse from the other students at school and made to feel unworthy to draw breath.
3. Lewis was a shy man. In spite of his great skill at debate and his mastery of the platform in holding an audience of hundreds in the palm of his hand, Lewis was shy in everyday encounters with other people he did not know. His enormous publishing success came in spite of his inability to put himself forward instead of from any effort on his part to market himself.
4. Lewis gave away the royalties from his books. Though he had only a modest salary as a tutor at Magdalen College, Lewis set up a charitable trust to give away whatever money he received from his books. Having given away his royalties when he first began this practice, he was startled to learn that the government still expected him to pay taxes on the money he had earned!
5. Lewis never expected to make any money from his books. He was sure they would all be out of print by the time he died. He advised one of his innumerable correspondents that a first edition of The Screwtape Letters would not be worth anything since it would be a used book. He advised not paying more than half the original price. They now sell for over $1200.
6. Lewis was instrumental in Tolkien’s writing of The Lord of the Rings. Soon after they became friends in the 1920s, J. R. R. Tolkien began showing Lewis snatches of a massive myth he was creating about Middle Earth. When he finally began writing his “new Hobbit” that became The Lord of the Rings, he suffered from bouts of writer’s block that could last for several years at a time. Lewis provided the encouragement and the prodding that Tolkien needed to get through these dry spells.
7. Lewis had a favorite kind of story. Lewis loved Norse mythology and science fiction, but his favorite kind of story was the journey to the world’s end on a great quest to gain that most valuable prize, the great unattainable thing. He found this story as a teenager in the medieval story of the quest for the Holy Grail. It is the plot of Spenser’s The Fairie Queene and of George MacDonald’s Phantastes. It would be a plot he incorporated into The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Pilgrim’s Regress.
8. Lewis earned two degrees at Oxford. Lewis had planned to have a career as a philosopher, teaching at Oxford University. When he could not get a job upon graduation, he remained at Oxford an additional year and did a second degree in English literature. He could complete the degree in only one year because he had read the books in the English syllabus for his pleasure reading when he was a teenager. In the end, he taught English literature instead of philosophy.
9. Lewis’s first book was a collection of poetry he wrote as a teenager. Before he planned to be a philosopher, the teenage Lewis hoped to become a great poet. He wrote poetry with the hope of publishing his work and gaining fame. He returned to England after being injured in France during World War I and published his collection as Spirits in Bondage under the pen name of Clive Hamilton. | ||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 5 | https://timandsonya.net/2021/05/14/holy-trinity-church-in-oxford-where-c-s-lewis-worshiped-and-is-buried/ | en | Holy Trinity Church in Oxford: Where C. S. Lewis Worshiped and Is Buried | [
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"Tim Valentino"
] | 2021-05-14T00:00:00 | The magic of England never fades for the true Anglophile. I posted earlier this year on our trip to The Kilns: Where C. S. Lewis Lived and Wrote, but I didn’t include pictures of Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, where Lewis worshiped and is buried. At long last, here are those pictures. Our tour guide… | en | This New Life | https://timandsonya.net/2021/05/14/holy-trinity-church-in-oxford-where-c-s-lewis-worshiped-and-is-buried/ | The magic of England never fades for the true Anglophile. I posted earlier this year on our trip to The Kilns: Where C. S. Lewis Lived and Wrote, but I didn’t include pictures of Holy Trinity Church in Oxford, where Lewis worshiped and is buried. At long last, here are those pictures.
Our tour guide was a good friend of Lewis’s back in the day. He was also a Royal Air Force Veteran of World War II, which gave us plenty to talk about. We thanked him for his bravery and service, but he said it was the United States’ entry into the war that saved the world from the evil Nazi delusion. He had wonderful “Jack” Lewis stories to share that don’t usually make their way into the biographies and textbooks.
Lewis died at the Kilns on November 22, 1963, the same day as Aldous Huxley and President John F. Kennedy. Few people attended the Lewis funeral because they didn’t know he had passed. His brother Warnie went on a bender to soothe his depression, rendering him incapable of spreading the word. Moreover, the print and radio news cycles were dominated that week by the assassination of the American President.
Lewis’ final years were happy ones. From charity and common literary interests grew a deep friendship with American poet and pen pal Joy Davidman. Her acquaintance with Lewis led to his underwriting the boarding school education of her sons David and Douglas. Eventually agape became eros for this charming if improbable couple, and they were married in 1956.
Joy was nearly 17 years Lewis’s junior, which only served to enrich the happiness of their marriage. Experience, enthusiasm, and an array of common interests combined to provide the needed chemistry. A savage case of cancer, however, cut short their life together. After several years of reprieve from an earlier and nearly fatal bout with cancer, Joy Lewis passed away on July 13, 1960.
Still, Joy’s entry into Jack’s life brought much happiness. As he wrote to one friend soon after their marriage, “It’s funny having at 59 the sort of happiness most men have in their twenties . . . ‘Thou hast kept the good wine till now.’ ”
Lewis is buried beside his brother (who lived ten more years) in the cemetery of Holy Trinity Church, Headington Quarry, Oxford. His letters and books, and the lives these writings touch, are his enduring legacy.
The gravestone for Lewis and his brother, Major Warren “Warnie” Lewis, reads, “Men must endure their going hence,” the Shakespeare quotation on their father’s calendar the day their mother died. | |||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 97 | https://www.biggerinside.co.uk/p/the-death-of-c-s-lewis-and-birth | en | The death of C S Lewis and birth of Doctor Who, 60 years on | [
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"Caleb Woodbridge"
] | 2023-11-23T13:03:38+00:00 | Narnia and Who have shaped my imagination like no other stories – and my faith too. | en | https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fd3de1969-7050-4687-bd6c-80f7c25362f3%2Ffavicon.ico | https://www.biggerinside.co.uk/p/the-death-of-c-s-lewis-and-birth | Article coming up below, but first to say it’s been a busy time for me as a Doctor Who fan!
I’ve been writing and podcasting about the show’s anniversary, and I’ve managed to bag a ticket to the Royal Television Society’s anniversary special preview Doctor Who screening tonight. So watch out for my review of The Star Beast, with the return of writer Russell T Davies and stars David Tennant and Catherine Tate, very soon!
Here’s what else I’ve been up to…
Out now in print and online: My Premier Christianity article Doctor Who at 60: The spiritual themes behind the sci-fi phenomenon
Coming soon:
Premier Christian Radio interview on Doctor Who and faith - I’ll be on Esther Higham’s Inspirational Breakfast show on Tuesday 28th November, around 8.30am
I’ve recorded an episode of the God in Film podcast on spiritual themes in Doctor Who
I’ve written an article for Solas on Doctor Who and the human longing for a Messiah
60 years on…
60 years since the death of C.S. Lewis, and 60 years since the birth of Doctor Who. Narnia and Who have shaped my imagination like no other stories – and my faith too.
My Mum and Dad read the Narnia books to me as bedtime reading. I was captivated by these stories of children transported a magical land. I hunted in the back of my wardrobe for the way through to Narnia. I tried to get there through archways of trees in the woods, asking Aslan to let me in. I wanted to speak with Talking Animals, to dance with fauns and dryads, to see Cair Paravel on the sea and feast with Kings and Queens of Narnia. One of my first ever pieces of fan fiction, written around age 8, was a rewrite of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe to include my arrival by means of a magic Blue Peter badge!
But although I have never been able to visit Narnia physically, having visited Narnia in my imagination made the animals and woods and castles of this world that much more fascinating to me. Like all books, but perhaps especially so, the Narnia stories are bigger on the inside. Every time I’ve re-entered the wardrobe, I’ve discovered new things.
Gateways to other worlds
The world of Narnia was my gateway into myth and legend. It was Narnia that brought me into the worlds of Norse and Greek myth, introducing me to dwarves and giants, dryads and naiads, to River Gods and Bacchus.
Later, it was reading Michael Ward’s Planet Narnia that inspired me to go back and do an English Literature MA to study Children’s Literature and Medievalism. I studied Lewis, Tolkien and other writers alongside their medieval sources. It was through Narnia that I came to read Mallory, Spenser, Dante and other great stories of the past.
I also discovered the rich layer of Christian themes and images, which aren’t so much allegory as “what if?” I can understand that some people are annoyed by this. But as a Christian myself, I felt excited rather than cheated by realising that Aslan has “another name in our world”, as he says to Lucy and Edmund at the end of The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The connection it is never made explicit, however. Drawing on the Christian story, with its themes of sacrifice, death and resurrection, gives the books a mythic resonance that would otherwise be lost.
Narnia also helped me discover Lewis’s apologetic writings. His books such as Mere Christianity and Miracles were my gateway to a more intellectually engaged Christian faith, and to many other philosophers, authors and thinkers.
C.S. Lewis died on 22nd November 1963, the day before Doctor Who first aired on television, 60 years ago today. I suspect if he had lived, he would have rather liked Doctor Who – he enjoyed reading pulp science fiction in his spare time. (In contrast, the BBC’s early report into science fiction dismissed C.S. Lewis’s science fiction trilogy as “clumsy and old-fashioned”!).
The spiritual dimensions of Narnia and Who
It might seem strange, but I find that both Narnia and Doctor Who give imaginative expression to my spiritual longings. In Aslan’s death and return, I experience the myth of the dying and rising God anew, stripped of the overfamiliarity of Sunday School stories.
The Doctor is also a figure to inspire, caught between divinity and humanity, never cruel or cowardly. In this rational, humanist hero, I actually find a powerful echo of the God I believe in. Although the Doctor isn’t actually a messiah, just a very naughty Time Lord, he is far more like the spiky, funny, subversive Jesus of the Gospels than any number of “serious” portrayals of Christ.
If you’re a Doctor Who fan, you really ought to investigate Christianity, to examine for yourself the historical evidence of whether Jesus really rose from the dead and is the Son of God that the Bible claims he is, and that many like C S Lewis have come to be convinced of, as he explains in his case for the faith Mere Christianity and in an autobiographic way in Surprised by Joy. I believe our longing for a hero like the Doctor finds its true fulfilment in knowing Jesus Christ as saviour and the real Lord of Time.
The tv series is at its best when it remembers that the Doctor doesn’t simply fight aliens or monsters – he fights injustice, wherever in the universe he finds it. The Doctor is a reluctant exile turned adventurer turned hero. His companions too are ordinary people learning to fight evil across the universe. Like Rose says in The Parting of the Ways of life with the Doctor:
It was a better life. I don’t mean all the travelling and seeing aliens and spaceships and things. That don’t matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand. You say “no.” You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else just runs away.
The best stories don’t just entertain, but expand you as a person. Lewis wrote that the reason he read was to “see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations… I become a thousand men and yet remain myself.”
C.S. Lewis and Doctor Who have both done just that. They have enlarged my imagination, my thinking and even my spirituality. They have helped me become “bigger on the inside”. | |||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 0 | 61 | https://www.yahoo.com/news/last-day-c-lewis-life-202819371.html | en | What the last day of C.S. Lewis’s life was like, 60 years ago today | https://media.zenfs.com/en/deseret_news_992/49b6ea7f39b278668b9bbf772f1fae72 | https://media.zenfs.com/en/deseret_news_992/49b6ea7f39b278668b9bbf772f1fae72 | [
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"Jennifer Graham"
] | 2023-11-22T20:28:19+00:00 | President John F. Kennedy died the same day that C.S. Lewis did, causing Lewis’s passing to be largely overlooked. What were his last days like? | en | https://s.yimg.com/rz/l/favicon.ico | Yahoo News | https://www.deseret.com/2023/11/22/23972666/cs-lewis-death-jfk-narnia-mere-christianity | Although C.S. Lewis was famous when he was alive, the death of the beloved Christian apologist and author from renal failure went largely overlooked because of something else that happened the same day.
Lewis died around 5:30 p.m. at his home in Oxford, England, The Kilns. Adjusting for the time zones, this was an hour before John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas. The U.S. president was pronounced dead a half-hour later.
Lewis was 64 when he died, a week before his birthday. Kennedy was 46.
Lewis’ stepson, Douglas Gresham, would later recall that he learned about Kennedy’s death before that of his stepfather. (Lewis married Gresham’s mother, Joy Davidman, in 1956; she would die of cancer four years later, inspiring Lewis to write “A Grief Observed.”)
In a 2013 interview with the U.K.’s Independent, Gresham said that, because Lewis’ brother was so devastated by the loss, the stepson had worked with Walter Hooper to issue a news release about Lewis’ death the next day, and only two news outlets reached out about the news. The New York Times announced the death Nov. 24.
“People only very slowly became aware of Jack’s death,” Gresham said. “For years afterwards, his estate would forward letters to me that were still addressed to him.”
While largely unheralded, Lewis’ death was not entirely unexpected. He had been in declining health for a few years and had resigned from his position at Cambridge University in August 1963. His kidneys were failing, and treatment at that time largely consisted of blood transfusions; dialysis did not become common until the 1970s. In a July hospitalization, he came so close to death that he received the Roman Catholic last rites.
Correspondence in the last months of Lewis’ life showed that he didn’t expect to live much longer. He signed one letter, sent in June, “a tired traveller near the journey’s end.”
Related
How J.R.R. Tolkien’s friendship led C.S. Lewis to become a Christian
C.S. Lewis had a different take on Christmas. Here’s what he had to say
His last months were spent at home, in a room set up on the first floor, as he could no longer ascend the stairs to his bedroom and study. He was cared for, first by a nurse, and then by his brother, Warnie.
According to an article on the blog of The Gospel Coalition, among his final correspondents was a young woman by the name of Kathy Kristy, who would later go on to marry the renowned pastor Tim Keller, who died earlier this year.
In his last week of life, he met with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien and Tolkien’s son. (After Lewis’ death, Tolkien would say, “So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man my age — like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.”)
Lewis also worked on an essay that would be published the next month in the Saturday Evening Post, entitled, “We have no right to happiness.”
There is not much known of his last day, other than that he had a quiet morning at home with his brother, and took a nap in the afternoon. His brother later said that he took tea to Lewis in bed around 4 p.m., and then rushed to his brother’s side when he heard him collapse on the floor about 90 minutes later. Lewis was unconscious when his brother found him; he died a few minutes later. It’s unknown what his last words were.
But we do know what Lewis thought about death generally, because of his famous “argument from desire,” in which he said, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” | ||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 1 | 95 | https://www.samstorms.org/enjoying-god-blog/post/the-text-that-nearly-destroyed-the-faith-of-c-s-lewis | en | Sam Storms: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma > The Text that Nearly Destroyed the Faith of C. S. Lewis | [] | [] | [] | [
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"Sam Storms"
] | null | The Text that Nearly Destroyed the Faith of C. S. Lewis | en | Sam Storms: Oklahoma City, Oklahoma | https://www.samstorms.org/enjoying-god-blog/post/the-text-that-nearly-destroyed-the-faith-of-c-s-lewis | [I posted on this subject a few years ago, but as I’m preaching through John’s gospel it reared its head yet again. It is of such profound importance that we need to meditate deeply on it over and over again.]
C. S. Lewis was voted by evangelicals in America as the single most influential Christian of the 20th century. If you are wondering why he was known only by his initials, it is probably because C. S. stands for Clive Staples. If you were named Clive Staples, I suspect you’d go by C. S. yourself!
Lewis was born in 1898 in Belfast, Ireland. His death was hardly noticed by many, because he died on the same day that President John Kennedy was assassinated: November 22, 1963. His mother died when he was nine years old and his father never remarried. Lewis attended four different boarding schools before being admitted to Oxford University. However, before going to Oxford he joined the British Army to serve in World War I. In February of 1918, he was wounded in France and returned to England to recover. It was then that he began his studies at Oxford.
Over the next six years he was awarded three First Class Honors in classics, humanities, and English literature. He became a teaching fellow at Oxford in October, 1925, at the age of twenty-six. After a long personal and intellectual struggle, he professed faith in Christ as his Savior six years later, in 1931. After thirty years at Oxford, in 1955, he became professor in Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University. Lewis was not quite 65 years old when he died. Lewis is probably known most for his books, Mere Christianity, The Screwtape Letters, and The Chronicles of Narnia.
The reason I’ve taken time to tell you a little of Lewis’s life story is because it was the statement by Jesus in John 4:23 and others like it, especially in the Psalms, that almost destroyed Lewis’s faith. He had come out of atheism into theism and eventually to faith in Jesus as Lord. But he was deeply troubled and even angry with what he saw in Scripture as a less than flattering portrayal of God. So what did Jesus (and the psalmists and virtually every other biblical author) say that so angered Lewis?
“But the hour is coming and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him” (John 4:23).
What kind of God is it, Lewis asked himself, that would go about trying to find people to worship him? “What are you doing, God?” we might ask of him. “Well, I’m on the hunt, I’m on the lookout for people who will tell me how great I am. And I especially want them to tell everyone else how great I am.”
Lewis was more than puzzled by this. He was agitated and deeply offended. It is one thing, said Lewis, that Christians tell other people to worship God. What made it even worse is that God himself called for praise of God himself. This was almost more than Lewis could stomach. What kind of “God” is it who incessantly demands that his people tell him how wonderful he is?
Lewis describes his struggle and how he worked through it in an extraordinary passage from the essay, “The Problem of Praise in the Psalms” (found in Reflections on the Psalms [New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1958], pp. 90-98). Although I’m not widely read in Lewis, of what I have read this is undoubtedly the most important thing he ever wrote. I want you to hear it for yourself.
“We all despise the man who demands continued assurance of his own virtue, intelligence or delightfulness; we despise still more the crowd of people round every dictator, every millionaire, every celebrity, who gratify that demand. Thus a picture, at once ludicrous and horrible, both of God and His worshippers, threatened to appear in my mind. The Psalms were especially troublesome in this way – ‘Praise the Lord,' 'O praise the Lord with me,' 'Praise Him.' . . . Worse still was the statement put into God's own mouth, 'whoso offereth me thanks and praise, he honoureth me' (50:23). It was hideously like saying, 'What I most want is to be told that I am good and great.' . . . It was extremely distressing. It made one think what one least wanted to think. Gratitude to God, reverence to Him, obedience to Him, I thought I could understand; not this perpetual eulogy. . . .”
I suspect this strikes us as problematic, as it did Lewis, because we want to think that God is preeminently concerned with us, not himself. We want a God who is man-centered, not God-centered. Worse still, we can’t fathom how God could possibly love us the way we think he should if he is so unapologetically obsessed with the praise and glory of his own name. How can God love ME if all his infinite energy is expended in the love of HIMSELF? Part of Lewis’s problem, as he himself confesses, was that he did not see that,
“it is in the process of being worshipped that God communicates His presence to men. It is not of course the only way. But for many people at many times the 'fair beauty of the Lord' is revealed chiefly or only while they worship Him together. Even in Judaism the essence of the sacrifice was not really that men gave bulls and goats to God, but that by their so doing God gave Himself to men; in the central act of our own worship of course this is far clearer – there it is manifestly, even physically, God who gives and we who receive. The miserable idea that God should in any sense need, or crave for, our worship like a vain woman wanting compliments, or a vain author presenting his new books to people who never met or heard him, is implicitly answered by the words, 'If I be hungry I will not tell thee' (50:12). Even if such an absurd Deity could be conceived, He would hardly come to us, the lowest of rational creatures, to gratify His appetite. I don't want my dog to bark approval of my books.”
Lewis is addressing, somewhat indirectly, the question: How, or better yet, why do you worship a God who needs nothing? If God is altogether self-sufficient and cannot be served by human hands as if he needed anything (Acts 17:24-25; Romans 11:33-36), least of all glory, why does he command our worship and praise of him? Lewis continues.
“But the most obvious fact about praise – whether of God or anything – strangely escaped me. I thought of it in terms of compliment, approval, or the giving of honour. I had never noticed that all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise unless . . . shyness or the fear of boring others is deliberately brought in to check it. The world rings with praise – lovers praising their mistresses [Romeo praising Juliet and vice versa], readers their favourite poet, walkers praising the countryside, players praising their favourite game – praise of weather, wines, dishes, actors, motors, horses, colleges, countries, historical personages, children, flowers, mountains, rare stamps, rare beetles, even sometimes politicians or scholars. . . . Except where intolerably adverse circumstances interfere, praise almost seems to be inner health made audible. . . . I had not noticed either that just as men spontaneously praise whatever they value, so they spontaneously urge us to join them in praising it: 'Isn't she lovely? Wasn't it glorious? Don't you think that magnificent?' The Psalmists in telling everyone to praise God are doing what all men do when they speak of what they care about. My whole, more general, difficulty about the praise of God depended on my absurdly denying to us, as regards the supremely Valuable, what we delight to do, what indeed we can't help doing, about everything else we value.”
What Lewis is touching on here is how the love of God for sinners like you and me is ultimately made manifest. God desires our greatest good. But what greater good is there in the universe than God himself? So, if God is truly to love us, he must give us himself. But merely giving us of himself is only the first step in the expression of his affection for sinners. He must work to elicit from our hearts rapturous praise and superlative delight because, as Lewis said, “all enjoyment spontaneously overflows into praise.” That’s the way God made us. We can’t help but praise and rejoice in what we most enjoy. The enjoyment itself is stunted and hindered if it is never expressed in joyful celebration. Here’s how Lewis explained it.
“I think we delight to praise what we enjoy because the praise not merely expresses but completes the enjoyment; it is its appointed consummation. It is not out of compliment that lovers keep on telling one another how beautiful they are; the delight is incomplete till it is expressed. [“I just have to tell you how beautiful you are. I can’t keep it in any longer. I’m about to explode. You are the most wonderful person I’ve ever seen or met, and I love you!”] It is frustrating to have discovered a new author and not to be able to tell anyone how good he is; to come suddenly, at the turn of the road, upon some mountain valley of unexpected grandeur and then to have to keep silent because the people with you care for it no more than for a tin can in the ditch; to hear a good joke and find no one to share it with. . . .
If it were possible for a created soul fully . . . to 'appreciate', that is to love and delight in, the worthiest object of all, and simultaneously at every moment to give this delight perfect expression, then that soul would be in supreme beatitude. . . . To see what the doctrine really means, we must suppose ourselves to be in perfect love with God – drunk with, drowned in, dissolved by, that delight which, far from remaining pent up within ourselves as incommunicable, hence hardly tolerable, bliss, flows out from us incessantly again in effortless and perfect expression, our joy is no more separable from the praise in which it liberates and utters itself than the brightness a mirror receives is separable from the brightness it sheds. The Scotch catechism says that man's chief end is 'to glorify God and enjoy Him forever.' But we shall then know that these are the same thing. Fully to enjoy is to glorify. In commanding us to glorify Him, God is inviting us to enjoy Him.”
Let me summarize.
God’s pursuit of your praise of him is not weak self-seeking but the epitome of self-giving love! If your satisfaction in God is incomplete until expressed in praise of him for satisfying you with himself (note well: with HIMSELF, not his gifts or blessings, but the intrinsic beauty and splendor of God as God), then God’s effort to elicit your worship (what Lewis before thought was inexcusable selfishness) is both the most loving thing he could possibly do for you and the most glorifying thing he could possibly do for himself. For in our gladness in him (not his gifts) is his glory in us. Or as John Piper has most famously said, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.” | |||||
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] | null | [] | null | Who was C. S. Lewis? What is C. S. Lewis known for? What impact has C. S. Lewis had on Christianity? Are the writings of C. S. Lewis biblically sound? | CompellingTruth.org | https://www.compellingtruth.org/CS-Lewis.html | Clive Staples Lewis (1898—1963) is often referred to as the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century. He was a British academic, novelist, poet, broadcaster, lecturer, and apologist. He is best known for his fiction works: The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy; as well as for his non-fiction works: Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain. He wrote over seventy books and over thirty have been translated into over thirty languages and have sold millions of copies.
C. S. Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland on November 29, 1898 to a Christian family. At age four, his family dog, Jacksie, was killed by a car and afterwards C. S. declared his name was Jacksie and refused to answer to anything else. Thus, C. S. Lewis was known as Jack to his family and friends for the rest of his life. At ten years old, his mother died of cancer and he was soon after sent to boarding school. By age fifteen, he declared himself an atheist as a result of the pain and grief he experienced after his mother's death.
In 1916, Lewis was accepted into Oxford University but was soon shipped off to WWI at the age of nineteen. The horror of trench warfare he witnessed in Somme, France only served to confirm his atheism. During training, he and a fellow cadet, "Paddy" Moore, promised to care for each other's family if either one died in the war. C. S. Lewis was injured in April 1918, five months after arriving in France. However, Paddy Moore was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy's mother, Jane Moore, was like a second mother to him especially as he recovered from his injury. Lewis was demobilized in December 1918 and returned to school at Oxford while continuing to live with and care for Paddy's mother and sister.
Lewis went to work as a faculty member first at Oxford University from 1925 to 1954 and then at Cambridge University from 1954 to 1963. In 1926, at Oxford, he met J. R. R. Tolkien and the two became friends. Tolkien's influence as well as the book The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton and the works of George MacDonald inspired Lewis's return to theism by 1929. Finally in 1931, because of Tolkien and mutual friend Hugo Dyson, Lewis returned to Christianity. He described himself at the time of his conversion as "the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England." Lewis is sometimes referred to as the "Apostle to the Skeptics" due to his own history as a skeptic.
During WWII, his radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought C. S. Lewis wide acclaim. During this time he also housed child evacuees in his home, which inspired him to write The Chronicles of Narnia (his highest selling books). Later in life, he corresponded with American writer and divorcée Joy Davidman who was a Jewish convert to Christianity. She came to England with her two sons from a previous marriage and married Lewis in a civil ceremony in 1956. They later held a religious ceremony at her bedside during a bout of bone cancer in 1957. Unfortunately, in 1960 the cancer returned and she died. Lewis wrote a book about his grief in the aftermath of her death called A Grief Observed, but chose to publish it under a pseudonym, N. W. Clerk, due to the raw and personal nature of the book. Ironically, many of his friends suggested the book to him to help him cope with his own grief. Joy's sons continued to live with Lewis after her death. However, Lewis died of renal failure two years later on November 22, 1963 just one week before his sixty-fifth birthday.
C. S. Lewis is remembered for his contribution to Christian apologetics for being able to connect art, scholarship, and faith. His writing explains Christianity by connecting it to everyday experiences that all readers can relate to and understand. Many complicated theological ideas are presented in simple and direct ways in both his fiction and non-fiction works that have a profound effect on helping the reader grasp these important truths in a new way.
As with any human author, Lewis's work also attracts some criticism. Lewis's philosophy that stories and myths are mankind's way of foreshadowing God's eventual revealed truth led him to believe that the Old Testament stories might not have been literally true. Along the same lines, he did not believe the Bible, including the New Testament, to be inerrant. While believing the Bible contained contradictions and possible mistakes, he did, however, believe God's truth is contained within the Bible. Lewis also did not believe in eternal security. Instead, he believed that people are in constant spiritual motion either toward or away from God and that this direction of movement is what determined a person's salvation. Other criticisms come up when discussing particulars of specific works of Lewis and caution should be applied when interpreting Lewis's work. However, if the reader studies Scripture, remembering that Lewis's works are not Scripture, his writings can shed new light for understanding biblical truths.
C. S. Lewis stands as an example of the influence a Christian can have when he uses his gifting for the glory of God. Lewis's radio broadcasts and fiction and non-fiction works have influenced the lives of millions and continue to impact lives today more than fifty years after his death. C. S. Lewis's books continue to be a useful resource in explaining the value of Christian faith to a skeptical world.
Related Truth:
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] | 2016-11-16T17:41:12+00:00 | The official website for C. S. Lewis. Browse a complete collection of his books, sign up for a monthly enewsletter, find additional resources, and more. | en | https://www.cslewis.com/wp-content/themes/cslewis/public/img/favicon.ico?v=1.2 | Official Site | CSLewis.com | https://www.cslewis.com/us/about-cs-lewis/ | Clive Staple Lewis born in Belfast, Ireland.
Lewis’s mother, Florence Augusta (‘Flora’) Hamilton Lewis, dies.
Sent to the Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire, England.
Enrolls as boarding student at Campbell College, Belfast, Ireland; leaves in December due to respiratory problems.
Enrolls at Cherboug House near Malvern College, England; abandons his Christian faith.
Meets Arthur Greeves, who becomes a lifelong friend.
Is privately tutored by W. T. "The Great Knock" Kirkpatrick.
Receives a scholarship to University College, Oxford.
Enlists in British Army.
Lewis’s close friend Paddy Moore reported killed in battle.
Wounded in Battle of Arras.
Discharged from British Army.
Moves in with Moore’s mother, Mrs Janie King Moore, and sister, Maureen.
Publishes Spirits in Bondage under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.
Appointed English Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he tutors English Language and Literature.
Meets friend and colleague J.R.R. Tolkien.
Publishes Dymer under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton.
Abandons atheism and converts to theism.
Lewis’s father, Albert Lewis, dies in Belfast.
Lewis, the Moores, and later Warren, Lewis's brother, move into "The Kilns".
Converts to Christianity.
Publishes The Pilgrim’s Regress.
Publishes The Allegory of Love.Buy this book
Publishes the first novel in the Space Trilogy series, Out of the Silent Planet.Buy this book
Weekly meetings of the "Inklings" begin.
Publishes The Problem of Pain.Buy this book
Begins war-time broadcast talks on Christianity, later collected as Mere Christianity.Buy this book
Attends the first meeting of Oxford University's Socratic Club.
Publishes The Screwtape Letters.Buy this book
Publishes Broadcast Talks, based on BBC recordings.
Publishes A Preface to Paradise Lost.
Publishes The Abolition of Man.Buy this book
Publishes Christian Behaviour, based on BBC recordings.
Publishes the second novel in the Space Trilogy series, Perelandra.Buy this book
Publishes Beyond Personality, based on BBC recordings.
Publishes the third novel in the Space Trilogy series, That Hideous Strength.Buy this book
Publishes The Great Divorce.Buy this book
Awarded an honorary Doctor of Divinity by the University of St. Andrews.
Publishes Miracles.Buy this book
Appears on the cover of Time magazine.
Elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
Publishes The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.Buy this book
Publishes the first novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.Buy this book
Mrs. Moore dies.
Publishes the second novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series, Prince Caspian: The Return to Narnia.Buy this book
Publishes Mere Christianity, which combines previously published Broadcast Talks (1942), Christian Behavior (1943), and Beyond Personality (1944).Buy this book
Publishes the third novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.Buy this book
Publishes the fourth novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Silver Chair.Buy this book
Becomes chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge.
Publishes the fifth novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Horse and His Boy.Buy this book
Publishes English Literature in the Sixteenth Century.
Publishes the sixth novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Magician’s Nephew.Buy this book
Publishes Surprised By Joy.Buy this book
Publishes the seventh, and final, novel in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Last Battle.Buy this book
Marries Joy Davidman Gresham.
Publishes Till We Have Faces.Buy this book
Publishes Reflections on the Psalms.Buy this book
Becomes, with T. S. Eliot, a member of the Commission to Revise the Psalter.
Publishes The Four Loves.Buy this book
Lewis’s wife dies.
Publishes Studies in Words.Buy this book
Diagnosed with kidney inflammation.
Dies. | ||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 3 | 0 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis | en | C. S. Lewis | [
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] | 2001-11-07T01:35:02+00:00 | en | /static/apple-touch/wikipedia.png | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis | British writer, lay theologian, and scholar (1898–1963)
For the Anglo-Irish poet, see Cecil Day-Lewis.
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Magdalen College, Oxford (1925–1954), and Magdalene College, Cambridge (1954–1963). He is best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but he is also noted for his other works of fiction, such as The Screwtape Letters and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.
Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. Both men served on the English faculty at Oxford University and were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings. According to Lewis's 1955 memoir Surprised by Joy, he was baptized in the Church of Ireland but fell away from his faith during adolescence. Lewis returned to Anglicanism at the age of 32, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary layman of the Church of England".[1] Lewis's faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
Lewis wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularized on stage, TV, radio, and cinema. His philosophical writings are widely cited by Christian scholars from many denominations.
In 1956, Lewis married American writer Joy Davidman; she died of cancer four years later at the age of 45. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 from kidney failure, at age 64. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis was honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Life
Childhood
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in Ulster, Ireland (before partition), on 29 November 1898.[2] His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), a solicitor whose father Richard Lewis had come to Ireland from Wales during the mid-19th century. Lewis's mother was Florence Augusta Lewis née Hamilton (1862–1908), known as Flora, the daughter of Thomas Hamilton, a Church of Ireland priest, and the great-granddaughter of both Bishop Hugh Hamilton and John Staples. Lewis had an elder brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis (known as "Warnie").[3] He was baptized on 29 January 1899 by his maternal grandfather in St Mark's Church, Dundela.[4]
When his dog Jacksie was fatally struck by a horse-drawn carriage,[5] the four-year-old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie. At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life.[6] When he was seven, his family moved into "Little Lea", the family home of his childhood, in the Strandtown area of East Belfast.[7]
As a boy, Lewis was fascinated with anthropomorphic animals; he fell in love with Beatrix Potter's stories and often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. Along with his brother Warnie, he created the world of Boxen, a fantasy land inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read from an early age. His father's house was filled with books; he later wrote that finding something to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass".
Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age nine, when his mother died in 1908 from cancer. His father then sent him to England to live and study at Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire. Lewis's brother had enrolled there three years previously. Not long after, the school was closed due to a lack of pupils. Lewis then attended Campbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but left after a few months due to respiratory problems.
He was then sent back to England to the health-resort town of Malvern, Worcestershire, where he attended the preparatory school Cherbourg House, which Lewis referred to as "Chartres" in his autobiography. It was during this time that he abandoned the Christianity he was taught as a child and became an atheist. During this time he also developed a fascination with European mythology and the occult.
In September 1913, Lewis enrolled at Malvern College, where he remained until the following June. He found the school socially competitive. After leaving Malvern, he studied privately with William T. Kirkpatrick, his father's old tutor and former headmaster of Lurgan College.[11]
As a teenager, Lewis was wonderstruck by the songs and legends of what he called Northernness, the ancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in the Icelandic sagas.[12] These legends intensified an inner longing that he would later call "joy". He also grew to love nature; its beauty reminded him of the stories of the North, and the stories of the North reminded him of the beauties of nature. His teenage writings moved away from the tales of Boxen, and he began experimenting with different art forms such as epic poetry and opera to try to capture his new-found interest in Norse mythology and the natural world.
Studying with Kirkpatrick ("The Great Knock", as Lewis afterward called him) instilled in him a love of Greek literature and mythology and sharpened his debate and reasoning skills. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford.[13]
"My Irish life"
Lewis experienced a certain cultural shock on first arriving in England: "No Englishman will be able to understand my first impressions of England," Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy. "The strange English accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons. But what was worst was the English landscape ... I have made up the quarrel since; but at that moment I conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal."
From boyhood, Lewis had immersed himself in Norse and Greek mythology, and later in Irish mythology and literature. He also expressed an interest in the Irish language,[15] though there is not much evidence that he laboured to learn it. He developed a particular fondness for W. B. Yeats, in part because of Yeats's use of Ireland's Celtic heritage in poetry. In a letter to a friend, Lewis wrote, "I have here discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in, W. B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology."
In 1921, Lewis met Yeats twice, since Yeats had moved to Oxford. Lewis was surprised to find his English peers indifferent to Yeats and the Celtic Revival movement, and wrote: "I am often surprised to find how utterly ignored Yeats is among the men I have met: perhaps his appeal is purely Irish – if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish."[19][20] Early in his career, Lewis considered sending his work to the major Dublin publishers, writing: "If I do ever send my stuff to a publisher, I think I shall try Maunsel, those Dublin people, and so tack myself definitely onto the Irish school."
After his conversion to Christianity, his interests gravitated towards Christian theology and away from pagan Celtic mysticism (as opposed to Celtic Christian mysticism).[21]
Lewis occasionally expressed a somewhat tongue-in-cheek chauvinism towards the English. Describing an encounter with a fellow Irishman, he wrote: "Like all Irish people who meet in England, we ended by criticisms on the invincible flippancy and dullness of the Anglo-Saxon race. After all, there is no doubt, ami, that the Irish are the only people: with all their faults, I would not gladly live or die among another folk." Throughout his life, he sought out the company of other Irish people living in England and visited Northern Ireland regularly. In 1958 he spent his honeymoon there at the Old Inn, Crawfordsburn, which he called "my Irish life".
Various critics have suggested that it was Lewis's dismay over the sectarian conflict in his native Belfast which led him to eventually adopt such an ecumenical brand of Christianity. As one critic has said, Lewis "repeatedly extolled the virtues of all branches of the Christian faith, emphasising a need for unity among Christians around what the Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton called 'Mere Christianity', the core doctrinal beliefs that all denominations share". On the other hand, Paul Stevens of the University of Toronto has written that "Lewis' mere Christianity masked many of the political prejudices of an old-fashioned Ulster Protestant, a native of middle-class Belfast for whom British withdrawal from Northern Ireland even in the 1950s and 1960s was unthinkable."[28]
First World War and Oxford University
Lewis entered Oxford in the 1917 summer term, studying at University College, and shortly after, he joined the Officers' Training Corps at the university as his "most promising route into the army".[29] From there, he was drafted into a Cadet Battalion for training.[29][30] After his training, he was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry of the British Army as a Second Lieutenant, and was later transferred to the 1st Battalion of the regiment, then serving in France (he would not remain with the 3rd Battalion as it moved to Northern Ireland). Within months of entering Oxford, he was shipped by the British Army to France to fight in the First World War.[11]
On his 19th birthday (29 November 1917), Lewis arrived at the front line in the Somme Valley in France, where he experienced trench warfare for the first time.[29][30][31] On 15 April 1918, as 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry assaulted the village of Riez du Vinage in the midst of the German spring offensive, Lewis was wounded and two of his colleagues were killed by a British shell falling short of its target.[31] He was depressed and homesick during his convalescence and, upon his recovery in October, he was assigned to duty in Andover, England. He was demobilized in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies.[32] In a later letter, Lewis stated that his experience of the horrors of war, along with the loss of his mother and unhappiness in school, were the basis of his pessimism and atheism.[33]
After Lewis returned to Oxford University, he received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin literature) in 1920, a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923. In 1924 he became a Philosophy tutor at University College and, in 1925, was elected a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, where he served for 29 years until 1954.[34]
Janie Moore
During his army training, Lewis shared a room with another cadet, Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore (1898–1918). Maureen Moore, Paddy's sister, said that the two made a mutual pact that if either died during the war, the survivor would take care of both of their families. Paddy was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother, Janie King Moore, and a friendship quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was 18 when they met, and Janie, who was 45. The friendship with Moore was particularly important to Lewis while he was recovering from his wounds in hospital, as his father did not visit him.
Lewis lived with and cared for Moore until she was hospitalized in the late 1940s. He routinely introduced her as his mother, referred to her as such in letters, and developed a deeply affectionate friendship with her. Lewis's own mother had died when he was a child, while his father was distant, demanding, and eccentric.
Speculation regarding their relationship resurfaced with the 1990 publication of A. N. Wilson's biography of Lewis. Wilson (who never met Lewis) attempted to make a case for their having been lovers for a time. Wilson's biography was not the first to address the question of Lewis's relationship with Moore. George Sayer knew Lewis for 29 years, and he had sought to shed light on the relationship during the period of 14 years before Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In his biography Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, he wrote:
Were they lovers? Owen Barfield, who knew Jack well in the 1920s, once said that he thought the likelihood was "fifty-fifty". Although she was twenty-six years older than Jack, she was still a handsome woman, and he was certainly infatuated with her. But it seems very odd, if they were lovers, that he would call her "mother". We know, too, that they did not share the same bedroom. It seems most likely that he was bound to her by the promise he had given to Paddy and that his promise was reinforced by his love for her as his second mother.[36]
Later Sayer changed his mind. In the introduction to the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis he wrote:
I have had to alter my opinion of Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore. In chapter eight of this book I wrote that I was uncertain about whether they were lovers. Now after conversations with Mrs. Moore's daughter, Maureen, and a consideration of the way in which their bedrooms were arranged at The Kilns, I am quite certain that they were.[37]
However, the romantic nature of the relationship is doubted by other writers; for example, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski write in The Fellowship that
When—or whether—Lewis commenced an affair with Mrs. Moore remains unclear.[38]
Lewis spoke well of Mrs. Moore throughout his life, saying to his friend George Sayer, "She was generous and taught me to be generous, too." In December 1917, Lewis wrote in a letter to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves that Janie and Greeves were "the two people who matter most to me in the world".
In 1930, Lewis moved into The Kilns with his brother Warnie, Mrs. Moore, and her daughter Maureen. The Kilns was a house in the district of Headington Quarry on the outskirts of Oxford, now part of the suburb of Risinghurst. They all contributed financially to the purchase of the house, which eventually passed to Maureen, who by then was Dame Maureen Dunbar, when Warren died in 1973.
Moore had dementia in her later years and was eventually moved into a nursing home, where she died in 1951. Lewis visited her every day in this home until her death.
Return to Christianity
Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically "very angry with God for not existing" and "equally angry with him for creating a world". His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and a duty; around this time, he also gained an interest in the occult, as his studies expanded to include such topics.[40] Lewis quoted Lucretius (De rerum natura, 5.198–9) as having one of the strongest arguments for atheism:
Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa
which he translated poetically as follows:
Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.
(This is a highly poetic, rather than a literal translation. A more literal translation, by William Ellery Leonard, reads: "That in no wise the nature of all things / For us was fashioned by a power divine – / So great the faults it stands encumbered with.")
Lewis's interest in the works of the Scottish writer George MacDonald was part of what turned him from atheism. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in Lewis's The Great Divorce, chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical main character meets MacDonald in Heaven:
... I tried, trembling, to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead Station when I had first bought a copy of Phantastes (being then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante: Here begins the new life. I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard I had tried not to see the true name of the quality which first met me in his books is Holiness.
He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he seems to have met for the first time on 11 May 1926, as well as the book The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton. Lewis vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape". He described his last struggle in Surprised by Joy:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen [College, Oxford], night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929[45] I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.
After his conversion to theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion during a late-night walk along Addison's Walk with close friends Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Church of England – somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped that he would join the Catholic Church.[page needed]
Lewis was a committed Anglican who upheld a largely orthodox Anglican theology, though in his apologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe that he proposed ideas such as purification of venial sins after death in purgatory (The Great Divorce and Letters to Malcolm) and mortal sin (The Screwtape Letters), which are generally considered to be Roman Catholic teachings, although they are also widely held in Anglicanism (particularly in high church Anglo-Catholic circles). Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns.
Second World War
After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Lewises took child evacuees from London and other cities into The Kilns.[49] Lewis was only 40 when the war began, and he tried to re-enter military service, offering to instruct cadets; however, his offer was not accepted. He rejected the recruiting office's suggestion of writing columns for the Ministry of Information in the press, as he did not want to "write lies"[50] to deceive the enemy. He later served in the local Home Guard in Oxford.[50]
From 1941 to 1943, Lewis spoke on religious programmes broadcast by the BBC from London while the city was under periodic air raids.[51] These broadcasts were appreciated by civilians and servicemen at that stage. For example, Air Chief Marshal Sir Donald Hardman wrote:
"The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless. We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided just that."[52]
The youthful Alistair Cooke was less impressed, and in 1944 described "the alarming vogue of Mr. C.S. Lewis" as an example of how wartime tends to "spawn so many quack religions and Messiahs".[53] The broadcasts were anthologized in Mere Christianity. From 1941, Lewis was occupied at his summer holiday weekends visiting R.A.F. stations to speak on his faith, invited by Chaplain-in-Chief Maurice Edwards.[54]
It was also during the same wartime period that Lewis was invited to become first President of the Oxford Socratic Club in January 1942,[55] a position that he enthusiastically held until he resigned on appointment to Cambridge University in 1954.[56]
Honour declined
Lewis was named on the last list of honours by George VI in December 1951 as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) but declined so as to avoid association with any political issues.[57][58]
Chair at Cambridge University
In 1954, Lewis accepted the newly founded chair in Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he finished his career. He maintained a strong attachment to the city of Oxford, keeping a home there and returning on weekends until his death in 1963.
Joy Davidman
In later life, Lewis corresponded with Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer of Jewish background, a former Communist, and a convert from atheism to Christianity. She was separated from her alcoholic and abusive husband, novelist William L. Gresham, and came to England with her two sons, David and Douglas. Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend, and it was on this level that he agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in the UK. They were married at the register office, 42 St Giles', Oxford, on 23 April 1956.[62][63] Lewis's brother Warren wrote: "For Jack the attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met ... who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humour and a sense of fun." After complaining of a painful hip, she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and the relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, but a friend, the Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at her bed in the Churchill Hospital on 21 March 1957.[64]
Gresham's cancer soon went into remission, and the couple lived together as a family with Warren Lewis until 1960, when her cancer recurred. She died on 13 July 1960. Earlier that year, the couple took a brief holiday in Greece and the Aegean; Lewis was fond of walking but not of travel, and this marked his only crossing of the English Channel after 1918. Lewis's book A Grief Observed describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that he originally released it under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief. After Lewis's death, his authorship was made public by Faber, with the permission of the executors.
Lewis had adopted Gresham's two sons and continued to raise them after her death. Douglas Gresham is a Christian like Lewis and his mother,[66] while David Gresham turned to his mother's ancestral faith, becoming Orthodox Jewish in his beliefs. His mother's writings had featured the Jews in an unsympathetic manner, particularly on "shohet" (ritual slaughterer). David informed Lewis that he was going to become a ritual slaughterer to present this type of Jewish religious functionary to the world in a more favourable light. In a 2005 interview, Douglas Gresham acknowledged that he and his brother were not close, although they had corresponded via email.[67]
David died on 25 December 2014.[68] In 2020, Douglas revealed that his brother had died at a Swiss mental hospital, and that when David was a young man he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.[69]
Illness and death
In early June 1961, Lewis began experiencing nephritis, which resulted in blood poisoning. His illness caused him to miss the autumn term at Cambridge, though his health gradually began improving in 1962 and he returned that April. His health continued to improve and, according to his friend George Sayer, Lewis was fully himself by early 1963.
On 15 July that year, Lewis fell ill and was admitted to the hospital; he had a heart attack at 5:00 pm the next day and lapsed into a coma, but unexpectedly woke the following day at 2:00 pm. After he was discharged from the hospital, Lewis returned to the Kilns, though he was too ill to return to work. As a result, he resigned from his post at Cambridge in August 1963.
Lewis's condition continued to decline, and he was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure in mid-November. He collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on 22 November, at age 64, and died a few minutes later.[70] He is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington, Oxford. His brother Warren died on 9 April 1973 and was buried in the same grave.[72]
Media coverage of Lewis's death was almost completely overshadowed by news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which occurred on the same day (approximately 55 minutes following Lewis's collapse), as did the death of English writer Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World.[73] This coincidence was the inspiration for Peter Kreeft's book Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley. Lewis is commemorated on 22 November in the church calendar of the Episcopal Church.[75]
Career
Scholar
Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford University, where he won a triple first, the highest honours in three areas of study.[76] He was then elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he worked for nearly thirty years, from 1925 to 1954.[77] In 1954, he was awarded the newly founded chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, and was elected a fellow of Magdalene College.[77] Concerning his appointed academic field, he argued that there was no such thing as an English Renaissance.[78][79] Much of his scholarly work concentrated on the later Middle Ages, especially its use of allegory. His The Allegory of Love (1936) helped reinvigorate the serious study of late medieval narratives such as the Roman de la Rose.[80]
Lewis was commissioned to write the volume English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) for the Oxford History of English Literature.[78] His book A Preface to Paradise Lost[81] is still cited as a criticism of that work. His last academic work, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964), is a summary of the medieval world view, a reference to the "discarded image" of the cosmos.[82]
Lewis was a prolific writer, and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the "Inklings", including J. R. R. Tolkien, Nevill Coghill, Lord David Cecil, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and his brother Warren Lewis. Glyer points to December 1929 as the Inklings' beginning date. Lewis's friendship with Coghill and Tolkien grew during their time as members of the Kolbítar, an Old Norse reading group that Tolkien founded and which ended around the time of the inception of the Inklings. At Oxford, he was the tutor of poet John Betjeman, critic Kenneth Tynan, mystic Bede Griffiths, novelist Roger Lancelyn Green and Sufi scholar Martin Lings, among many other undergraduates. The religious and conservative Betjeman detested Lewis, whereas the anti-establishment Tynan retained a lifelong admiration for him.[page needed]
Of Tolkien, Lewis writes in Surprised by Joy:
When I began teaching for the English Faculty, I made two other friends, both Christians (these queer people seemed now to pop up on every side) who were later to give me much help in getting over the last stile. They were HVV Dyson ... and JRR Tolkien. Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both.
Novelist
In addition to his scholarly work, Lewis wrote several popular novels, including the science fiction Space Trilogy for adults and the Narnia fantasies for children. Most deal implicitly with Christian themes such as sin, humanity's fall from grace, and redemption.[87][88]
His first novel after becoming a Christian was The Pilgrim's Regress (1933), which depicted his journey to Christianity in the allegorical style of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. The book was poorly received by critics at the time,[21] although David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of Lewis's contemporaries at Oxford, gave him much-valued encouragement. Asked by Lloyd-Jones when he would write another book, Lewis replied, "When I understand the meaning of prayer."[page needed]
The Space Trilogy (also called the Cosmic Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy) dealt with what Lewis saw as the dehumanizing trends in contemporary science fiction. The first book, Out of the Silent Planet, was apparently written following a conversation with his friend J. R. R. Tolkien about these trends. Lewis agreed to write a "space travel" story and Tolkien a "time travel" one, but Tolkien never completed "The Lost Road", linking his Middle-earth to the modern world. Lewis's main character Elwin Ransom is based in part on Tolkien, a fact to which Tolkien alludes in his letters.[90]
The second novel, Perelandra, depicts a new Garden of Eden on the planet Venus, a new Adam and Eve, and a new "serpent figure" to tempt Eve. The story can be seen as an account of what might have happened if the terrestrial Adam had defeated the serpent and avoided the Fall of Man, with Ransom intervening in the novel to "ransom" the new Adam and Eve from the deceptions of the enemy. The third novel, That Hideous Strength, develops the theme of nihilistic science threatening traditional human values, embodied in Arthurian legend.[citation needed]
Many ideas in the trilogy, particularly opposition to dehumanization as portrayed in the third book, are presented more formally in The Abolition of Man, based on a series of lectures by Lewis at Durham University in 1943. Lewis stayed in Durham, where he says he was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the cathedral. That Hideous Strength is in fact set in the environs of "Edgestow" university, a small English university like Durham, though Lewis disclaims any other resemblance between the two.
Walter Hooper, Lewis's literary executor, discovered a fragment of another science-fiction novel apparently written by Lewis called The Dark Tower. Ransom appears in the story but it is not clear whether the book was intended as part of the same series of novels. The manuscript was eventually published in 1977, though Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog doubts its authenticity.[92]
The Chronicles of Narnia, considered a classic of children's literature, is a series of seven fantasy novels. Written between 1949 and 1954 and illustrated by Pauline Baynes, the series is Lewis's most popular work, having sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages (Kelly 2006) (Guthmann 2005). It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage and cinema.[94]
The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales.[95][96]
Lewis's last novel, Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, was published in 1956.[97] Although Lewis called it "far and away my best book", it was not as well-reviewed as his previous work.[97]
Other works
Lewis wrote several works on Heaven and Hell. One of these, The Great Divorce, is a short novella in which a few residents of Hell take a bus ride to Heaven, where they are met by people who dwell there. The proposition is that they can stay if they choose, in which case they can call the place where they had come from "Purgatory", instead of "Hell", but many find it not to their taste. The title is a reference to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a concept that Lewis found a "disastrous error". This work deliberately echoes two other more famous works with a similar theme: the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, and Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.
Another short work, The Screwtape Letters, which he dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien, consists of letters of advice from senior demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood on the best ways to tempt a particular human and secure his damnation.[98] Lewis's last novel was Till We Have Faces, which he thought of as his most mature and masterly work of fiction but which was never a popular success. It is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the unusual perspective of Psyche's sister. It is deeply concerned with religious ideas, but the setting is entirely pagan, and the connections with specific Christian beliefs are left implicit.[99]
Before Lewis's conversion to Christianity, he published two books: Spirits in Bondage, a collection of poems, and Dymer, a single narrative poem. Both were published under the pen name Clive Hamilton. Other narrative poems have since been published posthumously, including Launcelot, The Nameless Isle, and The Queen of Drum.[100]
He also wrote The Four Loves, which rhetorically explains four categories of love: friendship, eros, affection, and charity.[101]
In 2009, a partial draft was discovered of Language and Human Nature, which Lewis had begun co-writing with J. R. R. Tolkien, but which was never completed.[102]
In 2024 an original poem was discovered in a collection of documents in Special Collections at the University of Leeds.[103] Its Old English title, "Mód Þrýþe Ne Wæg", is not easily translated into modern English and references the epic poem Beowulf.[104] The poem was addressed to professor of English Eric Valentine Gordon and his wife Dr Ida Gordon.[103] It was written under the pen name Nat Whilk, meaning "someone" in Old English.[103]
Christian apologist
Lewis is also regarded by many as one of the most influential Christian apologists of his time, in addition to his career as an English professor and an author of fiction. Mere Christianity was voted best book of the 20th century by Christianity Today in 2000.[105] He has been called "The Apostle to the Skeptics" due to his approach to religious belief as a sceptic, and his following conversion.[106]
Lewis was very interested in presenting an argument from reason against metaphysical naturalism and for the existence of God. Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and Miracles were all concerned, to one degree or another, with refuting popular objections to Christianity, such as the question, "How could a good God allow pain to exist in the world?" He also became a popular lecturer and broadcaster, and some of his writing originated as scripts for radio talks or lectures (including much of Mere Christianity).[page needed]
According to George Sayer, losing a 1948 debate with Elizabeth Anscombe, also a Christian, led Lewis to re-evaluate his role as an apologist, and his future works concentrated on devotional literature and children's books.[108] Anscombe had a completely different recollection of the debate's outcome and its emotional effect on Lewis.[108] Victor Reppert also disputes Sayer, listing some of Lewis's post-1948 apologetic publications, including the second and revised edition of his Miracles in 1960, in which Lewis addressed Anscombe's criticism.[109] Noteworthy too is Roger Teichman's suggestion in The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe that the intellectual impact of Anscombe's paper on Lewis's philosophical self-confidence should not be over-rated: "... it seems unlikely that he felt as irretrievably crushed as some of his acquaintances have made out; the episode is probably an inflated legend, in the same category as the affair of Wittgenstein's Poker. Certainly, Anscombe herself believed that Lewis's argument, though flawed, was getting at something very important; she thought that this came out more in the improved version of it that Lewis presented in a subsequent edition of Miracles – though that version also had 'much to criticize in it'."[110]
Lewis wrote an autobiography titled Surprised by Joy, which places special emphasis on his own conversion.[11] He also wrote many essays and public speeches on Christian belief, many of which were collected in God in the Dock and The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.[111][112]
His most famous works, the Chronicles of Narnia, contain many strong Christian messages and are often considered allegory. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December 1958:
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, "What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?" This is not allegory at all.
Prior to his conversion, Lewis used the word "Moslem" to refer to Muslims, adherents of Islam; following his conversion, however, he started using "Mohammedans" and described Islam as a Christian heresy rather than an independent religion.[114]
"Trilemma"
Main article: Lewis's trilemma
In a much-cited passage from Mere Christianity, Lewis challenged the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude that claim:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Although this argument is sometimes called "Lewis's trilemma", Lewis did not invent it but rather developed and popularized it. It has also been used by Christian apologist Josh McDowell in his book More Than a Carpenter.[116] It has been widely repeated in Christian apologetic literature but largely ignored by professional theologians and biblical scholars.[117]
Lewis's Christian apologetics, and this argument in particular, have been criticized. Philosopher John Beversluis described Lewis's arguments as "textually careless and theologically unreliable",[118] and this particular argument as logically unsound and an example of a false dilemma.[119] The Pluralist theologian John Hick claimed that New Testament scholars do not now support the view that Jesus claimed to be God.[120] The Anglican New Testament scholar N. T. Wright criticizes Lewis for failing to recognize the significance of Jesus's Jewish identity and setting – an oversight which "at best, drastically short-circuits the argument" and which lays Lewis open to criticism that his argument "doesn't work as history, and it backfires dangerously when historical critics question his reading of the gospels", although he argues that this "doesn't undermine the eventual claim".[121]
Lewis used a similar argument in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the old Professor advises his young guests that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth.[109]
Universal morality
One of the main theses in Lewis's apologia is that there is a common morality known throughout humanity, which he calls "natural law". In the first five chapters of Mere Christianity, Lewis discusses the idea that people have a standard of behaviour to which they expect people to adhere. Lewis claims that people all over the earth know what this law is and when they break it. He goes on to claim that there must be someone or something behind such a universal set of principles.
These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
Lewis also portrays Universal Morality in his works of fiction. In The Chronicles of Narnia he describes Universal Morality as the "deep magic" which everyone knew.
In the second chapter of Mere Christianity, Lewis recognizes that "many people find it difficult to understand what this Law of Human Nature ... is." And he responds first to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply our herd instinct" and second to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply a social convention". In responding to the second idea Lewis notes that people often complain that one set of moral ideas is better than another, but that this actually argues for there existing some "Real Morality" to which they are comparing other moralities. Finally, he notes that sometimes differences in moral codes are exaggerated by people who confuse differences in beliefs about morality with differences in beliefs about facts:
I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did – if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.
Lewis also had fairly progressive views on the topic of "animal morality", in particular the suffering of animals, as is evidenced by several of his essays: most notably, On Vivisection[126] and "On the Pains of Animals".[127][128]
Legacy
Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In 2008, The Times ranked him eleventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[129] Readers of his fiction are often unaware of what Lewis considered the Christian themes of his works. His Christian apologetics are read and quoted by members of many Christian denominations. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis joined some of Britain's greatest writers recognized at Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.[131] The dedication service, at noon on 22 November 2013, included a reading from The Last Battle by Douglas Gresham, younger stepson of Lewis. Flowers were laid by Walter Hooper, trustee and literary advisor to the Lewis Estate. An address was delivered by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.[132][page needed] The floor stone inscription is a quotation from an address by Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.[132]
Lewis has been the subject of several biographies, a few of which were written by close friends, such as Roger Lancelyn Green and George Sayer.[133][134] In 1985, the screenplay Shadowlands by William Nicholson dramatized Lewis's life and relationship with Joy Davidman Gresham.[135] It was aired on British television starring Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom.[136] This was also staged as a theatre play starring Nigel Hawthorne in 1989[137] and made into the 1993 feature film Shadowlands starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.[138]
Many books have been inspired by Lewis, including A Severe Mercy by his correspondent and friend Sheldon Vanauken. The Chronicles of Narnia has been particularly influential. Modern children's literature has been more or less influenced by Lewis's series, such as Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter.(Hilliard 2005) Pullman is an atheist and is known to be sharply critical of C. S. Lewis's work,[139] accusing Lewis of featuring religious propaganda, misogyny, racism, and emotional sadism in his books. However, he has also modestly praised The Chronicles of Narnia for being a "more serious" work of literature in comparison with Tolkien's "trivial" The Lord of the Rings.[141] Authors of adult fantasy literature such as Tim Powers have also testified to being influenced by Lewis's work.
In A Sword Between the Sexes? C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen finds in Lewis's work "a hierarchical and essentialist view of class and gender" corresponding to an upbringing during the Edwardian era.[143]
Most of Lewis's posthumous work has been edited by his literary executor Walter Hooper. Kathryn Lindskoog, an independent Lewis scholar, argued that Hooper's scholarship is not reliable and that he has made false statements and attributed forged works to Lewis. Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham, denies the forgery claims, saying that "The whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons ... Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited."
A bronze statue of Lewis's character Digory from The Magician's Nephew stands in Belfast's Holywood Arches in front of the Holywood Road Library.
Several C. S. Lewis Societies exist around the world, including one which was founded in Oxford in 1982. The C.S. Lewis Society at the University of Oxford meets at Pusey House during term time to discuss papers on the life and works of Lewis and the other Inklings, and generally appreciate all things Lewisian.[147]
Live-action film adaptations have been made of three of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005), Prince Caspian (2008) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).
Lewis is featured as a main character in The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series by James A. Owen.[148] He is one of two characters in Mark St. Germain's 2009 play Freud's Last Session, which imagines a meeting between Lewis, aged 40, and Sigmund Freud, aged 83, at Freud's house in Hampstead, London, in 1939, as the Second World War is about to break out.[149] In 2023, Freud's Last Session was released as a movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Freud and Matthew Goode as Lewis. The movie had additional characters as well, including Anna Freud, played by Liv Lisa Fries.
In 2021, The Most Reluctant Convert, a biographical drama about Lewis's life and conversion, was released.[150]
The CS Lewis Nature Reserve, on ground owned by Lewis, lies behind his house, The Kilns. There is public access.
Bibliography
Main article: C. S. Lewis bibliography
See also
Speculative fiction portal
Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, has the world's largest collection of works by and about Lewis
Courtly love
Johan Huizinga
D. W. Robertson Jr.
Notes
References
Further reading | ||||||
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] | 2021-02-08T15:30:00+00:00 | When I first read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, published in 1961, like many, I was already familiar with the author – or so I thought. His beloved series The Chronicles of Narnia (1949-1954) rotated regularly through my reading list as a child; in fact, my mother recently reminded me... | en | Remembering A Life | https://www.rememberingalife.com/blogs/book-reviews/a-grief-observed-by-c-s-lewis | Reader Notes
May be of special interest to those who have experienced spouse/partner loss.
Recommended Audience
Recommended for young adults and adults 18 years and older, people supporting others who are grieving and spousal loss survivors.
Review
When I first read A Grief Observed by C.S. Lewis, published in 1961, like many, I was already familiar with the author – or so I thought. His beloved series The Chronicles of Narnia (1949-1954) rotated regularly through my reading list as a child; in fact, my mother recently reminded me that she had begun reading the series aloud to me when I was only two years old and quite incapable of grasping either the plot or the allegorical Christian subtext. Narnia has sold over 100 million copies and been translated into over forty languages and offers young readers adventure, hope, and the comfort of Christian ideals, including afterlife.
“No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.”
This slim, meditative volume gives readers insight into a far more complex, private, and tormented Lewis than any of his other work. It can be interpreted as an almost-accidental memoir of intense personal loss. Unlike traditional memoirs, A Grief Observed does not provide the reader either a narrative arc or much biographical insight into the subject’s life. The text is comprised entirely of entries from Lewis’ private journals following the loss of his wife, poet Joy Davidman, who died of cancer on July 13, 1960. At the time of her death, she and Lewis had been married only four years. After compiling the text for publication, Lewis published it under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk; throughout the book, he refers to Joy only as “H.,” a veiled reference to her little-used first name, Helen. His authorship was only made public following his death.
“The death of a beloved is an amputation.”
I read A Grief Observed for the first time as a returning undergraduate at the University at Albany (SUNY), in a course titled Love & Loss in Literature and Life taught by Dr. Jeffrey Berman. Berman, a celebrated educator and prolific writer, had designed the course in response to the recent death of his own beloved wife, Barbara. In reading A Grief Observed then, I was struck by the raw pain influencing Lewis’ writing style and the circular questioning of himself, God, and the universe in his non-linear chapters; similarly, I was amazed that my recently-bereaved professor could teach this text.
It is intense. Individual lines hit one hard with the grief that can be felt in the author. Lewis grapples not only with memories of Joy but also with fears of forgetting her. He turns both toward and away from the God he devoutly followed for decades and writes, “don't come talking to me about the consolations of religion or I shall suspect that you don't understand.” He likens himself to an amputee and argues that after such profound loss, one cannot ever truly be whole again. Importantly, Lewis does not merely write about his grief but from his space of grief, which may particularly resonate with readers.
“Her absence is like the sky, spread over everything.”
Rereading this text in the many years since I took that course, I have come to appreciate far better the shared impetus of the author and my amazing professor – the need to undertake grief work. Only by working through our grief can we begin to acknowledge our loss and move forward in our mourning. Making sense of devastating loss is possible only by recognizing its presence, and our loved one’s absence, “spread over everything.” For anyone who is coming to terms with loss, particularly spousal loss, A Grief Observed is a compelling reminder that our mourning experiences are unique, that our beliefs following loss may indeed be tested, and that sometimes working through what Lewis terms the “mad midnight moments” of our grief may be the only way we can move forward.
Discussion Prompts
Some scholars speculate that Lewis insisted that A Grief Observed be published pseudonymously in order to avoid criticism from his Christian readers. We know that grief can challenge our religious or spiritual beliefs. Where in the text do you see Lewis’ faith challenged and how does he try to make sense of his relationship with God? Have you experienced any similar responses to loss?
Lewis asserts that “the death of a beloved is an amputation” and that, while he may “walk” again, or “get about on crutches,” he will “never be a biped again.” Have you experienced a loss that felt literally crippling in this way? Do you believe that after this type of “amputation,” one can regain wholeness?
A Grief Observed opens, “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear. I am not afraid, but the sensation is like being afraid. The same fluttering in the stomach, the same restlessness, the yawning.” What feelings and bodily sensations can you identify in relation to your grief experiences? How have these feelings and sensations changed as your grief journey progressed?
About the Reviewer | |||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 1 | 83 | https://www.abc.net.au/religion/memory-and-grace-redating-the-conversion-of-cs-lewis/10099984 | en | Memory and grace: Redating the conversion of C.S. Lewis | https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/3c81ca94d401cc2ad1be03714c170a6d?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=394&cropW=700&xPos=0&yPos=37&width=862&height=485&imformat=generic | https://live-production.wcms.abc-cdn.net.au/3c81ca94d401cc2ad1be03714c170a6d?impolicy=wcms_crop_resize&cropH=394&cropW=700&xPos=0&yPos=37&width=862&height=485&imformat=generic | [
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"ABC Religion & Ethics"
] | 2013-03-11T01:04:00+00:00 | C.S. Lewis wrote his autobiography, like Augustine, to discern structure in his life. It was a narrated account of prevenient grace, the moments when Lewis realized that his life was being directed. | en | /core-assets/religion/favicon-32x32.png | ABC Religion & Ethics | https://www.abc.net.au/religion/memory-and-grace-redating-the-conversion-of-cs-lewis/10099984 | "The art of Biography is different from Geography," wrote the English wit and novelist E.C. Bentley. "Geography is about maps, But Biography is about chaps." Now biographers are grateful for any help they can get. Bentley's witticism might seem somewhat whimsical and insignificant, yet it points to an issue that every biographer has to wrestle with - the reliability of memory. You can look at maps. But you have to rely on "chaps" to remember what happened in the past. What if they get things wrong?
I came to appreciate this point when researching my biography of C.S. Lewis. I had long been interested in Lewis, and found him to repay study. Somehow, there always seemed to be more under the surface of his writings, waiting to be discovered. I began to read Lewis in the mid-1970s, as a student at Oxford University. Over a period of decades, I gradually came to appreciate that his intellectual range and imaginative vision were far greater than I had appreciated.
In 2008, I began to consider the idea of writing a new biography of Lewis, which would try to do justice to his Irish roots, get the institutional complexities of his Oxford period right and explore how he initially discovered Christianity and then became one of its leading public advocates. I decided to do the job properly, and spent fifteen months reading everything Lewis had published in chronological order - including the vast collection of letters recently assembled and edited by Walter Hooper. This, I thought, would help me understand the flow and development of both Lewis's ideas, and allow me to choose some good quotes to include in the text. After a few months, I began to realize that something was wrong.
In his celebrated autobiography Surprised by Joy, Lewis writes of his conversion. He finally abandoned his resistance to an approaching God, becoming the "most dejected and reluctant convert in all England". Lewis dates this development to "Trinity Term 1929" - that is, to the eight weeks from 28 April and 22 June 1929. This has become a landmark in Lewis studies, one of the few fixed dates in Lewis's spiritual development that we know with any precision. But as I read his writings from 1929, I sensed no change in his voice or tone. There was no indication of any kind of such a radical realignment. If Lewis did indeed come to believe in God in Trinity Term 1929, it appears to have made no discernible difference to his outlook or thought. But his writings of 1930 tell a different story.
There are four good reasons for challenging Lewis's recollection that this is to be dated to Trinity Term 1929:
A close and continuous reading of his works - especially his correspondence - reveals no sign of a significant change in tone or mood throughout 1929 and even into the first weeks of 1930. Between September 1925 and January 1930, Lewis's writings disclose no hint of any radical change of heart or mind. If Lewis was converted in 1929, this supposedly pivotal event made no impact on his writings - including his letters to his closest friends at that time, Owen Barfield and Arthur Greeves.
Lewis's widowed father died in September 1929. If Lewis's chronology of his own conversion is accepted, Lewis had come to believe in God at the time of his father's death. Yet Lewis's correspondence makes no reference at all to any impact of a belief in God, however emergent, upon his final days spent with his father, his subsequent funeral, and its emotional aftermath. Might, I wondered, the death of Lewis's father have been a stimulus to him to think about God, rather than something he approached from an existing theistic perspective? If Lewis discovered God in the summer of 1930, his father's death the previous year might have marked a turning point in his thinking.
Lewis's account of the dynamics of his conversion in Surprised by Joy speaks of God closing in on him, taking the initiative and ultimately overwhelming him. We find echoes of this language in a short letter to Owen Barfield, written hastily on 3 February 1930, which speaks of the "spirit" becoming "much more personal," "taking the offensive" and "behaving just like God." Lewis asked Barfield to come and see him soon. Otherwise, he might have "entered a monastery." Barfield was later unequivocal about the significance of this letter for Lewis's spiritual development: it marked "the beginning of his conversion." The letter reflects Lewis's language about the pressures he experienced immediately before his conversion. Yet this conversion is clearly ahead of him, not behind him.
Lewis makes it clear that his behaviour changed as a result of his new belief in God. Although still not committed to Christianity, he now began to attend both his local parish church on Sundays, and college chapel on weekdays. Yet Lewis's correspondence makes no reference to regular attendance at any Oxford church or Magdalen College chapel in 1929, or the first half of 1930. Yet things change decisively in October 1930. In a letter to his close friend and confidant Arthur Greeves, dated 29 October 1930, Lewis mentions that he now goes to bed earlier than he used, to, as he has now "started going to morning chapel at 8." This is presented as a new development, a significant change in his routine, dating from the beginning of the academic year 1930-31. The date of this change of habit makes sense if Lewis discovered God in the summer of 1930 - perhaps in June 1930, right at the end of the academic year. This would explain Lewis starting to attend college chapel in October 1930. The Oxford academic year resumes in October, thus giving Lewis the opportunity to begin attending college chapel regularly.
The traditional date of Lewis's conversion, based on his own narrative in Surprised by Joy and repeated in every major study of Lewis to date, clearly needs review. The best explanation of things is that Lewis's subjective location of the event in his inner world is regarded as reliable, but his chronological location of the event in terms of his outer world is misplaced. If Lewis was converted during any Trinity Term, it was the Trinity Term of 1930, not 1929 - namely, at some point between 27 April and 21 June 1930.
This clearly raises the question of the reliability of Lewis's memory. How could he misremember such an important date in his life? If this was the tipping-point in Lewis's life, surely he would remember it in detail?
The answer, I realized, was quite simple. Lewis was terrible about remembering dates - however, he retained a vivid memory of his thoughts and feelings. Subjectively, Lewis gives us a superb account of his thoughts, longings and concerns, leading up to his conversion. But he is unreliable when it comes to relating his internal and external world. When it comes to dates, months, and days, Lewis gets things muddled.
Lewis himself remarked on this failing in 1957, shortly after the publication of Surprised by Joy: he could now, he confessed, "never remember dates." His older brother Warnie declared that Lewis had a "life-long inability to keep track of dates." When Lewis became Vice-President of Magdalen College, Oxford in 1941 - a fixed-term appointment with essentially administrative responsibilities, which rotated around the fellowship - he was soon found to be incapable of carrying out one of the chief responsibilities of this role: arranging for the booking of rooms for college meetings or private engagements. Lewis simply could not remember dates. Rooms were double-booked - if they were booked at all.
So did Lewis just misremember this date? After all, Surprised by Joy was written twenty years after the event. Perhaps. Yet the more I read this work, especially in the light of possible influences from the late classical period (such as Augustine of Hippo) and the Middle Ages (such as Dante), I began to realize there was more going on. Lewis clearly regarded writing his autobiography, not simply as conveying information about himself, but discerning structure in his life. Like Augustine's Confessions, it was a narrated account of prevenient grace - the moments when Lewis, like Augustine, realized he was being redirected; that seeds were being planted; that his eyes were being opened.
The simple reality is that, after his conversion, dates didn't really matter all that much to Lewis. Surprised by Joy is a narrative of an unexpected and transformative encounter between God and an awakening soul. For Lewis, the really important thing was that God encountered him in the world of time and space - not the precise moment when this happened. Even if he could remember when that was. | ||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 0 | 20 | https://www.blueskytraveler.com/oxford-land-narnia/ | en | Oxford and The Land of Narnia | [
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"Teri Didjurgis",
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] | 2015-01-30T16:48:08-05:00 | Explore Oxford through the eyes of CS Lewis as he created the Chronicles of Narnia, the magical world of mythical talking animals in a snowy wonderland. | en | BlueSkyTraveler.com | https://www.blueskytraveler.com/oxford-land-narnia/ | As a child, I was entranced by the Chronicles of Narnia series – the magical world of mythical talking animals in a snowy wonderland. You can re-read these stories over and over at different stages in your life and find different truths to ponder as the characters encounter and evolve their values through their adventures.
On my trip to Oxford, I had the chance to see the inspiration behind these magical books.
C. S. Lewis, or Jack Lewis, as he preferred to be called, was born in Belfast, Ireland (now Northern Ireland) on November 29, 1898. Lewis’s early childhood was relatively happy and carefree until his mother died when he was 10. Lewis and his older brother were sent away to boarding school in England. While he hated the strictness of the school, Lewis was introduced to Virgil, Homer and other classics. In 1916, Lewis became a student at University College at Oxford University but with the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for service and fought for the British Army in northern France.
Following the end of the war in 1918, Lewis returned to Oxford, where he took up his studies again graduating with first-class honors in Greek and Latin Literature, Philosophy and Ancient History, and English Literature. Lewis was elected to an important teaching post in English at Magdalen College, Oxford where he remained for 29 years.
At the age of 40, World War II started and Lewis tried to re-enter service but was not accepted. Instead he offered his home to the children evacuated from the Blitz bombings in London. The children escaping both to the countryside and from war would become part of the story for the children of Narnia.
Post WWII, between 1949 and 1954, Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven fantasy novels for children, that is considered a classic of children’s literature. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales. The series is Lewis’s most popular work, having sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages. It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage and cinema.
Here are the 5 sites to see whilst in Oxford to be a part of Lewis’s Narnia. | |||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 39 | https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2013/1115/C.S.-Lewis-Even-50-years-after-death-his-work-deeply-inspires | en | C.S. Lewis: Even 50 years after death, his work deeply inspires | [
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"Mary Beth McCauley",
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] | 2013-11-15T11:57:43-05:00 | C.S. Lewis: His death on the same day as John F. Kennedy's assassination may have been overshadowed, but his literature continues to shine, selling in the millions 50 years later. | en | /extension/csm_base/design/standard/images/favicon.ico | The Christian Science Monitor | https://www.csmonitor.com/The-Culture/Family/Modern-Parenthood/2013/1115/C.S.-Lewis-Even-50-years-after-death-his-work-deeply-inspires | While the rest of the country thinks about John F. Kennedy next week on the 50th anniversary of his death, the C.S. Lewis Society of Chattanooga will be celebrating their own hero, one of the great minds and most beloved writers of the 20th century, who also died Nov. 22, 1963. The Chattanooga group is but one of the passionate many, here and abroad, in cities large and small, keeping C.S. Lewis’ work alive.
Though the subject of their admiration was, among other things, an Oxford scholar, a literary critic, a poet, a writer of more than 30 books and countless shorter pieces and speeches, a war veteran, and even a broadcaster, to many it is Lewis’ contributions as a masterful Christian apologist that most endears him to readers and endures a half-century after his death. He made the complex simple and the brain-bending breezy. An estimated 200 million copies of his books are in print, and today they continue to sell about 2 million copies annually.
Raised in Belfast, Ireland, Clive Staples Lewis left the church as a teenager, but embraced it again at age 32, influenced largely by the works of G.K. Chesterton and his friend J. R. R. Tolkien.
For his fans in Chattanooga and elsewhere, Lewis is before everything a fellow Christian, one who explains and defends what they believe, who sees faith the way they do: smart, beautiful, perplexing, and – when seen though Lewis’ simple everyday images – an easy reach.
Lewis’s fiction fans are “in love with the worlds he creates, and with the beauty and truth found in them,” says the society's moderator the Rev. David Beckmann. Lewis wrote many books for children, including the wildly popular “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” one of his seven Narnia chronicles. He aimed to “sneak theology through the fairy tales,” says Rev. Beckmann. His fiction for grown-ups – “That Hideous Strength,” from his space trilogy, for example, as well as “The Great Divorce” and the funny, perennial favorite “The Screwtape Letters“ – is just as beloved. Characters and plots gave theological concepts like death and redemption of the heart that comes when the concepts are played out in human form. “There’s something transcendental about them which gives them a reality the everyday world doesn’t give,” Beckmann says.
Lewis’ nonfiction apologetics and autobiographical works were no less accessible. “He was a master of making things sensible,” the moderator explains. There’s a favorite for every Lewis fan: “Mere Christianity,” “The Four Loves, Miracles,” “The Problem of Pain,” his more autobiographical “A Grief Observed” and “Surprised by Joy,” and dozens of others, now classics.
You needn’t be religious to love Lewis, who held an academic chair at Cambridge University. “There are also just people who like the world of ideas and beauty in literature who gravitate to him because he’s been so important in reviving and preserving literary issues,” says Beckmann.
In Chattanooga, the society will be celebrating not just the 50th anniversary of the author’s death this fall, but also the 50th anniversary of his final autumn – a season he relished – with a season-long poetry reading. Societies elsewhere will also mark the moment, and in his native UK, Lewis will join the likes of Shakespeare, Blake, Byron, and Keats in being commemorated with a memorial in Westminster Abbey’s Poets’ Corner.
Literature lovers all over will find an excuse to dip back into their Lewis libraries this month. And Christians feeling pushed back by a world which often misunderstands religion will appreciate anew having this elegant, intellectual giant doing some explaining for them. Lewis continues to be like found treasure. | ||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 15 | https://www.cslewiscollege.org/c-s-lewis/ | en | C.S. Lewis College | [
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] | null | [] | 2011-04-26T18:35:27+00:00 | Who was C.S. Lewis, the inspiration for C.S. Lewis College? Learn more about him, and his life, and why he is an excellent ambassador for Christians today | en | https://www.cslewiscollege.org/c-s-lewis/ | Clive Staples Lewis (1898–1963) was a brilliant scholar, acclaimed writer, literary critic, and Christian apologist. He is particularly honored for his contributions in literary criticism, apologetics, and children’s and fantasy literature.
Of his over thirty books and numerous essays (the majority of which have remained in print since his death), the most renowned are The Chronicles of Narnia, Mere Christianity, and The Screwtape Letters. The Chronicles of Narnia series is especially popular and has been adapted into several plays, radio productions, and feature films.
Most recently Time magazine listed the first book in that series, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, as one of the top 100 English language novels written between 1923 and 2005. Lewis’ works have been translated into over thirty languages and many millions of copies have been sold worldwide.
Brief Biography
C.S. Lewis was born November 29, 1898, in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His only sibling was his older brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis (1895–1973, author of The Splendid Century), with whom he would remain very close throughout his life. Their mother died of cancer when Lewis was nine years old.
After receiving a scholarship to University College, Oxford University, England in 1916, Lewis soon suspended his studies in 1917 to enlist in the British Infantry during World War I. Wounded during the Battle of Arras, he was discharged at the end of 1919.
Education
Soon after, Lewis resumed his studies in Oxford, later to become a Fellow and Tutor of English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford. He served there from 1925 until 1954, when he was appointed Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge.
Conversion
In 1930, Lewis and his brother, Warren, moved into what became Lewis’s lifelong home, “The Kilns,” located just outside Oxford. In 1931, influenced by the writings of G.K. Chesterton and George MacDonald, along with his close friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien, Lewis abandoned atheism and embraced Christianity, becoming a member of the Church of England. His conversion transformed his work and writings.
During WWII, his BBC wartime radio broadcasts on Christianity explained the faith to many thousands and ultimately brought Lewis worldwide acclaim. He is widely regarded as one of the most influential Christian writers of the 20th century. Throughout his years in Oxford, Lewis and a small company of friends and fellow writers, including Tolkien and Charles Williams, met frequently to share their creative works-in-progress. Members of this now famous writers group, the “Inklings,” came to produce some of the most beloved works of fiction and prose of the 20th century.
Marriage
Late in his life, in 1956, Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer. After a four year fight with bone cancer, she died in 1960, after which Lewis continued to care for her two sons, Douglas and David Gresham. In his book, A Grief Observed, Lewis expressed his deep anguish over his wife’s death. The book, which would later inspire the award winning stage play and feature film, Shadowlands, has been a source of comfort to many experiencing grief.
Death
One week before his 65th birthday, on Friday, November 22, 1963, Lewis died at The Kilns—the same day that President Kennedy was assassinated and Aldous Huxley died. He is buried a short walk from his beloved home in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford. | ||||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 1 | 2 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._S._Lewis | en | C. S. Lewis | [
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For the Anglo-Irish poet, see Cecil Day-Lewis.
Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963) was a British writer, literary scholar, and Anglican lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Magdalen College, Oxford (1925–1954), and Magdalene College, Cambridge (1954–1963). He is best known as the author of The Chronicles of Narnia, but he is also noted for his other works of fiction, such as The Screwtape Letters and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.
Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, author of The Lord of the Rings. Both men served on the English faculty at Oxford University and were active in the informal Oxford literary group known as the Inklings. According to Lewis's 1955 memoir Surprised by Joy, he was baptized in the Church of Ireland but fell away from his faith during adolescence. Lewis returned to Anglicanism at the age of 32, owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, and he became an "ordinary layman of the Church of England".[1] Lewis's faith profoundly affected his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
Lewis wrote more than 30 books which have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularized on stage, TV, radio, and cinema. His philosophical writings are widely cited by Christian scholars from many denominations.
In 1956, Lewis married American writer Joy Davidman; she died of cancer four years later at the age of 45. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 from kidney failure, at age 64. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis was honoured with a memorial in Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey.
Life
Childhood
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast in Ulster, Ireland (before partition), on 29 November 1898.[2] His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), a solicitor whose father Richard Lewis had come to Ireland from Wales during the mid-19th century. Lewis's mother was Florence Augusta Lewis née Hamilton (1862–1908), known as Flora, the daughter of Thomas Hamilton, a Church of Ireland priest, and the great-granddaughter of both Bishop Hugh Hamilton and John Staples. Lewis had an elder brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis (known as "Warnie").[3] He was baptized on 29 January 1899 by his maternal grandfather in St Mark's Church, Dundela.[4]
When his dog Jacksie was fatally struck by a horse-drawn carriage,[5] the four-year-old Lewis adopted the name Jacksie. At first, he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life.[6] When he was seven, his family moved into "Little Lea", the family home of his childhood, in the Strandtown area of East Belfast.[7]
As a boy, Lewis was fascinated with anthropomorphic animals; he fell in love with Beatrix Potter's stories and often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales. Along with his brother Warnie, he created the world of Boxen, a fantasy land inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read from an early age. His father's house was filled with books; he later wrote that finding something to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass".
Lewis was schooled by private tutors until age nine, when his mother died in 1908 from cancer. His father then sent him to England to live and study at Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire. Lewis's brother had enrolled there three years previously. Not long after, the school was closed due to a lack of pupils. Lewis then attended Campbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but left after a few months due to respiratory problems.
He was then sent back to England to the health-resort town of Malvern, Worcestershire, where he attended the preparatory school Cherbourg House, which Lewis referred to as "Chartres" in his autobiography. It was during this time that he abandoned the Christianity he was taught as a child and became an atheist. During this time he also developed a fascination with European mythology and the occult.
In September 1913, Lewis enrolled at Malvern College, where he remained until the following June. He found the school socially competitive. After leaving Malvern, he studied privately with William T. Kirkpatrick, his father's old tutor and former headmaster of Lurgan College.[11]
As a teenager, Lewis was wonderstruck by the songs and legends of what he called Northernness, the ancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in the Icelandic sagas.[12] These legends intensified an inner longing that he would later call "joy". He also grew to love nature; its beauty reminded him of the stories of the North, and the stories of the North reminded him of the beauties of nature. His teenage writings moved away from the tales of Boxen, and he began experimenting with different art forms such as epic poetry and opera to try to capture his new-found interest in Norse mythology and the natural world.
Studying with Kirkpatrick ("The Great Knock", as Lewis afterward called him) instilled in him a love of Greek literature and mythology and sharpened his debate and reasoning skills. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford.[13]
"My Irish life"
Lewis experienced a certain cultural shock on first arriving in England: "No Englishman will be able to understand my first impressions of England," Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy. "The strange English accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons. But what was worst was the English landscape ... I have made up the quarrel since; but at that moment I conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal."
From boyhood, Lewis had immersed himself in Norse and Greek mythology, and later in Irish mythology and literature. He also expressed an interest in the Irish language,[15] though there is not much evidence that he laboured to learn it. He developed a particular fondness for W. B. Yeats, in part because of Yeats's use of Ireland's Celtic heritage in poetry. In a letter to a friend, Lewis wrote, "I have here discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in, W. B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology."
In 1921, Lewis met Yeats twice, since Yeats had moved to Oxford. Lewis was surprised to find his English peers indifferent to Yeats and the Celtic Revival movement, and wrote: "I am often surprised to find how utterly ignored Yeats is among the men I have met: perhaps his appeal is purely Irish – if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish."[19][20] Early in his career, Lewis considered sending his work to the major Dublin publishers, writing: "If I do ever send my stuff to a publisher, I think I shall try Maunsel, those Dublin people, and so tack myself definitely onto the Irish school."
After his conversion to Christianity, his interests gravitated towards Christian theology and away from pagan Celtic mysticism (as opposed to Celtic Christian mysticism).[21]
Lewis occasionally expressed a somewhat tongue-in-cheek chauvinism towards the English. Describing an encounter with a fellow Irishman, he wrote: "Like all Irish people who meet in England, we ended by criticisms on the invincible flippancy and dullness of the Anglo-Saxon race. After all, there is no doubt, ami, that the Irish are the only people: with all their faults, I would not gladly live or die among another folk." Throughout his life, he sought out the company of other Irish people living in England and visited Northern Ireland regularly. In 1958 he spent his honeymoon there at the Old Inn, Crawfordsburn, which he called "my Irish life".
Various critics have suggested that it was Lewis's dismay over the sectarian conflict in his native Belfast which led him to eventually adopt such an ecumenical brand of Christianity. As one critic has said, Lewis "repeatedly extolled the virtues of all branches of the Christian faith, emphasising a need for unity among Christians around what the Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton called 'Mere Christianity', the core doctrinal beliefs that all denominations share". On the other hand, Paul Stevens of the University of Toronto has written that "Lewis' mere Christianity masked many of the political prejudices of an old-fashioned Ulster Protestant, a native of middle-class Belfast for whom British withdrawal from Northern Ireland even in the 1950s and 1960s was unthinkable."[28]
First World War and Oxford University
Lewis entered Oxford in the 1917 summer term, studying at University College, and shortly after, he joined the Officers' Training Corps at the university as his "most promising route into the army".[29] From there, he was drafted into a Cadet Battalion for training.[29][30] After his training, he was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry of the British Army as a Second Lieutenant, and was later transferred to the 1st Battalion of the regiment, then serving in France (he would not remain with the 3rd Battalion as it moved to Northern Ireland). Within months of entering Oxford, he was shipped by the British Army to France to fight in the First World War.[11]
On his 19th birthday (29 November 1917), Lewis arrived at the front line in the Somme Valley in France, where he experienced trench warfare for the first time.[29][30][31] On 15 April 1918, as 1st Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry assaulted the village of Riez du Vinage in the midst of the German spring offensive, Lewis was wounded and two of his colleagues were killed by a British shell falling short of its target.[31] He was depressed and homesick during his convalescence and, upon his recovery in October, he was assigned to duty in Andover, England. He was demobilized in December 1918 and soon restarted his studies.[32] In a later letter, Lewis stated that his experience of the horrors of war, along with the loss of his mother and unhappiness in school, were the basis of his pessimism and atheism.[33]
After Lewis returned to Oxford University, he received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin literature) in 1920, a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923. In 1924 he became a Philosophy tutor at University College and, in 1925, was elected a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, where he served for 29 years until 1954.[34]
Janie Moore
During his army training, Lewis shared a room with another cadet, Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore (1898–1918). Maureen Moore, Paddy's sister, said that the two made a mutual pact that if either died during the war, the survivor would take care of both of their families. Paddy was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother, Janie King Moore, and a friendship quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was 18 when they met, and Janie, who was 45. The friendship with Moore was particularly important to Lewis while he was recovering from his wounds in hospital, as his father did not visit him.
Lewis lived with and cared for Moore until she was hospitalized in the late 1940s. He routinely introduced her as his mother, referred to her as such in letters, and developed a deeply affectionate friendship with her. Lewis's own mother had died when he was a child, while his father was distant, demanding, and eccentric.
Speculation regarding their relationship resurfaced with the 1990 publication of A. N. Wilson's biography of Lewis. Wilson (who never met Lewis) attempted to make a case for their having been lovers for a time. Wilson's biography was not the first to address the question of Lewis's relationship with Moore. George Sayer knew Lewis for 29 years, and he had sought to shed light on the relationship during the period of 14 years before Lewis's conversion to Christianity. In his biography Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, he wrote:
Were they lovers? Owen Barfield, who knew Jack well in the 1920s, once said that he thought the likelihood was "fifty-fifty". Although she was twenty-six years older than Jack, she was still a handsome woman, and he was certainly infatuated with her. But it seems very odd, if they were lovers, that he would call her "mother". We know, too, that they did not share the same bedroom. It seems most likely that he was bound to her by the promise he had given to Paddy and that his promise was reinforced by his love for her as his second mother.[36]
Later Sayer changed his mind. In the introduction to the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis he wrote:
I have had to alter my opinion of Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore. In chapter eight of this book I wrote that I was uncertain about whether they were lovers. Now after conversations with Mrs. Moore's daughter, Maureen, and a consideration of the way in which their bedrooms were arranged at The Kilns, I am quite certain that they were.[37]
However, the romantic nature of the relationship is doubted by other writers; for example, Philip Zaleski and Carol Zaleski write in The Fellowship that
When—or whether—Lewis commenced an affair with Mrs. Moore remains unclear.[38]
Lewis spoke well of Mrs. Moore throughout his life, saying to his friend George Sayer, "She was generous and taught me to be generous, too." In December 1917, Lewis wrote in a letter to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves that Janie and Greeves were "the two people who matter most to me in the world".
In 1930, Lewis moved into The Kilns with his brother Warnie, Mrs. Moore, and her daughter Maureen. The Kilns was a house in the district of Headington Quarry on the outskirts of Oxford, now part of the suburb of Risinghurst. They all contributed financially to the purchase of the house, which eventually passed to Maureen, who by then was Dame Maureen Dunbar, when Warren died in 1973.
Moore had dementia in her later years and was eventually moved into a nursing home, where she died in 1951. Lewis visited her every day in this home until her death.
Return to Christianity
Lewis was raised in a religious family that attended the Church of Ireland. He became an atheist at age 15, though he later described his young self as being paradoxically "very angry with God for not existing" and "equally angry with him for creating a world". His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and a duty; around this time, he also gained an interest in the occult, as his studies expanded to include such topics.[40] Lewis quoted Lucretius (De rerum natura, 5.198–9) as having one of the strongest arguments for atheism:
Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa
which he translated poetically as follows:
Had God designed the world, it would not be
A world so frail and faulty as we see.
(This is a highly poetic, rather than a literal translation. A more literal translation, by William Ellery Leonard, reads: "That in no wise the nature of all things / For us was fashioned by a power divine – / So great the faults it stands encumbered with.")
Lewis's interest in the works of the Scottish writer George MacDonald was part of what turned him from atheism. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in Lewis's The Great Divorce, chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical main character meets MacDonald in Heaven:
... I tried, trembling, to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead Station when I had first bought a copy of Phantastes (being then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante: Here begins the new life. I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard I had tried not to see the true name of the quality which first met me in his books is Holiness.
He eventually returned to Christianity, having been influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend J. R. R. Tolkien, whom he seems to have met for the first time on 11 May 1926, as well as the book The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton. Lewis vigorously resisted conversion, noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape". He described his last struggle in Surprised by Joy:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen [College, Oxford], night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929[45] I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.
After his conversion to theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931, following a long discussion during a late-night walk along Addison's Walk with close friends Tolkien and Hugo Dyson. He records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Church of England – somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped that he would join the Catholic Church.[page needed]
Lewis was a committed Anglican who upheld a largely orthodox Anglican theology, though in his apologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe that he proposed ideas such as purification of venial sins after death in purgatory (The Great Divorce and Letters to Malcolm) and mortal sin (The Screwtape Letters), which are generally considered to be Roman Catholic teachings, although they are also widely held in Anglicanism (particularly in high church Anglo-Catholic circles). Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymns.
Second World War
After the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, the Lewises took child evacuees from London and other cities into The Kilns.[49] Lewis was only 40 when the war began, and he tried to re-enter military service, offering to instruct cadets; however, his offer was not accepted. He rejected the recruiting office's suggestion of writing columns for the Ministry of Information in the press, as he did not want to "write lies"[50] to deceive the enemy. He later served in the local Home Guard in Oxford.[50]
From 1941 to 1943, Lewis spoke on religious programmes broadcast by the BBC from London while the city was under periodic air raids.[51] These broadcasts were appreciated by civilians and servicemen at that stage. For example, Air Chief Marshal Sir Donald Hardman wrote:
"The war, the whole of life, everything tended to seem pointless. We needed, many of us, a key to the meaning of the universe. Lewis provided just that."[52]
The youthful Alistair Cooke was less impressed, and in 1944 described "the alarming vogue of Mr. C.S. Lewis" as an example of how wartime tends to "spawn so many quack religions and Messiahs".[53] The broadcasts were anthologized in Mere Christianity. From 1941, Lewis was occupied at his summer holiday weekends visiting R.A.F. stations to speak on his faith, invited by Chaplain-in-Chief Maurice Edwards.[54]
It was also during the same wartime period that Lewis was invited to become first President of the Oxford Socratic Club in January 1942,[55] a position that he enthusiastically held until he resigned on appointment to Cambridge University in 1954.[56]
Honour declined
Lewis was named on the last list of honours by George VI in December 1951 as a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) but declined so as to avoid association with any political issues.[57][58]
Chair at Cambridge University
In 1954, Lewis accepted the newly founded chair in Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he finished his career. He maintained a strong attachment to the city of Oxford, keeping a home there and returning on weekends until his death in 1963.
Joy Davidman
In later life, Lewis corresponded with Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer of Jewish background, a former Communist, and a convert from atheism to Christianity. She was separated from her alcoholic and abusive husband, novelist William L. Gresham, and came to England with her two sons, David and Douglas. Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend, and it was on this level that he agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in the UK. They were married at the register office, 42 St Giles', Oxford, on 23 April 1956.[62][63] Lewis's brother Warren wrote: "For Jack the attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met ... who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humour and a sense of fun." After complaining of a painful hip, she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and the relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, but a friend, the Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at her bed in the Churchill Hospital on 21 March 1957.[64]
Gresham's cancer soon went into remission, and the couple lived together as a family with Warren Lewis until 1960, when her cancer recurred. She died on 13 July 1960. Earlier that year, the couple took a brief holiday in Greece and the Aegean; Lewis was fond of walking but not of travel, and this marked his only crossing of the English Channel after 1918. Lewis's book A Grief Observed describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that he originally released it under the pseudonym N. W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. Ironically, many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief. After Lewis's death, his authorship was made public by Faber, with the permission of the executors.
Lewis had adopted Gresham's two sons and continued to raise them after her death. Douglas Gresham is a Christian like Lewis and his mother,[66] while David Gresham turned to his mother's ancestral faith, becoming Orthodox Jewish in his beliefs. His mother's writings had featured the Jews in an unsympathetic manner, particularly on "shohet" (ritual slaughterer). David informed Lewis that he was going to become a ritual slaughterer to present this type of Jewish religious functionary to the world in a more favourable light. In a 2005 interview, Douglas Gresham acknowledged that he and his brother were not close, although they had corresponded via email.[67]
David died on 25 December 2014.[68] In 2020, Douglas revealed that his brother had died at a Swiss mental hospital, and that when David was a young man he had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.[69]
Illness and death
In early June 1961, Lewis began experiencing nephritis, which resulted in blood poisoning. His illness caused him to miss the autumn term at Cambridge, though his health gradually began improving in 1962 and he returned that April. His health continued to improve and, according to his friend George Sayer, Lewis was fully himself by early 1963.
On 15 July that year, Lewis fell ill and was admitted to the hospital; he had a heart attack at 5:00 pm the next day and lapsed into a coma, but unexpectedly woke the following day at 2:00 pm. After he was discharged from the hospital, Lewis returned to the Kilns, though he was too ill to return to work. As a result, he resigned from his post at Cambridge in August 1963.
Lewis's condition continued to decline, and he was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure in mid-November. He collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm on 22 November, at age 64, and died a few minutes later.[70] He is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington, Oxford. His brother Warren died on 9 April 1973 and was buried in the same grave.[72]
Media coverage of Lewis's death was almost completely overshadowed by news of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, which occurred on the same day (approximately 55 minutes following Lewis's collapse), as did the death of English writer Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World.[73] This coincidence was the inspiration for Peter Kreeft's book Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley. Lewis is commemorated on 22 November in the church calendar of the Episcopal Church.[75]
Career
Scholar
Lewis began his academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford University, where he won a triple first, the highest honours in three areas of study.[76] He was then elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he worked for nearly thirty years, from 1925 to 1954.[77] In 1954, he was awarded the newly founded chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University, and was elected a fellow of Magdalene College.[77] Concerning his appointed academic field, he argued that there was no such thing as an English Renaissance.[78][79] Much of his scholarly work concentrated on the later Middle Ages, especially its use of allegory. His The Allegory of Love (1936) helped reinvigorate the serious study of late medieval narratives such as the Roman de la Rose.[80]
Lewis was commissioned to write the volume English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (Excluding Drama) for the Oxford History of English Literature.[78] His book A Preface to Paradise Lost[81] is still cited as a criticism of that work. His last academic work, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964), is a summary of the medieval world view, a reference to the "discarded image" of the cosmos.[82]
Lewis was a prolific writer, and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the "Inklings", including J. R. R. Tolkien, Nevill Coghill, Lord David Cecil, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and his brother Warren Lewis. Glyer points to December 1929 as the Inklings' beginning date. Lewis's friendship with Coghill and Tolkien grew during their time as members of the Kolbítar, an Old Norse reading group that Tolkien founded and which ended around the time of the inception of the Inklings. At Oxford, he was the tutor of poet John Betjeman, critic Kenneth Tynan, mystic Bede Griffiths, novelist Roger Lancelyn Green and Sufi scholar Martin Lings, among many other undergraduates. The religious and conservative Betjeman detested Lewis, whereas the anti-establishment Tynan retained a lifelong admiration for him.[page needed]
Of Tolkien, Lewis writes in Surprised by Joy:
When I began teaching for the English Faculty, I made two other friends, both Christians (these queer people seemed now to pop up on every side) who were later to give me much help in getting over the last stile. They were HVV Dyson ... and JRR Tolkien. Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both.
Novelist
In addition to his scholarly work, Lewis wrote several popular novels, including the science fiction Space Trilogy for adults and the Narnia fantasies for children. Most deal implicitly with Christian themes such as sin, humanity's fall from grace, and redemption.[87][88]
His first novel after becoming a Christian was The Pilgrim's Regress (1933), which depicted his journey to Christianity in the allegorical style of John Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress. The book was poorly received by critics at the time,[21] although David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of Lewis's contemporaries at Oxford, gave him much-valued encouragement. Asked by Lloyd-Jones when he would write another book, Lewis replied, "When I understand the meaning of prayer."[page needed]
The Space Trilogy (also called the Cosmic Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy) dealt with what Lewis saw as the dehumanizing trends in contemporary science fiction. The first book, Out of the Silent Planet, was apparently written following a conversation with his friend J. R. R. Tolkien about these trends. Lewis agreed to write a "space travel" story and Tolkien a "time travel" one, but Tolkien never completed "The Lost Road", linking his Middle-earth to the modern world. Lewis's main character Elwin Ransom is based in part on Tolkien, a fact to which Tolkien alludes in his letters.[90]
The second novel, Perelandra, depicts a new Garden of Eden on the planet Venus, a new Adam and Eve, and a new "serpent figure" to tempt Eve. The story can be seen as an account of what might have happened if the terrestrial Adam had defeated the serpent and avoided the Fall of Man, with Ransom intervening in the novel to "ransom" the new Adam and Eve from the deceptions of the enemy. The third novel, That Hideous Strength, develops the theme of nihilistic science threatening traditional human values, embodied in Arthurian legend.[citation needed]
Many ideas in the trilogy, particularly opposition to dehumanization as portrayed in the third book, are presented more formally in The Abolition of Man, based on a series of lectures by Lewis at Durham University in 1943. Lewis stayed in Durham, where he says he was overwhelmed by the magnificence of the cathedral. That Hideous Strength is in fact set in the environs of "Edgestow" university, a small English university like Durham, though Lewis disclaims any other resemblance between the two.
Walter Hooper, Lewis's literary executor, discovered a fragment of another science-fiction novel apparently written by Lewis called The Dark Tower. Ransom appears in the story but it is not clear whether the book was intended as part of the same series of novels. The manuscript was eventually published in 1977, though Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog doubts its authenticity.[92]
The Chronicles of Narnia, considered a classic of children's literature, is a series of seven fantasy novels. Written between 1949 and 1954 and illustrated by Pauline Baynes, the series is Lewis's most popular work, having sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages (Kelly 2006) (Guthmann 2005). It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage and cinema.[94]
The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology, as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales.[95][96]
Lewis's last novel, Till We Have Faces, a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, was published in 1956.[97] Although Lewis called it "far and away my best book", it was not as well-reviewed as his previous work.[97]
Other works
Lewis wrote several works on Heaven and Hell. One of these, The Great Divorce, is a short novella in which a few residents of Hell take a bus ride to Heaven, where they are met by people who dwell there. The proposition is that they can stay if they choose, in which case they can call the place where they had come from "Purgatory", instead of "Hell", but many find it not to their taste. The title is a reference to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a concept that Lewis found a "disastrous error". This work deliberately echoes two other more famous works with a similar theme: the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, and Bunyan's The Pilgrim's Progress.
Another short work, The Screwtape Letters, which he dedicated to J. R. R. Tolkien, consists of letters of advice from senior demon Screwtape to his nephew Wormwood on the best ways to tempt a particular human and secure his damnation.[98] Lewis's last novel was Till We Have Faces, which he thought of as his most mature and masterly work of fiction but which was never a popular success. It is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the unusual perspective of Psyche's sister. It is deeply concerned with religious ideas, but the setting is entirely pagan, and the connections with specific Christian beliefs are left implicit.[99]
Before Lewis's conversion to Christianity, he published two books: Spirits in Bondage, a collection of poems, and Dymer, a single narrative poem. Both were published under the pen name Clive Hamilton. Other narrative poems have since been published posthumously, including Launcelot, The Nameless Isle, and The Queen of Drum.[100]
He also wrote The Four Loves, which rhetorically explains four categories of love: friendship, eros, affection, and charity.[101]
In 2009, a partial draft was discovered of Language and Human Nature, which Lewis had begun co-writing with J. R. R. Tolkien, but which was never completed.[102]
In 2024 an original poem was discovered in a collection of documents in Special Collections at the University of Leeds.[103] Its Old English title, "Mód Þrýþe Ne Wæg", is not easily translated into modern English and references the epic poem Beowulf.[104] The poem was addressed to professor of English Eric Valentine Gordon and his wife Dr Ida Gordon.[103] It was written under the pen name Nat Whilk, meaning "someone" in Old English.[103]
Christian apologist
Lewis is also regarded by many as one of the most influential Christian apologists of his time, in addition to his career as an English professor and an author of fiction. Mere Christianity was voted best book of the 20th century by Christianity Today in 2000.[105] He has been called "The Apostle to the Skeptics" due to his approach to religious belief as a sceptic, and his following conversion.[106]
Lewis was very interested in presenting an argument from reason against metaphysical naturalism and for the existence of God. Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and Miracles were all concerned, to one degree or another, with refuting popular objections to Christianity, such as the question, "How could a good God allow pain to exist in the world?" He also became a popular lecturer and broadcaster, and some of his writing originated as scripts for radio talks or lectures (including much of Mere Christianity).[page needed]
According to George Sayer, losing a 1948 debate with Elizabeth Anscombe, also a Christian, led Lewis to re-evaluate his role as an apologist, and his future works concentrated on devotional literature and children's books.[108] Anscombe had a completely different recollection of the debate's outcome and its emotional effect on Lewis.[108] Victor Reppert also disputes Sayer, listing some of Lewis's post-1948 apologetic publications, including the second and revised edition of his Miracles in 1960, in which Lewis addressed Anscombe's criticism.[109] Noteworthy too is Roger Teichman's suggestion in The Philosophy of Elizabeth Anscombe that the intellectual impact of Anscombe's paper on Lewis's philosophical self-confidence should not be over-rated: "... it seems unlikely that he felt as irretrievably crushed as some of his acquaintances have made out; the episode is probably an inflated legend, in the same category as the affair of Wittgenstein's Poker. Certainly, Anscombe herself believed that Lewis's argument, though flawed, was getting at something very important; she thought that this came out more in the improved version of it that Lewis presented in a subsequent edition of Miracles – though that version also had 'much to criticize in it'."[110]
Lewis wrote an autobiography titled Surprised by Joy, which places special emphasis on his own conversion.[11] He also wrote many essays and public speeches on Christian belief, many of which were collected in God in the Dock and The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses.[111][112]
His most famous works, the Chronicles of Narnia, contain many strong Christian messages and are often considered allegory. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December 1958:
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality, he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, "What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?" This is not allegory at all.
Prior to his conversion, Lewis used the word "Moslem" to refer to Muslims, adherents of Islam; following his conversion, however, he started using "Mohammedans" and described Islam as a Christian heresy rather than an independent religion.[114]
"Trilemma"
Main article: Lewis's trilemma
In a much-cited passage from Mere Christianity, Lewis challenged the view that Jesus was a great moral teacher but not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude that claim:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic – on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg – or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
Although this argument is sometimes called "Lewis's trilemma", Lewis did not invent it but rather developed and popularized it. It has also been used by Christian apologist Josh McDowell in his book More Than a Carpenter.[116] It has been widely repeated in Christian apologetic literature but largely ignored by professional theologians and biblical scholars.[117]
Lewis's Christian apologetics, and this argument in particular, have been criticized. Philosopher John Beversluis described Lewis's arguments as "textually careless and theologically unreliable",[118] and this particular argument as logically unsound and an example of a false dilemma.[119] The Pluralist theologian John Hick claimed that New Testament scholars do not now support the view that Jesus claimed to be God.[120] The Anglican New Testament scholar N. T. Wright criticizes Lewis for failing to recognize the significance of Jesus's Jewish identity and setting – an oversight which "at best, drastically short-circuits the argument" and which lays Lewis open to criticism that his argument "doesn't work as history, and it backfires dangerously when historical critics question his reading of the gospels", although he argues that this "doesn't undermine the eventual claim".[121]
Lewis used a similar argument in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when the old Professor advises his young guests that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth.[109]
Universal morality
One of the main theses in Lewis's apologia is that there is a common morality known throughout humanity, which he calls "natural law". In the first five chapters of Mere Christianity, Lewis discusses the idea that people have a standard of behaviour to which they expect people to adhere. Lewis claims that people all over the earth know what this law is and when they break it. He goes on to claim that there must be someone or something behind such a universal set of principles.
These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.
Lewis also portrays Universal Morality in his works of fiction. In The Chronicles of Narnia he describes Universal Morality as the "deep magic" which everyone knew.
In the second chapter of Mere Christianity, Lewis recognizes that "many people find it difficult to understand what this Law of Human Nature ... is." And he responds first to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply our herd instinct" and second to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply a social convention". In responding to the second idea Lewis notes that people often complain that one set of moral ideas is better than another, but that this actually argues for there existing some "Real Morality" to which they are comparing other moralities. Finally, he notes that sometimes differences in moral codes are exaggerated by people who confuse differences in beliefs about morality with differences in beliefs about facts:
I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did – if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house.
Lewis also had fairly progressive views on the topic of "animal morality", in particular the suffering of animals, as is evidenced by several of his essays: most notably, On Vivisection[126] and "On the Pains of Animals".[127][128]
Legacy
Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In 2008, The Times ranked him eleventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[129] Readers of his fiction are often unaware of what Lewis considered the Christian themes of his works. His Christian apologetics are read and quoted by members of many Christian denominations. In 2013, on the 50th anniversary of his death, Lewis joined some of Britain's greatest writers recognized at Poets' Corner, Westminster Abbey.[131] The dedication service, at noon on 22 November 2013, included a reading from The Last Battle by Douglas Gresham, younger stepson of Lewis. Flowers were laid by Walter Hooper, trustee and literary advisor to the Lewis Estate. An address was delivered by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams.[132][page needed] The floor stone inscription is a quotation from an address by Lewis:
I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen, not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.[132]
Lewis has been the subject of several biographies, a few of which were written by close friends, such as Roger Lancelyn Green and George Sayer.[133][134] In 1985, the screenplay Shadowlands by William Nicholson dramatized Lewis's life and relationship with Joy Davidman Gresham.[135] It was aired on British television starring Joss Ackland and Claire Bloom.[136] This was also staged as a theatre play starring Nigel Hawthorne in 1989[137] and made into the 1993 feature film Shadowlands starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.[138]
Many books have been inspired by Lewis, including A Severe Mercy by his correspondent and friend Sheldon Vanauken. The Chronicles of Narnia has been particularly influential. Modern children's literature has been more or less influenced by Lewis's series, such as Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter.(Hilliard 2005) Pullman is an atheist and is known to be sharply critical of C. S. Lewis's work,[139] accusing Lewis of featuring religious propaganda, misogyny, racism, and emotional sadism in his books. However, he has also modestly praised The Chronicles of Narnia for being a "more serious" work of literature in comparison with Tolkien's "trivial" The Lord of the Rings.[141] Authors of adult fantasy literature such as Tim Powers have also testified to being influenced by Lewis's work.
In A Sword Between the Sexes? C. S. Lewis and the Gender Debates, Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen finds in Lewis's work "a hierarchical and essentialist view of class and gender" corresponding to an upbringing during the Edwardian era.[143]
Most of Lewis's posthumous work has been edited by his literary executor Walter Hooper. Kathryn Lindskoog, an independent Lewis scholar, argued that Hooper's scholarship is not reliable and that he has made false statements and attributed forged works to Lewis. Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham, denies the forgery claims, saying that "The whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons ... Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited."
A bronze statue of Lewis's character Digory from The Magician's Nephew stands in Belfast's Holywood Arches in front of the Holywood Road Library.
Several C. S. Lewis Societies exist around the world, including one which was founded in Oxford in 1982. The C.S. Lewis Society at the University of Oxford meets at Pusey House during term time to discuss papers on the life and works of Lewis and the other Inklings, and generally appreciate all things Lewisian.[147]
Live-action film adaptations have been made of three of The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005), Prince Caspian (2008) and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (2010).
Lewis is featured as a main character in The Chronicles of the Imaginarium Geographica series by James A. Owen.[148] He is one of two characters in Mark St. Germain's 2009 play Freud's Last Session, which imagines a meeting between Lewis, aged 40, and Sigmund Freud, aged 83, at Freud's house in Hampstead, London, in 1939, as the Second World War is about to break out.[149] In 2023, Freud's Last Session was released as a movie starring Anthony Hopkins as Freud and Matthew Goode as Lewis. The movie had additional characters as well, including Anna Freud, played by Liv Lisa Fries.
In 2021, The Most Reluctant Convert, a biographical drama about Lewis's life and conversion, was released.[150]
The CS Lewis Nature Reserve, on ground owned by Lewis, lies behind his house, The Kilns. There is public access.
Bibliography
Main article: C. S. Lewis bibliography
See also
Speculative fiction portal
Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College, has the world's largest collection of works by and about Lewis
Courtly love
Johan Huizinga
D. W. Robertson Jr.
Notes
References
Further reading | ||||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 9 | https://www.headington.org.uk/history/famous_people/lewis.htm | en | C. S. Lewis and Headington, Oxford | [
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Clive Staples Lewis, who was born in Belfast, Ulster on 29 November 1898, came up to University College, Oxford in the summer of 1917, but within months went off to France to serve in the First World War. He came back to Oxford to complete his degree in the autumn of 1918, lodging with Mrs Jane King Moore (née Askins), known as Minto, who was born in Ireland on 28 March 1872 and was the mother of Edward Francis Courtenay Moore, a comrade of Lewis who had been killed in France at the age of 19 on 24 March 1918. Mrs Moore was separated from her husband, Courtenay Edward Moore,
Lewis's first house that he shared with Mrs Moore and her daughter Maureen Daisy Helen Moore (from 1918) was 28 Warneford Road in Cowley St John parish.
Lewis regarded Mrs Moore as his adopted mother; but some scholars have suggested that there was more to the relationship than this, even though she was 26 years his senior.
Lewis had associations with Headington from 1919, and it was his permanent home from 1929 until his death in 1963. Even between 1954 and 1963 when he was a Fellow of Magdalene College in Cambridge, he regularly returned by train to Headington for weekends and vacations.
Three addresses in All Saints (Highfield) parish, Headington
Mrs Moore and her lodger C. S. Lewis then moved to Headington, where they had three addresses:
(1) “Uplands”, 54 Windmill Road (1919)
As Uplands (right) was on the east side of the road, it was in the parish of All Saints', Highfield.
They lived here for less than a year.
(2) Hill View at 76 Windmill Road (1919–1922)
On 24 August 1919 Lewis returned from a two-day trip to Dublin to find that Mrs Moore had moved eleven houses down to a flat in 76 Windmill Road (below ), so he too had to move to his second Headington home. Again it was in All Saints' (Highfield) parish.
Lewis wrote to his brother on 24 August 1919:
Just a line to let you know of my arrival and of this change of the address – the Minto having left Uplands and come here [letter is headed “Hill View, Windmill Road]. Our landlady is a funny old woman, the wife of an Indian engine driver. I sleep on the sofa.”
This was the home of Mr & Mrs Albert Morris. Alfred Morris is listed at Gleanbury Cottage, Windmill Road in Kelly's Directory from 1911 to 1921 and at 76 Windmill Road in the 1911 census, where he is described as a jobbing gardener. It appears that the Morrises had given the new name Gleanbury Cottage to the house that was formerly called Hill View, but that C. S. Lewis was using the old name, which may still have been on the door. This house was again in All Saints (Highfield) parish, and In a letter to Greeves of 24 August 1919, Lewis described himself as living “in the solitudes of Highfield”.
Mrs Moore's daughter Maureen went to Headington School, and C. S. Lewis wrote to his brother in April 1921 describing how he attended a show there, “sneaking in alone a whimsical and unobserved male among miles of petticoat”.
Lewis completed his first degree while living here and was awarded a First in Greats (Philosophy & Ancient History) in 1922.
(3) Hillsboro House, now 14 Holyoake Road (original address 2 Western Road) (1922–1930)
On 28 July 1922 Lewis moved into a third Headington house with Mrs Moore and her daughter: Hillsboro House on Holyoake Road, the west side of which was again in All Saints' (Highfield) parish. They remained there until they moved into The Kilns on 10 October 1930, but Mrs Moore was subletting 28 Warneford Road and they appear to have returned there for a period from 5 September 1922. By June 1924 their charlady and friend at Hillsboro was Mrs Harry Joseph Phipps (nicknamed Phippy by Lewis): she lived at 151 Windmill Road, and Lewis claimed that Tolkien's way of communicating was the same as hers.
Below: Hillsboro House in September 2013
Left: The house still has its original name engraved over the right-hand side of the downstairs bay window
The address of Hillsboro House used to be 2 Western Road, but it is currently 14 Holyoake Road. Mrs Moore can be seen listed here in Kelly’s Directory for 1928, the first directory that covers Headington fully.
Hillsboro House was for many years the Oxford Chiropractic Clinic.
While living here Lewis completed a second Oxford degree, this time in English, in 1923, and in 1925 was elected a Fellow and Tutor in English at Magdalen College.
Lewis famously became a theist in 1926 while on the bus up to this Headington house:
The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears to be a moment of wholly free choice. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words, and almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay. I felt myself being given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut. I chose to open.
In 1929 he became a monotheist, and finally a Christian in 1931/2.
Mrs Moore is still listed at Hillsboro in Kelly's Directory for 1930, and in February that year it was reported in the Daily Telegraph that her daughter Maureen had qualified as a piano teacher in the licentiate examination of the Royal Academy of Music. .
On 10 October 1930 Lewis moved with Mrs Moore and her daughter to The Kilns, now in Risinghurst, Oxford but then outside the city.
Life at The Kilns, 1930 until his death in 1963)
At first Lewis’s older brother Warren Hamilton Lewis (known as Warnie), who was a Major in the Royal Army Service Corps, would have nothing to do with Janie Moore; but after the death of their father in 1929 Lewis persuaded Warnie to buy “The Kilns” (then outside the city of Oxford), together with him and Mrs Moore. The two brothers saw the house for the first time on Sunday 6 July 1930, and Lewis wrote in his diary the following day:
We did not go inside, but the eight acre garden is such stuff as dreams are made of. I never imagined that for us any such garden would ever come within the sphere of discussion. The house … stands at the entrance to its own grounds at the northern foot of Shotover at the end of a narrow lane, which is turn opens off a very bad and little used road, giving as great privacy as can reasonably be looked for near a large town. To the left of the house are the two brick kilns from which it takes its name – in front, a lawn and hard tennis court – then a large bathing pool, beautifully wooded, and with a circular brick seat overlooking it: after that a steep wilderness broken with ravines and nooks of all kinds runs up to a little cliff topped by a thistly meadow, and then the property ends in a thick belt of fir trees, almost a wood: the view from the cliff over the dim blue distance of the plain is simply glorious.
The Kilns (right) cost £3,300, and Lewis moved there with Mrs Moore and her daughter on 10 October 1930.
The ownership of The Kilns was put in Mrs Moore’s name, even though her Askins estate had borne less than half the cost. Hence in Kelly's Directory the listing of The Kilns (under Forest Hill) was under the name of Mrs J. K. Moore.
In June 1931 Lewis described in a letter to Arthur Greeves how he would go out on the lake at The Kilns before breakfast and dive into the lake and swim.
On 22 November 1931, the anniversary of the dedication of Holy Trinity Church, Lewis attended a special service there taken by the Revd Alured George Clarke, the Vicar of All Saints Church in Headington, and was very rude about his sermon in a letter to Warnie, stating “The matter was good enough, the manner detestable”.
When Warnie retired in 1932, he also came to live with them, and Alice Hamilton Moore, the widow of Dr Robert Moore of Bush Hills, Ireland) also lived there. She is thought to have been a friend of Mrs Moore rather than a relation of her husband, and another coincidence is that she shared the same middle name (Hamilton) as Warnie Lewis.
The 1939 Register shows the following people listed at the Kilns, with Mrs Moore and her daughter ahead of C. S. Lewis: Warnie is missing, as he had been recalled to active service in France on 4 September 1939
Janie K. MOORE (born 28 March 1872), married, unpaid domestic duties
Maureen D. MOORE (born 19 August 1906), single, music teacher
Clive Staples LEWIS (born 27 November 1890), single, Fellow & Tutor University
Annie HENRY (born 9 June 1896), single, Confectioner, Employee
Frederick W. PAXFORD (born 5 August 1898), single, Gardener & chauffeur
Alice H. MOORE (born 20 November 1853), widow, incapacitated (age)
Ellen E. CRUMMER (born 23 April 1921, single, domestic servant)
Muriel McC. YOUNG (born 23 April 1921), single, Domestic servant (Mrs CROCKER from 1941/2)
Joan E. MORRISON (born 24 February 1923), single, at school (Mrs FRETWELL from 1948)
Three names blacked out: these are probably young evacuees.
Mrs Moore's friend Alice Hamilton Moore died at the age of 85 soon after the Register was compiled and was buried in Holy Trinity churchyard on 6 November 1939.
On 27 August 1940 at Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Mrs Moore's daughter Maureen Daisy Helen Moore (33), described as a schoolmistress who lived at The Kilns, married Leonard James Blake (32), a schoolmaster from Hendon.
Mrs Moore died on 12 January 1951 and was buried in the same grave in Quarry as her friend Alice. Her estranged husband Courtenay Edward Moore outlived her by just five months, dying on 9 June 1951.
Lewis accepted the Chair of Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature at the University of Cambridge that year, but continued to keep “The Kilns” as his home.
The extensive grounds of this house, which was then out in the country, provided the inspiration for the Chronicles of Narnia, which started off as a tale told to children evacuated there from London in 1939. The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe was published nine years later in 1948.
The Kilns is in the parish of Headington Quarry, and Lewis attended Holy Trinity Church there with his brother. He first preached there on 29 March 1942, on the subject “Religion and pleasure”.
Lewis's brother Warnie, who had hitherto been the correspondent of Headington Quarry Church School, served Churchwarden at Holy Trinity from 1953 to 1956. The brothers (known to the Vicar (the Revd Canon R. E. Head as The General and The Professor) rarely missed Holy Communion at that church on a Sunday. In his reminiscences of C. S. Lewis, the Vicar says that they were also well known at the Mason's Arms pub, the nearest one to the church.
Mary Rogers gives two vignettes of Lewis in Headington in her article “C.S. Lewis — God’s Fool” in Oxford (the Journal of the Oxford Society) for November 1998:
Jack never minded looking a fool in a good cause. My sister-in-law tells me that he used to attend an annual party in Headington where guests were expected to arrive, not exactly in fancy dress, but to suggest some topic the hostess had decided upon. After Jack’s marriage to Joy, he brought her along, obviously much to her disgust. She had chosen not to represent some character in Poetry or Opera…. Lewis (of course) represented Wotan, wearing a black eye-shade over one eye — without embarrassment.
Another Lewis-the-fool story involved an elderly dog. Both brothers were animal lovers, and cared for each dog lovingly to his last breath. One, in its extreme old age (probably Baron or Mr Papworth, also known as “Tykes”) became very difficult, as we all do, in time. It was one of the rare sights of Headington to see Jack feeding an animal who was sensitive about being seen eating, and would not eat on home territory. So Jack would walk in front holding the dog dish in one hand, and a spoon in the other, ladling the food backwards over his shoulder to the following shambling dog, the leader being quite unmindful of the passersby and their reactions, as long as the dog got fed.
.
The brothers always sat in the same pew there, beside the pillar to St George. The Narnia window (right), designed and made by Sally Scott, was installed beside this pew in 1991. It was paid for out of the Howe Bequest in memory of the children of George and Kathleen Howe: William George Howe (1938-1954) and Gillian Margaret Howe (1945-1947).
On the left, the window depicts Aslan the Lion as the sun, with the word NARNIA in the rays of light coming from his mane.
On the right are the flying horse, the castle Cair Paravel, and a talking tree.
“Surprised by Joy”
In 1952 Lewis met Mrs Joy Gresham (née Davidman), an American who had been deserted by her husband. and their story is famously told in the film Shadowlands.
Lewis helped Joy to arrange the rental of 10 Old High Street, Headington (right) for herself and her two boys, David Gresham (born 1944) and Douglas Howard Gresham (born 10 November 1945) and she moved in during August 1953.
The house (opposite the present Waitrose) has a plaque over the downstairs window reading: “The former home of the writer Joy Davidman, wife of C. S. Lewis”.
Joy’s son Douglas Gresham was nearly eight years old when he moved into Old High Street in 1953. He said of the house: “It was a nice place partly because of the visitors who came, many of Oxford’s literary luminaries. Lewis himself of course, his brother Warnie, and J. R. R. Tolkien.”
C. S. Lewis continued to live at The Kilns, and had to look after his two teenage stepsons with the help of his brother.
Lewis survived his wife by three years. During his final illness, Father Ronald Head, the Vicar of Holy Trinity Church, visited him twice a week to administer communion.
Lewis died at “The Kilns” on 22 November 1963 (the anniversary of the consecration of Holy Trinity Church in 1849).
He was buried at Holy Trinity churchyard in a very plain grave (left). The quotation on the gravestone, “Men must endure their going thence”, is taken from King Lear: Lewis's mother had a calendar with a Shakespearian quotation for each day of the year, and that was the one on the day she died.
The report on his death in the Oxford Times of 29 November 1963 was very brief:
Prof. C. S. Lewis, who was Fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1924 to 1954 died on Friday at his home in Headington Quarry. Until his resignation last month because of ill health he was Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge University.
The son of a Belfast solicitor, Clive Staples Lewis served as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry in France towards the end of the First World War. In 1918 he went up to University College, Oxford. He was best known outside the university for his books, especially his apologies for Christianity - among them The Screwtape letters.
Lewis's brother Warnie remained at The Kilns and died there on 9 April 1973. He was buried in the same grave as his brother.
Mrs Moore's daughter Maureen, who now styled herself Lady Dunbar, sold The Kilns after his death.
Mrs Moore's daughter Maureen Daisy Helen Moore (1906–1997)
(Mrs Leonard James Blake 1940–1965)
(Lady Dunbar of Hempriggs 1965–1997)
Maureen Daisy Helen Moore was born on 19 August 1906, the daughter of Courtenay Edward Moore (26 June 1870–9 June 1951) and Janie King Askins (28 March 1872 to 12 January 1951). She had an older brother Edward Francis Courtenay Moore (born 19 August 1906), who was the friend of C. S. Lewis and was killed in action on 24 March 1918.
She lived in Headington with her mother and C.S. Lewis for 21 years from 1919 to her marriage on 27 August 1940. She attended Headington School, and then became a music teacher.
Maureen and her husband Leonard James Blake had two children:
Richard Francis Blake (born in Oxford on 8 January 1945)
Eleanor M. Blake (born in Kidderminster, Worcestershire on 16 November 1949).
Her son Richard was educated at Charterhouse School.
By 1965 Maureen was living at The Lees in Malvern, where her husband Leonard Blake was Director of Music at Malvern College.
On 4 March 1965 the Birmingham Post reported that “Mrs Maureen Daisy Helen Moore or Blake” had lodged a claim in Edinburgh to a baronetcy of Nova Scotia and asked to be recognized as Dame Maureen Daisy Helen Moore or Dunbar, of Hempriggs, Baronetess. This followed the death in 1963 of her kinsman, Sir George Duff-Sutherland-Dunbar, 7th Baronet, and as the baronetcy was one of only four that can pass through the female line and she was successful at the Lyon Court.
Both children of Maureen (Lady Dunbar) and Leonard James Blake married:
On 27 December 1969 at St Catherine's Church, Gloucester her son Richard married Elizabeth Margaret Jane Lister, the only daughter of Mr & Mrs George Lister of Gloucester. He was styled Richard Francis Dunbar of Hempriggs. in the marriage announcement in the Daily Telegraph.
On 17 February 1973 at St Peter's Church Winchcombe her daughter Eleanor M. Blake married David Eldridge, youngest son of Lt-Col. & Mrs E. J. M. Eldridge of The Mill, Mill Lane, Prestbury, Cheltenham.
In 1986 Maureen, Lady Dunbar (described in the Western Daily Press as a “Cotswold aristocrat” was forced to sell her family's 500-year old castle, Ackergill Tower, on the north-east coast of Scotland. Apparently when Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother was staying at the Castle of Mey nearby she used to come to tea with Lady Dunbar.
Mrs Moore's daughter Lady Dunbar (Maureen) died on 15 February 1997 at the age of 90, leaving an estate of £349,587 net. Her grandson is now Sir Richard Francis Dunbar of Hempriggs, 9th Baronet. He has two daughters: Emma Katherine Dunbar (born 1977) and Fiona Blake Dunbar (born 1981).
Frequently Asked Questions about C. S. Lewis
by Mike Stranks of Holy Trinity Church (PDF)
Pictures of The Kilns, and how to get there
You Tube: Memories of C. S. Lewis in Headington
There is a much fuller entry on C. S. Lewis in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ODNB online is available free to many public library users, including those in Oxfordshire:
put your library ticket number in the “Library Card Login” box | |||||||
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] | 2009-08-20T02:54:00+00:00 | The first time I visited Oxford, in 1982, the porter at Magdalen College didn’t even recognize the name— C. S. Lewis. I had asked him if he could give me directions to Lewis’s former home in Headington Quarry. Obviously he could not and did not. Things have changed a lot ... | en | https://www.cslewis.com/wp-content/themes/cslewis/public/img/favicon.ico?v=1.2 | Official Site | CSLewis.com | https://www.cslewis.com/c-s-lewis-sat-here/ | The first time I visited Oxford, in 1982, the porter at Magdalen College didn’t even recognize the name— C. S. Lewis. I had asked him if he could give me directions to Lewis’s former home in Headington Quarry. Obviously he could not and did not.
Things have changed a lot since 1982. Now Lewis is remembered all around Oxford. At the pub where the Inklings met, at Magdalen College, and not least—at his parish church—Holy Trinity Headington Quarry, where a plaque now appears on the pew where C. S. Lewis sat with his brother Warren.
The first time I visited the church I only saw the outside and Lewis’s grave, shared with “Warnie”. Since that first visit I have returned to Holy Trinity a number of times and worshiped there. The church is well worth a visit if you happen to be in the Oxford area.
C. S. “Jack” Lewis’s connection to Holy Trinity Church stretches back to the time even before his return to Christian faith in 1931. Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy:
“As soon as I became a Theist I started attending my parish church on Sundays and my college chapel on weekdays; not because I believed in Christianity, nor because I thought the difference between it and simple Theism a small one, but because I thought one ought to “fly one’s flag” by some unmistakable overt sign. I was acting in obedience to a (perhaps mistaken) sense of honour. The idea of churchmanship was to me wholly unattractive… though I liked clergymen as I liked bears, I had as little wish to be in the Church as in the zoo. It was, to begin with, a kind of collective; a wearisome “get-together” affair. I couldn’t yet see how a concern of that sort should have anything to do with one’s spiritual life. To me, religion ought to have been a matter of good men praying alone and meeting by twos and threes to talk of spiritual matters. And then the fussy, time-wasting botheration of it all! The bells, the crowds, the umbrellas, the notices, the bustle, the perpetual arranging and organizing. Hymns were (and are) extremely disagreeable to me. Of all musical instruments I liked (and like) the organ least. I have, too, a sort of spiritual gaucherie which makes me unapt to participate in any rite” (1).
It occurs to me that this paragraph is a good description of Lewis’s attitude toward attendance at his parish church not only at the beginning of his Christian life but right the way through to the end. Lewis’s first mention in his letters, of attendance at his parish church, was in a letter to Arthur Greeves written on January 10, 1931 (2). This, along with other references in Lewis’s letters and Warnie’s diary, provides some proof, if we needed any, that he did indeed begin attendance at college chapel and at his parish church after becoming a theist in Trinity Term of 1929 and prior to his return to full-bodied Christian faith in September 1931.
However, Lewis’s references to church attendance became more frequent in his letters after his conversion. On October 24, 1931 Lewis wrote to his brother about a pleasant tea time with the Reverend Wilfrid Savage Thomas, Vicar of Holy Trinity from 1924 to 1935 (3). Judging by Lewis’s references to Thomas in his letters, and Warnie’s references in his diary, both the Lewis brothers were, on the whole, pleased with Thomas as their vicar.
It is also clear from Jack’s letters and Warnie’s diary that in the early 1930’s both of the brothers did not take Holy Communion every Sunday. Both Jack and Warnie came back to faith in Christ around the same time, toward the end of 1931. And both took Communion again for the first time on the exact same day — Christmas 1931 — though Jack was at Holy Trinity Headington Quarry and Warnie was in Shanghai (4). Warnie planned at that time to henceforth take Communion four times per year. Jack, for his part, was displeased with the vicar trying to “make it a rule that you must communicate if you want to hear a sermon” (5). In other words, in his early days as a Christian Jack preferred to attend church services without always taking Communion. Warnie later summarized Jack’s early and later attitudes toward Communion in this way:
“… he had been a practising Christian again for some time when he said to me, of Communion: ‘I think that to communicate once a month strikes the right balance between enthusiasm and Laodiceanism.’ In later years he saw that ‘right balance’ differently and never failed to communicate weekly and on the major feast days as well” (6).
Jack summarized his own early view on the taking of Communion in a letter to his brother on January 17, 1932:
“I see (or think I see) so well a sense in which all wine is the blood of God—or all matter, even, the body of God, that I stumble at the apparently special sense in which this is claimed for the Host when consecrated. George Macdonald observes that the good man should aim at reaching the state of mind in which all meals are sacraments. Now that is the sort of thing I can understand: but I find no connection between it and the explicit ‘sacrament’ proprement dit” (7).
If Jack and Warnie were generally pleased with the Reverend Thomas as their vicar, they were certainly less delighted with his successor, the Reverend T. E. ‘Peter’ Bleiben. On September 10, 1939, one week after England declared war on Germany, Jack wrote to Warnie, reporting how unhappy he was with an extra petition which Bleiben added to the Litany that morning: “Prosper, oh Lord, our righteous cause.” Jack protested to the vicar regarding “the audacity of informing God that our cause was righteous—a point on which He may have His own view” (8).
It was on July 21, 1940, during a not too profitable sermon from the curate of Holy Trinity, The Reverend Arthur William Blanchett, that Jack was struck with the idea for a book which eventually became The Screwtape Letters (9). Screwtape’s second letter to Wormwood no doubt reflects some of Jack’s own experience in attending church services. Screwtape reminds Wormwood that when his patient goes inside the church building…
“… he sees the local grocer with rather an oily expression on his face bustling up to offer him one shiny little book containing a liturgy which neither of them understands, and one shabby little book containing corrupt texts of a number of religious lyrics, mostly bad, and in very small print. When he gets to his pew and looks round him he sees just that selection of his neighbours whom he has hitherto avoided. You want to lean pretty heavily on those neighbours. Make his mind flit to and fro between an expression like “the body of Christ” and the actual faces in the next pew. …Provided that any of those neighbours sing out of tune, or have boots that squeak, or double chins, or odd clothes, the patient will quite easily believe that their religion must therefore be somehow ridiculous. …Work hard, then, on the disappointment or anticlimax which is certainly coming to the patient during his first few weeks as a churchman” (10).
If this was reflective of Jack’s own experience in attending church then it seems natural to ask: why did he keep going? When asked during a “One Man’s Brain Trust” in 1944, “Is attendance at a place of worship or membership with a Christian community necessary to a Christian way of life?” Lewis answered:
“My own experience is that when I first became a Christian, about fourteen years ago, I thought that I could do it on my own, by retiring to my rooms and reading theology, and I wouldn’t go to the churches and Gospel Halls; and then later I found that it was the only way of flying your flag; and, of course, I found that this meant being a target. It is extraordinary how inconvenient to your family it becomes for you to get up early to go to Church. It doesn’t matter so much if you get up early for anything else, but if you get up early to go to Church it’s very selfish of you and you upset the house. If there is anything in the teaching of the New Testament which is in the nature of a command, it is that you are obliged to take the Sacrament, and you can’t do it without going to Church. I disliked very much their hymns, which I considered to be fifth-rate poems set to sixth-rate music. But as I went on I saw the great merit of it. I came up against different people of quite different outlooks and different education, and then gradually my conceit just began peeling off. I realized that the hymns (which were just sixth-rate music) were, nevertheless, being sung with devotion and benefit by an old saint in elastic-side boots in the opposite pew, and then you realize that you aren’t fit to clean those boots. It gets you out of your solitary conceit” (11).
Jack did indeed face opposition to his church attendance on the home front. Mrs. Moore would often taunt him on his return home each Sunday. “Back from the blood feast” she would say (12). Yet Jack did indeed continue on with church attendance, Mrs. Moore and boring sermons notwithstanding.
By 1940 Jack and Warnie even had their favorite pew at Holy Trinity. Near the front of the church on the left-hand side as one faces the altar was a pew beside a pillar just large enough to accommodate the two brothers (13). However, on Easter Sunday in 1940 there were so many people in church that Jack had to sit on the other side of the pillar and tightly wedged against it with his bottom resting on the angle at the end of the bench (14)! Apparently this was the general location in which the Lewis brothers sat for the rest of their church-going lives.
In a tape recording entitled Two People of the Foothills: Reminiscences of C. S. Lewis by the Reverend Canon R. E. Head, Vicar of Holy Trinity from 1956-1990, Lewis’s former pastor recalled the Lewis brothers sitting in the two-person pew next to the pillar. Head said that the Lewis brothers sat in that position so that they could see the altar and the pulpit but not be noticed by the rest of the congregation.
Douglas Gresham, Lewis’s step-son, who attended church with his step-father throughout the last decade of his life, remembers Jack sitting in a different place. In 1997 when Doug showed our mostly-American tour group around Holy Trinity Church he happened to mention to me how Jack sat behind the pillar during the service so that his facial expression could not be seen by the vicar, Ron Head.
“Was that because he disagreed with the vicar’s theology?” I asked.
“No,” said Doug. “It was not so much Ron’s basic theology that Jack objected to, but the slants that he put on it. Ron was a fine scholar of church history and by intellect a High Church Anglican. However, in his sermons there were often many things that would cause a spasm of pain or perhaps a look of total boredom to cross Jack’s face. Sitting as he did out of sight of Ron, Jack could yawn if he had to without causing pain to a man whom he regarded as something of a bore, one who had become lost in the trivial aspects of his calling whilst ignoring some of the essential ones. Ron was a very nice and indeed I think a good man and none of us would have hurt him for the world.”
In fact Jack referred to Ron Head as “a very trying curate” in a letter written to Mrs. Mary Van Deusen on April 22, 1954 (15). Head was curate at Holy Trinity from 1952 to 1956, prior to serving as vicar. On December 28, 1953, Lewis wrote to the same Mrs. Van Deusen and said:
“I think someone ought to write a book on ‘Christian life for Laymen under a bad Parish Preist’ for the problem is bound to occur in the best churches. The motto wd. be of course Herbert’s lines about the sermon ‘If all lack sense, God takes a text and preaches patience’” (16).
At that time Lewis was suffering from “the virtual extinction of Morning Prayer in favour of an 11 o’clock Celebration.” When Ron Head arrived at Holy Trinity Church Holy Communion was celebrated at 8 a.m. and Morning Prayer at 11 a.m. Lewis preferred the early service because there were no hymns. Head was responsible for reversing the times of these services, an action which Lewis found irritating though not impossible to submit to. Lewis wrote to Van Deusen,
“Perhaps we are put under tiresome priests chiefly to give us the opportunity of learning this beautiful & happy virtue: so that if we use the situation well we can profit more, perhaps, than we shd. have done under a better man” (17).
In our own age in which “church shopping” is so prevalent we have much to learn from the unwavering discipline of C. S. Lewis in regard to church attendance. Despite the fact that Lewis seldom “got anything out of” the sermons in his parish church, he never went looking for another congregation. He believed in attending services at the church closest to his home and that was that. Lewis was determined to go to church, not for what he could get out of it, but for what he could put in, namely—worship. Lewis understood well the temptation of searching for a church that would “suit” him; he once delineated this temptation in another letter from Screwtape to Wormwood:
“My dear Wormwood,
You mentioned casually in your last letter that the patient has continued to attend one church, and one only, since he was converted, and that he is not wholly pleased with it. May I ask what you are about? Why have I no report on the causes of his fidelity to the parish church? Do you realise that unless it is due to indifference it is a very bad thing? Surely you know that if a man can’t be cured of churchgoing, the next best thing is to send him all over the neighbourhood looking for the church that “suits” him until he becomes a taster or connoisseur of churches” (18).
C. S. Lewis was determined not to become such a “connoisseur of churches”. As he wrote to Mary Van Deusen, “Is there not something especially good (and even, in the end, joyful) about mere obedience (in lawful things) to him who bears our Master’s authority, however unworthy he be—perhaps all the more, if he is unworthy?”
In summary it is evident that C. S. Lewis faced the same temptations that every Christian faces who attends church for many years. What sets Lewis apart from most of us is that he learned how to resist those temptations; and thereby he gained certain lifelong and perhaps eternal benefits from attending the same parish church for all of his Christian life. With regard to church attendance, as in so many other areas of Christian experience, we have much indeed to learn from this famous apologist and fellow pilgrim.
—————————————
Will Vaus is the author of Mere Theology: A Guide to the Thought of C. S. Lewis and The Professor of Narnia: the C. S. Lewis Story. You can find him on the internet at www.willvaus.com. | ||||
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] | null | [] | null | en | /themes/custom/dus_main/favicon.png | https://discoverulsterscots.com/language-literature/cs-lewis-and-island-his-birth | In 1898, the year that C S Lewis was born, the old white Linen Hall in Belfast’s Donegall Square was demolished to make way for the new City Hall. Belfast was then one of the fastest growing ports in the British Isles. In that era, the manufacture of linen was one of two key economic drivers in the development of Belfast, and shipbuilding was the other.
Lewis’s grandfather Richard was a founding partner in the shipbuilding firm of MacIlwaine and Lewis, Boiler-makers, Engineers and Iron Shipbuilders. His maternal grandfather, the Rev. Thomas R Hamilton, was the first rector of St Mark’s Church in Belfast. The Hamiltons were related to the Ewarts, who owned one of the largest family businesses involved in the manufacture of linen. Belfast’s industrial and maritime development, along with the academic and clerical pursuits of his maternal grandfathers, brought the Hamilton and Lewis families to Belfast. These factors determined that C S Lewis was born in Belfast at the end of the 19th century.
From these beginnings in Belfast, C S Lewis developed his great affection for counties Antrim, Donegal, Down and Londonderry. His intriguing family story, however, goes beyond these to embrace the counties of Armagh, Fermanagh, Tyrone, and beyond Ulster to include the counties of Cork, Dublin, Kilkenny and Galway. Lewis’s story extends beyond Ireland to ancestral roots in Scotland and Wales.
C S Lewis was born in Belfast on 29 November 1898. He commences his book Surprised by Joy with these words:
"I was born in the winter of 1898 at Belfast, the son of a solicitor and a clergyman’s daughter."
Surprised by Joy is sub-titled The Shape of my Early Life, and it was in Belfast that Lewis’s early life took shape.
His parents, Albert and Florence Augusta (Flora), were married in St Mark’s Church in 1894. After their wedding they moved into Dundela Villas on Dundela Avenue, Holywood Road, Belfast. The following year their first son Warnie (Warren Hamilton) was born, and three years later Clive Staples Lewis was born.
The view from the nursery windows at the front of Dundela Villas was of the Castlereagh Hills, and from the back the view was of Divis Mountain, Colin and the Cave Hill.
Lewis says of the Castlereagh Hills:
"They were not very far off but they were to children quite unattainable. They taught me longing – Sehnsucht; made me for good or ill, and before I was six years old, a votary of the blue flower."
In 1905 the Lewis family moved a short distance from Dundela to the new house Little Lea, which Lewis describes as being “further out into what was then the country”. This would be a somewhat surprising description today for visitors to the house on Belfast’s Circular Road. While his early life at Dundela was characterised by “humdrum happiness”, his boyhood at Little Lea, in sharp contrast, would always be remembered with “poignant nostalgia”.
The early years from 1905 to 1908 were idyllic. Lewis records the excitement and the enthusiasm of the family’s move to Little Lea.
“In 1905 my seventh year the first great event in my life took place. We moved house. – To me, the important thing about the move was that the background to my life became larger. – The New House is almost a major character in my story.”
The important and pleasurable things he remembered about the house included: his father’s books; the attics; the solitude of the gardens; his schooling under the guidance of his mother and local teacher Annie Harper; the view over Belfast Lough to the Cave Hill and also the sounds of the steam ships ploughing out of the Lough to English and Scottish ports.
“The sound of a steamer’s horn at night still conjures up my whole boyhood.”
In these idyllic surroundings the blows of change began to fall. Lewis’s mother Flora died at Little Lea in 1908 and his life was altered for ever.
The Hamiltons, Lewis’s mother’s family, were brought to Belfast by the church. The Rev. Thomas R Hamilton served in the Royal Navy as a Chaplain and was based in Cork, where his daughter Flora, Lewis’s mother, was born (1862). Then, after serving as curate for four years in Holy Trinity Church in Rome, Flora’s father was appointed in 1874 as the Rector of St Mark’s, Dundela, and so her family came to Belfast.
From when Flora was 12 years old until her marriage, she lived with her parents in the Rectory beside the Church at St Mark’s. In 1894, she married Albert Lewis in St Mark’s Church and went to live at the nearby Dundela Villas, where C S Lewis and his brother were born.
Both boys were baptised in the font beneath the tall tower of St Mark’s Church by their grandfather. The Church holds the baptismal record for both events. As a teenager, C S Lewis was confirmed at St Mark’s but ideologically he was moving away from the Church. His first Communion was made in “total disbelief”, a position he reversed in later life when he became a convinced Christian and Christian apologist.
St Mark’s contains many memorials to Lewis’s immediate and extended family. The Lewis memorial window was commissioned by C S Lewis in memory of his parents and installed in the Church in 1933.
Following his mother’s death in 1908, C S Lewis’s education at Little Lea came to an abrupt end. He was sent off to boarding schools in England. This was an unhappy period in the life of young C S Lewis. His memory contained images of many journeys to Donegall Quay and leaving Belfast by steamer to return to schools in England that initially he did not enjoy.
The exchange of letters between Lewis and his father over the period 1908–1910 reflect the unhappiness of his early experiences of boarding school. In 1910, his father decided to send him to Campbell College in Belfast, and Lewis records that he was filled with delight at the prospect.
"I was delighted. I did not believe that anything Irish, even a school, could be bad."
Although Lewis was only at Campbell for a short time he says:
"I am always glad, as a historian, to have known Campbell…"
One of the lasting influences that can be traced to his time at Campbell College was his introduction to poetry by his English teacher Lewis Alden. Alden introduced him to Mathew Arnold’s poem Sohrab and Rustum. In Surprised by Joy he writes:
"I loved the poem at first sight and have loved it ever since."
The beginnings of a poet were stirred at Campbell College in Belfast.
The great affection that C S Lewis had for many locations in his native Ulster, and County Down in particular, is captured graphically in a conversation between David Bleakley and C S Lewis. Lewis invited Bleakley to define heaven and, on seeing Bleakley struggle with the challenge, he offered his own definition:
“Heaven is Oxford lifted and placed in the middle of County Down.”
This great love for County Down commenced with the view of the Castlereagh Hills from the nursery windows of Dundela Villas where he was born.
Lewis describes his main haunts as defined by the irregular polygon you would have described if you drew a line from Stormont to Comber … to Newtownards … to Scrabo … to Craigantlet … to Knocknagoney and back to Stormont.
The letters from his mother Flora to Albert record early family holidays spent at Ballynahinch and Killough that included visits to Ardglass and to the lighthouse at St John’s Point.
He enjoyed visits to Kilkeel and walks in the Mournes with his brother.
“I have seen Landscapes, notably in the Mourne Mountains which under a particular light made me feel that at any moment a giant might raise his head over the next ridge.”
When Lewis married Joy Davidman, they spent a belated honeymoon in 1958 at the Old Inn Crawfordsburn, Co Down.
In C S Lewis’s recollection of his earliest memories, he paints a vivid image of the view from the front of their home in Belfast, Little Lea. That view was the panorama of the mountain peaks of the Antrim Plateau: Divis, Colin and the Cave Hill. The Antrim shoreline of Belfast Lough was also part of that vista stretching from the Belfast shipyards to Carrickfergus.
The Lewis family spent the summer of 1901 at Ballycastle in County Antrim, and in 1904 the family returned to the North Coast, staying at Castlerock in County Londonderry. As an adult, C S Lewis returned to the north coast for walking holidays, staying at the Ballycastle Hotel. His letters and books refer explicitly to some of the locations along the Causeway Coast.
The ruined castle at Dunluce, perched precariously on its commanding position at the edge of the cliff-top, is undoubtedly significant among the images that made a lasting impression on young Lewis.
In The Last Battle, the closing scenes are of a landscape in the new Narnia. Farsight the eagle ultimately tells them that the landscape is of Cair Paravel, but the children have a recollection of this ancient castle “perched on the edge of the eastern sea”. Peter, the High King, says:
“It reminds me of somewhere. Could it be somewhere we once stayed for a holiday when we were very, very small ...”
Scattered throughout Lewis’s books, letters and diaries there are many references to County Donegal, which he enjoyed greatly. The early visits in 1916 were undertaken and shared with Arthur Greeves, and later visits included Arthur and his brother Warnie. Reflecting on a holiday visit to Portsalon in 1916 he writes:
“I remember, in particular, glorious hours of bathing in Donegal. It was surf bathing …the monstrous emerald, deafening waves …”
In August 1916 Lewis writes in a letter to Arthur:
“Portsalon is like a dream.”
In 1959 Lewis again makes arrangements to visit Donegal, staying at the Rathmullan Hotel. However, Donegal remained not only an important location and visual image for Lewis but a feeling. He coins a term that he uses as a literary description of a quality or a property of a piece of writing. Lewis called this its Donegality. By Donegality he meant the tone or the character of a story. Just as there are special places that each have a unique aura, so stories can convey a special feel or atmospheric quality.
“Lovers of Romance go back and back to such stories in the same way that we go back to a fruit for its taste; to an air for ... what? for itself; to a region for its whole atmosphere – to Donegal for its Donegality and London for its Londonness. It is notoriously difficult to put these tastes into words.”
The Lewis family extends back over four generations to north east Wales. Richard Lewis I (c. 1775–1845) farmed a small holding in Flintshire near the small town of Caergwrle, not far from present-day Wrexham. He had one daughter and six sons. Joseph, his fourth son, moved to a village called Saltney, today a suburb of Chester, just across the Welsh border in England.
At Saltney, Joseph Lewis, also a farmer, married Jane Ellis in 1825. They had eight children and Richard II (1832–1908), their second son, developed an interest in engineering and marine engineering in particular. In 1853 he married Martha Gee and they moved to Cork in southern Ireland, where he worked as a boilermaker with the Cork Steamship Company.
In Cork, Richard and Martha had their six children, of whom Albert James, father of C S Lewis, was the youngest. The family moved to Dublin in 1864 and then in 1865 to Belfast, where Richard met John H MacIlwaine and they decided to set up in business together. The business of MacIlwaine and Lewis was established in January 1868. The Lewises settled in a house called Ty-isa off Parkgate Ave.
Albert Lewis was sent from Ty-isa to Lurgan College for his education. He became a solicitor and married Florence Augusta Hamilton in 1894. Their second son C S Lewis was born in Belfast in 1898.
C S Lewis’s mother, Flora, was a Hamilton; the story of her family goes back to Scotland. The Ulster-Scots link extends beyond the plantation of Ulster and back through the Stewart Kings of Scotland to Robert the Bruce. Flora’s immediate Hamilton ancestors were a line of three generations of Church of Ireland Rectors and Bishops.
Flora’s father, the Rev. Thomas R Hamilton, was Rector of St Mark’s Dundela, her grandfather was Rector of Innishmacsaint in Co. Fermanagh, and her great grandfather, Hugh, was Dean of Armagh and ultimately Bishop of Ossory.
Bishop Hugh Hamilton (1729–1805) grew up at Hampton Hall, Balbriggan from where he went to study at Trinity College, Dublin, where he became Professor of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, before he entered the Church.
Bishop Hugh Hamilton came from four generations of Hamiltons that settled in Killyleagh. His great, great grandfather, also Hugh Hamilton (c. 1590), was a grandson of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart in Scotland. Hugh Hamilton arrived from Scotland at Killyleagh, where he became a denizen in 1616 and rented land at Lisbane from his relative James Hamilton, later Earl of Clanbrassil. The Finnart line of the Hamiltons can be traced back through Sir James Hamilton, the 1st Earl of Arran (1457–1529) to James I of Scotland (1406–1437) and to Robert the Bruce (1306–1329).
Lewis is best known to children all over the world for his Narnia stories. These Chronicles comprise seven books of which The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe is probably the most well-known. Its popularity is due mainly to the fact that it was the first one to be published and many children read it before any of the others. In the chronology of Narnia, The Magician’s Nephew is where it all begins and the stories end with The Last Battle.
Long before the Narnia stories gripped the public imagination, Lewis had written the science fiction trilogy Out of the Silent Planet, Voyage to Venus and That Hideous Strength. The latter of these is dedicated to his Belfast friend Janie MacNeill. In 1945 he published The Great Divorce, and Till We Have Faces was published in 1956. Lewis considered the latter to be his best piece of fiction.
Lewis made an important and significant contribution to English Literature and criticism through his scholarly work. In 1936 he published The Allegory of Love, a study in medieval tradition, and in 1954 English Literature in the Sixteenth Century was published as part of The Oxford History of English Literature. These are but two of the many books, papers and lectures published during his academic career that spanned the years 1925–1960. Other well-known academic pieces include An Experiment in Criticism, The Discarded Image and A Preface to Paradise Lost.
From his earliest years at Little Lea, C S Lewis was writing poetry and stories. He was particularly intentional about poetry. In the early part of his life, through his teens, the years of the First World War and his initial years as an Oxford Don, C S Lewis embraced an atheistic worldview. After his friendship and debates with JRR Tolkien and others, he abandoned atheism. He became arguably the most quoted Christian apologist of the century.
Lewis’s initial poetry developed across the years 1907–1917. One of the earliest, dated by his brother to 1907, was written when he was nine years of age. By the end of WW1 he had written some 40 pieces, which were published by Heinemann’s under the title of Spirits in Bondage. Lewis commenced his undergraduate studies at Oxford, after the war, as a published poet. Most of his other poetry was published within other works of prose and some was unpublished until 2015, long after his death. His poetry is now available under the title of The Collected Poems of C S Lewis.
Lewis outlined his journey from atheism to Christianity in books such as The Pilgrim’s Regress and Surprised by Joy. His debates in the Oxford Socratic Club and the BBC broadcasts during WW2 earned him a reputation as a skilful and persuasive apologist for Christianity. The broadcasts were initially published as three books, which were later combined and published as Mere Christianity. His other apologetic works include: The Problem of Pain, Miracles, The Abolition of Man and Letters to Malcolm. | ||||||
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] | 2015-01-30T16:48:08-05:00 | Explore Oxford through the eyes of CS Lewis as he created the Chronicles of Narnia, the magical world of mythical talking animals in a snowy wonderland. | en | BlueSkyTraveler.com | https://www.blueskytraveler.com/oxford-land-narnia/ | As a child, I was entranced by the Chronicles of Narnia series – the magical world of mythical talking animals in a snowy wonderland. You can re-read these stories over and over at different stages in your life and find different truths to ponder as the characters encounter and evolve their values through their adventures.
On my trip to Oxford, I had the chance to see the inspiration behind these magical books.
C. S. Lewis, or Jack Lewis, as he preferred to be called, was born in Belfast, Ireland (now Northern Ireland) on November 29, 1898. Lewis’s early childhood was relatively happy and carefree until his mother died when he was 10. Lewis and his older brother were sent away to boarding school in England. While he hated the strictness of the school, Lewis was introduced to Virgil, Homer and other classics. In 1916, Lewis became a student at University College at Oxford University but with the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for service and fought for the British Army in northern France.
Following the end of the war in 1918, Lewis returned to Oxford, where he took up his studies again graduating with first-class honors in Greek and Latin Literature, Philosophy and Ancient History, and English Literature. Lewis was elected to an important teaching post in English at Magdalen College, Oxford where he remained for 29 years.
At the age of 40, World War II started and Lewis tried to re-enter service but was not accepted. Instead he offered his home to the children evacuated from the Blitz bombings in London. The children escaping both to the countryside and from war would become part of the story for the children of Narnia.
Post WWII, between 1949 and 1954, Lewis wrote The Chronicles of Narnia, a series of seven fantasy novels for children, that is considered a classic of children’s literature. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales. The series is Lewis’s most popular work, having sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages. It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage and cinema.
Here are the 5 sites to see whilst in Oxford to be a part of Lewis’s Narnia. | |||||
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] | 2024-07-03T16:38:30+00:00 | Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as Jack, was an Irish-born British[1] novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is also known for his... | en | /skins-ucp/mw139/common/favicon.ico | Culture Nation Wiki | https://culturenation.fandom.com/wiki/C.S._Lewis | Clive Staples Lewis (29 November 1898 – 22 November 1963), commonly referred to as C. S. Lewis and known to his friends and family as Jack, was an Irish-born British[1] novelist, academic, medievalist, literary critic, essayist, lay theologian and Christian apologist. He is also known for his fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia and The Space Trilogy.
Lewis was a close friend of J. R. R. Tolkien, and both authors were leading figures in the English faculty at Oxford University and in the informal Oxford literary group known as the "Inklings". According to his memoir Surprised by Joy, Lewis had been baptised in the Church of Ireland at birth, but fell away from his faith during his adolescence. Owing to the influence of Tolkien and other friends, at the age of 32 Lewis returned to Christianity, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England".[2] His conversion had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on the subject of Christianity brought him wide acclaim.
In 1956, he married the American writer Joy Gresham, 17 years his junior, who died four years later of cancer at the age of 45.
Lewis died three years after his wife, as the result of renal failure. His death came one week before his 65th birthday. Media coverage of his death was minimal, as he died on 22 November 1963 – the same day that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the same day another famous author died, Aldous Huxley.
Lewis's works have been translated into more than 30 languages and have sold millions of copies over the years. The books that make up The Chronicles of Narnia have sold the most and have been popularised on stage, in TV, in radio, and in cinema.
Biography
Childhood
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland, on 29 November 1898.[3] His father was Albert James Lewis (1863–1929), a solicitor whose father, Richard, had come to Ireland from Wales during the mid 19th century. His mother was Florence (Flora) Augusta Lewis née Hamilton (1862–1908), the daughter of a Church of Ireland (Anglican) priest. He had one older brother, Warren Hamilton Lewis (Warnie). At the age of four, shortly after his dog Jacksie died when run over by a car, Lewis announced that his name was now Jacksie. At first he would answer to no other name, but later accepted Jack, the name by which he was known to friends and family for the rest of his life. When he was seven, his family moved into "Little Lea", the family home of his childhood, in the Strandtown area of East Belfast.
Lewis was initially schooled by private tutors before being sent to the Wynyard School in Watford, Hertfordshire, in 1908, just after his mother's death from cancer. Lewis' brother had already enrolled there three years previously. The school was closed not long afterwards due to a lack of pupils; the headmaster Robert "Oldie" Capron was soon after committed to a psychiatric hospital. Tellingly, in Surprised By Joy, Lewis would nickname the school (and place) "Belsen".[4] After Wynyard closed, Lewis attended Campbell College in the east of Belfast about a mile from his home, but he left after a few months due to respiratory problems. As a result of his illness, Lewis was sent to the health-resort town of Malvern, Worcestershire, where he attended the preparatory school Cherbourg House (called "Chartres" in Lewis's autobiography).
In September 1913, Lewis enrolled at Malvern College, where he would remain until the following June. It was during this time that 15-year-old Lewis abandoned his childhood Christian faith and became an atheist, becoming interested in mythology and the occult.[5] Later he would describe "Wyvern" (as he styled the school in his autobiography) as so singularly focused on increasing one's social status that he came to see (although he stated that it never interested or tempted him personally) the homosexual relationships between older and younger pupils as "the one oasis (though green only with weeds and moist only with fetid water) in the burning desert of competitive ambition.... A perversion was the only thing left through which something spontaneous and uncalculated could creep".[6] After leaving Malvern he moved to study privately with William T. Kirkpatrick, his father's old tutor and former headmaster of Lurgan College.
As a young boy, Lewis had a fascination with anthropomorphic animals, falling in love with Beatrix Potter's stories and often writing and illustrating his own animal stories. He and his brother Warnie together created the world of Boxen, inhabited and run by animals. Lewis loved to read, and as his father's house was filled with books, he felt that finding a book to read was as easy as walking into a field and "finding a new blade of grass."[7]
As a teenager, he was wonderstruck by the songs and legends of what he called Northernness, the ancient literature of Scandinavia preserved in the Icelandic sagas. These legends intensified a longing he had within, a deep desire he would later call "joy". He also grew to love nature; the beauty of nature reminded him of the stories of the North, and the stories of the North reminded him of the beauties of nature. His writing in his teenage years moved away from the tales of Boxen, and he began to use different art forms (epic poetry and opera) to try to capture his new-found interest in Norse mythology and the natural world. Studying with Kirkpatrick ("The Great Knock", as Lewis afterwards called him) instilled in him a love of Greek literature and mythology, and sharpened his skills in debate and sound reasoning. In 1916, Lewis was awarded a scholarship at University College, Oxford, and began his university studies.[8]
World War I
In 1917, Lewis temporarily left his studies to volunteer in the British Army. As World War I raged on he was commissioned an officer in the Third Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry. Lewis arrived at the front line in the Somme Valley in France on his nineteenth birthday, and experienced trench warfare.
On 15 April 1918 Lewis was wounded by an English shell falling short of its target,[9] and suffered some depression during his convalescence, due in part to missing his Irish home. Upon his recovery in October, he was assigned to duty in Andover, England. He was discharged in December 1918, and soon returned to his studies. Lewis received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin Literature) in 1920, a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923.
Jane Moore
While being trained for the army Lewis shared a room with another cadet, Edward Courtnay Francis "Paddy" Moore (1898–1918). Maureen Moore, Paddy's sister, claimed that the two made a mutual pact[10] that if either died during the war, the survivor would take care of both their families. Paddy was killed in action in 1918 and Lewis kept his promise. Paddy had earlier introduced Lewis to his mother, Jane King Moore, and a friendship very quickly sprang up between Lewis, who was 18 when they met, and Jane, who was 45. The friendship with Mrs Moore was particularly important to Lewis while he was recovering from his wounds in hospital, as his father did not visit Lewis.
Lewis lived with and cared for Mrs Moore until she was hospitalized in the late 1940s. He routinely introduced her as his "mother", and referred to her as such in letters. Lewis, whose own mother had died when he was a child and whose father was distant, demanding and eccentric, developed a deeply affectionate friendship with Mrs Moore.
Speculation regarding their relationship re-surfaced with the publication of A. N. Wilson's biography. Wilson (who had never met Lewis) attempted to make a case for their having been lovers for a time. Wilson's biography was not the first to address the question of Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore. George Sayer, who knew Lewis for 29 years, sought to shed light on their relationship in his biography Jack: A Life of C. S. Lewis, in which he wrote:
Were they lovers? Owen Barfield, who knew Jack well in the 1920s, once said that he thought the likelihood was "fifty-fifty." Although she was twenty-six years older than Jack, she was still a handsome woman, and he was certainly infatuated with her. But it seems very odd, if they were lovers, that he would call her "mother." We know, too, that they did not share the same bedroom. It seems most likely that he was bound to her by the promise he had given to Paddy and that his promise was reinforced by his love for her as his second mother.[11]
Later Sayer changed his mind. In the introduction to the 1997 edition of his biography of Lewis he wrote:
I have had to alter my opinion of Lewis's relationship with Mrs. Moore. In chapter eight of this book I wrote that I was uncertain about whether they were lovers. Now after conversations with Mrs. Moore's daughter, Maureen, and a consideration of the way in which their bedrooms were arranged at The Kilns, I am quite certain that they were.
Lewis spoke well of Mrs. Moore throughout his life, saying to his friend George Sayer, "She was generous and taught me to be generous, too."
In December 1917 Lewis wrote in a letter to his childhood friend Arthur Greeves that Jane and Greeves were "the two people who matter most to me in the world."
In 1930, Lewis and his brother Warnie moved, with Mrs. Moore and her daughter Maureen, into "The Kilns", a house in the district of Headington Quarry on the outskirts of Oxford (now part of the suburb of Risinghurst). They all contributed financially to the purchase of the house, which passed to Maureen, then Dame Maureen Dunbar, Btss., when Warren died in 1973.
Mrs. Moore suffered from dementia in her later years and was eventually moved into a nursing home, where she died in 1951. Lewis visited her every day in this home until her death.
"My Irish life"
Lewis experienced a certain cultural shock on first arriving in England: "No Englishman will be able to understand my first impressions of England", Lewis wrote in Surprised by Joy, continuing, "The strange English accents with which I was surrounded seemed like the voices of demons. But what was worst was the English landscape ... I have made up the quarrel since; but at that moment I conceived a hatred for England which took many years to heal."[4]
From boyhood Lewis immersed himselfTemplate:Citation needed firstly in Norse and Greek and then in Irish mythology and literature and expressed an interest in the Irish language,Template:Citation needed though there is not much evidence that he labored to learn it. He developed a particular fondness for W. B. Yeats, in part because of Yeats's use of Ireland's Celtic heritage in poetry. In a letter to a friend Lewis wrote, "I have here discovered an author exactly after my own heart, whom I am sure you would delight in, W. B. Yeats. He writes plays and poems of rare spirit and beauty about our old Irish mythology."Template:Citation needed
In 1921, Lewis had the opportunity to meet Yeats on two occasions, since Yeats had moved to Oxford.[12] Surprised to find his English peers indifferent to Yeats and the Celtic Revival movement, Lewis wrote: "I am often surprised to find how utterly ignored Yeats is among the men I have met: perhaps his appeal is purely Irish — if so, then thank the gods that I am Irish."[13] Early in his career, Lewis considered sending his work to the major Dublin publishers, writing: "If I do ever send my stuff to a publisher, I think I shall try Maunsel, those Dublin people, and so tack myself definitely onto the Irish school."Template:Citation needed After his conversion to Christianity, his interests gravitated towards Christian spirituality and away from pagan Celtic mysticism.Template:Citation needed
Lewis occasionally expressed a somewhat tongue-in-cheek chauvinism toward the English. Describing an encounter with a fellow Irishman he wrote: "Like all Irish people who meet in England we ended by criticisms on the invincible flippancy and dulness of the Anglo-Saxon race. After all, there is no doubt, ami, that the Irish are the only people: with all their faults I would not gladly live or die among another folk."[14]
Throughout his life, he sought out the company of his fellow Irish living in EnglandTemplate:Citation needed and visited Northern Ireland regularly, even spending his honeymoon there in 1958 at the Old Inn, Crawfordsburn.[15] He called this "my Irish life."Template:Citation needed
According to Paul Stevens of the University of Toronto, "Lewis's Mere Christianity masked many of the political prejudices of an old-fashioned Ulster protestant, a native of middle-class Belfast for whom British withdrawal from Northern Ireland even in the 1950s and 1960s was unthinkable."[16]
Conversion to Christianity
Raised in a church-going family in the Church of Ireland, Lewis became an atheist at the age of 15, though he later paradoxically described his young self as being "very angry with God for not existing".[17]
His early separation from Christianity began when he started to view his religion as a chore and as a duty;Template:Citation needed around this time he also gained an interest in the occult as his studies expanded to include such topics.Template:Citation needed Lewis quoted Lucretius (De rerum natura, 5.198–9) as having one of the strongest arguments for atheism:[18]
Nequaquam nobis divinitus esse paratam
:Naturam rerum; tanta stat praedita culpa
"Had God designed the world, it would not be
:A world so frail and faulty as we see."
Lewis's interest in the works of George MacDonald was part of what turned him from atheism. This can be seen particularly well through this passage in Lewis's The Great Divorce, chapter nine, when the semi-autobiographical main character meets MacDonald in Heaven:
...I tried, trembling, to tell this man all that his writings had done for me. I tried to tell how a certain frosty afternoon at Leatherhead Station when I had first bought a copy of Phantastes (being then about sixteen years old) had been to me what the first sight of Beatrice had been to Dante: Here begins the new life. I started to confess how long that Life had delayed in the region of imagination merely: how slowly and reluctantly I had come to admit that his Christendom had more than an accidental connexion with it, how hard I had tried not to see the true name of the quality which first met me in his books is Holiness.[19]
Influenced by arguments with his Oxford colleague and friend J.R.R. Tolkien, and by the book The Everlasting Man by G. K. Chesterton, he slowly rediscovered Christianity. He fought greatly up to the moment of his conversion noting that he was brought into Christianity like a prodigal, "kicking, struggling, resentful, and darting his eyes in every direction for a chance to escape."[20] He described his last struggle in Surprised by Joy:
You must picture me alone in that room in Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. That which I greatly feared had at last come upon me. In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.[21]
After his conversion to theism in 1929, Lewis converted to Christianity in 1931. Following a long discussion and late-night walk with his close friends Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, he records making a specific commitment to Christian belief while on his way to the zoo with his brother. He became a member of the Church of England — somewhat to the disappointment of Tolkien, who had hoped he would convert to Roman Catholicism.[22]
A committed Anglican, Lewis upheld a largely orthodox Anglican theology, though in his apologetic writings, he made an effort to avoid espousing any one denomination. In his later writings, some believe he proposed ideas such as purification of venial sins after death in purgatory (The Great Divorce) and mortal sin (The Screwtape Letters)Template:Citation needed, which are generally considered to be Roman Catholic teachings although they are also widely held in Anglicanism. Regardless, Lewis considered himself an entirely orthodox Anglican to the end of his life, reflecting that he had initially attended church only to receive communion and had been repelled by the hymns and the poor quality of the sermons. He later came to consider himself honoured by worshipping with men of faith who came in shabby clothes and work boots and who sang all the verses to all the hymnsTemplate:Citation needed.
Joy Gresham
In Lewis's later life, he corresponded with and later met Joy Davidman Gresham, an American writer of Jewish background and also a convert from atheism to Christianity.[23] She was separated from her alcoholic and abusive husband, the novelist William L. Gresham, and came to England with her two sons, David and Douglas.[24] Lewis at first regarded her as an agreeable intellectual companion and personal friend, and it was at least overtly on this level that he agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her so that she could continue to live in the UK.[25] Lewis's brother Warnie wrote: "For Jack the attraction was at first undoubtedly intellectual. Joy was the only woman whom he had met... who had a brain which matched his own in suppleness, in width of interest, and in analytical grasp, and above all in humour and a sense of fun" Template:Harvard citation. However, after complaining of a painful hip, she was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer, and the relationship developed to the point that they sought a Christian marriage. Since she was divorced, this was not straightforward in the Church of England at the time, but a friend, the Rev. Peter Bide, performed the ceremony at her hospital bed in March 1957.[26]
Gresham's cancer soon went into a brief remission, and the couple lived as a family (together with Warren Lewis) until her eventual relapse and death in 1960. The year she died, the couple took a brief holiday in Greece and the Aegean in 1960; Lewis was fond of walking but not of travel, and this marked his only crossing of the English Channel after 1918. Lewis's book A Grief Observed describes his experience of bereavement in such a raw and personal fashion that Lewis originally released it under the pseudonym N.W. Clerk to keep readers from associating the book with him. However, so many friends recommended the book to Lewis as a method for dealing with his own grief that he made his authorship public.
Lewis continued to raise Gresham's two sons after her death. While Douglas Gresham is, like Lewis and his mother, a Christian,[27] David Gresham turned to the faith into which his mother had been born and became Orthodox Jewish in his beliefs. His mother's writings had featured the Jews, particularly one "shohet" (ritual slaughterer), in an unsympathetic manner. David informed Lewis that he was going to become a ritual slaughterer in order to present this type of Jewish religious functionary to the world in a more favourable light.Template:Citation needed In a 2005 interview, Douglas Gresham acknowledged he and his brother were not close, but he did say they are in email contact.[28]
Douglas remains involved in the affairs of the Lewis estate.
Illness and death
In early June 1961, Lewis began experiencing medical problems and was diagnosed with inflammation of the kidneys which resulted in blood poisoning. His illness caused him to miss the autumn term at Cambridge, though his health gradually began improving in 1962 and he returned that April. Lewis's health continued to improve, and according to his friend George Sayer, Lewis was fully himself by the spring of 1963. However, on 15 July 1963 he fell ill and was admitted to hospital. The next day at 5:00 pm, Lewis suffered a heart attack and lapsed into a coma, unexpectedly awaking the following day at 2:00 pm. After he was discharged from the hospital, Lewis returned to the Kilns though he was too ill to return to work. As a result, he resigned from his post at Cambridge in August. Lewis's condition continued to decline and in mid-November, he was diagnosed with end stage renal failure. On 22 November 1963 Lewis collapsed in his bedroom at 5:30 pm and died a few minutes later, exactly one week before his 65th birthday. He is buried in the churchyard of Holy Trinity Church, Headington, Oxford Template:Harvard citation.
Media coverage of his death was almost completely overshadowed by news of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which occurred on the same day, as did the death of Aldous Huxley, author of Brave New World. This coincidence was the inspiration for Peter Kreeft's book Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis, & Aldous Huxley Template:Harvard citation.
C. S. Lewis is commemorated on 22 November in the church calendar of the Episcopal Church.[29]
Career
The scholar
Lewis began his brilliant academic career as an undergraduate student at Oxford, where he won a triple first, the highest honours in three areas of study.[30] Lewis then taught as a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, for nearly thirty years, from 1925 to 1954, and later was the first Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. Using this position, he argued that there was no such thing as an English Renaissance. Much of his scholarly work concentrated on the later Middle Ages, especially its use of allegory. His The Allegory of Love (1936) helped reinvigorate the serious study of late medieval narratives like the Roman de la Rose. Lewis wrote several prefaces to old works of literature and poetry, like Layamon's Brut. His book "A Preface to Paradise Lost" is still one of the most valuable criticisms of that work. His last academic work, The Discarded Image: An Introduction to Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1964), is a summary of the medieval world view, the "discarded image" of the cosmos in his title.
Lewis was a prolific writer, and his circle of literary friends became an informal discussion society known as the "Inklings", including J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and his brother Warren Lewis. At Oxford he was the tutor of, among many other undergraduates, poet John Betjeman, critic Kenneth Tynan, mystic Bede Griffiths, and Sufi scholar Martin Lings. Curiously, the religious and conservative Betjeman detested Lewis, whereas the anti-Establishment Tynan retained a life-long admiration for him Template:Harvard citation. Of Tolkien, Lewis writes in Surprised by Joy:
When I began teaching for the English Faculty, I made two other friends, both Christians (these queer people seemed now to pop up on every side) who were later to give me much help in getting over the last stile. They were H.V.V. Dyson ... and J.R.R. Tolkien. Friendship with the latter marked the breakdown of two old prejudices. At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a Papist, and at my first coming into the English Faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both.[31]
The author
In addition to his scholarly work, Lewis wrote a number of popular novels, including his science fiction Space Trilogy and his fantasy fiction Narnian books, most dealing implicitly with Christian themes such as sin, humanity's fall from grace, and redemption.
The Pilgrim's Regress
Main article: The Pilgrim's Regress
His first novel after becoming a Christian was The Pilgrim's Regress, which depicted his experience with Christianity in the style of John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The book was poorly received by critics at the time,Template:Citation needed although D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones, one of Lewis's contemporaries at Oxford, gave him much-valued encouragement. Asked by Lloyd-Jones when he would write another book, Lewis replied, "When I understand the meaning of prayer." Template:Harvard citation
Space Trilogy
Main article: Space Trilogy
His Space Trilogy or Ransom Trilogy novels (also called the Cosmic Trilogy) dealt with what Lewis saw as the de-humanising trends in contemporary science fiction. The first book, Out of the Silent Planet, was apparently written following a conversation with his friend J. R. R. Tolkien about these trends; Lewis agreed to write a "space travel" story and Tolkien a "time travel" one. Tolkien's story, "The Lost Road", a tale connecting his Middle-earth mythology and the modern world, was never completed. Lewis's main character of Ransom is based in part on Tolkien, a fact that Tolkien himself alludes to in his Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien. The second novel, Perelandra, depicts a new Garden of Eden on the planet Venus, a new Adam and Eve, and a new "serpent figure" to tempt them. The story can be seen as a hypothesis of what could have happened if the terrestrial Eve had resisted the serpent's temptation and avoided the Fall of Man. The last novel in the Trilogy, That Hideous Strength, further develops the theme of nihilistic science threatening traditional human values embodied in Arthurian legend (and making reference to Tolkien's fictional universe of Middle-earth).
Many of the ideas in the Trilogy, particularly the opposition to de-humanization in the third volume, are presented more formally in Lewis’ The Abolition of Man, based on his series of lectures at Durham University in 1943. Lewis stayed in Durham, where he was overwhelmed by the cathedral. That Hideous Strength is in fact set in the environs of 'Edgestow' university, a small English university like Durham, though Lewis disclaims any other resemblance between the two.[32]
Walter Hooper, Lewis's literary executor, discovered a fragment of another science-fiction novel by Lewis, The Dark Tower, but it is unfinished; it is not clear whether the book was intended as part of the same series of novels. The manuscript was eventually published in 1977, though Lewis scholar Kathryn Lindskoog doubts its authenticity.
The Chronicles of Narnia
Main article: The Chronicles of Narnia
The Chronicles of Narnia is a series of seven fantasy novels for children and is considered a classic of children's literature. Written between 1949 and 1954 and illustrated by Pauline Baynes, the series is Lewis's most popular work, having sold over 100 million copies in 41 languages Template:Harvard citation Template:Harvard citation. It has been adapted several times, complete or in part, for radio, television, stage and cinema.
The books contain Christian ideas intended to be easily accessible to young readers. In addition to Christian themes, Lewis also borrows characters from Greek and Roman mythology as well as traditional British and Irish fairy tales.
Other works
Lewis wrote a number of works on Heaven and Hell. One of these, The Great Divorce, is a short novella in which a few residents of Hell take a bus ride to Heaven, where they are met by people who dwell there. The proposition is that they can stay (in which case they can call the place where they had come from "Purgatory", instead of "Hell"); but many find it not to their taste. The title is a reference to William Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a concept that Lewis found a "disastrous error" Template:Harvard citation. This work deliberately echoes two other more famous works with a similar theme: the Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, and Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Another short work, The Screwtape Letters, consists of suave letters of advice from a senior demon, Screwtape, to his nephew Wormwood, on the best ways to tempt a particular human and secure his damnation. Lewis's last novel was Till We Have Faces — he thought of it as his most mature and masterful work of fiction, but it was never a popular success. It is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche from the unusual perspective of Psyche's sister. It is deeply concerned with religious ideas, but the setting is entirely pagan, and the connections with specific Christian beliefs are left implicit.
Before Lewis's conversion to Christianity, he published two books: Spirits in Bondage, a collection of poems, and Dymer, a single narrative poem. Both were published under the pen name Clive Hamilton.
He also wrote The Four Loves, which rhetorically explains four loves including friendship, eros, affection, and charity or caritas.
In 2009, a partial draft of Language and Human Nature, which Lewis had begun co-writing with J.R.R. Tolkien, but which was never completed, was discovered.[34]
The Christian apologist
In addition to his career as an English professor and an author of fiction, Lewis is regarded by many as one of the most influential Christian apologists of his time; Mere Christianity was voted best book of the twentieth century by Christianity Today in 2000. Due to Lewis's approach to religious belief as a skeptic, and his following conversion, he has been called "The Apostle to the Skeptics."
Lewis was very interested in presenting a reasonable case for the truth of Christianity. Mere Christianity, The Problem of Pain, and Miracles were all concerned, to one degree or another, with refuting popular objections to Christianity, such as "How could a good God allow pain to exist in the world?". He also became known as a popular lecturer and broadcaster, and some of his writing (including much of Mere Christianity) originated as scripts for radio talks or lectures.[35]
According to George Sayer, a 1948 loss in a debate with Elizabeth Anscombe, also a Christian, led to his reevaluating his role as an apologist and his future works concentrated on devotional literature and children's books.[36] Anscombe had a different recollection of the debate's emotional effect on Lewis.[36] Victor Reppert also disputes Sayer, listing some of Lewis's post-1948 apologetic publications, including the second and revised edition of his Miracles in 1960.[37]
Lewis also wrote an autobiography titled Surprised by Joy, which places special emphasis on his own conversion. (It was written before he met his wife, Joy Gresham; the title of the book came from the first line of a poem by William Wordsworth.) His essays and public speeches on Christian belief, many of which were collected in God in the Dock and The Weight of Glory and Other Addresses, remain popular today.
His most famous works, the Chronicles of Narnia, contain many strong Christian messages and are often considered allegory. Lewis, an expert on the subject of allegory, maintained that the books were not allegory, and preferred to call the Christian aspects of them "suppositional". As Lewis wrote in a letter to a Mrs. Hook in December 1958:
If Aslan represented the immaterial Deity in the same way in which Giant Despair [a character in The Pilgrim's Progress] represents despair, he would be an allegorical figure. In reality however he is an invention giving an imaginary answer to the question, 'What might Christ become like, if there really were a world like Narnia and He chose to be incarnate and die and rise again in that world as He actually has done in ours?' This is not allegory at all. Template:Harvard citation
Trilemma
Main article: Lewis's trilemma
In a much-cited passage from Mere Christianity, Lewis challenged the increasingly popular view that Jesus, although a great moral teacher, was not God. He argued that Jesus made several implicit claims to divinity, which would logically exclude this:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: 'I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.' That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. Template:Harvard citation
This argument, which Lewis did not invent but developed and popularised, is sometimes referred to as "Lewis's trilemma". It has been used by the Christian apologist Josh McDowell in his book More Than a Carpenter Template:Harvard citation. Although widely repeated in Christian apologetic literature, it has been largely ignored by professional theologians and biblical scholars, as it fails to take into account the possibility that Jesus' claims to divinity may have been significantly misunderstood, or the possibility that the Gospels themselves may be inaccurate. For these reasons, Lewis's argument is regarded by some as logically unsound and an example of false dilemma.[38]
Lewis's Christian apologetics, and this argument in particular, have been criticized. Philosopher John Beversluis described Lewis's arguments as "textually careless and theologically unreliable".[39] John Hick argues that New Testament scholars do not today support the view that Jesus claimed to be God.[40] The Anglican bishop N. T. Wright commented that the 'trilemma' argument "doesn't work as history, and it backfires dangerously when historical critics question his reading of the Gospels."[41]
Lewis used a similar structure in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, when Digory Kirke advises the young heroes that their sister's claims of a magical world must logically be taken as either lies, madness, or truth.[37]
Universal morality
One of the main theses in Lewis's apologia is that there is a common morality known throughout humanity. In the first five chapters of Mere Christianity Lewis discusses the idea that people have a standard of behaviour to which they expect other people to adhere. This standard has been called Universal Morality or Natural Law. Lewis claims that people all over the earth know what this law is and when they break it. He goes on to claim that there must be someone or something behind such a universal set of principles. Template:Harvard citation
These then are the two points that I wanted to make. First, that human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in. Template:Harvard citation
Lewis also portrays Universal Morality in his works of fiction. In The Chronicles of Narnia he describes Universal Morality as the "Deep magic" which everyone knew. Template:Harvard citation In the second chapter of Mere Christianity Lewis recognizes that "many people find it difficult to understand what this Law of Human Nature [...] is". And he responds first to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply our herd instinct" and second to the idea "that the Moral Law is simply a social convention". In responding to the second idea Lewis notes that people often complain that one set of moral ideas is better than another, but that this actually argues for there existing some "Real Morality" to which they are comparing other moralities. Finally he notes that sometimes differences in moral codes are exaggerated by people who confuse differences in beliefs about morality with differences in beliefs about facts:
I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did — if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house. Template:Harvard citation
Lewis also had fairly progressive views on the topic of "animal morality", in particular the suffering of animals, as is evidenced by several of his essays: most notably, On Vivisection[42] and "On the Pains of Animals."[43][44]
Legacy
Lewis continues to attract a wide readership. In 2008, The Times ranked him eleventh on their list of "the 50 greatest British writers since 1945".[45] Readers of his fiction are often unaware of what Lewis considered the Christian themes of his works. His Christian apologetics are read and quoted by members of many Christian denominations, from Catholics to Mormons Template:Harvard citation.
Lewis has been the subject of several biographies, a few of which were written by some of his close friends, such as Roger Lancelyn Green and George Sayer. In 1985 the screenplay Shadowlands by William Nicholson, dramatizing Lewis's life and relationship with Joy Davidman Gresham, was aired on British TV (starring Joss Ackland as Lewis and Claire Bloom as Joy). In 1989 this was staged as a theatre play (starring Nigel Hawthorne) and in 1993 Shadowlands became a feature film, starring Anthony Hopkins as Lewis and Debra Winger as Joy. In 2005, a one hour made for TV movie entitled C. S. Lewis: Beyond Narnia (starring Anton Rodgers) provided a general synopsis of Lewis's life.
Many books have been inspired by Lewis, including A Severe Mercy by his correspondent and friend Sheldon Vanauken. The Chronicles of Narnia have been particularly influential. Modern children's literature such as Daniel Handler's A Series of Unfortunate Events, Eoin Colfer's Artemis Fowl, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, and J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter have been more or less influenced by Lewis's series Template:Harvard citation. Pullman, an atheist and so fierce a critic of Lewis's work as to be dubbed "the anti-Lewis",[46][47] considers him a negative influence and has accused Lewis of featuring religious propaganda, misogyny, racism] and emotional sadism Template:Harvard citation in his books. Authors of adult fantasy literature such as Tim Powers have also testified to being influenced by Lewis's work.
Most of Lewis’ posthumous work has been edited by his literary executor, Walter Hooper. An independent Lewis scholar, the late Kathryn Lindskoog, argued that Hooper's scholarship is not reliable and that he has made false statements and attributed forged works to Lewis Template:Harvard citation. C. S. Lewis's stepson, Douglas Gresham, denies the forgery claims, saying that "The whole controversy thing was engineered for very personal reasons... Her fanciful theories have been pretty thoroughly discredited." Template:Harvard citation.
A bronze statue of Lewis's character, Digory, from The Magician's Nephew, stands in Belfast's Holywood Arches in front of the Holywood Road Library Template:Harvard citation.
Lewis was strongly opposed to the creation of live-action versions of his works. His major concern was that the anthropomorphic animal characters "when taken out of narrative into actual visibility, always turn into buffoonery or nightmare". This was said in the context of the 1950s, when technology would not allow the special effects required to make a coherent, robust film version of Narnia.
Several C. S. Lewis Societies exist around the world, including one which was founded in Oxford in 1982 to discuss papers on the life and works of Lewis and the other Inklings, and generally appreciate all things Lewisian.[48] His name is also used by a variety of Christian organizations, often with a concern for maintaining conservative Christian values in education or literary studies.
The 2005 film adaptation of The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was based on his first installment in the Narnia series. Film adaptations have been made of two other books he wrote: Prince Caspian (released on 16 May 2008) and Voyage of the Dawn Treader (to be released 2010).
Several songs, bands, and musicians have taken influence from Lewis's work:
The song "The Earth Will Shake" performed by Thrice is based on his poem "The Prudent Jailer", with many other songs relating to his work including "The Abolition of Man", "(That) Hideous Strength" and "As The Ruin Falls".
*The band Sixpence None the Richer are named after a passage in Mere Christianity.
*The Great Divorce has served as the inspiration for at least four pieces of music:
**A string quartet piece entitled The Great Divorce by Matt Slocum of Sixpence None the Richer
**The song "The High Countries" by Caedmon's Call on their album Back Home
**Phil Woodward's 2007 rock album Ghosts and Spirits
**The song "Mountain of Souls" by Becoming the Archetype on their album Dichotomy (album)
*New Zealand Christian singer-songwriter Brooke Fraser also included a song entitled "C. S. Lewis Song" in her latest album "Albertine" which contains passages from his writing.[49]
*Christian alternative rock band Poor Old Lu are so named because of a sentence in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe.
*Alternative rock band Future of Forestry got its name from Lewis's poem The Future of Forestry.
*2nd Chapter of Acts recorded an album entitled The Roar of Love, inspired by the first of the Narnia stories.
*British band The Waterboys quoted from the final Narnia book, The Last Battle, in their 1984 song "Church Not Made with Hands". Later, on their 1990 album Room to Roam, The Waterboys included a song entitled "Further Up, Further In", the title taken from the penultimate chapter of The Last Battle.
*Joni Mitchell included a song titled "The Dawntreader" on her album, "Song to a Seagull".
*American guitarist and vocalist Phil Keaggy, besides being a huge fan of Lewis' works (sometimes even quoting him during his concerts), recorded on his 1976 album Love Broke Thru an arranged version of the poem "As the Ruin Falls" by Lewis. In 1991 on his instrumental album Beyond Nature (named after a quotation of Mere Christianity), Keaggy referenced Lewis in the titles of some of the songs (e.g., "Brother Jack", "Addison's Walk" and "County Down").
*Phish has a song titled "Prince Caspian" named after the title character in Lewis's book Prince Caspian.
*Christian guitarist and vocalist Phil Wickham wrote the song "Sailing on a Ship" based on The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the song "Heaven and Earth" based on The Last Battle.
== Bibliography==
Main article: Bibliography of C. S. Lewis
Secondary works
* John Beversluis, C. S. Lewis and the Search for Rational Religion. Eerdmans, 1985. ISBN 0-8028-0046-7
* Humphrey Carpenter, The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and their friends. George Allen & Unwin, 1978. ISBN 0-04-809011-5
* Joe R. Christopher & Joan K. Ostling, C. S. Lewis: An Annotated Checklist of Writings about him and his Works. Kent State University Press, n.d. (1972). ISBN 0-87338-138-6
* James Como, Branches to Heaven: The Geniuses of C. S. Lewis, Spence, 1998.
* James Como, Remembering C. S. Lewis (3rd ed. of C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table). Ignatius, 2006
* Michael Coren, The Man Who Created Narnia: The Story of C. S. Lewis. Eerdmans Pub Co, Reprint edition 1996. ISBN 0-8028-3822-7
* Christopher Derrick, C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome: A Study in Proto-Ecumenism. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 1981. ISBN 978-9991718507
*David C. Downing, Into the Region of Awe: Mysticism in C. S. Lewis. InterVarsity, 2005. ISBN 0-8308-3284-X
*David C. Downing, Into the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis and the Narnia Chronicles. Jossey-Bass, 2005. ISBN 0-7879-7890-6
*David C. Downing, The Most Reluctant Convert: C. S. Lewis's Journey to Faith. InterVarsity, 2002. ISBN 0-8308-3271-8
*David C. Downing, Planets in Peril: A Critical Study of C. S. Lewis's Ransom Trilogy. University of Massachusetts Press, 1992. ISBN 0-87023-997-X
* Colin Duriez and David Porter, The Inklings Handbook: The Lives, Thought and Writings of C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and Their Friends. 2001, ISBN 1-902694-13-9
* Colin Duriez, Tolkien and C. S. Lewis: The Gift of Friendship. Paulist Press, 2003. ISBN 1-58768-026-2
* Bruce L. Edwards, Not a Tame Lion: The Spiritual World of Narnia. Tyndale. 2005. ISBN 1414303815
* Bruce L. Edwards, Further Up and Further In: Understanding C. S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Broadman and Holman, 2005. ISBN 0805440704
* Bruce L. Edwards, General Editor, C. S. Lewis: Life, Works, and Legacy. 4 Vol. Praeger Perspectives, 2007. ISBN 0275991164
* Bruce L. Edwards, Editor. The Taste of the Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer. The Popular Press, 1988. ISBN 0879724072
* Bruce L. Edwards, A Rhetoric of Reading: C. S. Lewis's Defense of Western Literacy. Center for the Study of Christian Values in Literature, 1986. ISBN 0939555018
* Alastair Fowler, 'C. S. Lewis: Supervisor', Yale Review, Vol. 91, No. 4 (October 2003).
* Jocelyn Gibb (ed.), Light on C. S. Lewis. Geoffrey Bles, 1965 & Harcourt Brace Jovanovich 1976. ISBN 0-15-652000-1
* Douglas Gilbert & Clyde Kilby, C. S. Lewis: Images of His World. Eerdmans, 1973 & 2005. ISBN 0-8028-2800-0
* Diana Glyer The Company They Keep: C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien as Writers in Community. Kent State University Press. Kent Ohio. 2007. ISBN 978-0-87338-890-0
* David Graham (ed.), We Remember C. S. Lewis. Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2001. ISBN 0-8054-2299-4
* Roger Lancelyn Green & Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Biography. Fully revised & expanded edition. HarperCollins, 2002. ISBN 0-00-628164-8
* Douglas Gresham, Jack's Life: A Memory of C. S. Lewis. Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005. ISBN 0-8054-3246-9
* Douglas Gresham, Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis. HarperSanFrancisco, 1994. ISBN 0-06-063447-2
* William Griffin, C. S. Lewis: The Authentic Voice. (Formerly C. S. Lewis: A Dramatic Life) Lion, 2005. ISBN 0-7459-5208-9
* Joel D. Heck, Irrigating Deserts: C. S. Lewis on Education. Concordia Publishing House, 2006. ISBN 0-7586-0044-5
* David Hein, "A Note on C. S. Lewis's The Screwtape Letters." The Anglican Digest 49.2 (Easter 2007): 55–58. Argues that Lewis's portrayal of the activity of the Devil was influenced by contemporary events—in particular, by the threat of a Nazi invasion of Britain in 1940.
* David Hein and Edward Hugh Henderson, eds., Captured by the Crucified: The Practical Theology of Austin Farrer. New York and London: T & T Clark / Continuum, 2004. A study of Lewis's close friend the theologian Austin Farrer, this book also contains material on Farrer's circle, "the Oxford Christians", including C. S. Lewis.
* Walter Hooper, C. S. Lewis: A Companion and Guide. HarperCollins, 1996. ISBN 0-00-627800-0
* Walter Hooper, Through Joy and Beyond: A Pictorial Biography of C. S. Lewis. Macmillan, 1982. ISBN 0-02-553670-2
* Alan Jacobs, The Narnian: The Life and Imagination of C. S. Lewis. HarperSanFrancisco, 2005. ISBN 0-06-076690-5
* Carolyn Keefe, C. S. Lewis: Speaker & Teacher. Zondervan, 1979. ISBN 0-310-26781-1
* Jon Kennedy, The Everything Guide to C.S. Lewis and Narnia. Adams Media, 2008. ISBN 0-1-59869-427-8
* Clyde S. Kilby, The Christian World of C. S. Lewis. Eerdmans, 1964, 1995. ISBN 0-8028-0871-9
* W.H. Lewis (ed), Letters of C. S. Lewis. Geoffrey Bles, 1966. ISBN 0-00-242457-6
* Kathryn Lindskoog, Light in the Shadowlands: Protecting the Real C. S. Lewis. Multnomah Pub., 1994. ISBN 0-88070-695-3
* Susan Lowenberg, C. S. Lewis: A Reference Guide 1972–1988. Hall & Co., 1993. ISBN 0-8161-1846-9
* Wayne Mardindale & Jerry Root, The Quotable Lewis. Tyndale House Publishers, 1990. ISBN 0-8423-5115-9
* David Mills (editor) (ed), The Pilgrim's Guide: C. S. Lewis and the Art of Witness. Eerdmans, 1998 ISBN 0-8208-3777-8
* Markus Mühling, "A Theological Journey into Narnia. An Analysis of the Message beneath the Text", Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 2005, ISBN 3-525-60423-8
* Joseph Pearce, C. S. Lewis and the Catholic Church. Ignatius Press, 2003. ISBN 0-89870-979-2
* Thomas C. Peters, Simply C. S. Lewis. A Beginner's Guide to His Life and Works. Kingsway Publications, 1998. ISBN 0-85476-762-2
* Justin Phillips, C. S. Lewis at the BBC: Messages of Hope in the Darkness of War. Marshall Pickering, 2003. ISBN 0-00-710437-5
* Victor Reppert, C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea: In Defense of the Argument from Reason. InterVarsity Press, 2003. ISBN 0-8308-2732-3
* George Sayer, Jack: C. S. Lewis and His Times. Macmillan, 1988. ISBN 0-333-43362-9
* Peter J. Schakel, Imagination and the Arts in C. S. Lewis: Journeying to Narnia and Other Worlds. University of Missouri Press, 2002. ISBN 0-8262-1407-X
* Peter J. Schakel. Reason and Imagination in C. S. Lewis: A Study of "Till We Have Faces." Available online. Eerdmans, 1984. ISBN 0-8028-1998-2
* Peter J. Schakel, ed. The Longing for a Form: Essays on the Fiction of C. S. Lewis. Kent State University Press, 1977. ISBN 0-87338-204-8
* Peter J. Schakel and Charles A. Huttar, ed. Word and Story in C. S. Lewis. University of Missouri Press, 1991. ISBN 0-8262-0760-X
* Stephen Schofield. In Search of C. S. Lewis. Bridge Logos Pub. 1983. ISBN 0-88270-544-X
* Jeffrey D. Schultz and John G. West, Jr. (eds.), The C. S. Lewis Readers' Encyclopedia. Zondervan Publishing House, 1998. ISBN 0-310-21538-2
* G. B. Tennyson (ed.), Owen Barfield on C. S. Lewis. Wesleyan University Press, 1989. ISBN 0-8195-5233-X.
* Richard J. Wagner. C. S. Lewis and Narnia for Dummies. For Dummies, 2005. ISBN 0-7645-8381-6
* Andrew Walker, Patrick James (ed.), Rumours of Heaven: Essays in Celebration of C. S. Lewis, Guildford: Eagle, 1998, ISBN 0863472508
* Chad Walsh, C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics. Macmillan, 1949.
* Chad Walsh, The Literary Legacy of C. S. Lewis. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979. ISBN 0-15-652785-5.
* Michael Ward, Planet Narnia, Oxford University Press, 2008. ISBN 978-0-19-531387-1.
* George Watson (ed.), Critical Essays on C. S. Lewis. Scolar Press, 1992. ISBN 0-85967-853-9
* Michael White, C. S. Lewis: The Boy Who Chronicled Narnia. Abacus, 2005. ISBN 0-349-11625-3
* Erik J. Wielenberg, God and the Reach of Reason. Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-521-70710-7
* A. N. Wilson, C. S. Lewis: A Biography. W. W. Norton, 1990. ISBN 0-393-32340-4
See also
* Christian apologetics (field of study concerned with the defence of Christianity)
* Pauline Baynes
* G. E. M. Anscombe
* George MacDonald
Notes
References
Barker, Dan (1992), Losing Faith in Faith: From Preacher to Atheist, Madison: Freedom from Religion Foundation, ISBN 1-877733-07-5
BBC News, Staff (2005), "Pullman attacks Narnia film plans", BBC News 2005 (16 October), http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4347226.stm
BBC News, Staff (2004), "City that inspired Narnia fantasy", BBC News 2004 (5 March), http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/3533797.stm
Carpenter, Humphrey (2006), The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien and Their Friends, HarperCollins, ISBN 0-0077-4869-8
Dodd, Celia (2004), "Human nature: Universally acknowledged", The Times 2004 (05-08), http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-100-1100513,00.html
Drennan, Miriam (1999), "Back into the wardrobe with The Complete Chronicles of Narnia", BookPage, http://www.bookpage.com/9903bp/douglas_gresham.html
Ezard, John (2002), "Narnia books attacked as racist and sexist", The Guardian 2002 (6-3), http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,726739,00.html
Fiddes, Paul (1990), 'C.S. Lewis the myth-maker', in Andrew Walker and James Patrick, A Christian for all Christians: essays in honour of C.S. Lewis (London: Hodder & Stoughton), pp. 132–55 [reprinted as Rumours of Heaven: essays in celebration of C.S. Lewis (Guildford: Eagle, 1998)]
Friends of Holy Trinity Church, Staff, History of the Building, http://www.friendsofholytrinity.org.uk/History1.html
Gopnik, Adam (2005), "PRISONER OF NARNIA How C. S. Lewis escaped", The New Yorker 2005 (11–21), http://www.newyorker.com/critics/content/articles/051121crat_atlarge
Guardian Unlimited, Staff (2005), "If you didn't find Narnia in your own wardrobe...", Guardian Unlimited 2005 (04–12), http://travel.guardian.co.uk/article/2005/dec/04/unitedkingdom.cslewis.booksforchildrenandteenagers
Guthmann, Edward (2005), "'Narnia' tries to cash in on dual audience", San Francisco Chronicle, http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/12/11/NARNIA.TMP
Haven, Cynthia (2006), "Lost in the shadow of C. S. Lewis' fame Joy Davidman was a noted poet, a feisty Communist and a free spirit", San Francisco Chronicle (01-01), http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/01/01/RVGQFGC5DO1.DTL
Hooper, Walter (1979), They stand together: The letters of C. S. Lewis to Arthur Greeves (1914–1963), London: Collins, ISBN 0-00-215828-0
Hilliard, Juli (2005), "Hear the Roar", Sarasota Herald-Tribune 2005 (12–09), http://www.heraldtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051209/FEATURES/512090692/1376
Kelly, Clint (2006), "Dear Mr. Lewis", Response 29 (1), http://www.spu.edu/depts/uc/response/winter2k6/features/lewis.asp
Kreeft, Peter (1982), Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialogue Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley, InterVarsity Press, 0-8778-4389-9
Lewis, C. S. (1946), The Great Divorce, London: Collins, 0-00-628056-0
Lewis, C. S. (1952), Mere Christianity, London: Collins, 0-00-628054-4
Lewis, C. S. (1942), The Screwtape Letters, London: Collins, 0-00-767240-3
Lewis, C. S. (1966), Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, London: Harvest Books, ISBN 978-0156870115
Lindskoog, Kathyrn (2001), Sleuthing C. S. Lewis: More Light In The Shadowlands, Mercer University Press, ISBN 0-8655-4730-0
Gresham, Douglas (2007), Behind The Wardrobe: An Interview Series with Douglas Gresham, NarniaFans.com, http://www.narniafans.com/?id=1235
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, ISBN 0-1981-4405-9, http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/785
Martindale, Wayne; Root, Jerry (1990), The Quotable Lewis, Tyndale House, ISBN 0-8423-5115-9
McDowell, Josh (2001), More Than a Carpenter, Kingsway Publications, ISBN 0-8547-6906-4
Murray, Iain (1990), David Martyn Lloyd-Jones: The Fight of Faith, 1939–1981, The Banner of Truth Trust, ISBN 0-8515-1564-9
Neven, Tom (2001), "In Lenten Lands", Le Penseur Réfléchit, http://www.mrrena.com/2001/Lewis.shtml
The Old Inn, Staff (2007), History of the Old Inn, http://www.theoldinn.com/about-us/history-of-the-old-inn/
Pratt, Alf (1998), "LDS Scholars Salute Author C. S. Lewis At BYU Conference", The Salt Lake Tribune 1998 (December), http://www.crlamppost.org/BYU.htm
Tonkin, Boyd (2005), "CS Lewis: The literary lion of Narnia", The Independent 2005 (11–11), http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/features/article326179.ece
Toynbee, Polly (2005), "Narnia represents everything that is most hateful about religion", The Guardian 2005 (5 December)
Works by C. S. Lewis at Project Gutenberg
Open Directory entry for C. S. Lewis
Collection of C. S. Lewis quotations
RapidNet.com — C. S. Lewis FAQ
Ancestry of C. S. Lewis
Arend Smilde's CSL site — Dutch and (mainly) English. Several unique or hard-to-find texts and resources; extensive annotations on several of CSL's works
Rare photos of the youthful C.S. Lewis, with his family and of the older Lewis with his wife, Joy Davidman Gresham
Brazilian site about CS Lewis
Original works
Marion E. Wade Center at Wheaton College — has the world's largest collection of Lewis's works and works about him
Taylor University, Upland, Indiana, has the world's largest private collection of C. S. Lewis first editions, letters, manuscripts, and ephemera — the Edwin W. Brown Collection
Audio
Lewis on The George MacDonald Informational Web Has an excerpt of Lewis talking about friend and fellow author: Charles Williams, bottom of page
Lewis's Surviving Broadcast Talks on the BBC BBC page on Lewis with original audio recordings.
Complete text and audio of C. S. Lewis's BBC Radio Broadcast 'Beyond Personality — Mere Men'
Analysis/evaluation
Works by or about C. S. Lewis in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
The C.S. Lewis Chronicle — British academic journal for C. S. Lewis and his circle
C. S. Lewis at the Internet Book List
Adaptations | ||
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] | null | [] | 2001-08-16T23:00:00 | LONDON (AP) -- Renowned Christian scholar and best-selling author C.S. Lewis died in 1963, but bitter arguments about his literary legacy continue today. | en | /apple-touch-icon.png | Brainerd Dispatch | https://www.brainerddispatch.com/lifestyle/questions-raised-about-c-s-lewis-works-published-posthumously | LONDON (AP) -- Renowned Christian scholar and best-selling author C.S. Lewis died in 1963, but bitter arguments about his literary legacy continue today.
The latest comes in a new book by an American expert on Lewis, who claims the custodians of his literary estate posthumously published forgeries under the author's name.
Kathryn Lindskoog, an independent academic living in Orange, Calif., says the Lewis estate, including his editor, Walter Hooper, is cashing in on his fame by "drip-feeding" suspect and altered works onto the market for maximum profit.
"C.S. Lewis' literary legacy is increasingly defiled by fraud, forgery and falsehood," she writes in her new book, "Sleuthing C.S. Lewis," to be published Wednesday in the United States.
Lindskoog has been making similar arguments for many years, creating intense debate in literary circles. The new book is also getting attention.
Maggie Shannon, spokeswoman for the publisher, Mercer University Press in Macon, Ga., said a second printing had been ordered after the first print run of 1,200 sold out in advance orders.
Hooper says Lindskoog didn't come to the project with an open mind, so it's difficult for him to defend himself.
"Mrs. Lindskoog has made me her life's work, but I couldn't do my job and ... reply (or even read) all that was coming from her," Hooper said in an e-mail to The Associated Press.
"I found myself in the position of Brer Rabbit trying to argue with the Tar Baby. Just when you imagine you've scored a point with the Tar Baby you find yourself stuck."
Lewis, author of the acclaimed Narnia chronicles for children, wrote prolifically about the spiritual quest that took him from atheism to robust Anglican Christianity.
A complex, pipe-smoking character with a powerful intellect, Lewis is still a phenomenal best seller; 29 of the books published before his death are still in print. His works have sold more than 115 million copies, according to HarperCollins, which last year signed a deal with the Lewis estate that made it the primary English-language publisher of Lewis around the world.
But in recent weeks, admirers have complained that Lewis is being commercialized -- an even de-Christianized -- by the Lewis estate, including licensing of Narnia paraphernalia, heavy promotion by HarperCollins publishers and alleged suppression of Christian themes in a scuttled TV documentary.
Christianity Today, an influential U.S. evangelical magazine, editorialized this month that a plan to produce further Narnia novels is "a categorically bad idea," but otherwise believers should be pleased when a major book house spends millions to promote "some of the best Christian writing of all time."
Lindskoog, meanwhile, is charging that "The Dark Tower," a time-travel adventure published after Lewis' death, is a forgery. She also argues that Hooper, a 70-year-old former U.S. Episcopal priest who converted to Roman Catholicism, changed Lewis' words and meanings in a 1976 American edition of "The Screwtape Letters," the famous dialogue between two devils, and has withheld some of Lewis' letters.
Hooper said that "neither Mrs. Lindskoog nor any of those who profess to believe that 'The Dark Tower' is a forgery have ever looked at the manuscript." Lindskoog says she wanted to look at the manuscript but was refused; Hooper says she passed on the chance to review it.
He notes Lindskoog once appeared to accept its authenticity; in the 1981 version of her book, "C.S. Lewis: Mere Christian," she speculates about "why Lewis gave up on this innovative story and returned to more ordinary space travel instead."
Lindskoog also questions the secrecy that surrounds the Lewis estate, saying it is not clear who exercises literary and financial control and reaps the vast rewards of marketing such a beloved writer.
Reviewing Lindskoog's book, the U.S. book industry guide Publisher's Weekly says she "makes a powerful case that something fishy is going on in the affairs of C.S. Lewis."
But David Brawn, HarperCollins' publishing director for the Lewis estate, says Lindskoog "is flogging a dead horse."
"The claims about 'The Dark Tower' are not new, and no one has proved them," Brawn said. "So we take all this stuff with a pinch of salt. We see it as yet another opportunity to bring Lewis into the public eye."
Yet Lindskoog has supporters in academic circles. Dozens, including science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke and former U.S. poet laureate Richard Wilbur, have signed a petition calling for the Lewis estate to respond to the charges.
Robert S. Ellwood, emeritus professor of religion at the University of Southern California, says those "in the multimillion dollar C.S. Lewis 'industry"' ought to "take her well-documented case more seriously."
Lindskoog, 66, who has multiple sclerosis, has a long history of investigating Lewis and also wrote the 1988 book "The C.S. Lewis Hoax."
"Hooper's main response to me since 1978 has been to spread the rumor that my mind has been destroyed by MS and that I'm obsessed with him and victimizing him. A mad woman," Lindskoog wrote in an e-mail to the AP. | ||
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] | null | [] | null | --------------------------------------------------------------- ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ ♦ --------------- The video above is a book review that shares with us just who this amazing group of thinkers were-The Inklings-and what they... | en | https://thecslewis-studygroup.org/the-c-s-lewis-study-group/the-inklings/ | —————————————————————
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The video above is a book review that shares with us just who this amazing group of thinkers were-The Inklings-and what they were all about; and as a minor extension, what we aspire to be about; The Inklings was an informal literary discussion group associated with the University of Oxford, England, for nearly two decades between the early 1930s and late 1949. The Inklings were literary enthusiasts who praised the value of narrative in fiction and encouraged the writing of fantasy (<== to view Peter Kreeft’s presentation on Imagination see the You Tube at the bottom of the hot linked page above).
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C.S. Lewis and the Inklings
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Filmed on the campus of Hillsdale college, this series examines the philosophical, theological, and literary ideas that bound the Inklings, as well as their understanding of the relationship of myth and reality, and the continuing importance of their thought and writings today.
Below are links to each of the five videos in the series:
“Who Are the Inklings?” by Bradley J. Birzer
“C.S. Lewis’s The Abolition of Man” by Michael Ward
“J.R.R. Tolkien’s Scholarship” by Michael Drout
“Themes of Lewis’s Fiction” by Jason Lepojärvi
“Tolkien and the Christian Imagination” by Holly Ordway
It’s important to mention that Hillsdale College does all of its work while refusing to accept ONE PENNY of government support—not even indirectly in the form of federal or state student grants or loans.
The support of informed patriots like you allows us to remain the best-positioned college in the nation to reach and teach millions of Americans.
Please enjoy your free video series about the Inklings.
A Fellowship of Christian Thinkers and Writers
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Perhaps no informal association of writers has had the impact on the world that the Inklings have. This collection of gifted men met weekly between 1930 and 1949 in Lewis’ rooms in Magdalen College at Oxford. During their celebrated gatherings, they would talk, share a beverage, and read aloud their latest projects. Discussion and constructive criticism of the work would follow. Lewis’ Screwtape Letters and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings were only two of the lasting literary works which bore the scrutiny of scholarly and friendly critique in this setting.
The same set of friends would also meet each Tuesday morning at an Oxford pub. This casual gathering usually assembled at the Eagle and Child, affectionately called by them the “Bird and Baby.” These sessions, in the comfortable atmosphere of an English pub, continued up until Lewis’ death in 1963. G.B. Tennyson describes the Inklings as a “literary school that shared not only Lewis’s friendship but in their own ways Lewis’s dedication to Christianity.”
It is worth noting that a student at Oxford, Edward Tangye-Lean had actually formed the predecessor to the Inklings of renown. His “Inklings” group included both students and dons, and reviewed unpublished manuscripts. This club did not last long, but two of its members, Lewis and Tolkien maintained their mutually supportive bonds. Reflecting decades later on the connection between the two societies, Tolkien said, “although our habit was to read aloud compositions of various kinds (and lengths!), this association and its habit would in fact have come into being at that time, whether the original short-lived club had ever existed or not.”
Although occasional visitors were invited to attend meetings of the Inklings, the core membership remained stable. In addition to C.S Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, longterm members included Lewis’ brother Warren, Charles Williams and Owen Barfield. Other regular members included Robert Havard, Lewis’ physician, and Adam Fox, a poet and priest. In 1940, as Warnie headed toward the conflict of the Second World War, Lewis wrote to his brother, “the Inklings is now really very well provided, with Fox as chaplain, you as army, Barfield as lawyer, Havard as doctor–almost all the estates!” Colin Hardie, Ronald McCallum, George Sayer, Courtenay Stevens, Christopher Tolkien, John Wain, and Charles Wrenn were other regular members of the fellowship. Despite some confusion on the subject, although she was an anointed writer and a close friend of Lewis, Dorothy Sayers was never a member of the Inklings. In fact, Lewis wrote, “Dorothy Sayers, so far as I know, was not even acquainted with any of us except Charles Williams and me… I liked her, originally, because she liked me; later for the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation… Needless to say, she never met our own club, and probably never knew of its existence.”
Lewis was extremely appreciative of the friendship of his fellow Inklings, saying “what I owe to them is incalculable.” I’m sure I speak for not only myself when I declare that what we owe to the Inklings is likewise beyond measure. | ||||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 14 | https://www.crossway.org/articles/this-day-in-history-the-death-of-c-s-lewis/ | en | This Day in History: The Death of C. S. Lewis | [
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] | null | [] | 2022-11-22T06:00:00 | Jack faced the prospect of death bravely and calmly. “I have done all I wanted to do, and I’m ready to go,” he said one evening. | en | Crossway | null | This article is part of the This Day in History series.
His Heart Attack
On Sunday, July 14, 1963, Lewis was not well enough to go to church when Walter Hooper arrived at the Kilns. Without his brother Warnie anymore as a reliable helper with his correspondence, and feeling his own steady decline, Lewis asked Hooper if he would consider serving as his private secretary. After discussing it, Hooper agreed to resign his post at the University of Kentucky at the end of the fall semester and return to help Lewis. In the meantime, he would help Lewis through the summer.1 The next day, on Monday, July 15, at five in the afternoon, Lewis arrived at the Acland Nursing Home, where he promptly had a heart attack and went into a coma.2
With Warnie away, Lewis must have given Kay and Austin Farrer as his emergency contacts, for the Acland notified them of Lewis’s condition. They contacted Douglas Gresham and Walter Hooper. On Tuesday afternoon, July 16, Lewis received extreme unction from Rev. Michael Watts of the Church of St Mary Magdalen. Then he woke up and asked for a cup of tea.3
For two days, Lewis appeared to be doing better, but then he slipped into what he called his “black period.” For a week he suffered from nightmares, hallucinations, and a general disorientation interspersed with lucid moments.4 Several of his oldest and dearest friends visited him in the Acland, including Tolkien, Alastair Fowler, Douglas and David Gresham, James Dundas-Grant, John Walsh, Maureen Moore Blake, and George Sayer. When Dundas-Grant visited Lewis, he suggested that Lewis write a book on prayer, to which Lewis replied with a twinkle in his eye, “I might.”5 Dundas-Grant did not know that Lewis had just finished writing Letters to Malcolm, which suggests how far the remaining Inklings had departed from being a writing club aware of what each other was writing.
Beginning on July 17, Hooper undertook the handling of Lewis’s correspondence. He picked up the mail every day at the Kilns and took it to the Acland, where Lewis, when his mind was clear, dictated his letters to Hooper. At Lewis’s behest, Hooper wrote letters to Lewis’s friends who had not yet learned of his hospitalization, including Roger Lancelyn Green. Lewis asked Hooper to write Green a letter and explain that Hooper was a collector of “Lewisiana” like Green and to work out with Green if they were “competitors or collaborators.”6 Time would prove that they were the best of collaborators as coauthors of the first true biography of Lewis, C. S. Lewis: A Biography (1974).
Lewis probably recognized his condition better than most. He knew he would die sooner or later. Not wishing to create a burden for Cambridge University and Magdalene College, his academic home for nine years, he sent a letter resigning his chair, probably as soon as he returned home.7 On August 12 and 13, Lewis wrote to Jock Burnet, the bursar of Magdalene College, to make arrangements for Hooper to pack his things and remove them from the college. He apologized for the trouble he was causing, but he explained that his “situation [was] rather desperate.”8 The college needed to reclaim its furniture and sell Lewis’s. He also asked that the painting of his grandfather Hamilton be sent to St Mark’s Church, Dundela, Belfast, where he had served as rector. It still hangs in the Parish Hall today.
Toward the end of August, Tolkien wanted to see Lewis again. Tolkien’s eldest son, Father John Tolkien, took Tolkien to see Lewis at the Kilns. Father John recalled: “We drove over to the Kilns for what turned out to be a very excellent time together for about an hour. I remember the conversation was very much about the Morte d’Arthur and whether trees died.”9
Ready for Death
Walter Hooper was back in the United States when Lewis wrote to him on September 3 to let him know that all was well at the Kilns. Though Warnie was still in Ireland behaving badly, the gardener and handyman, Fred Paxford, slept in the house in case Lewis had trouble during the night.10 After much wringing of hands and worry about his looming poverty, Lewis offered Hooper five pounds a week when he would return the first week of January 1964 to resume his work as Lewis’s secretary, now that Warnie had proved such an unreliable disappointment.11 To others, Jack regularly referred to himself as an “extinct volcano.”12 When asked how he managed his retirement, he came up with another line he rather liked. He said he would never have to read A. L. Rowse on Shakespeare’s sonnets, but he could reread the Iliad instead.13 On a deeper level, he had something to say to many about how close he came to death. The nurses all thought he had come to the Acland one last time to die. He said to many of his correspondents that it was a pity he had come to the very gates of Heaven so easily not to be allowed to enter. Now he would have to go through it all over again.14 Warnie finally returned home in early October.15 His return meant some relief from what Lewis regarded as the worst part of his invalid existence. The newspapers had reported Lewis’s illness and retirement, so he was flooded with letters of condolence, to which he felt obligated to reply.16 In spite of everything, he remained cheerful and grateful. He especially valued his friends who came to see him.17
Just as Jack had gone through anticipatory grief over Joy’s coming death, Warnie had gone through the same thing in his own way over Jack’s inevitable death. Yet he had pulled himself together and returned to the Kilns. His company would have meant so much to Jack. Of those last days together, Warnie wrote:
Joy had left us, and once again—as in the earliest days—we could turn for comfort only to each other. The wheel had come full circle: once again we were together in the little end room at home, shutting out from our talk the ever-present knowledge that the holidays were ending, that a new term fraught with unknown possibilities awaited us both. Jack faced the prospect bravely and calmly. “I have done all I wanted to do, and I’m ready to go,” he said to me one evening.18
The End
Warnie was always famous for preparing the tea on Thursday nights when the Inklings had gathered so long ago. He also brought the late-night tea to Jack and any guest he might have as they talked away. Even with Mrs. Miller in the house, Warnie brought Jack his tea in the afternoons that last autumn. He described the last time in the memoir he wrote that became a foundational piece of biography Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper would build upon, along with Surprised by Joy, when they wrote their biography of Lewis. Warnie said:
Friday, the 22nd of November 1963, began much as other days: there was breakfast, then letters and the crossword puzzle. After lunch he fell asleep in his chair: I suggested that he would be more comfortable in bed, and he went there. At four I took in his tea and found him drowsy but comfortable. Our few words then were the last: at five-thirty I heard a crash and ran in, to find him lying unconscious at the foot of his bed. He ceased to breathe some three or four minutes later.19
He was a week shy of his sixty-fifth birthday.
The death of C. S. Lewis came on the same day John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, and all the news media were focused on that event, which gripped not only the United States but people around the world. Word of Lewis’s death had not gotten out. Douglas called Walter Hooper in the United States, and Hooper notified those he knew of who should be told.20 David Gresham had gone to New York to study at Mesivta Rabbi Chaim Berlin Talmudical college when he finished his studies in London, so he could not attend the funeral.21 Warnie was too intoxicated and overwhelmed by grief to attend. The funeral took place on November 26 at Holy Trinity Church, the parish church where Jack and Warnie had attended since moving to the Kilns. Only a small group attended. Ronald Head, the vicar of Holy Trinity, led the service, and Austin Farrer read the lesson, so we may assume that Kay was with him.22 The small party of mourners included Owen Barfield, Cecil Harwood, Ronald Tolkien, Colin Hardie, Robert “Humphrey” Havard, James Dundas-Grant, John Lawlor, Peter Bayley, Peter Bide, Molly and Len Miller, Fred Paxford, Maureen (Lady Dunbar) and Leonard Blake, and Douglas Gresham.23
A large gravestone covers the length and breadth of the grave of C. S. Lewis. When Flora Hamilton Lewis died in 1908, the quotation for the day on her Shakespearean calendar came from King Lear:
Men must endure
Their going hence, even as their coming hither;
Ripeness is all.24
On Lewis’s gravestone, Warnie had the epitaph engraved:
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
MY BROTHER
CLIVE STAPLES LEWIS
BORN BELFAST 29th NOVEMBER 1898
DIED IN THIS PARISH
22nd NOVEMBER 1963
MEN MUST ENDURE THEIR GOING HENCE.
This article is adapted from The Completion of C. S. Lewis: From War to Joy (1945–1963) by Harry Lee Poe.
Popular Articles in This Series | |||||
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] | 2012-06-03T03:52:00+00:00 | Introduction: Last Fall 2011 on sabbatical, I had the privilege of being a scholar in residence at the Kilns, C. S. Lewis’s old home in an outlying residential area called Risinghurst, just about three miles from Oxford and Oxford University. I didn’t know it when I arrived, but about three days ... | en | https://www.cslewis.com/wp-content/themes/cslewis/public/img/favicon.ico?v=1.2 | Official Site | CSLewis.com | https://www.cslewis.com/with-their-christianity-latent-c-s-lewis-on-the-arts/ | Introduction: Last Fall 2011 on sabbatical, I had the privilege of being a scholar in residence at the Kilns, C. S. Lewis’s old home in an outlying residential area called Risinghurst, just about three miles from Oxford and Oxford University. I didn’t know it when I arrived, but about three days into my time there, I found out I was staying in the room in which C. S. Lewis died. It was somewhat spooky, especially when I received an email from a friend which included this line, “Please say hello to C. S. Lewis’s ghost for me.”
There might be more to that, I thought, than he realized. Here’s the story of Lewis’s death, as I was told of it. On November 22, 1963, at about 4:00 p.m., Lewis’s brother Warnie served his brother his afternoon tea. About 5:30 p.m., about an hour and a half later, Warnie heard a crash, boom, bang coming from Lewis’s room. He rushed in, only to find Jack, as he was known to his family and friends, lying on the floor, unconscious. Scooping him up into his arms, Lewis remained unconscious and then died in his brother’s arms. Kidney failure, I understand, was the cause.
That would have been about 11: 30 a.m., North Texas time. About an hour later at 12:30 p.m., the 35th president of the United States, John F. Kennedy, was assassinated on the streets of Dallas. I was in fifth grade and heard the word from my teacher, Miss Watkins. To be sure, the Kennedy assassination overshadowed the news about Lewis’s death.
Also, on the same day, Aldous Huxley also died. On his deathbed, unable to speak, Huxley made a written request to his wife Laura for “LSD, 100 µg, intramuscular”. According to her account of his death in This Timeless Moment, she obliged with an injection at 11:45 a.m. and another a couple of hours later. He died, aged 69 on November 22, 1963, several hours after the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Media coverage of Huxley’s passing was also overshadowed by the news of the assassination of JFK on the same day. [2]
The coincidence of the deaths of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Clive Staples Lewis and Aldous Huxley was the inspiration for Peter Kreeft’s book Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis and Aldous Huxley. [3]
But, of course, this paper is not about the deaths of these three notables, but to share with you a few insights on art from the mind and pen of one who died that day, C. S. Lewis. Though I must say, that staying in the room in which CS died did creep me out a bit — there was a lot of talk about fairies, spooks, demons, angels, and the supernatural in general around — I knew my accommodations in that room would make for a much better story. So I remained. Indeed, one letter of his I read while there stated that if he came back to haunt anyone, it would be at Cambridge. That enabled me to breathe a sigh of relief.
Lewis spent more time doing art than talking about it. Perhaps Lewis would have identified with this rather scathing statement from American artist Barnett Newman (1905–1970).
“Aesthetics is for art as ornithology is for the birds.” [4]
Regardless, Lewis, as a Christian, was a connoisseur of the arts and was himself was artistic, though I understand there are two different attitudes about his perspectives on the arts. Either he was a highbrow, elitist according to some, or a lowbrow philistine according to others. In my mind, there may have been room for both. Perhaps this is because he sought to be Christian in his approach. For example, though he valued art and culture, Lewis did not see it as a final good — an end in itself, an idol or a god that could save us.
The excessive elevation of the arts to a religious status was dangerous. “Art for art’s sake” was “balderdash” according to Lewis, though many in the twentieth century, like Friedrich Nietzsche, Wallace Stevens, and John Gardener, however, thought it could save us. Insurance executive and poet Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) once famously and rather naively said, “After one has abandoned a belief in god, poetry is that essence which takes its place as life’s redemption.” [5]
That, of course, is a fatal mistake. It amounts to idolatry, as the Apostle Paul states in Romans 1:25: “They exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen (ESV).
For Lewis, art and culture were second things that must be preceded and domesticated by first things, namely, by and under God, if they are to be meaningful. As he said in an essay in God in the Dock, “You can’t get second things by putting them first. You get second things only by putting first things first.” [6]
Similarly in a letter to Dom Bede Griffiths, Lewis wrote, “Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things.” [7]
For Lewis, a work of art was always a sub-creation, which I (not Lewis or Tolkien) define as a creative work made under God the creator — a sub-creation — for his glory and human good out of very good things God had already made. God created ex nihilo; we create ex creatio, out of previously existing, created material. As Lewis stated in Letters to Malcomb, “We — even our poets and musicians and inventors — never in the ultimate sense, make. We only build.” [8]
Thus, Lewis did value the creation of culture and art in God the creator; and with this order in mind, let’s take a walk with C. S. Lewis and see what he has to say about the arts and aesthetics specifically. If we were walking with him side by side, say along Addison’s walk under the shade of its beautiful trees, I think he would share at least these five things.
First, the beauty (along with truth and goodness) in art and aesthetics is objective.
That is to say, Lewis did not believe that the way things are, reality as such beauty included (along with truth and goodness), was merely in the eye of the beholder in some sort of poisonous, person-relative, subjective sense. Rather Lewis believed in the existence of an objectively true reality, the way things really are. He called it the Tao — a Chinese word he used to convey the notion of an objective natural law that constituted reality and was spread over everything, beauty included (along with truth and goodness).
Morality is rooted in God and his character. The Ten Commandments reveal His holy character; the ten words also clarify and declare what He expects from us morally. Similarly, beauty is rooted in God and his character. Yet we don’t have ten aesthetic commandments since, apparently, we are to work these out culturally in the working out our aesthetics. We have settled on ideas such as order, balance, proportion, brightness, clarity and so on as essential aesthetic and artistic properties.
Lewis, I think, would agree. For example, he said in The Abolition of Man that true truth or true beauty, and education in true truth and true beauty should enable the student to discern the objectively existing sublimity that exists, say, in a waterfall. Such recognition was not merely the subjective state of the observer, a view in ethics called “emotivism.” Rather, as Lewis stated in The Abolition of Man, “It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” [9] The beauty (along with truth and goodness) that comes through creation can be accepted or rejected, depending on the inner state of the observer. This is seen in the alternative responses of Digory and Polly in comparison with Uncle Andrew in The Magician’s Nephew, people who respond to Aslan’s creation with two very different kinds of hearts. [10]
It was an empty world when Digory and Polly first arrived, very much like nothing. But then in the chaos, a Voice began to sing in the most sonorous tones imaginable. All at once the blackness overhead was ablaze with stars who joined in on the chorus, though in lesser voices. As the main Voice reached a crescendo, the sun was born, laughing for joy as it arose! In the fresh light of the young sun stood the Lion Aslan — huge, shaggy, and bright as it was singing the new world into being. As his song continued, the valley grew green, trees were born, flowers blossomed, and then, as a stretch of grassy land was bubbling up like water in a pot and swelling into humps, out came the animals great and small.
Then in a solemn moment, there was a flash of fire and Aslan’s fiat: “Narnia, Narnia, Narnia, awake. Love. Think. Speak. Be walking trees. Be talking beasts. Be divine waters” (116). Aslan then said to them: “Creatures, I give you yourselves. . . . I give to you forever this land of Narnia. I give you the woods, the fruits, the rivers. I give you the stars and I give you myself” (118). Thus, the creation of Narnia was then complete.
However, all this looked totally different from Uncle Andrew’s perspective (not to mentioned Queen Jadis, for she also hated it). When Uncle Andrew first heard the Voice, and the stars shone, and the first light of the sun was revealed, Uncle Andrew’s mouth fell open, but not with joy like Digory and Polly. He did not like the Voice.
It was that song of the Lion’s that he detested more than anything else. It made him think and feel things he just did not want to think and feel. So he convinced himself completely that it was nothing but an ugly roar.
He soon did hear nothing but roaring in Aslan’s song. Soon he couldn’t have heard anything else even if he had wanted to. And when at last the Lion spoke and said, “Narnia awake,” he didn’t hear any words: he heard only a snarl. And when the Beasts spoke in answer, he heard only barkings, growlings, bayings and howlings. And when they laughed—well, you can imagine. That was worse for Uncle Andrew than anything that had happened yet. Such a horrid, bloodthirsty din of hungry and angry brutes he had never heard in his life (126).
But why did Uncle Andrew interpret the founding of Narnia by Aslan’s song in such a dreadful manner? What was it about him that gave him such a different view of this enchanted world? Lewis’s answer was this, right there in the text: “For what you see and hear depends a good deal on where you are standing: it also depends on what sort of person you are.” (125)
Unable to see the true, objective, God-given truth, goodness and beauty of things, Uncle Andrew, to use expressions from The Abolition of Man, was simply a trousered ape, and an urban blockhead. And since he also lacked any inward desire or emotion or unction to observe and do the right things, he was, as Lewis also offered in Abolition, a man without a chest.
A trousered ape, by the way, Lewis said was the kind that could only conceive of, say, the Atlantic Ocean as so many million tons of cold salt water.
Artists of various kinds, can fall prey to the same condition as Uncle Andrew: they, too, can be trousered or skirted apes, urban block heads, and chestless human beings who are not really human at all, failing to see and express the glory in things and lacking ordained affections and just sentiments as well. Or artists can stand and see and be like Digory and Polly, and discern and celebrate and express artistically the true objective truth, goodness and beauty in the whole of creation. So, the first thing we learn from Lewis is the objective nature of truth, goodness and beauty in culture and the arts. We must see it, seek it out, capture, and express it.
Second, art and aesthetics can be signposts pointing to God and true joy.
Multiple experiences he remembered, of nature, art, and literature may evoke within him, and us, an experience of intense longing and desire for joy. The Germans, Lewis says, called this longing and desire Sehnsucht, described by Lewis in these words in the preface to the third edition of The Pilgrim’s Regress.
That unnameable something, desire for which pierces us like a rapier at the smell of a bonfire, the sound of wild ducks flying overhead, the title of The Well at the World’s End, the opening lines of Kubla Khan, the morning cobwebs in late summer, or the noise of the falling waves? [11]
In Surprised by Joy, Lewis says it …
… is that of an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction. I call it Joy, which is here a technical term and must be sharply distinguished both from Happiness and from Pleasure. Joy (in my sense) has indeed one characteristic… in common with them; the fact that anyone who has experienced it will want it again. [12]
The interesting thing for Lewis was that the existence of this need communicated as it was through art and this world was not to be confused with art or this world that is, by the means of communication (many sadly do this, however). Rather, art and this world pointed to God as the source and solution of this needed joy. Hear Lewis in perhaps his most famous book, Mere Christianity:
Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exist. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, there is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire [like Senhsucht] which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probably explanation is that I was made for another world. [13]
Philosopher Peter Kreeft puts this together in what he calls an argument for God existence from desire, augmented for our aesthetic purposes just a tiny bit by yours truly:
Premise 1: Every natural, innate desire [artistically prompted] in us corresponds to some real object that can satisfy that desire.
Premise 2: But there exists in us a desire [artistically prompted] which nothing in time, nothing on earth, no creature can satisfy.
Conclusion: Therefore there must exist something more than time, earth and creatures, which can satisfy this desire. This something is what people call “God.” [14]
Again, artistic objects and the world itself can easily be confused for the true, heavenly object it points to, namely God. We don’t want to make that mistake. Instead, artistic objects and world may point us to God who can satisfy our desires, the source of true joy. It did for Saint Augustine. “It did for C. S. Lewis.” [15] May art do that for us. May our art do that for others. Point to God and joy thru your art.
Third, art and aesthetics must be incarnational.
If we use Lewis language, we would say the TAO became flesh and dwelt among us. Or to put it more accurate terms biblically and theologically, as the eternal Son of God and second person of the Trinity, the Word or Logos of God became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). In other words, Jesus bought a house and “moved into the neighborhood,” as Eugene Peterson paraphrases John 1:14 in The Message. Jesus’s “divinity-in-humanity” or “humanity-in-divinity” is the mystery of the incarnation (1 Tim. 3:16a) and this has all kinds of artistic and aesthetic implications for Lewis.
But first there was a problem for Lewis and the problem was this: many worldwide mythologies speak of God becoming man and of that incarnate god dying and rising again. Why is Christianity or the Christian mythology any different? As you probably know, Lewis was convinced by the likes of J. R. R. Tolkien and Hugo Dyson that this mythology had become fact in Christ. As Lewis writes in his essay “Myth Became Fact,”
The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens — at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. [16]
For Lewis, the incarnation was, indeed, as he called it, “The Grand Miracle,” the central miracle asserted by Christians; it is the chapter on which the whole of God’s story turns; it illuminates all of history and nature. [17]
It was the wedding of heaven and earth, the earthy and heavenly together;
it meant that God had encountered humanity and humanity had encountered God;
it meant that the supernatural and natural met and married;
it meant the enchantment or re-enchantment of the world;
it meant valuing the mundane;
it meant valuing the miraculous;
it meant the meeting and valuing of both of the mundane and the miraculous … together.
Hear Lewis on how he pictured the incarnation in these evocative words:
… one has the picture of a diver, stripping off garment after garment, making himself naked, then flashing for a moment in the air, and then down through the green and warm and sunlit water into the pitch black, cold, freezing water, down into the mud and slime, the up again, his lungs almost bursting, back again to the green and warm and sunlit water, and then at last out into the sunshine, holding in his hand the dripping thing he went down to get. This thing is human nature; but, associated with it, all nature, the new universe. [18]
For Lewis, then, the incarnation meant the transformation of human nature and all nature or creation. Both now shimmer with life and glory and this must be depicted artistically. Thus, according to Lewis, all of art and aesthetics must be informed by this “Grand Miracle” of the incarnation. As one writer has said, “The Incarnation was, after all, Lewis’ chief source of inspiration, and he devoted most of his life to letting it work its peculiar magic in his mind and craft.” [19]
It what way did the incarnation of the TAO, of the eternal Word or Logos of God, have artistic and aesthetic repercussions for Lewis? I think it was this: he saw divinely ordained, objective beauty embedded in ordinary things of everyday life. Life was sacred, sacramental, holy. The challenge, for him and us, is to represent this artistically and aesthetically. And almost every page of Lewis’s art of writing does exactly that. So should ours. Like Dawn Water’s skies and trees and in her book, God in my Paint. [20]
For example, in Surprised by Joy, Lewis offers us a phenomenology of books in which he sees “splendor in the ordinary” [21] –
One other thing Arthur [Greeves] taught me was to love the bodies of books. I had always respected them. My brother and I might cut up stepladders without scruple; to have thumb-marked or dog’s-eared a book would have filled us with shame. But Arthur did not merely respect, he was enamored; and soon, I too. The set up of the page, the feel and smell of the paper, the differing sounds that different papers make as you turn the leaves, became sensuous delights. [22]
This valuing of the ordinary reminds me of Francis Schaeffer’s point in Art and the Bible that all creation as God’s creation is thus legitimate subject matter for the artist. Schaeffer states:
Christian art is by no means always religious art, that is, art which deals with religious [biblical] themes. Consider God the Creator. Is God’s creation totally involved with [so-called] religious subjects? What about the universe? the birds? the trees? the mountains? What about the bird’s song? and the sound of the wind in the trees? When God created out of nothing by his spoken word, he did not just create [so-called] “religious” objects. And in the Bible, as we have seen, God commanded the artist, working within God’s own creation, to fashion statutes of oxen and lions and carvings of almond blossoms for the tabernacle and temple. [23]
Schaeffer continues to declared a bit later:
Christian art is the expression of the whole life of the whole person who is a Christian. What a Christian portrays in his art is the totality of life. Art is not to be solely a vehicle for some sort of self-conscious evangelism. [24]
Remember, then, the incarnation/al. And Lewis would heartily agree. As we continue our walk with him near Magdalene College, Oxford, we hear him offer his next point – number four:
Fourth, art and aesthetics are not just for pragmatic and didactic purposes, Christian or otherwise.
From Lewis’s book An Experiment in Criticism we learn first of all that Lewis believed that true art wasn’t meant to promote an ideological agenda, whether Christian or some other outlook. If we did, we would butcher art as art. Instead, art is meant to enable us to see with other’s eyes, and to experience by way of other’s experience. He writes in Experiment in Criticism about the question of the value and purpose of literature (and by extension, other arts, too):
The nearest I have yet go to an answer [about the question of the value and purpose of literature] is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves. Each of us by nature sees the whole world from one point of view with a perspective and a selectiveness peculiar to himself. …
To acquiesce in this particularity … would be lunacy. … We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own. We are not content to be [windowless] Leibnitzian monads. We demand windows. Literature as Logos is a series of windows, even doors. …
In love we escape from our self into one other. In the moral sphere, every act of justice or charity involves putting ourselves in the other person’s place and thus transcending our own competitive particularity. … The primary impulse of each is to maintain and aggrandize himself. The secondary impulse is to out of the self, to correct its provincialisms and heal its loneliness.
We therefore delight to enter into other men’s beliefs … even though we think them untrue. And into their passions, thought we think them depraved. …This, so far as I can see, is the specific value or good of literature [and other arts] considered as Logos; it admits us to experiences other than our own. [25]
To use art merely to promote a practical or didactic purpose, even a Christian one, would strip the work of art of any aesthetic qualities it may possess and offer, and reduce it, possibly, to a boring anesthetic. Rather, then, our first response to art was to understand it in the sense of standing under it, enjoy it, receive from it, and experience the experience, know the story, see the colors, taste the realities, and enjoy the pleasures it offered. He writes, “The first demand any work of any art makes upon us is surrender. Look. Listen. Receive. Get yourself out of the way.” [26]
Submitting ourselves to the art-work, therefore, is our primary responsibility. In this same book An Experiment in Criticism, Lewis rejects the idea of only looking for truth in an art-work, by merely probing it for its underlying philosophy or worldview. Hence, he rejects worldview analysis as the exclusive way to approach a work of art, especially fiction.
To value them [works of art] chiefly for reflections which they may suggest to us or morals we may draw from them, is a flagrant instance of “using” instead of receiving. … One of the prime achievements in every good fiction has nothing to do with truth or philosophy or a Weltanschauung at all. [27]
In short, Lewis values literature and the arts apart from their utilitarian purpose. Artistic and aesthetic sensibilities are lost – the powerful imaginative dimensions – if worldview analysis becomes the primary way of approaching art. In other words, we can become myopic, narrow-minded, bigoted, prejudiced, and intolerant. Food and cooking, for example, is more than mere nutrition, and there is more to art and aesthetics than worldview underpinnings. We need flavor!
Though he does not reject worldview analysis entirely (as is made clear in his essay “Christianity and Culture” [28]), he would couple it with other basic artistic and aesthetic concerns and the entertainment, play, fun, and leisure that should accompany good art. In any case, avoid propaganda.
The final point Lewis would make on our walk with him is this one:
Fifth and finally, art and aesthetics can convey Christian themes, but the Christianity within a work of art is best if it is “latent” or indirect.
This was Lewis’s strategy in the creation of his fairy stories, Narnia included. The Christianity within it merely “bubbled up.” He did not, I repeat, did not start by asking himself how he could present the Christian gospel in a way children and others could understand. He did not produce a list of Christian teachings and then developed the idea of presenting them through fairy tales. NO. Rather, he came up with the artistic idea and the Christianity which was in him came through … naturally. That he started with Christianity and then contrived a literary, artistic way to portray it, he says, is “all pure moonshine.”
I couldn’t write in that way at all. Everything began with images; a faun carrying an umbrella, a queen on a sledge, a magnificent lion. At first there wasn’t even anything Christian about them; that element pushed itself in of its own accord. It was part of the bubbling. [29]
In advocating art as art with its Christianity latent, his argument is something like this: just as God’s very good creation is God’s very good creation in and of itself and without need of so-called “religious” justification, so we live in an intrinsically good world and we create creatively and imaginatively as something very good in and of itself without need of pragmatic or didactic justification because we are made in the image and likeness of a creative and imaginative Creator. Christian doctors, dentists and coaches shouldn’t neglect or ignore the importance of good medicine, dentistry, or coaching just in order to do evangelism and so on. Such would be a serious misuse, even a prostitution, of their God-given crafts and calling. They should be excellent first and foremost as doctors, dentists, and coaches; the gospel will follow. Indeed, it will “bubble” up.
So it should be with Christian artists: their or your first priority ought to be excellence and delight in the craft itself first and foremost, as a painter, musician, poet, writer, and so on, else the artistic craft suffer misuse and abuse. The kingdom content and implications will then be there … naturally, latent, even if indirect, bubbling up. This would be true if we look at it in reverse. As Lewis writes in his essay on “Christian Apologetics”:
Our faith is not very likely to be shaken by any book on Hinduism. But if whenever we read an elementary book on Geology, Botany, Politics, or Astronomy, we found that its implications were Hindu, that would shake us. It is not the books written in direct defense of Materialism that make the modern man a materialist; it is the materialistic assumptions in all the other books.[30]
I read the New York Times newspaper on Sunday, and often I observe and feel the latent, naturalistic assumptions that are informing just about everyone of its stories and reviews. Now what if Christian assumptions informed the cultural artifacts to which we were regularly exposed? It could create a critical mass. It just might be the best apologetic of all. Hear Lewis on the matter in full:
I believe that any Christian who is qualified to write a good popular book on any science may do much more by that than by any direct apologetic work…. We can make people (often) attend to the Christian point of view for half an hour or so; but the moment they have gone away from our lecture or laid down our article, they are plunged back into a world where the opposite position is taken for granted…. What we want is not more little books about Christianity, but more little books by Christians on other subjects — with their Christianity latent.
In the same way, it is not books on Christianity that will really trouble him. But he would be troubled if, whenever he wanted a cheap popular introduction to some science, the best work on the market was always by a Christian. [31]
Along these lines, I am reminded of a key notion of J. Gresham Machen (1881-1937), the founder of Westminster Theological Seminary. In an essay titled, “Christianity and Culture,” he wrote:
False ideas are the greatest obstacles to the reception of the gospel. We may preach with all the fervor of a reformer and yet succeed only in winning a straggler here and there, if we permit the whole collective thought of the nation or of the world to be controlled by ideas which, by the resistless force of logic, prevent Christianity from being regarded as anything more than a harmless delusion. Under such circumstances, what God desires us to do is to destroy the obstacle at its root. [32]
Indeed, to destroy this obstacle at its root, we best follow Lewis’s advice: create works of art (among other things) based on Christian assumptions, with the Christianity latent. … or bubbling up. This may just be the best apologetic of all. Thus artists who do this just may be the best apologists of all. In a sense, this means a smuggling in of Christianity into the cultural bloodstream and mainstream. Actually, I think this is biblical. The incarnation itself may have been the “Grand Miracle,” but it was not carried out on a grand scale, with pomp and circumstance … a really big show.
Rather, Jesus came to this earth in humility, obscurity, and anonymity. Furthermore, when Jesus would perform a major miracle, he would often follow it up by telling the recipient of the mighty deed to tell no one. See Luke 8:55, for example. Mark 8:30 is another where after Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ, Jesus commanded his disciples not to tell anyone. It’s known as the Messianic secret. Artists, then, can be God’s smugglers. [33] Thus, you artists, let your Christianity be latent and allow it to “bubble up” … naturally.
What, then, has Lewis shared with us on this walk with him today along Addison’s Walk? Five things total:
First, beauty (along with truth and goodness) in art and aesthetics is objective.
Second, art and aesthetics can be signposts pointing to God and true joy.
Third, art and aesthetics must be incarnational.
Fourth, art and aesthetics are not just for pragmatic and didactic purposes, Christian or otherwise.
Fifth, art and aesthetics can convey Christian themes, but the Christianity within a work of art is best if it is “latent” or indirect.
Hence, I say to you as an artist in your art …
1. Affirm the transcendent objectivity of beauty (and truth and goodness).
2. Point to God and joy in and through your art.
3. Remember the incarnation/al (and its many implications)
4. Avoid propaganda.
5. Smuggle. Be latent. Let your faith bubble up in your work.
May the Holy Ghost, and the ghost of C. S. Lewis, haunt your work as an artist as your work is informed by Christian faith.
———————————
———————————
NOTES
[1] With a hat tip to Charlie W. Starr and his essay “Aesthetics vs. Anesthesia: C. S. Lewis on the Purpose of Art,” available at: http://library.taylor.edu/dotAsset/e0530ce0-be3c-4980-ba6a-c3ed39e810b3.pdf. Accessed May 23, 2012.
[2] From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley. Accessed May 23, 2012.
[3] Peter Kreeft, Between Heaven and Hell: A Dialog Somewhere Beyond Death with John F. Kennedy, C. S. Lewis & Aldous Huxley (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1982). The book is described at the Amazon website in the following words: “On November 22, 1963, three great men died within a few hours of each other: C.S. Lewis, John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley. All three believed, in different ways,
that death is not the end of human life. Suppose they were right, and suppose they met after death. How might the conversation go? Peter Kreeft imagines their discourse as a modern Socratic dialog–a part of The Great Conversation that has been going on for centuries. Does human life have meaning? Is it possible to know about life after death? What if one could prove that Jesus was God? Combining logical argument and literary imagination, Kreeft portrays Lewis as a Christian theist, Kennedy as a modern humanist and Huxley as an Eastern pantheist. Their interaction involves not only good thinking but good drama.”
[4] Barnett Newman, quoted by Arthur C. Danto in The Abuse of Beauty: Aesthetics and the Concept of Art, (Peru, IL: Carus Publishing Company/Open Court Publishing, 2003), 1.
[5] Wallace Stevens, Opus Posthumous, ed. Milton J. Bates (London: Faber and Faber, 1990), p. 185
[6] C. S. Lewis, “First and Second Things,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed. Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 280.
[7] April 23, 1951, cited at: http://thegospelcoalition.org/blogs/justintaylor/2010/07/28/the-first-things-first-principle/. Accessed May 15, 2012.
[8] C. S. Lewis, Letters to Malcomb: Chiefly on Prayer (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1963/1964), p. 73.
[9] C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man or Reflections on Education with Special Reference to the Teaching of English in the Upper Forms of Schools (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, HarperCollinsPublishers, 2001, originally 1944, 1947), p. 18.
[10] The following summary is abbreviated from my own book Worldview: The History of a Concept (Eerdmans, 2002), pp. 1-3. Page numbers in parentheses are from C. S. Lewis, The Magician’s Nephew, with pictures adapted from illustrations by Pauline Baynes (New York: Collier Books/Macmillan Publishing Company, 1970, 1955).
[11] C. S. Lewis, The Pilgrim’s Regress: An Allegorical Apology for Christianity, Reason and Romance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1958, originally, 1933, 1943), pp. 9-10. For a discussion of the notion of Sehnsucht in C. S. Lewis, see Corbin Scott Carnell, Bright Shadow of Reality: Spiritual Longing in C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1974).
[12] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, A Harcourt Brace Modern Classic (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1955), pp. 15-16.
[13] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1958), p. 106.
[14] Peter Kreeft and Ronald T. Tacelli, Handbook of Christian Apologetics: Hundreds of Answers to Crucial Questions (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), pp. 78-81. This material is also online at: http://www.peterkreeft.com/topics/desire.htm. Accessed May 15, 2012.
[15] From Charlie W. Starr, “Aesthetics vs. Anesthesia: C. S. Lewis on the Purpose of Art.” Available at: http://library.taylor.edu/dotAsset/e0530ce0-be3c-4980-ba6a-c3ed39e810b3.pdf. Accessed May 15, 2012.
[16] C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), 66-67.
[17] See C. S. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), pp. 80-88; and Miracles: A Preliminary Study (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1947), chapter fourteen.
[18] C. S. Lewis, “The Grand Miracle,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed., Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 82.
[19] Philip Harrold, “Smuggling for God: What the Emerging Church Movement Can Learn from C. S. Lewis’ Incarnational Aesthetic,” Available at: http://www.cslewis.org/journal/smuggling-for-god-what-the-emerging-church-movement-can-learn-from-c-s-lewis’-incarnational-aesthetic/2/. Accessed May 15, 2012.
[20] Dawn Waters Baker, God in My Paint: Little Truths I’ve Learned While Painting (Blurb.com, 2011).
[21] Os Guinness, The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life (W Publishing Group, Thomas Nelson, 1998, 2003), p. 185
[22] C. S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, A Harcourt Brace Modern Classic (New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1955), p. 158 (emphasis added).
[23] Francis A. Schaeffer, Art and the Bible: Two Essays, rev. ed., foreword Michael Card (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2006), p. 88.
[24] Schaeffer, Art and the Bible, p. 90.
[25] C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism, Canto edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961, Canto edition 1992), p. 137-38, 139.
[26] Lewis, An Experiment, p. 19.
[27] Lewis, An Experiment, pp. 82-83.
[28] C. S. Lewis, “Christianity and Culture,” in Christian Reflections, ed., Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1967), pp. 28-29. Here is the thought I am to which I am referring: “the real beliefs may differ from the professed and may lurk in the turn of a phrase or the choice of an epithet; with the result that many preferences which seem to the ignorant to be simply “matters of taste” are visible to the trained critic as choices between good and evil, or truth and error. And I fully admit that this important point had been neglected in my essay of March, 1940. Now that it has been made, I heartily accept it. I think this is agreement.”
[29] C. S. Lewis, “Sometimes Fairy Stories May Say Best What’s to be Said,” in On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, ed., Walter Hooper (New York: A Harvest/HBJ Book, 1966/1982), p. 46.
[30] C. S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed., Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 93 (emphasis added).
[31] C. S. Lewis, “Christian Apologetics,” in God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics, ed., Walter Hooper (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1970), p. 93 (emphasis added).
[32] J. Gresham Machen, “Christianity and Culture,” The Princeton Theological Review 11 (1913): 7. | ||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 38 | https://www.yahoo.com/news/last-day-c-lewis-life-202819371.html | en | What the last day of C.S. Lewis’s life was like, 60 years ago today | https://media.zenfs.com/en/deseret_news_992/49b6ea7f39b278668b9bbf772f1fae72 | https://media.zenfs.com/en/deseret_news_992/49b6ea7f39b278668b9bbf772f1fae72 | [
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] | null | [
"Jennifer Graham"
] | 2023-11-22T20:28:19+00:00 | President John F. Kennedy died the same day that C.S. Lewis did, causing Lewis’s passing to be largely overlooked. What were his last days like? | en | https://s.yimg.com/rz/l/favicon.ico | Yahoo News | https://www.deseret.com/2023/11/22/23972666/cs-lewis-death-jfk-narnia-mere-christianity | Although C.S. Lewis was famous when he was alive, the death of the beloved Christian apologist and author from renal failure went largely overlooked because of something else that happened the same day.
Lewis died around 5:30 p.m. at his home in Oxford, England, The Kilns. Adjusting for the time zones, this was an hour before John F. Kennedy was shot in Dallas, Texas. The U.S. president was pronounced dead a half-hour later.
Lewis was 64 when he died, a week before his birthday. Kennedy was 46.
Lewis’ stepson, Douglas Gresham, would later recall that he learned about Kennedy’s death before that of his stepfather. (Lewis married Gresham’s mother, Joy Davidman, in 1956; she would die of cancer four years later, inspiring Lewis to write “A Grief Observed.”)
In a 2013 interview with the U.K.’s Independent, Gresham said that, because Lewis’ brother was so devastated by the loss, the stepson had worked with Walter Hooper to issue a news release about Lewis’ death the next day, and only two news outlets reached out about the news. The New York Times announced the death Nov. 24.
“People only very slowly became aware of Jack’s death,” Gresham said. “For years afterwards, his estate would forward letters to me that were still addressed to him.”
While largely unheralded, Lewis’ death was not entirely unexpected. He had been in declining health for a few years and had resigned from his position at Cambridge University in August 1963. His kidneys were failing, and treatment at that time largely consisted of blood transfusions; dialysis did not become common until the 1970s. In a July hospitalization, he came so close to death that he received the Roman Catholic last rites.
Correspondence in the last months of Lewis’ life showed that he didn’t expect to live much longer. He signed one letter, sent in June, “a tired traveller near the journey’s end.”
Related
How J.R.R. Tolkien’s friendship led C.S. Lewis to become a Christian
C.S. Lewis had a different take on Christmas. Here’s what he had to say
His last months were spent at home, in a room set up on the first floor, as he could no longer ascend the stairs to his bedroom and study. He was cared for, first by a nurse, and then by his brother, Warnie.
According to an article on the blog of The Gospel Coalition, among his final correspondents was a young woman by the name of Kathy Kristy, who would later go on to marry the renowned pastor Tim Keller, who died earlier this year.
In his last week of life, he met with his friend J.R.R. Tolkien and Tolkien’s son. (After Lewis’ death, Tolkien would say, “So far I have felt the normal feelings of a man my age — like an old tree that is losing all its leaves one by one: this feels like an axe-blow near the roots.”)
Lewis also worked on an essay that would be published the next month in the Saturday Evening Post, entitled, “We have no right to happiness.”
There is not much known of his last day, other than that he had a quiet morning at home with his brother, and took a nap in the afternoon. His brother later said that he took tea to Lewis in bed around 4 p.m., and then rushed to his brother’s side when he heard him collapse on the floor about 90 minutes later. Lewis was unconscious when his brother found him; he died a few minutes later. It’s unknown what his last words were.
But we do know what Lewis thought about death generally, because of his famous “argument from desire,” in which he said, “If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.” | ||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 3 | 74 | https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/giving-thanks-for-c-s-lewis | en | Giving Thanks for C.S. Lewis | [
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"Joel J Miller"
] | 2023-11-22T12:00:16+00:00 | It’s the 60th Anniversary of His Death: Here’s to His Life and Ongoing Influence | en | https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fbucketeer-e05bbc84-baa3-437e-9518-adb32be77984.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F1a3818bd-6994-425e-ad5e-846891377ae8%2Ffavicon.ico | https://www.millersbookreview.com/p/giving-thanks-for-c-s-lewis | November 22 this year marks the sixtieth anniversary of C.S. Lewis’s death. I can recall reading a newspaper obituary about Lewis my grandmother kept. She preserved the entire paper. The event was buried in the back—just a few inches of text. The rest of the paper, or at least the majority of it, was dedicated to reporting the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
Both men died the same day. Coincidentally, they both answered to “Jack.” Though popular, this Irish author and academic couldn’t rival America’s departed head of state. Coverage of Lewis’s passing was swamped by pages and pages of copy about the death of Kennedy. Naturally, that’s why my grandmother kept the issue.
Reflecting on the date and what it signifies, I spent some time reading about Lewis’s final years. Biographies by A.N. Wilson, George Sayer, Alan Jacobs, and Alister McGrath offered helpful windows into his waning days.
Bad Health, Good Spirits
A bachelor until late in life, Lewis eventually wed, but the marriage was brief. His wife, the American Joy Davidman, died of cancer in 1960 after just four years of marriage. Following her death, the grieving Cambridge professor found himself a single dad to Joy’s two boys.
Then, some eleven months later, Lewis began experiencing difficulty peeing. Doctors concluded that his prostate was significantly enlarged and that his kidneys were infected, spreading toxins through his bloodstream and causing cardiac trouble. His condition didn’t go unnoticed by friends. One recalled that he looked “very ill.” Another said he appeared “unwell.”
Besides giving him blood transfusions—the only solution before dialysis—doctors put Lewis on a low-calorie diet and ordered him to quit smoking. He disobeyed. “If I did [comply], I know that I should be unbearably bad tempered,” he told George Sayer. “Better to die cheerfully with the aid of a little tobacco, than to live disagreeably and remorseful without it.”
Sayer says that Lewis “never lost his sense of humor.” Indeed, he was famously good natured, even amid dire circumstances. On July 15, 1963, he suffered a heart attack and slipped into a coma. Friends feared the worst; some came and prayed; a priest gave the sacrament of extreme unction. Amazingly, an hour after the sacrament, Lewis awoke, revived, and asked for a cup of tea.
True to form, he found a joke in it. “I was unexpectedly revived from a long coma,” he wrote Sister Penelope, an Anglican nun with whom he frequently corresponded. “Ought one honor Lazarus rather than Stephen as the protomartyr? To be brought back and have all one’s dying to do again was rather hard.”
The joke reflects a more serious poem Lewis had written a few years prior, “Stephen to Lazarus”:
But was I the first martyr, who
Gave up no more than life, while you,
Already free among the dead,
Your rags stripped off, your fetters shed,
Surrendered what all other men
Irrevocably keep, and when
Your battered ship at anchor lay
Seemingly safe in the dark bay
No ripple stirs, obediently
Put out a second time to sea
Well knowing that your death (in vain
Died once) must all be died again?
Though his health improved some, Lewis resigned his position at Cambridge and settled into life at his home, the Kilns.
Walls of Books
Though Lewis began suffering acute delusions at this time, Jacobs records another story that captures his humor and good spirits. Following his resignation, Lewis sent his recently engaged secretary, Walter Hooper, to collect his things from his rooms at Cambridge—including an extraordinary number of books for which the Kilns had little available room. Back at the house, writes Jacobs,
some comedy ensued when Lewis talked Hooper into building a wall of books around the sleeping body of Alec Ross, Lewis’s live-in nurse, who had chosen the wrong time and place to take a nap.
Books always formed a key part of Lewis’s life, just as Lewis’s books have now long formed a key part in the lives of many others. They’ve been part of my mental atmospherics for more than three decades now.
I read the Space Trilogy in high school and my first year in college, followed by Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters. I read Till We Have Faces then as well and have come back to it several times since. Somewhere in that period I also read Sayer’s biography, Jack, for the first time.
A friend’s dad was a minister and had a dust-jacketless hardcover of Lewis’s God in the Dock he’d given his son. In those dark days before Amazon and AbeBooks, this was a treasure of inestimable value. I traded my friend a nearly-complete set of Charles Williams’s novels to secure the all-important book of essays.
Williams was a close friend of Lewis and wrote a series of eerie novels, characterized as supernatural thrillers. One, The Place of the Lion, imagined Plato’s forms breaking into the material world and influenced Lewis’s creation of his most memorable character, Aslan.
Some years later I wanted to reread Williams’s novels. I lucked out and found the set at a used bookstore. I’ve since given them away again. But I had—and still have—the pearl of great price, Lewis’s God in the Dock, and have been able to make much use of it. In time I found and purchased many other Lewis volumes: The Four Loves, Christian Reflections, Studies in Words, Miracles, The Weight of Glory, Present Concerns, and more.
The Narnia stories actually came late for me. I only read them in my thirties. It’s the same story with Reflections on the Psalms and The Discarded Image, which I first read some thirteen or fourteen years ago.
I haven’t checked, but I would guess I quote Lewis more than any other single author. I have more books by him than any other (except maybe St. Augustine). And I keep returning to them. I’ve probably read Till We Have Faces five or six times at this point. I particularly enjoy rereading his essays.
Lewis was always a serious rereader. “I can’t imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once,” he once wrote a friend. Rereading “is one of my greatest pleasures.”
Final Pages
Holed up at the Kilns in those final months, Lewis reread the Iliad and other books. Sayer lists not only the Iliad and the Odyssey but mentions that he read them in Greek, that he read the Aeneid in Latin. He also read “Dante’s Divine Comedy; Wordsworth’s The Prelude; and works by George Herbert, Patmore, Scott, Austen, Fielding, Dickens, and Trollope.”
Surrounded by his books, Wilson says that Lewis “remained . . . propped up in the very room where Joy had spent so many heroic hours suffering.”
And then he joined her.
It was Friday, November 22. Lewis was cheerful but had a hard time staying awake. He ate breakfast, got dressed, answered some letters. After lunch, his brother Warnie “suggested he would be more comfortable in bed, and he went there.”
Warnie took him tea at four. An hour and a half later he heard a crash. Lewis had collapsed at the foot of his bed. Unconscious, as Warnie recorded, “He ceased to breathe some three or four minutes later.”
Lewis wrote dozens of books, some of profound literary, cultural, theological, and psychological insight. He never imagined the lasting influence he would have. “After I’ve been dead five years,” he told his friend Owen Barfield, “no one will read anything I’ve written.” Indeed, after quitting his post at Cambridge, he worried about dwindling funds; he didn’t see how his royalties would last.
He needn’t have worried. Lewis’s books have long outlived him. There’s a story there, too, of course. I tell it here. In the meantime, there’s no better way to give thanks for Lewis’s life and work this time of year than pulling a favorite volume off the shelf and settling in between the pages.
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correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 1 | 82 | https://www.blackgate.com/2015/12/20/wandering-the-worlds-of-c-s-lewis-part-i-boxen/ | en | Wandering the Worlds of C.S. Lewis, Part I: Boxen – Black Gate | [
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] | 2015-12-20T00:00:00 | en | https://www.blackgate.com/2015/12/20/wandering-the-worlds-of-c-s-lewis-part-i-boxen/ | C.S. Lewis loved walking, and in one letter to his friend Arthur Greaves he wrote of a fifty-mile three-day expedition he undertook alongside other friends: walking by day through woods and river valleys, at evenings stopping at local houses where the company might discuss the nature of the Good. Bearing this image in mind I’ve decided to begin wandering through the terrain of Lewis’ fiction. It is well-trodden ground, as many others have done this before me. But there’s a certain charm in seeing things for oneself. It is also just possible that another pair of eyes may spot something new in even the most familiar landscape, if the terrain is varied enough. And Lewis’ writing, as a whole, stands out as heterogeneous indeed.
I have read some, though far from all, of Lewis’ non-fiction; I intend to talk about it only insofar as I see a bearing on his fiction. I’m interested in seeing what images, tones, ideas, and approaches unite a fairly disparate corpus of writing. I want to see how Lewis’ approach to storytelling developed over his life, and how motifs and themes recurred in his work. I hope that by doing this I’ll better understand his individual books. At any rate, I’ll begin here with a look at Lewis’ published juvenilia. Tomorrow I’ll have a look at his early collection of poetry, Spirits in Bondage, then the day after that his long poem Dymer. Next Sunday I’ll move on to his first long prose work, The Pilgrim’s Regress, and see what sort of schedule I can manage from there until I reach Lewis’ last novel, Till We Have Faces.
Note that these posts will be merely my own impression of Lewis’ work, rather than, say, an attempt to read Lewis by his own lights. So while Lewis believed that a writer’s biographical details were by and large irrelevant to their literary accomplishments, I’m a little more interested in how the story of a writer’s life maps onto the stories they choose to tell. Some chronological landmarks therefore follow by which to survey Lewis’ early writings.
Born in 1898 in Ulster, as a child Lewis was inspired by books and the Irish countryside; the sight of the Castlereagh Hills inspired a kind of longing within him that he came to call ‘joy,’ a type of joy that would also be inspired by other sources — particularly certain kinds of poetry and myth. He later described his imagination being sparked at age six by a large, rambling house his father, a solicitor, had built for the family. By this point Lewis, perhaps inspired by the works of Beatrix Potter, had already begun writing stories about talking animals in a world of medieval chivalry. At the same time, Lewis’ older brother Warren was writing stories set in a fictional ‘India.’ Soon the brothers integrated their tales into a single world called ‘Boxen.’ Lewis would write stories based in this setting into his teens.
Lewis’ mother died of cancer when he was nine, and Lewis was sent to a school in England that was a nightmare of physical abuse and mentally stultifying exercises. After a year it closed because the headmaster was declared insane. Lewis was sent to another school, again in England; at age 13, having been raised an Anglican to that point, he became an atheist. He also became fascinated by Norse myth and Wagner, as well as Greek myth, and published his first poem in the school magazine. He graduated in 1913, spent a year at an English college where he was severely bullied (and during which he wrote a now-lost verse tragedy called Loki Bound), and ended up studying under a private tutor for two and a half years. At eighteen, with national conscription imminent, he was accepted to Oxford’s University College where he studied for a term before joining Oxford’s Officers’ Training Corps. He earned a commission, and, late in 1917, was sent to France to fight in the First World War.
After a bout of trench fever in February, 1918, Lewis was wounded by a shell which also killed his sergeant and army mentor; Lewis would carry a fragment of shrapnel in his chest the rest of his life, and by the time he had recovered from the wound the war was over. He returned to Oxford early in 1919, aiming at a degree in Literae Humaniores (roughly, humanities focussing on classical literature) and an eventual academic career. The same year, he published his first book, a collection of short lyric poetry called Spirits in Bondage.
Lewis had become close friends with four other men while in the cadet corps; all were now dead, but he had also become close, and apparently romantically involved, with the mother of one of these men. Lewis began living with Jane King Moore (and her daughter Maureen) in 1921, and they’d stay together until Moore’s death in 1951. The early 1920s were mostly years of financial stress for Lewis, who was partially supported by his increasingly estranged father. Unable to get a job as a teacher, Lewis continued his schooling in English literature; in 1922 he also began writing a long narrative poem, Dymer, which was published in 1926. A year spent teaching undergraduate philosophy led in 1925 to a position at Oxford’s Magdalen College teaching English literature. Lewis was now financially secure in a profession he would follow most of the rest of his life, and after the death of his father in 1929, he and his brother sold their childhood home in Ireland. By this point he was already at work on a scholarly book about medieval allegory.
That’s more-or-less the first half of Lewis’ life, up to the point where he converted back to Christianity. It’ll be convenient to consider that when I look at The Pilgrim’s Regress. For the moment I want to discuss some of the surviving stories Lewis wrote in his youth, stories first published in 1985, well after Lewis’ death.
(I should note here that Lewis scholar Katherine Lindskoog has cast some doubt on the provenance of the surviving Boxen manuscripts and of some short stories that have emerged after Lewis’ death. I’m not personally convinced by her arguments, but I mention the point for the sake of completeness. The full details are in Lindskoog’s book The C.S. Lewis Hoax.)
Boxen: The Imaginary World of the Young C.S. Lewis was edited by Walter Hooper, who was Lewis’ secretary at Lewis’ death. It collects a number of texts written by Lewis between (probably) age 7 and age 15, as well as a mock-academic “Encyclopedia Boxoniana” Lewis wrote in 1928 listing the “surviving documents” pertaining to Boxen. “The King’s Ring” is a comedy, complete with a list of dramatis personae. “Manx Against Manx” and “The King’s Ring” are brief fables with all the surreality a young child brings to story-telling. Two histories follow, the “History of Mouse-Land from Stone-Age to Bublish I” and “History of Animal-Land,” as well as “The Chess Monograph,” a fragment that starts to outline some of the background of the young Lewis’ imagined world. “The Geography of Animal-Land” is next, brief descriptions of places keyed to a map, not unlike a very simple role-playing game supplement. Three long ‘novels’ clearly written by a slightly older hand take up most of the book: “Boxen: or Scenes from Boxonian City Life,” “The Locked Door and Thank-Kyu,” and “The Sailor.” The whole thing’s interspersed with pictures and maps drawn by Lewis and his brother, and Hooper provides an introduction in which he mentions that other long ‘novels’ have survived — though as of 2015 they’ve yet to be published.
Boxen is an interesting example of a paracosm (a fictional world created by a child — in this case two children — and maintained over the course of years). There’s not much immediately apparent relevance to Lewis’ later writings, and Lewis himself downplayed the connection between Boxen and Narnia in particular. Still, it’s interesting to see how the growing depth of the fictions seems to echo some of Lewis’ later fascinations and techniques.
Reading through the book there is an odd sense of myth being retold and reinterpreted. The earliest stories by the young Lewis were based on his toys, and had a pseudo-medieval setting (apparently inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s novel Sir Nigel). When Animal-Land was united with the ‘India’ imagined by Lewis’ brother, Lewis was faced with a problem: ‘India’ was a modern country with modern technology, so — in the thinking of the brothers — the joint land of Boxen had to be modern as well. The Boxen stories took place centuries after Lewis’ original stories, leading to Lewis to try to write histories that would bridge the gap. Reading them in the order assembled in the published volume, you see the original short pieces becoming the foundation for the later historical superstructure: characters reinterpreted, events rationalised, narratives extended or questioned. In a sense there’s a tension here between myth and analysis.
On the other hand, when Lewis looked back on the stories as an adult he tended to deprecate the creativity involved. In Surprised by Joy, a sort of spiritual autobiography published in 1955, Lewis described the Boxen tales as “prosaic.” Although he recalled being satisfied by his early “chivalric” stories, he felt the histories and longer novelistic stories derived from “the mood of the systematiser … the mood which led Trollope so endlessly to elaborate his Barsetshire.” Lewis wrote elsewhere that he enjoyed Trollope, but he’s criticising himself here for, essentially, excessive world-building. He felt that the Boxen and Animal-Land stories were training for “a novelist; not a poet.” There was, he wrote, a total lack of romance, and the stories were therefore not, in the highest sense, imaginative.
What did he mean by “romance”? Not love relationships; there aren’t any in the Boxen stories (and no major female characters, perhaps unsurprising for a world created by two young boys). “Romance” has several related meanings for Lewis, as I suspect I’ll discuss in a future post, but the relevant point here is his statement that “Animal-Land, by its whole quality, excluded the least hint of wonder.” This strikes me as a significant distinction. Poetry, romance, and wonder on one hand; the novelist and systematiser on the other.
Certainly it seems as though the Boxen ‘novels’ are directly inspired by Lewis’ life in a way that would be unusual in his later work. Two of the main characters of the novels, the king of Animal-Land and the rajah of India, are dominated by their old teacher Big, a highly political frog, and Lewis himself has said that there’s a resemblance there to the Lewis brothers dominated by their politically-interested father. Both of the younger Lewises later recalled the adult visitors in their father’s home constantly talking politics, and recalled as well that political talk filtering into their stories; they saw “talking politics” as being something that adults did, for unguessable adult reasons. It is interesting to see Big at one point reminded by a sharp-tongued parliamentary opponent that he’s actually an alien to Boxen who comes from a “dependent island” called “Piscia, which is only a colony.” This provokes a long and outraged speech on the merits and history of Piscia, which I find oddly powerful; hard not to think that Lewis is writing about his Irishness, however transmogrified.
At any rate, there is a sense that Boxen is filled with things that the young Lewis half-understood along with images that caught his imagination. Politics and Prussian villains. Life aboard ship. Music-halls: one of the minor characters being the owner of a string of music-halls. In Surprised By Joy Lewis wrote that he had thought, when he was a child, that he enjoyed vaudeville but in fact later came to realise he enjoyed only the atmosphere of the show and the experience of the family excursion to the theatre. On the other hand, it’s interesting that the first surviving Animal-Land story is a brief stage comedy.
If the longer Boxen stories are novelistic, they at least use a range of novelistic techniques. There’s a certain complexity to the plots, well-chosen scene transitions, and multiple points of view. Description is relatively sporadic, with the narratives largely carried by dialogue but occasionally slowing for detailed scene-setting or character sketches. Above all, the stories build effectively. The first two describe a political upheaval in Boxen which leads, in the second story, to a brief war. The third describes an attempt to reform the morals of the Boxen navy by introducing an upstanding new sailor to a specific ship. The schemes are simplistic, but the sense of a narrative arc is strong.
The notion of moral reform in the last story is interesting, precisely because it goes nowhere and is treated as idealistic buffoonery. There’s no sign of religion in the stories that I could see, which may be interesting given that they were presumably being written around the time that Lewis was losing his faith. There is in fact a certain sympathy for scoundrels; the music-hall owner’s a good man, while Big, the effective ruler of Boxen, is officous, bumptious, and occasionally violent. Big’s far from evil, but while he has good qualities, he’s also held up to mockery.
Most of the Boxen characters are notionally animals, but they act in completely human ways (“most;” one of the minor characters in the early stories, presumably based on one of Lewis’ toys, is a golliwog, which was essentially a doll based on a racial caricature). One character is a cat who joins the navy and, uncatlike, goes to sea, voluntarily bathes in the ocean, and once displays “almost superhuman energy.” Illustrations by Lewis show humans with animal-heads, like Egyptian gods in Victorian dress. Perhaps the humanness of the characters grew stronger as the stories became more novelistic. One of the early short stories has a mouse waking up to find his tail cut off, exactly the kind of awareness of an animal nature that the other stories are missing. The mouse, incidentally, is a knightly hero named Peter, and much as I don’t want to anticipate later work too much, I have to admit when one reads in another short story of Peter leading an army to victory there is an oddly familiar feel; perhaps for whatever reason the name struck a chord with Lewis.
Overall, as the published Boxen stories grow more sophisticated, they grow accordingly less fantastic and more directly concerned with everyday behaviour. This, more than anything else, is unlike what one might expect from Lewis’ later work. While readable, they’re most interesting because of the difference from Lewis’ adult fiction, not only in terms of craft but in terms of ambitions and interests. Move ahead several years, to Lewis’ first published poems, and things are different. More on that tomorrow. | |||||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 0 | 37 | https://www.amarillo.com/story/lifestyle/faith/2013/11/09/author-cs-lewis-finally-gets-his-due/13294264007/ | en | Author C.S. Lewis finally gets his due | [
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"Staff , Amarillo Globe-News"
] | 2013-11-09T00:00:00 | You may have heard this story before. My wife, Kathy, and I were on a city bus in Oxford, England, about to get off a couple of blocks from the Kilns, the longtime home of C.S. Lewis. \n A big part of… | en | Amarillo Globe-News | https://www.amarillo.com/story/lifestyle/faith/2013/11/09/author-cs-lewis-finally-gets-his-due/13294264007/ | You may have heard this story before. My wife, Kathy, and I were on a city bus in Oxford, England, about to get off a couple of blocks from the Kilns, the longtime home of C.S. Lewis.
A big part of that winter trip to England was our arranged private tour of the famous house where the celebrated Christian writer once lived. He resided there from 1930 to his death in 1963.
On the almost-empty bus were a man and a woman, not together. We found out the woman attended Holy Trinity Church, the Anglican parish where Lewis and his brother, Warren, had sat in their regular pew for years.
The man had a different take on Lewis. As I recall, he said in his British accent that yes, he knew where Lewis' house was but that "I don't agree with what he stood for."
As someone who strongly agrees with the Christianity that Lewis stood for, I was dismayed but not surprised. After all, Oxford University, where the author of "Mere Christianity" and "The Chronicles of Narnia" taught, had not put its association with him front and center through the decades. Neither had England as a whole. In fact, after his rise to fame in the 1940s and 1950s had faded, Lewis had become more popular in America than in his home country.
So I'm happy that this Nov. 22, 50 years after Lewis died - on the same day as President Kennedy - the professor, writer of children's books and creative defender of the faith will be recognized with a memorial stone in Poets' Corner, the cluttered area of Westminster Abbey where 108 creative people already are either buried or have their names inscribed for posterity. Among them are Geoffrey Chaucer, John Milton, Charles Dickens and Jane Austen.
Despite some signs of spiritual life last time Kathy and I made it to the United Kingdom, the UK is not a nation of churchgoers. Even in his own day, some considered Lewis an intellectual rebel for embracing Christianity. When he made the cover of Time magazine in 1947, the caption read, "Oxford's C.S. Lewis. His heresy: Christianity."
Michael Ward, whose story, "How Lewis Lit the Way" is in this month's Christianity Today, told the magazine earlier that "It takes a while in Britain for a great man to be recognized as such. But Lewis has been safely dead now for 50 years, and we can afford to recognize him as the major figure he was."
The figure who wrote about a devil's apprentice and a Christlike lion also contributed much to literary criticism and medieval studies, which gives nonbelievers something to latch onto. "He is, by any standard, someone who is a serious intellectual … who thinks about the society we're in," said Rowan Williams, former archbishop of Canterbury, in Christianity Today.
Lewis is buried in his home churchyard, a mile or two from his Oxford home. Kathy and I had to go to great lengths to get there. Now millions will have a chance to see his name inside one of Britain's best-known tourist attractions.
Mike Haynes teaches journalism at Amarillo College. He can be reached at the college, the Amarillo Globe-News or haynescolumn@hotmail.com. Go to www.haynes
column.blogspot.com for other recent columns.
An update on the C.S. Lewis Foundation's efforts to establish a C.S. Lewis College: After failing to raise enough money to own and operate a picturesque campus in Northfield, Mass., the foundation apparently decided to settle for small steps. It has bought "Green Pastures," a historic house across the street from that campus. Several generations of the family of D.L. Moody, the renowned evangelist, lived in the home, which will be converted into a C.S. Lewis Study Center. | |||||
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C.S. Lewis’s father, Albert Lewis, was the son of a Welsh immigrant who found success as a partner in a firm that manufactured boilers and ships. Albert attended college and began a practice as a solicitor in Belfast in 1885.
Lewis believed his father’s quick mind, eloquence and love of oratory would have suited him for a career in politics if he had had the means. Albert’s favorite pastime was spending an afternoon swapping anecdotes with his brothers, acting them out with great florish.
C.S. Lewis described his father’s side of the family as “true Welshmen, sentimental, passionate, and rhetorical, easily moved both to anger and to tenderness.” Albert never fully recovered from grief following his wife’s death, and his erratic and sometimes cruel subsequent behavior alienated his sons.
Albert filled the Lewis home with books, but his son’s interest in fantasy literature was not shared by his parents. “If I am a romantic,” he wrote, “my parents bear no responsibility for it.”
Florence Hamilton Lewis (1862–1908)
Flora Lewis, C.S. Lewis’s mother, was the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Hamilton, rector of the church attended by the Lewises. Flora’s talent for mathematics won her a first in the subject at Queen’s College, Belfast, where she earned a B.A.
Flora’s cool temperament was the antithesis of her husband’s emotionality. When she agreed to marry Albert after an eight-year courtship, she wrote to him, “I wonder do I love you? I am not quite sure. I’l know that at least I am very fond of you, and that I should never think of loving anyone else.”
C.S. Lewis wrote of her family, “their minds were critical and ironic and they had the talent for happiness to a high degree.” Flora was a voracious reader and wrote magazine articles. She died of cancer when C.S. Lewis was only nine. “With my mother’s death,” he wrote, “all that was tranquil and reliable disappeared from my life.”
Major Warren Hamilton Lewis (1895–1973)
C.S. Lewis referred to his older brother, Warren (“Warnie”), as “my dearest and closest friend.” The lifelong bond formed as the boys played together, writing and illustrating stories, in their country home. When their mother’s death devastated their father, they were left with only each other for comfort and support.
Although their careers took widely different turns, the two lived together much of their lives. Warren was a career army officer in the Royal Army Service Corps and served in such posts as Sierra Leone and China. After retiring from 18 years of active service in 1932, he took up residence at the Kilns, where he lived until after his brother’s death.
Upon retirement, Warren took on the task of editing the Lewis family papers. He was recalled to active service in World War II. During his final retirement he wrote seven books on the history of 17th Century France.
Warren Lewis returned to belief in Christianity five months before his brother’s conversion. He was a frequent participant in weekly meetings of the Inklings. The Lewis brothers undertook many annual walking tours of up to 50 miles. His 40-year battle with alcoholism was a source of great concern to his brother.
Arthur Greeves (1895–1966)
C.S. Lewis described Arthur Greeves as, “after my brother, my oldest and most intimate friend.” Lewis met Greeves when the neighbor boy, bedridden with the bad heart that kept him an invalid most of his life, requested a visit. The two boys discovered a common love for books, and Lewis found in Greeves an “alter ego, the man who first reveals to you that you are not alone in the world by turning out (beyond hope) to share all your most secret delights.”
Although Lewis did not consider Greeves his intellectual equal, he learned much from Greeves’ insight into the realm of feelings. The two began a correspondence that lasted for the rest of Lewis’s life, and he wrote his friend nearly 300 letters. Greeves was also a consistent influence for Christ in his friend’s life, and it was to Greeves that Lewis first revealed his own conversion.
Greeves’ heart ailment prevented him from holding steady employment. Independently wealthy, he never needed it. He earned a certificate of art at a London school, and was considered a good painter. Although he also wrote, Greeves was never published. Lewis sent Greeves some of his manuscripts for critique.
Owen Barfield (1898– )
C.S. Lewis and Owen Barfield were drawn together during their undergraduate days at Oxford by a common interest in poetry. As they read and critiqued each other’s work, Lewis found in Barfield a second great friend. The two men shared interests, but not points of view; Lewis described Barfield as his “anti-self,” “the man who disagrees with you about everything.”
After Oxford, Barfield worked as a free-lance writer until financial demands forced him to enter his father’s legal firm as a solicitor. He maintained his friendship with Lewis for the rest of their lives, and was influential in shaping Lewis’s views about the importance of myth in language, literature, and the history of thinking. Barfield resumed his writing career after retiring from law.
Raised an agnostic, Barfield became a Christian in his late twenties; nevertheless, he was never comfortable with Lewis’s apologetics or his evangelism. He later embraced and wrote about anthroposophy, a form of religious philosophy which he believed complemented rather than detracted from Christianity.
J.R.R. Tolkien (1892–1973)
Although they initially took opposite sides in a faculty dispute over English literature curriculum, Tolkien and Lewis were eventually united by an interest in myth and legend. Tolkien introduced Lewis to the Coalbiters, a club he had formed which read and translated Icelandic myths. Their mutual interest led to many late-night discussions and long walks. Lewis wrote to Greeves that Tolkien was “the one man absolutely fitted, if fate had allowed, to be a third in our friendship in the old days.”
Their shared belief in the importance of myth led to a discussion about Christianity that Lewis regarded an important factor leading to his conversion. Lewis encouraged Tolkien in his work on The Silmarillion, a cycle of myth and legend, and read The Lord of the Rings as Tolkien wrote it. Tolkien was extremely critical of Lewis’s Narnian chronicles, charging that they were hastily written, inconsistent, and that they failed to create a “real” setting. Tolkien was also critical of Lewis’s marriage to Joy, partly because of his views on divorce and remarriage.
Tolkien was professor of Anglo-Saxon at Oxford from 1925 to 1945, when he became professor of English language and literature until retirement in 1959.
Charles Williams (1886–1945)
The son of a clerk who instilled in him his love of literature and belief in understanding all sides of an argument, Charles Williams was largely self-educated. Williams began his career as a proofreader in the London office of Oxford University Press, where he worked his way up to the position of editor. Williams wrote poetry from his early days, and became a prolific writer of novels, drama, theology, and criticism as well.
Williams met Lewis when the latter wrote him a letter praising his novel, The Place of the Lion. At the same time, Williams was admiring Lewis’s Allegory of Love. The two met occasionally until Williams moved to Oxford in 1939, where he became a regular member of the Inklings.
Although Lewis described Williams as “ugly as a chimpanzee,” Williams’ personal magnetism won him a wide following. He developed the idea of romantic theology, which considers the theological implications of romantic experiences, and The Way of Affirmation, in which earthly pleasures are seen as a door to Christian vision rather than a barrier.
Lewis was impressed by Williams’ selfless character, and described him as offering himself wholly to others without expecting anything in return. Although Lewis said he was never consciously influenced by Williams’ work, many students of the two see Williams’ influence in Lewis’s writing, especially in using ordinary people as the characters in the Space Trilogy.
R.E. Havard (1901– )
The son of an Anglican clergyman, R.E. Havard studied chemistry at Oxford before becoming a medical doctor. Havard took his practice to Oxford in 1934, where he became the physician for Lewis and the Tolkien family. Lewis enjoyed Havard, who was as willing to discuss philosophical problems as medical ones. After Lewis invited him to read a paper on the effects of pain at a Thursday evening meeting of the Inklings, Havard became a regular member of the group.
Tolkien said Havard, unlike most doctors, “thinks of people as people, not as collections of ‘works.’ ” Lewis named the doctor in Perelandra “Humphrey,” Havard’s nickname, in tribute to his friend.
Dorothy Sayers (1893–1957)
Dorothy Sayers, one of the first woman graduates of Oxford, studied the classics and won honors in modern language studies. She worked as an advertising copywriter for 11 years. Sayers first won recognition as the writer of detective thrillers featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. She later wrote religious plays for radio, as well as numerous books and essays on Christian apologetics and theology. Sayers kept up correspondence, primarily concerning literature, with Lewis and his contemporaries. Lewis considered her “the first person of importance who ever wrote me a fan letter,” and he called her “one of the great English letter writers.” It may have been Sayers who spurred Lewis to write Miracles—he began work on the book just weeks after receiving her letter lamenting no good modern works on the subject.
Sayers was a member of Oxford’s Socratic Club, a forum for discussing intellectual challenges in religion and Christianity, of which Lewis was president for 22 years. Lewis appreciated Sayers in person as well as by post; he praised “the extraordinary zest and edge of her conversation.”
Joy Davidman (1915–1960)
Helen Joy Davidman, of Jewish descent, was raised in the Bronx, New York, where she readily adopted her father’s materialistic philosophy. Extraordinarily bright, she entered college at 14. By the age of 25 she had earned a master’s degree and published a novel and two books of poetry. After a failed try at screenwriting in Hollywood, she settled in New York to continue her work with the Communist Party. There she met and married William Gresham, a fellow writer.
Joy found faith in God in her early thirties, and became a Christian a year later, partly through the influence of Lewis’s books. She began correspondence with him that led to a visit and a growing friendship. When her husband left her for another woman, she moved to Oxford with her two sons.
Lewis described Joy’s mind as “lithe and quick and muscular as a leopard.” Many of his friends disapproved of the match; some found Joy too harsh and outspoken; others objected to her status as a divorcee. Nevertheless, their brief marriage, which ended in her death from cancer, brought some of the greatest joy to his life. Joy encouraged Lewis to write Reflections on the Psalms and her influence can be seen in Till We Have Faces and The Four Loves. Her own book, Smoke on the Mountain, is still in print.
G.K. Chesterton (1874–1936)
One of Lewis’s primary mentors in apologetics, and an influence even in his conversion, was G.K. Chesterton. Novelist, poet, essayist, and journalist, Chesterton was perhaps best known for his Father Brown detective stories. He produced more than 100 volumes in his lifetime, including biographies of St. Francis of Assisi and St. Thomas Aquinas. His The Everlasting Man, which set out a Christian outline of history, was one of the factors that wore down Lewis’s resistance to Christianity.
Chesterton was one of the first defenders of orthodoxy to use humor as a weapon. Perhaps more important was his use of reason to defend faith. Chesterton wrote that the universe can only be understood as a creation; that man’s sense of right and wrong and his conflict when he becomes aware that he is not what he was made to be points to a Creator. Though they never met, Lewis called Chesterton “the most sensible man alive.”
George MacDonald (1824–1905)
The man C.S. Lewis regarded as his master barely made a living as a poet, novelist, lecturer, and writer of children’s books. Yet Lewis said of the retired minister, “I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ Himself.” In his teens, Lewis was profoundly changed by reading MacDonald’s Phantastes, a Faerie Romance, an experience Lewis considered the “baptism” of his imagination. Lewis considered MacDonald the best writer of fantasy alive, and he found a sense of holiness in all MacDonald’s writings. Lewis was touched by MacDonald’s devotional writings as well. He wrote, “My own debt to (Unspoken Sermons) is almost as great as one man can owe to another,” and he recommended the book with success to many seekers.
By the Editors
[Christian History originally published this article in Christian History Issue #7 in 1985]
Next articles | ||||
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] | null | [] | null | Clive Staples Lewis >The British novelist and essayist Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was an >established literary figure whose impact is increasingly recognized by >scholars and teachers. On November 29, 1898, Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland. He was the son of A. J. | en | /sites/default/files/favicon.ico | https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/classical-literature-biographies/cs-lewis | LEWIS, CLIVE STAPLES
Literary historian, Christian apologist, scholar, critic, writer of science fiction and children's books; b. Belfast, Ireland, Nov. 29, 1898; d. the Kilns, Headington, England, Nov. 22, 1963. His father was Albert James Lewis, a solicitor; his mother Florence Augusta Hamilton. They had two sons, Warren and Clive, who at an early age changed his name to "Jack." Before he was 10 his mother died of cancer, and the two boys were on their own, being somewhat estranged from their father. In 1917 Lewis prepared for entrance into Oxford University but World War I found him commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry. He arrived at the front line trenches on his 19th birthday Nov. 29, 1917, soon afterwards seeing service at Fampoux and Monchy, and was wounded at Mt. Bemechon, near Lillers, in April 1918.
He returned to Oxford in January 1919 and on June 25, 1925, was elected to official fellowship in Magdalen College as tutor in English Language and Literature. He remained at Oxford until 1954. Passed over for the Merton Chair of English Literature in 1947 and defeated in 1951 for the Professorship of Poetry, he finally accepted in 1954 the Professorship of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College in Cambridge. Soon after, Oxford awarded him an honorary fellowship.
In 1956 Lewis married Joy Gresham Davidman, who died in 1960 of bone cancer. Lewis described this most difficult experience in A Grief Observed (1961).
Prior to 1929 Lewis had considered himself an atheist or at least an agnostic, and had published two books of poetry in that vein, but his conversion to theism in 1929 and to Christianity in 1931 resulted in his first book on apologetics: The Pilgrim's Regress (1933). Using John Bunyan's classic as a model, Lewis enucleated one of his major themes: the idea of longing, disquietude, yearning, Sehnsucht, for the eternal which no earthly thing can satisfy since our hearts are restless for the Eternal. Following Saint augustine, the pseudo-dionysius, and Pascal, Lewis asserts that earthly pleasures, being unsatisfactory, can only point to an everlasting heavenly pleasure. This theme is repeated in the Chronicles of Narnia (1950–56), a series of children's books treating traditional topics but translating them into an imaginary kingdom of people and animals. Aslan, the lion and king of beasts, represents a Christ figure.
Lewis's two most popular works are The Screwtape Letters (1942), a series of letters from the devil to his undersecretary in hell, Wormwood, on how to win a Christian from the fold, and Mere Christianity (1952), a summation of talks from the British Broadcasting Series that made Lewis famous during World War II.
Elsewhere, Lewis deals with the imperatives of the moral law, and in The Abolition of Man (1943) asserts that ethical commands (the Tao) are not merely written in the heart, but into the very structure of the universe itself. The Great Divorce (1945) records a series of conversations between various visitors from hell who are allowed to make an excursion to heaven, and for the most part decide not to remain there. The Problem of Pain (1940) contains some interesting analyses of evolution, primitive societies, animal pain, and the existence of hell. Various kinds of love (The Four Loves 1960), prayer (Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer 1964), insights into the Psalms (Reflections on the Psalms 1958), and theological questions on sin and redemption arising on other planets not yet or about to be tempted (Out of the Silent Planet 1938; Perelandra 1943; and That Hideous Strength 1945), are just a few of the many topics which Lewis dealt with. Some consider his best work to be the novel Till We Have Faces (1956), a story of the soul based on the Greek legend of Psyche.
Lewis is widely remembered not so much for his scholarly expertise in medieval and Renaissance English literature (brilliantly demonstrated in the Oxford History of English Literature 1966), but for his popular writings in defense of traditional Christianity, and in this he is not infrequently compared to G. K. chesterton and Hilaire Belloc. Quite orthodox in content but very original in style it is their direct "ad hominem" approach which has helped to make his books so lasting in their appeal.
Bibliography: h. carpenter, The Inklings (London 1978). m.j. christensen, C. S. Lewis on Scripture (Waco, Tex. 1979). j. r. christopher and j. k. ostling, An Annotated Checklist of Writings About Him and His Works (Kent, Ohio 1974). j. t. como, ed., C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and other Reminiscences (New York 1979). c. derrick, C. S. Lewis and the Church of Rome (San Francisco 1981). w. griffin, Clive Staples Lewis: A Dramatic Life (San Francisco 1986). w. hooper, Past Watchful Dragons: The Narnian Chronicles of C. S. Lewis (New York 1979). c. c. kilby, The Christian World of C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1964). g. meilaender, The Taste for the Other. The Social and Ethical Thought of C. S. Lewis (Grand Rapids, Mich. 1978). r. l. purtill, C. S. Lewis' Case for the Christian Faith (New York 1981). c. walsh, C. S. Lewis: Apostle to the Skeptics (New York 1949); The Literary Legacy of C. S. Lewis (New York 1979). w. l. white, The Image of Man in C. S. Lewis (Nashville 1969). j. r. willis, Pleasures Forevermore. The Theology of C. S. Lewis (Chicago 1983).
[j. r. willis]
Clive Staples Lewis
The British novelist and essayist Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963) was an established literary figure whose impact is increasingly recognized by scholars and teachers.
On November 29, 1898, Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast, Ireland. He was the son of A. J. Lewis, a solicitor, and Flora August Hamilton Lewis, whose father was a clergyman. The death of his mother occurred when he was a child. After spending a year in studies at Malvern College, he continued his education privately under the tutelage of W. T. Kirkpatrick, formerly headmaster of Lurgan College.
During World War I he served as a second lieutenant in the infantry, interrupting his career as scholar begun in 1918 at University College, Oxford. Wounded in the war, he returned to Oxford, where in 1924 he was appointed lecturer at University College. In 1925 he was appointed fellow and tutor at Magdalen College, England, where he lectured on English literature.
Lewis early grew disillusioned with religion and only later "converted" to Christianity, joining the Anglican Church. Taciturn about the details of his early life, his autobiography, Surprised by joy: The Shape of My Early Life, fails to provide enlightenment and leaves the Lewis scholar to speculations about his childhood and early disenchantment with emotional Christianity. Perhaps his headmaster, a clergyman who urged him to "think" by application of the rod, contributed to his dissuasion.
His autobiography does reveal, however, that he had little interest in sports as a boy and that he was a voracious reader. Among his early favorite authors was G. K. Chesterton who was himself a paradoxical and religious writer.
Widely read as an adult, his knowledge of literature was prodigious and made of him a superb conversationalist much sought after for his company. Lewis thoroughly enjoyed sitting up into the wee hours in college rooms" … talking nonsense, poetry, theology, and metaphysics over beer, tea, and pipes."
His subjects at Oxford were medieval and Renaissance English literature, in which he became a scholar, lecturer, and tutor of renown. His reputation was made secure by his English Literature in the 16th Century (1954) and Experiment in Criticism (1961). Aside from scholarly writings, his output included science-fiction, children's stories, and religious apology.
In 1926 his first publication, Dymer, a narrative versification in Rime Royal, appeared under the pseudonym Clive Hamilton. Dymer revealed something of his satirical gift. The Pilgrims' Regress, an allegory published in 1933, presented an apology for Christianity. It was not until the appearance of his second allegorical work, The Allegory of Love (1936), however, that Lewis received acclaim by winning the coveted Hawthornden prize.
His Pilgrims' Regress is a work of allegorical science fiction, in which a philologist is kidnapped by evil scientists. The Screwtape Letters (1942), for which he is perhaps best known, is a satire in which the devil, here known as Screwtape, writes letters instructing his young nephew, Wormwood, how to tempt souls to damnation.
Of his seven religious allegories for children titled Chronicles of Narnia (1955) he commented that, "stories of this kind could steal past … inhibitions which had dissuaded him from his own religion." … "An obligation to feel can freeze feeling." His later rejoining of Christianity was philosophical, not emotional.
Lewis was married, rather late in life, in 1956, to Joy Davidman Gresham, the daughter of a New York Jewish couple. She was a graduate of Hunter College and for a time belonged to the Communist Party. She had previously been married twice. When her first husband suffered a heart attack, she turned to prayer. Reading the writings of Lewis, she began to attend Presbyterian services. Later, led by his writings to Lewis himself, she divorced her second husband, Williams Gresham, left the Communist Party, and married Lewis. Her death proceeded her husband's by some three years. C. S. Lewis died, at his home in Headington, Oxford, on November 24, 1963. A major collection of his works is held by Wheaton College in Illinois.
Further Reading
Lewis's autobiography Surprised by Joy (1955) was written at age 57. Later biographical information is contained in Letters of C. S. Lewis (1966) as edited by W. H. Lewis. Further insights to the artist's life are provided in C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and other Reminiscences (1979), edited by James T. Como. C. S. Lewis's works include: "Out of the Silent Planet" (1938); "Rehabilitations" (1939); "The Personal Heresy" with E. M. W. Tillyard (1939); "A Preface to Paradise Lost" (1942); "The Case for Christianity" (1942); "Perelandra" (1943); "Christian Behavior" (1943); "Abolition of Man" (1943); "Beyond Personality" (1944); "That Hideous Strength" (1945); "Miracles" (1947); "Weight of Glory" (1949); "Mere Christianity" (1952); and "Studies in Words" (1960). □ | |||||
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] | 2021-07-20T00:00:00 | Almost everything C.S. Lewis wrote about Christianity sounds Catholic. But here are twenty facts about him you may not know. | /favicon.ico | Catholic Answers | https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/c-s-lewis-the-shouldve-been-a-catholic-apologist | 1. He wasn’t English.
People often assume that C.S. Lewis was English, especially after listening to one of the few surviving recordings of his voice. They are surprised to discover that he was actually born in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He was, however, educated in England and lived in Oxford for most of his adult life.
2. He had several names.
He was baptized Clive Staples Lewis, but this was not what his friends called him. When Lewis was about four, a neighborhood dog named Jacksie of whom he was particularly fond died. Afterward, he refused to respond to any other name, although it was eventually shortened to “Jack.”
3. He experienced tragedy as a child.
Lewis’s mother died of cancer when he was nine. Of that experience, he wrote “all settled happiness, all that was tranquil and reliable, disappeared from my life” (Surprised by Joy, Harcourt [1966], 21).
As mentioned earlier, the young Jack was sent to a boarding school in England. He disliked England and hated most of his schooling, so much so that in his autobiography he calls one of the schools “Belsen” after the notorious World War II concentration camp. Sometime after he left, the school’s headmaster was committed to an asylum.
4. He wasn’t always a Christian.
Most people who have heard of Lewis know that he was a renowned Christian of his generation. Although he was raised in the Church of Ireland, he became an atheist as a teenager.
Lewis loved the old pagan myths, particularly those of the Norse. As he received his education in classics, he was told that paganism was false, whereas Christianity was true. This assessment seemed wrong to the young Lewis, who found much truth and beauty in the pagan myths. Ultimately, he rejected paganism and Christianity, regarding them both as nothing more than fanciful stories.
Like many who embrace atheism, Jack struggled with the problem of pain and suffering. He couldn’t reconcile a benevolent God with the suffering world he saw around him, and as a young man he often quoting the Roman Epicurean poet Lucretius:
Had God designed the world, it would not be
a world so frail and faulty as we see.
5. He was a war veteran.
Lewis fought in World War I, arriving at the front line on his nineteenth birthday. After being wounded in combat a year later, he returned home.
During his army training he befriended a young man named Paddy Moore. The two agreed that if one of them died, the other would look after the deceased’s family. Unfortunately, Paddy was killed in the trenches and, true to his word, Lewis took care of Paddy’s mother and sister for the rest of his life.
6. He was exceptionally gifted.
Upon returning to Oxford University after the war, Lewis excelled in his studies, gaining multiple degrees. He got a First in Greek and Latin literature (“Moderations”), philosophy and ancient history (“Greats”), and finally another in English.
Lewis was highly intelligent, particularly when it came to language, but he struggled with mathematics. In fact, his ineptitude nearly derailed his entrance into Oxford University. Fortunately, upon his return from the war, his military service granted him a dispensation from those exams.
7. He first became a theist.
Over time, Lewis became discontented with atheism’s lack of imaginative and explanatory power. He had embraced atheism in part because of the cruel and unjust nature of the universe. However, as he would later ask: “How had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?” (Mere Christianity, HarperOne [2001], 38).
Lewis explored several different philosophical outlooks before he finally accepted the inevitable. In his autobiography he writes: “You must picture me alone in [my] room, . . . night after night, feeling . . . the steady, unrelenting approach of him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet. . . . [I eventually] gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed: perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England” (Surprised by Joy, Harcourt [1966], 228).
Lewis had come to believe in God, but he was not yet a Christian.
8. He was devoted to his friends.
Contrary to some biographical and cinematic depictions of Lewis, he was not an isolated, stoic academic. He loved good food, good beer, and good conversation. He loved his friends, and they played a hugely important role in his life.
One person who particularly impacted Lewis was J.R.R. Tolkien, the author of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. In fact, Tolkien fans owe a great debt of gratitude to Lewis, since for many years he was Tolkien’s only audience, doing much to encourage his friend to complete and publish his masterworks. Tolkien, however, did not appreciate all of Lewis’s books, not even The Screwtape Letters, which Lewis dedicated to his friend!
Jack had many other close companions, such as Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Owen Barfield, and his own brother, Warnie. All of these men were bound together by a great love of literature. As Lewis noted in his chapter on friendship in The Four Loves, friendships typically begin with the exclamation “What? You too? I thought I was the only one.” (The Four Loves, HarperOne [2017], 83).
Lewis and these friends formed the Inklings, a literary discussion group where they would debate ideas and read works-in-progress to each other. For many years, they met on Tuesday mornings in their favorite Oxford pub, the Eagle and Child, affectionately known to locals as the Bird and Baby. They would also meet on Thursday nights in Lewis’s rooms at Magdalen College to read their manuscripts, enjoy a drink, and smoke some tobacco.
9. He loved to smoke.
Recently, I came across a biography of Lewis that estimated he smoked sixty cigarettes a day. I may only be marginally better at mathematics than Lewis, but assuming that he was awake for fourteen hours a day and that it took him approximately five minutes to smoke each cigarette, it would seem that he spent a third of his waking life smoking!
Several years ago, I visited Lewis’s home and, although the walls in the living room had been repainted, the ceiling was left untouched to allow visitors to see how it had been thoroughly stained by nicotine.
10. His friends brought him to Christ.
After converting to theism, Lewis began to suspect that Christianity might actually be true. However, it was during a long conversation with Tolkien and Dyson that the last major obstacle was removed.
As explained earlier, Lewis saw Christianity as a myth like any of the pagan myths—he called them “lies breathed through silver” (Dedication of the poem “Mythopoeia” by J.R.R. Tolkien)—emotionally moving but false nonetheless.
Over the course of their conversation, Tolkien and Dyson helped Lewis see that Christianity was the true myth. For centuries before Christianity, man’s myths had intuited a dying and rising God. However, in Jesus of Nazareth, that myth became fact. Soon after that late-night conversation with his friends, Lewis finally became a Christian.
11. He buoyed the British spirits during World War II.
During World War II, after the success of his book The Problem of Pain, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) invited Lewis to address the nation. He used these radio broadcasts to defend the basic tenets of Christianity and they became the basis for one of Lewis’s best-known apologetics books, Mere Christianity.
12. He was a “Jack of all genres.”
Mere Christianity was just one of approximately thirty books that Lewis authored. His vast output across a diverse range of literary styles is indeed impressive. He wrote essays, apologetics, fairy tales, science fiction, autobiography, poetry, and anthology, in addition to his professional work in literary criticism.
His books earned him considerable wealth, but he gave away two-thirds of his income anonymously through the Agape Fund which was established by his solicitor and friend, Owen Barfield.
13. There is more to Narnia than you might imagine.
Probably Lewis’s best-known books are The Chronicles of Narnia, and many have received TV and movie adaptations. These books were read to me as a child, and although they seemed familiar, I didn’t grasp the Christian nature of these books until much later.
Lewis was quick to argue that Narnia wasn’t simply Christian allegory. Instead, he called it an imaginative supposal, saying, “Suppose there were a Narnian world and it, like ours, needed redemption. What kind of Incarnation and Passion might Christ be supposed to undergo there?” (Letter to Mr. Higgins, Dec. 2, 1962).
Lewis understood the power of storytelling and its ability to smuggle ideas past the “watchful dragons” of our prejudice, thus allowing us to encounter ideas afresh and with renewed potency. He had been affected in a similar way many years before when he read George MacDonald’s Phantastes, which he described as having baptized his imagination.
However, there are even more layers to The Chronicles of Narnia. About a decade ago, Dr. Michael Ward (a convert to Catholicism and the hundredth priest ordained to the Anglican Ordinariate), published his book Planet Narnia, which argues convincingly that Lewis had based The Chronicles of Narnia on the medieval conception of the cosmos. Each of the books in the series corresponds to one of the seven planets. For example, Prince Caspian is associated with the planet Mars which is, in turn, associated with warfare and trees, motifs we find throughout that book.
14. He was a pen pal to many.
Not only was Lewis a man of letters, he also was a prolific letter writer. For example, for more than half a century, he regularly corresponded with his childhood friend in Ireland, Arthur Greeves.
With Lewis’s celebrity came many more letters sent to him by adults and children alike. He took this responsibility seriously and spent several hours each day writing responses to the avalanche of fan mail.
My personal favorite is from a mother whose son was worried that he loved Aslan—the lion who is the Christ figure in the Narnian books—more than he loved Jesus himself. Lewis responded with a delightful and reassuring letter.
15. He was snubbed at Oxford but honored at Cambridge.
Despite his acclaim and popularity as a lecturer, Lewis was many times overlooked for promotion at Oxford University. The commonly accepted reason for this was that he wrote and spoke openly about his Christianity. Many felt it unbecoming of a man in his position, particularly one who was not even a professor of theology.
Fortunately, Cambridge University created a position specifically for him which, after some persistent encouragement from the University’s representatives, Lewis eventually accepted. This wasn’t the only commendation for which he was recommended. In 1951, Jack was offered a CBE (Commander of the British Empire) by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, which he declined for fear that it might politicize his evangelistic efforts.
16. Although he wasn’t Catholic, he sounded a lot like one.
Many Catholics are surprised to discover that Lewis was not a Catholic. This surprise is understandable when one looks at some of his beliefs. For example, he spoke highly of the Blessed Sacrament, he believed in purgatory and praying for the dead, and he regularly confessed to an Anglican priest.
Although he avoided talking about his difficulties with Catholicism, when pressed he cited the authority of the pope and the veneration of Our Lady as his chief concerns. However, his Catholic friend Tolkien blamed what he called Lewis’s “Ulsterior motive,” suggesting that the deep-seated anti-Catholicism which Lewis had absorbed as a boy in Ireland had never entirely left him.
Lewis himself admits to this kind of childhood indoctrination when he recounts his first meeting Tolkien: “At my first coming into the world I had been (implicitly) warned never to trust a papist, and at my first coming into the English faculty (explicitly) never to trust a philologist. Tolkien was both” (Surprised by Joy, Harcourt [1966], 216).
Despite his resistance to embracing Catholicism, Lewis is much loved by Catholics. Both Pope St. John Paul II and Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI were familiar with his work and spoke highly of it. Not only that, many people around the world credit Lewis, at least in part, with their conversion to Catholicism. This list of converts includes Peter Kreeft; Fr. Dwight Longernecker; Thomas Howard; and Lewis’s own secretary, Walter Hooper, who died in December 2020.
17. He married late in life.
Lewis lived most of his life as a bachelor. Among the writers of his many fan letters was an American poet and writer named Joy Gresham, and the two developed a firm friendship. Joy visited England and eventually moved there with her two sons. When it seemed that the British government was going to force them to leave the country, Lewis offered her a platonic civil marriage so that she and her children could legally stay in England.
Shortly after they had obtained a civil marriage certificate, Joy was diagnosed with cancer and not expected to survive for long. Faced with the possibility of losing Joy, Jack realized his deeper feelings for her. They were married at her hospital bed by an Anglican priest who also laid hands on her and prayed. To everyone’s delight, she was granted a remission of four years before the cancer returned. Heartbroken by her death, Lewis chronicled his mourning in his book A Grief Observed.
18. He is one of the most misquoted authors online.
Abraham Lincoln warned us not to believe all the quotations we read on the internet. This is particularly true when it comes to Lewis, since his name is regularly attached to words that he never wrote. William O’Flaherty’s book The Misquotable C.S. Lewis catalogues many of these inaccurate and misattributed quotations.
A few years ago, I was looking for a Lewis-themed walking tour in Oxford and found one that cost an exorbitant $335. In addition to having numerous spelling mistakes, the organizer’s website attributed this quotation to Lewis: “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.”
Lewis never wrote this. However, I have found that people typically do not appreciate it when you discredit their favorite misattributed quotation!
19. His death was overshadowed.
Lewis died in his bed at age sixty-four on Nov. 22, 1963. This was the same day the author of Brave New World, Aldous Huxley, died. It was also the day on which U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, which naturally dominated the news, resulting in Lewis’s passing being largely overlooked. Jack’s funeral was small and his brother, Warnie, who had always struggled with alcoholism did not attend, finding comfort instead in a bottle of whisky (Jack’s Life, Boardman & Holman Publishers [2005], 165).
20. He won many arguments . . . except one.
Lewis’s secretary, Walter Hooper, liked to say that he lost every argument with Lewis—except one. Lewis thought that no one would read his books following his death, but Hooper said he was certain their acclaim would continue.
Not only has history vindicated Hooper, he played a hand in ensuring the enduring popularity of his friend’s works. In the years following Lewis’s death, Hooper released a number of his previously unpublished works, including several volumes of letters. With each new book, Hooper demanded that the publishers re-release two of Lewis’s older works, thus keeping his books in print and ensuring Lewis’s continued legacy.
* * *
Today, Lewis’s popularity is greater than ever. Eight years ago, on the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death, he was recognized at Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey, London, as one of the great British writers. His books continue to be read, and Netflix recently purchased the rights to produce new adaptations of The Chronicles of Narnia.
The Episcopal Church has even honored Lewis in its liturgical calendar with the following prayer:
“O, God of searing truth and surpassing beauty, we give thee thanks for Clive Staples Lewis, whose sanctified imagination lighteth fires of faith in young and old alike; surprise us also with thy joy and draw us into that new and abundant life which is ours in Christ Jesus, who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen” (Collect of the Episcopal Church). | |||||
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Lewis sketch "C.S. Lewis, Good vs. Evil," Work found at http://browse.deviantart.com/?qh=§ion=&q=c.s.+Lewis+good#/d1ypsjd / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/)
Photo of peeled-back London Times page: Times. (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sklyanchuk/3959101860/) / Oleg Sklyanchuk (http://www.flickr.com/photos/sklyanchuk/) / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/)
Cartoon of student in stacks, titled "Neulich in der Bibliothek," by Johannes Kretschmer. Work found at http://blog.beetlebum.de/2008/07/31/neulich-in-der-bibliothek/ / http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/de/ (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/de/)
Adapted from Chronology posted on the C.S. Lewis Foundation website and Lewis' biography in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
1898 - C.S. Lewis born in Belfast, Northern Ireland
1908 - Lewis' parents and older brother die. He is enrolled in boarding school.
1913 - Lewis abandons his childhood Christian faith.
1917 - Lewis enters Oxford University but is soon commissioned in the British Infantry. He reaches the Somme on his 19th birthday. He is wounded in 1918 and discharged in 1919.
1919 - Lewis' first publication outside of school magazines, the poem "Death in Battle," published in Reveille. Lewis resumes studies at University College, Oxford.
1919-1951 - Honoring a pact with a fallen comrade to look after his bereaved mother, Lewis lives at the home of Mrs. J.K. (Janie) Moore and her daughter Maureen until Janie's death in 1951.
1926 - Narrative poem Dymer published pseudonymously
1929-1931 - Lewis becomes a believer in God, and eventually a Christian.
1933 - Lewis convenes "The Inklings" at the Eagle & Child pub. His first allegorical work The Pilgrim's Regress is published.
1936 - The Allegory of Love, a study of the Medieval tradition, is published.
1938-1945 - Lewis' "Space Trilogy" is published (Out of the Silent Planet, 1938; Perelandra, 1943; That Hideous Strength, 1945)
1939 - The Personal Heresy (with E. M. W. Tillyard).
1940 - The Problem of Pain is published.
1941 - The Screwtape Letters are published in weekly installments in The Guardian, a religious newspaper that ceased publication in 1951; it had no connection with the Manchester Guardian newspaper.) Lewis begins giving radio addresses on the BBC, known as "Right and Wrong."
1943 - Lewis delivered the Riddell Memorial Lectures (Fifteenth Series), a series of three lectures subsequently published as The Abolition of Man. Lewis criticizes trends in modern education.
1944 - Lewis continues giving talks on the BBC. Taken together, all of Lewis' BBC radio broadcast talks were eventually published under the title Mere Christianity. The Great Divorce is published in weekly installments in The Guardian.
1946 - Lewis is passed over for the M Chair at Oxford, because of "too pronounced" Evangelical tendencies
1950-1956 - Chronicles of Narnia are published. Lewis' correspondence with writer Joy Gresham of New York begins. She will eventually leave her abusive husband and join Lewis in England.
1960 - Lewis crosses the English Channel for the first time since 1918, on a journey to Greece with Joy, whose cancer was then in remission. The Four Loves is published.
1961 - An Experiment in Criticism is published. A Grief Observed, published pseudonymously, about his grief at the death of Joy.
1963 - Lewis' paperback sales alone reach 1 million. C.S. Lewis dies on November 22.
1964 - The Discarded Image is published posthumously. | |||||
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] | null | [] | null | en | null | Born: November 29, 1898
Belfast, Ireland
Died: November 24, 1963
Oxford, England
Irish writer, novelist, and essayist
The Irish novelist and essayist C. S. Lewis was best known for his essays on literature and his explanations of Christian teachings.
Published works
In 1926 Lewis's first publication, Dymer, appeared under the pseudonym (fake writing name) Clive Hamilton. Dymer revealed Lewis's gift for satire (a work of literature that makes fun of human vice or foolishness). The Pilgrims' Regress, an allegory (an expression of truths about human existence using symbols) published in 1933, presented an apology for Christianity. It was not until the appearance of his second allegorical work, The Allegory of Love (1936), however, that Lewis was honored with the coveted Hawthornden prize.
The Screwtape Letters (1942), for which Lewis is perhaps best known, is a satire in which the devil, here known as Screwtape, writes letters teaching his young nephew, Wormwood, how to tempt humans to sin. Lewis published seven religious allegories for children titled Chronicles of Narnia (1955). He also published several scholarly works on literature, including English Literature in the 16th Century (1954) and Experiment in Criticism (1961).
Although Lewis went on to publish several works involving religion, he had lost interest in it early in life and only later "converted" to Christianity, joining the Anglican Church. His autobiography (the story of his own life), Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, fails to explain what happened in his childhood. His headmaster in boarding school, a minister who urged him to "think" by hitting him, may have contributed to this change.
Later years
Lewis went on to become a professor of English at Cambridge University, England, in 1954. Widely read as an adult, his knowledge of literature made him much sought after for his company and conversation. Lewis thoroughly enjoyed sitting up into the late hours in college rooms talking about literature, poetry, and religion.
In 1956, rather late in life, Lewis married Joy Davidman Gresham, the daughter of a New York Jewish couple. She was a graduate of Hunter College and had previously been married twice. When her first husband suffered a heart attack, she turned to prayer. Reading the writings of Lewis, she began attending church. Later, led by his writings to Lewis himself, she divorced her second husband, Williams Gresham, and married Lewis. She died some three years before her husband. C. S. Lewis died at his home in Headington, Oxford, England, on November 24, 1963. A major collection of his works is held by Wheaton College in Illinois.
For More Information
Adey, Lionel. C. S. Lewis: Writer, Dreamer, and Mentor. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Pub., 1998.
Como, James T., ed. C. S. Lewis at the Breakfast Table and Other Reminiscences. New York: Macmillan, 1979.
Glaspey, Terry W. Not a Tame Lion: The Spiritual Legacy of C. S. Lewis. Nashville: Cumberland House, 1996.
Lewis, C. S. Surprised by Joy; the Shape of My Early Life. London: G. Bles, 1955.
Walsh, Chad. The Literary Legacy of C. S. Lewis. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979. | |||||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 4 | https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cs-lewis-grave | en | C.S. Lewis's Grave | [
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] | 2018-02-08T11:00:00-05:00 | Discover C.S. Lewis's Grave in Oxford, England: The beloved fantasy novelist is buried near a church containing a whimsical etched glass window full of Narnia favorites. | en | https://img.atlasobscura.com/arq81MTohFEUbDPogElM6DD8zKK9nOeDi38TE22FmFs/q:81/sm:1/scp:1/aHR0cHM6Ly9zMy5h/bWF6b25hd3MuY29t/L2F0bGFzLWRldi9t/aXNjL2ljb25zL2Fw/cGxlLXRvdWNoLWlj/b24ucG5n | Atlas Obscura | https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/cs-lewis-grave | The bones of C.S. Lewis, one of the 20th century’s literary greats, rest within a peaceful cemetery. Nearby, an etched glass window bearing characters from his most famous fantasy world adds a whimsical touch of childhood magic to the churchyard.
The grave of C.S. Lewis lies within the cemetery of the Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry just outside of Oxford. He was buried there in November of 1963, and even today it’s common to find flowers placed atop his tombstone.
C.S. Lewis is best known for his beloved fiction novels, notably The Chronicles of Narnia, The Screwtape Letters, and The Space Trilogy. He is also known for his popular works of non-fiction Christian apologetics, including Mere Christianity and The Problem of Pain.
Lewis was educated at Oxford University, which is only a couple miles from the churchyard. After serving in World War I, he returned to Oxford to become a tutor and fellow in English Literature at Magdalen College. He was one of the “Inklings” that brought weekly fractions of the fantasy realm to the town’s local haunts. | ||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 0 | 17 | https://www.flickr.com/photos/john_berghout/31929083176 | en | Tombstone of Clive Staples Lewis | [
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1898
Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Albert J. Lewis (1863-1929) and Florence Augusta Hamilton Lewis (1862-1908). His brother Warren Hamilton Lewis had been born on June 16, 1895.
1905
The Lewis family moved to their new home, “Little Lea,” on the outskirts of Belfast.
1908
Flora Hamilton Lewis died of cancer on August 23, Albert Lewis’ (her husband’s) birthday. During this year Albert Lewis’ father and brother also died. In September Lewis was enrolled at Wynyard School, Watford, Hertfordshire referred to by C.S. Lewis as “Oldie’s School” or “Belsen”. His brother, Warren, had been enrolled there in May 1905.
1910
Lewis left “Belsen” in June and, in September, was enrolled as a boarding student at Campbell College, Belfast, one mile from “Little Lea,” where he remained until November, when he was withdrawn upon developing serious respiratory difficulties.
1911
Lewis was sent to Malvern, England, which was famous as a health resort, especially for those with lung problems. Lewis was enrolled as a student at Cherbourg House (which he referred to as “Chartres”), a prep school close by Malvern College where Warnie was enrolled as a student. Jack remained there until June 1913. It was during this time that he abandoned his childhood Christian faith. He entered Malvern College itself (which he dubbed “Wyvern”) in September 1913 and stayed until the following June.
1914
In April, Lewis met Arthur Greeves (1895-1966), of whom he said, in 1933, “After my brother, my oldest and most intimate friend.” On September 19, Lewis commenced private study with W.T. Kirkpatrick, “The Great Knock,” in Great Bookham Surrey, with whom he was to remain until April 1917. William T. Kirkpatrick (1848-1921) was former Headmaster of Lurgan College, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, from 1874-99. Albert Lewis had attended Lurgan from 1877-79 and later was Kirkpatrick’s solicitor. After Kilpatrick retired from Lurgan in 1899, he began taking private students and had already successfully prepared Lewis’ brother, Warnie, for admission to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.
1916
In February, Lewis first read George MacDonald’s, Phantastes, which powerfully “baptized his imagination” and impressed him with a deep sense of the holy. He made his first trip to Oxford in December to take a scholarship examination.
1917
From April 26 until September, Lewis was a student at University College, Oxford. Three years after the outbreak of WWI in Britain, he enlisted in the British army and was billeted in Keble College, Oxford, for officer’s training. His roommate was Edward Courtnay Francis “Paddy” Moore (1898-1918). Jack was commissioned an officer in the 3rd Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, on September 25 and reached the front line in the Somme Valley in France on his 19th birthday.
arras1918
On April 15 Lewis was wounded on Mount Berenchon during the Battle of Arras. He recuperated and was returned to duty in October, being assigned to Ludgerhall, Andover, England. He was discharged in December 1919. His former roommate and friend, Paddy Moore, was killed in battle and buried in the field just south of Peronne, France.
1919
The February issue of Reveille contained “Death in Battle,” Lewis’ first publication in other than school magazines. The issue had poems by Robert Bridges, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Hilaire Belloc. From January 1919 until June 1924, he resumed his studies at University College, Oxford, where he received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin Literature) in 1920, a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923. His tutors during this time included A.B. Poynton for Honour Mods, E.F. Carritt for Philosophy, F.P. Wilson and George Gordon in the English School, and E.E. Wardale for Old English.
1920
During the summer, Paddy Moore’s mother, Mrs. Janie King Moore (1873-1951) and her daughter, Maureen, moved to Oxford, renting a house in Headington Quarry. Lewis lived with the Moores from June 1921 onward. In August 1930, they moved to “Hillsboro,” Western Road, Headington. In October 1930, Mrs. Moore, Jack, and Major Lewis purchased “The Kilns” jointly, with title to the property being taken solely in the name of Mrs. Moore with the two brothers holding rights of life tenancy. Major Lewis retired from the military and joined them at “The Kilns” in 1932.
1921
W.T. Kirkpatrick died in March. Lewis’ essay “Optimism” won the Chancellor’s English Essay Prize in May. (No copy of “Optimism” has been found as of this date.)
1924
From October 1924 until May 1925, Lewis served as philosophy tutor at University College during E.F. Carritt’s absence on study leave for the year in America.
O Magdalene College - IMG_0274ABAH-Crop21925
On May 20, Lewis was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he served as tutor in English Language and Literature for 29 years until leaving for Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1954.
1929
Lewis became a theist: “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed….” Albert Lewis died on September 24.
1931
Lewis became a Christian: One evening in September, Lewis had a long talk on Christianity with J.R.R. Tolkien (a devout Roman Catholic) and Hugo Dyson. (The summary of that discussion is recounted for Arthur Greeves in They Stand Together.) That evening’s discussion was important in bringing about the following day’s event that Lewis recorded in Surprised by Joy: “When we [Warnie and Jack] set out [by motorcycle to the Whipsnade Zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”
1933
The fall term marked the beginning of Lewis’ convening of a circle of friends dubbed “The Inklings.” For the next 16 years, on through 1949, they continued to meet in Jack’s rooms at Magdalen College on Thursday evenings and, just before lunch on Mondays or Fridays, in a back room at “The Eagle and Child,” a pub known to locals as “The Bird and Baby.” Members included J.R.R. Tolkien, Warnie, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Dr. Robert Havard, Owen Barfield, Weville Coghill and others. (See Humphry Carpenters The Inklings for a full account of this special group.)
1935
At the suggestion of Prof. F.P. Wilson, Lewis agreed to write the volume on 16th Century English Literature for the Oxford History of English Literature series. Published in 1954, it became a classic.
1937
Lewis received the Gollancz Memorial Prize for Literature in recognition of The Allegory of Love (a study in medieval tradition).
1939
At the outbreak of World War II in September, Charles Williams moved from London to Oxford with the Oxford University Press to escape the threat of German bombardment. He was thereafter a regular member of “The Inklings.”
1941
From May 2 until November 28, The Guardian published 31 “Screwtape Letters” in weekly installments. Lewis was paid 2 pounds sterling for each letter and gave the money to charity. In August, he gave four live radio talks over the BBC on Wednesday evenings from 7:45 to 8:00. An additional 15-minute session, answering questions received in the mail, was broadcast on September 6. These talks were known as “Right and Wrong.”
1942
The first meeting of the “Socratic Club” was held in Oxford on January 26. In January and February, Lewis gave five live radio talks on Sunday evenings from 4:45 to 5:00, on the subject “What Christians Believe.” On eight consecutive Sundays, from September 20 to November 8 at 2:50 to 3:05 p.m., Lewis gave a series of live radio talks known as “Christian Behavior.”
1943
In February, at the University of Durham, Lewis delivered the Riddell Memorial Lectures (Fifteenth Series), a series of three lectures subsequently published as The Abolition of Man.
1944
On seven consecutive Tuesdays, from February 22 to April 4 at 10:15 to 10:30 p.m., Lewis gave the pre-recorded talks known as “Beyond Personality.” Taken together, all of Lewis’ BBC radio broadcast talks were eventually published under the title Mere Christianity. From November 10, 1944 to April 14, 1945, The Great Divorce was published in weekly installments in The Guardian. (The Guardian was a religious newspaper that ceased publication in 1951; it had no connection with the Manchester Guardian.)
1945
Charles Williams, one of Lewis’ very closest of friends, died on May 15.
1946
Lewis awarded honorary Doctor of Divinity by the University of St. Andrews.
1948
On February 2, Elizabeth Anscombe, later Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, read her “Reply to Mr. C.S. Lewis’ Argument that ‘Naturalism is Self-refuting'” to the Socratic Club; Anscombe’s argument caused Lewis to revise Chapter 3 of Miracles when it was reprinted by Fontana in 1960. Later in the year, Lewis was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
TheLionWitchWardrobe(1stEd)
1950
The first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is released. The series became extremely popular and Wardrobe is one of Lewis’s most enduring and beloved books.
1951
Mrs. Moore died on January 12. Since the previous April, she had been confined to a nursing home in Oxford. She is buried in the yard of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford. Lewis lost the election for the position of Professor of Poetry at Oxford to C. Day Lewis. In December, he declined election to the Order of the British Empire.
1952
Lewis was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Laval University, Quebec. In September, he met Joy Davidman Gresham, fifteen years his junior (b. April 18, 1915 – d. July 13, 1960), for the first time.
1954
In June, Lewis accepted the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. He gave his Inaugural Lecture, “De Description Temporum,” on his 56th birthday and gave his last tutorial at Oxford on December 3. His review of Tolkien’ Fellowship of the Ring appeared in Time and Tide in August.
1955
Lewis assumed his duties at Cambridge in January. During his years at Cambridge, he lived at Magdalene College, Cambridge, during the week in term and at The Kilns in Oxford on weekends and during vacations. Lewis was elected an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
1956
Lewis received the Carnegie Medal in recognition of The Last Battle. On April 23, he entered into a civil marriage with Joy Davidman at the Oxford Registry Office for the purpose of conferring upon her the status of British citizenship in order to prevent her threatened deportation by British migration authorities. In December, a bedside marriage was performed in accordance with the rites of the Church of England in Wingfield Hospital. Joy’s death was thought to be imminent.
1958
Throughout 1957, Joy had experienced an extraordinary recovery from her near terminal bout with cancer. In July of 1958, Jack and Joy went to Ireland for a 10-day holiday. On August 19 and 20, he made tapes of ten talks on The Four Loves in London. Lewis was elected an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford.
1959
Lewis was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of Manchester.
1960
Subsequent to learning of the return of Joy’s cancer, Jack and Joy, together with Roger Lancelyn Green and his wife, Joy, went to Greece from April 3 to April 14, visiting Athens, Mycenae, Rhodes, Herakleon, and Knossos. There was a one-day stop in Pisa on the return. Joy died on July 13 at the age of 45, not long after their return from Greece.
1963
Lewis died at 5:30 p.m. at The Kilns, one week before his 65th birthday on Friday, November 22; the same day on which President Kennedy was assassinated and Aldous Huxley died. He had resigned his position at Cambridge during the summer and was then elected an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. His grave is in the yard of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford. Warren Lewis died on Monday, April 9, 1973. Their names are on a single stone bearing the inscription “Men must endure their going hence.” Warnie had written, “…there was a Shakespearean calendar hanging on the wall of the room where she [our mother] died, and my father preserved for the rest of his life the leaf for that day, with its quotation: ‘Men must endure their going hence’.” –W.H. Lewis, “Memoir,” in Letters of C.S. Lewis | en | https://combo.staticflickr.com/pw/favicon.ico | Flickr | https://www.flickr.com/photos/john_berghout/31929083176 | The life and death of CS Lewis
1898
Clive Staples Lewis was born on November 29 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, to Albert J. Lewis (1863-1929) and Florence Augusta Hamilton Lewis (1862-1908). His brother Warren Hamilton Lewis had been born on June 16, 1895.
1905
The Lewis family moved to their new home, “Little Lea,” on the outskirts of Belfast.
1908
Flora Hamilton Lewis died of cancer on August 23, Albert Lewis’ (her husband’s) birthday. During this year Albert Lewis’ father and brother also died. In September Lewis was enrolled at Wynyard School, Watford, Hertfordshire referred to by C.S. Lewis as “Oldie’s School” or “Belsen”. His brother, Warren, had been enrolled there in May 1905.
1910
Lewis left “Belsen” in June and, in September, was enrolled as a boarding student at Campbell College, Belfast, one mile from “Little Lea,” where he remained until November, when he was withdrawn upon developing serious respiratory difficulties.
1911
Lewis was sent to Malvern, England, which was famous as a health resort, especially for those with lung problems. Lewis was enrolled as a student at Cherbourg House (which he referred to as “Chartres”), a prep school close by Malvern College where Warnie was enrolled as a student. Jack remained there until June 1913. It was during this time that he abandoned his childhood Christian faith. He entered Malvern College itself (which he dubbed “Wyvern”) in September 1913 and stayed until the following June.
1914
In April, Lewis met Arthur Greeves (1895-1966), of whom he said, in 1933, “After my brother, my oldest and most intimate friend.” On September 19, Lewis commenced private study with W.T. Kirkpatrick, “The Great Knock,” in Great Bookham Surrey, with whom he was to remain until April 1917. William T. Kirkpatrick (1848-1921) was former Headmaster of Lurgan College, County Armagh, Northern Ireland, from 1874-99. Albert Lewis had attended Lurgan from 1877-79 and later was Kirkpatrick’s solicitor. After Kilpatrick retired from Lurgan in 1899, he began taking private students and had already successfully prepared Lewis’ brother, Warnie, for admission to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst.
1916
In February, Lewis first read George MacDonald’s, Phantastes, which powerfully “baptized his imagination” and impressed him with a deep sense of the holy. He made his first trip to Oxford in December to take a scholarship examination.
1917
From April 26 until September, Lewis was a student at University College, Oxford. Three years after the outbreak of WWI in Britain, he enlisted in the British army and was billeted in Keble College, Oxford, for officer’s training. His roommate was Edward Courtnay Francis “Paddy” Moore (1898-1918). Jack was commissioned an officer in the 3rd Battalion, Somerset Light Infantry, on September 25 and reached the front line in the Somme Valley in France on his 19th birthday.
arras1918
On April 15 Lewis was wounded on Mount Berenchon during the Battle of Arras. He recuperated and was returned to duty in October, being assigned to Ludgerhall, Andover, England. He was discharged in December 1919. His former roommate and friend, Paddy Moore, was killed in battle and buried in the field just south of Peronne, France.
1919
The February issue of Reveille contained “Death in Battle,” Lewis’ first publication in other than school magazines. The issue had poems by Robert Bridges, Siegfried Sassoon, Robert Graves, and Hilaire Belloc. From January 1919 until June 1924, he resumed his studies at University College, Oxford, where he received a First in Honour Moderations (Greek and Latin Literature) in 1920, a First in Greats (Philosophy and Ancient History) in 1922, and a First in English in 1923. His tutors during this time included A.B. Poynton for Honour Mods, E.F. Carritt for Philosophy, F.P. Wilson and George Gordon in the English School, and E.E. Wardale for Old English.
1920
During the summer, Paddy Moore’s mother, Mrs. Janie King Moore (1873-1951) and her daughter, Maureen, moved to Oxford, renting a house in Headington Quarry. Lewis lived with the Moores from June 1921 onward. In August 1930, they moved to “Hillsboro,” Western Road, Headington. In October 1930, Mrs. Moore, Jack, and Major Lewis purchased “The Kilns” jointly, with title to the property being taken solely in the name of Mrs. Moore with the two brothers holding rights of life tenancy. Major Lewis retired from the military and joined them at “The Kilns” in 1932.
1921
W.T. Kirkpatrick died in March. Lewis’ essay “Optimism” won the Chancellor’s English Essay Prize in May. (No copy of “Optimism” has been found as of this date.)
1924
From October 1924 until May 1925, Lewis served as philosophy tutor at University College during E.F. Carritt’s absence on study leave for the year in America.
O Magdalene College - IMG_0274ABAH-Crop21925
On May 20, Lewis was elected a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where he served as tutor in English Language and Literature for 29 years until leaving for Magdalene College, Cambridge, in 1954.
1929
Lewis became a theist: “In the Trinity Term of 1929 I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed….” Albert Lewis died on September 24.
1931
Lewis became a Christian: One evening in September, Lewis had a long talk on Christianity with J.R.R. Tolkien (a devout Roman Catholic) and Hugo Dyson. (The summary of that discussion is recounted for Arthur Greeves in They Stand Together.) That evening’s discussion was important in bringing about the following day’s event that Lewis recorded in Surprised by Joy: “When we [Warnie and Jack] set out [by motorcycle to the Whipsnade Zoo] I did not believe that Jesus Christ was the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did.”
1933
The fall term marked the beginning of Lewis’ convening of a circle of friends dubbed “The Inklings.” For the next 16 years, on through 1949, they continued to meet in Jack’s rooms at Magdalen College on Thursday evenings and, just before lunch on Mondays or Fridays, in a back room at “The Eagle and Child,” a pub known to locals as “The Bird and Baby.” Members included J.R.R. Tolkien, Warnie, Hugo Dyson, Charles Williams, Dr. Robert Havard, Owen Barfield, Weville Coghill and others. (See Humphry Carpenters The Inklings for a full account of this special group.)
1935
At the suggestion of Prof. F.P. Wilson, Lewis agreed to write the volume on 16th Century English Literature for the Oxford History of English Literature series. Published in 1954, it became a classic.
1937
Lewis received the Gollancz Memorial Prize for Literature in recognition of The Allegory of Love (a study in medieval tradition).
1939
At the outbreak of World War II in September, Charles Williams moved from London to Oxford with the Oxford University Press to escape the threat of German bombardment. He was thereafter a regular member of “The Inklings.”
1941
From May 2 until November 28, The Guardian published 31 “Screwtape Letters” in weekly installments. Lewis was paid 2 pounds sterling for each letter and gave the money to charity. In August, he gave four live radio talks over the BBC on Wednesday evenings from 7:45 to 8:00. An additional 15-minute session, answering questions received in the mail, was broadcast on September 6. These talks were known as “Right and Wrong.”
1942
The first meeting of the “Socratic Club” was held in Oxford on January 26. In January and February, Lewis gave five live radio talks on Sunday evenings from 4:45 to 5:00, on the subject “What Christians Believe.” On eight consecutive Sundays, from September 20 to November 8 at 2:50 to 3:05 p.m., Lewis gave a series of live radio talks known as “Christian Behavior.”
1943
In February, at the University of Durham, Lewis delivered the Riddell Memorial Lectures (Fifteenth Series), a series of three lectures subsequently published as The Abolition of Man.
1944
On seven consecutive Tuesdays, from February 22 to April 4 at 10:15 to 10:30 p.m., Lewis gave the pre-recorded talks known as “Beyond Personality.” Taken together, all of Lewis’ BBC radio broadcast talks were eventually published under the title Mere Christianity. From November 10, 1944 to April 14, 1945, The Great Divorce was published in weekly installments in The Guardian. (The Guardian was a religious newspaper that ceased publication in 1951; it had no connection with the Manchester Guardian.)
1945
Charles Williams, one of Lewis’ very closest of friends, died on May 15.
1946
Lewis awarded honorary Doctor of Divinity by the University of St. Andrews.
1948
On February 2, Elizabeth Anscombe, later Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge, read her “Reply to Mr. C.S. Lewis’ Argument that ‘Naturalism is Self-refuting'” to the Socratic Club; Anscombe’s argument caused Lewis to revise Chapter 3 of Miracles when it was reprinted by Fontana in 1960. Later in the year, Lewis was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
TheLionWitchWardrobe(1stEd)
1950
The first book in the Chronicles of Narnia series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, is released. The series became extremely popular and Wardrobe is one of Lewis’s most enduring and beloved books.
1951
Mrs. Moore died on January 12. Since the previous April, she had been confined to a nursing home in Oxford. She is buried in the yard of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford. Lewis lost the election for the position of Professor of Poetry at Oxford to C. Day Lewis. In December, he declined election to the Order of the British Empire.
1952
Lewis was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters by Laval University, Quebec. In September, he met Joy Davidman Gresham, fifteen years his junior (b. April 18, 1915 – d. July 13, 1960), for the first time.
1954
In June, Lewis accepted the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Cambridge. He gave his Inaugural Lecture, “De Description Temporum,” on his 56th birthday and gave his last tutorial at Oxford on December 3. His review of Tolkien’ Fellowship of the Ring appeared in Time and Tide in August.
1955
Lewis assumed his duties at Cambridge in January. During his years at Cambridge, he lived at Magdalene College, Cambridge, during the week in term and at The Kilns in Oxford on weekends and during vacations. Lewis was elected an Honorary Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, and was also elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
1956
Lewis received the Carnegie Medal in recognition of The Last Battle. On April 23, he entered into a civil marriage with Joy Davidman at the Oxford Registry Office for the purpose of conferring upon her the status of British citizenship in order to prevent her threatened deportation by British migration authorities. In December, a bedside marriage was performed in accordance with the rites of the Church of England in Wingfield Hospital. Joy’s death was thought to be imminent.
1958
Throughout 1957, Joy had experienced an extraordinary recovery from her near terminal bout with cancer. In July of 1958, Jack and Joy went to Ireland for a 10-day holiday. On August 19 and 20, he made tapes of ten talks on The Four Loves in London. Lewis was elected an Honorary Fellow of University College, Oxford.
1959
Lewis was awarded the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature by the University of Manchester.
1960
Subsequent to learning of the return of Joy’s cancer, Jack and Joy, together with Roger Lancelyn Green and his wife, Joy, went to Greece from April 3 to April 14, visiting Athens, Mycenae, Rhodes, Herakleon, and Knossos. There was a one-day stop in Pisa on the return. Joy died on July 13 at the age of 45, not long after their return from Greece.
1963
Lewis died at 5:30 p.m. at The Kilns, one week before his 65th birthday on Friday, November 22; the same day on which President Kennedy was assassinated and Aldous Huxley died. He had resigned his position at Cambridge during the summer and was then elected an Honorary Fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. His grave is in the yard of Holy Trinity Church in Headington Quarry, Oxford. Warren Lewis died on Monday, April 9, 1973. Their names are on a single stone bearing the inscription “Men must endure their going hence.” Warnie had written, “…there was a Shakespearean calendar hanging on the wall of the room where she [our mother] died, and my father preserved for the rest of his life the leaf for that day, with its quotation: ‘Men must endure their going hence’.” –W.H. Lewis, “Memoir,” in Letters of C.S. Lewis | ||||
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] | 2013-11-22T14:01:46-04:00 | C.S. Lewis constructed the world of "Narnia" through seven novels, the most recognizable of which is "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Even today, Gregory Maguire, author of the bestselling "Wicked," gets lost in C.S. Lewis' world of Narnia. "Imagine yourself going through a wardrobe and you think that you know the wardrobe is 4-feet deep and it has a back wall, but you don't get to the back wall, you keep going on. | en | PBS News | https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/celebrating-a-literary-giant-the-50th-anniversary-of-cs-lewiss-death | C.S. Lewis constructed the world of “Narnia” through seven novels, the most recognizable of which is “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
Even today, Gregory Maguire, author of the bestselling “Wicked,” gets lost in C.S. Lewis’ world of Narnia.
“Imagine yourself going through a wardrobe and you think that you know the wardrobe is 4-feet deep and it has a back wall, but you don’t get to the back wall, you keep going on. And then you find yourself in a snowy fantastic landscape that is nothing like the world in which you’ve known before.”
And so begins “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” of the “The Chronicles of Narnia,” the beloved children’s novels by C.S. Lewis that have sold more than 100 million copies and have been translated into 46 languages.
Friday marks the 50th anniversary of Lewis’s death. He died from renal failure in 1963 at the age of 64. It was one week before his 65th birthday.
Gregory Maguire spoke to chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown about the Narnia series and C.S. Lewis’s influence on the world of fantasy and Maguire’s own construction of Oz. Listen to the whole conversation.
C.S. Lewis broke new ground in 1950 with his fantasy series “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Photo by John Chillingworth/Picture Post/Getty Images
Born in Belfast, Ireland in November 1898, Clive Staple Lewis became one of the most well-renowned and widely recognized names in children’s literature. However, Lewis was primarily an author of adult novels. He published 30 books in total, including “The Screwtape Letters” and “The Great Divorce.”
Still, the seven installments that comprise “The Chronicles of Narnia” are his most well-known. According to Maguire, who is also a scholar of children’s literature, Lewis was hugely influential for both children’s literature and fantasy alike.
In fact, Maguire says, “You only have to open any book and you see, the wardrobe has many imitators.” One such imitator he points out comes from Philip Pullman’s 1995 “The Golden Compass.” Maguire points to a scene early in the book when Lyra, the protagonist, hides in a wardrobe to eavesdrop on her uncle in Oxford.
For Maguire, Narnia was magical. Lewis created this world over his whole lifetime. He drew from the stories that his Irish nurse would tell him as a child. Several years later, at the age of 16, Lewis fantasized about a faun carrying parcels and an umbrella through a snow-covered forest. And then, during World War II, Lewis was inspired by four children who stayed at his country house.
Located in Belfast, Ireland, “The Searcher” by Ross Wilson depicts C.S. Lewis looking into his magical wardrobe. Photo by Mike Johnson
When he finally sat down to write “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Lewis called on his memories, including sitting in an old wardrobe with his brother, and his youthful imaginings to create the Narnia known today.
While Lewis was exploring his make-believe world, his close friend J.R.R. Tolkien was creating Middle Earth in “The Lord of the Rings” series. Together, the two created syntax for fantasy writing that is widely used today, but according to Maguire, they did so in almost opposite ways.
“The differences between Middle Earth and Narnia … are really vast because Narnia is built on the back of existing conventions,” Maguire says. “There’s a bit of Father Christmas there, there’s a bit of Christianity, there’s a bit of the Odyssey, there’s a bit of the Arabian Nights. Little scraps and bits and tatters from everything on the bookshelf that interested Lewis.” Tolkien wanted to create a whole new world that concealed his roots. He tried to “make something … new as if it had never been sighted before,” Maguire says.
In terms of his own writing, Maguire looked to Lewis for help: “When it was time for me to write ‘Wicked,’ I said I want to look at Oz the way C.S. Lewis looked at Narnia. I want to explore every corner and give it a deep and abiding subtlety and mystery the same sort that we can smell of Narnia whenever we walk into a piney wood even in upstate New York.”
Three major motion pictures have already been made from the Narnia series and the fourth, “The Silver Chair,” is in development.
Check out the slideshow below to view “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” cover art from 1950s to the e-book today. | |||||
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] | 2018-11-22T00:00:00 | This year I introduced an occasional feature I call “Throwback Thursday.” This is where I find a blog post from the past–raiding either my own vault or someone else’s–and throw it back out into the digital world. This might be an idea or book that is now relevant again, or a concept I’d like to | en | A Pilgrim in Narnia - a journey through the imaginative worlds of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and the Inklings | https://apilgriminnarnia.com/2018/11/22/11-22-63-the-day-that-c-s-lewis-died/ | This year I introduced an occasional feature I call “Throwback Thursday.” This is where I find a blog post from the past–raiding either my own vault or someone else’s–and throw it back out into the digital world. This might be an idea or book that is now relevant again, or a concept I’d like to think about more, or even “an oldie but a goodie” that I think needs a bit of spin time.
This is a rewriting of a post from the 50th anniversary of C.S. Lewis’ death in 2013. Lewis died on the same day as American president John F. Kennedy and English public intellectual and dystopian writer, Aldous Huxley. Though Lewis died an hour before the President was assassinated, the Lewises had lived privately and the story was lost in a swirl of international news. On this 55th anniversary it is Thursday, but on 11/22/63 it was a Friday. That great album With the Beatles dropped that Friday morning and the 1st episode of Doctor Who ran later that night. Lyndon B. Johnson would later be sworn in as the 36th President of the United States as condolences poured in from around the world. Meanwhile, two of Britain’s voices, including the Narnian himself, quietly slipped out of this world.
Canadians just are not as good as Americans when it comes to iconic days. Let’s be honest: Canada Day isn’t nearly as interesting as Independence Day, though we do have our quaint county fair traditions. The American Civil War is one for history books, family legend, and blockbuster TV, while 10 to 1 odds it is unlikely the reader knows much about Canada’s founding moment, our Battle on the Plains of Abraham. From the landing of the Mayflower to 9/11, America sets its days in the hewn stones of history, while Canada plays Youtube reruns of Heritage Minutes that are mostly cool things Canadians did without anyone knowing they were Canadian–and often before there was such a thing as “Canada.”
The moment hit home for me on Aug 31, 1997, early in the morning on the East Coast. I can pinpoint where I was when I heard that Lady Diana died. It was a Sunday and I was on my way to church where I was a ministry intern. I was driving down a side road of the little community as my new wife and I were preparing to move to the village the next day. I remember the announcer’s voice, and the weather, and some sense of loss.
This is all firmly in my mind even though I had no real concern about this celebrity, really. But I still sealed the memory within me in the way people sealed in Nov 22, 1963, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. My memory of Lady Di’s crash is perhaps chiefly due to my grandfather’s wry sense of humour. On the eve of Diana’s epic, international funeral, Mother Teresa quietly passed away. Most people were focussed on things other than a nun in India. My grandfather, a seldom spoken man, commented:
“It really is poor timing on her part,” he said.
“Abominable timing,” I said.
“If she’d have thought it through, she might have waited,” he said.
“A real mistake in marketing,” I said.
On Feb 17, 2011, my grandfather died. It was a Thursday.
Though Canadians are lacking in the area of great days, I feel free to borrow UK and, especially, American iconic moments. I remember all the minutes of 9/11. It was a Tuesday. I was in rural Japan when I heard from our American landlords what had happened. My wife and I drove to the top of a mountain to get the English radio station from the American installation at the Yokota Air Base on the Kanto Plains. Then we mourned with the motley crew of ex-patriots under the weepy trees of Karuizawa. It was an international day of grieving, but it was an American day. Though we came from all parts of the world, on 9/11 we were all kind of American.
Then there was 12/22/63.
I am far too young to know the JFK moment as all middle-aged Americans do. I think I remember the death of John Lennon, also an assassination. I don’t remember any details as a five-year-old boy, except a general sense of sadness in the house. Strawberry fields forever and the like. It was a Monday.
In my own life, besides 9/11 and that week in June 1989 when things went bad in Tiananmen Square, there are dates I will never forget: Thursday, April 16, 1987; Sunday, Feb 4, 1990; Monday, Jul 2, 1990; Monday, Jan 3, 1994; Friday, May 9, 1997; Thursday, Nov 25, 2004; Friday, Feb 1, 2008. They are mine but they are not the world’s. No children salute as the motorcade of my memory travels by.
Despite the impact of 9/11, which is shaping American culture and politics up to this very minute, the weight of American days in memory is still heaviest on Nov 22, 1963. The death of Kennedy, which keeps appearing in this blog on C.S. Lewis’ death, continues to appear in American consciousness. When he died in Dallas, the news overwhelmed all other news throughout the world.
There were many things that happened that day. A police officer died with Kennedy, didn’t he? The Beatles released their second album. The political tides were shifting in Asia. Americans died in Vietnam as children there lost their homes. Many people in the world died that day, including Aldous Huxley, the author of Brave New World and dozens of other books. This was also the day that Wilhelm Beiglböck died comfortably in his home after having made a career out of doing live human tests on Jews in concentration camps as if they were lab rats, which in his mind they were.
Most eyes were turned away from his death. Perhaps that is best.
My grandfather quipped that Mother Teresa should have planned her death better. It doesn’t surprise me that she slipped away without much fanfare. She may not have thought she was worth the fuss anyway.
I suppose my grandfather would also have criticized C.S. Lewis for his inopportune death. If dying during the week of Lady Di’s memorial was bad, dying on America’s 1960s day of days is even worse. But that is what happened. On Nov 22, 1963, while Americans were glued to their television sets and radios, the news that C.S. Lewis died quietly in his bedroom slipped out into the world. Lewis had been recovering from an episode in the summer, but his health faded quickly in November. Lewis was one week shy of his sixty-fifth birthday. when he died. It was a Friday.
Almost no one paid attention to the death of one of the most popular authors of a generation. This probably would not have fazed Lewis, though he may have found it disappointing that neither his brother Warren nor his close friend Tolkien attended his funeral. I am not sure he ever really had a true sense of his importance as an author. He knew he was popular because he responded to the fan letters that poured in for years. But the popularity never truly settled within him. According to his step-son, Douglas Gresham, Lewis told his lawyer he didn’t need a literary estate since he would be forgotten in five year’s time. With book sales in the hundreds of millions—The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe is steadily moving toward 100,000,000 copies alone—I would suggest Lewis underestimated his impact.
If Lewis was forgotten on the day he died, it is no longer the case 55 years later. Five years ago, the semicentenary of Lewis’ passing became a year of jubilee. Beiglböck is mercifully forgotten. The Beatles are as important as ever, though I still miss John Lennon and they still aren’t as big as Jesus. Brave New World is a must-read, even if Aldous Huxley himself is obscured in time. 9/11 began a century—and closed one off, I hope—though I’m not sure Tiananmen Square did either of these things. Mother Teresa was canonized and Lady Di’s children are having children of their own. Doctor Who has nearly 850 episodes and is on its 13th doctor.
All calendar pages turn, and in the end, all days are just days. 55 years ago, C.S. Lewis finished his last day with tea. J.F.K.’s legacy is Cuba and Vietnam, Marilyn Monroe and the Moon, and the audacious idea that it was an American’s duty to serve, not to be served. Lewis’ legacy is far more modest: Oxford and Narnia, tea stains, smoke rings, and a few good words. I wonder, though, as we pass the few decades, if Lewis’ legacy may not continue to rise, while the days of America’s visionary martyr will prove to have been too short. Perhaps JFK died too soon, or perhaps Lewis simply had more to say.
Only the Ancient of Days can know for certain. The voices of great men and almost all women have passed away, no doubt. All stone turns to sand, I suppose. But I have a feeling that C.S. Lewis’ words are engraved in our human experience. So it is on this day that I think it is worth celebrating the artistic, literary, and spiritual legacy of C.S. Lewis. It is why I have dedicated years to helping American readers see the transformative project that Lewis undertook. And a few Canadians too, I suppose. | |||||
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] | 2022-11-02T13:13:15+00:00 | Belfast-born CS Lewis was one of the most influential writers of the 20th Century who created The Chronicles of Narnia. Discover his legacy in east Belfast. | en | Visit Belfast | https://visitbelfast.com/article/the-cs-lewis-story/ | Clive Staples Lewis was a writer and theologian, most famous for creating The Chronicles of Narnia. He was born in east Belfast in 1898 and later attended Campbell College, a historic private boys’ school that’s still in use today.
In 1916 he was awarded a scholarship at Oxford University and, after completing his studies, went on to work there as a professor. Throughout his lifetime CS Lewis wrote over 40 books including fictional novels and Christian apologetics. Many of his works are still known and read worldwide today.
But perhaps the most famous of his works were The Chronicles of Narnia, a fictional series written for children that deals the Christian themes. The trilogy was adapted into three films: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe in 2005; Prince Caspian in 2008 and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader in 2010.
Though buried in Oxford following his death in 1963, CS Lewis’ legacy lives on in Belfast. Uncover the man and the stories that touched the world right here in the east of the city. | |||||
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] | null | [] | 2013-02-05T18:43:01+00:00 | Visit the Kilns, C.S. Lewis's beloved Oxford home. Tours are available year-round by appointment. | en | C.S. Lewis Foundation | https://www.cslewis.org/ourprograms/thekilns/kilnstour/ | The Kilns, Headington, Oxford, OX3 8JD, UK
Tour the Kilns
Tours of the home are conducted by appointment only. Tours can be scheduled on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, with some restrictions for holidays and private functions. Filming is not permitted during the tours.
Admission fees for the tour are £15 per adult, £12 per student or senior (60+), and £10 per child. Cash is the only payment method accepted.
Starting 1 September 2024, tour rates will be £20 per adult, £15 per student or senior (60+), and £10 per child.
Special admissions fees for larger groups (groups of 15 or more) are also available upon request (we request several weeks’ advance reservations for large groups).
Tour Reservations
To increase the chances that we will have available tours on your preferred date, please make your request at least two weeks in advance. See below about how to request your tour and about our policies on confirmations and cancellations.
To Request A Tour
Email thekilns@cslewis.org to request a tour. Our Tour Coordinator will work with you to identify potential dates and times for your visit. We regret that we are usually unable to schedule tours on short notice. Please contact us at least two weeks prior to your visit to allow time for scheduling.
Please be aware that the C.S. Lewis Study Centre is a residential home for scholars (see our scholars in residence page here).
Due to the needs of those living at The Kilns, we have a limited amount of tour times that can be scheduled each week, and we generally reserve tours around the needs of the resident scholars.
While some parties understandably wish to make plans far in advance, we have a limited number of tour guides available and thus are usually only able to fully confirm tour reservations about two weeks in advance.
Cancellations
Please note that while we make every effort to hold tours as scheduled and reserved, there may be rare occasions where we may need to cancel a tour for unexpected reasons. If so, we will contact you by email as soon as a change is made.
If you need to cancel your tour for any reason, please contact us as far in advance as possible by email to our Tour Coordinator.
Kilns Etiquette
In the interest of ensuring a quality study experience for all in residence at The Kilns, visitors are respectfully asked to observe the fact that The Kilns is not a museum.
Rather, it is the Foundation’s intention to honor the memory of C.S. Lewis by encouraging its continued use as a quiet place of study, fellowship and creative scholarly work, much in the manner that characterized Lewis’ own period of residency there. Filming during tours is not allowed at The Kilns.
Because the home functions primarily as a personal residence, much as it did in Lewis’ time, there are occasions when it simply may prove impractical, or even impossible, to receive outside visitors.
On such occasions, please be assured that we deeply regret any disappointment that may result. To minimize this possibility, we strongly encourage all interested parties to make every effort to arrange for the desired visit and tour at least two weeks in advance.
Kilns Seminars and Residencies
In addition to tours of the Kilns, the C.S. Lewis Foundation also hosts C.S. Lewis Summer Seminars at the Kilns as well as opportunities for long term Scholars-in-Residence. You can learn more clicking on the links below.
C.S. Lewis Summer Seminars
Scholars-in-Residence at the Kilns
The Kilns address is The Kilns, Headington, Oxford, OX3 8JD, UK
Visit Holy Trinity Church | |||
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] | null | [] | 2023-11-22T00:00:00 | Today, on the sixtieth anniversary of C.S. Lewis’ passing, I offer you a special gift. Well, not a modest gift from my own pen, but a link to an insightful obituary, written by one of Lewis’ students. The author of the obituary, John Wain, one of Britain’s “angry young men,” is critical of some aspects of… | en | Mere Inkling Press | https://mereinkling.net/2023/11/22/the-anniversary-of-lewis-death/ | Today, on the sixtieth anniversary of C.S. Lewis’ passing, I offer you a special gift. Well, not a modest gift from my own pen, but a link to an insightful obituary, written by one of Lewis’ students.
The author of the obituary, John Wain, one of Britain’s “angry young men,” is critical of some aspects of Lewis’ work that are most appreciated by others. Yet his unique perspective is valuable.
The Inklings included in their number Charles Williams, a man C.S. Lewis deeply respected. They compiled for him a Festschrift, but since he passed before it was presented, it was published as a memorial collection. Lewis wrote the preface, in which he included this amazing passage.
So, at any rate, many of us felt it to be. No event has so corroborated my faith in the next world as Williams did simply by dying. When the idea of death and the idea of Williams thus met in my mind, it was the idea of death that was changed. (Essays presented to Charles Williams).
The legacy of C.S. Lewis himself, exerts a similar influence on many.
I’ll not say more, other than to extend a sincere “thank you” to Dr. Brenton Dickieson, who transcribed it from a twentieth century literary magazine. Dickieson consistently provides solid, and accessible, Inkling scholarship at A Pilgrim in Narnia.
An Obituary of C.S. Lewis by John Barrington Wain CBE
Happy Thanksgiving to citizens of the United States, and a belated Thanksgiving to Canadians such as Dickieson. | |||||
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] | 2012-05-24T20:04:20+00:00 | As I learned, a pilgrimage is not necessarily about completeness. It's about questions. And it was C.S. Lewis who taught me how to ask them. | en | /favicon.ico | HuffPost | https://www.huffpost.com/entry/cs-lewis-pilgrimage_b_1540068 | A little over a year ago, I found myself channeling Chaucer, embarking on my own pilgrimage while studying abroad in York, UK. Instead of Canterbury, however, my destination was Oxford. And instead of St. Thomas a Beckett, I sought the sites of another divine: Clive Staples Lewis.
I was never much into "The Chronicles of Narnia," but when I read Lewis' "Mere Christianity" at the age of 16, it completely changed the way I thought of my faith. Lewis has provided answers to millions since his death in 1963, speaking to an age that views traditional expressions of faith -- and even faith itself -- with skepticism. And as I boarded the train from York to London in desperate need of answers to my own questions, I hoped Lewis could help me.
I was at a pivotal point in my own faith journey. In the throes of discerning a call to ordained ministry in the Episcopal Church, I had just come out of a complete upheaval of my previous religious identity as a Southern Baptist.
After disembarking the train at the Oxford train station and checking into my B&B, I headed up to Headington just North of Oxford to pay a visit to Lewis's grave and to make an appointment to tour Lewis's nearby home, The Kilns.
The tiny church where Lewis lies buried is idyllic. It sits in the cleft of a gentle valley, at the end of a narrow, winding road lined with pretty houses. The area around the church itself is surprisingly wooded, and so serene. I heeded the signs on the parish gate and found the Lewis' marker -- a large marble slab -- situated beneath an ancient tree. Bright flower buds carpeted the grass leading up to the grave as if to point pilgrims like myself in the right direction.
In his book "The Great Divorce," Lewis posited heaven as a celestial country more real than our own, where the grass pierces the feet of those unfit to stand upon it. Something about the sight of the flowers made me think he had made it there. I paid my solemn respects and, after a few moments of silence, turned to leave.
Though The Kilns has a new life as a living space for scholars and students doing research at the university, it still bares the marks of the man who had once called this place home. I felt transported into Lewis's life as I stepped through the front door, and was nearly moved to tears when, at the end of my tour, my guide took me into a downstairs bedroom where Lewis died.
"He had collapsed onto the floor," my guide told me, her voice trembling slightly. "Warnie (Lewis's brother) found him lying there, and he died shortly thereafter."
The marble grave marker flashed through my head, and the epitaph inscribed upon it: Men must endure their going hence.
On day two, I toured the colleges. For dinner I stopped for a meal at the Eagle and Child -- the pub where Lewis, Tolkien, and the others who called themselves "the Inklings" met to read their work to one another. I tried to imagine what it would have been like in their day, drinks at their elbows, pipe smoke swirling toward the ceiling, a small fire crackling in the fireplace. I tried to listen to their conversation. I hoped I'd hear a piece of sage advice that would help me articulate where my fear came from, that would help me articulate my vocation.
The next day, after lunch at Magdalen College (where Lewis taught), I was shown the way to Addison's Walk by a man I had met at my table. Named after the 18th century writer Joseph Addison, this wooded, creek-side path bore particular significance for my pilgrimage. Lewis frequently walked this path with his friends JRR Tolkien and Hugo Dyson, and while on one of these walks Lewis became convinced of the veracity of his Christian faith. In a very real way, that one walk down this dirt path altered Christianity in the 20th century and literally changed the world.
To be fair, I didn't expect anything of that magnitude to happen as I walked down Addison's Walk, but I was hoping that a little of that energy still hung in the air somewhere for me to absorb.
For him, it was all about myth, and how myth became fact in the life of Jesus Christ. In many modern stories of Lewis, I think evangelicals try to spin this moment on Addison's walk as a conversion experience, but I believe Lewis himself remarked that he felt he never had one. Instead, Lewis' decision to accept his Christian faith came almost imperceptibly.
As I would discover later, my acceptance of my vocation as a priest in the Episcopal Church would occur in a similar way -- subtly, quietly, in the way that scripture describes God speaking in a "still, small voice."
Looking back, that trip to Oxford was a defining moment in my discernment. It showed me what questions to ask, pointing me down the path that eventually led to some semblance of clarity. I found myself thinking of Chaucer's pilgrims, and dwelling on the fact that they never reached their destination; Chaucer never finished "The Canterbury Tales." Yet, as I learned, a pilgrimage is not necessarily about completeness. It's about questions. And it was Lewis who taught me how to ask them. | ||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 1 | 61 | https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/09/c-s-lewis-and-his-stepsons | en | C. S. Lewis and His Stepsons | Jonathon Van Maren | [
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] | 2020-09-03T06:00:00-04:00 | C. S. Lewis struggled mightily to help his mentally ill stepson. | en | https://d2201k5v4hmrsv.cloudfront.net/img/favicon.ico | First Things | https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2020/09/c-s-lewis-and-his-stepsons | Douglas Gresham is the last person living who knew C. S. Lewis well. The son of Joy Davidman, Douglas watched his mother and “Jack” fall in love and marry. He wept with his stepfather when Joy died of cancer, and led the mourners behind the casket when husband followed wife to the graveyard.
In a recent interview, Douglas told me that many biographers have misunderstood Lewis’s marriage. Lenten Lands is Douglas’s memoir of his life at The Kilns in Oxford with his brother David, his mother, Lewis, and Lewis’s brother Warnie. A poignant and powerful account of his mother’s death as well as Lewis’s last days, the memoir recounts the intimate details of his childhood, the move from America to England, and the blossoming relationship between Jack and Joy. Contrary to prevailing theories, Douglas says, the marriage was first and foremost a meeting of two magnificent minds. “There wasn’t much in the world that my mother didn’t know about,” he told me. “There wasn’t anyone on the same level as herself until she met Jack. They just sort of clicked together. It was inevitable, I think.” According to the man who knew them best, his mother’s intimidating intelligence was one reason many of Lewis’s friends disliked her. Warnie, on the other hand, adored Joy.
While the relationship between Lewis and Joy Davidman has been a matter of endless fascination to Lewis fans and academics alike, many have ignored the fact that the marriage made Lewis a stepfather. But Davidman’s boys (ages 11 and 12 at the time of the marriage) became Lewis’s stepsons, and these relationships shaped the last decade of his life. Lewis dedicated The Horse and His Boy to Douglas and David Gresham. While Douglas has weighed in with two books—Lenten Lands and a short biography of Lewis—David has virtually vanished from the historical record. In the 1993 film Shadowlands, for example, David Gresham is nonexistent. Even in his brother’s memoir he makes only a handful of brief appearances.
David died several years ago in a secure Swiss mental hospital, and Douglas has finally broken his silence about a hitherto unknown aspect of life at The Kilns. His earliest memories, he told me, were of his brother, who was later diagnosed as schizophrenic. “When I was a small child,” Douglas said, “he was continually trying to get rid of me. This went on into our teen years.” Douglas said he recalls “running like crazy or defending myself from my rather insane brother. . . I would never have said anything to harm him or upset him while he was alive, because oddly enough I still loved him as a brother. In fact, I wept when he died.”
For decades, despite a booming cottage industry of Lewis biographies and endless academic theorizing about the last years of Lewis’s life, Douglas kept to himself the fact that Lewis struggled mightily to help his mentally ill stepson. “We didn’t tell anybody,” he told me. “The only reason I’m releasing it now is because people should know what Jack put up with and what Warnie put up with and how heroic they were to do it at all.” It is time, he added, “that people understand what Jack and Warnie went through. Jack and Warnie didn’t know what the heck to do.”
“Our uncle, my mother’s brother Howard in New York, had allowed David to come and stay with him for awhile,” Douglas told me. “He didn’t know what condition David was born with, but he was a very talented and renowned psychotherapist and psychiatrist in New York.” When David went to stay with Howard, they had difficulties and eventually David left. Years later, Douglas said, he went to visit Howard. “Howard took me aside and said, ‘I think you should know that I did diagnose your brother as being a dangerous paranoid schizophrenic.’” Howard had offered David treatment, and David had refused. David was not welcomed back.
Douglas recounted some surreal stories. “I learned how to fight very fast; I learned how to run very fast,” he recalled. “I came out of the kitchen [at The Kilns] one afternoon, for example. . . As I walked out the brick arch doorway, there was a splash, and I was covered in gasoline. My brother was standing there trying to strike a match to throw at me. I kicked his wrist so hard I nearly broke it. The matches went flying, and I took off.” Douglas told me that this sort of thing was not uncommon. “It was a difficult childhood for me,” he said. “Jack tried his very hardest for David all the time. He tried to help in every way he could—he was kind and gentle and wonderful with him.”
“Jack helped my brother through all sorts of difficulties in education and so forth,” Douglas told me. “When my brother decided to become Jewish rather than Christian—he’d already been through Islam and tried Buddhism—Jack went out of his way to get special pots and pans for him so he could cook his own kosher food and get kosher food from the Jewish shop in the middle of the covered market in Oxford.” “Jack went out of his way to do everything he possibly could for that lad, and none of it was accepted,” Douglas said. “Well, it was accepted, but he was never grateful about it. He was just very badly damaged mentally and emotionally, and he stayed that way.”
In a letter to the boys’ father, William Gresham, in America, Lewis was less than forthcoming about these difficulties: “They’re a nice pair and easy to get on with—if only they got on better with one another.” William—a veteran of the Spanish Civil War and an accomplished writer in his own right—came to visit the boys at The Kilns shortly after Joy’s death in 1960, at Lewis’s urging. But David had no interest in spending time with his father. In the U.S. shortly thereafter, William killed himself after being diagnosed with tongue cancer. With Lewis’s death on November 22, 1963, Douglas and David had lost their mother, their father, and their stepfather within three short years.
After Jack’s death, Douglas went to live with journalist Jean Wakeman. (J.R.R. Tolkien, whom he’d met at the Inklings meetings Lewis often took him to as a boy, also offered to take him in if he needed a place to stay.) Warnie, grieving for Joy and his brother, finally succumbed to the alcoholism he had fought so long to defeat. Gresham says that after Jack’s death he never saw Warnie sober again. David struck off on his own, and his mental illness plagued him for his entire life.
“Nobody seems to know that David was ever there,” Gresham told me. “He seems to have faded out of existence. . . the biographies that I’ve encountered about Jack, for example, hardly mention my brother.” For Gresham, it's a signal that the biographers haven’t dug deep enough. “I grew up with him, and I can tell you a great deal more than any of the biographers.” Perhaps it is time that Douglas Gresham put pen to paper and did just that.
Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist.
First Things depends on its subscribers and supporters. Join the conversation and make a contribution today.
Click here to make a donation. | ||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 3 | 97 | https://renovare.org/articles/the-perfect-penitent | en | The Perfect Penitent - C.S. Lewis | [
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] | 2016-03-22T20:00:00-04:00 | C.S. Lewis's explores the role of the incarnation in the mystery of the atonement. "We cannot share God's dying unless God dies; and he cannot die except… | en | /favicon.ico | Renovaré | https://renovare.org/articles/the-perfect-penitent | We are told that Christ was killed for us, that His death has washed out our sins, and that by dying He disabled death itself. That is the formula. That is Christianity. That is what has to be believed. Any theories we build up as to how Christ’s death did all this are, in my view, quite secondary: mere plans or diagrams to be left alone if they do not help us, and, even if they do help us, not to be confused with the thing itself. All the same, some of these theories are worth looking at.
The one most people have heard is the one about our being let off because Christ volunteered to bear a punishment instead of us. Now on the face of it that is a very silly theory. If God was prepared to let us off, why on earth did He not do so? And what possible point could there be in punishing an innocent person instead? None at all that I can see, if you are thinking of punishment in the police-court sense. On the other hand, if you think of a debt, there is plenty of point in a person who has some assets paying it on behalf of someone who has not. Or if you take “paying the penalty,” not in the sense of being punished, but in the more general sense of “footing the bill,” then, of course, it is a matter of common experience that, when one person has got himself into a hole, the trouble of getting him out usually falls on a kind friend.
Now what was the sort of “hole” man had gotten himself into? He had tried to set up on his own, to behave as if he belonged to himself. In other words, fallen man is not simply an imperfect creature who needs improvement: he is a rebel who must lay down his arms. Laying down your arms, surrendering, saying you are sorry, realising that you have been on the wrong track and getting ready to start life over again from the ground floor — that is the only way out of a “hole.” This process of surrender — this movement full speed astern — is what Christians call repentance. Now repentance is no fun at all. It is something much harder than merely eating humble pie. It means unlearning all the self-conceit and self-will that we have been training ourselves into for thousands of years. It means undergoing a kind of death. In fact, it needs a good man to repent. And here’s the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent: only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are the more you need it and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly would be a perfect person — and he would not need it.
Remember, this repentance, this willing submission to humiliation and a kind of death, is not something God demands of you before He will take you back and which He could let you off of if He chose: it is simply a description of what going back to Him is like. If you ask God to take you back without it, you are really asking Him to let you go back without going back. It cannot happen. Very well, then, we must go through with it. But the same badness which makes us need it, makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes, but what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself, so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers and that is how we think: He puts a little of His love into us and that is how we love one another. When you teach a child writing, you hold its hand while it forms the letters: that is, it forms the letters because you are forming them. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen, that would all be plain sailing. But unfortunately we now need God’s help in order to do something which God, in His own nature, never does at all — to surrender, to suffer, to submit, to die. Nothing in God’s nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God’s leadership most of all is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can share only what He has: this thing, in His own nature, He has not.
But supposing God became a man — suppose our human nature which can suffer and die was amalgamated with God’s nature in one person — then that person could help us. He could surrender His will, and suffer and die, because He was man; and He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can go through this process only if God does it in us; but God can do it only if He becomes man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in God’s dying, just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence: but we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies; and he cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt, and suffers for us what He Himself need not suffer at all. | ||||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 2 | 34 | https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/10/the-odd-story-of-c-s-lewis-an-extremely-odd-man | en | The Odd Story of C.S. Lewis, An Extremely Odd Man | https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1439,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1492787115/articles/2013/03/10/the-odd-story-of-c-s-lewis-an-extremely-odd-man/130305-c-s-lewis-biographies-wilson-tease_dbxtcy | https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_1439,w_2560,x_0,y_0/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_740/fl_lossy,q_auto/v1492787115/articles/2013/03/10/the-odd-story-of-c-s-lewis-an-extremely-odd-man/130305-c-s-lewis-biographies-wilson-tease_dbxtcy | [
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] | 2013-03-10T00:00:00 | The author who understood so little about the emotional life still speaks eloquently to millions of us 50 years after his death, writes A.N. Wilson. | en | data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQCAIAAACQkWg2AAABPUlEQVQoz6WSv6rCMBTGOymCIL6BizqIgvgHBRdxcPYJxNkHEDd1EhUclE6uPoKzu4OggoKP4CC3JqZNbJqbGKk3XVq4IcPJB7/DOV8+DdbrP6GQvEYk8kgm8WLBKFX0aBTkcni5ZIxp/M3cQyk9n2GthnVd0V8vejjAcpms13+A+53ZtqD2e5DPu7pzu/FGgtpsnq3WF4CNhtXviwpjIxZzdZDJ4NlMNDoeQamkAKjTkbUc3QXMdyN6OoFCIRBgDQZyVFip+APcAHq98oLoOmq3/YHPQQhWq9Zo5A/Y260wSu6QSgXbodd7ozb/2WAudbuu/g/g2Wzi8VhUpmnE48pIw6EMCA+V5nWDj7rbgWLxqyP0CRpfOptVAULk75DVyhvKy4XnF8/nmifeIJ3G0ylzHEUPhx+JBJ5MuFG/5/Ynabxw9yEAAAAASUVORK5CYII= | The Daily Beast | https://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/03/10/the-odd-story-of-c-s-lewis-an-extremely-odd-man | C.S. Lewis died on Nov. 22, 1963: the very day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Few people attended his funeral in Headington Quarry, just outside Oxford, partly because his brother, Major Warnie Lewis, had taken to his bed with a whiskey bottle when Lewis died and told no one of the burial arrangements. The figures around the grave included his estranged friend J.R.R. Tolkien, some members of their famous discussion-group called the Inklings, who had not convened for more than a decade, and his stepsons, themselves by then not the best of friends. Many considered that Lewis’s influence as a Christian apologist was on the wane. But, 50 years on, he is regarded in many circles, especially among American Christians, as “the Aquinas, the Augustine, and the Aesop of contemporary evangelicalism.” His Narnia books, now made into films, break box-office records. His fame is greater than it ever was.
There have been plenty of biographies of Lewis—I once wrote one myself—but I do not think there has been a better one than Alister McGrath’s. He is a punctilious and enthusiastic reader of all Lewis’s work—the children’s stories, the science fiction, the Christian apologetics, and the excellent literary criticism and literary history. He is from Northern Ireland, as Lewis was himself, and he is especially astute about drawing out the essentially Northern Irish qualities of this very odd man. And he is sympathetic to the real oddness of his story.
Having written a book on the same theme, I have had phases of being been obsessed by Lewis myself. I do not believe McGrath entirely explains the extreme oddness, but his narrative has a truly lucid fluency that presents all the case for the baffled reader to consider. And what McGrath is especially good at doing is painstakingly reconstructing the chronology. Lewis wrote a compellingly readable autobiography called Surprised by Joy. He then, to his surprise, married a woman called Joy (whom he scarcely knew), which certainly surprised his friends. But then his friends did not know very much about him, and the autobiography antedated the marriage. “Joy” in Lewis’s book was the word he used for those extraordinary moments, almost mystical moments, in which he had been overcome since early childhood by a sense of yearning, a sense of excitement as another world intruded itself upon his inner life. He felt this, for example, as a boy when reading George Macdonald’s Phantastes.
What makes Surprised by Joy so, well, so surprising—once you know Lewis’s story more fully—is to see how he manages to distort and rearrange the events of his life to make them into a good story. The book is a sort of Apologia Pro Vita Sua, and it is understandable that he should, therefore, concentrate on the development of his religious ideas—first as a schoolboy atheist, then soldier in the First World War, brilliant Oxford scholar, winning a Triple First Degree, and getting a job as a fellow of Magdalen College. Then, the befriending various Christian scholars, most notably the inspirational philologist J.R.R. Tolkien who, in a memorable midnight walk with Lewis, persuaded his friend that Christianity, though a myth, was a myth that was true.
Where McGrath is so good is in sorting out the truth of this story. Lewis remembered, shortly after his conversation with Tolkien, being driven in the sidecar of his brother’s motorbike to an outdoor zoo—Whipsnade. In the course of this journey, he decided he believed in the Incarnation of Christ. He remembered his exultation as the two brothers walked together among bluebells. But, McGrath, points out, it was September—when bluebells are not in flower! McGrath cunningly shows us that the moment of epiphany must in fact have come two years later, when Lewis went to the zoo with his lover, or former lover Mrs. Moore and her daughter Maureen.
Mrs. Moore is the most understandable omission from Lewis’s autobiography. (Another being Lewis’s obsession with sadism; he nicknamed himself Philomastix, or Lover of the Whip). McGrath deals with the whole story remarkably fairly. Lewis trained as an officer to fight in the First World War, and shared a room with a man called Paddy Moore. The two boys agreed that if either were killed in the war, the other would look after the dead one’s parent. Moore was killed. Lewis had already begun a relationship with Janey Moore, with whom he subsequently lived for the rest of his life. When I wrote my life of Lewis, I speculated, as others have done, that they must have been lovers—though this was always hotly contested in those days by some of Lewis’s more pious admirers. When my book was published, Maureen, Mrs. Moore’s daughter, smilingly told me she was glad I had realized what she had been trying to tell me during our conversations about her mother.
Lewis lost his own mother when he was 9 years old. He called Mrs. Moore by a variety of names, but one of them was “Mother.” It is not clear whether he stopped being her lover because of his religious conversion, or whether this inner event postdated the cooling of their relationship, which became increasingly unhappy. Warnie, Lewis’s collapsed brother, an unsuccessful army major, also shared the household, having frequent drinking binges. I was told by Walter Hooper, who served as Lewis’s secretary at the end of his life that the major could polish off three bottles of whisky in a day.
It was against the background of this truly bizarre domestic situation that Lewis wrote the works of Christian apologetics and the Narnia stories that are now so celebrated. After Mrs. Moore died, Lewis married an American divorcée, whose sons inherited the royalties to his books. It must be an inheritance worth millions, though Lewis himself, who never mastered the idea that you had to pay tax, was in a perpetual state of financial anxiety, believing that if you gave money away to good causes or friends, it would not count as income. (God saw his kindness, but the tax man did not.)
In the last decade or so of his life, Lewis gave up being an apologist, feeling he had lost his knack. He concentrated more on the children’s stories and on more meditative stuff, such as a lovely book on the Psalms. His faith was challenged, though not shaken, by the painful cancer death of his wife, and this searing experience produced the heart-rending book A Grief Observed, which was the inspiration for the play (and movie) Shadowlands.
Until reading McGrath, I had never before been so struck by the fact that Lewis was a poet manqué. Of course I had known this—it is the most obvious fact about Lewis the writer. His earliest printed works were poems, but they were no good. He never quite recognized this fact, and the people he truly hated tended to be poets. One of his first pupils at Magdalen was dear old John Betjeman, later poet laureate, but Lewis the sadist treated him abominably. Lewis loathed T.S. Eliot and could not see any virtue in Eliot’s work, even after he became a Christian. Lewis once had a fight in a pub with the poet Roy Campbell. To this degree, he was the classic case (we have all met them in university life) of the secondary talent who could not endure primary talents. Brilliant as an exponent of the virtues in Spenser, Dante, Chaucer, Lewis could not write his own poetry. | ||
correct_death_00033 | FactBench | 1 | 77 | https://www.historyhit.com/culture/the-enduring-legacy-of-c-s-lewis/ | en | Beyond Narnia: The Enduring Legacy of C.S. Lewis | [
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] | null | Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), known to the world as C.S. Lewis, is an iconic figure in the realms of literature, theology, and fantasy. The... | en | /app/themes/history/favicon/apple-icon-57x57.png?x24183 | History Hit | https://www.historyhit.com/culture/the-enduring-legacy-of-c-s-lewis/ | Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), known to the world as C.S. Lewis, is an iconic figure in the realms of literature, theology, and fantasy. The creator of the enchanting world of Narnia and a prolific writer on Christian apologetics, Lewis remains a celebrated author whose influence extends far beyond his works.
Here we explore the life, legacy, and contributions of arguably one of the most influential writers of the 20th century.
Early life and education
C.S. Lewis was born on 29 November 1898, in Belfast, Ireland. As a child, he was fascinated with anthropomorphic animals, and enjoyed Beatrix Potter’s stories. He often wrote and illustrated his own animal tales, including Boxen (written with his brother), about a fantasy land run by animals.
Having been schooled by private tutors, after his mother’s death when he was aged 9, he was ultimately sent to Malvern, Englandy, where he attended Cherbourg House and Malvern College, before studying privately with his father’s old tutor.
As a teenager, Lewis was interested in the Icelandic Sagas and Norse and Greek mythology, and later received a scholarship to Oxford University (University College), where he excelled in languages, particularly literature and philosophy.
Army career
Shortly after he came to Oxford University, on 8 June 1917, Lewis enlisted in the Officer’s Training Corps. After his training, he was commissioned into the 3rd Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry as a Second Lieutenant, and later transferred to the 1st Battalion of the regiment, who were then serving in France.
Thus within months of entering Oxford, Lewis was shipped by the British Army to France to fight in the First World War. On 29 November 1917 (his 19th birthday), he arrived at the front line in the Somme Valley in France, and experienced trench warfare.
Less than a year later, in April 1918 his close friend Paddy Moore was reported killed in battle, while Lewis was wounded in the Battle of Arras. The two friends had made a pact that if either died, the other would take care of both their families.
After his discharge from the army in December 1918, Lewis moved in with Moore’s mother, Mrs Janie King Moore, and Moore’s sister, Maureen. Having lost his own mother, Lewis is said to have developed a deeply affectionate friendship with Moore, treating her as a surrogate mother figure (in part due to his own father’s distant relationship with him). He lived with her until she was hospitalised in the late 1940s, then visited her every day once she had moved into a nursing home. Some have speculated their relationship was on more of a romantic basis.
Academic career
After serving in World War One, Lewis soon returned to Oxford, receiving a triple First across his three areas of study. In 1924 he became a Philosophy tutor, and in 1925 was elected a Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, in which he remained for nearly three decades until 1954.
He was later elected to the Chair of Medieval and Renaissance Literature at Magdalene College, Cambridge University (during the time he was writing The Chronicles of Narnia series), holding the post until his retirement. His academic career flourished, contributing significantly to literary criticism and medieval literature studies.
The Inklings and friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien
Whilst lecturing at Oxford University, from April 1940 Lewis was a core member of the Inklings, an informal literary discussion group that included fellow renowned author and colleague J.R.R. Tolkien.
Tolkien and Lewis’s deep friendship and mutual respect had a profound influence on their literary works, and the two authors often shared their writings and discussed their fantastical worlds, contributing to the creation of both The Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia series.
Conversion to Christianity
Though raised in a Christian household, Lewis faced a period of atheism during his youth, which he later claimed was due to the loss of his mother, unhappiness at school, and the horrors experienced in war. However, through profound intellectual exploration and discussions with close friends like Tolkien, Lewis experienced a spiritual awakening, and later embraced Christianity (Anglicanism) aged 32. He converted in September 1931, and became a layman of the Church of England.
This conversion became a cornerstone of his life and work, and whilst he seldom spoke of his beliefs during university lectures, his Christian faith significantly influenced his writing.
Christian apologetics
Lewis was only 40 at World War Two’s outbreak, and tried to re-enter military service, but was not accepted and he later served in the Home Guard. From 1941-1943, Lewis spoke in many BBC radio war-time broadcasts about Christianity, which gained widespread acclaim.
These broadcasts were anthologised in one of Lewis’s most influential works is Mere Christianity, a seminal book in Christian apologetics (a defence of the faith). In this work, Lewis logically and persuasively presents the core beliefs of Christianity in a way that resonates with believers and sceptics alike, making complex theological concepts accessible to a wider audience. (During this time, Lewis was made President of Oxford’s Socratic Club).
Literary career and The Chronicles of Narnia
Lewis wrote over 30 books which have been translated into over 40 languages, including The Space Trilogy, Miracles, The Screwtape Letters, The Problem of Pain, The Weight of Glory, and his memoir Surprised by Joy). However, his most famous literary legacy remains The Chronicles of Narnia series, considered a classic of children’s literature.
The beloved series began with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (published on 16 October 1950), and consists of 7 fantasy novels exploring themes of courage, sacrifice, redemption, and spirituality, captivating readers of all ages with its imaginative storytelling and moral depth. The books contain Christian ideas, intended to be easily accessible to young readers.
To date, Lewis’s Narnia books have sold over 100 million copies and have been transformed into 3 major films.
Lewis’s writing style is known for its clarity, wit, and profound insight. His ability to blend deep philosophical ideas with captivating narratives continues to captivate readers worldwide, influencing countless authors and readers, shaping the genre of fantasy literature and theological writings.
The impact of Lewis’s writings extends beyond books. The Chronicles of Narnia series has been adapted into films, radio plays, and stage productions, captivating audiences across various mediums, and his profound theological works continue to inspire scholars and theologians.
Relationships
Lewis’s personal life was marked by enduring friendships, including his deep bond with Tolkien.
In later life, Lewis corresponded with American writer Joy Davidman Gresham, who was separated from her abusive husband and had two sons. At first, Lewis regarded her as an intellectual companion and close friend, and agreed to enter into a civil marriage contract with her in 1956 so she could continue living in the UK. They later sought a Christian marriage service.
Joy died of cancer 4 years later on 13 July 1960, aged 45, and Lewis continued to raise her sons after her death. Their relationship, chronicled in A Grief Observed, reflects Lewis’s emotional journey through love, loss, and faith.
Lasting influence
C.S. Lewis died on 22 November 1963 – an event overshadowed somewhat in the news by the assassination of President Kennedy the same day. However, he left behind a legacy that continues to shape literature, theology, and popular culture. His writings on faith, morality, and the human condition remain relevant, resonating with readers across generations and cultures, though many readers of his fiction are often unaware of the Christian themes of his works.
C.S. Lewis had been named on the last list of honours by George VI in 1951 as a CBE, but declined, wanting to avoid association with political issues. However, in 2013, C.S. Lewis was honoured with a memorial in Poet’s Corner in Westminster Abbey.
His multifaceted contributions as a scholar, author, and Christian thinker – along with his timeless works, philosophical insights, and imaginative storytelling – continue to impact the literary and spiritual landscapes. | ||||
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] | 2013-11-22T14:01:46-04:00 | C.S. Lewis constructed the world of "Narnia" through seven novels, the most recognizable of which is "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe." Even today, Gregory Maguire, author of the bestselling "Wicked," gets lost in C.S. Lewis' world of Narnia. "Imagine yourself going through a wardrobe and you think that you know the wardrobe is 4-feet deep and it has a back wall, but you don't get to the back wall, you keep going on. | en | PBS News | https://www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/celebrating-a-literary-giant-the-50th-anniversary-of-cs-lewiss-death | C.S. Lewis constructed the world of “Narnia” through seven novels, the most recognizable of which is “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.”
Even today, Gregory Maguire, author of the bestselling “Wicked,” gets lost in C.S. Lewis’ world of Narnia.
“Imagine yourself going through a wardrobe and you think that you know the wardrobe is 4-feet deep and it has a back wall, but you don’t get to the back wall, you keep going on. And then you find yourself in a snowy fantastic landscape that is nothing like the world in which you’ve known before.”
And so begins “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” of the “The Chronicles of Narnia,” the beloved children’s novels by C.S. Lewis that have sold more than 100 million copies and have been translated into 46 languages.
Friday marks the 50th anniversary of Lewis’s death. He died from renal failure in 1963 at the age of 64. It was one week before his 65th birthday.
Gregory Maguire spoke to chief arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown about the Narnia series and C.S. Lewis’s influence on the world of fantasy and Maguire’s own construction of Oz. Listen to the whole conversation.
C.S. Lewis broke new ground in 1950 with his fantasy series “The Chronicles of Narnia.” Photo by John Chillingworth/Picture Post/Getty Images
Born in Belfast, Ireland in November 1898, Clive Staple Lewis became one of the most well-renowned and widely recognized names in children’s literature. However, Lewis was primarily an author of adult novels. He published 30 books in total, including “The Screwtape Letters” and “The Great Divorce.”
Still, the seven installments that comprise “The Chronicles of Narnia” are his most well-known. According to Maguire, who is also a scholar of children’s literature, Lewis was hugely influential for both children’s literature and fantasy alike.
In fact, Maguire says, “You only have to open any book and you see, the wardrobe has many imitators.” One such imitator he points out comes from Philip Pullman’s 1995 “The Golden Compass.” Maguire points to a scene early in the book when Lyra, the protagonist, hides in a wardrobe to eavesdrop on her uncle in Oxford.
For Maguire, Narnia was magical. Lewis created this world over his whole lifetime. He drew from the stories that his Irish nurse would tell him as a child. Several years later, at the age of 16, Lewis fantasized about a faun carrying parcels and an umbrella through a snow-covered forest. And then, during World War II, Lewis was inspired by four children who stayed at his country house.
Located in Belfast, Ireland, “The Searcher” by Ross Wilson depicts C.S. Lewis looking into his magical wardrobe. Photo by Mike Johnson
When he finally sat down to write “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe,” Lewis called on his memories, including sitting in an old wardrobe with his brother, and his youthful imaginings to create the Narnia known today.
While Lewis was exploring his make-believe world, his close friend J.R.R. Tolkien was creating Middle Earth in “The Lord of the Rings” series. Together, the two created syntax for fantasy writing that is widely used today, but according to Maguire, they did so in almost opposite ways.
“The differences between Middle Earth and Narnia … are really vast because Narnia is built on the back of existing conventions,” Maguire says. “There’s a bit of Father Christmas there, there’s a bit of Christianity, there’s a bit of the Odyssey, there’s a bit of the Arabian Nights. Little scraps and bits and tatters from everything on the bookshelf that interested Lewis.” Tolkien wanted to create a whole new world that concealed his roots. He tried to “make something … new as if it had never been sighted before,” Maguire says.
In terms of his own writing, Maguire looked to Lewis for help: “When it was time for me to write ‘Wicked,’ I said I want to look at Oz the way C.S. Lewis looked at Narnia. I want to explore every corner and give it a deep and abiding subtlety and mystery the same sort that we can smell of Narnia whenever we walk into a piney wood even in upstate New York.”
Three major motion pictures have already been made from the Narnia series and the fourth, “The Silver Chair,” is in development.
Check out the slideshow below to view “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” cover art from 1950s to the e-book today. | |||||
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] | 2020-12-11T09:30:06+02:00 | Posts about CS Lewis written by Lex Loizides | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/357ec20fa4f28958793d7cf1e70d24e41e32cf9f172f624698197216a1bfcd0c?s=32 | Church History Review | https://lexloiz.wordpress.com/tag/cs-lewis/ | Lessons in Digging
When my wife and I first moved to South Africa we employed a gardener. This was a new thing for us. In the UK and the USA I was the one who struggled with the lawnmower. In South Africa you employed people to do that. We became aware that there was a kind of emotionally remote relationship to gardeners, cleaners and so on. It felt different than just employer/employee. The difference was more pronounced. And it was racial. I have never heard of a white cleaner, or gardener in this part of the world, unless they owned the gardening service and employed others.
One day, between the digging and the weeding, I asked our gardener what his interests were, or if he had studied. He said he used to have a keen interest in history. My face lit up! This was a great connection!
‘Oh! I also enjoy history!’
‘No, but I hate history,’ he replied, looking toward me, ‘I don’t enjoy history at all.’
‘But why? How can you hate ‘history’?’ said Mr Stupid.
‘It made me angry. Very, very angry. So I stopped. I had to stop reading it.’
CS Lewis on White Supremacy
CS Lewis, in the excellent collection Christian Reflections, writes tellingly when he seeks to apply some of the ‘cursings’ we find in the Psalms. WARNING! This never-quoted section in Lewis’s writings may shock you:
‘I am inclined to think that we had better look unflinchingly at the work we have done; like puppies, we must have ‘our noses rubbed in it’. A man, now penitent, who has once seduced and abandoned a girl and then lost sight of her, had better not avert his eyes from the crude realities of the life she may now be living. For the same reason we ought to read the psalms that curse the oppressor; read them with fear. Who knows what imprecations of the same sort have been uttered against ourselves? What prayers have Red men, and Black, and Brown and Yellow, sent up against us to their gods or sometimes to God Himself? All over the earth the White Man’s offence ‘smells to heaven’: massacres, broken treaties, theft, kidnappings, enslavement, deportation, floggings, beatings-up, rape, insult, mockery, and odious hypocrisy make up that smell.’ [1]
I understand that it is quite natural for me, as a white person, not to want ‘my nose rubbed in it’, yet I don’t see how I can assist, support, or generate change in my context without at least attempting to understand, and to feel, something of the struggle and pain of others. Surely that is included in what it means to love my neighbour?
Frederick Douglass, both in his autobiography and in speeches, hits out not only at white slave owners but at a complicit church. He doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t write off true Christianity; he doubts whether the church, in his experience, was practising real Christianity. He writes:
‘I assert most unhesitatingly, that the religion of the south is a mere covering for the most horrid crimes,—a justifier of the most appalling barbarity,—a sanctifier of the most hateful frauds,—and a dark shelter under, which the darkest, foulest, grossest, and most infernal deeds of slaveholders find the strongest protection.
Were I to be again reduced to the chains of slavery, next to that enslavement, I should regard being the slave of a religious master the greatest calamity that could befall me. For of all slaveholders with whom I have ever met, religious slaveholders are the worst. I have ever found them the meanest and basest, the most cruel and cowardly, of all others.
It was my unhappy lot not only to belong to a religious slaveholder, but to live in a community of such religionists. Very near Mr. Freeland lived the Rev. Daniel Weeden, and in the same neighborhood lived the Rev. Rigby Hopkins. These were members and ministers in the Reformed Methodist Church. Mr. Weeden owned, among others, a woman slave, whose name I have forgotten. This woman’s back, for weeks, was kept literally raw, made so by the lash of this merciless, religious wretch … His maxim was, Behave well or behave ill, it is the duty of a master occasionally to whip a slave, to remind him of his master’s authority. Such was his theory, and such his practice.’ [2]
These things are surely not easy for anyone to process. Acknowledging the terrible crimes of history ought not push us away from the Christian faith, properly understood and applied. That’s not Douglass’s point. He appeals for genuine Christianity to rebuke the counterfeit.
And as we consider these things, we should ask questions of our own processes and practices today. Acknowledging our history or our bias should help Christian believers reapply the historic gospel, with all its liberating power through faith in Jesus Christ, to our own lives and churches. The gospel should convict us, humble us, and then renew our minds, liberating us from both shame and anger. Coming to the cross of Christ, acknowledging and repenting of our sin, will enable us to receive empowering grace, the grace to be changed personally, and the grace to persevere until we accomplish genuine change around us:
‘Let your Kingdom come, let your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.’
To read the next post in this series, on how religious legalism made the slaveholders even more vindictive, click here
For the first post in this series on Frederick Douglass click here
[1] CS Lewis, Christian Reflections, The Psalms, (1981 Glasgow: Fount/Collins) p.153
[2] Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave, 1845, p.46 (Dover Thrift Edition, 1995)
©2019 Lex Loizides / Church History Review
[Also of interest: CS Lewis on the Puritans, and CS LEWIS: THE POET]
CS Lewis and John Betjeman
When I picked up A.N. Wilson’s highly readable C.S. Lewis – A Biography I thought Lewis might get a little rough treatment. That’s because I’d already seen how Wilson dealt with him in his biography of John Betjeman.
It’s true that Lewis and Betjeman couldn’t stand each other, but it wasn’t entirely Lewis’s fault. Lewis, a young man, had become a Tutor of English at Magdalen College, Oxford. Betjeman was one of his first difficult students. To Betjeman Lewis seemed overly serious, unimaginative and hard. To Lewis Betjeman appeared affected, unintelligent and lazy, regularly failing to hand in essays on time. In fact, on one occasion Lewis was pleasantly surprised by Betjeman submitting a decent essay and looked forward to the tutorial. He later wrote in his diary, ‘I soon discovered [the essay] to be a pure fake, for he knew nothing about the work when we began to talk. I wish I could get rid of the idle prig.’[i]
He did eventually, and possibly unnecessarily. Betjeman never forgave him and, in letters written years later, referred to Lewis as ‘my old enemy’.
His career
Clive Staples Lewis was born in Belfast on November 29, 1898 and died on November 22, 1963. Although bright, he hated school and was moved from place to place until his father finally agreed to have him privately tutored. After gaining a triple first at Oxford he became Tutor of English Literature and Language at Magdalen, Oxford, a position he held for nearly 30 years. Shockingly, he was never made Professor until he was invited by Cambridge University to take the Chair of Medieval English Literature where he served until retirement.
His literary ambition was to be a poet, but he is best known for the Narnia Chronicles a series of children’s books. Through the influence of friends such as J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and others he moved from atheism to theism and finally to Christianity. He wrote some of the most influential Christian books of the 20th Century and was the central member of an influential literary circle called ‘The Inklings’.
A.N. Wilson’s C.S. Lewis – the best bad biography I’ve read!
It’s a speedy, engaging, infuriating read. Wilson is rightly peeved by attempts to ‘canonize’ Lewis. ‘There are those readers who are so uplifted by the sublimity of Lewis at his best as a writer that they assume that he was himself a sublime being, devoid of blemishes.’ Even though that is an exaggeration one can understand Wilson’s desire to describe the man more realistically. There’s a difference, however, between bringing a man back down to earth and burying him.
After reading Wilson I also read an earlier Lewis biography to get a little balance. Wilson refers to (and draws heavily from) Green and Hooper’s biography from the early 70s. Undeniably less well written, I didn’t, however, find it gushing with hero-worship. Surprised by Joy although frustrating for different reasons, is also essential reading.
Why is ANW’s biography of Lewis ‘bad’?
Where to begin? First of all, it must be said that since writing about Lewis, A.N. Wilson has had a change of heart about Christianity itself, and has moved from atheism to the Christian Faith. This does, in some degree, temper our response to what appears to be one of his aims in the biography: to discredit Christianity itself. This constant sneering disrupted my enjoyment of the book, like an irritating fly.
From the cover endorsements to Wilson’s clunky misunderstanding of ‘A Grief Observed’ (Lewis’s most authentic, mature expression of belief was doubt, supposedly) the reader senses a quiet celebration that this is the book that humiliates Lewis and his faith. With a silent nod and smile, we can breathe a sigh of relief, congratulate Wilson and go back to our skepticism unscathed: Lewis has been put in his place.
My copy is the Harper Perennial 2005 edition (which I understand includes some revisions based on reader’s reactions to the first edition of 1990). Before this, I don’t recall ever seeing the cover of a biography which says more about the biographer than the subject:
‘Wilson’s biography is probably the best imaginable…he is a brilliant biographer.’ Anthony Burgess (front cover).
‘The more biography Wilson writes, the better he gets – this life of CS Lewis is his best yet. It’s a vivacious and compassionate book. Wilson’s range of interests makes him an ideal match for the subject.’ Andrew Motion
‘It seems fitting that AN Wilson should have written the definitive biography of Lewis, and it is a superb job.’ John Bayley
The fact that the cover endorsements are primarily about Wilson’s literary skill, rather than Lewis’s, should be a clue: this is a take-down!
But enough of covers. It’s an odd thing to be forced to ask yourself a series of distracting questions as you move through the book: Does the biographer respect the subject?
Did he understand the nature of religious conversion and its implications? Does he understand the role and limitations of Christian apologetics?
He exposes the jealousies and nastiness of CSL’s peers but is ANW himself entirely free from such nastiness given that he appears to support their criticisms?
Why the persistent schoolboy name-calling, likening CSL to a low-class ‘police court solicitor’ (a disrespectful mocking of CSL’s father’s occupation)? Yet, even schoolboys have an opportunity to respond. Lewis has no ability to respond.
While there may be some debate about the nature of CSL’s relationship to Mrs. Moore in the early days, are we to believe that CS Lewis cherished being both a domestic and sexual masochist? You needn’t be a Freudian scholar to have a few chuckles at some of Wilson’s psychoanalytical observations.
The bigger question is if Wilson is so repelled by Lewis’s Christianity and by Lewis as a personality, then why on earth write a biography of him? May we ask for a proper revision?
What we have here is a gossipy attempt to cut the puffed-up Lewis down. Positively tabloid my good man! It just makes Wilson appear pompous and mean-spirited.
In an attempt at balance, Wilson writes, ‘Insufferably annoying as he may have been in life, there was also something glorious about him.’[ii] Seriously? Glorious?
Lewis’s Reluctant Conversion
It may have struck you as odd that Lewis is usually quoted as describing his conversion negatively. He says that in 1929 he ‘gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed; perhaps that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.’[iii]
But actually, as both ANW and Green/Hooper helpfully point out, this was an intellectual assent to theism, not his decision to follow Jesus Christ which came about two years later. Wilson adds that Lewis, at the time, was emphasizing his unwillingness to accept any high sounding ‘divine call’ which might undermine him.
He still considered himself a ‘prodigal’ looking for any opportunity to escape the inevitable. Green/Hooper write of Lewis’s 1929 experience, ‘This conversion was, however, to theism pure and simple, and not to Christianity. He knew nothing about the incarnation at this stage.’[iv]
Lewis, Tolkien and Dyson
Although in his autobiography Surprised by Joy Lewis only touches on the events surrounding his Christian conversion Green/Hooper describe it in some detail:
‘Lewis was still thinking about myth and resurrection when, on Saturday evening (19 September 1931), he invited Tolkien and Hugo Dyson to dine with him at Magdalen. Probably none of them had any idea what a momentous impact this night’s conversation would have to Lewis…In Lewis’s rooms they talked about Christianity till 3.00am when Tolkien left to go home. After seeing him through the little postern door that opens on to Magdalen Bridge, Lewis and Dyson continued the discussion for another hour, walking up and down the cloister of New Buildings…On Monday, 28 September, Lewis and Warren [his brother] took a picnic lunch to Whipsnade Zoo…But something happened to Lewis on the way to Whipsnade for, as he says in Surprised by Joy: ‘When we set out I did not believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, and when we reached the zoo I did…It was…like when a man, after a long sleep, still lying motionless in bed, becomes aware that he is now awake.’
A few days later (1 October) Lewis wound up a long letter to Arthur Greeves with the news: ‘I have just passed on from believing in God to definitely believing in Christ…My long night talk with Dyson and Tolkien had a good deal to do with it.’[v]
Lewis on ‘Low Church’ and ‘High Church’
Lewis was not a so-called ‘high church’ Anglican. In fact, he was forthright on this point. ‘I’m not…what you call high. To me the real distinction is not high and low, but between religion with a real supernaturalism and Salvationism on the one hand, and all watered down modernist versions on the other.’[vi]
Lewis on Adam as an Historical Figure
On one evening, fellow academic Helen Gardner was dining with Lewis and a number of others at Lewis’s home. Wilson writes:
‘Conversation at the table turned on the interesting question of whom, after death, those present should most look forward to meeting. One person suggested he would like to meet Shakespeare; another said St. Paul.
‘But you, Jack,’ said the friends (or, as Helen Gardner felt, the disciples), ‘who would be your choice?’
‘Oh I have no difficulty in deciding,’ said Lewis. ‘I want to meet Adam.’ He went on to explain why, very much in the terms outlined in A Preface to ‘Paradise Lost’, where he wrote: ‘Adam was, from the first, a man in knowledge as well as in stature. He alone of all men ‘had been in Eden, in the garden of God.’…He had ‘breathed the aether and was accustomed to converse with God ‘face to face’.
Be that as it may, Adam is not likely, if she has anything to do with it, to converse with Helen Gardner. She ventured to say so. Even, she told Lewis, if there really were, historically, someone whom we could name as ‘the first man’, he would be a Neanderthal ape-like figure, whose conversation she could not conceive of finding interesting.
A stony silence fell on the dinner table. Then Lewis said gruffly, ‘I see we have a Darwinian in our midst.’’[vii]
The inclusion of this incident may be intended to make Lewis appear either misogynistic, self-serving, rude, a fundamentalist or all of the above. The point, though, is that Lewis did consider Adam to be a real historical figure.
C.S. Lewis, T.S. Eliot, and J.R.R Tolkein
There are numerous other small points of interest like this one. Lewis’s resistance to modern poetry alienated him from the emerging generation of poets. His own relative failure as a poet, especially as a narrative poet, even after publishing two books of poetry, was a source of sadness to him. And indeed, for those of us who have actually put in the hours to read every published poem by Lewis, we concur that he wasn’t a success (although there are a few brilliant pieces).
Some may, however, sympathise with him when considering the work of the modernists’ leading light T.S. Eliot. Lewis wrote:
‘For twenty years I’ve stared my level best
To see if evening – any evening – would suggest
A patient etherized upon a table;
In vain. I simply wasn’t able.’[viii]
Wilson also describes such fascinating moments as when CSL and Tolkien decide they’ve had enough of the popular novels being published and made a commitment to each other that they will write ‘better’ books: ‘I’m afraid we shall have to try and write some ourselves!’ What a result!
C.S. Lewis – never Professor of English at Oxford
Is it not strange that Lewis never became a Professor at Oxford?
Wilson gives us the reason:
‘It could be said that Lewis was exiled, in some sense, for his refusal to toe the line. It was not his failure to be a good graduate supervisor which cost him the Oxford chair, it was Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters.’[ix]
In 1954, however, Cambridge established a new ‘Chair’ of English and Lewis was invited, and accepted the position: Professor of Medieval and Renaissance Literature. His lectures were sensationally popular.
Other Biographers
Towards the end of Wilson’s book, apart from a somewhat rushed feel, there is an attempt to undermine other biographers and historians of Lewis. Hooper is dismissed as unreliable. Wheaton College is snubbed with characteristic upper-class English pomposity: It’s not a real University is it, after all? Once again, we hear the persistent drone undermining Lewis’s Christianity: it’s that pesky fly again.
There is much to enjoy in Wilson’s biography but so much that is disappointing. In a book so littered with uncharitable moments, perhaps Wilson’s final paragraph gives a typical example: ‘Those who knew Lewis in the days of his flesh might suppose that he would chiefly be remembered as a vigorously intelligent university teacher and critic who also wrote some children’s stories.’
So that’s it then! Lewis, phenomenally popular during his own lifetime and an inspiration to thousands of Christian intellectuals, is triumphantly minimised and dismissed: not a Professor, not a best-selling author, just a ‘university teacher who wrote children’s stories’.
It’s time for a better CS Lewis Biography
To coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Lewis’s death in 2013, when he was honoured in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey, Alister McGrath released a new biography of Lewis. For a review in Christianity Today check here. Readers of that biography may still feel we need something more like Wilson in style and more like Hooper in appreciation. But that’s another story.
© 2013/2019 Lex Loizides / Church History Review
[i] John Betjeman, Letters Volume One (London: Miverva, 1995), p.17
[ii] A.N. Wilson, C.S. Lewis A Biography (London: Harper Perennial, 2005), p. 252
[iii] ibid, p.110 (from ‘Surprised by Joy’)
[iv] Roger Lancelyn Green and Walter Hooper, C.S. Lewis A Biography (Glasgow: Fount/Collins, 1979), p. 103
[v] ibid. p.116
[vi] ANW, p.174
[vii] ibid, p.210
[viii] ibid, p. 263
[ix] ibid, p. 246 | ||
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] | 2014-08-22T16:53:50-04:00 | Magazine-styled website about contemporary culture, politics, and business history, crafted to engage readers on topics ranging from civil rights history to the power of the entertainment industry, environmental politics, sports history, music, film, and the media. | en | null | Linda Ronstadt and Jerry Brown first met sometime in 1971 at Lucy’s El Adobe, a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles. They were introduced by Lucy Casada, the co-owner of the restaurant along with her husband, Frank. Jerry Brown was then California’s Secretary of State. Linda Ronstadt was in the pre-superstar stage of her musical career, not yet the mega star she would soon become. She was 25 at the time; Jerry Brown was 33.
The friendship between Linda Ronstadt and Jerry Brown grew gradually; they had some compatible interests and liked each other’s company. They enjoyed ethnic food, long walks along the California seaside, Japanese movies, and country music. Both were also Catholic.
By 1975, however, Brown and Ronstadt became high-profile celebrities in their respective realms – he in politics, by then California’s governor, and she, rising to the top of the music charts with her Heart Like a Wheel album. There is a lot more to their respective careers, both before and after 1975, explored later. Yet through their rising fame, and through most of the 1970s – including the glare of Brown’s presidential bids in 1976 and 1980 – they continued to see each other, with speculation at one point, mostly in the press, of a possible marriage between the two. That, however, in the words of an earlier Ronstadt/Stone Poneys song, “Different Drum,” would not likely occur, as the song’s lyrics suggest: “You and I travel to the beat of a different drum / Oh, can’t you tell by the way I run / Ev’ry time you make eyes at me…” Still, there was an interesting decade of activity between this rock star and politician, made more interesting by the swirl of music and politics of those times. What follows here is a look back at some of that history.
Jerry Brown
Jerry Brown was born in San Francisco in 1938. His father, Edmund Gerald “Pat” Brown, was then District Attorney of San Francisco and later Governor of California for two terms (1959-1967). Young Jerry grew up in San Francisco and graduated from St. Ignatius Catholic High School. In 1955, after a year at Santa Clara University, he entered a Jesuit seminary, intent on becoming a Catholic priest, but left after three years. He then enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley in 1960, graduating a year later with a degree in Latin and Greek. A law degree from Yale followed in 1964. After law school, Brown returned to California and clerked for California Supreme Court Justice Mathew Tobriner. He then went into private practice in Los Angeles. In 1968, he left his L.A. law practice briefly to join U.S. Senator Gene McCarthy’s presidential campaign. Back in California in 1969, Brown ran for and won his first elective office, the newly created Los Angeles Community College Board of Trustees.
The following year he was elected Secretary of State. In that post through 1974, among other things, Brown argued before the California Supreme Court and won cases against Standard Oil of California, International Telephone and Telegraph, Gulf Oil, and Mobil for election law violations. He also forced legislators to comply with campaign disclosure laws.
In 1974, he ran for, and was elected governor of California at age 36, the youngest to do so in the state’s history. Brown followed Ronald Reagan in the Governor’s office, who previously held the post for two terms, 1967-1975.
On taking office, Brown garnered some headlines when he canceled the inaugural ball and refused to live in the $1.3 million governor’s mansion that Ronald Reagan had built. He also sold the governor’s limo and wouldn’t use the jet plane. He lived in an apartment, walked to work, and had his chauffeur drive him around in his 1974 Plymouth.
Once in office, Brown pushed a landmark farm labor law and new environmental initiatives. The farm labor measure won him particular kudos, as agreement on that front — while retaining labor’s right to strike — had eluded other politicians for more than 40 years. He also made some notable appointments, including Sim Van der Ryn as State Architect, and environmentalist Stewart Brand as Special Advisor, also adding minorities and women to major government posts. He significantly boosted funding for the California Arts Council.
In 1975, Brown helped repeal a prized oil-industry tax break, the “depletion allowance,” and later in his term sponsored the “first-ever tax incentive for rooftop solar.” Brown also strongly opposed the death penalty and later in his term vetoed it as Governor, although the legislature overrode his veto.
Linda Ronstadt
Linda Ronstadt was born in 1946 in Tucson, Arizona, to Gilbert Ronstadt, a prosperous machinery merchant who ran the F. Ronstadt Co. hardware store. Her mother, Ruth Mary Copeman, from the Flint, Michigan area, was the daughter of Lloyd Groff Copeman, a prolific inventor and holder of nearly 700 patents, among them, an early form of the microwave oven and a flexible ice cube tray, the latter earning millions in royalties. Linda’s father came from a pioneering Arizona ranching family and was of German, English, and Mexican descent, and also a guitarist who sang Mexican songs to his children. Linda was raised on the family’s ten-acre ranch in Tucson along with three siblings. She had a pony and later a horse. As a teen, she formed a folk trio with brother Peter and sister Suzy; calling themselves the New Union Ramblers.
Music Player
“Different Drum”- Ronstadt/Stone Poneys
https://pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Different-Drum.mp3
At age 18 in 1964, after meeting guitarist Bob Kimmel while attending University of Arizona briefly, the pair left for Los Angeles, joining guitarist and singer/songwriter Kenny Edwards to form the Stone Poneys. After three years the group broke up, but scored a Top 20 hit in 1967-68 with the Ronstadt-led “Different Drum.”
Following her stint with the Stone Poneys, Ronstadt then began a solo career, struggling for about five years, playing with various transient and backup musicians. Owing in part to her timid nature, she had some performance and self-confidence troubles in the studio and on stage. Along the way, there were also difficult romantic entanglements and some cocaine use, a period of her life she sometimes refers to as the “bleak years.” But it wasn’t all bad.
In March 1970, her second solo album, Silk Purse, was released, but it did not fare well on the music charts. However, one of its singles did – “Long Long Time,” rising in late-summer 1970 to No. 25 on the Billboard pop chart. The song proved to be an opening for Ronstadt, highlighting her voice and talent.
Music Player
“Long Long Time”- Linda Ronstadt
https://pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Linda-Ronstadt-Long-Long-Time.mp3
“Long Long Time” earned her a Grammy Award nomination in early 1971, although Dionne Warwick took the prize that year for best contemporary female vocalist.
One of Ronstadt’s backing bands in her early solo period featured musicians Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Bernie Leadon, and Randy Meisner, who went on to form the Eagles, one of the most successful American rock bands of the 1970s. They toured with her for a short period in 1971 and played on Linda Ronstadt, her self-titled third album. In those years she was beginning to define a new genre of music, sometimes called country rock.
Still, by the end of 1972 Linda Ronstadt was in debt and paying commissions to two managers. Then came Peter Asher, formerly of the Peter & Gordon duet, who had also been a manager at the Beatles’ Apple Records label. Asher became her producer and manager.
With Asher, she made two albums – the first, Don’t Cry Now, came out in 1973 which would sell 300,000 copies. Among its songs was “Desperado,” an Eagles song she would notably perform in concert. The album also included her first country hit, “Silver Threads and Golden Needles,” which broke into the Top 20.
Capitol Records, meanwhile, perhaps suspecting there might be more upside business opportunity in Ms. Ronstadt’s voice than they previously believed, began digging up her older tunes and issuing them as compilation albums, one of which appeared in early 1974 under the title, Different Drum.
But the second album she made with Peter Asher, Heart Like a Wheel, became her big breakthrough album. Asher would later tell Time magazine: “Linda is brilliant musically. Her voice is qualitatively exceptional…”.
Released shortly before Christmas 1974, Heart Like a Wheel hit No. 1 on both the Billboard albums chart and the Country & Western chart (C&W). The album offered Ronstadt doing a mix of pop covers and contemporary songs. One of its singles was “You’re No Good,” a song previously done in 1963 by Betty Everett (famous for “It’s In His Kiss”, the “shoop shoop song”). “You’re No Good” was released a week after the Heart Like A Wheel album came out. It soared to No. 1 on the singles chart by February 15, 1975 and stayed in the Top 40 for ten weeks.
Music Player
“You’re No Good”- Linda Ronstadt
https://pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Youre-No-Good-Linda-Ronstadt.mp3
“You’re No Good” was also a hit for Ronstadt in Australia (#15), the Netherlands (#17), and New Zealand (#24). The B-side, “I Can’t Help It If I’m Still in Love With You,” a Hank Williams cover, hit No. 2 on the C & W chart. That song would also win her a Grammy that year for Best Female Country Vocal Performance. Another song from Heart Like A Wheel – the follow-up single, “When Will I Be Loved” – a 1960 Everly Brothers hit, was also a big Ronstadt hit. In May 1975, her uptempo version of this song hit No. 2 on the pop chart and No. 1 on the country chart. A review of the song at AllMusic.com by Denise Sullivan notes, in part:
“…There was no disputing her vocal prowess, but Ronstadt’s choice in repertoire was equally important to her success, as she continually picked heartbreakers and tearjerkers like ‘When Will I Be Loved.’ Oddly, there wasn’t a shred of inauthenticity in the sung sentiments, even though Ronstadt was considered to be a hugely popular singer and sex symbol with an active personal life. Yet, she gave the song its definitive reading, even more so than the Everly Brothers…”
Although Ronstadt still had problems with stage jitters, she soon became a popular concert attraction. Heart Like a Wheel, meanwhile, would go on to sell over two million copies in the U.S. With this success, her first Rolling Stone magazine cover appeared on March 27, 1975 with a story titled, “Linda Ronstadt: Heartbreak on Wheels,” reporting on her earlier struggles to make it in the rock ’n roll business.
In September 1975, another Ronstadt album came out – Prisoner In Disguise – which quickly climbed into the top five on the Billboard chart and sold over a million copies. Asylum Records also issued a single from that album with a Ronstadt version of “Heat Wave,” a 1963 Motown/Martha & The Vandellas tune on the A-side, and Neil Young’s “Love Is a Rose” on the B-side. “Heat Wave” proceeded to crack the top five on Billboard’s pop chart, while “Love Is A Rose” did the same on Billboard’s country chart. With her new-found success that fall, she also bought a place of her own – reported at the time to be a $325,000 beach house in Malibu. Ronstadt by this time was also filling up her rock concert outings, as she did at the Center for the Performing Arts, San Jose, California on September 22, 1975. In 1976, a European tour — her first outside the U.S. — extended her popularity. Back in the States, meanwhile, her friend, Jerry Brown was about to make some waves of his own.
“Brown-for-Prez” (Pt.1)
In March 1976, Jerry Brown began his first run at the Democratic Party nomination for President of the United States. However, the primary season had already begun and several other candidates, including Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, had been campaigning for a year.
The Democratic primaries that year had become more numerous and more important in the nominating process than they were previously, and Carter, for one, set out to run in all of them. He surprised political pundits by finishing second in the Iowa caucuses (“uncommitted” finished first). Rep. Morris Udall, a front-runner in early polls, came in fifth behind former Senator Fred R. Harris. Carter went on to win in New Hampshire, North Carolina (defeating George Wallace), Pennsylvania (defeating Senator Henry “Scoop” Jackson ) and Wisconsin (beating Mo Udall).
However, some Northern and Western liberal Democrats viewed Carter as too conservative, and sought alternative candidates to block him from getting the nomination. Jerry Brown and Senator Frank Church of Idaho were seen by some as possible alternatives to Carter, or at least to help slow him down.
By May 1976, Brown’s name began appearing on primary ballots, and he visited with key party leaders and bosses to improve his chances, including Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and Maryland Governor Marvin Mandell. Brown won contests in Maryland, Nevada, and his home state of California with its 280 delegates. In Oregon, he missed the deadline, but as a write-in candidate, he took an unprecedented 25 percent of the vote, finishing third behind Jimmy Carter and Senator Frank Church of Idaho.
In the New Jersey and Rhode Island primaries, Brown supported uncommitted slates of delegates which “won” in those contests. In Louisiana, Governor Edwin Edwards backed Brown, helping him win a majority of that state’s convention delegates, besting southerners Carter and George Wallace.
Brown’s late bid and his gathering of delegates was seen as a possible way to influence uncommitted delegates at the Democratic National Convention in July.
Still, Brown’s bid for the Democratic nomination was seen as too late by party insiders and quixotic by others. People magazine ran a June 14, 1976 cover story on Brown with the tagline, “The far-out candidate who puzzles almost everybody.”
In campaigning, Brown spoke of “an era of limits” – not typically a Democratic sentiment – while critics found his term as California’s Governor unimpressive. Yet his late-coming primary victories had been a demonstration of his voter appeal.
Despite Jerry Brown’s impressive showing in a short amount of time, he was unable to stall Carter’s momentum. At the 1976 Democratic National Convention in New York city, Carter was nominated on the first ballot. Brown finished third with roughly 300 delegate votes behind Congressman Morris Udall of Arizona.
Jerry Brown, however, had his supporters during his brief presidential bid – not least of whom was a contingent of rock music stars, including Linda Ronstadt. Brown had Ronstadt’s help and that of others from the rock music business. Ronee Blakley, Helen Reddy, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and Ronstadt all performed at various times for Brown at fund-raisers and rallies.
At one “Brown For President” benefit concert event held at the Capital Center in Maryland in mid-May 1976, Brown joined Ronstadt, The Eagles and other performers on stage briefly, waving to the audience. Although Jerry Brown’s run for the presidential nomination ended, and he went back to being Governor of California, there would be more Jerry Brown presidential politics in the future.
Linda Ronstadt, meanwhile, in a December 1976 interview with Creem magazine, appeared to be having some second thoughts about mixing her concert gigs with political advocacy:
“I’ve retired from politics…. For a while, I thought it might do some good working for someone I believe in, like Jerry Brown, but now I’m only going to do benefits for concrete causes in the community that I live. Right now that happens to be Los Angeles.”
“I just got tired of mixing up the message. I mean, if kids are there to listen to music, I don’t want to ram politics down their throats. It ruins the magic of the music. I just think it’s taking unfair advantage of the audience to sort of slip in some specific political message while they’re captivated by your music. Politics should not be run like a circus.”
Still, Ronstadt appeared to be a person who stayed informed on the issues of her day, noting in late December 1976 that she was a daily reader of the Wall Street Journal. She would not likely be retired from politics for very long.
Ronstadt Rising
Ronstadt’s musical career, meanwhile, was heading into the stratosphere. In August 1976 she released Hasten Down the Wind, an album that included her version of Buddy Holly’s “That’ll Be The Day,” the single for which hit No. 11 on both the Billboard and Cash Box charts. It also rose to No. 27 on the Billboard country chart. Hasten Down the Wind also included a cover of Willie Nelson’s classic “Crazy,” which became a Top Ten country hit for Ronstadt in early 1977.
Hasten Down the Wind was Ronstadt’s third straight million-selling album – a feat no other female artist had then accomplished. The album earned her a Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female. It was her second Grammy. In early December 1976 she appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone for the second time, as photographed by Annie Leibovitz. That Christmas season, Ronstadt issued a Greatest Hits LP that also became a top seller. And while Jerry Brown was not the Democratic Presidential nominee that political season, Ronstadt was invited to sing at Jimmy Carter’s presidential inaugural in January 1977. Meanwhile, the notices on her music kept coming. By late February 1977, she appeared on the cover of Time magazine (see below right) with the cover-story tagline: “Linda Ronstadt: Torchy Rock,” referring to her love-hurts balladeering in the rock ‘n roll age. Said Time: “Ronstadt has used the driving energy of rock and the melancholy of country music to transport …her audiences into a region…rarely explored by a mainstream singer in the past two decades. …[S]he has the neural-overload generation…screaming for a kind of music that … goes back to the cabaret singing of Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday and Peggy Lee. Linda has made the Stones’ people listen to a torch singer. Try a new name: torch rock.” Time also added that Ronstadt was “a superstar on the verge of becoming …a Big Superstar.”
“Torchy Linda”
Image Politics
As a rising rock star – and “rock star cover girl” – Linda Ronstadt was also dealing with issues involving her image, both in how she appeared to the public as well as backstage, in the male-dominated music business. The December 1976 Rolling Stone cover story and photo shown above earlier, also included a couple of photographs inside the magazine of Ronstadt at home – photos taken by avant garde photographer Annie Leibovitz. One of the photos of Ronstadt that ran in the Rolling Stone story, included her sprawled across her bed at home in a skimpy red slip and underpants (shown below). However, Leibovitz had refused to grant any veto of the photos that would run in the December 2, 1976 issue of Rolling Stone, which incensed Peter Asher, Ronstadt’s manager. Asher reportedly kicked Leibovitz out of the house when she visited to show them the photographs prior to publication. Ronstadt would later explain: “Annie [Leibovitz] saw that picture [sprawling on the bed ] as an exposé of my personality. She was right. But I wouldn’t choose to show a picture like that to anybody who didn’t know me personally, because only friends could get the other sides of me in balance.” Not all of the photos Leibovitz took appeared in the magazine (However some of them did appear later in the tabloid, Modern People of January 28, 1979, and possibly others). But it wasn’t just Leibovitz and Rolling Stone. With Ronstadt’s February 1977 Time magazine cover photo using the “Torchy Rock” banner, shown above, Ronstadt also felt manipulated. For one, the photographer pushed her to wear a dress, which was an image she did not want to project. Some years later, in 2004, Ronstadt was interviewed for CBS This Morning and stated that this image was not her because she did not sit like that. Ronstadt said she hated the image the Time cover photo of her projected.
Still, at least part of Ronstadt’s image in her heyday was that based on her sex appeal, exploited by more than Rolling Stone and Time, also seen in her mid-1970s album covers as well as her nightclub and rock concert attire, which could run to hot-pants-and-heels for some performances. But Ronstadt was also a women’s rights advocate, especially in her profession. Peter Asher, for one, called her “an extremely determined woman, in every area. To me, she was everything that feminism’s about.”
In the October, 14th, 1977 issue of New Times magazine, John Rockwell wrote a piece titled “Linda Ronstadt: Her Soft-Core Charms,” a piece that covered Ronstadt’s career and persona at the time, quoting her during an ongoing interview. In the piece, Rockwell noted: “Even before her 1970 Daisy Mae, Moonbeam McSwine album cover on Silk Purse [her second album] Linda was regarded as a sex symbol. Then it was braless bouncing and bare feet; today, it’s more sophisticated and complex, though no less overt…” Then Rockwell added there were “problems in being a sex goddess,” and that Linda was mindful of those, quoting her as follows:
“…I don’t know how good a sex symbol I am, but I do think I’m good at being sexy. The sexual aspect of my personality has been played up a lot, and I can’t say it hasn’t been part of my success. But it’s unfair in a way, because I don’t think I look as good as my image. Sometimes I feel guilty about it, sometimes I feel embarrassed about it, sometimes I feel I have to compete with it. But that’s part of the fun, too- that’s part of the charade. When you look at somebody like Jean Harlow real close, she really did have an exquisitely formed face and beautiful hair and beautiful skin and a real gorgeous figure, and those are things I just don’t have. But I don’t think they’re essential to being attractive. Sometimes they’re more of a handicap than a help. I think vitality is what is attractive to people. That’s why there are a lot of pretty girls that are kind of boring to look at. If I get a hot romance, my sexuality is likely to work whether I curl my hair and put makeup on or not. When it’s successful and I’m at my shining best, I like to think of it as sassiness that incorporates sexuality and strength. It’s aggressive without being intimidating. As long as there’s strength in my attitude, I like it.”
Still, some years later, in a September 2008 New York Times piece by Patricia Leigh Brown, Ronstadt explained of her rock ‘n roll years that she was marketed as “this sexualized being, somebody else’s version of me walking around with my name. It became a strange distortion. Eventually I had to put out the complete version of who I was.” Which she eventually did, both in her later personal life and through her demonstrated musical diversity. As John Rockwell would note in his 2014 Rock Hall of Fame biographical essay on Ronstadt, in which he would make special mention of Ronstadt’s vocal range and versatility: “People may have loved her looks, but they bought her records because of the sounds she made.”
Back in 1977, meanwhile, Ronstadt’s eighth studio album, titled Simple Dreams, was released in September. Two months later it had replaced Fleetwood Mac’s long-running No. 1 album Rumours in the top spot. Simple Dreams stayed atop the Billboard albums chart for five consecutive weeks.
Music Player
“Blue Bayou”- Linda Ronstadt
https://pophistorydig.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Linda-Ronstadt-Blue-Bayou.mp3
On the Billboard country chart, Simple Dreams knocked Elvis Presley out of the No.1 slot. The album would sell over 3.5 million copies in less than a year in the U.S. alone, and would also hit No. 1 on Australia and Canada’s pop and country charts.
Simple Dreams also spawned a string of hit singles including covers of Roy Orbison’s “Blue Bayou”; Buddy Holly’s “It’s So Easy,” and up-and-coming songwriter Warren Zevon’s “Poor Poor Pitiful Me.” Of the three, “Blue Bayou” – which included Don Henley of the Eagles singing backup – was the biggest hit, rising to No. 3 on the Billboard pop chart in late 1977, where it held for four weeks. It also hit No. 2 on the Cash Box chart, No. 2 on the country chart and No.3 on the “easy listening” chart. “Blue Bayou” would become one of Ronstadt’s signature tunes. It sold more than 1 million copies by January 1978, and would later surpass the 2 million mark, becoming a worldwide hit with a Spanish version as well.
By October 1977, Linda Ronstadt was pretty much at the top of the rock world. She had turned out five straight million-selling albums, was grossing something on the order of $60 million from those albums, and had much more music ahead. That fall she was also asked by the Los Angeles Dodgers to sing the National Anthem on October 24, 1977 at game three of the World Series as the Dodgers hosted the New York Yankees.
Jerry & Linda
As for Jerry Brown and Linda Ronstadt, they continued to see each other in the late 1970s. In December 1977, it was reported that Brown took Ronstadt to some of his old haunts in San Francisco where he had grown up: City Lights Bookstore, a landmark of the 50s beat culture, the Spaghetti Factory, and the museums at the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park. Later that month, they spent the Christmas holiday together in Malibu. In the following year, they were seen together occasionally at public events, ranging from a March 1978 tribute to Neil Simon at the Long Beach Civic Auditorium to a reception at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel for a group of Chinese diplomats. They also appeared together at rock music hangouts such as the Roxy in Los Angeles.
On May 17, 1978, US magazine put Ronstadt on its cover along with a smaller inset photo of Governor Jerry Brown, with the headline: “The Governor and The Rock Queen” plus an additional teaser tagline that read: “Jerry Brown courts Linda Ronstadt: Are they playing love songs…or politics?”
The magazine reported that in early April 1978 the couple celebrated Brown’s 40th birthday at Lucy’s, the Mexican restaurant where they met back in 1971. The next afternoon Brown was seen emerging from Ronstadt’s house. That night, they were seen dining together at Tony Rome’s, another popular Hollywood restaurant. There were also reports that the Governor was spending weekends at Ronstadt’s house. Orville Schell, who wrote a book about Brown (Brown, Random House, 1978), recounted one Saturday morning visit to Ronstadt’s Malibu house to meet with Brown, as Ronstadt moved in and out of the room in which they met. Later, Schell described the three of them leaving for a drive in Ronstadt’s Porsche, with Schell driving and Ronstadt sitting on Brown’s lap.
Still, some believed Brown’s relationship with Ronstadt was just a friendship and nothing more. “I just think he uses Linda’s home as a sanctuary,” said Robert Pack in a May 1978 article in US magazine. “It’s situated among an expensive group of houses that are guarded and closed off to the public,” explained Pack, whose biography, Jerry Brown: The Philosopher Prince, was published that year by Stein & Day. “His favorite pastime is walking on the beach. And he takes his privacy seriously…I don’t think he would have a serious relationship with her because of her background,” Pack noted, referring to numerous affairs Ronstadt acknowledged having. Ronstadt, for her part, found reports of her many involvements to be greatly exaggerated, once quoted as saying: “I wish I had as much in bed as I get in the newspapers.”
Jerry Brown as governor, meanwhile, was very popular among California voters. In his first year as governor, Brown had a voter approval rating of 87 percent – then the highest in the history of polling in the state. Brown’s popularity, and public opinion about him, was then being watched very closely by President Jimmy Carter’s staff in Washington, then monitoring Brown’s activities. Carter’s aides considered Brown to be the “single largest threat” to the President’s re-election in 1980. Yet first, before Brown could challenge Carter, he faced a gubernatorial re-election campaign in California, beginning with the 1978 primary elections.
Seeking Re-Election
In the California gubernatorial primaries of 1978, California Attorney General Evelle Younger won the Republican primary defeating three other candidates, including Pete Wilson, then Mayor of San Diego. On the Democratic side, Jerry Brown, with only minor opposition, won the Democratic Primary and would seek a second term.
The one big issue in California during the time of primaries was Proposition 13, a ballot initiative authored by anti-tax crusader Howard Jarvis. Prop 13 sought to drastically reduce property taxes and change the way property taxes were calculated – a provision if enacted would play havoc with government budgets and funding of key services. Younger and most Republicans supported Proposition 13 while Brown and most Democrats opposed it. The initiative, which appeared on the June 6 primary ballot, passed with 64.8 percent of the vote and is still in effect today.
Then came the general election campaign in the fall of 1978. With the apparent taxpayer revolt now enrolled in law, Republican candidate Younger attempted to seize the Prop 13 momentum and Brown’s opposition to it. Younger, however, was not the best campaigner, and his organization faltered. The Republican primary battle had also drained Younger’s campaign of money, leaving him short of funds in the general election. Brown, on the other hand, saw a campaign opening.
During the primaries that summer, Brown had called Prop 13 “consumer fraud, expensive, unworkable and crazy, the biggest can of worms the state has ever seen.” But in the June election ballot vote, more than 4 million voters went for Prop 13 by a 2-1 margin. Once these results were in, Brown cleverly pivoted to a new position as the would-be top official in charge of implementing the law, promising, as enforcer-in-chief, if elected, to back the law.
“The people have spoken [on Prop 13],” he said, “and as Governor I will diligently enforce their will.” Thus Brown turned a negative into a positive. In addition, since he was relatively unchallenged in the primary, he had a much bigger campaign war chest.
During his campaign in 1978 Brown opposed another high-profile initiative– this one on the general election ballot. Proposition 6, also known as the Briggs Initiative, sought to ban gays and lesbians from serving as public school teachers in California. Brown opposed and helped defeat the initiative on November 7.
Jerry Brown ultimately won reelection in a landslide, beating Republican Evelle Younger by some 1.3 million votes, one of the biggest margins in California election history.
Linda’s 1978
During 1978, Linda Ronstadt scored her third consecutive No.1 album with Living in the USA. It appeared on the Billboard album chart in September 1978 and was the first album by any recording act to ship over 2 million advance copies. It would eventually sell some 3 million copies in the U.S. alone. A major hit single from that album in October 1978 was a cover of Smokey Robinson & the Miracles’ “Ooh Baby Baby.” That single, in fact, appeared on all four of the major music charts – Pop (No. 7), Adult Contemporary (No. 2), Country, and R&B.
Ronstadt appeared on another Rolling Stone cover October 19th in a photo by Francesco Scavullo, and was also featured in the magazine’s interview. She also appeared in the 1978 film FM, about competing radio disc jockeys and the rock music business. In the film, Ronstadt performed the songs “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me,” “Love Me Tender,” and the Rolling Stones’ “Tumbling Dice.”
Earlier that year, in July, she made a guest appearance in her hometown of Tucson appearing with the Rolling Stones at the Tucson Community Center where she and Mick Jagger sang “Tumbling Dice” together.
By the end of 1978, Linda Ronstadt had solidified her role as one of rock and pop’s most successful solo female acts. She was selling out her rock concerts, including those in large arenas and stadiums, with tens of thousands of fans.
According to some sources, she was the “highest paid woman in rock,” with income that year estimated at more than $12 million, or more than $43 million in today’s dollars. Her 1978 album sales were reported to have reached some 17 million units – with a gross return of well over $170 million in today’s dollars.
Billboard magazine crowned Ronstadt with three No. 1 Awards for the Year – Pop Female Singles Artist, Pop Female Album Artist, and overall Female Artist of the Year. By then six of her albums had exceeded 1 million in sales, three of which had been No. 1 on Billboard, as well as numerous Top 40 singles.
Her friend Jerry Brown also had a pretty good year. Following his reelection as California’s Governor, he was expected to mount a second try for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1979-1980. But before he did, he and Linda Ronstadt would have what some might call a high-profile moment.
Trip To Africa
In early April 1979, Governor Jerry Brown and rock star Linda Ronstadt decided to do some traveling together. The governor had been advised to go to Africa and meet with some of its national leaders. There were also environmental issues he wanted to explore there.
The couple perhaps thought they could mix a little business with pleasure, take a respite from their busy lives, and explore Africa’s land, wildlife and culture. The period they selected to travel also included Jerry Brown’s 41st birthday.
On April 6, 1979, the couple left for their trip as the Los Angeles Times reported in a news story headline: “Brown, Miss Ronstadt Slip Quietly Out of New York; Board Plane for Africa.” But if they thought their trip would go unnoticed in the U.S, or that there would be little interest in them in Africa, they were sadly mistaken.
At the time, there had been a sizable contingent of western photographers and reporters already in Africa, trying to cover a war in Uganda. But failing to gain entry to that country, they turned their cameras and attention to covering the California Governor and his rock star guest. Reporters and photographers camped outside hotel rooms and mobbed the couple whenever they appeared.
The press stalked the couple at Nairobi’s airport, where Ronstadt was reluctant to show herself to board a plane, even though Brown coaxed her to let the press have one photo and be done with it. One report quoted a Ronstadt friend as saying the press really freaked her out and that she felt badly that she was “ruining Jerry’s trip.”
When Brown set off for meetings with African presidents or environmental officials, Ronstadt often remained behind in the hotel or cottages where they has stayed. At one point, it was reported that she inquired about an early departure. One April 11th, 1979 Los Angeles Times headline noted:“Brown Politicks; Miss Ronstadt ‘May Go Home’.”
However, the couple did have some luxury camping in Tanzania, where they also safaried to watch buffalo, wildebeests and cheetahs, later dining on beef Wellington around a campfire. And Ronstadt established a truce with the press, sharing stories and drinks with them at one point. Near the end of their trip, Ronstadt departed separately and flew to London, where Brown later caught up with her, flying home together to Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, the press coverage of their trip back in the States had been reported by the Los Angeles Times and other newspapers, and soon the magazines had stories as well, including cover stories in Newsweek’s April 23 edition (shown at the top of this story), and People’s April 30th edition. Look magazine ran a later story on the trip in June. The magazine accounts played up the relationship side of the story, and also what the trip might mean for Brown’s presidential ambitions.
Many in the political community then following the reporting on the Brown/Ronstadt trip, believed Brown had made a political misstep by taking the trip with Ronstadt. Some felt he had damaged his chances of being a prominent challenger to incumbent Jimmy Carter for the 1980 nomination. One senior Carter aide told Time magazine he thought the trip would “hurt [Brown] in a serious way,” adding, “I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t something self-destructive in him.” Democrats watching from the early primary state of New Hampshire had similar thoughts. Dudley Dudley, a leading liberal Democrat there told Time: “In political terms, this sort of thing is counterproductive. A lot of people are chuckling about [his trip with Ronstadt].”
The Newsweek and other stories on the Africa trip also refocused attention on the Brown/Ronstadt relationship and what had or had not transpired between the two in Africa, as well as previously back home. Newsweek’s writers asked, “were the singer with a heart like a wheel and the governor with a soul set on the White House getting it all together at last?” One rumor at the time had it that Brown and Ronstadt were going to the slopes of Mount Kilimanjaro to be married.
In terms of what had already transpired between the two back home, Newsweek reported that they took long walks together, “hand in hand,” along the Malibu beach; sometimes went to midnight Japanese movies in West L.A., or enjoyed country music “at the funky Palomino out in the San Fernando Valley.” And as regulars at the El Adobe restaurant where they met, co-owner Frank Casada reported them having a good time there, enjoying each other’s company, and giving each other pecks on the cheek occasionally.
“They really like each other,” explained California State Assemblyman Willie Brown in the Newsweek story – a friend who had spent time with them. “He’s a different person when he’s with her,” Willie Brown said. “There’s a side the public never sees. He’s flirty, flippant and very funny. And he’s as interested in her physically as I’d like to be.”
“It’s a very, very special relationship that they have,” one of Brown’s aides was quoted in the Newsweek story. “It’s a very important thing, and it’s not something that either of them takes lightly.”
But whether the couple had more serious intentions ahead, was quite another matter. Both had made statements they could not be married to one another, Brown saying it would stop him from reaching the White House, and Ronstadt saying that the political life for her would be too confining.
Yet some of Ronstadt’s friends offered Newsweek a different take: “Marrying Jerry is an urge that comes on her periodically. She wants a sense of stability. She has talked about their becoming hermits on Jerry’s land in northern California.” But Linda’s mother Ruthmary Ronstadt, weighed in with a definitive “I know she would not like being a political wife.” And Ronstadt herself – pointing to an occasion when Mick Jagger breezed through town and called her to meet him in Mexico – acknowledged, “that’s the sort of thing I couldn’t do if I was married to Jerry.” Still, they continued their relationship in the meantime.
In November 1979, Jerry Brown formally announced that he would be a candidate for the Democratic Presidential nomination in 1980.
1979-1980
“Brown-for- Prez” (Pt 2)
The late 1970s were an anxious time in America. Overseas, the Iranian revolution of 1978-79 had curtailed oil supplies, spurring inflation and gasoline lines in America by the summer of 1979. President Carter’s approval ratings had plummeted to below 30 percent. And earlier in the year, in March, the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania had a catastrophic accident, an event which raised questions about the safety of nuclear power nationally while elevating the potential for energy alternatives.
Jerry Brown had been a proponent of energy alternatives to both continued oil import dependency and nuclear power, and so, was a politician who might draw some attention nationally by way of these issues. But Brown was also now a second term governor, and had a record of what he had and had not accomplished.
In his first term as California governor, Brown came down hard on crime, refused to raise taxes, and sought to eliminate waste in the state bureaucracy. Personally, he had refused the trappings of office early on, living frugally without the big limo and Governor’s mansion. But liberals believed he had fallen short on job programs for the inner cities, child-care, housing for the poor, and tax reform. Brown did develop a strong relationship with the large Mexican-American community, an important voting bloc. He also negotiated a landmark farm-labor law with Cesar Chavez, the growers, and the Teamsters Union. And he signed laws decriminalizing marijuana, another ending oil depletion allowances, and a third permitting sexual freedom between consenting adults.
Yet Brown was still a puzzle for many; a man hard to pin down, frustrating the press by answering their questions with questions of his own, or offering some philosophical nugget from Thomas Aquinas or a Zen aphorism. Still, he often proved the pundits wrong and had a keen political sense of public sentiment. Said one observer: “He’s capable of taking the pulse of the public before the public even knows what it’s feeling.” He was also capable of running counter to public sentiment. When a bill to reinstitute the death penalty came to his desk as governor – with polls showing an overwhelming 70 percent of the public favoring it – he vetoed it. But this action did not hurt him politically that year, as the legislature overrode his veto.
In California, some viewed Brown as an opportunist, hellbent on the White House. State House Republican minority leader Paul Priolo stated at one point that Brown’s philosophy was “to do what’s necessary to become President.” Some even suggested that his relationship with Ronstadt was a calculated media ploy to further his career.
In November 1979 when he announced that he would be a candidate for the 1980, Democratic Presidential nomination, Brown offered a platform with three main planks: a call for a constitutional convention to ratify the Balanced Budget Amendment, a promise to increase funds for the space program, and, in the wake of the 1979 Three Mile Island nuclear powerplant accident, opposition to nuclear power. The anti-nuclear movement in California was especially strong, and Brown had addressed activist gatherings that helped give him national visibility on the issue.
On the subject of the 1979 energy crisis, Brown charged that Carter had made a “Faustian bargain” with the oil industry. He also declared that he would greatly increase federal funding of research into solar power. During his campaign he described the health care industry as a “high priesthood” engaged in a “medical arms race” and called for a market-oriented system of universal health care. Brown also endorsed the idea of mandatory, non-military national service for the nation’s youth, and suggested that the Defense Department cut back on support troops while beefing-up the number of combat troops.
In his presidential bid, however, Brown had trouble gaining traction in both fundraising and polling. Part of the problem had come from Jimmy Carter regaining voter approval after American hostages were taken in Iran, as the country traditionally rallied around any President during a national crisis.
But the more serious problem for Brown as a challenger to Carter came from the rival candidacy of liberal icon, Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts. Senator Kennedy had refused to run previously in 1972 and 1976, primarily due to his Chappaquiddick auto accident and the death of passenger Mary Jo Kopechne. But 1980, many believed, was Kennedy’s moment, and he mounted a major challenge to Carter.
Still, Brown continued his candidacy, and among his supporters were a number of film stars and others from Hollywood, as well as those from the music industry. Linda Ronstadt did benefit concerts for Brown, including one on December 22nd, 1979 in Las Vegas. At that concert, she mentioned on stage that evening that Brown had been running hard for president “in the the last two months” and that she hadn’t seen him much during that time, “except on TV.” She went on to say that he was coming home soon, and dedicated the next song in her performance to him – “My Boyfriend’s Back.” Another benefit concert for Brown on December 24th that year included others from Hollywood and the music business, including Jane Fonda, Helen Reddy, and members of the rock band Chicago. The star-studded benefit concerts, however, did not produce the turnout or revenue the Brown campaign had hoped for.
Linda Ronstadt would also campaign for and with Brown on occasion, and was mentioned in news stories about his campaign. Her image also appeared on various campaign buttons, some with Brown and others by herself, the latter touting her for “First Lady.”
Jerry Brown’s supporters from Hollywood and the music industry, however, could cut both ways with voters. Conservative commentators of the day began describing some of Brown’s supporters such as activists Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, and Jesse Jackson as on “the fringe,” which did hurt Brown in certain quarters.
Brown appeared on the ballot in a number of primary states. In the February 26, 1980 New Hampshire primary, however, he received only 10 percent of the vote. By late March 1980, Brown had spent $2 million but had won no primaries. Kennedy, on the other hand had beaten Carter in the Connecticut and New York primaries on March 25th, and seemed to be picking up steam.
Brown then announced that his continuation in the race would hinge on a good showing in the April 1st, 1980 Wisconsin primary. Brown had polled well in Wisconsin throughout the primary season.
Then came a plan to film Brown on the steps of the Wisconsin state capitol at Madison in a special 30-minute event to be broadcast live and then used as a campaign commercial. Hollywood’s Francis Ford Coppola was retained to produce and direct the event, and a thoughtful speech was prepared titled, “The Shape of Things to Come.” However, due to technical problems, the event did not go well, and contributed to the melt-down of Jerry Brown’s candidacy.
On April 1st, 1980, after finishing 3rd in the Wisconsin primary behind Carter and Kennedy, Brown withdrew from the Democratic Presidential race. Momentum thereafter went briefly in Kennedy’s direction after Carter’s attempt to rescue the hostages on April 25th ended in disaster. Still, Carter was able to hold off Kennedy, winning the nomination in the end, but losing to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 general election.
Linda’s Interview
A few days after Jerry Brown quit his presidential bid, Linda Ronstadt appeared on the April 3rd, 1980 cover of Rolling Stone in a piece titled “The Styles of Linda Ronstadt,” with Annie Leibovitz photos. However, around the same time, she had also given an interesting interview to Playboy magazine – an interview conducted earlier that spring that was published in the April 1980 issue.
The interview was billed by Playboy as: “a candid conversation with the first lady of rock about her music, her colorful past, her new image, and her ‘boyfriend,’ Jerry Brown.” The magazine likely reached subscribers and the newsstands before Jerry Brown had quit the presidential race, and so would still be topical with Brown’s candidacy in mind. But in the interview, Ronstadt offered some thoughtful observations on how she dealt with her celebrity and political involvement. A few excerpts follow below:
…PLAYBOY: Why weren’t you involved in the benefits opposed to nuclear power?
RONSTADT: I didn’t have a band and I felt it might be construed as an attempt on my part to start stumping for Jerry Brown.
PLAYBOY: What’s wrong with that?
RONSTADT: I feel it can be dangerous for me as an artist to get involved with issues and, particularly, with candidates. But at some point, I feel like I can’t not take a stand. I think of pre-Hitler Germany, when it was fashionable for the Berliners not to get involved with politics and, meantime, this horrible man took power.If I am saying things about nuclear power, I want people to go out and learn about it. I don’t want them to say “No nukes” because Jackson and Linda say it. But it is difficult for me as a public person. I don’t want people to take my word for something because they like my music. That’s a danger in itself. I am real aware of my ability to influence impressionable people and I am reluctant to wield that power. If I am saying things about nuclear power, I want people to go out and learn about it. I don’t want them to say “No nukes” because Jackson (Browne) and Linda say it. I don’t want them to think that to be hip, they have to be a no-nukes person. I don’t want people to think about issues when they hear my music. I really want them to hook their dreams onto what I am singing. When I’m out in public, I want to be singing.
PLAYBOY: But you are stumping for Brown. You had a $1000-a-couple dinner for him and you’re doing concerts, something you said you’d never do.
RONSTADT: You know how most people burn their bridges behind them? Well, I have a tendency to burn my bridges ahead of me. I swore up and down I wouldn’t do a benefit for Jerry. The artistic reason is the selfish reason, but also, I always thought that if I did a concert for Jerry, it would be perceived by the public as him trying to use me. They would say, “I told you all along: The basis of their relationship is that she can do concerts for him and make him a lot of money.” But there is no way for me to stay neutral.…A candidate like Ronald Reagan can go to Westing- house and ask for lots of money…Jerry Brown can’t go to Westinghouse. He can only go to indivi- duals. He has no corporate financing for his ideology. …Jerry Brown can’t go to ARCO for money for solar power, because it’s not in the company’s interest…. If I won’t support him, and I know him best, it looks like an attack. I would like him to be able to speak his ideas. I think they are really important and good and, for the most part, he’s right. It’s so hard for me, not only as a public figure but also as someone who believes in him, cares about him, is close to him and is on his side. I want to be on his side.
PLAYBOY: What’s the reaction to your limited public support of Brown?
RONSTADT: I’m going to take a lot of heat for it, but I’m ready. I just don’t feel that any of the alternatives are as good as Jerry, and that’s what it comes down to. Look at it this way: The Eagles and I, in a way, represent the antinuclear concern. Westinghouse is heavily invested in nuclear power. A candidate like Ronald Reagan can go to Westinghouse and ask for lots of money and despite the $1000 limit, Westinghouse can commandeer huge sums of money. Plus, it can hire lawyers and take out huge ads in the newspapers and continue to brainwash the American public about the safety of nuclear power, which I think is a lie. Jerry Brown can’t go to Westinghouse. He can only go to the individuals. He has no corporate financing for his ideology. A candidate like Jerry Brown can’t go to Arco for money for solar power, because it’s not in the company’s interest. I believe it’s in the public interest to have a candidate who is interested in furthering technology like solar power and protecting us from things like nuclear power.
PLAYBOY: Then you’re not wary about ill-informed performers’ affecting politics.
RONSTADT: A lot of us were naive in the beginning about doing benefits. We tended just to take people’s word for things. I don’t now. I read newspapers, periodicals. I’m not saying I’m an expert, but I am a hell of a lot better informed than before and better informed than the average person. I think my opinion is informed enough to put out there.…But if Frank Sinatra is going to do a benefit for Reagan, then I guess I have to do a benefit for Jerry…. Richard Reeves wrote sarcastically about how nobody would pay $400,000 an hour to watch him type, but Richard Reeves, in fact, swings much more influence with a typewriter than I ever could. He’s a political writer. He sways public opinion every day. Doing a concert for a candidate can’t swing an election. We flatter ourselves to think that. What I can do is provide better access to the public forum, and then it’s up to the public to decide. Artists like Jane Fonda, Joan Baez, Vanessa Redgrave, I say more power to them, they are sticking out their necks. I don’t particularly want to stick out my neck. But I don’t see how I can not take a stand. It’s dangerous territory for me, that’s for sure. But if Frank Sinatra is going to do a benefit for Reagan, then I guess I have to do a benefit for Jerry….
Subsequent Lives
In the early 1980s, Jerry Brown and Linda Ronstadt would continue to be seen together occasionally. She joined him and other friends at an informal gathering in Sacramento on January 3, 1983 after he stepped down as governor. Later that year, on March 20th, 1983, they were photographed together attending the opening of the film Dreamgirls at the Shubert Theater in Century City, California. But after their active friendship years ended, Brown and Ronstadt went their separate ways, continuing in their respective careers.
In 1982, Jerry Brown could have sought a third term as governor, but instead decided to run for the U.S. Senate. He was defeated in that attempt by Republican Pete Wilson. Afterward, he took some personal time, traveling to Mexico to learn Spanish, to Japan to study Buddhism in a monastery, and to India to work with Mother Teresa. Upon his return in 1988, Brown won a race to become chairman of the California Democratic Party, and in that post he greatly expanded the party’s donor base. But in early 1991, Brown resigned as Democratic Party Chairman, announcing he would run for the U.S. Senate seat held by then retiring Alan Cranston. Although he led in the polls for both the nomination and the general election, he quit this Senate bid in favor of running for president for a third time in 1992. Running as an outsider, he won six primaries, but still lagged well behind frontrunner Bill Clinton.
After Jerry Brown’s third failed attempt at the Presidency, many believed his political career was over, and for six years or so, he remained in the political wilderness. But in 1997, running as an independent, Brown became mayor of Oakland, California where he helped revitalize the city and reverse its hemorrhage of residents. In 2007, Brown ran for and won the post of State Attorney General, and four years later, succeeded Arnold Schwarzenegger in a third term as California’s governor. As this is written, Brown is running for an historic fourth term as California’s governor, which if he wins on November 4, 2014, will begin in January of 2015.
Linda Ronstadt, for her part, went on making music – all kinds of music. In 1981, she went to Broadway as Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance, co-starring with Kevin Kline. She also co-starred with Kline and Angela Lansbury in the 1983 film version. In music she continued to put out popular recordings and appear at concert venues. In 1983, her estimated worth was placed at over $40 million, mostly from records, concerts and merchandising But she soon tired of rock concerts, where the audience – sometimes into beer and pot – was not always focused on the performer. Ronstadt longed for venues that had “angels in the architecture,” as she once put it. In late 1984 she ventured into opera, cast as Mimi in La Bohème in New York City.
Back in the studio, meanwhile, in 1983-1986, she collaborated with Nelson Riddle on songs from the Great American Songbook, producing three albums of jazz and traditional pop standards that between them sold more than seven million copies in the U.S. In 1987 she collaborated with Dolly Parton and Emmy Lou Harris to produce the album Trio which held the No.1 position on Billboard’s country albums chart for five weeks. In late 1987, Ronstadt released Canciones de Mi Padre, an album of traditional Mexican folk songs.
For Ronstadt the 1980s proved to be just as commercially successful as the 1970s. Between 1983 and 1990, she turned out six additional million-selling albums; two of which sold more than three million U.S. copies. In 1991, she released a second album of Mexican music, Mas Canciones, for which she won a Grammy. And there is lots more about her music, politics, and personal life – covered elsewhere in greater detail.
Suffice it to say here that Linda Ronstadt was one of the most successful and versatle female singers in U.S. history. To date, she has sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide and also became one of the top-grossing concert performers for over a decade. During her career, she released over 45 albums, 30 of those studio productions. Among her singles, 38 charted on Billboard’s pop chart – 21 in the Top 40, ten in the Top 10, three at No. 2, and “You’re No Good” at No. 1. She has earned 11 Grammy Awards, two Academy of Country Music Awards, an Emmy Award, and an ALMA Award. But sadly, in August 2013, Ronstadt revealed she has Parkinson’s disease, leaving her unable to sing.
In April 2014, Linda Ronstadt was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In July 2014, President Obama awarded her one of twelve 2013 National Medals of Arts and Humanities. He also stated that he had had a crush on her when he was younger. Engaged to filmmaker George Lucas for a time in 1984, Linda Ronstadt never did marry. In her 40s, during the 1990s, she adopted two children – Mary and Carlos, now young adults. Her autobiography, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, was released in September 2013 when it debuted in the Top 10 on the New York Times best sellers list.
In that memoir she writes: “Jerry Brown and I had a lot of fun for a number of years. He was smart and funny, not interested in drinking or drugs, and lived his life carefully, with a great deal of discipline.” She said she found him to be “a relief” from the musicians she hung around with. But she also added: “Neither of us ever suffered under the delusion that we would like to share each other’s lives. I would have found his life too restrictive, and he would have found mine entirely chaotic…Eventually we went our separate ways and embraced things that resonated with us as different individuals…We have always remained on excellent terms.”
For additional stories at this website on music please see the “Annals of Music” category page, and for politics, the “Politics & Culture” page. See also, “Noteworthy Ladies,” a topics page with more than 40 story choices on the history and careers of famous women. Thanks for visiting – and if you like what you find here, please make a donation to help support the research, writing, and continued publication of this website. Thank you. – Jack Doyle
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Date Posted: 22 August 2014
Last Update: 17 July 2023
Comments to: jackdoyle47@gmail.com
Article Citation:
Jack Doyle, “Linda & Jerry: 1971-1983,”
PopHistoryDig.com, August 22, 2014.
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“What’s New with Linda Ronstadt? She’s Singing Her Love Songs to Star Wars Czar George Lucas,” People, March 26, 1984.
Patricia Leigh Brown, “Linda Ronstadt, Home Again,” New York Times, September 22, 2008.
“Linda Ronstadt Articles & Interviews,” Ronstadt-Linda.com (fan site).
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Daniel Buckley, “Why Linda Ronstadt Still Matters to Tucson A Tucson Music Historian Reflects on the Lasting Influence of Our City’s Most Famous Musical Export,” Tucson Weekly.com, September 12, 2013.
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Maureen Dowd, “Palmy Days for Jerry,” New York Times, March 22, 2014.
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] | null | [] | 2020-11-16T00:41:11+00:00 | Our team consists of extremely passionate and driven individuals who bring experience from some of the most highly-regarded companies both inside and outside of the aerospace industry. | en | BETA | https://www.beta.team/team/ | Our Team
Luciano Martinez Stefanini
Mechanical Engineer with emphasis in thermo fluids. Passionate for electrification of transportation and aircrafts. Experience in icing protection, thermal management and environmental control systems
Marcela de Melo Anicezio
I am passionate about aviation and all the challenges technological advances bring us. As an experienced aircraft certification specialist, I am thrilled to contribute to Beta Technologies.
Jackie Yan
Jackie is passionate about leveraging technology to better the world and making technology accessible to all. Jackie has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and, prior to Beta, was a Vice President in Media and Communications Investment Banking at Morgan Stanley. Though a recent transplant to Vermont from New York City, she already feels at home in Burlington with her husband and their mini poodle.
Parker Sexton
Parker Sexton is passionate about making things, 3D printing, and perfecting embedded systems. His computer engineering degree is from NC State, where he developed a passion for collaboration and innovation. He is thrilled to do applied work in an innovative company at the bleeding edge of a profound technology.
Thomas Thorne
I am a native North Carolinian who enjoys outdoor adventures with my wife and dogs from the mountains to the coast. I received my B.S. in Biomedical Engineering and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University and have spent 12+ years working in medical device embedded software development. I look forward to diving into my first love of aviation with Beta Technologies. During my spare time, I enjoy hiking, fly fishing, surf fishing, kayaking, whitewater rafting, outdoor cooking, gardening, camping, and volunteer firefighting/EMS.
Yassine Elmzoudi
I am originally from Morocco and moved to Iowa in 2001. Even before receiving my Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Iowa, I began my experience in the aerospace domain by securing an electrical engineer co-op position with Collins. Since then, all of my jobs have been with different aerospace companies as an embedded software engineer. I love outdoor activities and watching Premier League soccer; I am a big fan of the Liverpool team.
Zachary Heibel
Commercial Pilot- SEL/MEL, Commercial Pilot- Helicopter
Zach spent the last seven years flying AH-64 Apaches for the Army and after a short stint in corporate fixed wing aviation has returned to helicopters to teach others as a CFI. When he’s not flying he enjoys cooking and gardening with his wife, Daisy.
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Careers
Graham Hulvey
Graham is a member of the FCC Airborne Software team. He lives in Raleigh, NC but grew up in Shelburne, VT. He graduated from NC State University with a bachelors in Biomedical Engineering and a masters in Computer Engineering. He has a passion for snowboarding, hiking, and everything outdoors.
Shauna Awad
Shauna is a New Jersey native and alumna of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She relocated to Cary, NC after graduating and worked on testing electric vehicle applications at Ford before joining the Beta team. With a passion for software test engineering and sustainable technology, she is dedicated to advancing both fields. Outside of work, Shauna enjoys photographing birds, spending time with her cats, reading non-fiction, and attending hot yoga classes.
David Fleissner
Before BETA I spent nine years as an Electronics Engineer working on 6-axis force/torque sensors and industrial tool changers. I have a BS degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an MS in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina State University. Today I work on BETA’s airborne embedded software.
Matthew Butler
Solving and creating are my core drivers. Aviation and technology are the outlets to express those drivers. My family keeps me grounded and fulfilled and my kids fill me with joy. Flying airplanes, Lego building, blacksmithing, woodworking, music, ice skating, skiing, and game modding are my hobbies.
Nicholas Pecora
Nicholas hails from Myrtle Beach and has a deep passion for golf, sports, music, and overall well-being. With extensive experience managing hotel networks for over 80 properties and running an independent IT business for 8 years, Nicholas has built a reputation for exceptional service in the local community. They are eager to bring their expertise and enthusiasm to their new role, ready to contribute effectively from day one.
Casey Irivn
ERAU (Prescott) Alumni, 20 year System Safety Engineer.
Cheyenne Phillips
With a passion and never-ending hunger for knowledge, I’m down to take on any challenge. Growing up flying Lockwood Drifters ignited my love and appreciation for aviation and has me stoked to earn my pilots license! I’ve always said I know I can do some pretty amazing things, but with the right team I know we can do extraordinary things and that’s why I’m here! When I’m not traveling for work or leisure with my Wife and Daughter, in true KC native fashion you can catch me outside smoking all sorts of food challenging my culinary thinking, and engaging in any adrenaline-producing hobbies.
Rick Florence
I have worked both military and commercial aircraft development programs including the Presidential helicopter replacement program, HondaJet, Gulfstream G500/600 and the Icon A5. I thoroughly enjoy working at startups and was last at Wisk Aero. My background in configuration management spans several decades. Having eight brothers has provided ample motivation to be an individual separate from the crowd while also being a team player. I look forward to contributing to the success of Beta. When not at work I enjoy gardening, hiking, cooking and spending time with my wife, Rosemary; my 3 daughters and 2 granddaughters as well as my 4-year-old chocolate lab, Stout.
Saahil Batra
Saahil Batra is a Battery Manufacturing Process Engineer at BETA Technologies. With seven years of diverse manufacturing experience, including roles at Rivian and Alstom, he brings a strong foundation in process optimization to the team. Holding a Master’s in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University, Saahil is eager to apply his skills to the challenges and opportunities of battery production. He is passionate about contributing to BETA’s mission of sustainable aviation.
Andrew Billings
Born in Vermont, grew up in NY, and eventually came back to my forever home of Vermont. Nearly 10 years in the Aerospace industry in various roles of Inspection and Test. Primary focus the last 6+ years has been Environmental/Dynamic testing. Lives with wife Jaskia, son Owen, and daughter Elsie. Currently when not working trying to keep up with the kids. Super excited to be working on the future of aviation here at Beta!
David Gelwan
Dave has worked in the aerospace industry for almost 10 years- both at a large corporation and at a small startup company. He has extensive experience in modeling & simulation, multidisciplinary design optimization, and control system development. Outside of work, he enjoys hiking, skiing, traveling, and listening to podcasts.
Molly Pepper
I am a native Vermonter who absolutely loves to be outdoors exploring the beauty of our state with my dog and loyal sidekick, Arya. After graduating from Champlain College, I began my career in the finance industry where I discovered my passion for working with numbers. I am so excited to be a part of the Beta team as an Accounts Payable Specialist and being part of the future of flight!
Ryan Verschoore
Configuration Management and Release. I am proud to join Beta with over a decade in the aeronautical manufacturing industry. Prior to coming to work on Beta’s electric aircraft, I supported various defense and proprietary projects. My education was completed at Purdue and Washington University-St Louis. I think of configuration management as a component of systems engineering that allows for the efficient synthesis of changes to all aspects of aircraft production. I am excited to bring my knowledge and drive to help the Beta team!
Ryan Spurney
Ryan is originally from Wilmington, North Carolina, and graduated from NC State University with degrees in Computer and Electrical Engineering. His background is in developing code for FDA-compliant medical devices and he’s excited to bring that experience to the world of electric aviation. When he’s not at work, you’ll find him skiing, golfing, watching F1, or at a hockey game (go Canes!).
Ryan Garrand
Vermont native tradesperson, and tech enthusiast with a deep-rooted love for the outdoors. If I’m not working you can find me on the trails or the water
Dean Corkum
I am a lifetime Vermonter. I had an idyllic childhood growing up in Woodstock where we rode bikes everywhere and played outside all day long. I went to the University of Vermont where I graduated with a degree in Physical Education. I spent 34 of my 36 years teaching at Essex High School. There are a number of Hornet alums that I am looking forward to working alongside. I live in Essex with my wife Lucy. We have two kids. Madison, a 5th grade math teacher in Williston and Grady who works here at BETA.
Keaton Osborne
Keaton is a native Vermonter and enjoys spending as much time as possbile outside. He has three years experience in metal manufacturing. His hobbies include hunting, fishing and historical reenactment.
Elliot Lipman
Elliot graduated with a BS in aerospace engineering with minors in sustainability and computer science from the University of Illinois. During this time, he conducted research with the university’s Center for Sustainable Aviation, analyzing the carbon impact of fuel selection in commercial aircraft. Though born and raised in New York City, he feels at home surrounded by the mountains and greenery of Vermont
Derek Rice
Derek is a graduate of St. Michael’s College. He has been welding and building for 14 years. From sculptures to camper conversions, motorcycles and beyond, he’s always tinkering. When not in the shop, Derek can be found on stage DJing or playing with one of several local groups.
Rodrigo Lopes Rose
Born and raised in southern Brazil, Rodrigo came to the U.S. to pursue a degree in aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech. He then obtained his master’s in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT with a focus on system safety. He is passionate about making flying safer, more efficient, and more sustainable by taking a systems approach to solving problems. Outside of work, you’ll find him out taking pictures of landscapes and wildlife, or at the nearest trivia contest.
Jared Williams
Jared was an engineer and leader on the team that took the worlds largest and most powerful rocket from initial concepts through successful orbital flight. He’s experienced in R&D, manufacturing, performance testing and operations. A 9th generation Vermonter, he takes pride in the state and it’s people. He’s happiest in the mountains and believes in human-nature symbiosis.
Katie Lake
Katie is from Colorado and just graduated from Colorado School of Mines with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and is excited to be an Intern at Beta this summer! She intends to explore Vermont hiking and backpacking and also loves to tele, climb, waterski, and run. You might see her hunting down some local bluegrass spots or playing out of tune on her own violin!
Cailean Sorce
I Grew up in Vermont, and have always enjoyed the simplicity of older machinery. I am passionate about improving older technology with modern advancements, while still maintaining simplicity and reliability.
Emma Sabourin
Emma is a native Vermonter, with a passion for the environment. She is a Chemical Engineering student at Clarkson University, hoping to pursue a career in battery test and development. Emma’s hobbies include traveling, hiking, and playing sports. In the past year, she has traveled to Uganda to install a solar pump for clean water, and to Nepal to build a solar micro-grid system for a rural hospital. Emma’s excited to spend the summer interning with BETA’s battery test team!
Dalton Rice
Dalton is a rising junior at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and will be part of the manufacturing team this summer. After joining the BETA family a few years ago, he is ready and amped to be back again. Outside of work, you could find him playing board games, engaging in spikeball, or visiting a waterhole to cool off.
Reid Randolph
Hi, I’m Reid. I’m from Westchester, New York and am currently a history major at Middlebury College with minors in architecture and computer science. I am passionate about any and all things aerospace and am excited to be a business operations intern at BETA. Some of my hobbies include watching my favorite sports teams and fly fishing.
Sarah Nguyen
Sarah recently graduated from University of Southern California with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering and is currently pursuing a Masters in Aerospace Engineering. She will be joining the Flight Sciences team as an intern. She is very excited to contribute to BETA’s mission towards sustainable aviation. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, traveling, and listening to music.
William Kiernan
My Name is Will Kiernan and I am originally from Saratoga Springs New York. I attend Western Michigan where there is tons of aviation majors which has sparked my interest in the aviation industry.
Braedon Jones
Born in Vermont and graduated from Champlain Valley Union High School, Braedon is a business and finance intern from Saint Michael’s College who is also a member of their collegiate baseball team as a pitcher. Outside of school and baseball, you will most likely find Braedon at the lake, working out, golfing, and enjoying time with friends and family. He is an outgoing individual who loves making new connections.
Bram Halpert
From the DC area, I just completed my first year at Lafayette College in Easton, PA majoring in mechanical engineering. When not studying, I enjoy competing on the Formula SAE Motorsport and Equestrian teams and tinkering with my 1976 Sebring-Vanguard Citicar.
Colin Grund
Colin is currently pursuing their masters in electrical engineering at the University of Vermont with a focus in autonomy. They are a part of their schools FSAE electric team. When not working they are passionate about the outdoors and can be found hiking or rollerblading.
Alessandro Galvan
I always have loved building things and found aircraft to be super cool, so I’m ecstatic I’m able to combine the two now. At UNC Charlotte, I’m studying to be a mechanical engineering technician, and in my free time, I’m likely either forging or swinging a sword.
Simon Flaherty
I am a student at UVM studying Business Analytics with a minor in Mandarin Chinese. I love hiking, mountain biking, snowboarding, and other outdoor adventures. I have a chocolate lab as my adventure buddy, and he loves to join me in all these activities too! I am passionate about aviation, and am excited to be a part of the team to further Beta’s mission!
Chris Emerson
A current grad student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former Army helicopter pilot, Chris is thrilled to merge his passions for aviation and sustainability as a BETA summer intern.
Claire Daly
Claire was born and raised in Burlington, VT, and is entering her third and final year at Albany Law School in Albany, NY. Before law school, Claire earned a bachelor’s Degree in English from Scripps College in Claremont, CA, and lived in NYC for several years working for a small UX research and consulting firm. Outside work, she loves enjoying Lake Champlain and the Green Mountains, traveling to new places, visiting museums, and attending live performances.
Case Bradbury
Case is an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan studying mechanical engineering. At UM, he is a suspension engineer and the race director for SPARK, an engineering project team designing and manufacturing an all-electric motorcycle for track racing. He is excited to support BETA’s manufacturing team as a returning summer intern. Case has always had a passion for sustainable technology and advanced mobility, and loves to snowboard, surf, and mountain bike in his free time.
Zachary Abood-Bieber
Zach is an ME Graduate from UVM who when not working with the team enjoys spending time rowing, snowboarding, or playing in his band RABBITFOOT
Isa Verna
Isa is a rising sophomore at North Carolina State University studying Industrial Design. When her nose is not stuck in a book, you can usually find her messing around with cameras and sewing. She is excited to continue working at Beta Technologies!
Ryan Richter
Ryan is an undergraduate at RIT studying software engineering. Outside of computers, Ryan loves music and plays the saxophone in the RIT jazz ensembles and his band. He also enjoys playing tennis and ultimate frisbee with friends. Ryan loves to talk about anything STEM, music, tennis, frisbee, or car/racing related.
Brendan Patience
Although born in Spain, I was mostly raised in Montreal. I majored in mechanical engineering at McGill. I alternate between bouldering and working out at the gym.
Mika Nalbandian
Mika Nalbandian is an engineering physics student at Queen’s University with a sub-plan in mechanical engineering. Mika is working with the battery team at BETA. In her free time, she enjoys skiing, hiking, traveling, and spending time with her friends and family!
Audrey Mundell
Born and raised in Vermont, Audrey is currently studying Chemistry at the University of Vermont with a minor in art. For the past two years she has interned on the Supply Team while doing the occasional creative project at BETA Technologies and will continue to do so over the summer. She enjoys making art, being on Lake Champlain, and everything to do with music (whether it’s spinning records or playing it on the drums). If you want to talk about anything from chemical science to your latest musical obsession, she’s there to share the excitement!
Gussie Guyette
I recently finished my freshman year at Boston College, majoring in communications. I am a very outgoing person and love to hang out with friends and family, especially my dogs.
Melanie Dostie
Melanie is a rising senior at Worcester Polytechnic Institute studying Mechanical Engineering and is joining the quality team at Beta. She has completed research around electric vehicles and wave energy converters and is eager to work with electric aviation. Outside of work, Melanie enjoys running, hiking, biking and crocheting.
Xavier Hogue
I’m a senior at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in NYC and a USCG veteran. In the Coast Guard, I was hands-on maintaining diesel engines and electronics on our response boats when we weren’t underway patrolling or conducting search and rescues. I have always been passionate about aerospace and renewable energy technologies which landed me in college after serving and then as a manufacturing intern at Beta. In my spare time, I powerlift, cook, and play a ton of video games.
Jack McBride
I am a manufacturing engineer who grew up on Long Island, NY. I graduated from Notre Dame with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, and went on to work in aerospace assembly technology before joining Beta. In my free time, I enjoy cooking, reading, and snowboarding.
Liam West
Liam studied mechanical engineering at CU Boulder where he developed an enthusiasm for systems testing and optimization while designing and building competition wind turbines. Having always considered the Champlain Valley home, he is thrilled to be back, working on instrumentation with Beta’s flight test team. When not at Beta, he is likely playing in the mountains, swimming in the lake, or trying to coax as many tomatoes as possible from his garden.
Samuel McPherson
Sam is a Mechanical Engineer with experience in sustainable fuel research and manufacturing electromechanical sensing systems. When Sam is not at work he enjoys surfing, skiing, rock climbing, all forms of biking and spending time with his partner Zoe and cat Gus.
Jennifer Brine
Jen excels in operations and efficiency, transforming dynamic challenges into streamlined processes. She believes that revolutionizing the aviation industry can create harmony on our planet, making a profound impact far beyond a single individual. An entrepreneur and mechanical engineer, Jen is driven by a passion for solving problems that impact humanity and the world. Her career spans across industries, from heavy movable structures to cutting-edge technology in the musculoskeletal space.
Ben Perry
I am a native Vermonter from a small town in orange county. I prefer to be outside and enjoy taking on new challenges. I am a father of one crazy little boy named Sawyer and an equally crazy mix breed dog named Astro.
Owen Brandriss
I recently graduated from UVM with a master’s in mechanical engineering, for which I conducted my thesis research in satellite propulsion. I have a passion for aerospace and sustainability, so I’m excited to be beginning my professional career on the motors team at BETA. Outside of engineering, I love spending time in the woods, whether searching for new swimming holes or learning to hunt. I also enjoy the guitar, brazilian jiu jitsu, and cooking elaborate meals for my friends.
Tom Grundherr
Tom caught the aviation bug at an early age, soloing in gliders at 15 and earning his Private Pilot Certificate before his driver’s license at 16. The only cure for his aviation passion was to immerse himself further. He was fortunate enough to be selected for Navy flight school, living his dream of flying F/A-18s in the United States Marine Corps. Today, Tom flies Gulfstream business jets for a living and is joining Beta as a part-time flight instructor, sharing his passion for aviation and the lessons he’s learned. When he’s not instructing, you can find him at small airports, tinkering on airplanes with his A&P certification or trying to get his hands on anything with wings. He also likes to snow ski, and ride motorcycles and mountain bikes.
Don (Russ) Russell
An avid enthusiast of things outdoors, preferably on 2 wheels and in the trees these days. Long-time hiker and seasoned Adirondack 46R. Devoted partner to an amazing woman. Father of 2 of the best young men I know and 1 English Mastiff named Oscar. Lover of food, and creative cooking time for friends and family. Designer of custom furniture when the wood shop gets lonely. So if I’m not at work CNC machining something that can hopefully change the world someday, in the kitchen or making sawdust…
Riley Livermore
Riley is a Flight Test Engineer, he spent 12 years doing flight tests for the Air Force and is a graduate of the Naval Test Pilot School. He loves being outside and enjoys biking, hiking, and making nourishing food.
Daron Hume
Native Vermonter, originally from the Northeast Kingdom. Degree from Vermont Tech. Over a decade in Aerospace, specializing in Inspection and Quality Engineering. Lives with partner Ashley, stepdaughters Lily and Willow, 2 dogs, 3 cats, 10 chickens, and a duck. Likes being outside, especially on a bike or a hike. Current passion: yard work.
Sabrina Marchand
Sabrina is originally from California but has called Vermont home for four years. She has worked in many areas from project management to operations, to procurement, and is excited to bring her skill set to BETA. Sabrina is looking forward to being a part of a team that is on the front line of innovation and sustainability in the world of aerospace. You can find her woodworking, doing an escape room, or spending time with her wife and pets.
Melaina Oak
Melaina has a BS in Integrated Natural Resources. After a short stint as an environmental consultant, she transitioned into healthcare IT software development as a technical writer, then engineering manager, and finally scrum master. She took a short break from the healthcare IT to work for The Nature Conservancy. She thrives on teamwork and collaborative problem-solving. She likes learning about how systems work and finding. When not working, she enjoys time with her husband and 3 cats, traveling, hiking, canoeing, and cooking.
Jack Nichol
Hi I’m Jack and I love aviation! Helicopters are my favorite but I do love it all. I am a former Marine that did 3 tours in Iraq during OIF. I have a lot of experience in aviation maintenance, manufacturing, as well as electronics. In my spare time I love to hang out with my family playing sports, skiing/snowboarding, or just enjoying all the greatness that is Vermont.
Thomas Jarvis
Born and raised in Montreal and studied computer engineering at McGill University. Passionate about all things technology. Outside of work I enjoy a good game of chess or volleyball with friends.
Dylan Hillyer
Iowa-raised. Traded a wildland fire career (hotshot/smokejumper) for treetops, building a climbing & furniture business. A Wim Hof Method instructor and stoked to be at Beta!
Colton Poulin
I graduated from Vermont Technical College with a degree in Electrical Engineering. I spent all 4 years in college interning at Beta where the experience I gained was invaluable to my labs and classroom studies. I look forward to continuing my learning as a full-time team member. I have a deep curiosity about how the world works and I enjoy building/creating things. In my spare time, you can find me preparing for my next CrossFit, Spartan, or dragon boat competition.
Maggie Bogosian
Having spent the last 15+ years in product, tech design and supply chain, Maggie is excited to be at BETA with a passion and curiosity for sustainability and innovation. She is process driven and constantly seeking the most efficient route that works for the entire team. Outside of work, her hobbies consist of gardening, natural dyes, weaving and snowboarding. You can find Maggie living in Burlington with her partner, 3 kids, dogs, chickens, bunnies and friends.
Ashley Bennett
It’s been a life long dream to be a part of the future in Aerospace. Previous Business Owner with over a decade of Manufacturing experience in Testing, Inspection and Compliance. Looking forward to creating systems that are simple to use and Lean conscious, while also being productive and efficient. I’m a Native Vermonter, loving of all things related to Family, Growth & Nature. Excited for the opportunity to have a positive impact and growing with BETA.
John Welch
After getting his bachelor’s degree in Natural Resources from UVM, John has been in the EHS field working with a variety of manufacturing, biotechnology, healthcare and higher education facilities. Outside of the office in the winter, you’ll find him snowboarding the Green Mountains and in the summer, exploring swimming holes.
Patrick Schlott
Patrick was born and raised in Vermont and has an educational background in Electrical Engineering. He is very motivated to work on projects that incorporate big ideas that change the world, and is eager to join the BETA team. When away from the work desk, Patrick enjoys kayaking, fishing, tinkering with electronics, hunting radio transmitters for fun, or installing payphones in rural VT.
Baxter Clements
I graduated from Champlain College with a degree in Computer Networking and Cyber Security. I enjoy skiing, scuba diving and reading. I am also setting up a home lab to segment and tinker with my home network and devices.
Trevor Larkin
In the realm of aviation I enjoy flying, embracing new technology and pursuing sustainability. It is my mission to help others to dream big and reach for the stars. I’m dedicated to building a brighter future and helping the aviation community and industry grow.
Jacob Sells
Jacob comes to Beta with a background in quality for precision motion control systems in Aerospace and Defense. A proud Hokie, and engineering graduate of Virginia Tech and William & Mary, he’s always looking for something new to learn. In his free time catch him sailing, snowboarding, backpacking and playing Uncle.
Andrew Woythal
Andrew earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Clarkson University. After graduating, he spent time in Colorado learning to fly in a 1946 Aeronca Champ, which sparked his passion for aviation. After working in the semiconductor industry for 5 years, he joins our team, excited to unite his passions with his skills. When not at work or out flying, Andrew can be found doing just about anything outdoors.
Brendyn Byrne
Brendyn is a multi-generational Vermonter, who has been taught to respect and protect the natural environment from a young age. Brendyn has a B.S. in Astronautical Engineering from the University of Southern California. He has previously worked with the Falcon 9 Subassembly and Mechanisms team at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California. In his spare time, he loves skipping rocks at sunset while listening to Khruangbin.
Gus Busch
I was born and raised in a small town in Northern Michigan. I attended Michigan State University, where I earned bachelor’s degrees in physiology and psychology, followed by a master’s in business management. After college, I began working at my family’s manufacturing company, where I developed a love for the industry. I’m intrigued by the manufacturing process and enjoy witnessing the creation of products. It’s remarkable how, as a collective whole, we can create and develop amazing products. One aspect I particularly appreciate about the manufacturing industry is its constant drive for improvement, a principle I try to emulate in my personal life as well.
Jake Gustafson
Jake has always lived and worked in Minnesota. During his undergraduate in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Minnesota, he found a love for software engineering thru various internships and extracurricular activities. After which he started working full time at Collins Aerospace in Burnsville MN doing various tasks around the certification of Level A Software where during his time he also completed his masters degree in Software Engineering.
Mika Nalbandian
Mika Nalbandian is an engineering physics student at Queen’s University with a sub-plan in mechanical engineering. Mika is working with the battery team at BETA. In her free time, she enjoys skiing, hiking, travelling, and spending time with her friends and family!
Calvin Wong
Calvin is a rising senior at the University of Michigan and will join the flight sciences team as an intern working on the wind tunnel model. He’s very excited to join BETA’s mission towards electrifying aviation and spend time in the Green Mountain State. Outside of work, he enjoys spending time with friends, rock climbing, and sketching in his journal.
Alex Wick
Alex is a software engineering intern passionate about developing innovative technical solutions. He is currently pursuing a degree in Computer Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. When he’s not coding, you can find him skiing Vermont’s slopes, surfing in Rhode Island, or jamming on the guitar, drums, or piano.
Olivia White
I recently graduated UVM with my B.S in Health Sciences, and am currently pursuing my Masters in Public Health. I am also a member of the UVM Varsity Soccer team! I am very outgoing, love building new connections, and am passionate about climate solutions and sustainable practices. Outside of school and soccer, I enjoy golfing, playing with my dog, and trying new foods.
Sydney Weber
I am Sydney, born and raised in Vermont. I am currently in the Vermont Air National Guard as an F-35 Crew Chief as well as attending VTSU studying Electro-Mechanical Engineering. In my free time you can find me on the mountain skiing, out on Lake Champlain wake surfing, or out on the trails with my RZR.
Eli Smith
Eli just graduated from UVM with a degree in Computer Science. He is excited to be supporting the software team as a test engineer and can’t wait to return to the skies during flight training. You may find Eli hiking in the mountains or running through Burlington if there isn’t snow on the ground. Otherwise, look for his tracks in the backcountry!
Bryn Shannon
Bryn is originally from Richmond, Virginia, and is currently studying Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. She enjoys spending her weekends whitewater kayaking, rock climbing, or really doing anything outside. As an outdoor enthusiast, Bryn values sustainability and is driven to support BETA’s mission.
Taylor Rowser
I’m a student at Utah State University studying marketing and computer science. While at university, I’ve worked on a team developing embedded software for a Cubesat. I’m excited to be a part of the team at Beta!
Ryan Richter
Ryan is an undergraduate at RIT studying software engineering. Outside of computers, Ryan loves music and plays the saxophone in the RIT jazz ensembles and his band. He also enjoys playing tennis and ultimate frisbee with friends. Ryan loves to talk about anything STEM, music, tennis, frisbee, or car/racing related.
Lincoln Reiter
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering student at Case Western Reserve University from Hershey, PA who enjoys mountain biking, hiking, and skiing. Co-founder of VTOL CWRU design-build-fly team.
Brendan Patience
Although born in Spain, I was mostly raised in Montreal. I majored in mechanical engineering at McGill. I alternate between bouldering and working out at the gym.
Shea McGregor
I am a Mechanical Engineering student at UVM and a lover of all things aviation. When I’m not in school or flying I serve part time as a crew chief in the Vermont Air National Guard.
Ishai Masada
I am an aerospace engineering student because I want to help the world through aviation technology. I love to stay active in school by finding ways to build experience with programming, mechanical design, and propulsion analysis. I love learning about aviation and I can’t wait to become a part of the industry.
Austin Lew
Austin is in his third year of Mechatronics Engineering at the University of Waterloo. Since his first plane ride, he loves anything to do with aviation and the aviation industry. He grew up in Vancouver BC snowboarding in the winter and mountain biking in the summer, in addition to planespotting at YVR!
Nick Lee
Nick was raised in the woods of Vermont and is pursuing a degree in Electrical Engineering from RIT. He is a former drone racer of over 5 years, and at school, he runs the CNC machines for his Baja SAE team. Outside school, he can be found playing hockey, driving around, biking, skiing, watching YouTube, or working on personal projects like building speakers or circuits.
Julia Lamorey
Born and raised in Vermont, I am currently a 2nd-year mechanical engineering student at Queen’s University. I love being hands-on and building things, and I’m continuing this passion in the wood shop. In my free time, I enjoy going to concerts and being outdoors.
Gabriel Klinger
Gabriel is an engineering student at Harvey Mudd College with experience in fluid dynamics, manufacturing, and battery storage systems. He is an aerospace enthusiast, passionate about helping make aviation greener. In his free time, you can find him belting out tunes from Phantom of the Opera, rocking out to Queen, or engaging in friendly soccer or volleyball matches with his friends.
Dan Jarvis
Lifetime aviation lover and outdoors enthusiast. As long as he can remember he wanted to work with airplanes. A lover of making and learning, he wants to continue to learn more about airplanes, how they work, and use that knowledge to build and create. Born and raised in Vermont, he is an avid biker, skier, climber, hiker, and camper and loves being outside. He is thrilled to be working at Beta this summer in an environment which fosters his interests and goals.
Xavier Hogue
I’m a senior at Vaughn College of Aeronautics and Technology in NYC and a USCG veteran. In the Coast Guard, I was hands-on maintaining diesel engines and electronics on our response boats when we weren’t underway patrolling or conducting search and rescues. I have always been passionate about aerospace and renewable energy technologies which landed me in college after serving and then as a manufacturing intern at Beta. In my spare time, I powerlift, cook, and play a ton of video games.
Konstantinos Hatzidakis
My name is Konstantinos J Hatzidakis, I am currently studying General Engineering with a focus in Engineering Design at Norwich University (Military College of Vermont). I am an upcoming Senior at Norwich, just promoted to Captain, where I will be the XO of the largest company in the regiment. I have played hockey my entire life, played allover America and Canada. I moved away from home at 16 to attend boarding school in NH which I had scholarship for hockey to play. I am a dual citizen of US and Canada.
Jay Fulreader
Jay, an electrical engineering student at Clarkson University, has a passion for all things electric-powered. In his free time, he enjoys mountain biking and skiing.
Henry Epstein
Henry is a mechanical engineer with a passion for aviation and the outdoors. If he’s not building a drone or in the flight simulator, you can find him hiking Mt. Mansfield or exploring a new mountain bike trail system.
Arwen Costello
Arwen is a rising senior Computer Science and Mathematics dual major who is so excited to be returning to BETA this summer to work with the charge team. When not sitting in front of a computer, they can be seen dancing, climbing, or cuddling their cat.
Avery Caron
Hi! I’m Avery, I’m from Vermont and go to school in Daytona Beach, Florida. I love making, fixing, and driving anything that goes fast, and has an engine, or ideally both. Whether it be a dirtbike, motorcycle, racing kart, car, or tractor, there’s a good chance I’ve gotten my hands dirty on it. When I’m not at the motocross track or in my garage, you will most likely find me hiking, mountain biking, skiing, or enjoying the outdoors in some other way.
Seb Brown
Seb is a born and raised Vermonter who attended BHS and the Burlington Technical Center. He is studying mechanical engineering and playing lacrosse at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. He fills various roles with Doyle in The Garage, and likes to cook, play lacrosse, and fly!
Julien Thibodeau
Julien is a recent Mechanical Engineering graduate who completed an internship at Beta Technologies and other sustainability-focused companies during his academic journey. He’s naturally curious about technology and deeply values environmental stewardship. Outside of work, he enjoys outdoor activities like camping and fishing.
Born and raised in Vermont where I graduated from UVM with a degree in business and a concentration in accounting. I love to spend time sailing with my dad in the summers and spending time with my friends on the mountain.
Marc Nasry
I’m an aerospace engineer, son of an aerospace engineer. With 10+ years of experience in aircraft structure as a liaison engineer, I love to find new and innovative ways of saving time and money by thinking outside the box and coming up with creative repairs. When I’m not saving the world by fixing planes, I enjoy long walks, playing basketball, and hanging out with friends. My faith and my family are everything to me and I always enjoy getting to know new people.
Alexandre Msellati
I’ve always wanted to become an engineer. I started my master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering in France, where I grew up, before coming to the US to continue in Electrical Engineering. Passionate about powertrains, those two specializations give me a comprehensive understanding of propulsion systems. When I’m not working or studying a textbook, I usually go for a swim or read a novel to relax.
Christian Lopez
Aeronautical engineer passionate about airplanes, I always want to learn more about new technologies and how it was done in the old days. I love spending time with family, they are my driving force.
Kayla Chenier
Kayla is an intern working with the Systems Engineering team. She is currently studying Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo. In her free time she enjoys travelling, swimming, hiking, skiing, climbing, and spending time outside!
Gabriel Bedell
Gabe brings a unique blend of experience to the BETA team, with a background in both supply chain and law. A passion for skiing led him and his wife to Vermont, where they both enjoy hitting the slopes whenever possible.
Kali Waag
With a lifelong passion for aerospace, I’ve dedicated my career to contributing to the industry’s success. As a seasoned professional specializing in managing quality systems and supplier development, I thrive in dynamic environments where autonomy and problem-solving skills are paramount. Beyond the boardroom, I cherish moments with my family, whether we’re hitting the slopes for some exhilarating skiing, casting lines into tranquil waters while fishing, or simply unwinding poolside at home. These moments rejuvenate me and provide balance to my professional endeavors.
Payton Veilleux
I’ve been involved in aviation for 14 years and have been working as an instructor for the last 5. I briefly flew with the airlines but my true passion is teaching others to fly. In my spare time you’ll find me hiking, skiing, or swimming with my pup, Piper.
Robert Turner
Robert hails from the Eastern Shore of Maryland and studied civil engineering at NC State. Robert has a background in airport design and construction and has a passion for all things aviation. He enjoys being on the water, hiking, cooking, and exploring with his dog, Beau.
Lyra Turner
As a Mechanical Engineer and curious individual, I’m always wondering why or how something is designed the way it is. I look forward to working with the BETA Team to revolutionize the aviation industry. Outside of work, you can find me hiking, backcountry skiing, or knitting with friends.
Ed Tirrell
Hello, My name is Ed Tirrell and I have 25 years of engineering and project management experience in the aerospace industry. I enjoy spending time with family and friends; biking, hiking, boating, watching the sunset, and playing golf.
Matthew Poe
I have been in the transportation industry for over 25 years. I’ve always been someone that liked to pay attention to details and that is why I became an inspector/quality assurance technichan. My wife and I have two sons that keep us moving in all directions. One is getting ready to graduate high school and head to Norwich for engineering. One is off to middle school.
Craig Pearson
Born and raised in Essex Junction VT. Spent 4 years in the Army. Co-owner of leather and sheepskin business for 25 years. Master Craftsman. Builder, fabricator, and fixer of all things. Love my weekends at the cabin with family.
Amela Nurkanovic
Originally from Bosnia and Herzegovina, last 21 years I have called Vermont my home. For most of my life I have been working in the food industry. I’m a mother of twins, Norah and Adam. I like to sing, but nobody like to listen. Enjoying the nature, traveling, cooking, and baking.
Nicolas McCrae
Born and raised in Montreal, I started my career in composites manufacturing within the cycling industry. After a few years living in the US and developing equipment for World Cup and Tour de France winning cycling teams, I am back in Montreal ready to put my expertise to use in a new industry with far greater reach and impact. An avid mountain biker, rock climber, and home-brewer, I am looking forward to contributing to the cleaning up of the aviation industry.
Andrew Mann
Andrew is a materials engineer born and raised in Montreal. He has worked in materials & processes in the gas turbines and electric automotive industry, and is excited to take the leap into aerospace. Outside of work, he enjoys running, cooking, chess or playing with his dog, Baxter.
Justin Harris
Justin is a born leader who believes that collaboration breeds success. He brings a positive attitude and creative energy to BETA’s quality team. A self-proclaimed gear aficionado, he prides himself on being prepared for any and all outdoor adventures, but only if his pup Basil Girl can come.
Fisher
Husband to the most wonderful and beautiful woman ever. Father to two amazing daughters who inspire me daily. When not at work you’re most likely to find me ripping singletrack all Summer and chasing powder all Winter. Wife and both daughters are all astounding athletes, so you’re actually most likely to find me at a track or a cross country meet…but when not at those I’m out on singletrack and pow ha! Obsessed with airplanes and aeronautics since as far back as I can remember. Cannot even find the words to express how excited and honored I am to be a part of defining the future of this space.
Keith Castonguay
I come from a very diverse automotive background, including an Associate of Applied Science Degree in Automotive and Alternate Fuels Automotive with several brand master certifications. My two life passions since childhood have always been air planes and cars. When I’m not at work you can often find me with my family out in the woods exploring nature.
Adam Campbell
My name is Adam Campbell, I was born and raised in Vermont I have 2 children 14 & 2 with my wife of 4 years. I attempt to play golf during the summers and travel frequently for my son’s hockey in the winter.
Andrea Brien
I grew up outside of Philadelphia and attended the University of the Arts where I received my BFA and fine art photography. Shortly after college, I moved to Columbia South Carolina, and worked in the food, beverage, and hospitality industry while also working as a professional photographer. 19 years ago, I came to Vermont for the summer and never left. I enjoy entertaining, gardening, and outdoor activities with my partner, and our two Rhodesian Ridgeback pups.
Andrew Zachar
Andrew Zachar is a Flight Test Pilot and DER with 19 years of experience in Experimental/Engineering Flight Test. He has over 1100 Flight Test Pilot hours spread over 9 different aircraft certification projects and is excited to be part of a team certifying an industry-changing aircraft.
Nicholas Mazzoleni
Nick is joining the Beta team in the Raleigh office to support with FCC verification. He recently completed his PhD in mechanical engineering at North Carolina State University. During his time at N.C. State, he has worked on several different projects ranging from small-scale aeroelastic energy harvesting to soft robotics. He enjoys working in real-time MATLAB and Simulink environments and hardware-in-the-loop testing. In his free time, Nick likes to play tennis and the piano.
Jake Tomlinson
7 years of experience in Manufacturing, mainly in Quality and Inspection. Outside of work I really enjoy music.
Lindsey Stinson
Lindsey is a Chemistry graduate from UVM and has a background in pharmaceutical quality control testing and enterprise application implementation and administration. She is excited to join the Quality team and learn lots more about aviation! When not at work, you can find her eating tomatoes, reading sci-fi novels, and skiing.
Jonathan Laramee
Born and raised in Vermont living all over the state, and with 19 years experience making prototype and limited edition snowboards. In my off time enjoy spending time with family, in the mountains, on a skateboard, playing guitar, and tinkering on the house (and various VW’s).
Gabriella Bernardoni
After graduating from the University of Colorado with a degree in Chemical & Biological Engineering, I moved to VT to explore the East Coast and enjoy the perks of living near water and mountains. I am passionate about contributing to a sustainable future and very excited to collaborate with BETA on this mission! Outside of work, you can find me traveling and spending time with friends and family.
Thomas Beeson
I was born and raised in Montreal, Canada. I majored in aerospace engineering and have a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Polytechnique Montreal engineering school. I am passionate about aeronautics and robotics. My career goal is to bring the two together, and help build a sustainable, competitive and world-renowned aerospace industry in North-America.
Pere Arau Mussons
I was born in Barcelona/ Spain and moved to Germany at a young age. I studied Mechanical Engineering in Darmstadt/ Germany. I worked in Germany and Spain as an Automotive Design Engineer in various OEMs programs for BMW, Mercedes, and Seat in design and development of Body in white, Closures, Exterior and Interior trims. Eight years ago I moved to California and worked as a Design Engineer and DRE for several EV startups like Karma, Nio, Lucid and Canoo working on the development of BIW and closures. And now I am very excited to start working for Beta Technologies which aims to revolutionize urban air mobility by developing eVTOL aircrafts.
Will Feltus
I come from an automotive repair background focused mostly on the collision repair industry. When not working I enjoy spending time with my family and dogs. I like to spend my spare time on the lake exploring in our boat. I’m always looking for a better spot to fish or a quiet cove to paddleboard.
Jack Carnahan
Born and raised in Vermont. Jack graduated with a BA in criminal justice from Norwich University. Coming to Beta as a SkillBridge intern at the end of his active duty service with the US Navy.
Vivek Prabhakar
Originally from India, I moved to the US in 2021. I graduated from NC State University, Raleigh with master’s in manufacturing engineering and have worked with autonomous vehicles and energy storage companies in the past. At BETA, I am part of the product quality team, working to ensure the impeccable quality of our aircraft. After work, you can find me painting, trekking, or watching a UFC match at the local dive bar.
Kunal Bavikar
Kunal, a dedicated system safety engineer, holds a Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech. Fueled by a fervent drive to discover and implement sustainable transportation solutions, he eagerly seeks to contribute to BETA’s ongoing success. Beyond his professional pursuits, Kunal’s zest for life extends to his passions for travel, scuba diving, and exploring culinary delights as an enthusiastic foodie.
Harris LaRock
Harris graduated from UVM with a Bachelor’s of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 2022. He loves finding ways to have a positive impact on people and communities. Harris is excited about the opportunity at BETA to impact the world! In his free time, he enjoys going for long bike rides, morning runs, and anything else that involves sweating outdoors.
Addison LaRock
Addison is moving back home to Vermont after spending over a decade living in Washington and New Hampshire. Along with his passions for technical communication and teamwork, Addison is joining the Beta team, excited to collaborate with unique individuals to implement new technologies. Outside of the office, Addison enjoys spending time on mountain bike trails, skinning up mountains in the backcountry, and hooting-and-hollering down whitewater.
Adam Raymond
Vermont native, self-driven, and ambitious thrill seeker. I come from a background holding many roles within production, and supply chain management for the injection molding industry. I spend my days enjoying gardening and the challenging world of Beekeeping. If I am not on my deck enjoying the evening with my wife (Amanda) I am typically found at the track dragging knees, or in Vegas flying through the Red Rock canyons.
Shea Smith
Shea is a lover of airplanes and the outdoors, born and raised in Huntington, Vermont. He grew up tinkering with Lego Technics, lawn mowers, model airplanes, boats, bikes, and his dad’s heavy machinery. For the last three years he’s helped build a food truck business with two high school friends called GloryBurger. Shea will be starting an engineering degree at Northwestern University in fall 2024.
Frankciano Cabral
As an Avionics Technician since the age of 14, I’ve been immersed in the world of technology and innovation. With a passion for aviation and a love for all things tech, I strive to contribute to building a better future through my work. Whether it’s ensuring the safety and efficiency of aircraft systems or exploring new advancements in technology, I’m dedicated to making a positive impact in the world.
Shandra Jackson
Shandra started her aviation journey through the Navy as an aviation electrician. Growing a passion for quality, safety, and efficiency she found her role in continuous improvement. Focusing on alignment with supply chains and schedules, she strives to help the team have what they need to ensure minimal impacts to the build processes. When she is not at work you can find her spending time with her partner and pets, making improvements around her house, garden, or maybe paddling around a lake.
Jenn Moore
Jenn is a former attorney who pivoted mid-career and has spent the last 12 years in inventory and merchandise planning for some of Vermont’s most iconic companies. Her planning experience ranges from fly fishing gear to flowers to pajamas to teddy bears. She is excited to put her planning chops to use in pursuit of Beta’s mission of sustainable flight. Jenn shares a home in Burlington with her husband, two amazing teenagers, and their four rescued pets. In her free time, you will find Jenn planning her next international trip, practicing yoga, or dancing in the front row at a Phish concert.
Gerlie Cruz
Moving freight across the world in different modes for more than 15 years. Competence, compliance, continuous improvement, dedication, and hard work are my fundamentals. But bonding with the family is priceless; Spending time with my children and traveling or going on a road trip with my husband creates balance and harmony. It’s always relaxing to cook for them, preparing savory ramen in wintertime or crispy egg rolls during the summer.
Daniel Pearce
Daniel Pearce is Quality Systems professional with experience in Semiconductors, Appliances, and the Automotive Industry. Having lived in nine states and four countries, Daniel brings a variety of unique and unusual perspectives to BETA. A consummate problem solver with a keen eye for detail and experienced in leading multi-disciplinary teams to a common goal.
Thomas Williams
Born and raised in Vermont (STJ), 15 years in Boston for college and my early career, 2+ years in Denver, and now back in the Green Mountains. The best job of my life was a start-up in Cambridge that was working on cutting-edge technology with the long-term goal of increased sustainability so I couldn’t be more thrilled to start a similar journey here at BETA.
Ben Wasser
Ben is an engineer with degrees in mechanical engineering and materials science. He has a lifelong passion for aerospace and aviation and has worked on projects ranging from scientific space probes to air-launched rockets.
Jen Walker
After 12 years of teaching high school English, Jen transitioned into the world of technical writing. In the past 8 years, she has created technical content for an array of industries including educational software, bicycle manufacturing, and autonomous vehicles. She is delighted to add aviation to that list. When not at work, you can find Jen running, biking, gardening, reading, writing, snacking, and/or spending time with her husband and fur family.
Bryan Timm
Bryan is an engineer with over a decade of experience, both domestically and internationally. His professional background includes electrical engineering, software development, and data science. Originally from Wisconsin, Bryan loves all things beer and cheese. In the wild, Bryan can be found creating software, writing music, traveling, or tinkering on assorted DIY projects.
Hans Runge
Hans brings 12+ years of rotorcraft flight test and certification experience to BETA. His focus is on performance and flight characteristics including fly-by-wire applications. He loves spending time outdoors hiking, mountain biking, and rock climbing with his family and friends.
Micah Ranallo
Micah has a passion for making things that go fast. he kicked off his career in Manufacturing Engineering with Zero motorcycles and is very excited to continue working with larger electric motors. In his free time, you can find him under a car, in the mountains, or in the water.
Tyler Prather
Originally from Florida, with a Master’s degree in Aviation Human Factors from the Florida Institute of Technology. Before Beta, I worked for Boeing working in Flight Deck Human Factors on the 737MAX and 777X. I am excited to be back on the East Coast, where you can find me paddle boarding, running, or snowboarding outside of work!
Nate Palmer
Nate is a mechanical engineer with experience in both start-ups and aerospace/defense. He has a knack for cleaning up mechanical designs and enjoys tinkering with hardware and building things at work and home. Nate unplugs in the mountains with his dog Maple, or somewhere outside with his superhero wife and 2 kids. He can’t wait to work on a mission he’s passionate about – progressing green energy and moving towards a sustainable future!
Gavin Murphy
I am Gavin Murphy, I am an outgoing active person who isn’t afraid to talk to anybody new. I work hard so I can play harder. When I’m not working you can find me on Lake Champlain either riding my jet ski or wake surfing.
Howie LeBlanco
Howie (he/they) built a career at the intersection of human resources, and diversity, equity, inclusion, belonging, and justice. He is excited to extend his work beyond social and racial justice and into environmental justice, supporting BETA’s sustainability value. Outside of HR and DEIBJ work, he is a toy photographer bringing together action figures, props, lighting equipment, and custom-made set pieces to playfully capture his imagination, bringing new life and story into each shot.
Pete Emerson
I am a software engineer who loves automating All Of The Things. I grew up in Middlebury, and have recently returned to the area after living in Oregon and California for 17 years. I am now living in an old 1870s farmhouse with my wife, kids, dogs, cats, chickens, and ducks.
Alfonso Arreguin Echeverria
After a childhood in Tijuana, Mexico, Alfonso moved to the United States where he completed his degree in Aerospace Engineering. Over the past 6 years, he has worked on a variety of projects, with an emphasis on designing composite structural components. His hobbies include paragliding, sailing, and motorcycle riding.
Jonas Armstrong
Jonas grew up skiing, hiking, and biking in Flagstaff, Arizona. He studied Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering at Webb Institute in New York, where he learned to design ships. After graduating, he moved to New England to be close to the mountains. He is passionate about making aviation more efficient, and is thrilled to be part of Beta’s team doing that!
Raoul Surprenant
After completing a degree as a mechanical engineering technician, I am now at my last year of aerospace engineering at Polytechnique Montreal. I love to design, built and fly/crash model airplane and in my free time I’m passionate about rock climbing and the outdoors.
Diane Vitas
Diane, aka Skid, is a world traveler since conception. She is happily nesting in OHIO, the birthplace of aviation and now hub of Advanced Air Mobility. She views education melded with hands on experience as the ticket to adventure. She is forever thankful for her military aviation career, dabbling with GA flight instruction and homeschooling four incredible humans, as well as her touch and go with the National Aviation Hall of Fame, where she met some of the most inspiring innovators. She dedicates her time and energy pointing the next gen to look forward and up!
Joe Sedon
I graduated from the University of Vermont with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. I worked as a line cook before refocusing my career with a quality control role in aerospace manufacturing. I’m excited to join the team at BETA and be a part of developing sustainable aviation technology. Outside of work I love snowboarding, biking around Burlington, and playing sports with my friends.
David Schmidt
David Schmidt is native to Vermont and a Commercial pilot SEL, I am vice chairman of the Planning Commission in the town I live in. For the past 6 years I have instructed the Unmanned Aerial Systems course for senior aviation students at Vermont State University. I have spent the last decade as a building contractor and look forward to applying those skills at BETA.
Stephanie Menotti
With an academic background in biopsychology and computer science, I am interested in the interactions between humans and technology. My love of travel (28 countries and counting) has helped me develop a deep appreciation for the diversity of human experiences and connections. I’m driven by my competitive nature and team-oriented spirit, and there is no creative challenge, sporting event, or good adventure I would refuse. I love meeting new people, trying new food, learning new languages, and overall facilitating the growth of new neurons. In my spare time, I like exploring the world with my drone named Darwin, dabbling in photography, filling my house with LEGO creations, reading, and playing croquet in the mountains.
Michael McKenney
Mike brings over 20 years of aviation and leadership experience from the Marine Corps. While serving, he flew the AV-8B Harrier, conducted operations around the globe, and delivered technology solutions through collaboration with government, industry, and foreign partners. Mike is thrilled to build the future of aviation with the BETA team. When not in the D.C. or Burlington offices, you can find him on hiking, biking, and skiing adventures with his wife and three daughters.
Morgan Lamendola
I am passionate about helping people find their next adventure through recruitment. With my career history in startups and manufacturing, I am excited to contribute to BETA’s mission. Outside of work, I enjoy reading, fostering cats, and spending time in my garden.
Christian Kleiner
Born in Germany, Christian lived on three continents during his childhood, spending most of his life here in Vermont. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from The University of Vermont and MBA from Bentley University. When not at work, he enjoys spending time outdoors (hiking, biking, boating/jet skiing, soccer), traveling, and is very excited to continue the pursuit of his pilot’s certificate. He is proud to be part of Beta’s mission to electrify aviation!
Jason Jung
Born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in Indiana, I bring diversity wherever I go. Following in the footsteps of Neil Armstrong, I earned my Bachelor’s degree from Purdue and then went on to USC to complete my Master’s in Mechanical Engineering. Since I was young, I’ve been passionate about creating and doing things that positively impact people’s lives. I’m thrilled to continue pursuing that dream here at BETA. Outside of work, you’ll find me either traveling, exploring new restaurants in town, or playing sports.
Stephanie Dutra
Originally from California, Stephanie ventured to the Midwest to earn her BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Illinois. Joining the flight controls team at BETA, she brings a background in systems and human factors engineering, along with a passion for sustainable aviation ignited by designing a hybrid-electric aircraft her senior year. Outside of work, you’ll find her exploring her new home in Vermont, cooking up a storm, and practicing her latte art skills.
Lucas Cavallaro
My name is Lucas and I am thrilled to be a part of the team here at BETA! I have always been fascinated by aviation and pushing the limits of human design, so I couldn’t imagine a more exciting place to work. In my free time I enjoy skiing, snowboarding, golfing, cornhole, pickleball, squash, fantasy football, and attempting to grow bonsai trees. My amazing wife Jordan is a preschool teacher and we live at home in Fletcher with our Bernese Mountain Dog Morty and our cat Reese.
Michael Fredette
Mike (aka Animal) a 5th + generation Vermonter and father/stepfather of 7 adult humans, comes to Beta from Collins Aerospace as a Final Inspection Tech in MRO. Served 8 years with Vt Army National Guard as a commo guy, and many years in retail management/leadership roles. In the wild you can find Mike behind his drums, singing, chilling with his wife and 2 fur kids, chasing the sun on his Harley with his wife, or wandering the aisles of Lowe’s in search of inspiration for his next house project. Inside Beta you’ll likely see him singing, as well as drumming on anything and everything his hands and feet touch.
Bao Nguyen
Bao takes a keen interest in understanding how things are built and is excited to build a new efficient path into the future. Coming from a manufacturing background, he hopes to find the right flow that will allow him to achieve better ideas, higher goals, and deeper passions. He’s also a deal seeker and one that likes to min/max.
Brandi Vincent
Born and raised in Michigan. I’m a lifelong learner with a passion for exploring new ideas and perspectives. I thrive on curiosity and discovery. With a background in materials management, operations and ERP systems, I’m dedicated to continuous growth and finding creative solutions to challenges. Outside of work, I enjoy spending time being active with my family, friends and dogs. You’ll often find me working out, listening to podcasts, engrossed in a good book, attending a concert, skiing, enjoying pool days or volunteering in my community!
Meranda Turner
I am originally from Vermont, but my career has taken me all over the country to a wide range of manufacturing facilities. I am very excited to apply my aeronautical engineering background along with the experiences from other facilities to Beta. When I’m not at work you can find me adventuring outdoors or out on the soccer field.
Gary Snow
I’ve spent most of my career in Quality and Operations Management mostly in Defense industry. When not at work I enjoy all things cycling and spending time with my family and dogs.
Noah Ranallo
Noah fell in love with flying at age 18 and earned his Private Pilot Certificate at the Shelburne Airport, during his senior year in high school. He now joins BETA as a Flight Instructor and FAA Designated Pilot Examiner. He is excited about sharing the joys of flying with BETA team members and to be a part of moving aviation in a more sustainable direction. When he is not flying, you can find Noah skiing, biking, going on long walks in the woods with his wife and their dog Jenny, or working on a renovation project on his 1850s Farmhouse.
Kyle Paquette
I am a 4th generation Vermonter. Who grew up on my family farm in Colchester. I have spend over 20 years in the automotive industry as a technician. I enjoy all the seasons Vermont has to offer by spending summers boating on lake champlain and winters in the mountains.
Dylon Murphy
I bring a foundation in Manufacturing Engineering, earned through my BS degree from VTC, coupled with a passion for problem-solving and innovation. Excited to make meaningful contributions at BETA Technologies! Beyond the workplace, I find joy in exploring the outdoors with my son, Knox, whether it’s hitting the trails on ATVs & dirt bikes, snowboarding, playing sports, or hunting.
Aravind Manoj Nair
Joined BETA as a Motor Control Software Engineer, bringing fresh insights from completing my MS in Electrical Engineering, specialized in Electrical Drives and Controls, from UW Madison. In my role, I focus on innovating motor control software to enhance efficiency and performance. Beyond my engineering pursuits, I enjoy gaming and driving, which provide me with a perfect blend of relaxation and adrenaline outside the professional sphere.
Aayush Kapar
Aayush, hailing from Nepal, nurtured his love for Aviation and honed his skills in Aeronautical Science on the Florida Space Coast. His passion for aviation technology emerged, leading him to specialize in avionics. Since graduating, Aayush has been actively involved in avionics systems engineering, contributing to cutting-edge advancements. Outside of work, he finds joy in flying, mountain biking in the summer, and snowboarding in the winter.
Steve Dickison
Born and raised outside of Montreal, Quebec. I have a bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering from Concordia University (Montreal) and a master’s in Systems Engineering from SMU (Dallas, TX). Over my 13+ year career, I’ve worked on everything from designing and certifying helicopters to designing systems on the most advanced fighter jet engines in the world. I love skiing, snowboarding and mountain biking. I’m thrilled to be able to combine my passion for sustainability and aviation here at BETA.
Kristen Costello
Kristen’s passion for the future of aviation and sustainability led her to BETA’s Government Affairs team. A Kansas State graduate with over 15 years in aviation, Kristen’s journey includes collegiate and corporate flight training environments, Part 91/135 flight departments, as well as emerging tech/UAS operations prior to coming to BETA. As a dual pilot household, Kristen and her Vermont-native husband love to share all things aviation with their three daughters.
Eric Boros
I doggedly try to learn and to grow, however uncomfortable that may be. To improve is to change; to become perfect is to have changed often. I am an NC native, NCSU engineering alumni, athletics enthusiast, and have had a varied career: fencing coach, industrial hygiene tech, semiconductor test tech, and aerospace sensor design engineer.
Patrick Beauregard
Pat comes to BETA with experience in project management and logistics from the Army and a passion for sustainability as a lifelong skier and outdoorsman. He is excited to contribute to BETA as it changes the world. In his free time, Pat pursues adventures with his family in the great outdoors.
Stanislas Barrier
I’m a mechanical engineer passionate by mechanics since my young age. I moved to Montreal at 21 where I got an Engineering degree. I started my career designing suspension arms for the automotive industry. Some of those parts went on EV’s. Then I jumped into the full EV experience by designing mechanical system on Electric Watercraft. After road and water vehicle, I’m excited to pursue with Electric aircraft what always attracted me. Outside of work, I love spending time outside somewhere between the mountains where I am rock climbing or skiing and the rivers where I enjoy fishing.
Jaxsen Yu
Born and raised in Ogden Utah. I spend two years working as a crew chief for the C-17A. After that I spent 2 years on Northrop Grummans A350 program. Then I moved to Northrop Grumman B-21 program.
Pandora West
Pandora’s love for the planet comes from growing up in the wilds of Colorado. Before studying for her mechanical engineering degree at CU Boulder, she worked in diagnostic genetics in Utah, where she discovered her true priorities: skiing and long desert trail runs. Now, a mechanical engineer with an interest in integrating electrical and mechanical systems, Pandora continues to dabble in sports and farming with her husband and English shepherd, all while planning the next big adventure.
Éloi Pinon
Éloi graduated from a master’s degree in aerospace engineering in Montreal after studying mechanical engineering in Toulouse, France. He is passionate about Formula 1 and mechanical sports. After interning for 8 months at Beta, he will be part of the Structures test team and will design equipment to break (maybe not every time) aircraft components. When not at work, you can find him playing rugby, working out at the gym, playing Spikeball, having a BBQ with his friends in a park or cooking for his roommates.
Alden Martin
7 Year Manufacturing Engineer, 5-Axis Mill and CMM programmer. Formerly at Pre-Tech Precision Machining. Enjoys sailboat racing, skiing, occasional skydiving.
Lucas Lonegren
I am a dedicated leader who excels at the intersection of creative and strategic thinking. The belief that passion is born from curiosity and stepping out of one’s comfort zone and continuously learning is at the core of my drive. Over the last 16 years, I have served as the Director of Operations for the leading U.S. manufacturer of handmade glass lighting components.
Matthew Hill
Lifetime aviation enthusiast and history buff. With a background in graphic design, screen printing, and automotive repair, I spend most of my free time reading science fiction, historical non-fiction, and playing video games. Very enthusiastic to be a part of the next generation of flight.
Isaiah Foss
I’m Isaiah Foss, a born and raised Vermonter. I even acquired my BS in Mechanical Engineering here in state at UVM. When I’m not running to look out the window or staring up at the sky watching for aircraft overhead, I’m likely designing, 3D printing, or building something my wife likely disapproves of! I’m naturally curious, and sometimes this manifests in disassembling objects I probably shouldn’t have touched. My curiosity fuels my motivation as I’m always in search of new information!
Dustin Fisher
Dustin is an avid tinkerer and RIT graduate with a degree in Computer Engineering Technology. Dustin is from Saugerties New York and is ready to be a part of the team that will be the future of electric flight. In his free time, he can be found in the garage making electric dirt bike conversions, at the computer designing custom electronics for his projects, or at the slopes on his snowboard.
Hugo Dumortier
Hugo is a french former intern at Beta. He used to work on the design of the wing dev test rig, he is now working with the awesome Manufacturing Team. He is eager to put his skills to the service of the team. Out of work, Hugo loves to go to the swimming pool or running, when the weather gets cold, you will find him at a table with a cute board game !
Ryan Dubois
I am a lifelong Vermonter with a background in industrial PC manufacturing. My hobbies are largely comprised of gaming whether that’s PC gaming, board gaming and jigsaw puzzles for the cozy winter months. Always up for any kind of challenge, it’s almost a compulsion for me to find the solution.
Teddy Coughlin
Edward Coughlin (Teddy) is a graduate from Clarkson University in 2023. I enjoy anything that spins. I am an antique airplane, boat, and car enthusiast. I like fixing and restoring anything vintage from chainsaws to airplanes. I am an avid rc airplane builder and pilot, and enjoy snowmobiling, skiing, flying and boating. I am a private pilot working towards IFR and commercial.
Greggory Carpenter
Gregg is a born and raised Vermonter which instilled in them early a love of nature and green spaces. Gregg has more than 10 years of professional firmware development experience and a love of making embedded computers and code in general do interesting things in useful spaces.
Michael Awad
Michael is a recent Cornell and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute graduate. In his free time, he plays and watches soccer, and tries to cook. He is the youngest of three, and yes, his family saved the coolest kid for last.
Justin Allen
I’m Justin. I grew up in a variety of places being a Navy brat and settled down with my wife Amanda and our 6 year old son, Liam in Lincoln. I have a background in assembly in the industrial electrical field and have always been an aviation enthusiast. When not at work, you can find me biking, camping, or playing retro video games with my family
Evan Zelesnik
After studying Physics at DePauw University, my interest in sustainability led me to work at SolarCity & Tesla. Having always had a passion for aviation, I later decided to pursue a MS in Aerospace Engineering at Utah State University. At BETA I look forward to contributing to the goal of making aviation less reliant of fossil fuels. At home I enjoy time spent with my wife and our 2 dogs and playing/recording music.
Christopher Mastropietro
Chris is a manufacturing expert having worked in a wide range of fields, from optics to batteries. Chris is highly driven individual who works hard and plays hard. When not working Chris can be found either engrossed in a personal project or in the mountains as an avid skier and Rock climber.
Davis Lavoie
Born and raised in Vermont. Graduated from UVM with degree in electrical engineering. Previous experience at Beta wiring tests rigs and creating harnesses for Alia. Hoping to bring my skills to the instrumentation team. Enjoy spending time outside in the green mountains and lake Champlain.
Alex Kreissle
Hi! I am Alex. With a background in automotive mechanic and racing (I worked with NASCAR) I love tinkering with anything and everything. Outside of work I love being outside hiking, sailing, spending time with my daughter and working on projects.
Seamus Hannan
Seamus is a curious tinkerer with a penchant for experimentation. His creative impulses force him to do things like play music with his friends, build odd things out of wood, and refuse to follow recipes. Skiing is the only sport he really cares about, but he’s usually ready for any kind of adventure, especially unguided bushwhacking in the woods. He was a Geologist in college and will often forget to look up from the ground. He lived in a converted short bus for 2 years.
Eric Gifford
Originally from Vermont, Eric is an electro-mechanical engineer with a passion for the outdoors and working with his hands. When not in the office, Eric loves to ski, bike, hike or can be found working on his latest project in his shop.
Connor Garnsay
Connor is a native from Michigan and got into the world of Aviation through a technical program there. Through that found himself with a job in VT working on general aviation aircraft. The drive for a more sustainable future and a hardworking personality to be better has led him here.
Holly Chase
Holly Chase is on the public affairs team at BETA, joining the team with a background in consulting and non-profit work. She is a proud graduate of the University of Connecticut (go Huskies!) and has enjoyed time spent living Utah, Colorado, and New Hampshire before settling in Vermont. Outside of work, you can find Holly catching up on podcasts, skiing, or biking with her husband Eddie.
Crystal Berg
Crystal was born and raised in North Dakota and loves fishing, board games, and recreational sports leagues. She brings a variety of perspectives to BETA’s Software Verification team, including majors in Mathematics and Aerospace Engineering, with experience in System Requirements Development and Test & Verification. When she’s not doing house projects or starting a new craft project, Crystal aspires to finally attain her private pilot’s license and fly her friends and family around the country.
Jason Kuerth
Jason, or Bubs as most know him by is a local Vermonter who loves motorcycles and his family that let’s him have motorcycles. He’s travelled the world both for work and pleasure. He’s full of stories, so careful if you get him going.
George Drumheller
George works on the commercial team. He is a Seattleite and received his B.A. from Middlebury College in Political Science. He loves biking, climbing, and listening to podcasts. Most of all, he loves his dog, Walter.
Brandon Campbell
Brandon was born and raised in Savannah, GA. He currently lives in Pooler, GA with his wife, Anna, and 2 daughters Chloe (14) and Carly (11). Brandon brings 16 years of aerospace experience to BETA with a background in both Accounting & Procurement. He graduated with a BS in Finance from Florida State University & MBA from Georgia Southern University. He’s joining the Supply Chain team to manage consumables, hardware, and raw materials. When he isn’t pinned to his laptop chasing parts, he’s either spending quality time with his family or golfing.
Tracy Tupper
I’m a native New Yorker. 25 years of Quality / Engineering / Consulting experience under my belt. I graduated with Honors in Engineering from a SUNY College. I live in Dannemora, NY (famous for the 2015 Prison Break/Ben Stiller made a mini-series of the escape) with my Wife, 4 dogs, 2 cats, and 4 tropical birds. I have 3 grown children who are doing amazing things in their professional careers. I have been a musician since the age of 5 (many, many moons ago). I play almost any instrument, but have a special love for the Bass Guitar. My love began with Bombardier Aerospace in 1999.
Mike Dubie
Mike grew up in Vermont and is part of the Government team. Prior to joining Beta, Mike served for 36 years in the USAF and ANG as an F-16 fighter pilot and senior general officer. As a commercial pilot, he also flew the 727, A-320, DC-10 and 747-400 at Northwest and Delta Airlines.
Ben Schullo
I was born and raised in Minnesota. I graduated from UW-Stout with a degree in Manufacturing Engineering, but pivoted into supply chain focused roles for the past 6+ years. My fiancé and I moved to Vermont in 2021 when she got into Residency at UVM and we have really enjoyed all Vermont has to offer. In my free-time I enjoy spending time with my fiancé, our dog and 2 cats, doing outdoor activities, and Coaching Crossfit.
Larry Burke
Larry has over three decades of software and hardware engineering experience including 8 years of airborne software development. When he learned about the extraordinary things Beta was doing with electric flight, he knew he needed to be part of it. Larry is originally from Pennsylvania and enjoys biking, kayaking, and boating. He is thrilled and honored to be a Beta Team Member!
Nicholas Bresnahn
I studied materials engineering at Colorado School of Mines and since graduating I have worked with a variety of manufacturing processes such as investment casting, CNC machining, and Li-Ion battery production. I love learning how everything is built and enjoy making improvements. In my free time, you’ll find me working on my car and motorcycle in the summer, and skiing the in the winter.
Tom Baginski
Tom has a BA in Graphic Design from Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Since then he has become a Creative Director, an Art Teacher, a Chef, an Immersive Environmental Artist and most recently a 3D Fabricator. He helped to build the half scale replica of the Wright Brothers model B airplane that hangs over the ticket area in the Burlington Airport. He is also one of the artistic team members that built the Mushroom Forest shipping container that lives in the Beta parking lot.
Caroline Desorcie
I am a native Vermonter who enjoys spending time with my family. As a mom of three daughters and nana to two grand-daughters I seem to keep pretty busy outside of work. I also have two dogs, Finnley and Brody. Through the years I have found a strong interest in finance and look forward to joining Beta and continuing to grow.
Chris Perren
Chris is Vermont native with a deep background in machining. Growing up in his fathers shop starting on a broom, he’s worked his way up to programming and machining multi-axis high precision parts. After spending the past decade+ in the plastics and nuclear industries, he feels it’s time to focus on a more sustainable and new, exciting path in the machining world. When he’s not on a machine, you can catch Chris in the backcountry in the winter or on the pitch coaching his 2 daughters during the warmer months.
Calvin Butler
Calvin is a Data Engineering with experience in Cloud Engineering and DevOps. In his free time he works on end to end software projects, practices his handstands, and loves to be outdoors. Calvin is extremely grateful for the opportunity to work with and support fun and hardworking people on the path to sustainable flight!
Jacob King
I am a fun-loving, active guy who enjoys working and playing. During high school, I worked at a hardware store and an automotive repair facility. I enjoy working on and racing my dirt bike and ATV, as well as mountain biking and skiing. I am passionate about aviation and hope to attain my private pilot rating as well as deepen my professional skillset.
Cordial Di Ruggiero
Cordial is a Manufacturing Technician with a BS from Unity Environmental College and is certified in Continuous Improvement. He has a background in aerospace, manufacturing, and conservation law enforcement. When not at work he is in his workshop tearing down/building computers, making creations with his 3D printer, or fixing an appliance he accidentally broke (don’t tell his wife).
Kelly Lucier
I’m Kelly Lucier and am a native Vermonter. I’m a mom of 4 boys and spend most of my nights and weekends on a baseball, football or soccer field. I love baking, all things outdoors and reading when I can find free time. I’m super excited to join the Beta Team and make a difference!
Heather Selleck
Also known as bubbles, sunshine or smiley you’ll find Heather crunching numbers or paying the bills. With zero volume control you will also likely hear her giggles. While her pragmatic approach sent her into the finance field, she’s extremely excited to be able to support the dream of flight.
Laurent Regnault
Laurent has been an expert in Dimensional Management (± on the drawings!) since 2002. He worked in France and Quebec, mainly for aerospace and a little bit for train.He love’s rock’n roll dance and rocket science!
Seth Maciejowski
Seth grew up in southern Vermont and can be often found logging flight time falling off local cliffs while rock climbing. He walks the talk of sustainable living as a long time user of solar power and biomass (AKA wood). Seth’s background is in Electrical Engineering and he is always interested in finding unique ways of using new and old technologies to solve cool problems.
Colten Lowe
I’m Colten, I grew up in Alaska working at remote fishing and skiing lodges where I gained an appreciation for the aviation world. I have 10+ years of experience in facilities maintenance and entrepreneurial experience running my own small business. Some of my favorite things include game nights, outdoor adventures and sitting around a campfire.
Adam Lowe
Adam joins BETA as an intern after over a decade in the Army as an Aviation Officer and Black Hawk pilot, more succinctly described as “a little of this, a little of that.” His career has taken him all over the world, but his favorite experiences have centered around creating and sustaining incredible teams. First introduced to Vermont through his now wife, they have been thrilled to recently relocate to the state to raise their daughter. Outside of work, any time not devoted to his family he endeavors to spend outside hiking, skiing, or cycling.
Rebecca Lawlor
I am Rebecca and I am from Belfast, Northern Ireland. In Ireland, I live with my wife Eimear and French Bulldog Alfie. I am a total foodie! I love cooking and baking, the more extravagant the better, and as I am coeliac I enjoy the challenge of experimenting. I love playing any type of sports, and spend my time in Ireland in the outdoors – playing rugby, walking the beach, hiking and surfing. I love to travel and no adventure is ever too big!
Paul Howell
Most recently served as Operations Manager at Husky Technologies, after receiving A&P in 1991, worked in general, airline, private jet and helicopter industries.
Keith Hendershot
Hi my name is Keith Hendershot, and I live in Rochester Vermont. I am a Private Pilot, Remote Pilot, Airframe and Powerplant Mechanic. I started in aviation as a avionics bench technician repairing legacy avionics and autopilots, which quickly transitioned to line maintenance and service. I am excited to bring all the skills I have learned over the years to contribute to the Beta team.
Meghan Burns
Meg studied Musicology (BA/MA), and transitioned to the business world, later earning her MBA. Meg previously worked in the outdoor industry, focusing on sustainability. Recently, Meg worked in the electric power equipment industry, tackling sourcing and process excellence. Meg is passionate about sustainable innovation, process improvement, and supplier management. When Meg is not at work she can be found on a snowboard, bike, rocking out on guitar/bass, fishing, or traveling with her family.
Jamie Bullivant
Passionate, competitive, thinker, and idea guy – has been the core of what drives me. I have a love for people – family – friends- and work. Work hard and play hard!
Bobby Backofen
Bobby started at Virginia Tech in Mechanical Engineering while working for a construction equipment manufacturer. After completing both an EE and ME degree he spent most of his career making embedded systems for electrical power equipment and Lithium-Ion batteries. He’s excited to use all of his training to make electric airplanes fly.
Mike Werner
Mike has spent over 30 years designing and manufacturing Interesting contraptions in the aerospace, defense, semi-conductor, automotive and general manufacturing sectors. He started and ran an industrial automation design/build firm for nearly 10 years. Mike is a long time Vermonter who spends his time with family sailing, hiking, biking, skiing, diving, walking dogs, but mostly doing chores. He is actively pursuing his private pilot license.
Lindsay Staples
Prior to joining the legal team at Beta, Lindsay served as Senior Manager of Legal Operations and Paralegal Services at National Life Group where she has nearly 17 years experience in the financial services industry. Lindsay spearheaded the Legal Ops Department, championing legal project management and legal technology implementation. Prior to that Lindsay launched her career in the litigation department at WilmerHale in Boston, MA. She’s a St. Michael’s College alum, now residing in Vermont with her family, relishing the state’s natural beauty.
Mike Murphy
My name is Mike. I grew up in Vermont. I’m passionate about board sports and Mountain biking. Some qualities that are important to me are creativity, the ability to have fun, and the pursuit of a good adventure. I enjoy building, woodworking and a variety of different art mediums.
Holly LeClair
I have a bachelors degree in Psychology and began my career in safety in 1995. Since then I have worked in construction, insurance and managed a safety consulting company for 20 years focusing on helping VT businesses with their safety management. I enjoy spending time with my family, including my furries ones.
Adil Khan
Over 10 years of experience in product/quality assurance and certification for a variety of aerospace and space products. Specializing in airborne SW/AEH and working on certification efforts with FAA, TCCA, aircraft OEMs, NASA, CSA, JAXA, etc. I enjoy biking, hiking, soccer, basketball (let’s go Raptors!), cooking and poutine (you need the St. Albert’s cheese curds).
Melissa Kelly
I grew up in NH and graduated with a BS in mechanical engineering from Daniel Webster College. I spend my free time flying, hiking, backpacking, skiing, and mountain biking. When I’m not outside, I am either taking photos, woodworking or spending time with friends and family. I’m excited to make the world a more sustainable place by supporting BETA’s mission to develop a net-zero emission aviation system.
Ian Hommel
Food brings us all together. What better way to stay together!
Solal Hecker
I was born and raised in Paris, France, where I learned to enjoy life, travel, good food and wine. I love skiing, scuba diving and soon… flying. Lately, I’m very interested in philosophy, particularly the subjects of ethics and metaphysics. I spend a lot of my free time walking my dog in the woods with my dear wife. I’m also a father of 3 wonderful kids (even if I’m reminded how teenagehood can be challenging…)
Amanda Wheeler
I have 10 years of aerospace experience working in both quality and supply chain. I have supported both new product introduction and sustaining engineering efforts in my career and have a strong bias for action. Aviation has always fascinated me and I’m excited to be able to merge this interest with my career. As a single mom of two I’m quite busy- but love to run, hike and hoop dance in what little spare time I get!
Akila Vedaiyan
Akila earned her Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering. Her aerospace expertise was honed during her tenure at Honeywell Aerospace, where she contributed to software and systems verification across various domains, including engines, displays, FMS, and flight controls. Outside of work, Akila enjoys exploring new destinations, spending playful time with her children, and hiking in the woods with her family.
Eli Rodriguez
Eli has a BS from Florida International University and an MS from Purdue University in Mechanical Engineering. He has experience designing drivetrains in Aerospace application. He enjoys spending his spare time with his family.
Quinn Perini
Quinn is a recent graduate from Harvard University where he got a BS in mechanical engineering. Passionate about electric vehicles since he was a child, Quinn is a proud member of the battery team and is enthusiastic about designing the next generation of battery packs. Originally from Harrison, NY, Quinn has embraced the outdoor Vermont lifestyle and likes to go skiing, running, biking, and, when it’s warm, out on Lake Champlain. He is also an avid photographer, loves to travel, and enjoys a good craft beer.
Vasu Nambeesan
Vasu is the reliability guy, working within the Safety team at Beta. He has a graduate degree in Energy Science from Carnegie Mellon University and led a team of performance and reliability engineers in the grid-scale energy storage industry in a previous life. He’s also a private pilot and volunteers at the VA Wing Civil Air Patrol. Beta brings together his experience with Li-ion batteries and his passion for flying!
Jake Burnham
Jake brings a passion for supporting people and building teams to his role with Beta. With experience as a teacher, designer, construction manager, and heavy equipment operator he is driven by elevating teams to achieve audacious goals. A generational Vermonter, Jake finds calm in the work of the woodshop, sunrise skin track, or après SUP.
Jack Brown
Jack is a Middlebury College grad and instrument-rated pilot. His formative work experience was at a commercial apple orchard. He loves operations and hands-on work and is thrilled to be at Beta as a member of the structures manufacturing team.
Marco Antonitti
Marco Antonitti has a diploma in Automobile Mechanics, a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and certificates in Stress Analysis, Finite Element Methods and GD&T. Having specialized in Materials and Composites, he is stubbornly curious when it comes to composite structures and mechanical systems. If it moves, he needs to know how it works. Outside of the 9-5, Marco has traded trackdays with his motorcycle and major repair/maintenance on his vehicles (due to his transition to an EV) for Arduino boards, building a bicycle for his two kids – and the next family project, a go-kart.
Zenab Muntasar
Office coordinator for the Montreal office and I am currently pursuing my undergraduate degree in Human Relations at Concordia University. I have experience in various roles within human services, and I now support the beta team with any facility and office-related tasks. In my free time, I enjoy traveling and exploring new places to eat
Cory Deacon
I am a Manufacturing Engineer who loves to learn and try new things. When I am not at work I’m either building things in my garage, tinkering with my ham radio, or running on the Burlington bike path.
Trent Thorson
Trent is a Mechanical Engineer with experience in design, metal and composite materials, and analysis. He has worked on projects from the size of a 400 ton mining truck to a suspension on a disk drive. He has been working on Part 23 aircraft structures for the last 16+ years. He enjoys the outdoors, golfing, hunting, fishing and house and car projects. He has been married to his college sweetheart for 27 years and has a son and a daughter.
Tom Kurowski
Tom believes there is a profound opportunity for technology to enhance the way we experience the natural world. Born and raised in Buffalo NY, he has lived by the motto “There’s no bad weather – just bad gear”. That translated into having a hobby for every weather pattern and no excuse to stay inside. With experience in conventional hydraulic flight control systems, Tom is excited to usher in a cleaner way to navigate our world.
Karen Iacopi
I am a CFII and love to educate people about anything aviation. I am a jack of all trades and expert of nothing specifically. I have 30 years experience in aviation and 15 years experience in FAA Certification. I am energized to be a part of the future of aviation!
Garrett Pitt
Garrett is an aerospace engineer who proudly grew up in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire but considers Vermont a pretty great place too. After completing a master’s degree focusing on optical diagnostic techniques for aerodynamic propulsion applications, Garrett is “electrified” to contribute to the sustainable future of aviation. When not working, he can be found running, hiking, or flying towards the nearest mountains or plucking out Old Man Luedecke tunes on the banjo.
Chris Pugh
I’ve been doing automotive Collision work since I was a kid. I like trying different things from, building clever things, brewing beer, going mudding in the woods. I love spending time with my two goofy little boys and my beautiful wife.
Dylan Kemelor
I grew up in DC and graduated with a BS in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech. I spend my free time whitewater kayaking & rafting, rock climbing, backpacking, skiing, and biking. When I’m not outside, I like to sew backpacking gear, brew beer, play my guitar, or cook with friends. I’m stoked to make the world a more sustainable place by supporting BETA’s mission to develop a net-zero emission aviation system.
Caitlin Bernstein
Caitlin is a Recruiter who is passionate about finding the best talent to grow teams. She recently moved back to her home state of Vermont after living out West for nearly 10 years. She spent time in San Francisco, where she started her Recruiting career, helping fast-growing start-ups
James Wasmer
Originally from Connecticut, I earned his undergraduate degree in Vermont and I’ve called it home ever since. With a diverse background including sales, healthcare, logistics, and software development, I’m excited to help bring the future of electric aviation into the present.
Scott Suiter
Scott is a true life-long aviation enthusiast and inveterate tinkerer. From building model planes with his dad and wind tunnels out of cardboard boxes when he was a kid, to learning to fly and earning a Commercial pilot’s license (with Multi-engine and Instrument ratings), and now getting to teach his 10 yo son to fly RC models, the love of all things flying has played a huge role in his life. Scott brings to BETA over two decades of warehouse and logistical experience, as well as mad skills piloting forklifts at extremely low altitudes.
Colby Pearce
Colby is a versatile professional that cut his teeth at the dealer level of luxury cars providing optimized task management and acute supplier communications. He chose to hitch his professional wagon to BETA’s when he realized its passion for people and sustainable technology aligned with his own. An int | |||||
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See the latest photos from the Your Shot community on Instagram.
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] | 2023-12-06T11:10:47-07:00 | Tag archive page for The Eagles. | en | Saving Country Music | https://savingcountrymusic.com/tag/the-eagles/ | Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Don Felder, Joe Walsh, and Timothy B. Schmit all agreed to show up to a bar in Los Angeles on December 6th, 1993 and appear in the video—shooting pool, hanging out, and cutting up as cameras rolled.
If this dark little corner of the internet never did anything else worth a damn, at least it introduced The Wilder Blue to country music megastar Luke Combs. The Wilder Blue have a new album coming out on November 21st.
Bass players never seem to get the proper respect. Randy Meisner suffered that fate as much as any of them. But from being a founding member of The Eagles, being there during the early formations of country rock…
In the founding era of country rock, guitarist Tom Leadon was right there witnessing and participating in some of the most important moments and projects. He just happened to be overshadowed in many respects by the bigger names that country rock would launch.
Vince Gill really is the closest thing that country music has to the five-tool baseball player. He can do it all. As a solo artist, he’s a Country Music Hall of Famer and Grand Ole Opry stalwart. He can throw a high harmony on any song and make it shine, or turn in a guitar solo that is good or better than any session player.
When it comes to the banjo in bluegrass or anywhere else, aside from maybe Earl Scruggs, nobody else has been heard and enjoyed more than Sonny Osborne of The Osborne Brothers. Both prolific and influential, the Osborne Brothers rendition of the iconic song “Rocky Top.”
I haven’t wanted to do this. Because ultimately, it should be the primary members and partners of the Turnpike Troubadours who should be allowed to control the narrative about any potential reunification, or the lack thereof for the band that went on indefinite hiatus two years ago.
Put Rusty Young right up there with the greatest West Coast twangers who instilled an appreciation for country sounds in a generation of psychedelic rockers, and proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that country music could be cool. He was a pioneer of country rock.
One of the most curious, and maybe one of the most cool developments in music over the last couple of years has been Vince Gill becoming a late career member of The Eagles. It wasn’t a development that came with a lot of fanfare or explanation. With the passing of Glenn Frey in 2016, it just sort of happened.
There should be no shame in major music outfits taking money through the government’s Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP, to keep their road crew and support staff financially stable, despite it being characterized as the cash grab of millionaires by some, aided by certain embellished and misleading headlines in the media.
Chris Darrow, multi-instrumentalist, singer and songwriter, country rock pioneer and member of multiple influential bands including the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and The Corvettes who backed up Linda Ronstadt, has passed away according to his representatives. He was 75-years-old. He was a centerpiece of country rock.
What makes a country boy like Vince Gill think he has the ability to fill some of the biggest shoes ever rendered vacant in American music? Well, 21 Grammy Awards, and incredible voice, some of the most underrated guitar chops in music, and a longer lineage with the music of The Eagles than one might think.
Jerry Reed and Ricky Skaggs may still be on the outside looking in when it comes to the Country Music Hall of Fame, but the Musicians Hall of Fame in Nashville, located on the other side of downtown in the Municipal Auditorium, has decided these two country music superpickers are worthy of induction. And along […]
Though Young was considered mostly a background member of the Outlaw movement for many years, his appearance on the legendary Outlaw documentary Heartworn Highways helped awaken the world to his talent. Though he still remained mostly known through the songs he wrote that others performed, Young had a strong solo career and released a total of 14 albums.
Love them, hate them, evoke the strong opinions of the Coen Brothers’ fictional character Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski all you want, but Glen Frey and The Eagles turned millions of music fans from all around the world into country music listeners through the evocative power of simple, universal sentiments bathed in twangy tones, however filed off the edges may have been, or however commercially successful the pursuit ultimately was.
Henley’s been out there outwardly criticizing the state of country music and the state of music in general, though doing so with a lot more of a thoughtful and informed tone than many others, including tracing the problem back to the disappearance of the agrarian way of life that was once prevalent throughout America, and now finds itself quickly receding.
Whatever you could want or hope from Don Henley’s “Cass County” as a country music fan, this album delivers it and in ample quantities. I don’t know that any country fan’s expectations can meet the actual enjoyment this music deals out. And this is a traditional country record.
I don’t expect Don Henley’s entire country record to sound this classic, but his take on the old Louvin Brothers standard with Dolly helping out was a welcomed treat that tells you this album isn’t going to be Don reaching for commercial relevance. It’s going to be Don making the country record he wants to make.
Don Henley, the singer and drummer for the Eagles, will be releasing a country album called Cass County via Capitol Record—his first solo album in 15 years. This was the news coming out of an exclusive listening party held at the Ruby event space as part of this week’s CMA Fan Fest in Nashville. And don’t expect this to be an aging rocker looking for a second wind in country by chasing the current trends.
Harris Interactive has just released a new poll that queried the American public about their favorite music artists, musicians, and bands, and some noteworthy country music names made the list. When pollsters asked for unprompted responses to the question, “Who is your favorite singer/musician or band?”
As one of America’s most traditional genres, drum machines, purposely Auto-tuned lyrics, and other such elements were treated with a very negative stigma, and stayed mostly buried on the fringes of the genre in experimental projects. But now as rap and Electronic Dance Music (EDM) have become very influential in popular country. | |||||
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] | null | [] | 2012-01-04T20:27:03-07:00 | en | /_media/favicon.png | https://sabr.org/bioproj/person/larry-gura/ | Health activities embraced by Larry Gura in 1976 were so unusual for a pro pitcher that veteran Sports Illustrated writer Bill Nack devoted a long newspaper article to them. “An idea fixed in conventional baseball wisdom is that a pitcher, of all people, should not involve himself in weightlifting, should not strain over weighted pulleys or barbells,” Nack wrote, yet that consumed Gura’s offseason. “Gura also has engaged in an elaborate series of muscle-flexibility exercises – squats, bends, rotations and jumping jacks – and indulged in a high protein, low carbohydrate diet that includes an exotic mixture for breakfast … of three raw eggs, two tablespoons of strained honey, three tablespoons of protein powder and 14 ounces of whole milk in a blender.”1 In hindsight, Gura proved to be much more an innovator than an oddity. “He was a pioneer in baseball, a fanatic about nutrition and weight training, years before it became commonplace for all ballplayers to pay attention to such matters,” said longtime Royals broadcaster Steve Stewart in 2008.2
Nothing in Gura’s formative years suggested this particular niche for him in baseball history. Lawrence Cyril Gura was born on November 26, 1947, to Charles J. Gura Jr. and Gretchen L. (Barnett) Gura in Joliet, Illinois,3 about 40 miles southwest of downtown Chicago. Joliet’s population was about 50,000 at the time.4
Charles Gura, of Slovak descent, was a lifelong resident of the area and for over 40 years was a baker for the American Baking Company, maker of Rainbo Bread. He belonged to the local Loyal Order of Moose lodge. Gretchen was a widow when she married Charles. She had children from her first marriage, and Larry grew up with two brothers and two sisters. Gretchen became a teacher’s aide at Joliet East High School, which opened in 1964. Larry was a senior there during the school’s first year. His mother also served as a president of the Air Force Mothers Club locally and was quite involved in the Belmont and Ingalls Park Athletic Clubs on Joliet’s east side. Larry played Little League baseball at Belmont Park and Pony League ball at Ingalls.5
According to a niece of Larry’s, the family was very athletic. His brother Chuck played football in high school, but several other relatives mainly played on the diamond. Their father pitched and played third base for the Moose team, and their mother played softball during her youth. Charles Gura’s brother Emery also played for the Moose, and because Emery was left-handed, like Larry, it was that uncle who taught Larry how to pitch during Little League.6
Joliet has long had a “reputation as a great baseball community,” according to a longtime journalist there.7 During the last decade of Gura’s pro career, a Chicago Tribune sportswriter even called Joliet “baseball-crazy.”8 Baseball in Joliet made the news nationwide when Larry was a baby, and another of Larry’s uncles was on the periphery. In 1948 the Joliet area’s new semipro baseball league was called the Will County Athletic Association (WCAA), and the Joliet Moose had one of the circuit’s eight teams. Starring for them that year was 5-foot-9, 18-year-old Francis “Fuzzy” Gura, who the local daily said was “undoubtedly the most effective hurler in the league.”9 Also in the WCAA was St. Joseph’s American Legion team. In an exhibition game for that team on July 20, pitcher Bernice Metesh became the only female semipro baseball player in the United States at the time. She and Frank Gura didn’t pitch against each other because she was added to the roster too late to be eligible for regular WCAA games.10 Instead, she pitched in more exhibition games across northern Illinois for which she received newspaper and radio coverage coast to coast.11
Frank Gura may have been overshadowed as he compiled a record of nine wins and three losses for the Moose team, to go with a .421 batting average, but he didn’t go unnoticed. In January of 1949 he was signed to a professional contract by White Sox scout Doug Minor. The White Sox’ announcement of his signing noted that in 1947 he had a pitching record of 6-1 for Joliet Catholic High School, and that three of those victories were one-hitters, after which he went 15-1 for a Junior American Legion squad, while batting .687 with a streak of 12 consecutive hits. The White Sox assigned him to Madisonville (Kentucky) Miners of the Class-D Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee (Kitty) League.12 Gura won 14 games and lost 8 for the Miners. In 1950 he was promoted to the Superior (Wisconsin) Blues of the Class-C Northern League. He won four games and lost four, but in midseason he was sent down to the Wisconsin Rapids White Sox in the Class-D Wisconsin State League and that was the conclusion of his professional career.
About three years later, his nephew Larry started playing baseball in earnest. “As a little kid, I always wanted to play for the Yankees,” he recalled in 1976. “Whitey Ford was my idol and he helped me when he was the Yankees’ pitching coach.”
Gura added, “I remember when I was pitching in the Little League on a team called the Caterpillars, my dad promised me a new fishing rod if I shut out the other team, and I shut them out. At the time that was real pressure.” He also took pride in accomplishments while playing American Legion ball in Joliet: “I pitched back-to-back no-hitters with 23 strikeouts in each game.”13
“Growing up, I didn’t try to throw the ball that hard,” Gura recalled on a later occasion. “I concentrated on control. It took me six months to learn a changeup.” In addition to location, he said, the other key to his success was patience.14
According to Charles Gura’s entries in city directories, Larry grew up at 9 North West Circle Drive, just a stone’s throw from Ingalls Park, where he played his Pony League ball. During the summer of 1962, Gura earned some national exposure as the Joliet Pony League All-Stars were advancing to the final four of the Pony League World Series double-elimination tournament in Washington, Pennsylvania. Facing a team from Northbrook, Illinois, in Davenport, Iowa, on August 21, he replaced Joliet’s starting pitcher with two out in the second inning. Over 5⅓ innings he struck out 13 batters. His opponents could manage only one walk, four hits, and a run as Gura and Joliet triumphed, 10-5.15
During the spring of 1964 Gura was a junior at Joliet Township High School (now Joliet Central) and didn’t pitch an inning. “I don’t think that’s real surprising, though,” he said a few years later, “because the two top pitchers on that club were Bill Sudakis and Dale Spier.” Sudakis had an eight-year major-league career (albeit never as a pitcher) and Spier pitched in the minors, peaking at Triple A from 1970 through 1972. But Gura had a 5-1 pitching record for his Colt League team that summer, and earned a spot on the city’s team in national Colt League World Series tournament.16 They reached the final game in Shawnee, Oklahoma, against a team from Houston, thanks in large part to Gura amassing a tournament record of 11-0. He got his team into the final game by beating a team from Riverside, California, on August 21 for the second time in 48 hours. “Gura’s control was perfect as he spun a five-hitter and struck out seven in lowering his earned run average to 1.65 over 58 innings of work,” his hometown daily reported. Gura didn’t play the next day when it took an extra eighth inning for Houston to beat Joliet, 2-1, and claim the crown.17
By switching to Joliet’s brand new East High School for his senior year, Gura was able to pitch for the varsity baseball team. He was also a competitive swimmer and runner for the school.18 “I guess I started thinking about playing pro ball in my senior year of high school,” Gura said a few years later. At Joliet East he was coached by Elmer Bell, who played minor-league ball briefly for the Philadelphia Phillies around the time of the Korean War. Bell was once a teammate of Bobby Winkles, the baseball coach at Arizona State University. As a result, Gura accepted a scholarship to enter ASU in the fall of 1965.19
Gura’s college years were very eventful, both with the Sun Devils and with other teams during his summer breaks. Jon Cole, an All-American for ASU in the discus and shot put, and a future Olympic weightlifter, later directed Gura through the trailblazing regime documented in the 1976 article by Bill Nack.20 Gura was a sophomore on the ASU team that won the 1967 College World Series tournament, and he delivered a key victory on June 14 against top-ranked Stanford with a scoreless, three-hit relief stint.21 That summer he had a 7-1 record for the semipro Cowboys of Halstead, Kansas, for whom he played in the 1967 National Baseball Congress tournament. Then, as a junior back at ASU during the spring of 1968 his mediocre 4-4 record was offset by an earned-run average of 1.90 in 90 innings and an average of more than 11 strikeouts per game. By that point he had reached his adult height of 6-feet and weighed 180 pounds.22
During that summer Gura compiled a record of 12-1 for the Collegians of Boulder, Colorado, and starred for them in the 1968 National Baseball Congress tournament. He hurled no-hitters three days apart on the way to being named to the all-tourney team.23 Then in November Gura and fellow Joliet resident John Lucenta were on the US team in a four-country round-robin tournament tacked onto the Olympics in Mexico City. The US squad hurdled teams from Puerto Rico and Mexico and received gold medals, defeating Cuba 2-1 in the final contest.24
The spring of 1969 was monumental for Gura. One harbinger was a game between ASU and the expansion Seattle Pilots on March 15. Gura and freshman Craig Swan combined to beat the major leaguers, 5-4.25 Toward the tail end of his record-setting season for the Sun Devils, he became a second-round draft pick of the Chicago Cubs, on June 5, 1969. He also received a bachelor’s degree in physical education.26 But he still had work to do for ASU in the College World Series. On June 13 he lost the opening game but on June 20 he beat Tulsa in the finale to give ASU another championship.27
Gura became the winningest pitcher in collegiate baseball history by virtue of a 19-2 record that included two wins and a save in the College World Series. In the process, he established ASU career records with 325 strikeouts and an ERA of 1.73, and his 1969 ERA of 1.01 was the best for a single season by a Sun Devil.28 He and University of Texas pitcher Burt Hooton were named to the 1969 American Baseball Coaches Association/Rawlings NCAA Division I All-America First Team.29
On June 25 Gura and the Cubs agreed on a contract, with a $30,000 signing bonus that was called “a surprisingly high figure” in at least one Arizona newspaper.
The Cubs assigned Gura to their top minor-league team, Tacoma in the Triple-A Pacific Coast League. To start his pro career, Gura lost to Hawaii on July 6 but shut out Tucson on July 11.30 All told, his half-season with Tacoma wasn’t particularly satisfying, with a 4-8 record and an ERA of 3.17. Before the end of the season, Gura celebrated a milestone of a very different kind. At 11:00 A.M. on August 21, he married his ASU girlfriend, Cindy Davenport, back in Arizona. Gura credited her with making a difference in his collegiate career. “On the days I was to pitch at ASU, she really took great care of me,” he said. “She saw that I ate properly, got in early and had plenty of rest.” The couple had planned the wedding two months earlier and couldn’t have anticipated that he’d be expected to pitch in a minor-league game that same night. “All the fellows tell me I’ll be scared stiff for the wedding,” Gura told a reporter the evening before. “But it doesn’t bother me at all. I’m more worried about pitching tomorrow night.” His record was 3-6 at the time. “I wanted the wedding to take place on the mound,” Gura added, tongue in cheek, “but she wouldn’t go along with that.” He lost that night’s start.31
When Tacoma’s season concluded, Gura was shifted to the Arizona Instructional League, the only time he ever pitched minor-league ball below the Triple-A level. He also pitched in the minors for parts of 1970 through 1974, and again during his last year as a pro. He did well in his 11 games in the Instructional League, posting a 5-2 record, 3 saves, and an ERA of 2.25. In 52 innings he stuck out 46 batters and walked eight.
In 1970 Gura had a 2-1 record with the major leaguers in spring training but started the regular season back in the Pacific Coast League. He wasn’t there long. On April 22, the Cubs purchased his contract from Tacoma.32 He made his major-league debut on April 30. He shared his recollections many years later:
We were playing the Braves in Atlanta. I was in the bullpen and I had just gotten up to throw a few, just to loosen up. All of a sudden I’m in the ballgame facing Rico Carty, Orlando Cepeda and Henry Aaron, two future Hall of Famers and a batting champion, all right-handed hitters. I said to myself, “Oh, great, this is a good way to start your career.” I got Aaron and Cepeda but I contributed to Carty’s 32-game hitting streak.
I got my first win in Montreal. I actually got a start and we got some runs early. Joe Becker, our pitching coach, came out to the mound in the third or fourth inning and I said, “Don’t you dare take me out of this this game.” In those days, the infielders could all come in to the mound so Santo, Kessinger, Beckert, and Jim Hickman all heard me, and, to tell you the truth, I think they were kind of impressed with my aggressiveness. At any rate, I stayed in the game and I think we won, 11-3.33
Gura’s memory about his debut was pretty good, though he focused on the second of the two innings he pitched. He entered a lopsided game in the seventh inning with the bases loaded and two outs. He yielded a single to George Stone that added two more runs, then issued a walk, but next Tony Gonzalez became the first batter he retired, on a fly to center. Aaron, Carty, and Cepeda were indeed the first three batters he faced in the eighth inning; he retired Felix Millan to end the frame. He was spot-on about his first victory, which occurred on August 5.
Gura appeared in 20 games for the Cubs in 1970, six in 1971, and 7 in 1972, and then 21 in 1973. All were relief outings except for three starts in 1970 and seven in 1973. He found the overall experience frustrating, summed up by one observation: “One year, I was with the Cubs for three months and had six innings of work.”34 Nevertheless, he retained some fond memories with that team:
I remember sitting in the bullpen and watching Ernie Banks hit his 500th home run. It brought tears to your eyes, it really did. And playing with guys like Banks and Jenkins and Billy Williams. And Fergie Jenkins winning 20 games all those years in that ballpark. How’d he do that? It was great. I enjoyed those years.35
On November 14, 1973, the Cubs sent Gura to the Texas Rangers as the player to be named later when they acquired Mike Paul on August 31. Gura didn’t actually play a regular-season game for the Rangers because on May 7, 1974, they traded him to the New York Yankees, with some cash, for Duke Sims. Still, Gura was with Texas just long enough in 1974 to have his first annoying experience with Billy Martin. “I pitched one inning in spring training and he sent me out [to the minors]. He told me I needed to work on my control,” recalled Gura. “My control? That was always my strong point. And he had a pitching staff [that] couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. But he sent me to Spokane.”36
Yankees manager Bill Virdon summoned Gura to the majors for September and gave him eight starts. Gura excelled. His record was 5-1, with four complete games, two shutouts, and an ERA of 2.41. For the rest of his time in the American League, he was done with the minors. In 1975 he pitched in 26 games for the Yankees, 20 of which were starts. He went 7-8 with an ERA of 3.51. Tragically, from Gura’s perspective, Virdon was fired in August and replaced with none other than Billy Martin.
During the 1976 playoffs, Gura commented bitterly about the first half of that year under Martin:
The first thing in spring training, he told me he was going to start me every fourth day but he didn’t start me at all in the exhibition games. When the season began, I thought he’d at least use me in long relief, but every time the situation came up, he used Tippy Martinez instead. He didn’t use me at all. Finally, after four weeks, he told me on a Friday he was going to start me the following Wednesday, and that Friday night Catfish Hunter got knocked out in the second inning. I thought for sure he’d use me in long relief then, to get me ready for the start. When he used Martinez instead, I asked him why and he said Tippy needed the work, he hadn’t pitched in two weeks. I told him I needed the work, too, I hadn’t pitched in four weeks. Two days later I was traded.37
On May 16, 1976, the Yankees dealt Gura to the Royals for Fran Healy. Since then, much has been written about the animosity between Gura and Martin. Martin’s disdain for Gura reportedly stemmed from the pitcher’s interest in playing tennis for relaxation, which Martin considered beneath a real man’s dignity.38
Despite the fresh start in Kansas City, by September of 1976 Gura was on a pace to have his lowest innings-pitched total since 1972 with the Cubs. He started only one game for manager Whitey Herzog before that month. Bill James, the statistics guru and a diehard Royals fan, summed up Gura’s significant September succinctly: “He had cut his ERA from 3.57 on September 1 down to 2.79 on September 28, had not given up a run in September, when Whitey Herzog decided to start him at Oakland on September 29. Huge, huge game,” James wrote, and of course offered a statistic quantifying just how huge. “Oakland had won the division five straight years, three world championships. Kansas City had lost four games in a row, blowing more than half of a six-game lead. They were clinging to a 2½-game lead with four games left. … Gura threw a 4-hit shutout, effectively ending the pennant race.” In due time, Herzog trusted Gura in similar situations, and James said Gura “became Herzog’s Big Game guy.” James identified 30 contests that he considered “a high percentage,” and in them Gura went 14-10 with an ERA of 3.04.39
The magic didn’t linger into the playoffs. Gura started two games in the American League Championship Series versus the Yankees, taking one loss with a so-so ERA of 4.22. He didn’t think pressure on him was a factor. “I’ve been playing baseball 23 years and I’ve been on 12 championship teams, that’s a lot of big games,” he said at the time.40 The Royals lost in the ALCS to the Yankees in 1976, 1977, and 1978.
In 1977 Gura pitched much more, and pitched well, but had only six starts. He went 8-5 with 10 saves and a 3.13 ERA. In the ALCS he started one game but the Yankees pounded him, and he was charged with the loss.
In 1978 Gura joined the Royals’ starting rotation, and was a fixture for seven seasons. That season only Ron Guidry and Nolan Ryan yielded fewer hits per nine innings than Gura.41 He achieved his highest winning percentage as a starter, .800, going 16-4 with an ERA of 2.72. He ranked seventh in postseason voting for the Cy Young Award and 23rd for the Most Valuable Player. He started the second game of the ALCS against the Yankees, pitched six scoreless innings, and won, 10-4. As gratifying as it may have been for Gura, it was his team’s only victory.
In 1979 Gura and the team as a whole had an off year. He was an average starter (13-12, 4.47) and the Royals didn’t make the playoffs. He turned that around quickly in 1980, when at the end of April he had what he considers the best performance of his career, a one-hitter against the Toronto Blue Jays. The only hit off him came at the beginning of the sixth inning when Damaso Garcia legged out a double on a softly hit ball toward left field. “All four pitches were working today, which is the main reason the game went the way it did,” Gura said after the game. “When all of my pitches are working, there are nine different places a batter has to look for.” Catcher John Wathan said, “He changes speeds better than anyone in the league.”42
That game was no fluke, because about two months later Orioles manager Earl Weaver named him an American League All-Star, the only time Gura received that honor. He didn’t play in the All-Star Game but that didn’t affect his performance, because he was named AL Pitcher of the Month for July, and he finished the season with a career-high 18 wins (10 losses) and a 2.95 ERA. He was sixth in voting for the Cy Young Award. Gura pitched exceptionally well in the postseason, and played in his only World Series. His start in the ALCS was a complete-game, 7-2 victory over the Yankees.43 Though he didn’t win either of his starts in the World Series, which the Royals lost to the Phillies in six games, his ERA in 12⅓ innings was 2.19.
In the strike-shortened 1981 season, Gura lowered his ERA to 2.72, had the third lowest walks per innings pitched in the league, and was named AL Pitcher of the Month for September. He was ninth in voting for the Cy Young Award. He had one last playoff game, losing a start against Oakland in the Division Series.
In 1982 Gura matched his career high with 18 wins (12 losses) but in 1983 his 18 losses were the most in the league. He had a much better record in 1984, 12-9, but his ERA was his worst in a full season, at 5.18. In 1985 he pitched in just three games for the Royals, and was released on May 18. Ten days later the Cubs signed him, but he pitched in only five games for them. His final game in the majors was on July 27, 1985. Thus, he wasn’t on the Royals’ roster when they won the World Series that year.
In his 10 seasons as a Royal, Gura had a record of 111-78, and posted the franchise’s second best winning percentage, .587. He was named Royals Pitcher of the Year twice, in 1978 and 1981, and was inducted into the team’s Hall of Fame in 1992.44 Including his time with the Cubs and Yankees, he was 126-97 with an ERA of 3.76. As of 2018, only 70 pitchers in major-league history had a better fielding percentage than Gura’s .986.45
In retirement, golf became one of Gura’s primary activities, and it was common to see him play in charitable tournaments, or even organize them himself after he purchased the Bent Oak Golf Course in Oak Grove, Missouri, east of Kansas City.46 In the mid-1990s he played in the Pro Athletes Golf League.47 Beyond that, he and Cindy were busy raising their daughters Kristina and Natalie. They also took over operation of the Dale Creek Equestrian Village, near Litchfield Park, Arizona, a farm that has been in her family for decades.48
The Royals’ official website credits Gura for “guile and guts” in his team Hall of Fame entry. The alliteration may just be a coincidence, but it’s easy to find testimonials in support of their overarching thesis about him: “Steady and unflappable, Gura was the textbook example of a crafty southpaw.”49
Sources
The primary source for statistics herein was baseball-reference.com.
Notes
1 Bill Nack, “Yankees’ Gura Anxious to Begin Playing Game,” Poughkeepsie (New York) Journal, March 13, 1976: 11. His teammates were aware of his penchant for health food during his first month with them. See Parton Keese, “Yanks Win, 10‐2, Lead by 2; Cubs Rally in 9th to Beat Mets,” New York Times, September 16, 1974: 45.
2 Steve Stewart, “Images from the K,” stevestewart.mlblogs.com/images-from-the-k-7ffb8bc6eb97, August 15, 2008.
3 See his parents’ obituaries, at hosting-24990.tributes.com/obituary/show/Charles-Joseph-Gura-92677336 and findagrave.com/memorial/8068513/gretchen-l.-gura.
4 Daniel J. Elazar and Joseph Zikmund II, The Closing of the Metropolitan Frontier: Cities of the Prairie Revisited (New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers, 2002), 235, 244.
5 hosting-24990.tributes.com/obituary/show/Charles-Joseph-Gura-92677336 and findagrave.com/memorial/8068513/gretchen-l.-gura; Don Hazen, “Larry Gura Signs Contract with Chicago Cubs,” Herald-News (Joliet, Illinois), June 26, 1969: 28.
6 Email message to the author from Celine Matthiessen, goddaughter of Larry Gura, July 10, 2018.
7 Don Hazen, “Convicts Served 1890-92 Sentence in Two-Eyed League,” Joliet Herald-News, May 19, 2002: Joliet Jackhammers Preview Section, 9. A Joliet team played in the earliest documented (as of 2018) baseball game in the Chicago area, in 1851 against a nine at nearby Lockport, according to Mark Rucker and John Freyer, 19th Century Baseball in Chicago (Charleston, South Carolina: Arcadia Publishing, 2003), 13.
8 Jerry Shnay, “Providence Star Throws Coach Curve,” Chicago Tribune, April 25, 1988: 3, 10.
9 “NRC Meets Joliet Moose in Crucial WCAA Tilt Today,” Joliet Herald-News, August 1, 1948: 31. See also “Gura Hurls Moose to Win over Irvings,” Joliet Herald-News, July 24, 1948: 2 for additional details about the WCAA.
10 “Gal Pitcher Shows Plenty of Ability but Loses Game,” Joliet Herald-News, July 21, 1948: 16. Metesh’s catcher was her brother Bob. She reportedly stood 5-feet-5 and weighed 110 pounds. According to the box score, she had a hit in three times at bat and scored a run.
11 “Girl Pitcher Wins Radio, Movie Acclaim,” Joliet Herald-News, August 8, 1948: 3. Metesh was also slated to appear “in the newsreels during the near future.” Because she was often called “Bea” for short, the local paper typically called her Beatrice rather than Bernice (and her surname was often misspelled Metesch in other sources). See also aagpbl.org/profiles/bernice-metesh-bernie/173.
12 “Chicago Whitesox Sign Sandlot Star,” Oil City (Pennsylvania) Blizzard, January 28, 1949: 4. Oil City had a Class-C minor-league affiliate of the White Sox at the time. The article reported Gura’s weight as 170 pounds and his height as “an even six feet,” three inches taller than Joliet’s daily reported.
13 Dave Anderson, “The Larry Gura-Billy Martin Feud,” New York Times, October 9, 1976: 13.
14 Grant Hall, “Mudcat Learned About Williams Early,” Northwest Arkansas Times (Fayetteville), June 26, 1989: B1.
15 “Ponies Win 1st Division Clash, 10-5,” Joliet Herald News, August 22, 1962: 30. The paper spelled his surname “Gora.” Joliet was eliminated a week later: “It’s All Over – National City Beats Joliet Pony Stars 5-2,” Joliet Herald News, August 29, 1962: 28.
16 Don Hazen, “Larry Gura Signs Contract with Chicago Cubs,” Joliet Herald-News, June 26, 1969: 25, 28.
17 Don Hazen, “Colt All-Stars Win 4-1,” Joliet Herald News, August 22, 1964: 7; Hazen, “Houston Defeats Joliet, Wins Colt World Series,” Joliet Herald News, August 23, 1964: B-13.
18 Bob Lueder, “Trojans Drop Pair; Next Foes Thornridge, Thornton,” Chicago Heights Star, May 2, 1965: 24. Gura pitched an eight-inning complete game over Bloom High School, winning 4-3, and in the fourth inning he drove in two runs to change a 2-1 deficit into a 3-2 lead. In Joliet East’s yearbook published around then, The Crown, he was pictured on page 121 with the varsity baseball team, on page 108 with runners, and on page 123 with swimmers (sharing a team with Joliet Central).
19 “Arizona State Unbeaten,” Long Island Star-Journal (Long Island City, New York), June 15, 1967: 21; baseball-reference.com/bullpen/Elmer_Bell; Denise M. Baran-Unland, “An Extraordinary Life: Shorewood Coach Taught More than Baseball,” Joliet Herald News, July 26, 2015, theherald-news.com/2015/07/20/an-extraordinary-life-shorewood-coach-taught-more-than-baseball/a6bbwfy/.
20 Nack: 11.
21 “Arizona State Unbeaten.”
22 “Arizona State Unbeaten”; Boulder Collegians 1968 Yearbook: 9.
23 “Arizona State Unbeaten”; David L. Porter, ed., Biographical Dictionary of American Sports: Baseball, G-P (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2000), 605. No-hitters were common in the tournament due to a wide range in the quality of teams; Gura had a no-hitter shortened to five innings by rain, according to Morris Fraser, “Rain Dominates Semi-Pro Meet; Hot Blue Sox Battle ACs Today,” Colorado Springs Gazette-Telegraph, August 4, 1968: 41.
24 “Name Jolietans to U.S. Squad,” Morris (Illinois) Daily Herald, October 15, 1968: 5; alumni.lewisu.edu/2015/featured-alumni/john-lucenta.
25 Associated Press, “Arizona St. Baseballers Stun Seattle Pilots, 5-4,” Albuquerque Journal, March 16, 1969: 19. .
26 Porter, 605.
27 baseball-reference.com/bullpen/1969_College_World_Series.
28 “ASU’s Gura Inks Chicago Cub Pact Worth $30,000,” Arizona Republic (Phoenix), June 26, 1969: 65.
29 abca.org/ABCA/Awards/All-Americans/NCAA_Division_I/1969.aspx for the full First Team and Second Team rosters for Division I.
30 “Islanders Triumph, 8-2, then Lose Nightcap, 12-4,” Honolulu Advertiser, July 7, 1969: 23; “Rookie Gura Hurls Cubs Past Toros,” Arizona Daily Star (Tucson), July 12, 1969: 18.
31 Verne Boatner, “Horsehide Honeymoon,” Arizona Republic, August 22, 1969: 53. A box score is on the same page.
32 “Gura to Report to Chicago Cubs,” Tucson Daily Citizen, April 23, 1970: 34.
33 John C. Skipper, Take Me Out to the Cubs Game: 35 Former Ballplayers Speak of Losing at Wrigley (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2000), 165.
34 Skipper, 164.
35 Skipper, 168.
36 Skipper, 166.
37 Anderson, 13.
38 Two examples of the tennis explanation: Maury Allen, All Roads Lead to October: Boss Steinbrenner’s 25-Year Reign over the New York Yankees (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 44. Christopher Devine, Thurman Munson: A Baseball Biography (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2001), 114. See also Tim Sheehy, “Billy Martin and Kansas City Pitcher Larry Gura Say…,” UPI Archives, October 9, 1980; upi.com/Archives/1980/10/09/Billy-Martin-and-Kansas-City-pitcher-Larry-Gura-say/8937339912000/.
39 Bill James, “Big Game Pitchers, Part V,” January 24, 2014; billjamesonline.com/big_game_pitchers_part_v/.
40 Anderson, 13.
41 Porter, 606.
42 Skipper, 167; “Gura’s One-Hitter Lifts KC,” Crescent-News (Defiance, Ohio), May 1, 1980: 24. Those four pitches were a curve, fastball, changeup, and slider, according to Parton Keese, “Yanks Win, 10‐2, Lead by 2; Cubs Rally in 9th to Beat Mets,” New York Times, September 16, 1974: 45.
43 In fact, by then he had consistent success against his previous team. See Fred McMane, “Yankee-Killer Larry Gura Survived a Second-Inning Home Run Blitz,” UPI Archives, October 8, 1980; upi.com/Archives/1980/10/08/Yankee-killer-Larry-Gura-survived-a-second-inning-home-run-blitz/9068263398053/.
44 kansascity.royals.mlb.com/kc/hall_of_fame/member.jsp?name=Gura.
45 baseball-reference.com/leaders/fielding_perc_p_career.shtml. Gura made no errors in 1980, 1981, 1983, and 1984.
46 Hall, “Mudcat Learned About Williams Early”; “Golf Tourney Set,” The Examiner (Independence, Missouri), April 20, 1991: 4B.
47 Juan C. Rodriguez, “Brodie, Dewveall Win PAGL Open,” Minneapolis Star Tribune, July 18, 1994: 5C.
48 baseballbytheletters.com/2011/04/20/pitcher-larry-gura-signs-to-save-family-farm-2/. | ||||||
4334 | dbpedia | 0 | 5 | https://m.facebook.com/groups/losangelesfreepress60smusic/posts/1005220927998701/ | en | Facebook | [] | [] | [] | [
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4334 | dbpedia | 1 | 62 | https://www.mcdonaldcountychamber.org/history-of-jane/ | en | History of Jane | [
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] | null | [] | null | en | //impact-production.s3.amazonaws.com/_originals/865ee624-a808-492b-8228-4a86b06a5514/MCC Badge Logo (1).png | https://www.mcdonaldcountychamber.org/history-of-jane/ | McDonald County was established as a county March 3, 1849, with its county seat in Rutledge; it took till 1857 to move it to Pineville. The first settler in White Rock Prairie according to the ‘Southernland & McEvoy’s Gazetteer’ was James Billingsly in 1834, though significant settlement in the county did not begin until the 1840s. During the years the town was without a post office, a traveling show came to town. Someone jokingly said about the attendance that was poor in Caverna and good at Pineville and Jane; that Pineville “Haddem”, Jane “Gottom” and Caverna “Needham”. These joke names stayed with Jane and Caverna for many years. (by Pauline Carnell) Store buildings in those days had high porches for the loading and unloading of merchandise from wagons. Bo Harmon says the nicknames came from hogs that laid under the porches and their fleas would hop up on people on the porches. The men would swat the fleas and say “Gottom”. Take whichever version you want; but they do say that hogs slept under the porches and at times, fleas were a problem.(by Pauline Carnell thru Gayla Baker)
The well in town that the Sulphur spring feeds, was said to have healing properties (as did many of the springs in McDonald Co). The town was laid out by the well, abstracts stating ‘start at the center of the well and go….’ Also it was said that the well would always have 4 owners so no one person could control the water. There is documentation that during the Civil War, both North and South watered their horses at the well. There they fed their horses sugar cubes and told stories to the neighborhood boys. In the year 1854, the tax roll listed 6 Davenport’s; Joseph, D.M., I.T., Eliza, T.G. and W.A., 3 Coffee’s; Meredith, John, and J.M., 3 Russell’s; J.D., Clarissa, and C.R. and Dr. A.M. Underwood. In 1866-67 the county established the first townships, some of which lasted for a century to come; and in 1872 redistricting it was decreed that township meetings for White Rock were to be held at Sulfur Springs School building. (Gayla Baker)
The post office was in continual operation for 22 years; from 1854 till 1876 when it was disbanded, having been in continual operation throughout the Civil War years. In 1876 Thomas B. Perkins moved the post office to Caverna, however, Samuel L. Ross re-established the post office on August 23, 1882, the same year the village of “White Rock Sulfur Springs” was platted. After submitting several names and being rejected, in honor of his six-year-old daughter he submitted “Jane”.(Gayla Baker) Though our post office closed in the mid-1980s, the building is being lovingly restored and maintained by the Jane Preservation Society. Maps thereafter called the village “White Rock Prairie”, “White Rock” with the post office of Jane, “Sulfur”, “Jane”, “White Rock Spring”, or simply “White Rock”. (From Place names; State of Missouri, History of McDonald Co p803; also various early maps)
From “the Gazetteer” 1883-1884: Jane had mail service tri-weekly, 3 churches, a district school, and the following businesses: GB Christian–Druggist; JB Davenport–Blacksmith; MJ Davenport–General Store; GA Dean- Shoemaker; Rev RF Downing–Methodist Minister; HT and JH Slinkard–General Store; JB Underwood–Justice of the Peace; and TH White–Wagon Maker. By 1899 the town had grown to 150 and included: JB Melton– Postmaster and Barber; WH Bullard–Meat Market; TB Clark–Hotel; CL Coffee & Co–Blacksmiths and Wagon Makers; John Horner–Physician; WH Horton–Physician; Horton & Sears–Druggists; Melton & Coffee–Dry Goods and Groceries; WA Patton–Music Teacher and Justice of the Peace; JM Sears–Constable; Jake Slinkard–Livery; JH Slinkard–General Store; White & Bunch–Blacksmiths; and TA Yeargain–Cattle Dealer. (Gayla Baker)
Pleasant Grove Baptist Church was organized Sept 6, 1868, and the first minister was Hezekiah Dobbs. Their first building was constructed on Main Street in Jane in 1903-1904. It still stands but is unoccupied in 2018. Prior to their building’s completion, they worshipped in either the schoolhouse or Union Church building. They dedicated their new building located at 2938 Rains Rd, after having used the previous building for 75 years, celebrating 150 years as of 2018. (Gayla Baker) Another historical building is currently being used as the Jane Store and is a mecca for locals and tourists alike.
After the Civil War, there was terrible lawlessness, and drunken behavior led to a flourishing of temperance movements. For a time virtually every member of the county joined the Blue Ribbon Movement and swore temperance.(Illustrated History of McDonald Co. Missouri by J. A. Sturgess) But the movements had largely waned when the election in February 1888 was held in which 1717 people voted whether we should be a “wet” or a “dry” county; wet won by 317 votes—and thus the profusion of liquor emporiums just North of the Arkansas border on U.S. 71 (Until recently our neighboring county in Arkansas was dry). (Goodspeed’s 1888 History of McDonald & Newton Counties)
The Public Water Supply District #1 was established in October 1976. The modern rural volunteer fire department was formed in 1962 and serves an area of 90 square miles with 21 regular firefighters. The building at the intersection of Rains Road and Highway 90 was formerly a carpentry shop, but today hosts four vehicles. A second fire station was added in 2001 with two vehicles near Simsbury, and on July 1, 2017, they celebrated the completion of their lighted landing strip at fire station no. 2 with the landing of the first helicopter and a dedication ceremony. A bit of the old confusion exists still with the “White Rock Fire Department”, but this is more precisely a regional fire district—not a village organization. The Interstate 49 Corridor was opened in 2012 between Joplin and Pineville with upgrades to the section of Hwy 71 between Pineville and the Arkansas Border. The final completion of the Bella Vista Bypass is scheduled for early 2022 and it now appears Jane will have its own exit ramp on Hwy 90.
In 2005 the village was incorporated as “Jane” and its original borders were expanded to the South in 2006. The first trustee meeting was held April 18, 2005, with Chairman Marv Shippman, Hank Gorman, Ron Breshears, Harry McAfee, & Robert Townsend. Jonell Lawyer was elected City Clerk on a no-pay basis. (Gayla Baker)
The old town no longer has the main highway running through its heart, as it was moved in 1967 to its current location about a mile west where it cuts across state highway 90 which is our East-West crossing road. For nostalgia buffs, you can still drive down a portion of Highway 71’s predecessor; old ’88 which was the major North-South road from 1922 till the paving of U.S. 71 in 1961 which renumbered the section of ’88 running from the Arkansas state line to Pineville. Back in 1926 Highway 71 ran from Neosho thru Anderson and Noel to Gravette, Arkansas. Rains road winds through Jane following the original highway 71 route most of the way to Pineville, and then to Lanagan and Anderson. (Bill Martin, MoDOT Missouri Highway Map Archive 1918-2014) | ||||||
4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 94 | https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/killers-of-the-flower-moon-release-date-cast-details/ | en | ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’: Everything to Know About Martin Scorsese’s $200 Million Western Epic | [
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] | 2023-04-18T20:38:07+00:00 | Martin Scorsese's "Killers of the Flower Moon" stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jesse Plemons, but has been delayed for years. | en | IndieWire | https://www.indiewire.com/gallery/killers-of-the-flower-moon-release-date-cast-details/ | Cannes Director Thierry Fremaux Wants Martin Scorsese to Compete for Palme d’Or
Thierry Fremaux confirmed that “Killers of the Flower Moon” is now eligible to debut in competition at 2023 Cannes due to its theatrical release from Apple. Fremaux told Variety that Scorsese should compete for the Palme d’Or almost a half-century since “Taxi Driver.”
“When we saw the film back in November and when we invited it, it was an Apple movie. The situation has changed now that Apple has announced that it will be released in theaters everywhere, including in France, on Oct. 19. That means it qualifies for the Cannes competition since, as you know, all films competing must have a theatrical release,” Fremaux said. “So I told Apple and Martin Scorsese that considering how great the movie is, it’s obviously invited in competition. And now I’m waiting to hear their decision. We have until the last minute.”
He continued, “When Fellini won the Palme d’Or for ‘La Dolce Vita,’ he said ‘I’m not coming back in competition,’ and Marty won the Palme d’Or in 1976. So obviously one could say, he doesn’t have much to gain considering his prestigious status. Except one thing: the Palme d’Or. I think he should come in competition.”
Fremaux compared “Killers of the Flower Moon” to an old Hollywood style of filmmaking, saying, “Martin Scorsese’s film is along the lines of big, popular yet director-driven films of the past, like David Lean and Cecil B. DeMille.”
As for the rumored staggering runtime, he teased, “All I know is that it’s only five minutes more than ‘Once Upon a Time in America.'”
Leonardo DiCaprio Thinks the Film Is a ‘Masterpiece’
Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio believes “Killers of the Flower Moon” is his best work yet, according to the film’s costume designer Jacqueline West.
“We had lunch before I came here. He said, ‘Jackie, I think we worked on a masterpiece.’ I thought for Leo to say that, was something. He doesn’t say that lightly,” West told Deadline. “He has been in the business since he was a little boy.”
West previously collaborated with DiCaprio on “The Revenant,” which landed the actor his first Academy Award. Yet working with director Martin Scorsese led to West contemplating retirement.
“I had the most incredible experience of my film career [on ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’],” she continued. “I can’t talk about that film yet because nothing has been released but I just have to say it’s the combination of someone I always wanted to work with and my absolute dream project…It was brilliantly done not just on my part but by everybody.”
West continued, “My husband said after I worked with Scorsese, ‘OK, now you can quit. That’s the pinnacle.'”
As for the film itself, West teased, “It follows the book, and the book was totally captivating. The native cast was incredible and the acting, Lily Gladstone is incredible. The images were thrilling. It looks amazing. I watched it all being shot but I haven’t seen any of it.”
The First Look Photo
Apple debuted the first official photo from “Killers of the Flower Moon” on May 10, 2021. The image depicts Leonardo DiCaprio as Ernest Burkhart and Lily Gladstone as Mollie Burkhart. The characters are married in the film. Also on display in the first look image is Jack Fisk’s production design. “Flower Moon” marks a first-time collaboration between Martin Scorsese and Fisk (read more about the production designer below).
Prior to production, DiCaprio met in person with members and leaders of the Osage Nation in order to ensure the film and his character would fairly represent the time period depicted. A press release from Osage News in February 2021 confirmed one meeting took place that month in which “several members of the community spoke, sharing their concerns, stories and thoughts with the film team. DiCaprio asked several questions which sparked thoughtful conversation that will inform the script and his character.”
The Osage Nation Reaction
With production on “Killers of the Flower Moon” now underway, several Osage Nation members spoke to The Oklahoman about what it means for such a huge production to be resurrecting painful memories from the past. The production has taken over entire streets in Pawhuska, Oklahoma and transformed them into 1920s Fairfax.
“I think about it both ways. It was a bad time — a real bad time — for the Osage…and I think this movie is going to bring back a lot of old, bad memories,” Osage Nation member Harrison Shackelford said. “But it’s going to bring back some stuff that needed to be talked about, that needs to be said, that some people know and some people don’t know. And I think it’s going to be good.”
Brandy Lemon, a longtime member of the Osage Nation Congress who is working as a liaison on the movie, added, “It’s definitely something that is delicate…It’s a delicate balance that, no matter what, it’s going to hurt some. And others are going to cheer it on. If anybody knows anything about Martin Scorsese, they’re going to get everything in this film. They’re going to get drama, they’re going to get violence in some form, they’re going to get anguish, they’re going to get happiness, all the big feelings.
The Source Material
Scorsese’s film is based on David Grann’s non-fiction book “Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI.” It’s the third book published by the American journalist and was released on April 18, 2017. The book investigates a series of murders that plagued the Osage people in Osage County, Oklahoma during the 1920s after valuable oil was discovered on their land. The Osage people were granted in court the right to profit from oil found on their land, which made them the target of greedy ranch owners. The murders attracted the attention of the newly-formed FBI. Scorsese’s film adaptation is expected to include the perspective of the FBI as they investigate the murders and the Osage Nation as its people deal with the battle for their land.
Scorsese Considers the Film to Be His First Western
In an interview in February 2020, Scorsese touted “Killers of the Flower Moon” as his first movie set in the Western genre. “We think it’s a Western,” Scorsese told Premiere of the film. “It happened in 1921-1922 in Oklahoma. There are certainly cowboys, but they have cars and also horses. The film is mainly about the Osage, an Indian tribe that was given horrible territory, which they loved because they said to themselves that Whites would never be interested in it. Then we discovered oil there and, for about 10 years, the Osage became the richest people in the world, per capita. Then, as with the Yukon and the Colorado mining regions, the vultures disembark, the White man, the European arrives, and all was lost. There, the underworld had such control over everything that you were more likely to go to jail for killing a dog than for killing an Indian.”
Scorsese continued, “It’s so interesting to think about the mentality that leads us to this. The history of civilization goes back to Mesopotamia. The Hittites are invaded by another people, they disappear, and later it is said that they have been assimilated or, rather, absorbed. It is fascinating to see this mentality which is reproduced in other cultures, through two world wars. And which is therefore timeless, I think. This is the film that we are going to try to make.”
Bringing Together Two of His Greatest Muses
Scorsese is bringing together his two greatest muses for “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Robert De Niro and Leonardo DiCaprio. The two Oscar winners previously acted together in Michael Caton-Jones’ 1993 drama “This Boy’s Life” and appeared as fictionalized versions of themselves in Scorsese’s short film “The Audition.” De Niro’s Scorsese films include “Mean Streets,” “Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull,” “Casino,” “The King of Comedy,” “Cape Fear,” and “The Irishman,” while DiCaprio appeared in Scorsese’s “The Aviator,” “Gangs of New York,” “Shutter Island,” “The Departed,” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.” De Niro was Oscar nominated for Best Actor with “Taxi Driver,” “Cape Fear,” and “Raging Bull,” winning for the latter. DiCaprio was Oscar nominated for “The Aviator” and “The Wolf of Wall Street.”
De Niro stars in “Killers of the Flower Moon” as William Hale, a powerful rancher who becomes the lead suspect in the FBI’s investigation into the Osage murders. DiCaprio plays Ernest Burkhart, William’s morally conflicted nephew. Ernest is married to an Osage woman named Mollie, played by Lily Gladstone.
The Switch From Paramount to Apple
Just as Paramount sold Scorsese’s “The Irishman” to Netflix because of the ballooning production budget, Paramount also sold “Killers of the Flower Moon” to Apple. But it wasn’t just the rumored $200 million “Flower Moon” budget that gave Paramount pause. When the film was set up at Paramount, DiCaprio was attached to star in the FBI agent role of Tom White. The character is a protagonist in the film, but DiCaprio was more interested in playing the more ambiguously-defined Ernest Buckhart, who reportedly oscillates between hero and villain during the film. Moving DiCaprio into a more seedy role allegedly made Paramount concerned “Flower Moon” would be less commercially viable, thus the decision to sell the film to streaming giant Apple was made. Apple is the creative studio and financer of the film, while Paramount remains attached as the worldwide distributor of the movie.
Script Changes Over Characters
Moving DiCaprio into the role of Ernest Buckhart opened the door for Scorsese to bring in Jesse Plemons as FBI agent Tom White. Back in November 2020, screenwriter Roth confirmed the character changes weren’t without tension, saying, “Leonardo [DiCaprio] wanted some things changed [in the script] that we argued about. He won half of [the arguments]. I won half of them.” As for what the character changes mean for the film, Roth said fans can expect to see DiCaprio and Plemons in equal measure.
“I wouldn’t say [Plemons is] the lead,” Roth said. “I would say that he was the designated hero…I think the parts are pretty equal and they were always equal to a certain extent, and Leo’s part is very complicated and very interesting. It’s a smart part for a smart actor to play. I mean, if Montgomery Clift was alive, I think he might think of playing him.”
Roth continued, “There were some changes that came about that were interesting about what Leonardo was going to play in it. I think in the long run — we all had our moments of trying to figure out how best to portray things because the story is so impactful — and I think we ended up with exactly the right material and that Marty made the right decisions.”
Plemons called being cast in the film feeling like “every sort of Christmas holiday rolled into one” in February 2022. Plemons’ FBI agent is akin to a “superhero of morality” and a true “beacon of justice,” according to the “Power of the Dog” Oscar nominee.
“Obviously, he had his flaws like everyone, but I had built this character up so massively,” Plemons said. “As for working with Scorsese, he really gives you a lot of space, likes playing around, and is open to any ideas. He’s got an infectious excitement, even after all this time. It just seems like he can’t believe that this is what he gets to do with his life.”
Eric Roth’s Script Has Been in the Works for Years
Eric Roth worked on the screenplay for “Killers of the Flower Moon” for nearly half a decade before the film finally went into production. The writer won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay with “Forrest Gump” before landing four more nominations in the category thanks to “The Insider,” “Munich,” “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” and “A Star Is Born.” Roth most recently earned an Oscar nomination for Best Picture as a producer on David Fincher’s “Mank” and he also has a writing credit on Denis Villeneuve’s “Dune” adaptation.
Roth said last month about “Flower Moon,” “I just think [Scorsese] is going to make — and obviously I would say this — but I think [of] all my work, this one could be one of the great movies. I really mean that. I think it has all the ingredients, which I don’t want to jinx it, but the story is so important.”
Working Closely with Osage Nation
Scorsese spent the year leading up to filming “Killers of the Flower Moon” visiting the Osage Nation in Oklahoma in order to better learn about their culture and to work with their leaders in order to accurately depict the Osage people in the film. Chief of the Osage Nation Geoffrey Standing Bear is one of the leading consultants on “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Scorsese also worked closely with the Osage Nation’s film ambassador Chad Renfro. DiCaprio joined Scorsese in February 2021 for a meeting with Standing Bear and Renfro in which they made a presentation of the overall intention of the film, particularly highlighting the themes of trust and betrayal, how ultimately the story of Mollie Kyle and Ernest Burkhart is a microcosm of the wider betrayal of the Osage people.
Standing Bear issued the following statement to mark the start of production in April 2021: “In recent meetings with Oklahoma Senators and House of Representative Members I made the point of how much their support for the movie industry has made a difference. This is a very strong, lucrative business which directly benefits many Oklahomans, including the Sovereign Nations. It promotes financial opportunities and cultural recognition for all. The funding from the State of Oklahoma along with the efforts of the Osage Nation have proven to be a big draw for this film in particular. We are now seeing the fruits of all of our efforts to bring this great movie production here and now!”
Recovering from “The Irishman”
The coronavirus pandemic delayed production on “Killers of the Flower Moon” for over a year, and Scorsese was honest with fans in December 2020 by saying the crisis resulted in a loss of his creative spark. “I have to find a way to get back to a singular creative impulse for my new film the way I had for ‘Irishman,’” the director told Empire Magazine. “Cut away all the award ceremonies, all that stuff, and get back to being in a room alone with a project and wondering if I can do something again.”
“With ‘Irishman,’ we achieved what I wanted to do,” Scorsese continued. “Whether it’s great or good or not, I don’t know. I know I could watch it. What I mean is I have to go back and find that spark. I don’t know if I can. But the pandemic has made it almost obligatory to go and find it. Because everything else is gone, normal life is not there anymore. So what do you have? You have people you love, family, and you hope, a creative spark, and maybe that can be rekindled for a new film. But I keep going back to ‘Irishman.’ Thinking on ‘Irishman.’ I use ‘Irishman’ as…I used that experience as the lesson.”
Now that production is underway, something tells us Scorsese got his spark back.
Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert DeNiro Offered a Walk-On Role
DiCaprio and De Niro helped raise funds for charity organizations Meals on Wheels America, No Kid Hungry, and America’s Food Fund during the pandemic by launching a campaign in which the highest donor received a walk-on role in “Killers of the Flower Moon.” America’s Food Fund was created in part by DiCaprio during the height of the pandemic and aims to help make sure every family in need gets access to food during the epidemic. “If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to be able to work with the great Martin Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and myself, this is your chance,” DiCaprio announced on social media at the time. The winner got to spend one whole day on set and also has an invitation to the film’s world premiere. | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 82 | https://flstrawberryfestival.com/2024-headline-entertainment/ | en | 2024 Headline Entertainment | [
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] | 2022-11-02T10:22:20-04:00 | Each year, the Florida Strawberry Festival® hosts world-famous headline entertainment from all over the globe. We work hard to provide our guests with a fresh | en | Florida Strawberry Festival | https://flstrawberryfestival.com/2024-headline-entertainment/ | If you ask any number of country singers who their favorite singer is, a large number of them will respond: Gene Watson. His music peers even named him “The Singer’s Singer” for his octave jumping range and smooth tone. Gene Watson has 34 studio albums, scored over 72 charted songs, including 23 Top Tens and 6 #1 hits over his fifty-year career. Watson’s first single, the self-penned, “If It’s That Easy” was released on Sun Valley Records in 1962.
It is safe to say that most knowledgeable country fans would point to Gene Watson as one of country music’s best ballad singers in the same league as country icons George Jones, Merle Haggard, Ray Price, and others who are the standard-bearers for honest, traditional country music. It’s no surprise to anyone but Gene that the Grand Ole Opry asked him to be a member and inducted him into that iconic group in March of 2020, just before the world shut down for the pandemic.
It’s also no surprise that such artists as Vince Gill, Lee Ann Womack, Trace Adkins, Connie Smith, Joe Nichols, Alison Krauss, and many others are not only happy but eager to record with Gene. It’s a stunning truth that at nearly 78 years of age, that Gene still sings with his clear, pure tone intact, an unmatched soulful delivery, and in the same key as 30 years ago. And that is good news for fans of real country music rooted in the timeless values of one of America’s bedrock musical genres.
“I think I’m working harder on each album to perfect what I do and still always working to be better,” Gene notes. “I don’t want anything to be so technically slick that we lose the emotion or the electricity of the moment. Each song is very personal to me and I always want the people listening to feel the emotion. Each song has a special meaning to me or I wouldn’t record it.”
Indeed Gene records the old-school way, live in the studio with a set of great musicians, and often singing literally in the same room as the musicians, eschewing the isolation booths normally used by vocalists. Gene picks all the songs for his albums and works side by side with his longtime producer, Dirk Johnson.
“I feel very fortunate,” Gene says, “that when I start to make an album I can call on the brilliant Nashville songwriting community and most of the songwriters there know my style and what type of songs to pitch to me. That makes my job easier. I try to choose songs I feel all people can relate to while at the same time trying to find a song that’s a little bit different and unique.”
Gene’s life story is a classic country life scenario. He is truly a humble man of the soil who has no idea of his own greatness. When he sings at the Grand Ole Opry, other artists gather at the side of the stage to watch him. But Gene himself seems incapable of pride or self-congratulation. Indeed despite all his success, he has never totally abandoned his auto repair business.
“I can remember singing before I can remember talking,” he relates. “Even when I was a kid, if I heard a song twice, I knew it. But I never planned to be an entertainer. I knew I could sing, but that wasn’t out of the ordinary. My whole family could.” In fact, Watson doesn’t even think he was the best singer in the seven-child household. Make that “bus-hold”. The itinerant Watson family moved from shack to shack until his father customized an old school bus for living quarters and transportation from job to job.
“Yeah, we were poor,” says the singer. “Today, people live in motor homes. Ours was yellow. We traveled to Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas until one day my dad came in and decided we were going to Phoenix, Arizona. We didn’t have the money to go to Phoenix, so we worked our way out there, stopped to pick crops and all that stuff. My dad was kind of a gypsy. He always said, ‘I’m fixin’ to leave in the morning. If there’s a dollar out there, I’m going to get 50 cents of it.’ I always kept that in mind. My dad worked hard at whatever it took to put food on the table. He worked in the log woods. He worked at the tire shops. He was a crop worker. We would cut spinach. We would pull radishes. We would dig potatoes. We would pick cotton. Whatever it took, we did it. That’s the only life I knew. I was a poor boy. But I wouldn’t take nothing for my raising–as far as my teachings, the way my mother raised me, the way my dad worked, and everything. We were a happy family. No one else around us had anything more, so we didn’t know we were poor. I think it took all that to get all this.
Born in Palestine, Texas in 1943, Gene Watson was singing in holiness churches with his family at an early age. His father played blues harmonica and guitar alongside African-American field laborers. Watson grew up loving both bluesman Jimmy Reed and honky-tonk king Lefty Frizzell. His earliest public country performance came when he was just 12 years old.
Watson worked from the time he was six, working in the fields, to age 12, when he’d jump off the school bus to work at the local salvage yard. He dropped out of high school to work full-time. In his late teens, he supported his family by doing auto body repair, so by day he worked on cars, and at night he sang in clubs. “But doing music professionally was never a goal of mine,” he confesses. I always wanted to work on cars. I always say I never did go looking for music. Music found me. Before I ever made a record, The Wilburn Brothers heard me sing down in Houston at a nightclub one night. They said they’d like for me to go with them and do a couple of shows. So I came up to Nashville and traveled to North Carolina with them. They got me on the Grand Ole Opry, and I got a standing ovation and an encore singing the Hank Williams song ‘I Can’t Help It If I’m Still In Love With You’ and ‘It Is No Secret What God Can Do.’ After that, they carried me down to the Ernest Tubb Record Shop and I got on stage and broadcast on The Midnight Jamboree. That was my first experience with the Big Time. I was 21.”
In the mid-70s, while on Capitol Records, he enjoyed success with a string of national hits, “Love In The Hot Afternoon,” “Where Love Begins,” “Paper Rosie,” “Farewell Party,” “Should I Come Home (Or Should I Go Crazy),” and “Nothing Sure Looked Good On You.” Before signing with MCA in the 80s, Gene recorded “Any Way You Want Me,” from the soundtrack of the Clint Eastwood movie “Any Which Way You Can”, a song personally requested by the legendary actor/director. Somewhere along the way, Clint Eastwood had heard the song as a demo recording by its writer, L. Ofman, a recording produced by Gene -but Eastwood insisted that Gene should record the song. Other songs by Watson that have been used in for TV and movies include “Paper Rosie” in the movie Another 48 Hours, “Cowboys Don’t Get Lucky All The Time” in the movie Convoy, and “Should I Come Home (or Should I Go Crazy)” in television’s WKRP in Cincinnati.
Shortly after moving to MCA, Watson recorded “Fourteen Carat Mind” which hit #1 in 1982. A parade of Top Ten hits followed during the early ’80s, including “Speak Softly (You’re Talking To My Heart)” and “You’re Out Doing What I’m Here Doing Without,” “Sometimes I Get Lucky,” “Drinkin’ My Way Back Home,” “Forever Again” and “Little By Little.”
In 1985, Gene moved to Epic Records and returned to the Top 5 with the western swing-influenced Memories to Burn, which was also the title of his first album on the label. Subsequent albums with Epic included Starting New Memories in 1986 and Honky Tonk Crazy in 1987. The following year, Gene Watson made his Warner Bros. debut with Back In The Fire which was followed by At Last. Leaving the label in 1991, Gene recorded the album In Other Words which was initially released only in Canada on Gary Buck’s label, Broadland International Records. It was later released in the US in 1993. The same year, Gene made his debut album for Step One Records Uncharted Mind and followed it with the albums The Good Ole Days, Jesus Is All I Need, and A Way To Survive. A brief stint with the RMG (Row Music Group) Records label yielded the title From The Heart which was followed by the recording Gene Watson….Sings on Intersound Records in 2003. In September 2007 Gene recorded his highly anticipated Shanachie Entertainment debut In A Perfect World. The Associated Press said “Gene Watson has never sounded better, which is saying something” while The Boston Herald claimed the album as “The Country Music Sleeper of the Year ” and USA Today called Watson “One of country’s finest, and most underrated singers.”
After two albums with Shanachie, in 2012, Watson established his own label Fourteen Carat Music, and released the ultimate re-recorded album, his own Best of the Best, 25 Greatest Hits. Each track was painstakingly recorded as close as possible to the original, updated sonically, and released to great critical acclaim.
In 2015, Gene enjoyed working on a TV show for the RFD-TV Network, produced by Larry Black’s Gabriel Entertainment company. The show was called “The Gene and Moe Show” and featured Gene with his longtime friend and country music star, Moe Bandy, as they interviewed various legends from Gene’s favorite truck and car world to Moe’s heroes on the rodeo and bull riding circuit.
Watson has released three other albums on his own label, My Heroes Have Always Been Country, Real.Country.Music. and a Gospel album, My Gospel Roots which garnered 4 consecutive #1 hits. He also recorded a duet album in 2011 with the “Queen of Bluegrass,” Rhonda Vincent for Rhonda’s label. The album titled “My Money And Your Good Looks” pleased both Country music fans and Bluegrass fans. Watson is currently working on a new album of country music titled “Outside The Box.”
Gene Watson says “ I have been on top. And I’ve been just as low as you can go.” All of those ups and downs have kept Watson always searching for his next project and never giving up. He concludes, “There’s a tremendous number of people around the world who continue to come out to hear some fiddle and steel and songs about heartbreak and real life,” Gene says. ” I think there is still such a hunger out there for traditional country music. So I’d like to stay out there as long as I’m able to do the job and do it well. | |||||
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] | null | [] | 2019-02-28T17:42:21-05:00 | Posts about New Order written by retrogod1985 | en | https://secure.gravatar.com/blavatar/619d5859ce87274f34c9a5e1bede76ea804d49cc91eb5393b8087086f17d33d3?s=32 | FOREVER YOUNG | https://foreveryoung80s.wordpress.com/category/new-order/ | Earlier this week, my wonderful and amazing girlfriend (and research queen), Maryhope, reminded me that today, February 28, 2019, marks the 33rd anniversary of the official release of the film (and soundtrack) of one of my all-time favorite 80s films, the cult classic PRETTY IN PINK, written by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch, and named after the 1981 Pyschedelic Furs song (which was re-recorded for the film).
PRETTY IN PINK the soundtrack almost didn’t become the soundtrack people have loved for generations now. First-time film director Howard Deutch had wanted more of a film score or theme music kind of soundtrack, but John Hughes talked him out of it, encouraging and influencing him to use New Wave, Post-Punk and maybe lesser-known recording artists (as he used in his previous films).
Growing up in the 80s in the old Central Maine mill town of Winslow, my knowledge of Modern Rock and Post-Punk had been mostly limited. But, thanks to John Hughes, I got to know about a lot of artists I prolly wouldn’t have known about until much later. Honestly, and I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before on the blog, the PRETTY IN PINK soundtrack was largely responsible for getting me into recording artists like New Order, The Psychedelic Furs, Echo & The Bunnymen, The Smiths and Suzanne Vega.
At least two of the songs released from the soundtrack were recorded specifically for the film PRETTY IN PINK: “If You Leave” by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark, and “Bring On The Dancing Horses” by Echo & The Bunnymen.
Echo & The Bunnymen started out as a four-man Post-Punk / New Wave band who formed in Liverpool, England in 1978. They had already put out four studio albums and three EP’s by the time PRETTY IN PINK was released. On the U.K. singles chart, between 1982 and 1984, Echo & The Bunnymen had six consecutive Top 40 hits to their credit, including the Top 10 hits, “The Cutter” (No. 8, 1983), and the forever-gorgeous and haunting “The Killing Moon” (No. 9, 1984).
When it came time to release their first compilation in 1985, SONGS TO LEARN & SING, Echo & The Bunnymen (most likely at the insistence of John Hughes) recorded a new song for the compilation and also for the upcoming film, PRETTY IN PINK: “Bring On The Dancing Horses.”
In a late 2018 interview with Songfacts, Echo lead vocalist Ian McCulloch said that the dancing horses, “headless and alone,” are statues. He added, “It’s about the way people would sooner look at statues than themselves. We revere things that tell us about ourselves. It’s that thing of how we think art is very important. A life without art, who knows what that would be like? We think the Mona Lisa is this thing that’s valuable, when something else isn’t.”
The lovely “Bring On The Dancing Horses” was released in mid-November 1985, a couple of months in advance of PRETTY IN PINK, and it reached No. 21 in the U.K. (to become their seventh consecutive U.K. Top 40 hit, of 10), and the Top 20 in Belgium and Ireland.
To me, the moderate chart success of “Bring On The Dancing Horses” is far outweighed by its appearance on the PRETTY IN PINK soundtrack. It got me to want to know a whole lot more about Echo & The Bunnymen, and I’ve been a big fan ever since.
Thank you, John Hughes, and Happy Anniversary PRETTY IN PINK! The incredible film and its amazing soundtrack (rightfully heralded as one of the best soundtrack albums ever), turned me on to Echo and much more, and I’m forever grateful…
“Bring on the dancing horses / Wherever they may roam…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_bJf3foa5I
On June 15, 2014, Casey Kasem, host of the longtime countdown program, AMERICAN TOP 40, passed away at the age of 82. From my first blog post (and prolly some more inbetween then and now), I explained how, in 1979, I was a geeky, lanky and somewhat lost 12-year-old living in Central Maine, had a few friends and not a lot of interest in much of anything, but at some point early that year, I discovered AMERICAN TOP 40, and was glued to it every weekend. Not only could I hear the 40 biggest songs in the country every week, but also Casey’s cool trivia and facts about the songs and the artists, a trait I treasure to this day. For me, the show was No. 1 with a bullet. And still is (thanks to the re-airing of broadcasts of AT40 on iHeart Radio).
In honor of my radio hero, Casey Kasem, since the start of June, I have been highlighting songs that peaked in the Top 40 of the BILLBOARD Hot 100 (including five (real) one-hit wonders of the 80s), just like on AMERICAN TOP 40, the hits have gotten bigger with each post. On June 1, 2017, I featured a song that peaked at No. 40. With the next post, I’ll feature a “song of the day” that went all the way to No. 1.
As Casey used to say on AT40, “And on we go!”
If you listened to AMERICAN TOP 40 as faithfully as I did back in the 80s, before Nos. 2 and 1 were announced, he’d usually take a commercial break before announcing them, and would usually say, “The two biggies are coming right up!” “The two biggies.” Always cracked me up and still does.
But, when it came to AMERICAN TOP 40, “the two biggies” were, in fact, a big deal. There a few positions on the chart that are the most frustrating, like Nos. 101, 41 and 11, but no other peak position on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 (or any singles chart, for that matter) was more frustrating to stop at than No. 2.
Foreigner endured the No. 2 position the longest in the 80s, spending 10 weeks in the runner-up spot in 1981 and 1982 with “Waiting For A Girl Like You,” a chart record Foreigner still shares to this day. And I believe Madonna, who has six No. 2 songs to her credit (four of them in the 80s), still holds the chart record for most No. 2 singles in Hot 100 history.
All told, nearly 100 songs reached No. 2 between 1979 and 1989, including songs by three Beatles (Paul McCartney, John Lennon, and George Harrison, whose 1981 No. 2 hit, “All Those Years Ago,” was a tribute to John Lennon), two Jacksons (Michael and Janet), and a couple of (real) one-hit wonders, including the Cold War Classic by Nena, “99 Luftballons.”
Some of the biggest songs in history that maybe you thought were No. 1 hits in America were actually No. 2 hits, such as “Girls Just Want To Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper, “Easy Lover” by Philip Bailey and Phil Collins, “We Got The Beat” by The Go-Go’s, “Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant, “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins, “Hurts So Good” by John Mellencamp, “Start Me Up” by The Rolling Stones and “Purple Rain” by Prince And The Revolution.
Several artists peaked at No. 2 between 1979 and 1989 with two songs, including The Bangles, Culture Club (with their first two hits), Air Supply, Duran Duran, Glenn Frey, Kool & The Gang, John Mellencamp, Billy Ocean (including the guilty pleasure, “Loverboy,” which a DJ back in the day once referred to as “Heavy Metal Disco”; I would disagree), plus Robert Palmer, Pointer Sisters, Linda Ronstadt (in two big duets with James Ingram and Aaron Neville), Tina Turner and Jody Watley.
Michael Jackson gets an honorable mention, as he peaked at No. 2 with “The Girl Is Mine” with Paul McCartney, and he is featured in an uncredited role backing up Rockwell on “Somebody’s Watching Me.” Likewise with Sheena Easton, who backed up Prince uncredited on “U Got The Look” and had her own No. 2 hit in 1989 with the sexy Dance hit, “The Lover In Me” (a long way from when she took that “Morning Train” to No. 1 in 1981; I’m sure Prince may have had something to do with it).
Speaking of Prince, he had three No. 2 hits between 1979 and 1989, or in this case, 1984 through 1987, with the aforementioned “Purple Rain” and “U Got The Look,” but also with “Raspberry Beret.” He, too, gets an honorable mention, as he composed the No. 2 hit for The Bangles, “Manic Monday.”
And a number longtime recording artists saw their biggest hits stop at No. 2, like The Cure (“Lovesong”), Journey (“Open Arms”), The Greg Kihn Band (“Jeopardy”), and Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing In The Dark.”
If there was any one huge artist in the 80s I wanted to see reach No. 1 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 singles chart, it was Bruce Springsteen. I was first introduced to Bruce’s music with 1980’s “Hungry Heart,” from his first No. 1 album, THE RIVER. At the time, I had no idea he had already released four critically-acclaimed and successful albums.
After “Hungry Heart,” I was a Bruce fan for life – granted, not the superfan that Hope is, but I don’t think anyone loves Bruce’s work more than Hope, except maybe for Bruce’s wife, Patti Scialfa.
“Dancing In The Dark” was released in early May 1984, a month before the BORN IN THE U.S.A. album was released. And, right out of the gate, it was a hit. “Dancing In The Dark” blasted onto the BILLBOARD Hot 100 the last week of May 1984 all the way into the Top 40, at No. 36. By the next week, it was already No. 18, with its eyes set on No. 1.
Bruce had hit No. 1 before – as a songwriter. A song from his 1973 debut album, GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK, N.J. – “Blinded By The Light” – was recorded by the London Rock band, Manfred Mann’s Earth Band, in 1977, and spent a week at No. 1 on the Hot 100 in February 1977, exactly four years to the month when Bruce’s original was released as a single.
“Dancing In The Dark” had a lot going for it – a popular video directed by Brian de Palma (SCARFACE, THE UNTOUCHABLES, CARRIE, DRESSED TO KILL and the first MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE film) with actress Courtney Cox (FAMILY TIES, FRIENDS) dancing with Bruce on the stage (the video would win the MTV Video Music Award for Best Stage Performance).
It also had a 12” Dance remix courtesy of Arthur Baker (who’s remixed songs for Daryl Hall & John Oates, Afrika Bambaataa, Cyndi Lauper, Pet Shop Boys and New Order). The “Blaster Mix” was miles away from anything on 1982’s NEBRASKA or 1980’s THE RIVER, but people loved it. Not only did it reach No. 7 on BILLBOARD’s Dance chart, it was the biggest-selling 12” single for all of 1984. Arthur Baker would also go on to remix the follow-up Bruce singles “Cover Me” and “Born In The U.S.A.” as well.
As much as “Dancing In The Dark” had going for it in its second week on the Hot 100, another single debuting on the same chart that early June was “When Doves Cry” by Prince, released in advance of the album and film, PURPLE RAIN. “When Doves Cry” reached the Top 40 a week later, and just like “Dancing In The Dark,” made a big move into the Top 20 the following week.
By late June 1984, “Dancing In The Dark” had climbed to No. 4, while “When Doves Cry” was closing in at No. 8. The following week, “When Doves Cry” had jumped to No. 3, and “Dancing In The Dark” was at No. 2, right behind Duran Duran’s “The Reflex.”
“When Doves Cry” proved to be too powerful for “Dancing In The Dark,” which stayed for four weeks in the runner-up position. “When Doves Cry” was the biggest song of 1984 here in America.
Though “Dancing In The Dark” didn’t reach No. 1, Bruce Springsteen still had a lot to be proud of. The song gave Bruce his first Grammy Award, winning for Best Rock Vocal Performance. In the 1984 ROLLING STONE readers poll, “Dancing In The Dark” was voted “Single Of The Year.” It’s also listed as one of The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame’s 500 Songs That Shaped Rock And Roll.” It sold a million copies in the U.S. alone, and the single’s B-side (one of the best ever), “Pink Cadillac,” was a Top 5 hit for Natalie Cole in 1988.
Around the globe, “Dancing In The Dark” was an international smash (though in some countries it took awhile), reaching No. 1 in Belgium and the Netherlands, No. 2 in Ireland, New Zealand and Sweden, No. 4 in South Africa and the U.K., No. 7 in Canada and Norway, No. 11 in Finland and No. 12 in Italy. In Australia, though it stopped at No. 5, it was the No. 1 song of the year, spending 40 weeks on the singles chart there.
“Dancing In The Dark” was just the first part of an amazing journey for Bruce Springsteen and the BORN IN THE U.S.A. album. Seven out of the album’s 12 songs were released as singles, and all seven reached the Top 10 on the Hot 100 between 1984 and 1986, tying a record set in 1984 by Michael Jackson’s THRILLER album.
BORN IN THE U.S.A. was No. 1 on BILLBOARD’s album chart twice, in July / August 1984 and January / February 1985. PURPLE RAIN may have been the album of the year here in the U.S. for 1984 (BORN IN THE U.S.A. was No. 28), but for 1985, BORN IN THE U.S.A. was the No. 1 album of the year in America (and even No. 16 for 1986).
NERDY FUN FACT: BORN IN THE U.S.A. was the first compact disc manufactured in the U.S. for commercial release. I remember seeing it at a DeOrsey’s in Waterville, Maine, and think it sold for something like $25.00. And the record album still sounds better.
NERDY FUN FACT 2: According to a 1984 ROLLING STONE interview, the “Dancing In The Dark” Blaster Mix by Arthur Baker happened because Bruce had heard the remix Arthur did for Cyndi Lauper’s “Girls Just Want To Have Fun,” and he thought it was incredible: “It sounded like fun, so I hooked up with Arthur. He’s a character, a great guy. He had another fellow with him, and they were really pretty wild. They’d get on that mixing board and just crank them knobs, you know? The meters were goin’ wild.”
Bruce Springsteen is one of those rare artists who have been on the same record label from the start – Columbia. Two other Columbia artists instantly come to mind – Barbra Streisand and Bob Dylan. There won’t be anyone else like them. Ever.
If you pull away the catchy dance beat, “Dancing In The Dark” is a personal song about the difficulty of writing a hit song and Bruce’s frustration of trying to write songs that will please everyone. Though I’m thinking Bruce would have liked to have another of his more personal songs become his biggest hit, I would almost bet my record collection he’s alright with that hit being “Dancing In The Dark.”
“You can’t start a fire / You can’t start a fire without a spark / This gun’s for hire / Even if we’re just dancing in the dark…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=129kuDCQtHs
On June 15, 2014, Casey Kasem, host of the longtime countdown program, AMERICAN TOP 40, passed away at the age of 82. From my first blog post (and prolly some more inbetween then and now), I explained how, in 1979, I was a geeky, lanky and somewhat lost 12-year-old living in Central Maine, had a few friends and not a lot of interest in much of anything, but at some point early that year, I discovered AMERICAN TOP 40, and was glued to it every weekend. Not only could I hear the 40 biggest songs in the country every week, but also Casey’s cool trivia and facts about the songs and the artists, a trait I treasure to this day. For me, the show was No. 1 with a bullet. And still is (thanks to the re-airing of broadcasts of AT40 on iHeart Radio).
In honor of my radio hero, Casey Kasem, for the entire month of June (and now through July), I will be highlighting a song each day (some days will have two songs!) that peaked in the Top 40 of the BILLBOARD Hot 100 (including five (real) one-hit wonders of the 80s), and with every blog post, just like on AMERICAN TOP 40, the hits will get bigger with each post. On June 1, 2017, I featured a song that peaked at No. 40. Sometime here in July, I’ll feature a “song of the day” that went all the way to No. 1.
As Casey used to say on AT40, “And on we go!”
You know, as unlucky as the stigma for being unlucky the number 13 has had as long as I’ve known it, the No. 13 position on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 is something altogether different, or, lucky. No. 13 has been the home (or treasure trove, if you prefer) to many great classics, like “Money” by Pink Floyd, Queen’s “Somebody To Love,” “Because The Night” by the Patti Smith Group, “Different Drum” by The Stone Poneys featuring Linda Ronstadt, “Radar Love” by Golden Earring, “Takin’ It To The Streets” by The Doobie Brothers, Santana’s “Oye Como Va,” “Roundabout” by Yes, “Let’s Talk About Sex” by Salt-N-Pepa, “Walking In Memphis by Marc Cohn, “Danke Schoen” by Wayne Newton (featured prominently in the John Hughes classic, FERRIS BUELLER’S DAY OFF), “Here Comes My Baby” by The Tremeloes (which my pal Dave Wakeling and The English Beat will be covering on their upcoming album!), “The Sun Ain’t Gonna Shine (Anymore)” by The Walker Brothers (which was featured in the brilliant but barely-seen 2012 Steve Carell film, SEEKING A FRIEND FOR THE END OF THE WORLD), and one of the first singles I ever owned, “Theme From CLOSE ENCOUNTERS” by John Williams.
Between 1979 and 1989, there were nearly 60 singles that reached lucky No. 13, and it was a popular number for Bob Seger, who had two hits stop there, as did Kenny Rogers, Elton John and Natalie Cole. Van Halen had three songs reach No. 13 – “Right Where Ya Started,” and two from the album, 1984: “Panama” and the highly underrated “I’ll Wait.” Speaking of Van Halen, in 1983, future / former Van Halen lead singer, Sammy Hagar, reached No. 13 with his first Top 40 hit (and biggest solo hit), “Your Love Is Driving Me Crazy.”
Some of my 80s favorites stopped at No. 13 too, like “Shadows Of The Night” by Pat Benatar, “All Over The World” by Electric Light Orchestra (from XANADU), “Back In The High Life Again” by Steve Winwood,” “One Night Love Affair” by Bryan Adams and “Don’t Come Around Here No More” by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
No. 13 must have been a favorite of mine for blog posts as well, as I’ve featured seven of them – “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid, “People Are People” by Depeche Mode, “Waiting On A Friend” by The Rolling Stones, “Where The Streets Have No Name” by U2, plus two of the three (real) one-hit wonders of the 80s that reached No. 13 – M|A|R|R|S (“Pump Up The Volume”) and Frida (“I Know There’s Something Going On”), and one song released in 1989, but peaked at No. 13 in March 1990 – “No Myth” by Michael Penn.
Another song that reached No. 13 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100 in the 80s came out of Italy, by way of Northern Ireland. In the late 70s, Jimmy McShane (of Derry, Northern Ireland) was attending a stage school in London, learning how to dance and sing, when he was hired as a stage dancer and backing singer for English singer and musician, Dee D. Jackson. He toured around Europe with Dee D. and her band, and upon a visit to Italy, he fell in love with Italy’s underground dance scene, and the country itself, and ended up moving to Milan in 1984.
In Milan, he learned the Italian language, and in 1984, met up with Maurizio Bassi, who was a music producer and a musician. Together, they decided to form the New Wave / Dance band, Baltimora, with Jimmy McShane as the singer and the face of the band.
In early September 1985, they released their debut album, LIVING IN THE BACKGROUND, along with the first single from the album, “Tarzan Boy.” The catchy song about being free and doing whatever you want in the jungle, without the hustle and bustle of living in the city, took about a month and a half to find its way to the BILLBOARD Hot 100, but did find it in mid-October 1985, when it debuted at No. 80.
“Tarzan Boy” steadily moved up the chart at first, but lost its chart “bullet” (for sales and airplay) in its sixth chart week, and stalled at No. 62 for three weeks. By early December 1985, “Tarzan Boy” had regained its bullet and started moving back up the Hot 100, reaching the Top 40 in mid-January 1986.
By March 1, 1986, “Tarzan Boy” had been on the chart for 20 weeks (longer than some No. 1 songs), and spent a week at No. 13. “Tarzan Boy” spent half a year on the survey and finished the year at No. 73.
Around the globe, “Tarzan Boy” was a massive hit, reaching No. 1 in Belgium, Finland, France, the Netherlands and Spain, and the Top 10 in the U.K., Austria, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland and the BILLBOARD Dance chart.
Despite the success of “Tarzan Boy,” Baltimora had a hard time duplicating that success for its other singles and second album, 1987’s SURVIVOR IN LOVE. Following “Tarzan Boy,” the title track from their debut album, LIVING IN THE BACKGROUND, peaked at No. 87 on the Hot 100, and a few other singles reached the Top 40 singles chart in Italy, but nothing more. Baltimora broke up after the record label (in this case, Manhattan) dropped them.
Fast forward to 1993, and a new remix of “Tarzan Boy” was used in a Cool Mint Listerine commercial (with animation by future film giant, Pixar). Well, it didn’t stop there. “Tarzan Boy” was also featured that year in the film, TEENAGE MUTANT NINJA TURTLES III, and the combination of the two sent “Tarzan Boy” back onto the BILLBOARD Hot 100, re-entering the chart in late March 1993.
“Tarzan Boy” climbed as high as No. 51 and spent 12 additional weeks on the Hot 100, and a total of 38 weeks combined. With new hits by Duran Duran, R.E.M., Madonna, INXS, New Order and Boy George’s Pet Shop Boys-produced theme to THE CRYING GAME, the 80s were still sticking around in 1993. But it was pretty cool to hear “Tarzan Boy” on the radio again.
Sadly, the following year, Jimmy McShane, the face of Baltimora, was diagnosed with AIDS while in Milan in 1994. A few months later, he returned to his hometown of Derry, Northern Ireland, the place where his family had shunned him many years before for being gay. He died in Derry in late March 1995 at the young age of 37. And, despite his family’s earlier stance towards Jimmy’s homosexuality, after his death, a family spokesperson said, “He faced his illness with courage and died with great dignity.”
The legacy of Jimmy and “Tarzan Boy” live on today, and the song continues to be covered by other artists and has appeared in films, like Seth MacFarlane’s 2014 film, A MILLION WAYS TO DIE IN THE WEST. And, “Tarzan Boy” is still heard on the radio today, as it should, because, who wouldn’t want to dance around to a fun, catchy song about being free and roaming around the jungle, removed from that city life?
“Jungle life, I’m far away from nowhere / On my own like Tarzan Boy / Hide and seek, I play along while rushing ‘cross the forest / Monkey business on a sunny afternoon…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_r0n9Dv6XnY
For years, during and away from STUCK IN THE 80s, I’ve been raving about and enjoying the music from Manchester and Greater Manchester, England, including but not limited to New Order, Joy Division, The Smiths, The Stone Roses, The Buzzcocks, Happy Mondays, James, The Chameleons, The Fall, When In Rome, as well as Lisa Stansfield, Swing Out Sister, The Bee Gees, The Hollies and Simply Red. Even this past weekend, Hope and I were taking about New Order’s incredible 1983 hit, “Blue Monday,” and how amazing it must have been to have heard this in the club at the time of its release!
Well, this past Monday, May 22, 2017, was indeed a Blue Monday, but not the cool, danceable New Order-kind of Monday. By now, I’m sure everyone has heard about the tragic bombing in Manchester immediately following a concert by American Pop star, Ariana Grande. The bombing happened at Manchester’s largest venue, the Manchester Arena (which has a capacity of 21,000 people).
As people were filing out of the venue, many of whom were stopping at the merch table on their way out, a 22-year-old man and British citizen (and of Libyan descent) took his own life and the lives of 22 others by detonating a bomb inside the venue. At least 120 others were injured from the blast (with nearly half of those folks having to be hospitalized).
Among those 22 people who died that night were Georgiana Callander, an 18-year-old superfan of Ariana Grande; Kelly Brewster, a 32-year-old fan who covered her niece from the explosion; Alison Howe and Lisa Lees, two friends (and moms) who weren’t even at the concert and were just waiting for their daughters to come out after the show; and Saffie Rose Roussos, an eight-year-old girl who was prolly attending her first concert ever and had her whole life ahead of her and then some. Students and teachers at the school she attended (about 40 miles north of Manchester), held a moment of silence for Saffie, and then sang Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin’” (the popular GLEE version) in her honor.
Many nations around the globe expressed their sorrow regarding the Manchester attack, and their solidarity and their prayers. Donald Trump called ISIS (who made an unconfirmed claim of responsibility for the attack) “evil losers.”
While my response might have been a bit more eloquent than Mr. Trump, I will agree that ISIS is evil, and yes, they are losers. All over the globe, ISIS (the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) has caused much havoc and taken far too many lives under a mask of religious violence, but when it’s all said and done, they really just don’t give a shit about anything except maybe their beloved Prophet Muhammad. As a lifelong Catholic (practicing, non-practicing and recovering), I can’t imagine the Apostle of God would be down with all this. Just sayin’.
Please know what you just read was not said to demean Muslims or Muhammad; my beef is with ISIS.
Here’s another reason why the collective of ISIS are a bunch of losers, or in my book, rank somewhere next to ticks and cockroaches as having no meaning or need for existence on this Earth: ISIS thinks that, with every venue they blow up, it’s going to stop people from returning to see concerts. They are so fucking mistaken. I’m in mourning for the loss of people I didn’t even know from this Manchester attack, and the one in Paris in late 2015. Many folks around the globe are in mourning too. But, you can’t let ISIS win.
It’s alright to fear. It’s alright to be scared. I’m scared more often than I’d like to admit for whatever reason, but for the sake of it being alright to be scared, I’m admitting it here. Of course, I’d never want something to happen to anyone I love (family, friends, radio listeners, kind blog readers) because of ISIS. Moreover, though, I’d never want anyone I love to give up something they love or love doing because these misguided, coward ISIS motherfuckers have their own agenda and don’t want you to do anything you love. It’s alright to be scared. It’s alright to fear. But, just because they don’t give a shit about their own lives or the lives of others in this world, you can’t let it stop you from doing something you love, with someone you love. So, don’t let it…
Sending many thoughts and prayers, and peace and love, to everyone in Manchester, England, and beyond, after a very Blue Monday…
#ManchesterUnited #ManchesterAttack #WeStandWithManchester
I have been a fan of Pat Benatar since the first time I heard “Heartbreaker” in late 1979. I own several of her albums, and yes, 12” singles too (hey – almost everybody did remixes back in the 80s!). But, oddly enough, as much as I have loved Pat Benatar and her music for almost 40 years, I have never seen her perform live. I am hoping to rectify that this Summer.
This week, I found out that Pat and her long-time husband and guitarist, Neil Giraldo, will be performing at Portland’s Maine State Pier for the second time in three years. In 2015, I believe they had the distinction of being the first performers at the Maine State Pier, performing in early May 2015. I wasn’t at that show, but from what I heard, it was incredibly cold (we were barely out of our longer-than-usual Winter that year) and I feared Pat wouldn’t be back to Maine again.
The Winter of 2014-2015 was what I classified as “The Winter That Would Never End,” in that it snowed on November 1, 2014, and snowed in six consecutive months, through April 2015. Even for Maine, that’s pretty unusual. I love Maine but not its Winters, and always hope they won’t last more than their calendared three months. (This year, Mom Nature is playing her own April Fool’s Joke on us, with several inches of snow predicted the first day of April.) I’m so glad Pat and Neil have picked to return to Portland’s Maine State Pier in late July, when – theoretically – it’ll be an awesome Summer (like 2016!).
By late 1983, the then-30-year-old from Brooklyn, NYC already had released four hugely successful albums, including a No. 1 album – 1981’s PRECIOUS TIME – and a No. 2 album – her biggest album to date, 1980’s CRIMES OF PASSION, which has been certified (at least) 4x Multi-Platinum. She had also nine out of 10 singles reach the Top 40 of the BILLBOARD Hot 100, including one Top 10 hit, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot,” which reached No. 9 in late December 1980.
Pat’s fifth release, a mostly-live album called LIVE FROM EARTH, was released in mid-October 1983, and contained two new studio tracks, “Lipstick Lies” and “Love Is A Battlefield,” the latter of which was written by popular songwriters Mike Chapman and Holly Knight, who have written a combined amount of huge songs that would require their own entire blog post, which I may write one day. I can say that Holly Knight (a member of the short-lived Dance / Rock band, Device) also wrote and/or co-wrote three other Pat Benatar songs, including 1985’s “Invincible (The Theme From THE LEGEND OF BILLIE JEAN).”
“Love Is A Battlefield” was released a month in advance of LIVE FROM EARTH, and only took 12 days to reach the BILLBOARD Hot 100, debuting at No. 78. In just four weeks, “Love Is A Battlefield” debuted in the Top 40, giving Pat her tenth Top 40 American hit. In a chart coincidence that only a singles chart nerd like myself could love, “Love Is A Battlefield” also debuted in the Top 40 the same week as Eurythmics debuted with “Love Is A Stranger.”
Like most Pat Benatar singles, “Love Is A Battlefield” made a steady climb up the chart and spent a week at No. 5 in early December 1983. It stayed on the Hot 100 until the second half of February 1984 and one of BILLBOARD’s biggest Hot 100 hits of 1984. With 1985’s “We Belong,” it remains her highest-charting American hit so far, and gave Pat her fourth consecutive Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.
Around the globe, there was a lot of love for “Love Is A Battlefield.” It spent five weeks at No. 1 in Australia, four weeks at No. 1 in Holland and BILLBOARD’s Mainstream Rock chart, two weeks at No. 1 in Belgium, plus Top 10 rankings in Canada, Germany, Ireland and New Zealand, and the Top 20 in the U.K. and Switzerland.
A special remix was used for the popular music video, which features Pat as a teenager running away from her family, Pat exploring the fast life in the big city, becoming a dancer, her father eventually showing regret for things he said that drove her away, and through all of this, she ends up discovering strength and independence, and the incredible undeniability of girl power. Pat also showed off some pretty cool dance moves in this partially-choreographed video, which was nominated for an MTV Video Music Award for Best Female Video.
I know the dancing and using a drum machine was out of Pat Benatar’s normal Rock ’n’ Roll element, and that remixes prolly weren’t her thing (although she’d end up releasing a few more; I know, because I own them), but in the end, “Love Is A Battlefield” is a song that worked, even when songwriter Mike Chapman didn’t think it would work, and even when Pat’s record company didn’t think it would work. But all’s fair in love and war and pop hits, right? What most folks involved with the record thought wouldn’t work is one of THE songs Pat Benatar is remembered most for to this day, and is a song I hope to hear her sing in Portland, Maine in late July.
Writing about “Love Is A Battlefield” here made me think of a time back in the mid-00s, when I was still living in Portland and had a Saturday night retro DJ gig at one of the clubs intown, where, in the small, already crowded Alt-Rock / Dance and New Wave “rec room” full of the music of New Order, Blondie, Duran Duran, Smiths, Siouxsie & The Banshees, Nine Inch Nails and the oft-requested Elvis Costello, there wasn’t much room for Pat’s Benatar’s straight up, kick-ass Rock ’n’ Roll, but I remember a couple of times I got a request for something by Pat. And I was pleasantly surprised both times.
The first time Pat Benatar was requested, for a second, I thought, “what could I possibly play for this amazing crowd of people that would blend in?” The only song that came to mind – and what proved to be THE best choice – was the 12” dance remix of “Love Is A Battlefield.” When Pat was requested another time, the choice that time was a no-brainer, because, not only did “Love Is A Battlefield” get a sweet reception the first time, when it comes to dance music from the 80s, whether it’s Pop, Rock, Punk, Funk, Dance, Rap, New Wave, New Romantics – to me, there IS no battlefield.
“We are strong / No one can tell us we’re wrong / Searching our hearts for so long / Both of us knowing / Love is a battlefield…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGVZOLV9SPo
On Saturday, February 25, 2017, we lost another great actor too soon – the incredibly-talented Bill Paxton, who died from a post-surgical stroke following heart surgery. The Fort Worth, Texas native was just 61.
Bill Paxton was a veteran actor, with an incredible resume that spanned four decades. Though he apparently was in the 1981 Bill Murray gem, STRIPES (as a soldier) I don’t remember Bill in that movie. I’ll look for him next time though. His first big movies were prolly THE TERMINATOR and STREETS OF FIRE, both from 1984.
The first movie I remember Bill in, however, was the 1985 John Hughes film, WEIRD SCIENCE. It’s my least favorite of John’s 80s teen films, but as the asshole brother, Chet, Bill Paxton played the role so brilliantly. Seriously, not many people could convincingly pull off playing a giant turd. And I mean that in the highest regard. I loved him in that role.
I loved Bill in many other roles, too, including films like TOMBSTONE, TRUE LIES, TWISTER, TITANIC, ALIENS (for which he won a Saturn Award) and APOLLO 13 (for which he won a Screen Actors Guild Award). He also had a TV resume that spanned four decades as well, including roles on MIAMI VICE, TALES FROM THE CRYPT, FRASIER, AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D., and his HBO series, BIG LOVE, for which he was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards. He was also a main character in the brand-new TV reboot of the 2001 film, TRAINING DAY. All of the 13 episodes had been completed before his death, and just wrapped shooting in December 2016.
In 1976, Bill Paxton met Seymour Stein, co-founder of my favorite record label, Sire Records (and future Rock And Roll Hall Of Famer and Vice President of Warner Bros. Records). They became friends, and Seymour took Bill to see acts on his roster at the time, like The Ramones and Talking Heads. Can you imagine? Hot damn. Seymour was also encouraging with Bill and his acting work. More on Bill’s connection with Sire Records in a bit.
What many folks don’t know about Bill Paxton, is that, when he wasn’t acting, he was involved with music. Before his big break in film and TV, Bill directed a music video in 1980 for a popular 1978 novelty song that had a lot of love on the Dr. Demento show over the years – “Fish Heads” by Barnes & Barnes.
Bill met up with the fictional twin brothers Art and Artie Barnes (actor Bill Mumy of LOST IN SPACE and singer / songwriter / musician Robert Haimer), and volunteered to direct the $2,000 video. He also starred in the video, along with Dr. Demento himself, who had a cameo as a bum. The video for “Fish Heads” aired on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE on December 6, 1980 (eight months before MTV), and the following week.
Bill Paxton’s video filmography didn’t stop there. He also appeared as a Nazi officer in Pat Benatar’s “Shadows Of The Night” video in 1982, and New Order’s “Touched By The Hand Of God” video in 1987. Bill was in a couple more videos in the 80s, but they were a bit more personal.
In 1982, vocalist and guitarist Andrew Todd Rosenthal thought up the idea for a band whose sound (a sorta different twist on New Wave) ended up being a precursor for late-80s Devo. That band was called Martini Ranch.
The idea behind the name Martini Ranch? According to the liner notes of 1988’s Sire compilation, JUST SAY YO: VOLUME II OF JUST SAY YES, the answer to the “philosophical query” is that Martini Ranch is “a neither dry nor dusty concoction that cheerfully assimilates all media forms in order to regurgitate a colorful, satirical audio-visual mélange of Life As We Know It. Got that, Martini fans? Then drink up.”
Between 1986 and 1988, Andrew, Bill and keyboardist Robert O’Hearn – as Martini Ranch – released, on Sire Records, two 12” singles and a full-length album, HOLY COW. Speaking of Devo, from that lone Martini Ranch album, the first single – “How Can The Laboring Man Find Time For Self-Culture?” – was produced and engineered Devo’s Bob 2 – Bob Casale, Jr. (who we sadly lost in February 2014), and featured Devo drummer Alan Myers (who we also sadly lost in June 2013), and Devo vocalist Mark Mothersbaugh on keyboards.
Also making appearances on this interestingly quirky album were Cindy Wilson of The B-52’s, famed New Age artist and film composer Mark Isham, actor Bud Cort (of HAROLD AND MAUDE), and actor Judge Reinhold (of FAST TIMES AT RIDGEMONT HIGH, the BEVERLY HILLS COP trilogy and more).
Judge Reinhold’s appearance on HOLY COW consisted of a sole credit – as the whistler on the album’s second single (and today’s “song of the day”), “Reach.” The song had a kind of cowboy-meets-New Wave sound (Boys Don’t Cry’s “I Wanna Be A Cowboy” comes pretty close), with a hint of Dead Or Alive.
For a song that was mostly just a fun College Radio hit, Martini Ranch picked up a pretty impressive director for the video of “Reach” – James Cameron.
Long before James Cameron became an Academy Award winner and “King of the world!” with two of the top three domestic films of all-time (AVATAR, No. 2 and TITANIC, No. 3, behind 2015’s STAR WARS: THE FORCE AWAKENS), he was an up-and-coming Sci-Fi writer-director, having directed and written – by 1988 – THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS.
Bill Paxton had appeared in both of those films (and would also appear in James Cameron’s TRUE LIES and TITANIC), and I’m betting his friend James directed the seven-and-a-half-minute cowboy-themed video for “Ranch” as a favor for Bill.
The number of cameos in this video is impressive, including James’ future third wife (of five), Kathryn Bigelow, who not only directed the New Order video for “Touched By The Hand Of God,” but would become (to date) the first female director (finally!) to win an Academy Award for Best Director (for 2009’s THE HURT LOCKER).
Cameos in the “Reach” video also included ALIENS and TERMINATOR star Lance Henriksen, actor Paul Reiser, the aforementioned Judge Reinhold and Bud Cort, and actor Adrian Pasdar (who I remember most for the role of Nathan Petrelli of the NBC series, HEROES).
The video for “Reach” appears in the brilliant 2005 Rhino / Sire 3-CD/1-DVD box set, JUST SAY SIRE: THE SIRE RECORDS STORY, which features 61 classic Sire gems spanning many genres and decades, and a DVD (which includes “Reach”), featuring 20 videos like M’s “Pop Muzik,” The Ramones’ “Rock ’N’ Roll High School,” “Let’s Go To Bed” by The Cure, “Like A Prayer” by Madonna, “Enjoy The Silence” by Depeche Mode and Talking Heads’ “Once In A Lifetime.”
In the liner notes for that box set, Bill wrote about Seymour in a way anyone who knew Bill or loved his work would prolly write about Bill:
“As anyone who has ever pursued a recording, theatre, or film career knows, it can be a very discouraging road. I think I speak for all of the artists who have been represented by and associated with Seymour over the years, in so much as when he believes in someone’s talent, he believes all the way. He will not be swayed by pressure or popular opinion. I believe that this positive, unflagging support is what has driven many of us to succeed when we might have lost faith. His great talent comes from a deep, deep love of what he does – finding and nurturing talent.”
Bill Paxton was definitely a great talent, and had a deep, deep love for what he did. And I’ll miss that. And I’ll miss Bill. R.I.P. Bill, and many, many thanks…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rkz0Lx6VyxA
Well, just two STUCK IN THE 80s shows to go on WMPG community radio (in Portland, Maine, USA)! Wow. This past Sunday, 1.29.2017, my awesome and talented WMPG radio neighbor, DJ SHAXX (host of the kick-ass LEFT OF THE DIAL), and I teamed up for a second installment in celebrating the 12-inch single, extended remixes and even mash-ups on a show that we called 12inchTHROWDOWN Redux!
The 12” single, to my knowledge, got its start during the disco era of the 70s, but it was during the 80s where the 12” single really flourished. One of the great things I love about the history of the 12” single during the 80s is that almost everyone in the music industry felt compelled to commission at least one 12” extended mix, whether or not they really needed to (i.e. Billy Joel, Chicago, Toto, Matthew Wilder, Nena, Bruce Springsteen).
In the 80s, you had 12” extended mixes from all walks of music life – with artists like Madonna, Cyndi Lauper, Duran Duran, Depeche Mode, INXS, Michael Jackson, New Order and Pet Shop Boys leading the way. The most surprising 12” dance mixes came from Rock and Roll artists. In the 80s, Rock bands like The Cult, Def Leppard, Aerosmith, ZZ Top and AC/DC all released 12” extended and/or dance mixes of some of their songs.
One Rock artist who was talked into releasing at least a couple of remixes in the 80s was the late, great Gary Moore, from Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the 70s, Gary was a member of the Irish Rock bands Skid Row and Thin Lizzy.
For his sixth studio album, 1985’s RUN FOR COVER, Gary teamed up with his former Thin Lizzy bandmate, Phil Lynott, on the song, “Out In The Fields,” about the religious issues they faced in their native Ireland. Shortly after the song’s success, Phil Lynott died at the young age of 36 in early January 1986.
Gary was off of my music radar until his next album, WILD FRONTIER (most notably the album’s first single, “Over The Hills And Far Away”) was released in March 1987. The album features many songs about Ireland and throughout the album, there’s a powerful Celtic presence, especially on “Over The Hills And Far Away.” I think that (along with the incredible assist of a drum machine, believe it or not) is what attracted me to the song. and ultimately, the album.
“Over The Hills And Far Away” is a song about a man who was sent to prison for a crime he didn’t commit and longs for the day he gets out to be with the woman he loves (“Over the hills and far away / She prays he will return one day / As sure as the rivers reach the sea / Back in her arms is where he’ll be…”).
The creative non-trad 12” extended mix of “Over The Hills And Far Away” starts off with Gary walking over to a couple of doors from his music past, or rather Gary revisiting a couple of songs from the previous album, RUN FOR COVER – the aforementioned “Out In The Fields,” and “Empty Rooms.” He opens the door to each song via the sound of a creaky door (i.e. his guitar), and then promptly closes each door once the quick sampling of each song was done. From there, he walks over to another creaky door, opens it (again, via his guitar) and then, replete with that powerful drum machine beat, Gary rips into that same guitar and starts wailing with everything he’s got. At the end of the song, the door to “Over The Hills And Far Away” closes too. This 12” mix was one of the highlights of the 12inchTHROWDOWN Redux show from the other night.
Following the release of his next Rock album, 1989’s AFTER THE WAR, Gary achieved his biggest success with 1990’s STILL GOT THE BLUES album, which featured the likes of Blues legends Albert King and Albert Collins, and The Beatles’ George Harrison. It was certified Gold here in the U.S., Finland and Germany. It was certified Platinum in the U.K., Australia and Switzerland, and Double-Platinum in Sweden.
Gary Moore would continue to release (mostly) Blues albums through 2008. He sadly passed away of a heart attack in early February 2011 at the young age of 58. He was beloved by many, especially folks in the Rock music field, including Ozzy Osbourne, Bob Geldof, Brian May and Roger Taylor of Queen, Bryan Adams and Henry Rollins. In Skånevik, Norway, a large statue was erected of Gary Moore, in honor of his many performances at the Skånevik Blues Festival.
I remember Gary mostly for his massive guitar talents, especially on that amazing 1987 song that always takes me “over the hills and far away…”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SgQUi9uJrc
For 10 of the 20 years on my little 80s radio program, STUCK IN THE 80s, on WMPG community radio in Portland, Maine, I aired a special series called FAST FORWARD, which featured new music from 80s artists, reissues, new covers of 80s songs, and artists who had nothing to do with the 80s but whose music was inspired by the 80s and sounded like it could have come from there.
This past Sunday (10.9.2016), I aired the first installment in a five-part series, titled THE NEXT GENERATION, highlighting those non-80s artists that kept the 80s revolution going well past Y2K.
With 17 shows left to go before I retire the show from WMPG on my 50th birthday in February, four of those remaining shows will be dedicated to the FAST FORWARD: THE BEST OF 2000-2016 series. One of those shows will feature the cream of the crop of amazing 80s covers since 2000. I’ve been listening to them for a month now. It’ll be so hard to whittle down hundreds of swell covers to just 20-25 of them. Today, one of those cover songs was instrumental in creating an “earworm” for me – “Walk Like An Egyptian” by The Bangles.
The cover of “Walk Like An Egyptian” I’m referring to is a 2007 gorgeous 1940s style remake by the London Swing / Vocal trio, The Puppini Sisters, from their second album, THE RISE AND FALL OF RUBY WOO.
The Puppini Sisters, who, like Sheffield, England’s Thompson Twins, are not related, found a niche of covering 40s and 50s classics like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy (Of Company B),” “Mister Sandman” and “Diamonds Are A Girl’s Best Friend,” as well as more modern gems like Blondie’s “Heart Of Glass,” Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love” and “Panic” by The Smiths. Their first three albums all reached the Top 10 on BILLBOARD’s Jazz Albums chart.
Rewinding now to the four-woman, Los Angeles-based Pop / Rock band, The Bangles, they had already released an EP and a popular full-length album when they released their second album, DIFFERENT LIGHT, in January 1986. Their first single from the album, the Prince-penned “Manic Monday,” was a huge international hit, and peaked at No. 2 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100, behind Prince’s own No. 1 hit, “Kiss.”
The second single released from DIFFERENT LIGHT was the Top 30 hit, “If She Knew What She Wants,” a Top 30 cover of a 1985 song by Jules Shear (his “All Through The Night” was famously covered by Cyndi Lauper for her SHE’S SO UNUSUAL album, reaching the Top 5 on the BILLBOARD Hot 100).
The third single from the album, “Walk Like An Egyptian,” almost never happened for The Bangles. Written by Liam Sternberg (who was part of the late-1970s Akron, Ohio scene with folks like Devo and The Waitresses), the original demo of “Walk Like An Egyptian” was recorded with Alt-Folk singer Marti Jones, and Liam offered the song to Toni Basil, but she turned it down. New Waver (and Detroit native) Lene Lovich actually recorded the first version of “Walk Like An Egyptian,” but it was never released, as she took some time off from music in order to raise her family.
The producer of DIFFERENT LIGHT, David Kahne, who has produced albums for many artists, including Fishbone, New Order, The Outfield, Romeo Void, Stevie Nicks, Translator and Paul McCartney, and who produced The Bangles’ first album, ALL OVER THE PLACE, got ahold of the song, and The Bangles agreed to record it.
“Walk Like An Egyptian” was released in September 1986, and found its way onto the BILLBOARD Hot 100 late that month. It was slowly climbing the Hot 100 this week in October 1986, and took awhile to catch on, but by year’s end, it was No. 1, and stayed there through the 1986 / 1987 holiday season, spending four weeks on top. It stuck around on the Hot 100 through the last day of February 1987, and ended up being the No. 1 song in the U.S. for all of that year.
The song wasn’t just an American phenom, it was a massive international smash, reaching No. 1 in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Holland, South Africa and Spain, and the Top 10 in the U.K, Austria, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand and Switzerland.
In addition to the version by the aforementioned Puppini Sisters, there have been several covers of “Walk Like An Egyptian” throughout the years, but none quite like the 1986 parody by the Boston band, The Swinging Erudites, titled “Walk With An Erection,” which appeared on their self-titled EP and 1987’s full-length UNCHAINED PARODIES album. And, with it being the 80s, there was even a 12” extended remix for it (the Big Weenie Mix; I know this because I actually own it). The memory’s a bit fuzzy, but I am pretty sure I first heard “Walk With An Erection” on the mighty WTOS in Skowhegan, Maine (when it was still mighty, that is; the format was famously – and sadly – changed in October 1987; WTOS DJ – and one of my first radio heroes – Duane Bruce, writes about it in his new book, HANG THE DJ, an amazing and fun read).
Despite the huge success of “Walk Like An Egyptian,” I would bet that each member of The Bangles – past and present – kinda wish they never had recorded the song. But I can’t say for sure. The song has shared vocals by lead guitarist Vicki Peterson, bassist Michael Steele (my favorite member of the band), and singer and guitarist Susanna Hoffs, but the producer, David Kahne, didn’t like any of the vocals provided by drummer Debbi Peterson (Vicki’s younger sister). So, she was relegated to sing backing vocals, playing the tambourine and whistling. Adding insult to injury, a drum machine was used for the song. Suffice it to say, there was tension in the band with this song since the recording of it.
Now, I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, whenever a song gets stuck in my head, like today’s “earworm” of “Walk Like An Egyptian” – once I play it, the song is pretty much gone and no longer occupies space in my gigantic head. And while I still enjoy the song 30 years later, it’s by far NOT my favorite Bangles song.
My favorite song from them also appears on DIFFERENT LIGHT, which is a great way to describe the song, “Following,” written and sung by the lovely Michael Steele. It truly is so different from anything on that album, or anything they put out, before or since. It’s an Alt-Folk-type ballad, sung in the first person, and about Michael’s high school sweetheart. It even reached No. 22 in Ireland and was a minor U.K. hit.
Hmmm, now I have that stuck in my head. And I’m not going to play it just yet; for now, I’m “following” my heart, not my head, and I’m gonna let it stir up there for awhile…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cv6tuzHUuuk | ||
4334 | dbpedia | 0 | 18 | https://www.wendywaldmanmusic.com/mytimeinthedesert | en | My Time In The Desert — Wendy Waldman | http://static1.squarespace.com/static/578e82b0b8a79b6ad9e28177/t/5916370d46c3c45c5c6cdaac/1494628112971/WendyWaldmanLogo.png?format=1500w | http://static1.squarespace.com/static/578e82b0b8a79b6ad9e28177/t/5916370d46c3c45c5c6cdaac/1494628112971/WendyWaldmanLogo.png?format=1500w | [
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] | null | [] | null | en | https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/578e82b0b8a79b6ad9e28177/1494628103762-1B3AC3WCCF7Y53TK5OLY/favicon.ico?format=100w | Wendy Waldman - Vocalist. Songwriter. Producer. Composer. | https://www.wendywaldmanmusic.com/mytimeinthedesert | I had a rough time during the transition back from Nashville in the early ‘90s into the early 2000s. Newly returned from a great career and life in Tennessee, I was struggling to reconnect with the industry in Los Angeles. The high notes of those years for me were reconnecting with my partners in Bryndle, Kenny Edwards, Karla Bonoff and Andrew Gold. Though this was only to last a few years, we would finally get a couple of beautiful cds released, and a lot of excellent songs were written. I also began to develop and produce other artists independently, figuring that my years as a producer for major labels in Nashville would not be repeated in Los Angeles. And unseen even by myself I was changing from “label artist” and “publishing company songwriter/producer” to “street musician”, in the happiest sense of the word. It was a 20 year process and I am so glad it happened, in retrospect.
Throughout that period, I was collecting songs, piles of them, some written in the last days of Nashville with amazing writers, and many of them in the late ‘90s, early aughts, as I found my way into the next chapter of my life. I kept writing, regardless of whatever was going on out there.
It should be noted that in that time, the backdrop for all of us “songwriter/acoustic” artists - and actually many rock artists as well - was the slow and steady early disintegration of the music business as we had known it and as it had been for some 40+ years.The floor under us was shifting though we didn’t quite see it yet. Like the industry itself, my professional life was in major transition. Everything I had known in Nashville and the early years at Warner Brothers was no longer relevant, though I kept trying to work within that mold. The universe definitely had other ideas for me: in particular, a lot of difficulty that would lead me into a whole new way of working, ultimately, joyfully, but a long and hard road.
At this writing, some two decades later, tha industry meltdown has been complete, and more than any business out there, the scenario for the musical pop artist has been completely transformed and is in effect, unrecognizable from what it was. This also has given us some unimagined opportunites to show our music, even though the single artist today does the work of 5 different divisions that functioned in the days of record deals.
Against this post-apocalyptic background, my co manager Mark Nubar and I have decided to properly release or “re-release” this album, which in many ways was my best work ever, and which fell through the cracks of time and circumstance. I love the songs on this project and to me, it’s one of the most important works I’ve ever completed. It’s a vital step from where I was to where I am going.
This is My Time in the Desert. My longtime engineer/partner Michael Boshears and I had been reunited when I came back from Nashville in the ‘90s, and we did what we do best: we made records, all kinds of records, for all kinds of people. We were working in Digital Performer, on Mackie boards, on whatever we could afford. We had already begun our little “Seeds and Orphans” series, which consisted of cool orphan tracks from our long history together as well as some tunes and demos I had always liked and felt had been overlooked.
Then together, in 2006-2007, we produced this new album of songs. We pulled from my ‘covered’ catalog, doing some songs I’d co written such as “Fishin in the Dark,” “Save the Best for Last,” “You Plant your Fields” and “Can’t Stop Now.” In the old days, I would have been very uncomfortable for absolutely no good reason—recording my “hits,” but when I moved back to LA, I played many songwriter nights that were just starting up, and I started to sing those tunes. Turns out it was fun and a good thing to do. I also recorded a group of self-penned tunes that I had been developing during that period-these tunes most definitely reflected the transition and often heartache of my life at that point. The album is appropriately named “My Time in the Desert” from the song.
Many of the songs were written by me alone, but some extraordinary songwriters also were my collaborators and guides on the others: Gary Nicholson (“Can’t Stop Now”), Sally Berris (“My Time in the Desert”), Jim Photoglo (“Fishin in the Dark”), Phil Galdston and Jon Lind (“Save the Best for Last”), Donny Lowery (“You Plant Your Fields”), and Reed Nielsen (“New Mexico Cadillac”)
We assembled a dream team of players and singers for this one: the late and much missed Kenny Edwards, Scott Babcock, Mark Goldenberg, Brent Rowan, John Cowan, Jim Photoglo, the iconic star George Wintson, Matt Cartsonis, Arthur Lee Land, the reclusive genius Steve Ferguson, and Seth Osburn. This was a magical group.
Mostly this project was recorded in the “old school’ style, meaning, actually played together in one room by humans who have to learn and execute the music! And an engineer who knows how to mike and handle all the players at one time, perhaps a rarer skill these days. Michael Boshears’ mixes to this day are clear, simple, and powerful. I am extraordinarily proud of this work, and eternally grateful to the wonderful musicians and writers who appear on this record album.
The songs & writers
Can’t Stop Now - Gary Nicholson/Wendy Waldman
We opened the album with “Can’t Stop Now,” which I had written in the ’80s in Nashville with the great songwriter/artist/producer Gary Nicholson, grammy winning producer of the iconic Delbert McClinton among others. Gary and I had written a funky, high energy bluegrass-soul hybrid tune,which had been recorded by a few people. But it found its true life when it was recorded at breakneck speed with lighting precision by the iconic band New Grass Revival. I’m pretty sure it was Michael Boshears, my co producer, who convinced me to do this tune, as I can’t imagine I would have ever thought I could ever pull it off. BUT, when we invited John Cowan to play bass on this record, all bets were off. When we approached “Can’t Stop Now” - played by John, Scott Babcock on drums, Kenny Edwards, Mark Goldenberg, and me - John said, “let’s do this like a Waylon Jennings tune—four on the floor, and very aggressively, but not bluegrass at all.” What a fantastic idea that was, and thus was born our hard-driving version of “Can’t Stop Now” complete with dueling solos from Kenny and Goldenberg, and vocals with Cowan and the marvelous Jim Photoglo.
You Plant Your Fields - Donny Lowery/Wendy Waldman
Donny Lowery and I wrote “You Plant Your Fields” in the mid-80s in Nashville. Here was an iconic and delightful songwriter from Arkansas, who with the legendary Mac McAnally had written some very big hits for the huge country group Alabama. Donny Lowery was also an icthyologist for the Tennessee Valley Authority and perhaps one of the greatest fishermen living then and even now. I had met Donny on my first trip down to Nashville as a songwriter (as opposed to prior visits as an artist) in 1983. We hit it off and wrote many songs together. But one of our finest works was this tune, which I have described as a “zen farming song”, and which has been recorded by many folks, including New Grass Revival. In Bryndle we had sung Plant your Fields, and it was Kenny who had added the flat 7 turnaround that has become a permanent part of my versions, including the Refugees. The superb guitar work of Kenny Edwards is featured throughout this entire album, but here in particular, his tone and haunting part always cuts straight to my core. Also on this track is the very great recording artist, the iconic George Winston.
My Last Thought - Wendy Waldman
DADGAD tuning was all the rage. Kenny became a master of DADGAD. By comparison, I was a dilettante but was quite inspired by it in a few instances. Perhaps the best thing I’ve done in this lovely tuning is “My Last Thought,” which I wrote thinking about my grandkids in particular, and my loved ones in general. I wrote this one alone, and it features John Cowan and myself singing, John on bass, and the wonderful Mark Goldenberg on electric guitar.
Carves New Rivers - Wendy Waldman
It’s pretty clear that I wrote this for/about my son. I’d been sitting on this song for years and I’m so glad we did this version which to me says it all, most clearly. This is a simple, straight-ahead ‘early SoCal folk-rock piano tune’, faithful to that style, and featuring the marvelous Brent Rown on electric guitar.
My Time in the Desert - Sally Berris/ Wendy Waldman
In my last days in Nashville, I did what I consider to be some of my best songwriting collaborations. Included in that was this effort with the brilliant songwriter/artist Sally Berris. We were talking the day we wrote, and she mentioned that her minister once said we all had our ‘time in the desert.’ I went crazy for that idea and probably steamrolled her, following the muse down the path. I’m so glad she went along with it—it’s the title track of this album, and it’s also true on so many levels of meaning for me.
Kenny Edwards outdid himself on mandolin and especially guitar—his solo is fierce as only he could have done. Another special thing about this recording is the marvelous piano work of George Winston. Sung with John Cowan.
The One Who Loved - Wendy Waldman
OK, yes. I did have a broken heart, but I am very proud of this tune. It said it better than I think I’ve ever been able to express it before. Mark Goldenberg played stunning guitar and Cowan played bass. And somehow I survived.
New Mexico Cadillac - Reed Nielsen/Wendy Waldman
I met a gorgeous, brilliant songwriter in Los Angeles—in the days when I still lived in Nashville. His name was Reed Nielsen. He was perhaps one of the best writers and singers I’d ever met. I adored everything he wrote and sang, and I was privileged to write quite a few tunes with him. He wrote many hits with and for Vince Gill, but the art songs were all with me.
The last thing we wrote together was this tune, “New Mexico Cadillac,” when we were both in Nashville. I think this is another case where I just went crazy and he went with me. He was a great pianist, but he could write on guitar, and actually it didn’t matter what he wrote on. I cherish the memory of working with him and this, along with the song “River of Stone” stands as a small testament to my fortunate time with him. He is missed deeply. The song, of course, is playful, and hearkens to the many times I was hanging out in Santa Fe with my family but more significantly, the delightful and wicked Santa Fe artists I came to know and love. I imagined this tune—as a cautionary tune to a nice family who foolishly lets their princess go to Santa Fe—and is never the same. Featuring the ridiculously fun and wicked slide guitar of the master, Kenny Edwards.
That’s What Love Is - Wendy Waldman
I really thought this could be a country hit! What was I thinking? Sure it would be if you could go through all kinds of key changes and extended passages and such, but not in the real world, I think! Nonetheless, it’s one of the most fun things I’ve written. Very proud of the lyrics and the extended passages especially :) Kenny played incredible mandolin, Scott was completely smoking on drums, and one interesting and brilliant feature of this tune is the lead guitar played by Arthur Lee Land.
The Luckiest Woman - Wendy Waldman
This song is driven by the great Steve Ferguson on piano, the real deal, the kind of playing that can’t be manufactured or imitated. You actually have to have it in your bones, and he does. I guess the tune was a gentle reminder to myself, and to the person, I was writing for. And anyone else who forgets how lucky they are to have someone. Also on this track is electric guitar from Brent Rowan, the master guitarist who dominated the recording scene when I was there in the 80s and with whom I became quite close.
Fishin’ in the Dark - Jim Photoglo/Wendy Waldman
On “Desert,” we elected to do a slower, sexier version of Fishin in the Dark, including the brilliant piano playing of the great Steve Ferguson. Interestingly on this track, it was Matt Cartsonis who played electric slide, and Kenny Edwards who played mandolin. Kenny and of course, Jim Photoglo sang on this cool version of “Fishin.” In the greatest ironic turn of all, Jim is now the bassist of the Dirt Band, so he gets to play it every night on stage and I just bet they make a big deal of the fact that he wrote it..with me, of course.
Save the Best For Last - Phil Galdston/Jon Lind/Wendy Waldman
I began writing songs with Phil Galdston, a well-known songwriter who has always lived in Manhattan. I mention this because I found it quite exotic. I digress. Anyhow, I started writing with him in 1983 when I had signed as a writer to Screen Gems in Hollywood, on the cusp of my move (still unimagined) to Nashville. We wrote a LOT of songs. Sometime in the later 80s, I noticed that Phil was writing with the iconic, delightful, and brilliant songwriter Jon Lind, who had co-written Boogie Wonderland for EWF as well as Crazy for You for Madonna. A great singer himself, he had moved into songwriting and record production. I had actually tried to write with Jon before I met Phil, but I was terribly intimidated by him. Not his fault, he was a larger-than-life character with a marvelous sense of humor, melody, irony, and he pulled no punches. I had resolved not to try to write with him again—until I saw that he and Phil were working together. For some reason I will never know, I spoke up and told Phil something silly like “you guys will never have a hit until you write with me.” What incredible bs was I throwing around? Ironically, it came true! They took me up on my silly challenge, and one weekend in 1989, Phil showed up in Nashville with three songs they were working on, among them “Save the Best for Last.” Of course, by now I was some kind of inflated bigwig Nashville songwriter and I didn’t like the title and I didn’t like the premise they had come up with and humbug, humbug, humbug. As it turned out, we did write the title, and we wound up with an enormous hit song recorded by Vanessa Williams on her debut album for Mercury, spearheaded by the visionary Ed Eckstine, one of Billy Eckstine’s sons. When they recorded the song, Ed told us that it was going to sit on the shelf for as long as it took for them to build a great album around it and he gave us his word that it would indeed come out. Oh, tell that to a songwriter and you will get incredible eye-roll. We had hoped Clive Davis would record it with Whitney Houston, but he didn’t think it was a hit. So here we sat, with a new artist holding the song for well over a year. We know how this turned out, so it was a great lesson for us and a great experience.
On my version of Save, which I had begun to perform on acoustic guitar, we took, of course, a more roots direction with the song. Kenny’s guitar work is stellar. We also featured here, a brilliant composer-pianist whose work is outstanding and sophisticated-the stunning Seth Osburn.
Never Love Again - Wendy Waldman
To the lover who had lost faith, I wrote this tune. I loved that it was in both major and minor keys. I had had it for quite a long time, working on it. The story is evident and it’s true that we had amazing times “back then” as I described. Mark Goldenberg was stellar in his fluidity as was Kenny. What an amazing experience to have both of those geniuses on my songs.
The Walkacross - Wendy Waldman
This song was written in the mid 90s after I had moved back to LA. I worked on it for several years. I loved that it was apocalyptic, frightening, howling and musically different. It was very hard to grasp the tune. Michael didn’t agree with the bridge, but I reminded him that at the end of the song, she does indeed hear the dogs howling out there, and all is not well. We recorded a version with full band, but in the end I chose to put it out as a mostly acoustic piece. I’m very proud of the story and the images, and I can see it right now in my imagination. What scares me is that it might yet come true.
I love how Michael framed my vocal. I think I decided to do it more solo because I loved the bones, both musically and lyrically, in this tune. It was, like a lot of these tunes, a challenge to sing.
The players & singers
Kenny Edwards - Guitar, Mandolin
Original member of the Stone Poneys along with Bobby Kimmel and Linda Ronstadt. I met Kenny when he was still in the Stone Poneys and I determined that I must play with him in my lifetime. I’m happy to say I did, for decades, until his passing in 2010. We had Bryndle together, we wrote many songs together, he played on my Warner Brothers records as well as well as many records I produced, the Bryndle records of course, and “My Time in the Desert.” Kenny was one of the greatest and most unsung musicians in our lifetime. He was able to release 2 cds of his own, and he had more people who loved him and followed him than he ever knew. He was in many ways, my muse, my mentor, and a deeply cherished writing and playing partner. He was Karla Bonoff’s musical partner and sometime record producer until his passing.
Scott Babcock - Drums, Percussion
I met Scott through Kenny Edwards, when Kenny was working with Scott’s band, the Brothers Figaro along with Bill Bonk and the great Phil Parlapiano. He has recorded with many artists and also works with local symphonies, among them, Karla Bonoff, Ronny Cox, Grant Lee Philips, Sara Hickman, The Williams Brothers, and Lisa Hayley. Scott played percussion on the first Bryndle record, and then became Bryndle’s drummer. He subsequently has played on 95% of every record I have produced since those days. He is equally comfortable playing jazz, classical music, hard rock, funk and of course the work of us singer songwriters. I find him to be endlessly inventive and it is my deep pleasure to continue working with him to this very day.
John Cowan - Bass, Vocals
Cowan had been the lead singer and bassist of NGR. For the record, New Grass Revival was the seminal band blending bluegrass, funk, pop, and blues—they featured Bela Fleck, Sam Bush, Pat Flynn, and John Cowan. I had had a few covers with them, and ironically, had wound up as the record producer on their very last album together, “Friday Night in America.” I had subsequently produced two solo cds for John himself, both of which were amazing experiences for Michael and me. Michael wanted Cowan to play bass on the cd and it was a brilliant choice. Happily at the time of this writing, I’m producing yet another project involving the great and innovative John Cowan, who is always pushing boundaries and who is still one of the greatest living singers. His day gig is playing bass with the Doobie Brothers, but he also does a lot of projects on his own, all iconic.
Mark Goldenberg
I met this famous, multi-disciplined and brilliant artist in 1977 when I was touring with my band opening for Al Stewart on his iconic “Year of the Cat” tour. Mark was playing in Al’s band and blowing people’s minds every night. We became friends and I started working with him. Along with Peter Bernstein, my oldest musical collaborator and friend, and Steve Beers, the “Cretones” were my backup band for the Strange Company album on Warner Brothers. Then they went out on their own as well as working for Linda Ronstadt. Mark and I reunited for my Epic album “Which Way to Main Street”, where his work is fantastic. Mark Goldenberg subsequently played with Jackson Browne for many years as well as the actor/singer Hugh Laurie. Mark has released many superb solo albums and continues to perform and record for himself as well as others.
Jim Photoglo
When I was leaving for Nashville in 1983, I had just met Jim Photoglo, who was fresh out of a pop record deal in Los Angeles. He was a marvelous soul singer and writer, with some hits to his name, but was experiencing the restlessness that many of us were feeling in LA in the early ‘80s. We hit it off amazingly and started writing together. Not long after I moved down, Jim followed, recognizing that the climate had changed in LA for artists like us. We would congregate at my upstairs apartment on 18th Avenue South, and cook, and write, and find our way through this new world.
Jim and I wrote a song that became an iconic hit on the country music scene: “Fishin’ in the Dark” (recorded by the Dirt Band). We recorded the demo in the upstairs apartment on my Fostex 8 track machine, with our friend Vince Gill singing lead. Clearly, none of us knew what was to come; we were just happy to be Californians getting perhaps a second chance at music-making. As I mentioned elsewhere, the great irony is that Jim now plays bass with the Dirt Band so I imagine every night he is celebrated when they introduce the tune!
George Winston - Piano, Harmonica
George Winston really needs no introduction. He is considered to be the ‘founding father’ od new age music along with the original label Windham Hill for whom he recorded. However, he is so much more: a dedicated scholar, a tireless contributor to charity, and supporter of other musicians. George is a dear friend of mine and perhaps one of the most knowledgeable music scholars on the planet. On “Fields” George plays harmonica, a passion of his, and a subject of many scholarly recordings of the master harmonica players he has produced for his own label.
Matt Cartsonis
Matt Cartsonis is one of the most recognized multi-instrumentalists out there on the acoustic/roots music scene today. He played years with Warren Zevon, Bryndle, Pete Seeger, Van Dyke Parks, John McKuen, Steve Martin, and many others. He is a composer for television and film, as well as a record producer. He plays mandolin, guitar, harmonica, banjo, fiddle, and just about every other traditional American instrument. I’m just happy to say I have worked with him a LOT and I love him as a human and a great musician.
Brent Rowan
In my early days in Nashville, I discovered that there were amazing musicians everywhere-truly literate, fast, inventive, at the top of their game, and versatile as hell. And the thing was, you could get them to play on your demos for a modest fee. They were working all the time, so their chops were always up. One such discovery for me was a fellow named Brent Rowan. It is written about him that he “became a premier session guitarist who supported Nashville’s biggest stars, playing guitar on more than 10,000 sessions.” He played on albums by so many people it would take all my pages to discuss this. Sufficeth to mention names like Alan Jackson, Alabama, Chris Ledoux, Tanya Tucker, Kt Oslin, Clay walker and on and on. But Brent and I just became friends doing demos together in the early 80s. I marveled at his speed, his inventiveness, and his superb sense of humor. When I began producing records in Nashville, he was always my first call, regardless of what kind of record we were doing as his versatility was astonishing. I’m so happy to say that to this day, we work together, and he has played on numerous of my post-Nashville projects as well.
Arthur Lee Land
Arthur Lee Land is an artist I had the privilege of producing, one of the great masters in the acoustic jam band world today in Colorado, and as a side point, a cousin of Jim Photoglo. Small world. Arthur is stunning and doing fantastic work to this day.
Steve Ferguson
Ah, Steve Ferguson. A whole other story, and no, you don’t know him. But Linda Ronstadt, Jennifer Warnes, Ry Cooder, David Geffen, Karla Bonoff, George Winston, Matt Cartsonis, Taj Mahal, and a few other lucky people do. Both Kenny Edwards and Andrew Gold loved his work. He was one of the very first artists ever signed by David Geffen, but the time was not right for him, and he subsequently withdrew from the pop music scene, devoting himself to decades of study of classical and roots music equally. He is one of the truly great scholars of music that I know and more formidable a player than ever. I might say he’s one of my closest friends. I first met him through Chuck Plotkin, my first producer, when Bryndle was still forming. Steve was one of the rarest musicians I had or have ever met in my life: an equally talented classically trained pianist and composer as well as a deep scholar in old-time Americana, a stunning guitarist, very great songwriter, a young African American music scholar, genius—and recluse. He was well after and well ahead of his time—and I’m hoping we will begin hearing some of his works soon. If you’ve listened to my Warner Brothers albums you have heard a lot of Steve’s stunning playing on the early records (on piano and guitar). It was a great honor to bring him out to play on ‘Desert’, and there are stunning performances of his on “Fishin’ in the Dark,” and “The Luckiest Woman.”
Seth Osburn
Seth Osburn is a modern piano virtuoso, composer, and educator. I first met him when he was teaching piano—mentoring my son Abraham Parker who has indeed become a force in his own right, I’m sure partially due to Seth’s superb teaching. But Seth is also a stunning interpreter of jazz, new age, and classical music. He has collaborated many years with David Arkenstone as well as performing with numerous artists among them Michael Crawford and Shirley Bassey. I loved his composition and needless to say, his flawless playing. We did a bit of composition together and I always found him nothing short of astonishing.
Michael Boshears (linktr.ee/michaelboshears)
I first began working with Michael Boshears in the “Clover Studios” years in Hollywood-a studio Chuck Plotkin developed so that our group of musicians, Bryndle, myself, Steve Ferguson, and others-would have a place to record. You might say Chuck was prescient in his knowledge that we would need to be able to record a lot of music to get a few great tracks. Boshears began engineering for me in particular before my first album at Warner Brothers in 1973, and he and I together worked on the bulk of my catalog through the ‘70s. We also did many demos in those years. Boshears was a soft-spoken and brilliant engineer with a background also in mastering: he had engineered one of the best of the Black Flagg albums, Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken (due to politics he wasn’t given credit for this until the next album, lamentably), Jimmy Wood and the Immortals, Oingo Boingo, countless R & B projects, and much more. He was ‘old school’ raised, meaning he could set up, mic, record, mix, and master any kind of project imaginable because that’s what great engineers did in those days. But he also loved and understood technology, which was to serve him well in the coming years.
We reunited in the ‘90s and teamed up on all of my independent productions including John Cowan, Brian Joseph, Arthur Lee Land, Bryndle, the first Refugees’ album, and more. Michael and I developed my little ‘Seeds and Orphans” franchise, which actually yielded surprisingly big returns in terms of exposure—these are LPs comprised of demos, tracks, masters—you name it—that had never been heard and that we thought deserved to be out there. He mastered these together, and he named them “Seeds and Orphans.”
Boshears is also a stunning photographer, having garnered some industry magazine covers, and also having shot what I think is one of the best pictures ever of me: the cover photo for My Time in the Desert. | |||
4334 | dbpedia | 1 | 54 | https://www.bafta.org/television/awards/2024-nominations-winners | en | BAFTA Television 2024: The Winners and Nominations | [
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] | null | [] | 2024-03-15T11:22:30+00:00 | Explore the winners and nominations for the 2024 BAFTA Television Awards with P&O Cruises and BAFTA Television Craft Awards, celebrating the very best in television broadcast in 2023. Scroll down to view the full list, or click images below to reveal category nominations and winners. The BAFTA Television Awards, hosted by Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan, took place on Sunday 12 May. The BAFTA Television Craft Awards, were hosted by Stacey Dooley, took place on Sunday 28 April. | en | https://www.bafta.org/sites/all/themes/bafta_theme/favicon.ico | https://www.bafta.org/television/awards/2024-nominations-winners | Jump to BAFTA Television Craft Awards
COMEDY ENTERTAINMENT
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WINNER - ROB & ROMESH VS Rob Beckett, Romesh Ranganathan, Jack Shillaker, Bill Righton, David Taylor, Graham Proud - CPL Productions / Sky Max
WOULD I LIE TO YOU? Peter Holmes, Rachel Ablett, Jake Graham, Zoe Waterman, Liz Clare, Barbara Wiltshire - Zeppotron / BBC One
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RUSSELL BRAND: IN PLAIN SIGHT (DISPATCHES) Production Team - Hardcash Productions / Channel 4
WINNER - THE SHAMIMA BEGUM STORY (THIS WORLD) Joshua Baker, Sara Obeidat, Sasha Joelle Achilli, Sarah Waldron, Simon McMahon, Mustafa Al-Ali – BBC Current Affairs / BBC Two
DAYTIME
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WINNER - SCAM INTERCEPTORS Rowland Stone, Sherry Knight, Nick Stapleton, Odin Gillies, Sue Malone, Mark Lewis - BBC Studios Documentary Unit / BBC One
DRAMA SERIES
THE GOLD Production Team - Tannadice Pictures / BBC One
HAPPY VALLEY Sally Wainwright, Sarah Lancashire, Jessica Taylor, Faith Penhale, Will Johnston, Fergus O’Brien - Lookout Point, AMC / BBC One
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ENTERTAINMENT*
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LATER… WITH JOOLS HOLLAND Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC Two
MICHAEL MCINTYRE’S BIG SHOW Production Team - Hungry McBear / BBC One
WINNER: STRICTLY COME DANCING Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC One
ENTERTAINMENT PERFORMANCE
ANTHONY McPARTLIN, DECLAN DONNELLY I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! - Lifted Entertainment / ITV1
BIG ZUU Big Zuu’s Big Eats – Boom, Big Productions / Dave
GRAHAM NORTON The Graham Norton Show – So Television / BBC One
HANNAH WADDINGHAM Eurovision Song Contest 2023 – BBC Studios / BBC One
WINNER - JOE LYCETT Late Night Lycett - Rumpus Media, My Options Were Limited / Channel 4
ROB BECKETT, ROMESH RANGANATHAN Rob & Romesh Vs – CPL Productions / Sky Max
FACTUAL ENTERTAINMENT
WINNER - CELEBRITY RACE ACROSS THE WORLD Production Team - Studio Lambert / BBC One
THE DOG HOUSE Production Team - Five Mile Films / Channel 4
ENDURANCE: RACE TO THE POLE Alexis Girardet, Mike Warner, Adam Bullmore, Martin Long - October Films / Channel 5
PORTRAIT ARTIST OF THE YEAR Production Team - Storyvault Films / Sky Arts
FACTUAL SERIES
DUBLIN NARCOS Benedict Sanderson, Claire McFall, Sacha Baveystock, Edmund Coulthard, Megan Taylor, Laura Dunne – Blast! Films / Sky Documentaries
EVACUATION Production Team - Wonderhood Studios / Channel 4
WINNER - LOCKERBIE Nancy Strang, John Dower, Claire McFall, Barnaby Fry, Dejan Cancar, Charlie Hawryliw - Mindhouse Productions / Sky Documentaries
ONCE UPON A TIME IN NORTHERN IRELAND Production Team - KEO Films, Walk On Air Films, The Open University / BBC Two
FEMALE PERFORMANCE IN A COMEDY
BRIDGET CHRISTIE The Change – Expectation / Channel 4
WINNER - GBEMISOLA IKUMELO Black Ops - BBC Studios Comedy Productions, Mondo Deluxe Productions / BBC One
MÁIRÉAD TYERS Extraordinary - Sid Gentle Films / Disney+
ROISIN GALLAGHER The Lovers - Drama Republic / Sky Atlantic
SOFIA OXENHAM Extraordinary - Sid Gentle Films / Disney+
TAJ ATWAL Hullraisers - Fable Pictures / Channel 4
INTERNATIONAL
THE BEAR Christopher Storer, Joanna Calo, Josh Senior, Matty Matheson, Tyson Bidner - FX Productions / Disney+
BEEF Lee Sung Jin, Steven Yeun , Ali Wong, Jake Schreier, Ravi Nandan, Alli Reich - A24 / Netflix
WINNER - CLASS ACT Bruno Nahon, Tristan Séguela, Olivier Demangel, Laurent Lafitte - Unité / Netflix
THE LAST OF US Production Team - Sony Pictures Television Studios, PlayStation Productions, Naughty Dog, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, HBO / Sky Atlantic
LOVE & DEATH Production Team - Lionsgate, David E. Kelley Productions, Blossom Films, Texas Monthly / ITVX
SUCCESSION Production Team - Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries, Gary Sanchez Productions, Hot Seat Productions, HBO / Sky Atlantic
LEADING ACTOR
BRIAN COX Succession - Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries, Gary Sanchez Productions, Hot Seat Productions, HBO / Sky Atlantic
DOMINIC WEST The Crown - Left Bank Pictures / Netflix
KANE ROBINSON Top Boy - Cowboy Films, Easter Partisan Films, Dream Crew, SpringHill Entertainment / Netflix
PAAPA ESSIEDU The Lazarus Project - Urban Myth Films / Sky Max
STEVE COOGAN The Reckoning - ITV Studios / BBC One
WINNER - TIMOTHY SPALL The Sixth Commandment - Wild Mercury Productions, True Vision / BBC One
LEADING ACTRESS
ANJANA VASAN Demon 79 (Black Mirror) - Broke & Bones / Netflix
ANNE REID The Sixth Commandment - Wild Mercury Productions, True Vision / BBC One
BELLA RAMSEY The Last of Us - Sony Pictures Television Studios, PlayStation Productions,, Naughty Dog, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, HBO / Sky Atlantic
HELENA BONHAM CARTER Nolly - Quay Street Productions / ITVX
WINNER - SARAH LANCASHIRE Happy Valley - Lookout Point, AMC / BBC One
SHARON HORGAN Best Interests - AC Chapter One / BBC One
LIMITED DRAMA
BEST INTERESTS Toby Bentley, Jenny Frayn, Sophie Gardiner, Michael Keillor, Jack Thorne - AC Chapter One / BBC One
DEMON 79 (BLACK MIRROR) Charlie Brooker, Richard Webb, Jessica Rhoades, Bisha K. Ali, Annabel Jones, Toby Haynes - Broke & Bones / Netflix
THE LONG SHADOW George Kay, Lewis Arnold, Matt Sandford, Sarah Lewis, Sacha Szwarc, Willow Grylls - New Pictures / ITV1
WINNER - THE SIXTH COMMANDMENT Derek Wax, Brian Woods, Sarah Phelps, Saul Dibb, Frances du Pille - Wild Mercury Productions, True Vision / BBC One
LIVE EVENT COVERAGE
THE CORONATION CONCERT Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC One
WINNER - EUROVISION SONG CONTEST 2023 Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC One
ROYAL BRITISH LEGION FESTIVAL OF REMEMBRANCE Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC One
MALE PERFORMANCE IN A COMEDY
ADJANI SALMON Dreaming Whilst Black - Big Deal Films, A24 / BBC Three
DAVID TENNANT Good Omens - BBC Studios Comedy Productions, Narrativia, The Blank Corporation / Prime Video
HAMMED ANIMASHAUN Black Ops - BBC Studios Comedy Productions, Mondo Deluxe Productions / BBC One
JAMIE DEMETRIOU A Whole Lifetime with Jamie Demetriou - BBC Studios Comedy Productions, Guilty Party Pictures / Netflix
JOSEPH GILGUN Brassic - Calamity Films / Sky Max
WINNER - MAWAAN RIZWAN Juice - Various Artists Limited / BBC Three
NEWS COVERAGE
WINNER - CHANNEL 4 NEWS: INSIDE GAZA: ISRAEL AND HAMAS AT WAR Production Team - ITN / Channel 4
SKY NEWS: INSIDE MYANMAR - THE HIDDEN WAR Production Team - Sky News / Sky News
SKY NEWS: ISRAEL-HAMAS WAR Production Team – Sky News / Sky News
REALITY
BANGED UP Production Team - Shine TV / Channel 4
MARRIED AT FIRST SIGHT UK Danielle Lux, Murray Boland, Rachel Viner, Susy Price, James Kayler, Dermot Caulfield - CPL Productions / E4
MY MUM, YOUR DAD Production Team - Lifted Entertainment / ITV1
WINNER - SQUID GAME: THE CHALLENGE Production Team - Studio Lambert, The Garden / Netflix
SCRIPTED COMEDY
BIG BOYS Jack Rooke, Jim Archer, Bertie Peek, Ash Atalla, Alex Smith - Roughcut TV / Channel 4
DREAMING WHILST BLACK Thomas Stogdon, Dhanny Joshi, Adjani Salmon, Ali Hughes, Nicola Gregory, Yemi Oyefuwa - Big Deal Films, A24 / BBC Three
EXTRAORDINARY Emma Moran, Toby Macdonald, Sally Woodward Gentle, Lee Morris, Charlie Palmer, Jennifer Sheridan - Sid Gentle Films / Disney+
WINNER - SUCH BRAVE GIRLS Kat Sadler, Simon Bird, Catherine Gosling Fuller, Jack Bayles, Phil Clarke - Various Artists Limited / BBC Three
SHORT FORM
WINNER - MOBILITY Jack Carroll, Thomas Gregory, Akaash Meeda, David Simpson, Sam Ward - Tiger Aspect Productions, Testmouse Productions / BBC Three
THE SKEWER: THREE TWISTED YEARS Production Team – unusual / BBC iPlayer
STEALING UKRAINE’S CHILDREN: INSIDE RUSSIA’S CAMPS Production Team – VICE UK / VICE News
WHERE IT ENDS Jack Robertson, Fergal Costello, Sam Ward, David Simpson - Tiger Aspect Productions / BBC Three
SINGLE DOCUMENTARY**
DAVID HOLMES: THE BOY WHO LIVED Dan Hartley, Kevin Konak, Simon Chinn, Jonathan Chinn, Vanessa Davies, Amy Stares - Lightbox, HBO / Sky Documentaries
WINNER - ELLIE SIMMONDS: FINDING MY SECRET FAMILY Jasleen Sethi, David Thompson, Colleen Flynn, Kathryn Jein, Nick Underhill - Flicker Productions / ITV1
HATTON Daniel Dewsbury, Paul Yoshida, Sam Bergson, Ian Davies, John McKenna - Noah Media Group / Sky Documentaries
VJERAN TOMIC: THE SPIDER-MAN OF PARIS Jamie Roberts, Dan Reed - Amos Pictures / Netflix
SOAP
WINNER - CASUALTY Production Team – BBC Studios / BBC One
EASTENDERS Production Team - BBC Studios / BBC One
EMMERDALE Production Team – ITV Studios / ITV1
SPECIALIST FACTUAL***
CHIMP EMPIRE James Reed, Matt Houghton, Callum Webster, Matt Cole - KEO Films, Underdog Films / Netflix
THE ENFIELD POLTERGEIST Jerry Rothwell , Al Morrow, Stewart le Maréchal, Nicole Stott, Jonathan Silberberg, Davis Guggenheim - MetFilm, Concordia Studio / Apple TV+
FORCED OUT Luke Korzun Martin, Sophie Perrins, Chibuikem Oforka, Josh Green, Tom Pullen, Richard Bond - Dragonfly / Sky Documentaries
WINNER - WHITE NANNY, BLACK CHILD Andy Mundy-Castle, Natasha Dack Ojumu, Rochelle Newman, Zeb Achonu, Ross Leppard, Rachael McLean-Anderson - Doc Hearts, TigerLily Productions, BFI / Channel 5
SPORTS COVERAGE
WINNER - CHELTENHAM FESTIVAL DAY ONE Richard Willoughby, Paul McNamara, Mark Demuth, Bridget Toomey, Rob Oldham, Dionne Robinson-Smith - ITV Sport / ITV1
MOTD LIVE: FIFA WOMEN’S WORLD CUP 2023 Production Team – IMG / BBC One
WIMBLEDON 2023 MEN’S FINAL Production Team – BBC Sport, Wimbledon Broadcast Services / BBC One
SUPPORTING ACTOR
AMIT SHAH Happy Valley - Lookout Point, AMC / BBC One
ÉANNA HARDWICKE The Sixth Commandment - Wild Mercury Productions, True Vision / BBC One
HARRIS DICKINSON A Murder at the End of the World - FX Productions / Disney+
JACK LOWDEN Slow Horses - See-Saw Films / Apple TV+
WINNER - MATTHEW MACFADYEN Succession - Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries, Gary Sanchez Productions, Hot Seat Productions, HBO / Sky Atlantic
SALIM DAW The Crown - Left Bank Pictures / Netflix
SUPPORTING ACTRESS
ELIZABETH DEBICKI The Crown - Left Bank Pictures / Netflix
HARRIET WALTER Succession - Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries, Gary Sanchez Productions and Hot Seat Productions, HBO / Sky Atlantic
WINNER: JASMINE JOBSON Top Boy - Cowboy Films, Easter Partisan Films, Dream Crew, SpringHill Entertainment / Netflix
LESLEY MANVILLE The Crown - Left Bank Pictures / Netflix
NICO PARKER The Last of Us - Sony Pictures Television Studios, PlayStation Productions, Naughty Dog, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, HBO / Sky Atlantic
SIOBHAN FINNERAN Happy Valley - Lookout Point, AMC / BBC One
P&O CRUISES MEMORABLE MOMENT AWARD (voted for by the public)
BECKHAM David teases Victoria about her ‘working class’ upbringing - Studio99, Ventureland / Netflix
DOCTOR WHO Ncuti Gatwa being revealed as the Fifteenth Doctor - Bad Wolf, BBC Studios Productions / BBC One
WINNER - HAPPY VALLEY Catherine Cawood and Tommy Lee Royce’s final kitchen showdown - Lookout Point, AMC / BBC One
THE LAST OF US Bill and Frank's Story - Sony Pictures Television Studios, PlayStation Productions, Naughty Dog, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, HBO / Sky Atlantic
THE PIANO 13-year old Lucy stuns commuters with jaw dropping piano performance - Love Productions / Channel 4
SUCCESSION Logan Roy's death - Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries, Gary Sanchez Productions, Hot Seat Productions, HBO / Sky Atlantic
BAFTA Television Craft Awards
SUPPORTED BY OFFICIAL TV CRAFT PARTNERS ECOTRICITY AND THE PARTNERSHIP GROUP PLUS OUR CATEGORY SPONSORS
COSTUME DESIGN
AMY ROBERTS The Crown (Episode 8) - Left Bank Pictures / Netflix
CHARLOTTE MORRIS Silo - AMC Studios / Apple TV+
MATTHEW PRICE Demon 79 (Black Mirror) – Broke & Bones / Netflix
Winner - SHARON LONG The Great - Civic Center Media, MRC / Lionsgate+
DIRECTOR: FACTUAL
GESBEEN MOHAMMAD Inside Iran: The Fight for Freedom (Exposure) – Hardcash Productions / ITV1
JAMES BLUEMEL Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland - KEO Films, Walk On Air Films, The Open University / BBC Two
JOHN DOWER Lockerbie – Mindhouse Films / Sky Documentaries
Winner - PETER BEARD, BRUCE FLETCHER Otto Baxter: Not a F***ing Horror Story - Story Films, Archface Films / Sky Documentaries
DIRECTOR: FICTION sponsored by 3 Mills Studios
JOSEPH BULLMAN Partygate – Halcyons Heart Films / Channel 4
LEWIS ARNOLD The Long Shadow (Episode 6) – New Pictures / ITV1
Winner - PETER HOAR The Last of Us - Sony Pictures Television Studios, PlayStation Productions, Naughty Dog, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, HBO / Sky Atlantic
WILLIAM STEFAN SMITH Top Boy (Episode 6) – Cowboy Films, Easter Partisan Films, Dream Crew, SpringHill Entertainment / Netflix
DIRECTOR: MULTI-CAMERA
JULIA KNOWLES An Audience with Kylie – Lifted Entertainment, BMG / ITV1
JULIA KNOWLES The Coronation Concert – BBC Studios / BBC One
Winner - NIKKI PARSONS, OLLIE BARTLETT, RICHARD VALENTINE Eurovision Song Contest 2023 – BBC Studios / BBC One
PAUL MCNAMARA FA Cup Final – ITV Sport / ITV1
EDITING: FACTUAL
CHARLIE HAWRYLIW Lockerbie - Mindhouse Films / Sky Documentaries
Winner - EDITING TEAM Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland - KEO films, Walk On Air Films, The Open University / BBC Two
EDITING TEAM Formula 1: Drive To Survive - Box to Box Films / Netflix
MICHAEL HARTE Beckham - Studio 99, Ventureland / Netflix
EDITING: FICTION
ALEX MACKIE Time – BBC Studios / BBC One
JOE CAREY Happy Valley (Episode 6) - Lookout Point, AMC / BBC One
Winner - SAM WILLIAMS Slow Horses (Episode 1) - See-Saw Films / Apple TV+
ZSÓFIA TÁLAS Slow Horses (Episode 6) - See-Saw Films / Apple TV+
EMERGING TALENT: FACTUAL
BEN CHEETHAM (DIRECTOR) Pete Doherty, Who Killed My Son? - Five Mile Films / Channel 4
FOLA EVANS-AKINGBOLA, JORDAN PITT (DIRECTOR) Untold Stories: Hair on Set - Good Girl Productions, One Umbrella Productions, Doc Hearts / Sky Documentaries
Winner - FRED SCOTT (DIRECTOR) London Bridge: Facing Terror – Raw TV / Channel 4
TED EVANS (DIRECTOR) Rose Ayling-Ellis: Signs for Change – Rogan Productions / BBC One
EMERGING TALENT: FICTION
ANDREW BOGLE (WRITER) Kirkmoore Fudge Park Productions / BBC Three
HAOLU WANG (DIRECTOR) Bodies - Moonage Pictures / Netflix
Winner - KAT SADLER (WRITER) Such Brave Girls - Various Artists Limited / BBC Three
MAWAAN RIZWAN (WRITER) Juice - Various Artists Limited / BBC Three
ENTERTAINMENT CRAFT TEAM sponsored by Hotcam
DICCON RAMSAY, PADDY FLETCHER, RIKKI FINLAY, JAMES TINSLEY, MATHIEU WEEKES, BEN NORMAN Squid Game: The Challenge – Studio Lambert, The Garden / Netflix
JAMIE HEATH, NICK HARVEY, GREG MENZEL Banged Up – Shine TV / Channel 4
Winner - JULIO HIMEDE, TIM ROUTLEDGE, KOJO SAMUEL, MICHAEL SHARP, DAN SHIPTON Eurovision Song Contest 2023 - BBC Studios / BBC One
NIGEL CATMUR, TOM BAIRSTOW, KEVIN DUFF, STEVE NOLAN, STEVE SIDWELL, SIMON HAW The Coronation Concert - BBC Studios / BBC One
MAKE UP & HAIR DESIGN sponsored by ScreenSkills High-end Television Skills Fund
CATE HALL, EMILIE YONG-MILLS, FIONA ROGERS The Crown (Episode 8) - Left Bank Pictures / Netflix
Winner - LISA PARKINSON The Long Shadow (Episode 6) - New Pictures / ITV1
LUCY SIBBICK Slow Horses - See-Saw Films / Apple TV+
SHARON MILLER, KYM MENZIES-FOSTER, KELLY TAYLOR Three Little Birds - Tiger Aspect Productions, Douglas Road Productions / ITVX
ORIGINAL MUSIC: FACTUAL
ED HARCOURT Otto Baxter: Not a F***ing Horror Story - Story Films, Archface Films / Sky Documentaries
GEORGE FENTON Wild Isles – Silverback Films, The Open University / BBC One
Winner - SIMON ROGERS A Time to Die – True Vision / ITV1
SIMON RUSSELL Once Upon a Time in Northern Ireland - KEO Films, Walk On Air Films, The Open University / BBC Two
ORIGINAL MUSIC: FICTION
ADIESCAR CHASE Heartstopper - See-Saw Films / Netflix
Winner - ATLI ÖRVARSSON Silo - AMC Studios / Apple TV+
BLAIR MOWAT Nolly - Quay Street Productions / ITVX
NATALIE HOLT Loki – Marvel Studios / Disney+
PHOTOGRAPHY: FACTUAL
Winner - BENEDICT SANDERSON The Detectives: Taking Down an OCG - Minnow Films / BBC Two
BERTIE GREGORY, WILL WEST, TOM WALKER, ANNA DIMITRIADIS Animals Up Close with Bertie Gregory – Wildstar / Disney+
JEAN-LOUIS SCHULLER The Man Who Played With Fire – Raw TV / Sky Documentaries
NARAYAN VAN MAELE, PATRICK SMITH Dublin Narcos – Blast! Films / Sky Documentaries
PHOTOGRAPHY & LIGHTING: FICTION
EBEN BOLTER The Last of Us - Sony Pictures Television Studios, PlayStation Productions, Naughty Dog, Word Games, The Mighty Mint, HBO / Sky Atlantic
ED RUTHERFORD The Long Shadow - New Pictures / ITV1
RIK ZANG The Sixth Commandment - Wild Mercury Productions, True Vision / BBC One
Winner - STEPHAN PEHRSSON Demon 79 (Black Mirror) – Broke & Bones / Netflix
PRODUCTION DESIGN sponsored by BENlabs
ANNA HIGGINSON The Long Shadow - New Pictures / ITV1
BEN SMITH Nolly - Quay Street Productions / ITVX
Winner - GAVIN BOCQUET, AMANDA BERNSTEIN Silo - AMC Studios / Apple TV+
UDO KRAMER, MIKE BRITTON Demon 79 (Black Mirror) – Broke & Bones / Netflix
SCRIPTED CASTING
Winner - AISHA BYWATERS Three Little Birds - Tiger Aspect Productions, Douglas Road Productions / ITVX
AMY HUBBARD Time - BBC Studios / BBC One
AMY HUBBARD, SHANNON DOWLING-MCNULTY Smothered - Roughcut Television / Sky Max
JINA JAY Demon 79 (Black Mirror) - Broke & Bones / Netflix
SOUND: FACTUAL
GEORGE FOULGHAM, PHILIP MOROZ, ALEX GIBSON, TOM VERSTAPPEN, ADAM PRESCOD If These Walls Could Sing - Ventureland, Mercury Studios / Disney+
NICK RYAN, BEN BAIRD, KIRSTIE HOWELL, JACK WENSLEY, JAMIE MCPHEE, ALEXEJ MUNGERSDORFF The Enfield Poltergeist - MetFilm, Concordia Studio / Apple TV+
Winner - SOUND TEAM The Coronation of TM The King and Queen Camilla – BBC Studios / BBC One
SOUND TEAM Formula 1: Drive To Survive - Box to Box Films / Netflix
SOUND: FICTION
CHRIS ASHWORTH, LEE WALPOLE, STUART HILLIKER, MARTIN JENSEN, SAOIRSE CHRISTOPHERSON, IAIN EYRE The Crown - Left Bank Pictures / Netflix
JULES WOODS, JAMES DRAKE, OSCAR BLOOMFIELD-CROWE, PADDY MCGUIRK Boiling Point - Ascendant Fox, Matriarch Productions, It's All Made Up Productions / BBC One
MATTHEW COLLINGE, JAMES BAIN, ROBERT FARR, TOM MELLING, MATT DAVIES, ALYN SCLOSA The Witcher – Netflix Original Series / Netflix
Winner - SOUND TEAM Slow Horses - See-Saw Films / Apple TV+
SPECIAL, VISUAL & GRAPHIC EFFECTS
ANDY SCRASE, PATRICIA LLAGUNO, BEAU GARCIA, OLIVER WINWOOD, HUW EVANS, JODIE DAVIDSON The Wheel of Time - Little Island Productions / Prime Video
BEN TURNER, REECE EWING, FRAMESTORE, RUMBLE VFX, ASA SHOUL, CHRIS REYNOLDS The Crown - Left Bank Pictures / Netflix
DANIEL RAUCHWERGER, STEFANO PEPIN, RICHARD STANBURY, RAPHAEL HAMM, IAN FELLOWS Silo - AMC Studios / Apple TV+
Winner - TIM CROSBIE, CAIMIN BOURNE, JET OMOSHEBI, DAN WEIR, CINESITE, DAVID STEPHENS The Witcher - Netflix Original Series / Netflix
TITLES & GRAPHIC IDENTITY
DAN MAY, JAMES COORE, PAINTING PRACTICE, REALTIME VISUALISATION Doctor Who (Wild Blue Yonder) - Bad Wolf, BBC Studios Productions – BBC One
PETER ANDERSON STUDIO Good Omens - BBC Studios Comedy Productions, Narrativia, The Blank Corporation / Prime Video
MANDDY WYCKENS, STUDIO AKA Queen Charlotte – shondalandmedia / Netflix
Winner - TAMSIN MCGEE, BEN HANBURY, HUGO MOSS, PAUL MCDONNELL Wilderness - Firebird Pictures, Amazon Studios UK, Nomadic Pictures / Prime Video
WRITER: COMEDY
Winner - JACK ROOKE Big Boys - Roughcut Television / Channel 4
JAMIE DEMETRIOU A Whole Lifetime with Jamie Demetriou - BBC Studios Comedy Productions, Guilty Party Pictures / Netflix
KAT SADLER Such Brave Girls - Various Artists Limited / BBC Three
MAWAAN RIZWAN Juice - Various Artists Limited / BBC Three
WRITER: DRAMA
Winner - CHARLIE BROOKER, BISHA K ALI Demon 79 (Black Mirror) – Broke & Bones / Netflix
JESSE ARMSTRONG Succession - Project Zeus, Hyperobject Industries, Gary Sanchez Productions, Hot Seat Productions, HBO / Sky Atlantic
SALLY WAINWRIGHT Happy Valley - Lookout Point, AMC / BBC One
SARAH PHELPS The Sixth Commandment - Wild Mercury Productions, True Vision / BBC One
* Entertainment is given in honour of Lew Grade
** Single Documentary is given in honour of Robert Flaherty
*** Specialist Factual is given in honour of Huw Wheldon
N.B. Categories which had less than 15 programmes under consideration at entry stage announce three nominations
20 March 2024
Nominations are correct at the time of going to print. BAFTA reserves the right to make changes to the names listed at any time up until Sunday 12 May 2024. | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 2 | 56 | https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/rock-and-roll | en | Rock | [
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"Texas State Historical Association"
] | null | The Handbook of Texas is your number one authoritative source for Texas history. Read this entry and thousands more like it on our site. | en | /images/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png | Texas State Historical Association | https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/rock-and-roll | Texas musicians have profoundly influenced the development and evolution of rock-and-roll and the various branches of its musical tree—rockabilly, blues rock, Tex-Mex, psychedelia, and redneck rock. Some of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's most high-profile inductees, including Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and Janis Joplin, pioneered the direction of the musical idiom. The Hall has also honored other musicians, both native Texans and those who made a name in the Lone Star State, as early influences critical to the genre's development. These musicians include T-Bone Walker, Lead Belly, Robert Johnson, Charlie Christian, and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.
Rock-and-roll's historic roots lie in a fusion of several musical genres that came into prominence in the early decades of the twentieth century. Texans played major roles in pioneering these varied styles, including blues, jazz, and western swing. Blues guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson from Freestone County, Texas, is credited as the first blues star. His recordings from 1926 to 1929 were the first blues records to be commercially successful and thus introduce what had been an African-American music form to a national audience.
In the 1930s, "race labels" recorded many black blues musicians in Texas. Two landmark sessions in San Antonio (1936) and Dallas (1937) captured the only recorded legacy of guitarist Robert Johnson, the itinerant Delta bluesman from Mississippi. Many music historians and guitar aficionados credit these songs, which include his legendary "Cross Road Blues," for laying the fundamental groundwork for rock-and-roll. Another historic blues great, Huddie Ledbetter ("Lead Belly"), traveled to Texas where he played his twelve-string guitar with the likes of Jefferson in Deep Ellum. Field-recording pioneers John and Alan Lomax discovered his guitar prowess while he was incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary and thus brought his blues to the world. These early players inspired later guitarists like Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Freddie King, and Albert Collins and their Texas blues sound, a highly improvisational style that encouraged a variety of personal playing techniques. The early bluesmen played an important role in the evolution of rock guitar. Legendary groups and players from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Jefferson Airplane, to Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, all credit these blues players as major musical influences. Interestingly, the song “Rock Awhile” recorded in 1949 by a little-known Houston blues and jazz man and his group—Goree Carter and his Hep Cats—has been lauded by some rock historians as a forerunning anthem to the new genre .
Texas jazz players also contributed significantly to the development of rock. In 1935 guitarist Eddie Durham of San Marcos was one of the first performers on the electric guitar, and he made the first jazz recording of the amplified instrument. Fellow jazzman Charlie Christian of Dallas further elevated the electric guitar as a lead instrument. Guitarist Aaron "T-Bone" Walker, born in Linden, forged the link to the modern electric guitar in the 1940s and established the instrument as the foremost soloing tool for rhythm-and-blues.
In Texas in the 1930s another musical sound, the interesting mix of jazz, hillbilly, boogie, blues, and country that became known as western swing, also influenced the beginnings of rock. Three bands were very representative of the catchy sound that caught on: the Light Crust Doughboys, Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Both Brown and Wills had originally played in the Light Crust Doughboys before forming their own groups, and radio presented a popular medium to reach a wide listening audience.
In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s the Big D Jamboree barn dance and radio program in Dallas cultivated local talent and recruited national acts. In additional to country performers, the show also explored new trends and presented a bluesy sound mixed with country and bluegrass (or hillbilly) music called rockabilly. Big D Jamboree and its larger Louisiana counterpart, the Louisiana Hayride, often featured one of the most visible rockabilly stars—a young Elvis Presley. Several native Texans, however, are recognized as groundbreaking rockabilly performers, including Charline Arthur, Dean Beard, and Johnny Carroll. In the mid-1950s Charline Arthur, born in Henrietta, Texas, headlined the Big D Jamboree. Her bold stage presence earned praise from Elvis, and music historians have credited her as a major precursor to rockabilly, but her aggressive manner and rowdy stage shows did not fit in with the times. Other rockabilly pioneers were Dean Beard of Coleman County and his West Texas band the Crew Cats, who recorded "Rakin' and Scrapin'" in 1956. That same year Johnny Carroll from Cleburne, a Big D Jamboree and Louisiana Hayride favorite, recorded his "Crazy, Crazy Lovin'" for Decca in Nashville. Carroll was the featured star in the cult movie Rock, Baby, Rock It! filmed with other local music talent in Dallas.
During the 1950s Houston record executive Don Robey gathered an impressive lineup of blues performers for his Duke and Peacock Records labels. One artist, Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, recorded "Hound Dog" in 1953, and the song became a major rock-and-roll hit for Elvis in 1956.
The emergence of rockabilly as a new musical style and the steady output of blues recordings set the stage for the development of a new genre—rock-and-roll. The windblown plains of West Texas furnished a wealth of musical talent. In 1956 Happy, Texas, native Buddy Knox and his band, the Rhythm Orchids, which included Knox's classmate Jimmy Bowen, learned of Norm Petty's recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico, from another up-and-coming West Texas musician, Roy Orbison. The group recorded "Party Doll," and Knox subsequently became the first artist in rock to write and perform his own Number 1 hit with that song. Bowen's "I'm Stickin' With You," originally the flip side of "Party Doll," also got into the Top 20.
In early 1957 another West Texas rocker, Buddy Holly of Lubbock, ventured to Petty's studio. The tracks recorded by Holly and the Crickets resulted in the release of their first single, "That'll Be the Day," on May 27, 1957. The song soared to Number 3 on the pop charts, and subsequent releases "Peggy Sue," "Oh Boy!," and "Not Fade Away" also met great success. The pioneering influence of Holly, an inaugural inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), on the development of rock-and-roll cannot be overstated. Holly wrote much of his own material, and his band, the Crickets (who were inducted in their own right into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012), brought to the forefront the combination of guitars, bass, and drums as a viable self-contained musical combo. These two precedents set the standard for rock groups. Young fans, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and other future British rockers saw Holly perform in England and were inspired to emulate him. His star shone brightly for less than two years, until he lost his life in a plane crash in Iowa on February 3, 1959. The Big Bopper, J. P. Richardson of the Beaumont area, also perished. His fun-loving single "Chantilly Lace" had been a hit in 1958. Another rising Texas musician and Holly's guitarist at the time, Waylon Jennings, was not on the plane. The crash, which killed the pilot, Holly, Richardson, and teenage star Ritchie Valens, marked the end of the first chapter of rock-and-roll, an event that songwriter Don McLean later so aptly proclaimed "the day the music died," in his anthem "American Pie" in 1971.
Texas rock-and-roll progressed, however, as the 1960s dawned. Singer–songwriter Roy Orbison carried the banner of the West Texas rockers throughout the early 1960s and, in fact, was one of the few American stars to hold his own on the charts against the rising Beatles. Born in Vernon, Texas, Orbison (in the band the Teen Kings) had made his own pilgrimage to Norm Petty's Clovis studio in the 1950s. His recording of "Ooby Dooby" caught the attention of Sun Records in Memphis, and in 1956 Orbison joined the ranks of a group of emerging rockabilly stars. He gained the reputation of a successful songwriter, but when he could not attract the interest of either Elvis or the Everly Brothers to record his "Only the Lonely," Orbison recorded it himself in 1960 and introduced to the world his soaring voice and a string of aching rock ballads that became his signature style. Rock-and-roll singers from Elvis to the Beatles to Bruce Springsteen heralded the dramatic voice of Orbison. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, Orbison, like Holly, has shown incredible staying power, as evidenced by his popular comeback in the 1980s with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne as the Traveling Wilburys and his best-selling album Mystery Girl (1989) after his death in 1988.
Mexican-American rockers entered the national rock-and-roll scene in the early 1960s. In 1960 Baldemar Huerta, better known as Freddy Fender, had a hit with "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights." In 1963 a band from San Antonio called Sunny and the Sunglows (later known as Sunny and the Sunliners) became the first all-Tejano group to play on American Bandstand. Dallas's Trini Lopez had a hit in 1963 with an upbeat version of the folk song "If I Had a Hammer." This emergence of such Mexican-American performers hinted of musical influences adopted from the rich Mexican heritage of Texas.
Also in the early 1960s Major Bill Smith of Fort Worth produced a number of artists who had national hits. Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson, known as Paul and Paula and formed in Brownwood, had a Number 1 song, "Hey Paula." Bruce Channel of Grapevine recorded "Hey! Baby." Denton's Ray Peterson scored a 1960 hit with "Tell Laura I Love Her," while Lufkin's J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers, a band formed in San Angelo, had a Number 1 smash with "Last Kiss" in 1964. Both songs were symbolic of the "teenage tragedy" subgenre of rock in the early 1960s. Another young Lubbock group, Delbert McClinton and the Ron-Dels, recorded "If You Really Want Me To I'll Go." McClinton, who had cut his musical teeth on the Jacksboro Highway blues scene of Fort Worth, had established himself as a rising rockabilly–blues player and went on to sustain a lengthy musical career encompassing various styles. McClinton played harmonica on Bruce Channel's "Hey! Baby." A longstanding legend tells that it was McClinton who, while on tour with Channel in England, advised John Lennon on his distinctive harmonica technique—information that the Beatle subsequently immortalized in the harmonica solo of "Love Me Do."
When the Beatles burst upon the American music scene in 1964, their performances had an impact on the growing stable of Texas musicians. Savvy music producer Huey Meaux of Houston decided to jump on the "British Invasion" bandwagon but with a distinctively Texas flavor. The result produced one of the enduring bands in Texas rock history—the Sir Douglas Quintet. Meaux approached San Antonio musician Doug Sahm, whose musical legacy established him as a quintessential rock-and-roller. Formed in San Antonio in 1964, the Sir Douglas Quintet consisted of frontman Sahm, Augie Meyers on organ, Frank Morin on horns, Jack Barber on bass, and John Perez on drums. Their stylish suits and Beatle haircuts, mandated by Meaux, were designed to give the band an English flavor and thereby to capitalize on the British Invasion. Meaux had to "break" the band in England before it played in the U.S., but the group scored a major international hit in 1965 with "She's About a Mover." The song's infectious hook was the thin "con queso" line of Meyers's Vox organ. Reminiscent of an accordion fill, this reflected the Tex-Mex influence on the group. The band eventually moved to the budding rock scene of San Francisco and released other notable tracks, including "Mendocino" in 1969.
Other noteworthy bands of the mid-1960s hailed from Texas and also echoed their Tex-Mex musical traditions. Domingo Samudio (Sam Samudio) of Dallas led Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, whose hit "Wooly Bully" topped the U.S. charts in 1965. Billboard, in fact, selected "Wooly Bully" as Record of the Year. They also enjoyed success with "Lil' Red Riding Hood." Question Mark and the Mysterians likewise tapped into their own queso organ hook, played by Frank Rodriguez of Crystal City, in their hit "96 Tears" in 1965.
Meaux also produced the early material of versatile vocalist Roy Head from Three Rivers, who later, as Roy Head and the Traits, scored a Number 2 pop single in 1965 with his soulful "Treat Her Right." Houston native B. J. Thomas was also in the Meaux stable before moving on to pop and country stardom with such hits as "Hooked on a Feeling" and "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head."
As Beatlemania swept the nation, Hollywood sought to capitalize on the British Invasion in the mid-1960s and introduced the Monkees. Bandmember Michael Nesmith was born in Houston and grew up in Dallas. Nesmith, considered the best musician in the quartet, also achieved other musical success. His song "Different Drum" was a hit for Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys in 1967. He later went on to front his own country rock band in the 1970s and became a music video pioneer, winning the first Grammy given for a video in 1981.
West Texas gave forth another popular group, the Bobby Fuller Four from El Paso. The band had a national hit in 1966 with "I Fought the Law," a tune written by Sonny Curtis of the Crickets. Fuller's success was cut short by his suspicious "suicide" on July 18, 1966.
Psychedelic and its heavier variation, acid rock, emerged from both folk-rock and electric roots during the mid-to-late 1960s. Texas spawned its share of garage bands, known for their original compositions and free-form improvisation, and these psychedelic groups had both regional and national impact. Red Krayola emerged from Houston. The punky blues of Zakary Thaks came from Corpus Christi. Mouse and the Traps was born in Tyler. The band Bubble Puppy, which formed in San Antonio, recorded in Houston at Gold Star Studios for International Artists in 1968 and scored a national hit, "Hot Smoke & Sasafrass." International Artists also signed another band—the 13th Floor Elevators. Formed in Austin in 1965, the 13th Floor Elevators commanded a devoted local following and created a potent combination when they added vocalist Roky Erickson to the lineup. His song "You're Gonna Miss Me" became a hit; it was from their 1966 album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. A second LP, Easter Everywhere (1967), also had a strong showing. Musicologists have heralded Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators as pioneers of acid rock, but their overt drug use, also a trademark of the psychedelic culture, took its toll on the band and especially Erickson. Convicted twice for drug possession, Erickson opted for a sentence to the Rusk State Hospital over state prison in 1969. During his incarceration he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and treated with various drug therapies and electroshock. He was never the same after his release in 1972, and took years to return to some semblance of musical coherence. But in the 2000s, on medication for his schizophrenia, Erickson made a comeback. In 2005 he played his first full-length concert in two decades at the Austin City Limits Festival. Many performances have followed, including debuts in New York and London. He tourned Australia and New Zealand in 2012.
In 2008 the city of Austin held the first annual Austin Psych Fest to honor the city’s historical connection to psychedelic rock and promote its ongoing expression. Conceived by the Reverberation Appreciation Society, the group went on to establish other festivals (called Levitation) in Chicago, Canada, and France. By 2015 the Austin festival was held over three days in May and included a reunion performance by the 13th Floor Elevators.
Janis Joplin, another innovator and ultimately victim of the psychedelic counterculture, burst on the rock-and-roll scene in the mid-1960s. Born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas, she moved to San Francisco and joined the band Big Brother and the Holding Company. Her electrifying rendition of the song "Ball and Chain," which had also been recorded by one of Joplin's musical mentors, Big Mama Thornton, at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 immediately earned her and the band national acclaim. Rock critics praised Joplin as the greatest White blues singer, but an accidental heroine overdose ended her life on October 4, 1970. Her posthumous single "Me and Bobby McGee," penned by Texan Kris Kristofferson, reached Number 1 on the charts.
The 1960s and early 1970s saw many Texas-born musicians earning musical names for themselves outside of the state. The impressive list includes Billy Preston, who was born in Houston, Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart of Dallas, who performed in Sly and the Family Stone, and Houston native Johnny Nash, whose catchy "I Can See Clearly Now" reached Number 1 in 1972. Mason Williams of Abilene won a Grammy for his pop instrumental guitar hit "Classical Gas" in 1968. Houston's Kenny Rogers and his pop group First Edition had a hit with "Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In." Dallas-born Stephen Stills found fame in the late 1960s in California as a member of Crosby Stills Nash and Young.
The 1970s ushered in the radio-popular genre of soft rock, with smoothly crafted, tight songs that inspired the term "California Sound." Notable Texans helped influence the California Sound. Seals and Crofts was one of the most popular mellow rock acts of the 1970s. Jim Seals, born in Sidney, Texas, and Dash Crofts of Cisco, played as teenagers with rockabilly star Dean Beard and the Crew Cats in the late 1950s. The two, along with Beard, moved to Los Angeles and joined the Champs, who had the instrumental hit "Tequila" in 1958. Eventually playing together as an acoustic duo, they hit it big with their song "Summer Breeze" in 1972. Seals's brother Dan, who performed with John Colley in the Dallas psychedelic group Southwest F.O.B., achieved his own fame with Colley in the duo England Dan and John Ford Coley. Dan Seals died on March 25, 2009.
The Eagles, a hugely successful group of the 1970s, owe a lot of their success to two Texans. Drummer–vocalist Don Henley was born in Gilmer and played in a hometown band called Shiloh, before the group moved to California in 1969. Henley was one of the founding members of the Eagles in 1971, and his songwriting and distinctive voice helped propel the group to fame. Henley, as a member of the Eagles, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Eagle associate J. D. Souther of Amarillo played in the Cinders, a Panhandle band of the early 1960s, before heading West. Souther wrote some of the Eagles' most memorable songs, such as "New Kid in Town" and "Best of My Love," and later recorded a hit of his own, "You're Only Lonely."
In the early 1970s the hard-edged sounds of rock and blues were still alive and well with Texas musicians. Brothers Johnny and Edgar Winter grew up in the Beaumont area and listened to the records of blues masters like Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker. Johnny attracted a massive audience with the release of Johnny Winter (1969), which showcased blues–rock guitar prowess, including a considerable penchant for slide guitar. Winter, who died in 2014, established himself among aspiring guitarists as one of the modern blues greats. Brother Edgar achieved success as a keyboardist. Edgar's part jazzy, part rhythm-and-blues tunes earned him respect as an amazing multi-instrumentalist (he also played saxophone) and vocalist.
The early 1970s saw prolific output from a band formed in Fort Worth, Bloodrock, which issued six albums from 1970 to 1973. Their second LP, Bloodrock 2, earned a Gold Record Award and included a popular single, the morbid "D.O.A." Fort Worth guitarist and vocalist John Nitzinger, though not a formal member of the group, contributed some of Bloodrock's songs.
The band ZZ Top became the Lone Star State's most successful rock act of the 1970s. This threesome emerged from the ashes of the Texas psychedelic scene. Drummer Frank Beard and bassist Dusty Hill had played in the American Blues in Dallas, and guitarist Billy Gibbons performed in the noteworthy Moving Sidewalks in Houston. Evidently he had turned heads, because Jimi Hendrix, while appearing on the Tonight Show, had praised Gibbons as the next hot young guitarist. Gibbons, Beard, and Hill came together in Houston in 1970 (after Gibbons had replaced two previous band members). They built a strong following with their touring and Southern-influenced, guitar-driven rock. Their third album, Tres Hombres (1973), went platinum on the strength of the hit "La Grange." Throughout the following decades, ZZ Top's continued popularity with releases such as their best-selling Eliminator (1983) attested to the band's popular appeal and staying power. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.
In the early 1970s Texas gave birth to a distinctive and unusual blending of country music and urban blues and rock that resulted in a hybrid style known variously as redneck rock or progressive country. The redneck rock movement began in Austin as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and a group of country and rocker songwriters congregated to create a burgeoning music scene. Nelson had rejected the slick commercial environment of Nashville and returned to his native Texas. The redneck rock movement inspired enthusiasm from both native Texans and Northern transplants in search of its laid-back, open-minded attitude. Rock and country musicians Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore formed the Flatlanders in rock's root town of Lubbock before each eventually moved to the Central Texas area.
Jerry Jeff Walker, B. W. Stevenson, and Michael Martin Murphey were three singer–songwriters who symbolized the redneck rock movement and garnered acclaim with big crossover hits. Walker, a transplanted Texan, penned "Mr. Bojangles," and the tune became a major radio hit for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1971. The big voice of Dallas native B. W. Stevenson belted out "My Maria," which went to Number 9 in 1973. Michael Martin Murphey's "Wild Fire" was a huge hit that went to Number 3 on the charts in 1975. The outgrowth of this flourishing Austin redneck rock scene also led to the creation of the syndicated public television program Austin City Limits, which brought numerous Texas country, blues, and rock musicians to a national audience.
The mid-to-late 1970s continued the tradition of Texan musicians gaining national and international fame. Players who had headed west in the 1960s included Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs, high school classmates in Dallas. During the 1970s each went on to success. Dallas native Marvin Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf, scored national hits with his musical theatrical flair, and his Bat Out of Hell (1977) became one of rock's biggest-selling albums.
The 1980s ushered in the national fame of Christopher Cross. Formed by San Antonio native Chris Geppert and consisting of some notable Austin-based musicians, Christopher Cross swept the Grammys with five awards, which included Best New Artist, Album of the Year—Christopher Cross (1980)—and three awards for the hit single "Sailing." The crisp recording and production of the songs earned Christopher Cross a place as one of pop music's biggest acts in the early 1980s. He also won an Oscar for Best Original Song, "Arthur's Theme" for the movie Arthur (1981).
The emergence of punk music and its mellower cousin new wave claimed its roots in the psychedelic bands of the 1960s, most notably Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Other musicians also adopted styles tinged with Tex-Mex nuances that harkened back to the influences of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Question Mark and the Mysterians. By the early 1980s punk bands performed throughout the state. The Judy's of Houston achieved moderate success. Dallas contributed acts like the Nervebreakers, and Austin spawned the Big Boys and the Next. Austin-based musicians such as Joe Ely toured as the opener for the Clash, and Joe "King" Carrasco's high energy, Tex-Mex–flavored "nuevo wavo" was a perennial draw on the club circuit. One of the early punk Texas bands that has shown staying power is the Butthole Surfers. Trinity University students Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary formed the group in San Antonio in the early 1980s. Their screeching sounds and societal satire have evoked shock and loathing in some, but have also inspired a devoted cult following for three decades.
Pop bands such as Timbuk 3 and Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians had their day in the sun in the mid-to-late 1980s. Timbuk 3's husband and wife duo, Pat and Barbara MacDonald, who had moved to Austin, wrote the very catchy "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades" in 1986. The New Bohemians were an established band playing in Deep Ellum when they added art student and singer Edie Brickell in 1985. A revamped lineup signed with Geffen Records and released their debut, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars (1989), which included the hit "What I Am." Brickell's airy vocal style and the band's hippie harkening image caught the public eye for a time. Both Timbuk 3 and Edie Brickell and New Bohemians were destined to be relegated to one-hit wonder status.
The 1980s saw the increasing recognition of the skill and versatility of a new generation of Texas guitarists. Numerous awards and polls in guitar magazines have heralded Austinite Eric Johnson as one of the technically best guitarists. He first turned heads as a member of the Austin jazz fusion group the Electromagnets, which featured founder Bill Maddox, Stephen Barber, and Kyle Brock, in the mid-1970s. Word of Johnson's virtuosity continued to build as he worked as a session player for the likes of Carole King, Cat Stevens, and Christopher Cross. His first solo album, Tones, came out in 1986, followed by Ah Via Musicom in 1990.
Van Wilks is another formidable guitar player in the Central Texas area. Listeners have often compared the blues rock master to ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, and he has toured with ZZ Top. Wilks released the album Bombay Tears in 1980 to critical acclaim. He and his band have also been the winners of many newspaper polls in recognition of their popular hard-rock style. Van Wilks and Eric Johnson teamed up in a memorable guitar duo performance of "What Child Is This" for the Texas Christmas Collection (1982).
The Vaughan brothers, Jimmie and Stevie, finally earned their long-sought national attention in the 1980s. Born in the Dallas area, the brothers had moved to Austin by the 1970s. Guitarist Jimmie Vaughan hit it big in the Austin-based blues group the Fabulous Thunderbirds, whose songs "Tuff Enuff" and "Wrap It Up" became national hits and featured videos on MTV in 1986. Jimmie's younger brother Stevie and his band, Double Trouble, stormed the blues rock scene with their release of Texas Flood (1983) and Couldn't Stand the Weather (1984). Both brothers had performed and collaborated at various times with songwriter/drummer Doyle Bramhall, who co-wrote several songs for Stevie and played drums on the Vaughan brothers’ Family Style (1990). Musicians recognized Stevie Ray Vaughan as one of the great new guitarists. Vaughan, standing on the shoulders of the old Deep Ellum blues greats, influenced countless young players, and many guitar magazines and instructional books have analyzed his use of heavy-gauge strings and tuning to achieve his distinctively fat sound. His tragic death in a helicopter crash in 1990 cut short a remarkable music career.
Two years later the rhythm section of Double Trouble, bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton, teamed with Charlie Sexton and Doyle Bramhall II in Austin to form the Arc Angels. Arc was taken from the initials of the Austin Rehearsal Center. What began as a musical outlet for the members soon erupted into media labels of "supergroup." Their debut album on Geffen Records and live shows quickly attracted national exposure, but the group fell apart in 1994. At South by Southwest in 2009, the Arc Angels reunited to record and perform once more. That year they opened for Eric Clapton on his European tour.
One of the biggest Texas acts of the 1990s consisted of legendary veteran rockers Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers, Freddy Fender, and conjunto accordionist Flaco Jiménez. The supergroup the Texas Tornados released its eponymous debut album with Warner Brothers in 1990. Once again the musicians relied heavily on their Texan-influenced roots, combining Tex-Mex conjunto rhythms with catchy lyric and melody hooks that had crossover appeal in the rock world. Throughout much of the 1990s the group toured nationally and internationally and was ready to embark on a new journey when Doug Sahm died on November 18, 1999. Sahm's career epitomizes Texas rock-and-roll, a meeting of cultures that borrows from the black blues greats, border-flavored Tex-Mex, and Texas cowboy and folk music, with some doo-wop thrown in. Freddy Fender, who had started his career as a young rocker in the late 1950s, died on November 17, 2007. The Texas Tornados found new life in the 2000s, however, as Sahm’s son Shawn joined forces with Meyers, Jiménez, and several original sidemen (including Louie Ortega on guitar, Speedy Sparks on bass, and Ernie Durawa on drums) to form a new incarnation of the band. They released ¡Está Bueno! in 2010. In 2015 the Tornados released a new double-CD compilation featuring songs from previous albums, some rareties, as well as six unreleased tracks in A Little Bit is Better Than Nada—Prime Cuts 1990–1996.
The significant influence shown by notable rock pioneer Roky Erickson was honored in the 1990 Warner Brothers release of Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson, on which various rockers recorded his songs. Another noteworthy tribute album resulted in an unlikely, but compelling combination. Twisted Willie (1996) was a compilation of Willie Nelson's songs as performed by some of the nation's top grunge bands. The alternative rock scene of Seattle in the early 1990s nodded to the legacy of the Texas Outlaw, redneck rocker Willie Nelson.
Fort Worth provided its own alternative grunge offering in the Toadies. Formed in 1989, the band gained considerable exposure with its extensive touring in the 1990s, opening for White Zombie, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bush, and other well-known acts. They broke up in 2001 but reunited for shows in 2006 and 2007 and released their album No Deliverance in 2008, Feeler in 2010, and Play. Rock. Music. in 2012. The band embarked on a new tour in 2014 to promote their album Rubberneck. The following year saw another tour and release (Heretics).
The rise of female singer–songwriters in the rock industry in the mid-1990s also featured a Texas-born artist whose unlikely commercial path led to stardom. Dallas native Lisa Loeb secured a place in music history for achieving the first-ever Number 1 hit single without having a record deal. In 1994 her song "Stay," which was featured on the soundtrack of the film Reality Bites, bulleted up the charts. Subsequently, Loeb signed with Geffen and later participated as a featured artist on the Lilith Fair tour promoting female musicians in 1997.
The Central Texas band Sixpence None the Richer entered the music scene in the 1990s. After several years of obscurity, they finally got national recognition with their hit "Kiss Me" in 1999. After the release of their second album Divine Discontent in 2002, the group disbanded in 2004 but reunited in 2007.
Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, heavy metal bands (and their various subgenres such as death metal or thrash metal) have flourished in the Lone Star State. Arlington's group Pantera actually formed in the early 1980s but, after building an impressive following through several album releases and tours, came into their own in the 1990s. Their formidable album Far Beyond Driven entered the U.S. and U.K. charts at number one in 1994, and releases and tours throughout the 1990s cemented the Texas group as a worldwide force. Other listeners, perhaps not familiar with thrash metal's blazing tempo and heavy atonal guitar riffs, got a taste of Pantera's style when the group wrote a brief metal theme song for the NHL team the Dallas Stars during their Stanley Cup season in 1999. The band broke up in 2003. Tragically, founding member and lead guitarist "Dimebag Darrell" (Darrell Lance Abbott) was shot and killed while playing onstage with his band Damageplan on December 8, 2004.
King's X, a band based in Houston, garnered critical acclaim for its interesting and intricate blend of vocal harmonies, progressive rock elements, and metal tendencies. Their often spiritual and introspective lyrics for their early releases led some to classify them in the genre of Christian rock, as evidenced in their successful LP Faith, Hope and Love (1990), a label that the band itself has opposed. They continued to tour and release works through 2015.
The hard-hitting rock band The Union Underground formed in San Antonio in 1996. By 1999 they signed with a subsidiary of Columbia Records, and their debut, An Education in Rebellion (2000), earned praise from critics as some of the best heavy metal of the day. Their recording and performance of "Across the Nation," the theme song for World Wrestling Entertainment's RAW show from 2002 through 2006, brought the group to an even larger worldwide audience, though they broke up not long after its release.
Another metal splash occurred for the Dallas quartet Drowning Pool in 2001. The group formed in the late 1990s and toured with alternative metal bands Sevendust and Kittie while peddling their demos. Eventually they signed to a major label, and the group's debut album, Sinner (2001), went platinum on the strength of the breakout single "Bodies." The band rode the wave of stardom as a major stage act on the Ozzfest tour, but suffered a great setback with the sudden death of singer Dave Williams in August 2002. The band continued to tour and record, however, and had issued three albums, each with different lead vocalists, through 2007. They released a live album, Loudest Common Denominator, in 2009. By 2014 Drowning Pool had released a total of five albums and also released Sinner, an expanded two-disc reissue of their debut album including bonus tracks.
In the 2000s Texas rock remained a powerful force in the music industry. The late King Curtis (born Curtis Ousley) of Fort Worth was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of rock's most talented and influential sidemen. He played tenor sax on recordings by the Coasters, Aretha Franklin, Sam and Dave, John Lennon, and countless others.
Texas musical groups and solo artists that emerged in the 2000s covered a broad spectrum of genres as well as cultural influences. Los Lonely Boys consists of brothers Henry, Jojo, and Ringo Garza of San Angelo. Their music, named "Texican Rock and Roll," draws from an amalgamation of rock-and-roll, blues, country, and conjunto. Their debut single "Heaven" in 2004 was a Top 40 hit and reached the top of the Billboard adult contemporary chart. It won a Grammy in 2005 for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
Black Angels, a heavy psych group from Austin, originated in 2004 and represented a new generation of rockers influenced by early Texas psychedelic bands such as Red Krayola and the 13th Floor Elevators. The proverbial students teamed with the master, so to speak, when the Black Angels performed with Roky Erickson in 2008.
The Wichita Falls band Bowling for Soup, considered pop punk, produced a Billboard Top 40 hit with their cover of "1985" in 2004. Over the next decade they continued to record and tour. They announced a UK farewell tour for 2013, but apparently reconsidered the finality of those travels and later scheduled a return to the UK for a tour in early 2016.
The television sensation American Idol discovered a dynamic performer from Fort Worth in its first-season winner, Kelly Clarkson, in 2002. Lauded for her powerful voice, Clarkson won a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2005. The singer had released five albums by 2012. Her fourth album, All I Ever Wanted, debuted at Number 1, and her single, "My Life Would Suck Without You" quickly reached Number 1 both in the United States and United Kingdom. She won a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album for Stronger (2011) and was ranked by Billboard as the fourteenth-best-selling artist of the 2000s.
The Simpson sisters, Jessica and Ashlee, both achieved considerable recognition in the pop world. Jessica Simpson of Abilene was a pop star and actress in the early 2000s, though in 2008 she delved into country music. Her younger sister Ashlee, born in Waco, won the Billboard Award for New Female Artist of the Year in 2004.
Annie Clark, a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who grew up in Dallas, received critical acclaim after the release of her debut album Marry Me in 2007. The musician, who performs under the name St. Vincent, won the PLUG Independent Music Female Artist of the Year award in 2008 and released her second album, Actor, worldwide in 2009. Her third album, Strange Mercy, hit Number 19 on the Billboard 200 in 2011. Her fourth solo album, titled St. Vincent (2014), won a Grammy for Best Alternative Album.
The Mars Volta was formed in 2001 in El Paso by Omar Rodríguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The group's fusion of progressive rock, jazz, punk, and Salsa attracted attention in the rock world. They won an ASCAP Vanguard Award in 2004 and have toured with System of a Down and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Rolling Stone proclaimed them 2008's Best Prog-Rock Band, and that same year their fourth album The Bedlam of Goliath debuted at Number 3 on the Billboard 200. The Mars Volta won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2009 for their song "Wax Simulacra." They disbanded by 2013. One of the group’s original members, Isaiah “Ikey” Owens, died of a heart attack in October 2014.
Texas rock-and-roll at the dawn of the new millennium continued to bring both veteran favorites and fresh faces, all classified under the broad umbrella of rock music. Veteran musician Delbert McClinton still toured heavily. Guitarists Eric Johnson, Jimmie Vaughan, and Van Wilks, as well their inspired protégés such as brothers Charlie and Will Sexton, participated in a vibrant scene. ZZ Top still appeared before packed audiences worldwide. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame continued to recognize the important contributions of Texans to rock-and-roll through the inductions of Freddie King in 2012 and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble in 2014. The strength of Texas rock-and-roll also lies in the many regional and road bands playing at venues across the state. With the proliferation of home recording studios and the marketing exposure enabled by social media, YouTube, digital downloads, and live streaming on the Internet, Texas rock-and-roll bands have increasing opportunities to present their music to new audiences. | ||||
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4334 | dbpedia | 1 | 15 | https://countrymusichalloffame.org/exhibit/dylan-cash-and-the-nashville-cats-a-new-music-city/beyond-the-nashville-skyline/ | en | Country Music Hall of Fame | [
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Numerous acts from New York’s folk scene were interacting with Nashville musicians by the late 1960s. Many of the singers met Bob Dylan early in his career in Greenwich Village, and arrived in Nashville in the wake of his success there. Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel—Simon & Garfunkel—came to Nashville to work with producer Bob Johnston and local musicians at Columbia’s studio. Nashville session guitarist Fred Carter Jr. became an important part of Simon & Garfunkel’s sound, joining them for many of their New York sessions as well.
Two of Dylan’s early influences from New York eventually followed him to Nashville to record with Johnston. Ramblin’ Jack Elliott arrived in 1969 to make Bull Durham Sacks and Railroad Tracks, which included five Dylan songs. In 1971 Pete Seeger recorded Rainbow Race. Both albums featured musicians who had played on Dylan’s Nashville recordings, and both artists appeared on Johnny Cash’s TV show.
Vanguard Records and Nashville
Maynard Solomon, founder of New York-based Vanguard Records, sent the label’s folk artists to Nashville to record in the 1960s and 1970s. Vanguard was a small classical label when Solomon and his brother Seymour signed Joan Baez in 1960, early in the folk boom.
Baez’s commercial success allowed Vanguard to add other urban folk acts to its roster, including Ian & Sylvia, Eric Andersen, Buffy Sainte-Marie, and Jerry Jeff Walker. When Bob Dylan recorded in Nashville with good results, Solomon had his Vanguard artists follow suit.
Overseeing many of the sessions himself, Solomon often used traditional country instrumentation, including dobro, steel guitar, and fiddle—the latter often played by Buddy Spicher. Singing style and repertoire reflected the artists’ urban folk sensibilities. The Nashville musicians were adept at providing relaxed, country-leaning accompaniment, which created unique musical hybrids.
Among the albums reflecting this dynamic was Driftin’ Way of Life by Jerry Jeff Walker. While many of the songs espoused countercultural values, the music was pure country. The 1969 album recorded in Nashville set the tone for Walker’s role as a key member of the “cosmic cowboy” scene of the 1970s in Austin, Texas.
Joan Baez
Joan Baez, the most popular act on New York-based Vanguard Records, recorded a number of successful albums in Nashville. She praised the city’s musicians, and her example drew other performers to Nashville.
Baez came to Nashville first in 1968. Working with veteran guitarist Grady Martin as her session leader, she was prolific, capturing enough material for multiple albums. Guitar virtuoso Jerry Reed is featured prominently on the recordings, adding to their country flavor. Baez was well known for her activism in the anti-war and Civil Rights movements. She was a highly polarizing figure, and heightened security was present at her Nashville sessions.
“I probably wouldn’t agree with her on her politics,” fiddler Buddy Spicher said, “[but] it was such a joy to back up somebody that had chops like she did.”
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
For her 1971 album, Blessed Are…, Baez enlisted bassist Norbert Putnam, a veteran of her earlier Nashville sessions, as producer. She trusted that he could make her music more appealing to pop audiences. They recorded at Quadraphonic Studios, owned by Putnam, pianist David Briggs, and producer Elliot Mazer.
Blessed Are … became the biggest seller of Baez’s career, its success driven by a major pop hit, “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.” First recorded by the Band, the song was written by the group’s guitarist Robbie Robertson.
Other artists followed Baez to Quadraphonic Studios, and Putnam emerged as a popular producer for folk acts, with clients such as Buffy Sainte-Marie and Eric Andersen. Later, Putnam used a similar folk-pop style with artists such as Dan Fogelberg and Jimmy Buffett.
Ian & Sylvia
In the early 1960s, Toronto’s folk music scene resembled that of New York’s Greenwich Village. The city’s coffeehouse culture made it a bohemian magnet for Canadian musicians.
Toronto native Sylvia Fricker and Ian Tyson, from Vancouver Island, formed a duo in the late 1950s to play local coffeehouses. They married a few years later. As Ian & Sylvia, they established themselves in New York in 1961.
On Vanguard Records the duo became one of the most successful acts in folk music. Inspired by Dylan’s songwriting, Ian composed “Four Strong Winds,” which became a folk standard and a country hit for Bobby Bare in 1964.
Ian & Sylvia turned to Nashville for invigoration as the folk circuit that supported the duo started to fade. Working with producer Elliot Mazer and a wide cross-section of the city’s best pickers, the Tysons recorded the albums Nashville and Full Circle there in 1968. Ian & Sylvia returned to Nashville in 1971 to record their self-titled album for Columbia.
Gordon Lightfoot
Orillia, Ontario, native Gordon Lightfoot settled in Toronto as a solo performer before making albums in Nashville that helped define the folk-pop sound of the 1960s and ’70s.
Taking inspiration from country music and from Bob Dylan’s songwriting, Lightfoot had written songs by the early 1960s that would become standards. Ian & Sylvia and Peter, Paul and Mary made popular recordings of his “Early Morning Rain” and “For Loving Me.” In country music, Marty Robbins scored a #1 hit with Lightfoot’s “Ribbon of Darkness” in 1965.
After Dylan made his 1966 album, Blonde on Blonde, in Nashville, manager Albert Grossman suggested to Lightfoot that he record his second album there with musicians Kenny Buttrey and Charlie McCoy. Lightfoot’s The Way I Feel, released in 1967, helped inspire the more stripped-down sound of Dylan’s next album, John Wesley Harding.
Feeling a natural fit with country players, Lightfoot returned to Nashville in 1968 to make Back Here on Earth with producer Elliot Mazer at Bradley’s Barn. Lightfoot moved to Woodland Sound Studios in East Nashville to record Summer Side of Life in 1970 and ’71.
Leonard Cohen
Montreal native Leonard Cohen’s journey from promising young Canadian poet to fascinating and influential songwriter began in the 1950s. He found the urban folk music scene receptive to the surrealistic, dark songs he was beginning to write in the 1960s, such as “Suzanne” and “Dress Rehearsal Rag.” His debut album, Songs of Leonard Cohen, released on Columbia Records in 1967, was a major critical success. Eager to record Cohen in Nashville, producer Bob Johnston persuaded him to move south, to the quiet hamlet of Leiper’s Fork, Tennessee, just outside of Nashville. There Cohen rented a cabin from songwriters Felice and Boudleaux Bryant.
In 1968, working with Johnston at Columbia’s Music Row studios, Cohen recorded Songs from a Room, featuring the classic “Bird on a Wire.” Ron Cornelius, Charlie Daniels, and Elkin “Bubba” Fowler provided backing. So comfortable was Cohen with the players that he toured far and wide with Johnston, Daniels, Cornelius, and Fowler in his band.
In 1971 Cohen recorded in Nashville again, working with his seasoned road band. Songs of Love and Hate included Cohen classics such as “Famous Blue Raincoat” and “Joan of Arc.”
Beau Brummels
The Beau Brummels anticipated the sound of folk-rock with its 1965 hits “Laugh, Laugh” and “Just a Little.” By 1968, the group’s two principal members, Sal Valentino and Ron Elliott, were looking for a new musical direction. They made their next album, Bradley’s Barn, at producer Owen Bradley’s studio in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee, in 1968. “Sal and I were both immersed in Nashville, especially with Dylan’s experiments down there,” said the group’s producer, Lenny Waronker.
The Beau Brummels hired the cream of the city’s young studio players and enlisted top guitarists Harold Bradley, Wayne Moss, Jerry Reed, and Billy Sanford.
The Steve Miller Band
Guitarist Steve Miller moved from Texas to San Francisco to form a band in 1967. The group found immediate success, signing with Capitol Records and becoming a staple on the city’s popular ballroom circuit.
In 1970 the Steve Miller Band—supplemented by Nashville musicians—recorded its album Number 5 at Wayne Moss’s Cinderella Sound Studio in Madison, Tennessee. Charlie McCoy’s harmonica and Buddy Spicher’s fiddle are prominent on “Going to the Country,” which received heavy airplay on rock radio.
Miller invited McCoy, guitarist Moss, and banjo player Bobby Thompson to join the band on another song, “Tokin’s,” and was amazed by the results. “They learned the song in seven minutes and sat down and recorded it,” Miller recalled. “When it was done, it sounded better than anything else on the record, and we said, ‘Well, that’s how pros do it!’”
Country Joe McDonald
Country Joe McDonald recorded in Nashville in 1969, soon after performing anti-Vietnam War song “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag” at the Woodstock festival. McDonald fronted Country Joe & the Fish, a band that had great success in the late 1960s blending the radical left politics of their hometown, Berkeley, with the psychedelic flavors of San Francisco.
McDonald made his first solo albums, Thinking of Woody Guthrie and Tonight I’m Singing Just for You, at Bradley’s Barn in Mt. Juliet, Tennessee. Nashville A-team guitarist Grady Martin led the sessions.
Tracy Nelson and Mother Earth
Growing up in Madison, Wisconsin, Tracy Nelson listened to rhythm & blues on WLAC, from far away Nashville, one of the only radio stations reaching Middle America with black music.
Nelson released an album of acoustic folk blues in 1965, before moving to San Francisco, where she formed blues-rock band Mother Earth. The band performed at the legendary Fillmore Auditorium and shared bills with the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Jimi Hendrix.
Mother Earth toured in support of their 1968 debut album, Living with Animals, ending with a show in Nashville. They stayed in Tennessee, rented a farmhouse in Mt. Juliet, and recorded their next album, Make a Joyful Noise, at Bradley’s Barn.
Nashville steel guitarist Pete Drake introduced Nelson to Elvis Presley’s pioneering guitarist, Scotty Moore, and other local players. She was so taken by Nashville that she decided to relocate to the area.
“The musical community that Pete introduced me to was far and away more reasonable, and nicer to be around, than in San Francisco,” Nelson said.
In 1969 Drake encouraged Nelson to record a solo country album, Mother Earth Presents Tracy Nelson Country, for which Nelson sang direct, strong versions of songs written by Hank Williams, Don Gibson, and Tammy Wynette. Nelson made the album at Moore’s Music City Recorders, accompanied by Moore, Drake, D.J. Fontana, Ben Keith, Johnny Gimble, Shorty Lavender, the Jordanaires, and other local stalwarts.
The Byrds
The Byrds were among the first successful purveyors of folk-rock. The group’s arrangement of Bob Dylan’s “Mr. Tambourine Man,” which went to #1 in 1965, and their recording of Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do,” helped introduce his songs to a broader audience.
Founding members Chris Hillman and Roger McGuinn, whose roots were in folk and bluegrass, began to introduce country songs and sounds onto Byrds albums. When Georgia native Gram Parsons joined the Byrds in 1967, he encouraged the group to embrace country music more fully.
Sweetheart of the Rodeo
Inspired by their enthusiasm for country music, the Byrds came to Nashville in March 1968 to begin work on their sixth album, Sweetheart of the Rodeo. The group was augmented in Columbia’s Studio A by local musicians Junior Huskey on bass, John Hartford on banjo, and Lloyd Green on pedal steel guitar.
Pedal steel guitar—played on some tracks by Lloyd Green in Nashville, and on others by Jay Dee Maness in Los Angeles—gave the record a distinctively country feel. Despite mixed reviews and modest sales, the album is now regarded as a landmark for its melding of country traditions with a rock & roll sensibility.
Neil Young
After recording country-inspired rock music with Buffalo Springfield; Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young; and as a solo artist, Neil Young came to Nashville in 1971 to perform on Johnny Cash’s TV show. Young also booked studio time at Quadrafonic Studios, where he recorded most of his fourth album, Harvest, with producer Elliot Mazer.
Released in 1972, Harvest remains Young’s most successful album. It included “Old Man” and Young’s #1 hit, “Heart of Gold.” He met Nashville musicians Kenny Buttrey, Tim Drummond, and Ben Keith at the sessions, dubbed them the Stray Gators, and continued to employ them for many years.
Leon Russell and J.J. Cale
From Tulsa, Oklahoma, by way of Los Angeles, J.J. Cale and Leon Russell took divergent musical paths to Nashville. A former L.A. studio pianist, Russell rose to rock stardom before recording Hank Wilson’s Back, his collection of country classics, cut in Nashville in 1972. The album harkened back to the honky-tonk and rockabilly Russell performed with Cale as a teenager in Tulsa nightclubs.
J.J. Cale’s debut album, Naturally, included his biggest hit, “Crazy Mama,” featuring Mac Gayden’s innovative wah-wah slide guitar. Produced in Nashville and released in 1972 on Russell’s Shelter label, the album also featured other Cale originals, such as “After Midnight” (popularized by Eric Clapton) and “Call Me the Breeze” (made famous by Lynyrd Skynyrd).
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
Originating in Southern California in the 1960s, folk-rock group the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band bridged cultural and generational gaps with their landmark 1972 album, Will the Circle Be Unbroken. The sessions at East Nashville’s Woodland Sound Studios brought together country legends and veteran musicians, including Roy Acuff, Maybelle Carter, Vassar Clements, Jimmy Martin, Earl Scruggs, Merle Travis, and Doc Watson.
The project was notable for deliberately connecting the young artists in the Dirt Band with older country music styles and with musicians from an earlier era. Its tremendous success introduced the legends and their music to a whole new audience.
George Harrison and Ringo Starr
British acts including the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were influenced by folk and rock albums made in Nashville in the late 1960s. George Harrison’s friendship with Bob Dylan and the Band helped the Beatles find their way back to a simpler sound and pointed to the distinctive sound of Harrison’s 1970 album, All Things Must Pass.
Aware of Pete Drake’s work with Dylan, Harrison flew the pedal steel guitarist to London to add Nashville flavor to All Things Must Pass. Drake was joined on the sessions by an all-star band that included Beatles drummer Ringo Starr, who told Drake of his lifelong appreciation for country music.
Persuading Starr to record in Nashville, Drake produced Ringo’s 1970 country album, Beaucoups of Blues, at guitarist Scotty Moore’s studio using local musicians and songwriters.
Wings Over Nashville
Paul McCartney spent six weeks in Nashville during the summer of 1974, rehearsing his band, Wings, for a world tour. While there he took in the sights and sounds of the city.
“I rather fancy the place,” McCartney told a Nashville Banner reporter. “It’s a musical center. I’ve just heard so much about it that I wanted to see it for myself.”
McCartney, his wife Linda, and their three daughters, as well as members of Wings and the band’s road manager, stayed on a farm near Lebanon, Tennessee, owned by Curly Putman, composer of the country and pop classic “Green, Green Grass of Home.”
McCartney cut seven songs at Buddy Killen’s Sound Shop. Two became hits. The title of “Junior’s Farm” was inspired by Putman’s home. For “Sally G,” McCartney enlisted pedal steel guitarist Lloyd Green and fiddler Johnny Gimble to give the song a country feel. | ||||||
4334 | dbpedia | 0 | 9 | https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-andrew-gold-20110606-story.html | en | Andrew Gold dies at 59; musician, songwriter, arranger | https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/8cb5546/2147483647/strip/true/crop/500x263+0+44/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F45%2Fae%2F204ff709140038b3c61283931b35%2Fla-me-2011notables-zeisel | https://ca-times.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/8cb5546/2147483647/strip/true/crop/500x263+0+44/resize/1200x630!/quality/75/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcalifornia-times-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F45%2Fae%2F204ff709140038b3c61283931b35%2Fla-me-2011notables-zeisel | [
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A free-form sculptor, John Chamberlain crafted works from masses of crushed cars and automobile sheet metal. He was 84. Full obituary (Librado Romero / Associated Press)
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A former dissident playwright, Havel was the revered first president of Czechoslovakia after it overthrew Communist rule in 1989. His slogan: “May truth and love triumph over lies and hatred.” He was 75. Full obituary (Petr David Josek / Associated Press)
3/46
Hubert Sumlin‘s snarling guitar helped define Howlin’ Wolf‘s sound. Though Sumlin never attained a fraction of the fame of his celebrated boss, he is revered by fellow blues musicians. He was 80. Full obituary
Notable music deaths of 2011 (Paul Hawthorne / Getty Images)
4/46
The daughter of stars Loretta Young and Clark Gable, Lewis wrote tenderly about her only meeting with Gable at age 15. Young, an unmarried, staunch Catholic, faked an adoption of Lewis, who did not learn the truth about her parentage until she was an adult. She had careers as an actress and a psychotherapist. She was 76. Full obituary (Jill Connelly / Associated Press)
5/46
Known as “Father Dollar Bill,” Father Maurice Chase handed out dollar bills on Los Angeles’ skid row, caring more about the gift of human love than about what his beneficiaries did with the money. He was 92. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
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The Bruins point guard, who in 1964 helped John Wooden win his first national championship at UCLA, coached the team for four seasons. He was 69. Full obituary
Notable sports deaths of 2011 (Harold Matosian / Associated Press)
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The heavyweight champ had epic bouts with Muhammad Ali. In 1971 he became the first fighter to defeat Ali, then lost two rematches. In his 37 professional fights, “Smokin’ Joe” won 32 times. But he never accepted his 1-2 record against Ali. He was 67. Full obituary
Notable sports deaths of 2011 (AFP / Getty Image)
8/46
Matty Alou won the National League batting title in 1966 while with the Pittsburgh Pirates. He and his brothers Felipe and Jesus became the only trio of brothers to play outfield together in a 1963 game. He was 72. Full obituary.
Notable sports deaths of 2011 (Diamond Images / Getty Images)
9/46
A legendary producer, director and impresario of the Geffen Playhouse, Gil Cates restored the luster to the Academy Awards telecasts, recruiting hosts such as Billy Crystal and Steve Martin. He was 77. Full obituary
Notable film and television deaths of 2011 (Kevork Djansezian / Associated Press)
10/46
Erratic and mercurial, the Libyan leader fancied himself a political philosopher, practiced an unorthodox, deadly diplomacy and cut an at times cartoonish figure in robes and sunglasses and surrounded by female guards. He was 69. Obituary | Full coverage of Kadafi’s death | Photos: Kadafi through the years
Notable deaths of 2010 (John Redman / Associated Press)
11/46
The Native American activist was the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit that accused the federal government of cheating Native Americans in its management of Indian land, resulting in a record $3.4-billion settlement. She was 65. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Louis Sahagun / Los Angeles Times)
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The two-time Indianapolis 500 winner was killed in a 15-car wreck in the IndyCar series’ season-ending race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway. He was 33. Full obituary
Notable sports deaths of 2011 (Jonathan Ferrey / Getty Images)
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Roger Williams was of the most popular instrumentalists of the mid-20th century and hit No. 1 on the pop charts in 1955 with his arpeggio-strewn “Autumn Leaves.” Between 1955 and 1972, he had 22 hit singles -- including “Born Free” -- and 38 hit albums. He was 87. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Lawrence Lucier / Steinway & Sons via Getty Images)
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The Scottish singer-guitarist influenced rock and folk greats including Neil Young, Jimmy Page, Paul Simon and Pete Townshend, who credit Jansch’s effect on their music and celebrate his virtuosic playing and evocative songwriting. He was 67. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Jim Dyson / Getty Images)
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Ralph Steinman died just days before the Nobel committee announced he had won the Nobel Prize in Medicine. His heirs will still receive his share of the award because the Nobel committee did not know of his death. He and two others were honored for their work with the immune system. He was 68. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Mike Groll / Associated Press)
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Robinson owned Sugar Hill Records. The label released “Rapper’s Delight” by the Sugar Hill Gang in 1979. It’s considered the first mainstream hip-hop hit. She also had a solo hit with “Pillow Talk” in 1973. She was 76. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
17/46
He invented the first practical implantable pacemaker. The electrical engineer’s handmade device was named by the National Society of Professional Engineers in 1983 as one of the 10 greatest engineering contributions to society in the previous 50 years. He was 92. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Bill Sikes / Associated Press)
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The NFL Hall of Famer for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers teamed with his brothers to create a dominant defensive front and led Oklahoma to back-to-back national college championships. He was 56. (J. Meric / Getty Images)
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The Chicago bluesman, the son of a sharecropper and grandson of a slave, performed with the founders of the art form: Robert Johnson, Charlie Patton, Son House, Tommy McLennan, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Joe Williams. He was the last of the bluesmen from his generation. He was 96. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Joe Brier / McClatchy-Tribune)
20/46
June Wayne founded the Tamarind Lithography Workshop in Los Angeles in the 1960s, where leading artists collaborated with professional printers to create high-quality prints. She was also a prolific artist in her own right. She was 93. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Liz O. Baylen / Los Angeles Times)
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Marshall Grant, who worked as Johnny Cash‘s road manager and played bass for him for more than two decades, helped create the singer’s famous sound. He was 83. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Wayne Risher / Associated Press)
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Bernadine Healy, a cardiologist and educator, was the first woman to head the National Institutes of Health. She led the Red Cross relief efforts after 9/11. She was 67. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)
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The NFL player, who was the No. 1 draft pick from Michigan State in 1967, played for the Baltimore Colts, the Oakland Raiders and the Houston Oilers. Later, he appeared in popular beer commercials and acted in films and on TV. He was 66. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (John Gwillim / Associated Press)
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The Oscar-nominated art director was best known for her work on “The Last Picture Show” and “Paper Moon,” both directed by former husband Peter Bogdanovich. She also was an executive in filmmaker James L. Brooks’ company. She was 72. Full obituary
Notable film and television deaths of 2010 (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)
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He became the first foreign-born chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and guided military and humanitarian efforts in the post-Cold War era of the 1990s. He was 75. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Rick Bowmer / Associated Press)
26/46
The British painter, whose works are highly prized by collectors, created subjects in anguished, anti-erotic poses. He used impasto, a technique involving the thick application of paint, to create his highly textured portraits. He was 88. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Stephan Agostini / AFP/Getty Images)
27/46
Lillian Mobley, a tireless South Los Angeles activist, fought to establish the King/Drew hospital and its related medical school. Above, Mobley, right, looks on as Dr. George Locke greets Rep. Maxine Waters at King/Drew in 2004. She was 81. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
28/46
The comedy writer and producer created “Gilligan’s Island” and “The Brady Bunch. “ He also wrote the memorable theme-song lyrics for both the wacky tale of a shipwrecked “three-hour tour” and the story of the marriage between a “lovely lady” with three daughters and “a man named Brady” with three sons. Above, Schwartz in 2008 receives kisses from Florence Henderson, who played Mrs. Brady, and Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on “Gilligan’s Island.” He was 94. Full obituary
Notable film and television deaths of 2011 (Nick Ut / Associated Press)
29/46
The former first lady captivated the nation with her unabashed candor and forthright discussion of her personal battles with breast cancer, prescription drug addiction and alcoholism. She founded the widely emulated Betty Ford Center in Rancho Mirage, Calif., for the treatment of chemical dependencies. She was 93. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Anna Moore Butzner / Grand Rapids Press)
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The internationally renowned American artist, whose work blurred the boundaries of painting, drawing and handwritten poetry, was recognized with Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg as one of the three most important American artists to emerge in the 1950s. Above, the artist at the Louvre, where he designed and painted the ceiling of a large gallery of bronze sculptures last year. He was 83. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Christophe Ena / Associated Press)
31/46
The saxophonist for Bruce Springsteen‘s E Street Band put his stamp on such Springsteen classics as “Born to Run” and “Rosalita.” He was known both for his full-throttle tenor sax work and his larger-than-life onstage persona as “the Big Man.” He was 69. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Hillery Smith Garrison / Associated Press)
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Pratt was a former Black Panther whose 1972 murder conviction was overturned after he spent 27 years behind bars for a crime he said he did not commit. He was 63. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Mark Boster / Los Angeles Times)
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The singer gained fame with her 1974 hit, “Poetry Man.” She received wide acclaim for her self-titled album, which showed off her multi-octave range and musical versatility. She had suffered a brain hemorrhage in January 2010. She was 60. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)
34/46
He was considered a living god by millions of Hindus. After declaring himself the reincarnation of a Hindu saint in 1940, he built a loyal following, including politicians and celebrities, despite allegations of sexual abuse. He leaves a trust worth billions of dollars. He was 84. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Mustafa Quraishi / Associated Press)
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The architect incorporated aerodynamic designs into his whimsical midcentury “Googie” coffee shops, including the original Norms on La Cienega Boulevard in L.A. and Pann’s in Westchester, to attract passing motorists. He was 94. Full obituary | Photos: “Googie” architecture
Notable deaths of 2010 (Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
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The developer of the Kendall-Jackson wine brand was a San Francisco lawyer who became a skilled wine merchant and titan of the industry. In recent years, Jackson owned winning racehorses, including Rachel Alexandra. He was 81. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Karen Tapia-Andersen / Los Angeles Times)
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The legendary Norwegian runner became the face of the New York City Marathon, winning the race nine times. She also set four marathon world records. She was 57. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Roald Berit / AFP/Getty Images)
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The biochemist won the 1976 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine for discovering the hepatitis B virus, which causes severe liver disease and cancer. He later developed the vaccine that protects against it. He was 85. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Eddie Adams / Associated Press)
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A prolific thinker and creator, he is credited with innovations in cable modems, interactive TV, airport metal detectors and the “packet switching” technology that helped lead to the Internet. Above, Baran receives the National Medal of Technology and Innovation from President Bush in 2008. He was 84. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Charles Dharapak / Associated Press)
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The political reporter and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist wrote more than four decades for the Washington Post, where he mentored countless colleagues. He appeared on “Meet the Press” some 400 times. He was 81. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
41/46
Frank Buckles, the last American veteran of World War I, drove ambulances in France and later spent years in an internment camp after Japan’s invasion of the Philippines in WWII. He was 110. Full obituary
Notable deaths of 2010 (Karen Bleier, AFP/Getty Images)
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The composer won five Oscars for films such as “Born Free” and “Out of Africa” and scored Bond films including “Goldfinger,” “Diamonds Are Forever” and “From Russia With Love.” His work on the Bond franchise put him in the forefront of music composers. He was 77. Full obituary
Notable film and television deaths of 2010 (Dave Hogan / Getty Images)
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Grannis photographs documented California surf culture of the 1960s and ‘70s. His images helped popularize and immortalize the sport -- and the life behind it -- at a crucial point in its history. “His photos captured the real thing,” wrote surfing journalist Steve Barilotti. He was 93. Full obituary (Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
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The relatively unknown photographer documented L.A.’s beat culture and emerging arts scene, the civil rights movement, the Black Panthers and antiwar protests. He was 82. Full obituary (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
45/46
Sargent Shriver, a lawyer and Kennedy in-law, worked for JFK’s and Lyndon Johnson’s administrations. He launched social programs including the Peace Corps, Head Start and the Job Corps and led the “war on poverty.” Programs he created “still change people’s lives,” says daughter Maria Shriver. Above, with his wife Eunice in 1968. He was 95. Full obituary (Charles Harrity / Associated Press)
46/46
The British director earned Academy Award nominations for “Breaking Away” and “The Dresser.” “Bullitt” was Yates’ American directing debut. It starred Steve McQueen as a detective and featured a memorable car chase on the streets of San Francisco with McQueen at the wheel of a Mustang. He was 81. Full obituary
Notable film and television deaths of 2010 (Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times)
Andrew Gold, a singer, songwriter and versatile musician who had a Top 10 hit in 1977 with “Lonely Boy” and was a vital component of Linda Ronstadt’s pop success in the 1970s as a member of her band, has died. He was 59.
Gold died Friday in his sleep at his home in Encino, said his sister, Melani Gold Friedman. He had cancer but had been responding well to treatment, she said.
He played several instruments, did arrangements and sang on such Ronstadt albums as “Heart Like a Wheel” in 1974, “Prisoner in Disguise” in 1975 and “Hasten Down the Wind” in 1976. His versatility also made him a highly regarded session player for such folk-rock musicians as James Taylor, Carly Simon, Loudon Wainwright III and J.D. Souther as well as the producer of recordings by Stephen Bishop, Nicolette Larson and others.
“Andrew was so enormously talented it almost seemed effortless,” Ronstadt told The Times on Saturday. “He was a real cornerstone of those early records.”
He met Ronstadt as a high school student in the 1960s when her country-rock band the Stone Poneys performed at Oakwood School in North Hollywood. “He came up to talk,” Ronstadt said. “He was so bubbly and so smart and we were so impressed with what a good musician he was.”
After the Stone Poneys disbanded after their hit “Different Drum” in 1967, founding member Kenny Edwards teamed with Gold and singer-songwriters Wendy Waldman and Karla Bonoff to create the folk-rock band Bryndle.
In an email to The Times, Gold’s former high school classmate Waldman called him “an extraordinary guitarist, pianist, drummer and record producer.”
Bryndle got a record deal, but the album wasn’t released. The band broke up (but reunited in the 1990s). Edwards, who died in August, rejoined Ronstadt and Gold joined the band.
Gold was born Aug. 2, 1951, in Burbank to composer Ernest Gold and singer Marni Nixon. His father won an Academy Award for his score for the 1960 film “Exodus,” and his mother sang for Natalie Wood in “West Side Story” and Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady,” among others.
“It was clear from the beginning that I was going to be a musician,” he told The Times in 1977. “With those kind of influences at home what else could I do?”
Gold’s sister said he taught himself instruments by listening to the Beatles. “He could really pick up any instrument and play it,” she said. He lived in England with family friends for about a year as a teenager, she said, and recorded a single with another young musician.
Waldman said Gold “listened to everything under the sun and absorbed it with terrifying accuracy. It was something I always admired and found fascinating about him.”
Gold launched a solo career in the mid-1970s while still with Ronstadt’s band. “Lonely Boy” was a hit on his second album, “What’s Wrong With This Picture?” and the single “Thank You for Being a Friend” from 1978’s “All This and Heaven Too” reached No. 25 on Billboard magazine’s charts.
He recorded with English musician Graham Gouldman in the 1980s, then continued to write, record and work with a variety of artists. Gold also did commercial work and soundtracks, such as singing the theme to the NBC sitcom “Mad About You.” His last release was 2008’s “Copy Cat.”
In addition to his sister, who lives in Tujunga, and his mother, Gold is survived by his wife, Leslie Kogan; daughters Emily, Victoria and Olivia from his marriage to Vanessa Gold, which ended in divorce; and sister Martha Carr of North Hollywood.
Services will be private, but a public remembrance will be planned.
Keith.thursby@latimes.com
Los Angeles Times staff writer Randy Lewis contributed to this report. | ||
4334 | dbpedia | 0 | 75 | https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-michael-nesmith-appreciation-thread.1061738/page-14 | en | The Michael Nesmith Appreciation Thread | https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8bea55690e2589770faa7d4134cca06b?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fforums.stevehoffman.tv%2Fstyles%2Fdefault%2Fxenforo%2Favatars%2Favatar_female_m.png | https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/8bea55690e2589770faa7d4134cca06b?s=96&d=https%3A%2F%2Fforums.stevehoffman.tv%2Fstyles%2Fdefault%2Fxenforo%2Favatars%2Favatar_female_m.png | [
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] | null | [] | null | You're right on this of course, but *maybe* (and it's a BIG *maybe*) the author considered the First National Band trilogy as being by a "band" and not... | en | /images/apple-touch-icon.png?v=2017a | Steve Hoffman Music Forums | https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-michael-nesmith-appreciation-thread.1061738/page-14 | Mike doesn't sing or play on the Wichita album though. It seems as much a Nesmith record as Frank Sinatra Conducts Tone Poems of Color is a Sinatra album. And it seems particularly inconsistent to say that Wichita is a Nesmith album but that the First and Second National Band albums are not, when all were credited to bands rather than Nesmith as an individual, but the latter ones actually feature singing and playing by Nesmith. Besides which, we don't know that your theory is even what the author of the article intended. He may have had some other convoluted rationale for saying Stash is the third Nesmith album. Or it might be a mistake... when an ostensibly professional piece of writing is sloppily written (typos and multiple unnecessary commas) then it makes me wonder how much thought and care the writer gave to the piece.
At any rate, whatever his rationale he is seemingly splitting hairs over a distinction that is trivial and illogical. The result being that he's creating unneeded confusion, which is the opposite of what a person writing an informative historical review typically wants to do.
I have been wanting to add to this Michael Nesmith Appreciation thread with some song rankings for quite sometime. It has been hard to find the time but I was motivated recently by the Monkees Rate and Review thread where some relatively unknown artists covered rare (originally unreleased) Nesmith penned tunes. That and a Nesmith tune was just up for a Grammy this year. With all that in mind I created a list of Top Nesmith songs in three categories - written and sung by Nez, written by Nez and sung by another vocalist and sung by Nez but written by someone else. I will put my top ten and would love to see other fans lists!!
I will start with songs sung by Nez but written by someone else. This was the smallest group of tunes to choose but the quality is there, both when he was with the Monkees and solo.
1. What Am I Doin Hangin Round - as a Monkee, off the Pisces LP written by Michael Martin Murphey and Owen Castleman
2. I Looked Away - written by Clapton off Nevada Fighter
3. Wax Minute - off Tantamount to Treason written by Richard Stekol
4. Love is Only Sleeping - another Pisces cut by great writing duo Mann/Weil
5. If I Ever Get to Saginaw Again - Missing Links 2 track a Russell/Keller song
6. Salesman - more Pisces written by Craig Smith
7. Door into Summer - Nez got a lot of leads on Pisces and all but one from other songwriters. This credited to Chip Douglas and Bill Martin
8. Of You - off Missing Links by Bill and John Chadwick
9. Rainmaker - more Nevada Fighter, penned by Harry Nilsson
10. Talking to the Wall - more Bill Chadwick from Tantamount to Treason - Vol. 1
Here are songs sung by Nez and written by him as well.
1. Papa Gene's Blues - early Monkees track
2. Nevada Fighter - great song, great LP
3. Marie's Theme - from the Prison LP
4. Crippled Lion - Magnetic South
5. Rio - a hit in England
6. Listen to the Band - Monkees take is my favorite
7. Dance Between the Raindrops - more from the Prison
8. How Can You Kiss Me - can't believe how good this early single is
9. St. Matthew - more Missing Links 2
10 - Casablanca Moonlight - From, From A Radio Engine to a Photo Wing
So many more but I am sticking with 10.
Last category and my favorite. I love Nesmith as a singer but these artists have made these Nesmith tunes so great the first several are my favorite songs by anybody, ever.
1. The Girl I Knew Somewhere - my favorite tune with Micky Dolenz doing the lead vocals
2. Different Drum - The Stone Poneys, sung by the incredible Linda Ronstadt
3. Some of Shelly's Blues - The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band
4. Propinquity - from Dolenz Sings Nesmith sung by Micky, of course
5. Silver Moon - Eric Alexandrakis official title is Silver Moon (a tribute to Michael Nesmith) and the latest entry on this list and Grammy nominated
6. Mary, Mary - more Micky singing with the Monkees
7. Carlisle Wheeling - Micky off DSN
8. Daily Nightly - Micky singing this Pisces LP tune, a great psychedelic track
9. I've Never Loved Anyone More - co written with Linda Hargrove sung by Lynn Anderson
10. Soul-Writers Birthday - the EP extra's from DSN and a really cool tune.
There are very good, and unique versions of several of the above from Different Drum, Propinquity, Shelly's Blues, etc. There are also covers of those tunes on this thread by SHF members, which is really cool as well. A cover of the unreleased My Share of the Sidewalk, I just heard. It is pretty good but it would be tough to crack this list but Silver Moon just did so who knows. | ||
4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 20 | https://abbeyroadinstitute.co.uk/staff/ | en | Meet the team behind the scenes | https://abbeyroadinstitute.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2017/01/chevron-favicon.ico | https://abbeyroadinstitute.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2017/01/chevron-favicon.ico | [
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] | null | [] | null | Abbey Road Institute Staff. Discover who teaches on our programmes and their wealth of expertise and knowledge. | en | https://abbeyroadinstitute.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/13/2017/01/chevron-favicon.ico | United Kingdom | https://abbeyroadinstitute.co.uk/staff/ | Rosabella Gregory is an award-winning songwriter, arranger and composer. She has released three solo albums and performed her work throughout the UK and internationally, at venues such as The Royal Festival Hall, Live at Zédel and in support of the legendary Jools Holland on his Country House tour.
Her musicianship has led to collaborations with such luminaries as Bob James, Soumik Datta and Árstíðir. Rosabella composes for theatre, television and opera, and her work has been performed at such venues as Hoxton Hall, The Arcola and 59E59 NYC.
Collaborating with her twin Dina has given Rosabella her most rewarding writing experiences, from writing a rock opera for the ENO Lilian Baylis programme at 16 to winning the Vivian Ellis prize at 21, right up to the present day and their collaboration on a new adaptation of The Wind in the Willows for Audible starring Jennifer Saunders and Harriet Walter.
In 2021 Broadway Records released a World Premiere Recording of their musical “My Marcello” with an all-star cast including Santino Fontana, Laura Osnes, Terrence Mann and Derek Klena. In June 2023, Rosabella was both the Composer and Musical Director of “T- room…The Musical” commissioned by Endstation Theatre Company, which premiered at Thoresen Theatre, Randolph College, Lynchburg, VA. Recent opera commissions include “Tutankhamun’s Shoes” for English Touring Opera and “Sammy And The Beanstalk” for OperaUpClose.
Rosabella Gregory and Dina have collaborated on a brand new opera “The Haberdasher Prince”, commissioned by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City that will tour the Kansas City metropolitan area from April 2024 until June 2025. | ||
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4334 | dbpedia | 0 | 22 | https://www.npr.org/transcripts/247499890 | en | In Memoir, Linda Ronstadt Describes Her 'Simple Dreams' | [
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"Fresh Air"
] | 2013-11-28T12:00:00-05:00 | Ronstadt recently revealed that she has Parkinson's disease and can no longer sing. Her memoir, Simple Dreams, reflects on a long career. In this conversation with Fresh Air's Terry Gross, she offers frank insights on sex, drugs, and why "competition was for horse races." | en | NPR | https://www.npr.org/2013/11/28/247499890/in-memoir-linda-ronstadt-describes-her-simple-dreams | TERRY GROSS, HOST:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Happy Thanksgiving. Today we'll listen to one of our most popular interviews from the past few months, my interview with Linda Ronstadt. We recorded it in September, when her memoir "Simple Dreams" was published. Just a few weeks before that, she'd revealed that she has Parkinson's disease and can no longer sing. Her memoir reflects on her long career, a career that was ended by the disease years before it was diagnosed.
Ronstadt recorded her first hit, "Different Drum," in 1967 under the name of her band, the Stone Poneys. She went on to sell more than 100 million records. Her best-known recordings including "Heart Like a Wheel," "Desperado," "You're No Good," "Faithless Love," "When Will I Be Loved," "Willin'," and "Blue Bayou."
Her rise to stardom coincided with the height of the counterculture and the music associated with it, making her a focal point in a world far removed from her Catholic upbringing in Tucson. But she didn't remain tied to the popular music of her time.
Against the recommendation of her record label, she recorded an album of standards with arranger Nelson Riddle that turned into a surprise hit and led to a couple of other albums from the American songbook. And she recorded albums of the Mexican songs she learned from her Mexican grandfather and her father.
We began with a song that was a No. 1 hit for her in 1975.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "YOU'RE NO GOOD")
LINDA RONSTADT: (Singing) Feeling better now that we're through, feeling better 'cause I'm over you. I learned my lesson, it left a scar. Now I see how you really are. You're no good, you're no good, you're no good, baby, you're no good...
GROSS: Linda Ronstadt, welcome to FRESH AIR. It is a great pleasure to have you on our show.
RONSTADT: Thank you so much.
GROSS: Your book about your life and music is being published soon after learning that you have Parkinson's, which explains why you've been unable to sing for several years. Is it hard to talk about your music career now that you can't sing anymore?
RONSTADT: Well, not really. I mean, you know, everything comes in its season. And I will say, I had a long turn at the trough. So that's what I - you know, I'm grateful for the time I had. I got to live a lot of my dreams, and I feel lucky about it.
GROSS: Was it a relief to have an explanation, even though the explanation means that you won't be able to sing again? And you have - you know, you have a bad disease. But still, did it help to know...
RONSTADT: Well, at least - I mean I would be saying for years I was struggling onstage. I was having such a hard time singing because I didn't have any muscle control. And, you know, you have exquisite muscle control when you're singing. There's just a lot of things that have to be coordinated on an exquisite level. So I just couldn't do it, and I didn't know why. I knew how to sing all my whole life.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: So yes, it was a relief to know, but I'd rather it had been measles or something I was going to get over. But, you know, that's the breaks.
GROSS: How's the rest of your body? How's walking?
RONSTADT: Well, walking isn't too much fun these days. I'm really slow. I've got that, you know, bradykinesia. I'm very slow with my hands, too. It's hard to brush my teeth. It's hard to wash my hair. The worst thing is, I love to knit - and I can't knit. So that - you know, there are just things that I have to - you know, I have to find some other thing to do to make myself useful, and it's important to do that, I think.
GROSS: Well, I want to talk with you about your childhood and your family tree. Reading your memoir, I was just astonished by the richness of your family tree. So let's start with your grandfather, who - correct me if I'm wrong - was born in Mexico and had a hardware store in Arizona.
RONSTADT: In Tucson, yeah.
GROSS: And had a lot of business that came across the border from Mexico. And tell us about his music background.
RONSTADT: Well, he was the one in Tucson who taught everybody how to play their instruments and assembled a band and wrote the arrangements and wrote a lot of compositions for the band. And he was like the Music Man, except he really knew how to play music and how to read. And he was an autodidact. He had quite a rich education. He only went to I think seventh grade in terms of formal schooling, but he was a wide reader and loved opera, loved classical music, you know, loved art.
And all those elements were there. You know, and his life, it was a rich life, artistically. He was a rancher, that's how he made his living in Arizona. It's a tough gig because it's the desert, and sometimes there's no water, and then there are no cattle, you know.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: So he went through some tough times. He went through the Depression. But he also was - he was apprentice to a blacksmith when he was a teenager, and so he made - he had the reputation in southern Arizona for making the most beautiful wagons and buggies, you know, like the luxury - like the equivalent of a Mercedes that you would drive around in a horse and carriage.
GROSS: Did he do a lot of Mexican songs?
RONSTADT: Oh yeah. You know, if you wanted to serenade your sweetheart, you'd get my grandfather's band to go and serenade her at 2:00 in the morning.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: And if you had to have a military parade, well, my grandfather's band was the one you would get, you know. And if you had a wedding or a funeral, well, they'd show up for that. I mean, in those days you had to make your own music. You couldn't get it off the radio. You couldn't get it from YouTube. You couldn't download it. You had to make it yourself, and that's what he did.
GROSS: So while we're talking about some of the music he introduced you to and the music he played, let me play a track from the first of I think three albums that you did of Mexican and Spanish songs. And...
RONSTADT: They're Mexican songs, yeah.
GROSS: Mexican songs. And the title of the album "Canciones De Mi Padre," is the same title that your aunt gave a collection of songs and stories that she published.
RONSTADT: Yes, my aunt was a singer and a dancer, and she was a music scholar, you know, in the teens and '20s of the 20th century. And she traveled all over Mexico and also went to Spain, and she collected all these different regional songs and dances. And she wrote a letter home to my grandfather saying that she had discovered a guitar player that she thought was absolutely wonderful, and she thought he was so brilliant.
And he could hold the attention of the audience when she left the stage to change her costumes. And she wanted to bring him to the United States because she was sure he would be a huge hit there and become a star in his own right. And the guitar player was Andres Segovia.
GROSS: And did he come here because of her?
RONSTADT: I don't know. I mean, I'm sure she encouraged him to. But I mean, he - people, that kind of talent, they make it on their own.
GROSS: Right, right.
RONSTADT: She just didn't get in the way, you know.
GROSS: So the song I want...
RONSTADT: Kind of like being the Eagles. You know, I didn't get in their way. They...
GROSS: They were your backup band before they became famous.
RONSTADT: They were my backup band, and I just got out of the way.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: So the song I want to play from your first album of Mexican songs is - and I'm going to say this wrong, "Rogaciano El Huapanguero."
RONSTADT: Huapanguero, yeah, "Rogaciano El Huapanguero." A huapango is a certain kind of song, it's a style of singing.
GROSS: Just there's so much emotion in this song. Just say a few words about it before we hear it.
RONSTADT: Well it's - this music is typical of the mountain regions, and I guess in mountain regions people develop a kind of a yodeling style because they can throw their voice across - you know, they don't have a telephone, so they yodel. And so there's a beautiful kind of a haunting, romantic kind of break in the voice that makes it typical of a - that's typical of a huapango. They're my favorites.
And there's a rhythm underneath that is - it would be written in European time signature as 6/8, but it's not really a 6/8. It's a 6/8 with a kind of hitch in the gate. You've got to grow up in that region and sort of know how to count it. It's very much an indigenous Mexican rhythm.
GROSS: OK, so this is Linda Ronstadt from her first album of Mexican songs, "Canciones De Mi Padre," from 1987.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "ROGACIANO EL HUAPANGUERO")
RONSTADT: (Singing in foreign language).
GROSS: That's my guest Linda Ronstadt, recorded in 1987. She has a new memoir, which is called "Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir." We were talking about how your grandfather introduced you to these kinds of songs and sang these kinds of songs. Your father sang, too. I was surprised to read that Paul Whiteman invited your father to be the boy singer in his band. And, I mean, that's where Bing Crosby got his start.
RONSTADT: Yeah, that was a huge deal, because in those days, he was the most well-known bandleader in the country. So that was quite an honor. My father had a beautiful, beautiful baritone voice. He sounded like a cross between Pedro Infante and Frank Sinatra. And he just had wonderful stories in his singing.
And always, you know, if there was a dinner party or something, he'd get the guitar out, you know, about 10 or 11 o'clock, and everybody would start to listen, and he'd just sing. And then people would talk for a while, and then he'd sing a little bit more. And I always would fall asleep in somebody's lap listening to my dad sing some beautiful song, you know. It was a beautiful memory.
GROSS: On your mother's side of the family, her father was Lloyd Copeman, who was an inventor, and...
RONSTADT: Yeah, he was a famous inventor. He invented, well, the electric toaster, the electric stove, all the timing devices. He invented the thermostat for Westinghouse, basically.
GROSS: Whoa.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: And he invented the pneumatic grease gun, and he invented a dripless paint thing that you put on your paint can, so it doesn't drip down the side. It's still in use today. He invented a tamper-proof envelope for the FBI, all kinds of things that he did. You know, he was kind of the Gyro Gearloose of his time. But he worked alone. He was the third to Thomas Edison in number of useful inventions sometime in the '50s, you know, that he had made, but he worked all by himself. Thomas Edison worked with teams and teams of people. So I always say my grandfather kind of beat him a little bit.
GROSS: So that leads me to wonder, I mean, did you grow up wealthy? Did your mother inherit a lot of money? That's a lot of inventions.
RONSTADT: No. My grandmother had Parkinson's disease, and it took all his money. He had - he was wealthy from time - you know, at certain times, but he spent all his money trying to find a cure for Parkinson's disease.
GROSS: Which is what you have now.
RONSTADT: It's what I have now, yeah. It's a gene, I guess. I mean, I think that's - a gene is one of the things that - they don't know what causes it, but I think that genetic is one of the ways you can get it.
GROSS: Wait, you mean, so he tried to invent a cure, as an inventor, to come up with a cure for...
RONSTADT: Well, he tried to - you know, he searched everywhere and tried to - you know, people would say, you know, we can cure it. Give us this much money. And he just went through his money trying to find a way to fix her, I think. He loved her so much. I remember seeing her in her declining years with Parkinson's disease, when she couldn't walk, and she couldn't talk. So it's pretty scary, you know, when I think about - Parkinson's works differently in different people.
So I don't really know. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't really know what's going to happen to me, but I hope it's not going to be what happened to my grandmother. But, you know, it could be.
GROSS: If you're just joining us, my guest is Linda Ronstadt, and she has a new memoir called "Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir." Let's take a short break, here, and then we'll talk some more. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: My guest is Linda Ronstadt. She has a new memoir called "Simple Dreams." So you form a band with friends, the Stone Poneys, which eventually has the hit "Different Drum" in 1967. But that was their second album. The first album, it was a harmony group, and you weren't, like, the lead singer Linda Ronstadt. It was a band. You sang harmonies.
I hadn't heard that early work until I was preparing for this interview, and I was really interested in hearing how the early Stone Poneys sound. So I want to play the first track from that first album. This is "Sweet Summer Blue and Gold." And do you just want to say a few words about this and about what the band was about in those early days?
RONSTADT: Well, Bobby Kimmel was a guy that I met in Tucson. He was kind of a blues guitar player, but he doesn't - but then he writes stuff that wasn't bluesy. He wrote songs and stories about his own life and his own experiences for his own vocal register, which was very different from mine.
So, you know, they weren't songs that would be good for me to sing as a soloist, but so we just - you know, we put them together. And we had Kenny Edwards, who was a really wonderful guitar player and a good musician that I met really early on, and he was part of the group, too. And so he hadn't thought of himself as a singer, but we just put the harmonies together. We just kind of fit them together, and sort of like throwing against the wall, you know, and see if it stuck.
GROSS: All right, so this is Linda Ronstadt with the Stone Poneys, the first album that they released.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "SWEET SUMMER BLUE AND GOLD")
STONE PONEYS: (Singing) Look out your window, the rain is turning into snow. So the time has come, you know. You must decide to stay or go. Oh, how you love me, sweet summer blue and gold. Will you stay with me, long winters gray and cold?
(Singing) Go, love, open up the door. You'll see the winds aren't warm anymore. The birds we heard all summer long were chased away by winter storm. Oh, how you love me, sweet summer blue and gold. Will you stay with me, long winters gray and cold?
GROSS: So that was the Stone Poneys, with my guest Linda Ronstadt, and that was before "Different Drum." This was from their first album. And Linda Ronstadt has a new memoir, which is called "Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir." So that's so folk-influenced. Was that the direction you were heading in?
RONSTADT: Well, that's what we came from, you know. That's - on the radio in those days, the radio was so wide open, you could hear a jazz song, the Singing Nun, a country song, and, you know, Peter, Paul and Mary, you know, doing sort of what was considered commercial folk music.
And we heard a lot of that stuff, and we were really influenced by it, you know, that kind of finger-picking guitar style and stuff like that. So that's what we were chasing then.
GROSS: You got a manager, and your manager thought you should really be, like, the soloist. He wasn't that hot on the band, but he liked you, and thought he could really promote you. And then you're ready to record "Different Drum," and you show up to the studio, and, like, your band's not there. It's these different musicians. Tell the story of what happened.
RONSTADT: Well, originally, we had recorded - I had heard it, it was a song called "Different Drum." I'd learned it off a bluegrass record by the Greenbriar Boys. And I thought it was a really strong piece of material. I thought it was a hit. But I wanted to record it in a folky way.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: So we recorded it with a guitar and a mandolin. And, of course, you know, the record company didn't like it. And they said, well, we want to do it again, but we're going to get a different arrangement. And I had no idea there was going to be all these musicians. It turns out they were all good players. Don Randi was playing. Jimmy Gordon was the drummer, a wonderful drummer.
GROSS: Don Randi was playing harpsichord.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: Yeah, Don Randi was playing harpsichord, and he played piano. So I was just shocked. And when they played the arrangement, I didn't know how to fit the phrasing in. I didn't - it suddenly wasn't the way I was used to singing it. So it really knocked me off my stride. And I think we went through it twice, and we kept the second take. And that was it, you know, me sort of going I know how to do this now.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: And it was a hit. You know, what was I supposed to know? I mean, I was just shocked. I didn't want them to use it, because I felt like I was struggling so with the singing, and I thought that showed, you know, so clearly. But it was a hit. So when they put it out, that was a lucky thing for me that they didn't listen to me.
GROSS: So this is my guest Linda Ronstadt, "Different Drum," 1967.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DIFFERENT DRUM")
RONSTADT: (Singing) You and I travel to the beat of a different drum. Oh, can't you tell by the way I run? Every time you make eyes at me. You cry and moan and say it will work out, but honey child, I've got my doubts. You can't see the forest for the trees. Oh, don't get me wrong. It's not that I knock it. It's just that I am not in the market for a boy who wants to love only me.
(Singing) Yes, and I ain't saying you ain't pretty. All I'm saying, I'm not ready for any person, place or thing to try and pull the reins in on me. So goodbye, I'll be leaving. I see no sense in this crying and grieving. We'll both live a lot longer if you live without me.
GROSS: That's Linda Ronstadt, recorded in 1967, a big hit for her, "Different Drum," her first big hit. Did you believe in the lyric about not wanting to be tied down or monogamistic? Like, did that describe you?
RONSTADT: Well, I didn't want - yeah. Yes, it did.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: Yes, it does.
GROSS: Never been married, right?
RONSTADT: No knack for it. You know, I think that the culture supports serial monogamy, and I think I had plenty of that. And I think I was reasonably monogamous in a serial way. But I'm not a good compromiser. I think I don't have a knack for the kind of compromise - I admire people's marriages, and I think it's a wonderful thing to have.
But I don't think it's the only way to live. I think there are many ways to live, and many ways to establish intimate support in your life that can be from family or friends or a great roommate that you like, you know. It doesn't have to be somebody you're sleeping with.
I figured that out pretty early on, and that was sort of how I felt. I was trying to sing. I was never trying to get married.
GROSS: Speaking of figuring out, you write in the book about how you had to figure out your image. And you write: Female performers in the folk-pop genre were genuinely confused about how to represent themselves. Did we want to be nurturing, stay-at-home Earth mothers who cooked and nursed babies? Or did we want to be funky mamas in the troubadour bar, our boot heals to be wandering an independent course like our male counterparts?
So, where did you see yourself fitting in between, like, the funky mama and the Earth mama?
RONSTADT: Well, I didn't really fit in there. I was raised to, you know, to a wear hat and gloves and polish the silver, and it wasn't the way I was quite raised. So I was a little bit confused by it. But I was also raised out in the country, you know, where we were sort of rough-and-ready child. I was kind of right out there on my own, rolling around in the desert. So I had a little bit of both.
And my mother, there was nothing pretentious or fussy about my mother, but she had had a very nice upbringing, a very privileged upbringing, and she liked to keep the rules sort of, you know, where we lived, way out in the wilderness in Tucson in the desert, which was pretty uncivilized compared to what she'd grown up, you know, having.
GROSS: Linda Ronstadt will be back in the second half of the show. Her new memoir is called "Simple Dreams." I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross back with more of our interview with Linda Ronstadt. Her memoir "Simple Dreams" was published in September. Ronstadt had her first hit in 1967 with the song "Different Drum." Some of her other best-known recordings include: "Heart Like A Wheel," "Desperado," "You're No Good," "When Will I Be Loved," "Willing" and "Blue Bayou." She's also recorded albums of American popular song and Mexican songs.
Last August, Ronstadt revealed that she has Parkinson's disease, and that the disease has left her unable to sing. When we left off, we were talking about her difficulty figuring out her public image early in her career, when she knew she didn't quite fit into the time's popular images of the Earth Mother or the Funky Mama.
I remember the rumor about Janice Joplin was - and I don't know if you heard this because you were in the music industry, so - and you actually knew her, but at a distance...
RONSTADT: Not well, but I knew her little bit.
Right. But at a distance, when like all of her fans were preparing for like the concert, you know, in the college auditorium, like the rumor that went around was like Janis Joplin got so deep into the sexuality of her songs that she actually reached orgasm on stage.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: Oh my god. Well, I never heard that.
GROSS: I doubt that was true, but...
RONSTADT: I've never personally had that experience myself, but...
GROSS: I assumed that. But did you feel like you have to compete with that kind of image and that kind of like level of sexuality that people projected onto her?
RONSTADT: No. I think competition is for horse races and I never thought it belonged in art. And I never felt that competitive with other girl singers, really. I admired them. If I really admired them, I'd try to figure out a way - if it was appropriate, to figure out a way - to sing with them. You know, I liked Maria Muldaur when I first started out. Now, there was somebody that was really sexy on stage. And, in fact, Janice just admired her too, she loved her. And I got to sing with Maria little bit. It was really fun. We did some harmonies together. But mainly when I ran into Emmylou Harris, that was it. You know, we could finish each other's sentences musically, and personally too. We have a very shared, similar sensibility, and that was a friendship that really opened up a tremendous number of musical doors for me.
GROSS: I love the way you write about first hearing her. That, you know, you loved her singing so much, and the songs that she was singing were the songs you'd wanted to be able to sing, if you record company had let you.
RONSTADT: And just like that, if I could.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Yeah. And you said you had a choice. You could either just be like really jealous or meet her and try to sing with her, and you chose to meet her and sing with her. I like that story.
RONSTADT: I remember that so clearly. It was just like running into a glass wall at 150 miles an hour. I just went, oh my god, it was like a slap in the face, you know, and I thought, OK, I can get jealous here or I can just love this person and admire her and just go with it and see what I can learn. And it was just a split second, but I made that decision and it was - I never looked back. It was the best decision I ever made.
GROSS: Yeah. You have a few stories in your new memoir about being propositioned by men who assumed hey, it's a hippie chick singer, free love.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: It's so funny.
GROSS: Yeah. Like...
RONSTADT: Yeah.
GROSS: For example, the time when a producer of a TV show that you were doing, you were a guest on the show. He came into your room on the premise that you had to talk about business, and he immediately like stripped off all his clothes.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: He took all his clothes off. I was so shocked because I'm really kind of modest, you know, I had a Catholic school upbringing and we just didn't see a lot of naked bodies. And this guy, I'm telling you, was not the Adonis of show business. He was kind of...
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: There was something really kind of exhibitionistic and self-hating about what he was doing.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
RONSTADT: I felt sorry for him. I mean it was - clearly he was so troubled. But, you know, he had the power and I didn't have any. And so I just kind of edged to the door and edged to the door and then I just went out the door. You know, and I didn't come back for a couple of hours, I went and sat in the lobby. And I was so bored and I was so mad down there sitting in the lobby, but - because I wanted to go to bed, but I was just afraid to go back to my room. And in those days, you know, when you were kind of low man on the pecking order, or low woman on the pecking order, you didn't dare go and complain. I called my manager and he said don't say anything because, you know, they might kick you off the show. I mean you did the show, so...
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: So while we're talking about this kind of stuff, I thought this was hysterical. In 1971, you perform at Disneyland. And the contract stipulated that you had to wear a bra and your skirt had to be a certain number of inches from the ground when you were kneeling. Which led me to wonder...
RONSTADT: Yeah. Not very many inches.
GROSS: Yeah. They seemed, so your skirt had to be long enough. Had they seen your act and known that, well, sometimes you don't wear a bra and that you kneel in your show?
RONSTADT: No. They just, that was just the rules, that if you wanted to work for Disneyland, you...
GROSS: For anybody?
RONSTADT: And I was laughing. I was going to put the bra my head, you know, it didn't say in the contract. But I really needed to get paid.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: They paid really well at Disneyland, that's why we did those silly gigs. But, you know, they always have these silly laws. I think they were a very uptight organization.
GROSS: In your memoir you write about how when you found the song "Heart Like A Wheel," the Anna McGarrigle song, which she sang with her sister Kate, that that song rearranged your entire musical landscape. First, let's start with why did you musical landscape need rearranging?
RONSTADT: Well, I'd come from this kind of sensibility. My grandfather loved opera, he loved "La Traviata," that was his favorite opera, that's my favorite opera. And he had this kind of, you know, arty, refined sensibility, but he also loved traditional music and he loved Mexican music, he was really passionate about that. So, and the same with my father, you know, he liked those things too. So the McGarrigles kind of married this incredibly traditional sort of refined aesthetic with, you know, just telling it like it is - sort of straight out, no bones about it the way they talk about stuff. And it was just this unabashed sentiment. They were unafraid of female sentiment.
And I don't know, there's something in the water up there in Canada because my favorite writers are the McGarrigles sisters, Leonard Cohen, Neil Young, Gordon Lightfoot - oh my god, what a great ballad writer - Joni Mitchell. I mean, you know, they're just, they're completely unique great writers. And in a lot of ways they're falling in the tradition of what it would be called art song. And that's what I was seeing with the McGarrigles. I thought, I didn't know what to call it then but I just knew it was different from folk music and it wasn't the same as rock 'n roll. It wasn't, there was no place for it in pop music on the charts, but I wanted to sing it because it told my story exactly how I felt at the time about what I, you know, how I was feeling about my life and my relationships. And I just had to sing it. And I tried it for a couple - and I sang it for couple of different guys. And, you know, my manager at the time, he said, oh, that's just too corny. You know, nobody's going to want to listen to that. And the record company wasn't interested in it. They said, oh, that's not a hit, they'll never play that on the radio. So I just kind of, it sort of hurt my feelings on behalf of the song, and I sort of folded it up and tuck it in my pocket.
And then one night before we were going to play Carnegie Hall, and the night before I was rehearsing with my piano player, Andrew Gold, and he had learned the song some other place. I don't know where he had learned it. And he was just playing the introduction to it. I said, I know that song, let's do it. So I sang through it and, of course, you know, I knew all the words and everything and I said let's put it in the show. And we put it in the next night at Carnegie Hall, got a huge response. So that was how I won with that song, I just kept trying, you know.
GROSS: Well, it ended up being the title track of a 1974 album. Let's hear it. This is my guest, Linda Ronstadt, singing "Heart Like A Wheel."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "HEART LIKE A WHEEL")
RONSTADT: (Singing) Some say the heart is just like a wheel. When you bend it, you can't mend it. But my love for you is like a sinking ship and my heart is on that ship, out in mid-ocean.
(Singing) When harm is done no love can be won. I know it happens frequently. What I can't understand, oh please God, hold my hand. Why it had to happen to me?
(Singing) And it's only love, and it's only love that can break a human being and turn him inside out.
GROSS: That's my guest Linda Ronstadt, singing "Heart Like A Wheel," the title track of her 1974 album. That also included "When Will I Be Loved," "Willing," "Faithless Love."
I think it was after "Heart Like A Wheel," you go to your record company, Capitol Records, and you basically beg them to let you go because you couldn't record what you wanted to record with them.
RONSTADT: Well, they weren't - I just didn't think they really got who I was, and I mean to their credit, how could they know? Because I was still shaping who I was.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
RONSTADT: I was morphing into something. It took me 10 years to learn how to sing, really, and to figure out, you know, who I was stylistically. So, but I had always loved Hank Williams, and I had always loved his country songs. And I could play them on the guitar because there were three chords. And I liked singing them and they were good harmonies and they were great sentiment. So - and again, I had this manager that said, oh, that's too country for rock and too rock for country; you'll never sell any records, you know. But I liked those songs, so I sang them.
GROSS: Let's take a short break here, then we'll talk some more with Linda Ronstadt. She has a new memoir called "Simple Dreams."
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: My guest is Linda Ronstadt. She has a new memoir about her singing career called "Simple Dreams."
One of the big decisions you made in your career is that you wanted to sing standards. You wanted to sing songs like Sinatra and Rosemary Clooney had recorded.
RONSTADT: Right.
GROSS: And you wanted to do it with Nelson Riddle...
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: ...who had done arrangements for both of them. And you were lucky enough to actually record three albums with him. So let's go back for a moment. How did you first know the American Song Stan Book? Sorry, Song Book.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: I'm glad that was you and not me.
GROSS: Right.
RONSTADT: Well, I...
GROSS: You're welcome. Yeah.
(LAUGHTER)
RONSTADT: I heard it on the - first on the Victrola and then on the big hi-fi monaural record player that my father brought home in the '50s. He brought it home with a bunch of records. He brought Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, duets that were just fabulous. And he brought Peg Lee and June Christy and Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby. There were a lot of people that could, really knew how to sing that stuff, and those were brilliant songs. They're just, they're, if - I think that if the American - what the United States gave to world culture at large - especially in the 20th century - was the American popular song, and it was a wonder to behold.
GROSS: The title of the album is "What's New." That's a song that so many people have sung. What spoke to you about that song?
RONSTADT: Well, I'd had experiences like that, where you run into an old boyfriend that maybe you're still carrying a little torch for and, you know, you see him and it just kind of brings back all those old feelings and you have a brief little encounter with him on the street and you go on by like nothing ever happened and it's kind of a devastating experience. And that song just describes it in very subtle innuendos, you know, it doesn't, it's not instructive. It doesn't say this is what happened, the story, the story, the story. It just kind of supplies these little details and you put the story together yourself - like a good arguing, like a good trial lawyer.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: OK. This is Linda Ronstadt from her first album of standards. The album is "What's New."
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "WHAT'S NEW")
RONSTADT: (Singing) What's new? How is the world treating you? You haven't changed a bit. Handsome as ever, I must admit.
(Singing) What's new? How did that romance come through? We haven't met since then. Gee, but it's nice to see you again.
(Singing) What's new? Probably I'm...
GROSS: That's Linda Ronstadt from her first album of standards, which was called "What's New," and the first of three albums in which she collaborated with the arranger Nelson Riddle.
Did you, do you feel like you learned things about music or about, you know, how singing fits in with an arrangement by working with Nelson Riddle?
RONSTADT: Well, I learned a tremendous amount. I mean I told Nelson in the beginning, I had the chutzpah to tell him I needed a really custom fit and that I liked to be involved in the way the arrangements were set. I didn't kid my, you know, I can do simple arrangements myself. I've done some very simple string writing and some very simple - and I can do pretty complicated harmony arrangements. But I knew that I was way over my head with anything like this. And he was one of the great masters of the style, if not the great master for pop music.
So - but I said I wanted a custom fit. So he came over to my house in the morning and we would go through things. And he's the only person I ever let - allowed him to correct me on a key. Like I'd usually pick the key out of the air and every once in a while he'd say, no, it'd be better if you moved it up a little bit or down a little bit. And he'd always be right.
But, you know, I remember in one song I asked for a modulation, you know, just to kind of brighten up the arrangement and give it a little - keep it from getting too boring, you know? And he said, oh, I can do a trick. He said I can modulate - modulation usually modulates it up to a higher key and it brightens. He said I'll give it - I'll modulate to a lower key. And it gave it this incredible mood shift, you know?
I was just always floored by the things that Nelson came up with and he always had a real reason for however he cast his arrangements. The woodwinds would have a certain place in the mix. You know, it would be just supporting something or they'd be speaking out more prominently or the strings would be in the background, they'd be speaking out more prominently. He always knew actually where to cast the instruments so that they supported the story and illustrated the story.
GROSS: He - Nelson Riddle died while doing the arrangements for your third album together. That must've been devastating.
RONSTADT: It was devastating because there was only one Nelson Riddle. They don't make any more like him. And, you know, it was the end of an era in a certain way. And we still had one track to record after he died and we did. Musicians were crying in the orchestra because they all loved Nelson. You know, he'd given them so much work over the years and he appreciated what, you know, what their abilities were.
And his son was also playing in the trombone section. He was crying. It was pretty tough that day.
GROSS: In your memoir you write about your father's death in 1995 and you write that it changed your thoughts about death, that he faced death with great courage and it changed the way that you feel about death. And you write: While I don't embrace it, I no longer fear it in the same way. Can you - would it be too personal to ask you to talk a little bit about his death and how that changed you?
RONSTADT: Well, we were all with him. His entire family was with him. He was in his own bed instead of in the hospital, you know, which is an enviable way to die. I think he had what I would describe as a beautiful death with people who had loved him all his life and revered him and respected him. And all of his children. There's something about wanting to connect with your children before you die. I don't know what that is.
But there was kind of a peace that happened when he died that went through the room. I was needlepointing and somebody else was doing something else and we were all just sitting there with him, you know? We knew what was going on; he knew what was going on. He had, the day before, recited a 20 verse limerick from memory.
And he was reading - in the three or four days that he was in bed before he died, he was reading to us passages from Gabriel Garcia Marquez's book "Love in the Time of Cholera," and it just tickled him. So he was laughing. Because there are a couple of passages that are really funny. He was laughing so hard at them.
And he and my nephews, his grandchildren, were - had his Audubon bird book and they were looking at the birds that were in the yard, coming and going in the yard, looking them up in the book. And it was just a great sharing, you know? But it was a different experience having - being with my father when he died than it was being with my mother.
I wasn't with my mother when she died and I just couldn't quite get it through my head that she was gone out of the world and I was never going to see her again. It was much harder to make a relationship to her as a dead person than it was with my father, who I saw him die and I understood that it was final and that that was going to be it. I knew I was going to miss him but I accepted it better.
GROSS: You've probably...
RONSTADT: It was just an easier burden.
GROSS: You've probably known a lot of people who've died young, and I'm thinking, just to name a few - Gram Parsons, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison.
RONSTADT: Yeah. Well, we had the great culling, you know, of people that took drugs and it was just a disaster and a tragedy. It was just so sad that those people didn't get to live out full lives. And then there was the next one, which was the AIDS epidemic, which was another just terrible tragedy. You know, that all those people had to die. You know, there are a lot of people that are gone from "Pirates of Penzance," most of them, in fact.
GROSS: From the production that you were in?
RONSTADT: Yeah. You know, the music director and a lot of the stars. And they're gone. It's a shame. They had amazing careers and they should - they had many more years in them they could've been around. So there was two. So then the next...
GROSS: Are you saying that that was because of AIDS?
RONSTADT: Yeah, because of AIDS.
GROSS: Mm-hmm.
RONSTADT: And then now is, you know, old age. You know, people are dropping around my generation, the senior - it's like the senior class in high school. Now we're the seniors and we're looking around going, eww, we're next. But that's the way it is, you know. We're all going to die.
GROSS: Do you still feel like a bit of a survivor because you made it through this far?
RONSTADT: Well, I didn't die young.
(LAUGHTER)
GROSS: Yes, right.
RONSTADT: I feel like...
GROSS: You can say that.
RONSTADT: Whatever I've got - I just feel whatever I've got now is gravy. I feel like I was lucky. I got to live out a lot of my dreams and I got to, you know, sing with all of these wonderful people like Emmy Lou and Aaron Neville and, you know, Smoky Robinson. I mean, the tenors - I sang with Aaron Neville, Smoky Robinson, Placido Domingo, Dennis Wilson, Ricky Skaggs. I mean how can you beat that, you know, for tenors?
So I was lucky. And having a singing sister like Emmy Lou Harris, what a gift in my life. You know, she opened doors for me musically that I never would've been able to open by myself. Because she was as passionate as I was about offbeat, quirky, you know, art song and traditional music. She didn't care whether it was going to be a hit or not either. She just wanted to sing it if it really told her story.
There was nothing that was going to get in the way of her telling her story. So she - and if that told it the best she was going to do that song and do it right. So you know, we just - it was like going through the woods with - like Hansel and Gretel. You know, leave them a little trail of breadcrumbs. We left our little notes behind and hoped we could find our way back.
GROSS: My guest is Linda Ronstadt. She has a new memoir called "Simple Dreams." We'll talk more after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)
GROSS: My guest is Linda Ronstadt. She has a new memoir called "Simple Dreams." Last summer she revealed she has Parkinson's disease, which has ended her singing career. I want to close with a song from your final album, "Humming to Myself" from 2004. And this is - this song "Tell Him I Said Hello."
RONSTADT: Oh, I'm glad you picked that. That's my favorite one.
GROSS: Oh, good. So is this - did you know this would be your final album when you recorded it?
RONSTADT: It wasn't my final album. I made an album after that, that I'm really proud of, called - it was called "Adieu False Heart" that I made with Ann Savoy down in the Cajun country. And it's - I had no voice left and I was just crafting whatever I could craft together, but I hung onto Ann and we sang this harmony duet and it was an unusual sound. I really loved that record.
But I was also really proud of this record because it was really hard to sing at this point when I was recording. And again, I had had to find a new voice to sing with that I put together, especially for this song, just "Tell Him I Said Hello." But I love this song. It's one of those kind of things, again, where it's just a moment where you're remembering, you know, the regret of a past relationship.
And you think you want to sort of reach out to that person and then you realize you'd better not. And so you just leave it alone.
GROSS: When you say you had to, like, refashion your voice, like, what did you have to do differently in these early stages of Parkinson's when you were still singing?
RONSTADT: Well, I was singing on sort of the flat lower part of my voice. I didn't have all the color and the breath and the sort of airy halo that comes. There's a lot of different textures that you can dial in and out on an unconscious level when you're singing. And you just bring in these colors and textures and they all express emotion in some way or another. And I didn't have that with me.
I was - I thought of myself as a painter that was painting with a limited palette. So I thought, well, I've got some darks and lights here and I've got some - maybe some umber, you know, and I can put that in. And I just have to make a really strong drawing, make the image as bold as I can. And that's what I was trying to do with this song.
GROSS: Do you still enjoy listening to music?
RONSTADT: I love music. I prefer music - always prefer to hear live music over recorded music. Which sounds odd, as I was a recording artist, but of course when I was recording it, it was live so my experience recording was always with live music. But I love to go the symphony. I feel it's a privilege to live in a city that can support a symphony and I feel the same way about the opera. I love the opera. And I love the ballet.
So, you know, those are things I like to see. I love chamber music and I have dear friends that still come over and they play their new songs that they've written and that's my favorite place for music, is just in the living room with some dear friends whose music you admire.
And you just get to sit down and really, really, really listen with nothing distracting you. You know? No audience, no stage, no sound system, nothing. Just that singer and a story. I love that the best.
GROSS: Well, Linda Ronstadt, it's just been such a pleasure to talk with you and I wish you the best.
RONSTADT: Well, thank you so much. It's been my pleasure too.
GROSS: Thank you. And Linda Ronstadt's new memoir is called "Simple Dreams" and here she is from her 2004 recording "Humming to Myself." This is "Tell Him I Said Hello." Thank you again.
RONSTADT: Thank you.
(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "TELL HIM I SAID HELLO")
RONSTADT: (Singing) When you see him, tell him things are slow. There's a reason and he's sure to know. But on second thought, forget it. Just tell him I said hello. If he asks you when I come and go say I stay home 'cause I miss him so. But on second thought, forget it. Just tell him I said hello.
GROSS: Linda Ronstadt, recorded last September. You can read an excerpt of her memoir "Simple Dreams" on our website freshair.npr.org.
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4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 98 | https://pleasekillme.com/the-left-banke-story/ | en | GOING FOR BAROQUE: THE LEFT BANKE STORY | [
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] | 2020-08-25T04:05:34+00:00 | Scott Schinder tells the tale of Baroque pop pioneers The Left Banke. | en | PleaseKillMe | https://pleasekillme.com/the-left-banke-story/ | With the death of Tom Finn last month, all four original members (Finn, Michael Brown, George Cameron, Steve Martin Caro) of The Left Banke are gone. Baroque pop pioneers whose influence is still felt today, The Left Banke were an oddity at a time of psychedelia and social mayhem–precocious New York teens in love with intricate arrangements and Beatlesque aspirations. They had a couple of major hits (“Pretty Ballerina,” “Walk Away Renee”) but weren’t temperamentally suited for rock stardom. And yet, the music still sounds timeless and grand. Scott Schinder tells their tale.
Tom Finn, the last surviving member of the Left Banke’s classic lineup, died on June 27, 2020 after years of declining health. Finn’s death followed the recent passings of his former bandmates Michael Brown, George Cameron and Steve Martin Caro (billed as Steve Martin during his years with the band), as well as songwriter/instrumentalist Tom Feher, a frequent collaborator during the band’s original run.
In The Left Banke’s ’60s heyday, the New York outfit’s persistent “baroque rock” tag failed to fully convey the breadth and depth of its exquisitely textured arrangements, its heart-tugging three-part harmonies and its evocative, emotionally resonant songwriting. The band began its recording career at the top, launching their career with the iconic, Brown-penned single “Walk Away Renee,” which became a Top Five hit and remains an enduring, much-covered pop classic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_QVUfZv92U
But the inexperienced teenaged combo quickly ran afoul of a series of mishaps that helped to derail its promising career. Indeed, the Left Banke’s history is strewn with poor choices, missed opportunities, interpersonal acrimony, squandered potential and managerial neglect. Originally anchored by a fragile musical prodigy and managed by his Murry Wilson-like father, the band was prematurely destabilized by internal dissention and outside pressures.
Despite this, the Left Banke’s first two albums, 1967’s Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina and 1968’s The Left Banke Too, rank with the era’s most distinctive and enduring music. And the group’s subsequent absence from the public eye, combined with the longstanding unavailability of its albums—finally remedied when Sundazed Music reissued them on CD and LP in 2011—only increased the Left Banke’s mythic stature amongst its admirers.
Even in the heady musical atmosphere of 1967, “Walk Away Renee,” and its Top 20 followup “Pretty Ballerina,” also written by Brown, stood out. The Left Banke’s beguiling blend of youthful innocence, autumnal melancholy and precocious musical sophistication remains in a class of its own.
Tom Finn met Steve Martin, born Carmelo Esteban Martin Caro, in 1965, on the street outside of Manhattan’s City Squire Hotel, watching a mob of screaming girls awaiting the arrival of the Rolling Stones. Finn had been in a garage band, the Magic Plants, which had released a punky single, “I’m A Nothing,” that had been picked up for release by Verve Records. Caro had recently arrived in town from his native Madrid with his mother, flamenco singer-guitarist Sarita Heredia. Finn introduced Martin to his musically inclined friends George Cameron and the Magic Plants’ drummer Warren David, nee Warren David Schierhorst.
The Magic Plants – I’m A Nothing 1966:
The Magic Plants had cut their single at World United Recording, a modest studio at 48th Street and Broadway in Manhattan. World United was owned by Harry Lookofsky, a veteran violinist who’d played on numerous sessions, and who’d made jazz recordings on his own as Hash Brown. Finn, Martin, Cameron and David met Lookofsky’s 16-year-old son, Michael Brown, a classically trained pianist and budding composer who’d been working at the studio as an assistant and sometime session player, and who had the keys to the studio.
“We wanted to be the Beatles—but we also wanted to be as good as the Beatles”
The five teens began convening at World United for after-hours rehearsals, gathering around the piano and working out harmonies on British Invasion hits as well as the original tunes that they were beginning to write. Martin, Finn and Cameron quickly developed a distinctive vocal chemistry, and Brown’s advanced musical skills expanded the fledgling group’s options considerably.
“I think we all knew from the beginning that we were doing something special,” Finn told me in 2011. “We’d sing our songs around the piano with Mike, and it really started to sound good. Then Mike started to write bridges for some songs that Steve and George had written. At the time, Michael and Warren were the only ones who could really play—I had just started playing guitar—so we gravitated towards Michael because he played piano really well and had so much musical knowledge.”
Harry Lookofsky soon took an interest in the band, which settled into the lineup of Martin on lead vocals, Cameron on guitar, Finn on bass, Schierhorst on drums and Brown on keyboards. Finn claims that it was Lookofsky’s idea for his son to join—and later to promote him as the Left Banke’s resident musical genius.
“When we first started,” Finn says, “Mike was not considered to be a member of the group. It was my band, and I introduced all the people to one another.”
Lookofsky appointed himself the band’s manager, publisher and producer. His involvement would help to advance the Left Banke’s early career, but his multiple roles created conflicts of interest that would soon help to splinter the quintet.
The Left Banke began cutting tracks at World United in late 1965, recording such early originals as the Martin/Cameron collaborations “I Haven’t Got The Nerve” and “I’ve Got Something On My Mind,” as well as an early attempt at “Walk Away Renee,” which would be recut a couple of times before becoming the Left Banke’s debut single.
“I Haven’t Got The Nerve” from The Left Banke’s debut album:
Aside from Schierhorst’s drumming and Brown’s piano and harpsichord, the instruments on those early sessions were played by seasoned session musicians, including guitarist/bassist/arranger John Abbott, who Finn later credited as a key contributor in developing the Left Banke’s studio sound. Production was handled by Harry Lookofsky and World United’s house engineers Steve and Bill Jerome. Schierhorst introduced “Walk Away Renee”‘s distinctive drum beat, which session drummer Al Rogers would duplicate on the released version.
“Walk Away Renee,” whose authorship is credited to Brown and co-writers Bob Calilli and Tony Sansone, was famously inspired by Brown’s unrequited crush on Finn’s girlfriend Renee Fladen.
“It’s about loving someone enough to set them free,” Brown later said. “There’s a certain purity to ‘Walk Away Renee,’ and its purity comes from the idea that a dream lives, even if it’s just as a fantasy.” According to Brown, Fladen was present when he first attempted to record his harpsichord part. “My hands were shaking when I tried to play, because she was right there in the control room. There was no way I could do it with her around, so I came back and did it later.”
Schierhorst was quickly ousted from the band by Harry Lookofsky after the drummer ran off to California with Mike Brown, financing the trip by selling Brown’s coin collection. Lookofsky had the underage pair stopped by police at the airport and sent home. While Lookofsky was dropping the boom on Mike and Warren’s west coast adventure, he recorded Martin, Finn and Cameron’s vocals for “Walk Away Renee.”
Having come up with a satisfactory take after some unsuccessful attempts, Lookofsky sold “Walk Away Renee” to Mercury Records’ Smash subsidiary, which released it in July 1966. The song’s peerless evocation of longing was driven home by Martin’s plaintive, aching lead vocal, and by Finn and Cameron’s heartbroken harmonies, by Abbott’s stately arrangement, incorporating flute, strings and Brown’s harpsichord.
The success of “Walk Away Renee” created a demand for live performances, and the inexperienced quintet—with George Cameron moving from guitar to drums, and new member Jeff Winfield taking over on guitar—did its best to adapt to the demands of the stage.
“Our first gig was at Our Lady Of Solace church in the Bronx,” Finn reports. “Tony Sansone, Michael’s co-writer on ‘Walk Away Renee,’ set it up. We took Renee with us because she looked so good, and we arrived in a limousine. When we got out of the car, the girls started screaming and the cameras started flashing, and when we played you couldn’t hear us because the girls were screaming so loud. It was ridiculous; we were signing autographs, but we could barely play.
“We got paid a hundred bucks for the show, and we spent $75 to rent the limousine,” says Finn. “We were starving at the time, but that’s where we were at; it was more important for us to look good and make a big splash when we arrived. We were really into the minutiae that went into creating that image, so we really played that role. You’ve got to remember that we were all teenagers—I was 17, and Mike was 16—and when you’re teenagers, you do things for different reasons.
“We wanted to be the Beatles—but we also wanted to be as good as the Beatles,” Finn asserts. “When we started playing those shows, we were all about harmonizing and singing and posing and riding in limousines and making a big splash when we arrived. We were living out our rock ‘n’ roll fantasies. But even though we put on this whole big thing about looking good, when it came to the music and the actual creative side, we did have a very honest approach to what we did. We sang and played from our hearts. We were still more of a vocal group and still trying to master our instruments, but we had very strong ideas about what we thought was good and what we thought was lame, and we followed that.”
The Left Banke’s next single, “Pretty Ballerina”—another Renee Fladen-inspired Michael Brown composition—reached the Billboard Top 15. The song’s instrumental track was once again played by Brown and a cast of studio pros.
Finn: “I remember the first time I heard ‘Pretty Ballerina’ on the radio, in Michael Brown’s hotel room, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. It came on the radio and I said, ‘Wow, this doesn’t sound like anything else that’s on the radio.’ That’s when I really realized how different we were to everything else that was around in 1967.”
“Pretty Ballerina”‘s b-side, the Brown/Martin-penned rocker “Lazy Day,” was, atypically, performed entirely by the band members. One of the few guitar-dominated songs in the Left Banke songbook, “Lazy Day” showcased the soaring fuzz guitar of Jeff Winfield, whose brief tenure in the group had already ended by the time the song was released.
The Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina album was released in February 1967. In addition to both sides of the two eponymous singles, the LP collected seven more tracks cut during the previous year. According to Finn, though, the band was already on the skids, the members’ personal tensions exacerbated by the pressures of touring, and by their increasing conflicts with their manager.
“The original band was completely destroyed within eight months,” Finn observes. “Right after ‘Walk Away Renee’ and ‘Pretty Ballerina’ became hits, we churned out the album, and then it was over. We really needed someone to look out for us, and we never had that. Maybe things would have been different if we’d had good management.
“As soon as we had the hits, Michael and his father completely took over. We’re out on the road doing these long tours, and Harry’s stealing all our money. Steve, George and I eventually put our foot down, so Mike decided to throw us all out.”
Finn says that, after their initial hits, Lookofsky attempted to rebuild the group around Martin and Brown and fire the other members. Guitarist Jeff Winfield was a victim of that purge; Finn says that he and Cameron were quickly asked back when Lookofsky failed to find suitable replacements. Rick Brand was hired as the band’s new guitarist; it’s Brand who appears with the band in Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina‘s cover photos, although he only plays on one album track, the Brown/Martin/Cameron composition “Let Go of You Girl.”
Lookofsky also fired co-producer/engineers Steve and Bill Jerome, whose studio skills had been crucial in the creation of the band’s hits, midway through recording the album.
“Steve Jerome used to go out on the road with us as our road manager, and when we got back, Harry would take all the money,” says Finn. “Steve was a genius recording engineer, but Harry didn’t want to pay him, so he got rid of him.”
After the Jerome brothers’ departure, the Left Banke moved from World United to Mercury Records’ Manhattan studio. “The trust was gone,” Finn recalls. “Now, we were at Mercury Studios recording with some by-the-book staff engineer with a white shirt and tie, who didn’t understand the first thing about what we were trying to do. That was the beginning of the end for us.”
Despite the internal machinations, Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina is a remarkably accomplished debut. While “Lazy Day” and “Let Go of You Girl” feature the entire band’s instrumental contributions, the remaining tracks match Brown’s keyboards with a variety of New York session players, including such studio stalwarts as the aforementioned John Abbott, guitarist Hugh McCracken and bassist Joe Mack.
“When we recorded the first album, we weren’t really a performing band yet,” says Finn. “We were still learning our instruments. But our intent was always to play. We did do some shows then, and I think Michael felt like a fish out of water, playing his electric piano in the corner, and he could never get the band to sound as tight as he would like it to sound. You’ve got to remember that when we all got together, Michael had been practically living in the recording studio for over a year, watching hundreds of sessions. So his experience was far, far further along than ours was.”
‘We were always fighting. Everything good that we ever came up with was the result of some kind of brawl.’
Although Brown wrote or co-wrote all but one of Walk Away Renee/Pretty Ballerina‘s 11 songs, Finn disputes the popular conception of Brown as The Left Banke’s mastermind. “It wasn’t about Michael Brown being some Svengali and us being his puppets,” Finn states. “It was a combination of everyone’s input. Mike was in no way the leader of the group or the brain behind the group.
“If you look at a song like ‘Lazy Day,’ that’s a garage-band song, yet it’s got these complicated chord patterns,” Finn continues. “That’s Michael Brown’s influence on the group. He came from playing classical music, and he had his own thing. He did like the Beatles, but he was a different kind of a guy from the rest of the group. The way he played the piano and the way we sang fit together to create what we were.”
The Left Banke’s modern classic sound gained additional exposure via the radio jingles that the band recorded for Coca-Cola, Hertz Rent-A-Car and Toni hairspray. Those ads demonstrated that the band could even make the humble acts of drinking a Coke or renting a car sound mysterious and beautiful.
The Left Banke toured extensively to promote their singles, although the band members’ instrumental limitations prevented them from tackling most of their technically challenging original material on stage.
“Our set list had more R&B and British rock covers than Left Banke songs,” Finn says, adding, “We were really a garage band, and we were still learning our instruments. The only Left Banke songs we played were ‘Walk Away Renee,’ ‘Pretty Ballerina’ and ‘She May Call You Up Tonight.’ We tried to play some of the others once or twice, but they sounded terrible, so they were quickly dropped. The rest of our set was all covers: Beatles, Temptations, James Brown, anything that we thought would excite an audience.”
“She May Call You Up Tonight”-The Left Banke:
Although the roadwork would ultimately have a positive effect on the band’s developing chops, other factors made touring unrewarding. Finn: “They’d send us out on these badly-planned tours with terrible equipment, driving four or five hundred miles between gigs, and by the end of it we couldn’t stand each other. And we sounded like shit. Then we’d get home and we wouldn’t get paid.”
The strain of touring weighed heaviest on Michael Brown, who eventually opted out of the Left Banke’s live lineup. “Being on the road was hard for Mike,” says Finn. “He had the first prototype of the Clavinet on the road, and it sounded great. But it went out of tune very easily, and that became a nightmare for him. We’d throw it in the back of a U-Haul trailer, and by the time we got to the gig it sounded horrible. For a guy who was used to playing classical piano, it was torture to be playing an instrument that would be out of tune on every show. So he decided to stop touring and stay home and write and produce, like Brian Wilson. We resented that, so we hired a lawyer to get us out of our deal with Harry.”
When the Left Banke’s original lineup combusted after the first album, the group split into two factions, with singers Martin, Finn and Cameron on one side, and Brown and his father on the other. The schism led to Brown—with help from band friend Tom Feher, who had co-written three songs on the first album, and singer Bert Sommer—recording his own single, “Ivy, Ivy” b/w “And Suddenly,” and releasing it under the Left Banke banner in April 1967 on Smash. Brown assembled and rehearsed a prospective new lineup that would have included Sommer and a returning Warren David, as well as unknown 18-year-old guitarist Michael McKean, who would later emerge as a renowned actor/comic and a founding member of Spinal Tap.
After Finn, Martin and Cameron won back control of the band name, Brown’s new lineup quietly disbanded and Smash withdrew support from the “Ivy, Ivy” single. But the resulting confusion over the competing Left Bankes resulted in a loss of commercial momentum from which the band would never recover.
Finn: “Our legal team and our fan club had gone to work sending letters and telegrams and news releases to all the radio stations in America, telling them that ‘Ivy, Ivy’ was not the real Left Banke. But we didn’t realize that that would come back to haunt us. After that, the DJs wouldn’t play anything by the Left Banke. There was a bad vibe out there about us.”
Brown assembled and rehearsed a prospective new lineup that would have included… unknown 18-year-old guitarist Michael McKean, who would later emerge as a renowned actor/comic and a founding member of Spinal Tap.
The band members temporarily reconciled in the spring of 1967, long enough to record a pair of Brown/Feher compositions, “Desiree” and “In the Morning Light.” Brown produced those sessions, with John Abbott as arranger and various New York session players providing most of the instruments. While the sunny “In the Morning Light” wouldn’t be heard until it turned up on The Left Banke Too, the sweeping orchestral epic “Desiree” was released as a single in June 1967.
“After Mike Brown lost control of the group, he realized that he couldn’t stand what his father had done to his first project, and he wanted back into the Left Banke,” Finn explains. “He had this song that he’d written with Tom Feher called ‘Desiree,’ and he wanted to be reinstalled as a member of the group. He asked us, we thought about it, and we said ok.”
Despite a tape mishap that forced the band to use a lower-fidelity mono dub in place of the original stereo backing track, “Desiree” was arguably the Left Banke’s most impressive achievement to date. It should have been a valedictory triumph for the band. Instead, “Desiree” stalled at #98 on Billboard‘s pop chart. Although it became a minor hit in a few regional markets, most radio programmers—still leery of anything Left Banke-related in the wake of the “Ivy, Ivy” fiasco—avoided playing it.
“The reason there’s no stereo version of ‘Desiree,'” Finn says, “is there was an accident with the tape, and the multi-track master somehow got erased. I think we were told that the tape was stolen, which I think was not true. Mercury had just spent a lot of money on the session, supposedly the most money they had ever spent on a record in their entire corporate history. And Mike Brown, on his first production, accidentally erased the tape. At the end of the session, the engineer ran off a mono mix for Mike to take home and listen to. When they came back in for the remix, the original tapes were gone, and the only thing that was left was that mono reference tape.
“So they went back into the studio and copied the mono tape onto a eight-track deck, and started bouncing on the vocals back and forth onto the multitrack. They put the vocals on top of that, and then tried to make it sound like stereo, and then they further destroyed it by putting bass on one side and treble on the other. Some people like the way it sounds, but it doesn’t sound as good as it originally did. This was all a big secret at the time. I don’t know if they even told the record company about it, but that’s what happened.”
The reunion with Brown ended there, and Finn, Martin and Cameron (who by then had also parted ways with guitarist Rick Brand) continued as the Left Banke. It would be another year before the band’s next release, namely a new single combining the haunting Finn/Martin/Cameron composition “Dark is the Bark” with the equally resonant Finn-penned “My Friend Today.” Both sides were recorded with pop-savvy producer/arranger Artie Schroeck, whose credits included work with the Four Seasons, the Lovin’ Spoonful and the Cowsills.
“On the ‘Dark Is the Bark’ single, Mercury gave us Artie Schroeck, who they really liked,” Finn recalls. “He brought in studio musicians for that one, because he’d heard our demo and felt that he could do a better job. He brought in all these top New York players for the session, with a big orchestra sound. It became so jazzy and so different from the way I had envisioned it. I was really pissed off, because the way I wrote it, it was much more classical. I thought it ended up sounding more like The Association than The Left Banke. So they got rid of Artie Schroeck when the single didn’t go anywhere.”
Although the Four Tops’ recent hit cover of “Walk Away Renee” was fresh in listeners’ minds, “Dark is the Bark” failed to chart—a fate that would befall all of the Left Banke’s subsequent singles. Despite the successive commercial failures of the band’s last two singles, Smash gave the go-ahead ahead for a second Left Banke album.
The Left Banke Too teamed the trio with new producer Paul Leka and augmented the threesome with instrumental and songwriting contributions from Tom Feher and backing vocals by Steven Tallarico, later Tyler, whose band the Chain Reaction shared management with The Left Banke. The album found Martin, Finn and Cameron taking the vocal, instrumental and songwriting reins and emerging as a creative unit capable of producing ambitious, expressive music without Michael Brown’s input.
Four Tops – Walk Away Renee (1968):
Finn: “Mercury gave us another producer, Paul Leka, who was coming hot on the heels of writing and producing ‘Green Tambourine’ by the Lemon Pipers, which we hated. This time, we insisted that we were all gonna play our own instruments, with no more of this studio musician crap. So from then on, we played everything ourselves.”
The sessions with Leka yielded six tracks, which would be included on The Left Banke Too along with both sides of the “Desiree” and “Dark Is the Bark” singles. The new material showed Martin, Finn and Cameron stretching beyond their formal roles within the group. For instance, Finn sings lead vocals on his compositions “There’s Gonna Be A Storm” and “Nice to See You,” while Cameron steps up front on the Tom Feher-penned tunes “Goodbye Holly” and “Bryant Hotel.” Meanwhile, Martin plays drums on “Goodbye Holly” and bass on “Bryant Hotel,” while Finn doubles on guitar and bass on most of the songs.
“There’s Gonna Be a Storm” from The Left Banke Too album:
“We had always intended to be a multi-lead-singer group and try different things, but we were never allowed to do that on the first album,” says Finn, adding, “Back in the beginning, Steve didn’t want to be the lead singer, he wanted us all to sing. So on the second album, we all sang lead. Now that Mike was gone, I sort of became the leader, although we never called it that. “By this time, we had a little experience. We’d been playing for about two years at this point, and we’d gotten good enough to do our own tracks.
“I also had to start writing songs, which I hadn’t really done before,” Finn continues. “Michael wouldn’t let any of my songs be on the first album. So on the second album, I rose to the occasion. I also decided on Tom Feher as a likely candidate to help us, because I liked his songs and he understood where we were coming from.”
In addition to writing three more songs for the album, Tom Feher plays piano on all of the Leka-produced tracks, except for his lilting composition “Sing Little Bird Sing,” on which he provides 12-string acoustic guitar. And departed member Rick Brand returned to play banjo on “Bryant Hotel.”
Despite its embarrassment of musical riches, The Left Banke Too largely escaped the public’s notice when it was released in November 1968 into a marketplace dominated by a new wave of hippie rock acts. Despite its ignominious commercial fate, the sophomore disc is an unsung gem that remains close to the hearts of a dedicated cadre of fans.
Although The Left Banke Too had shown the Left Banke’s creative batteries to be fully charged, the band experienced a new set of demoralizing conflicts with its new management team. Finn says that managers Bill Ottinger and Roger Rubenstein kept the band on the road for extended periods, with little financial reward and no discernable career benefit.
“We really started to fall apart after the second album,” says Finn. “Our management had us out there milking the hits to pay their bills, and it just felt like we were getting nowhere. Bill had originally been hired by Harry Lookofsky as our road manager after he got rid of Steve Jerome. Bill knew we were gonna break with Harry, and he said, ‘OK, I’ll be your new manager.’ He’d never been a manager before, but we said ok.
“So he and his partner Roger opened an office, and we ended up paying the bills. They also took on Steve Tyler’s group the Chain Reaction and two other groups, so they kept us out on the road and used that money to pay their bills and promote their other groups.
“We’d go out on the road, and we’d come back and there wouldn’t be any money,” Finn remembers. “Steve put his foot down and demanded that they get him an apartment on Sutton Place, which is just about the ritziest street in New York. They figured they’d better please him because he was the lead singer, so they tried to keep him happy. But the rest of us were living in rundown second-hand hotels. It just got worse and worse. We really started to fall apart in early ‘69, and then we were done.”
But the Left Banke didn’t die easily. After the trio disbanded, Steve Martin and Michael Brown briefly reunited on a new single, “Myrah” b/w “Pedestal,” released by Smash in November 1969 under the Left Banke name.
Left Banke -“Myrah” featuring Steve Martin from 1969:
In 1971, Martin, Finn, Cameron and Brown, along with frequent session guitarist Hugh McCracken, came together to record a pair of new Brown compositions, “Love Songs In The Night” and “Two By Two.” The results were released under Martin’s name, both as a single and on the soundtrack LP of the little-seen X-rated film Hot Parts, starring former Andy Warhol protégé Ultra Violet.
According to Finn, the Hot Parts tracks were credited to Martin rather than the Left Banke because Brown’s then-manager Dominic Sicilia, who assembled the soundtrack album, “felt that the Left Banke name was poison, that it was jinxed, that there were too many bad vibes attached to the name.”
Although the Hot Parts material could stand with the Left Banke’s best work, and became fan favorites despite their scarcity, the project didn’t lead to a longer-term reunion.
Tom Finn later worked as an engineer at the legendary New York studio Bell Sound, and served as MC and stage manager at Buddy Rich’s Manhattan club Buddy’s Place. He subsequently carved out a lengthy career as an in-demand live DJ, spinning vinyl at some of New York’s most prestigious venues and private parties, as well as at the Clinton White House.
Martin and Cameron, meanwhile, spent much of the next few decades drifting between various low-profile projects, most of which failed to reach fruition. Martin lived in Cleveland, California and Florida, recorded some demos for a proposed solo album, and insisted that he’d never sing “Walk Away Renee” again. He apparently auditioned for TV’s The Partridge Family, and was reportedly a guest in the studio at the Flying Burrito Brothers session where an inebriated Gram Parsons recorded the Burritos’ version of “Wild Horses.”
In 1978, Finn, Martin and Cameron reunited in the studio, as The Left Banke, to record a set of new songs, written mainly by Finn. The project began as a set of demos for Finn’s new publishing deal with Camex Music and evolved into a Left Banke project at the publisher’s suggestion. But Finn says that the music suffered because his bandmates were more interested in getting high than making music.
Although Finn considered the resulting tracks to be unfinished demos, they surfaced in 1986, with different track sequences and different cover art, as Strangers On A Train in the U.S. and Voices Calling in Britain. Spotty as the makeshift album is, its best songs—e.g. “Lorraine,” “And One Day” and “You Say” —tap into the Left Banke’s beautifully bittersweet essence, with the trio’s familiar voices carrying the same emotional gravity as in their ‘60s heyday.
Michael Brown—who had recorded albums with Montage, Stories and The Beckies between 1969 and 1976—kept a low public profile from the late ‘70s onward. But he continued to write and record new material in his home studio, and on several occasions reconnected with his former Left Banke bandmates. He even flew to Florida to record some new material with the mercurial Steve Martin Caro, some of which (including the sublime “Airborne”) was released as a privately pressed EP. Although many of Brown’s demos reached the hands of fans, nothing was officially released, and none of those prospective reunions lasted for long.
Meanwhile, The Left Banke’s posthumous prestige continued to grow, thanks in part to such reissues as 1982’s And Suddenly It’s…The Left Banke, on the British Bam-Caruso label, Rhino’s 1985 History of The Left Banke and especially 1992’s comprehensive There’s Gonna Be a Storm: The Complete Recordings 1966–1969, all of which are now sadly out of print, although There’s Gonna Be a Storm remains available on iTunes.
Finn was oblivious to the ongoing interest in the band until 2010, when he set up a Left Banke fan page on Facebook and found himself deluged with responses from fans.
Fans’ wishful thinking regarding a Left Banke reunion was finally answered in 2011. In March of that year, Finn and Cameron teamed with a group of New York musicians (including bassist Charly Cazalet, whose Left Banke connection goes back to the ’60s, and who plays on Strangers On A Train) to launch a new Left Banke lineup to perform the band’s vintage material.
The new, ten-person band (including a two-piece string section) performed several ecstatically-received club gigs in New York, marking the first Left Banke gigs in more than four decades—and the first time that many of the songs had ever been performed live. The new Left Banke delivered the classics with style and sensitivity, navigating the material’s emotional nuances and technical challenges with scrupulous fidelity. A frail Mike Brown even joined the new band on stage a couple of times, playing piano on “Pretty Ballerina” and lending his implicit endorsement to the enterprise.
Recorded November 12, 2011 @ DromNYC, by Froilan Frovelos:
The revival lineup lived up to The Left Banke tradition of rocky internal relations. According to local scene vet Mike Fornatale, who took on the unenviable task of stepping into the new band’s frontman slot, “There was a lot of fighting at rehearsals. This was nothing new, apparently. George told me, ‘We were always fighting. Everything good that we ever came up with was the result of some kind of brawl.’
“It was all very stressful,” Fornatale states. “But it was always great onstage.”
The new-look Left Banke announced its intention to record a new album, but instead quietly broke up in late 2012, partially due to Finn’s health issues, George Cameron briefly resurfaced in 2015 with a completely different band billing itself as The Left Banke. That grouping announced prospective collaborations with Michael Brown and Steve Martin Caro. Those grandiose plans also wouldn’t come to pass.
Brown died from heart disease on March 19, 2015, at the age of 65, and Cameron succumbed to cancer on June 24, 2018, at 70. Caro died from heart disease on January 14, 2020 at 71. With Tom Finn’s passing at 71 on June 27, 2020, all of The Left Banke’s founding members were gone.
As rocky and fractious as The Left Banke’s history was, the band—often working under less than optimum circumstances, and often limited by their own worst impulses—nonetheless left behind a consistently magnificent body of music that continues to touch and inspire successive generations of listeners. With the band’s original participants departed, the various bad vibes and emotional baggage are all in the past, but the music endures.
“We did some good things,” Tom Finn stated in 2011. “Unfortunately, it was nipped in the bud early on, and we were never able to fulfill our potential. What we did in the different incarnations of the group was maybe ten per cent of what we could have accomplished if we’d had decent management and the right support. That disappoints me, because we could have done so much more. But we still did some good stuff, and it makes me happy that people still want to hear it.”
≠≠≠≠
“Shadows Breaking Over My Head”-The Left Banke (rare live club footage):
Images via The Official Left Banke Fan Page
MORE FROM PKM:
THE DAWNING OF AQUARIUS: AN L.A. ARTIST REVISITS THE 1960S
THE INTREPID TRAVELLER: KEN BABBS ON THE MERRY PRANKSTERS, THE BEATS, THE DEAD, WOODSTOCK, AND MUCH MORE
KEITH RELF: WHEN A YARDBIRD FLEW SOLO | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 0 | 34 | https://bookinghouse.com/linda-ronstadt-the-linda-ronstadt-experience/ | en | The Linda Ronstadt Experience | [
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About The Show
The Linda Ronstadt Experience is “The Premier Touring Tribute” showcasing the songs that Linda Ronstadt made famous. The show takes you on a musical journey of smash hits “You’re No Good’, “When will I Be Loved”, “That’ll Be The Day”, “Blue Bayou” and many more. This repertoire spans from Linda’s early days with The Stone Poneys, the 1970’s where she helped forge the “Country-Rock Sound” with classic renditions of songs by The Eagles, Jackson Brown, Warren Zevon, and into the ’80s where she bridged the “New Wave Sound” into huge hits with her chart-topping tenth album “Mad Love”. Linda’s explosive live shows also included material by The Rolling Stones, Tom Petty, Little Feet, and other contemporaries of the day. Come out and revel in the songs Linda Ronstadt brought to life so beautifully performed by the Linda Ronstadt Experience. Tristan McIntosh (2016 American Idol finalist) takes you on an emotional ride of purity, power, and heartbreak as she is soaring through these songs as though they live inside her. Be part of the experience, and follow Tristan McIntosh and The Linda Ronstadt Experience as they bring Linda Ronstadt’s music into the 21st century!
Performing All The Hits And More
Linda Ronstadt was the rare artist who could comfortably cover a wide variety of musical bases; including folk, rock, country, jazz standards, opera and Latin. Her vocal gift had few limitations and she showcased it with every recording and performance. Her incredible vocal instrument along with her classic song interpretations have earned her countless devoted fans across the world. Sadly, Linda has been stricken with Parkinson’s Disease and can no longer sing or perform. The Linda Ronstadt Experience is excited to help keep her legacy alive by continuing to share the joy and beauty of her repertoire to a wide audience.“Music is meant to lighten your load. By singing it, you release the sadness and release yourself.” – Linda Ronstadt
How The Linda Ronstadt Experience Came To Be
In June of 2017 bassist Junior Cain ran a local ad in the Northeast seeking a Linda Ronstadt style singer. He proceeded to assemble a band of players that echoed his love for the artist, who had been stricken with Parkinson disease and left her unable to sing or perform. After a few early personnel changes Junior decided to place ads in the musical hot spots of Nashville and Austin. After a few weeks Tristan McIntosh’s Nashville Management replied to the ad. It was decided that Tristan’s closest musical collaborator Bronson Bush, would fill out the role as one of the bands guitarist. In March 2018 thirty songs were sent out to the potential band members to learn. In June of 2018, Tristan and Bronson flew into Boston to rehearse the material for three days, then shoot video on day four. It took a tremendous “Leap of Faith” on everyone’s part but when all the members met the chemistry and good vibes were undeniable. Then Tristan began to sing and everyone knew that this was going to be something very special.
“This performance made me cry. It was absolutely amazing! If you have the opportunity to see The Linda Ronstadt Experience, please do. This young singer is brilliant!!!!”
– Munya, Boston, MA
“Incredible band. Tremendous.”
– Lisa, Boston, MA
“You guys were FABULOUS! …it was amazing… Tristan, you’re a wonder!”
– Louisa, Northampton, MA
“Great show last night…. what impressed me most was [the] incredibly talented seasoned band. …Tristan was amazing… her innocence and playfulness really made the audience truly love her. [This] show was amazing! Multi talented band, guitar leads were exceptional, keys fantastic, Tristan well.. simply beautiful and vocally perfect with a hint of shyness & innocence. Great night thanks”
– Steve, Beverly, MA
“Stunning performance of this and every other song she did last night. So glad we were there.”
– Linda, western MA
“Great show! I’ve seen them perform twice now. Tristan McIntosh not only sounds like Linda Ronstadt, but she also bears an uncanny resemblance to her, as well. The band is as solid as they come. If you can attend, I assure that you’ll thoroughly enjoy yourself. I can’t wait until they come back to my area so I can see them again. Yes, they’re that good.”
– Uncredited Fan
“It was a night I will not forget, and one I definitely hope to repeat…”
– Chuck, Ironwood, MI
“The Mission of the Ironwood Theatre is to provide cultural entertainment of the highest possible quality to our community and we achieved this goal with the Linda Ronstadt Experience on April 12, 2019. Tristan and all the band members are musicians of the highest quality and provided our audience with an experience they will not soon forget. Comments included:
“Tristan is better than Linda Ronstadt.”; “Please bring them back again soon.”; and “One of the best shows I have ever seen and heard at the Ironwood Theatre.” From a 3 year old in the audience to an 83 year old the show was enjoyed by all. Thank you Cindy for making it happen!”
– Historic Ironwood Theatre Board President
“Tristan, you and the guys are the best! On behalf of the entire community, thank you for an outstanding show! The town is still abuzz over your show.”
– Bruce, ironwood, MI
“Absolutely a fantastic performance”
– Richard, West Haven, CT
“At the risk of being redundant…and to reiterate my remarks on Tristan’s personal FB page… well, here goes… what a superb show! Brilliant musicianship all around – and a truly spellbinding performance by Tristan McIntosh as well. Linda Ronstadt surely would be quite proud of this most gifted young artist – as well as her supremely talented band mates! Each and every one of them delivered 100% and then some. I am certain they will all be blessed with long and continually successful careers. Looking forward to their next appearance in NJ…in the meantime, I hope you all have a safe and successful tour!”
– Anthony, Woodbridge, NJ
“This amazing band truly is an experience!!!!”
– Bob, Fan, Lawrence Harbor, NJ
“What an amazing performance!!!! Thank you for coming to Evanston”
– Gary, Fan, Evanston, IL
“We decided to see your show last minute Friday at the Aracada and I was expecting some nice Linda Ronstadt songs and have a couple drinks. We were completely blown away by you and the band. We are still talking about it, and we saw Hamilton Saturday! Even though we were in a small space, you sang your heart out as if you were at the Allstate Arena. You are all passionate about her music. The last thing that made the night so special was the humility you and the band had. That you were so grateful to be able to play, even a tiny little place in suburbia. Made us feel special. Don’t forget this. See you next time you come in town.”
– Terri, Fan, Wheaton, IL,
“I’ve always loved Linda’s signature look of a flower in her hair. Usually a red Hibiscus. She is my favorite female singers of all time and you sound so much like her. What an amazing tribute to her! I hope you’ve met her & she knows about your band!”
⁃ Carmella, Fan
“Great performance!”
– Eileen, Fan
“I knew this was going to be a good show when, in sound check, Tristan sang for the first time and an older gentleman who had arrived early exclaimed “Holy S#*%!!!”. I looked at him and laughed because I was thinking the same thing.”
– Music on Main Street, Woodbridge, NJ
“Many years ago my wife and I went to see Linda at the Radio City Music Hall in New York. At first my wife was downed by the news that the show was sold out. I said let’s go and meet the scalpers outside the theatre. We wound up in the 1st row, 1st balcony. This past Sunday we had the privilege to see your group in Woodbrige NJ. I had all the same chills and found myself saying ‘Oh my goodness’. It was truly an experience beyond belief.”
– Uncredited Fan, Woodbridge, NJ
“Just go see them in your neighborhood. What a talent, what a voice and what a band.”
– Joe, fan
“Maybe the BEST Tribute band ever! This young lady is amazing. I’m sure she will have a successful career with her Linda Ronstadt show, but also as an artist in her own right. Just incredible!”
– Russ, Fan, YouTube
“Tristan and the Band are simply amazing!”
– Corey, Fan, Greenback, TN | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 61 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dean_Martin | en | Dean Martin | [
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This article is about the actor and singer. For other uses, see Dean Martin (disambiguation).
Dean Martin (born Dino Paul Crocetti; June 7, 1917 – December 25, 1995) was an American singer, actor and comedian. One of the most popular entertainers of the mid-20th century, he was nicknamed "The King of Cool".[2][3] Martin gained his career breakthrough together with comedian Jerry Lewis, billed as Martin and Lewis, in 1946. They performed in nightclubs and later had numerous appearances on radio and television and in films.
Following an acrimonious ending of the partnership in 1956, Martin pursued a solo career as a performer and actor. He established himself as a singer, recording numerous contemporary songs as well as standards from the Great American Songbook. Martin became one of the most popular acts in Las Vegas and was known for his friendship with fellow artists Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr., who together with several others formed the Rat Pack.
Starting in 1965, Martin was the host of the television variety program The Dean Martin Show, which centered on Martin's singing and comedic talents and was characterized by his relaxed, easy-going demeanor. From 1974 to 1984, Martin was roastmaster on the popular Dean Martin Celebrity Roast, which drew celebrities, comedians and politicians. Throughout his career, Martin performed in concert stages, nightclubs, audio recordings and appeared in 85 film and television productions and sold 12 million records in the US alone, over 50 million worldwide.
Martin's best known songs include "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?", "Memories Are Made of This", "That's Amore", "Everybody Loves Somebody", "You're Nobody till Somebody Loves You", "Sway", and "Volare".
Early life
[edit]
Martin was born Dino Paul Crocetti on June 7, 1917, in Steubenville, Ohio, to Italian father Gaetano Alfonso Crocetti (1894–1967) and Italian-American mother Angela Crocetti (née Barra; 1897–1966). Gaetano, who was a barber, was originally from Montesilvano, Pescara, and Angela was born December 18, 1897, in Fernwood, Ohio. Angela's father, Domenico Barra, emigrated from Monasterolo del Castello, Bergamo. Martin's first language was Italian and he spoke no English until starting school at the age of five. Martin attended Grant Elementary School in Steubenville, where he was bullied for his broken English. As a teenager, Martin played the drums as a hobby. He dropped out of Steubenville High School in the tenth grade because, according to Martin, he thought he was smarter than his teachers.[4] Martin bootlegged liquor, worked in a steel mill, served as a croupier at a speakeasy and a blackjack dealer, and was a welterweight boxer.[5]
At 15, Martin billed himself as "Kid Crochet". His prizefighting earned him a broken nose (later straightened), a scarred lip, many broken knuckles (a result of not being able to afford tape used to wrap boxers' hands), and a bruised body. Of his 12 bouts, Martin said that he "won all but 11." For a time, he shared a New York City apartment with Sonny King, who was also starting in show business and had little money. The two reportedly charged people to watch them bare-knuckle box each other in their apartment, fighting until one was knocked out. Martin knocked out King in the first round of an amateur boxing match.[7] Martin gave up boxing to work as a roulette stickman and croupier in an illegal casino behind a tobacco shop, where he had started as a stock boy. At the same time, he sang with local bands, calling himself "Dino Martini" (after the Metropolitan Opera tenor Nino Martini). Martin got his break working for the Ernie McKay Orchestra. He sang in a crooning style influenced by Harry Mills of the Mills Brothers and Perry Como.[5] By late 1940, Martin had begun singing for Cleveland bandleader Sammy Watkins,[8] who suggested he change his name to Dean Martin. He stayed with Watkins until at least May 1943.[9] By fall 1943, Martin had begun performing in New York.[10] He was drafted into the U.S. Army during World War II but was discharged after 14 months due to a hernia.[11]
In October 1941, Martin married Elizabeth "Betty" Anne McDonald in Cleveland, and the couple had an apartment in Cleveland Heights for a while. They eventually had four children before divorcing in 1949.
Career
[edit]
Teaming with Jerry Lewis
[edit]
Main article: Martin and Lewis
Martin attracted the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures, but a Hollywood contract was not forthcoming. Martin met comic Jerry Lewis at the Belmont Plaza Hotel in New York City in August 1944.[14][15] According to Lewis, the two men met initially in the lobby, where Martin approached him and said, "Hey, I saw your act, you're a funny kid."[16] Martin was singing at the hotel's famous Glass Hat Club at the time and the two happened to be on the same bill.[17][16] Martin and Lewis formed a fast friendship which led to their participation in each other's acts and the formation of a music-comedy team. Their debut together occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24, 1946, and they were not well received. The owner, Skinny D'Amato, warned them that if they did not come up with a better act for their second show that night, they would be fired. Huddling in the alley behind the club, Lewis and Martin agreed to "go for broke", they divided their act between songs, skits, and ad-libbed material.[18] Martin sang and Lewis dressed as a busboy, dropping plates and making a shambles of Martin's performance and the club's decorum until Lewis was chased from the room as Martin pelted him with bread rolls.[19]
They performed slapstick, reeled off old vaudeville jokes and did whatever else popped into their heads; the audience laughed. This success led to a series of well-paying engagements on the Eastern seaboard, culminating in a run at New York's Copacabana. The act consisted of Lewis interrupting and heckling Martin while he was trying to sing, with the two ultimately chasing each other around the stage. The secret, both said, is that they ignored the audience and played to each other. The team made its television debut on the first broadcast of CBS-TV network's The Ed Sullivan Show (then called The Toast Of The Town) on June 20, 1948, with composers Rodgers and Hammerstein also appearing. Hoping to improve their act, the two hired young comedy writers Norman Lear and Ed Simmons to write their bits.[20] With the assistance of both Lear and Simmons, the two would take their act beyond nightclubs.[21]
A radio series began in 1949, the year Martin and Lewis signed with Paramount producer Hal B. Wallis as comedy relief for the movie My Friend Irma. Their agent, Abby Greshler, negotiated one of Hollywood's best deals: although they received only $75,000 between them for their films with Wallis, Martin and Lewis were free to do one outside film a year, which they would co-produce through their own York Productions.
They also controlled their club, record, radio, and television appearances, and through these they earned millions of dollars. In Dean & Me, Lewis calls Martin one of the great comic geniuses of all time. They were friends, as well, with Lewis acting as best man when Martin remarried in 1949. But harsh comments from critics, as well as frustration with the similarity of Martin and Lewis movies, which producer Hal Wallis refused to change, led to Martin's dissatisfaction. He put less enthusiasm into the work, leading to escalating arguments with Lewis. Martin told his partner that he was "nothing to [him] but a dollar sign". The act broke up in 1956, 10 years to the day from the first teaming.[24]
Solo career
[edit]
Martin's first solo film, Ten Thousand Bedrooms (1957), was a box-office failure.[25] Although "Volare" reached number 15 in the U.S. and number 2 in the UK, the era of the pop crooner was waning with the advent of rock and roll. Martin wanted to become a dramatic actor, known for more than slapstick comedy films. Though offered a fraction of his former salary to co-star in a war drama, The Young Lions (1958), Martin's part would be with Marlon Brando and Montgomery Clift.[26] Tony Randall already had the part, but talent agency MCA realized that with this film, Martin would become a triple threat: they could make money from his work in nightclubs, films, and records. Randall was paid off to relinquish the role, Martin replaced him and the film turned out to be the beginning of Martin's comeback. He starred alongside Frank Sinatra for the first time in the Vincente Minnelli drama, Some Came Running (1958).[28]
By the mid-1960s, Martin was a movie, recording, television, and nightclub star. He was known as Dude in Rio Bravo (1959), directed by Howard Hawks and also starring John Wayne and singer Ricky Nelson.[29] Martin teamed again with Wayne in The Sons of Katie Elder (1965), cast as brothers.[30] In 1960, Martin was cast in the film version of the Judy Holliday stage musical comedy Bells Are Ringing. He won a Golden Globe nomination for his performance in the 1960 film comedy Who Was That Lady?,[32][33] but continued to seek dramatic roles, portraying a Southern politician in 1961's Ada,[34] and starring in 1963's screen adaptation of an intense stage drama, Toys in the Attic, opposite Geraldine Page,[35] as well as in 1970's drama Airport with Burt Lancaster, a huge box-office success.[36]
Sinatra and Martin teamed up for several more movies, the crime caper Ocean's 11,[37] the musical Robin and the 7 Hoods,[38] and the Western comedies Sergeants 3[39] and 4 for Texas, with their Rat Pack pals such as Sammy Davis, Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop, as well as a romantic comedy, Marriage on the Rocks. Martin also co-starred with Shirley MacLaine in a number of films, including Some Came Running, Artists and Models, Career, All in a Night's Work, and What a Way to Go! He played a satiric variation of his own womanizing persona as Las Vegas singer "Dino" in Billy Wilder's comedy Kiss Me, Stupid (1964) with Kim Novak,[42] and Martin poked fun at his image in films such as the Matt Helm spy spoofs of the 1960s, in which he was a co-producer. In the third Matt Helm film The Ambushers (1967), Helm, about to be executed, receives a last cigarette and tells the provider, "I'll remember you from the great beyond", continuing sotto voce, "somewhere around Steubenville, I hope".
As a singer, Martin copied the styles of Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers), Bing Crosby, and Perry Como until he developed his own and could hold his own in duets with Sinatra and Crosby. Like Sinatra, Martin could not read music,[44] but he recorded more than 100 albums and 600 songs. His signature tune, "Everybody Loves Somebody", knocked the Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night" off number one in the United States in 1964.[45] This was followed by "The Door is Still Open to My Heart",[46] which reached number six that year. Elvis Presley was said to have been a fan of Martin, and patterned his performance of "Love Me Tender" after Martin's style. Martin, like Elvis, was influenced by country music. By 1965, some of Martin's albums, such as Dean "Tex" Martin Rides Again, Houston, Welcome to My World, and Gentle on My Mind, were composed of country and western songs by artists such as Johnny Cash, Merle Haggard, and Buck Owens.[44] Martin hosted country performers on his TV show and was named "Man Of the Year" by the Country Music Association in 1966.[44] The final album of his recording career was 1983's The Nashville Sessions.
The image of Martin as a Vegas entertainer in a tuxedo has been an enduring one. "Ain't That a Kick in the Head?", a song Martin performed in Ocean's 11, did not become a hit at the time, but has enjoyed a revival in the media and pop culture and has been his most frequently played song in media for two decades.[48] For three decades, Martin was among the most popular acts in Las Vegas, where he sang and was a comedian, benefiting from the decade of comedy with Lewis. Martin's daughter, Gail, also sang in Vegas and on many TV shows including his, co-hosting his summer replacement series on NBC. Daughter Deana Martin continues to perform, as did youngest son Ricci Martin until his death in August 2016.[49] Eldest son Craig was a producer on Martin's television show and daughter Claudia was an actress in films such as For Those Who Think Young. Though thought of as promiscuous, Martin spent a lot of time with his family; as second wife Jeanne put it, prior to the couple's divorce, "He was home every night for dinner."[51]
Rat Pack
[edit]
Main article: Rat Pack
As Martin's solo career grew, he and Frank Sinatra became friends. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Martin and Sinatra, along with friends Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford, and Sammy Davis Jr., formed the Rat Pack, so-called after an earlier group of social friends, the Holmby Hills Rat Pack centered on Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, of which Sinatra had been a member (The Martin-Sinatra-Davis-Lawford-Bishop group referred to themselves as "The Summit" or "The Clan" and never as "The Rat Pack", although this has remained their identity in popular imagination). The men made films together, formed part of the Hollywood social scene, and were politically influential (through Lawford's marriage to Patricia Kennedy, sister of President John F. Kennedy).[52]
The Rat Pack was legendary for its Las Vegas Strip performances. For example, the marquee at the Sands Hotel might read "DEAN MARTIN—MAYBE FRANK—MAYBE SAMMY". Their appearances were valuable because the city would flood with wealthy gamblers. Their act (always in tuxedo) consisted of each singing individual numbers, duets and trios, along with seemingly improvised slapstick and chatter. In the socially charged 1960s, their jokes revolved around adult themes, such as Sinatra's womanizing and Martin's drinking, as well as Davis's race and religion. Sinatra and Martin supported the civil rights movement and refused to perform in clubs that would not allow black American or Jewish performers.[53] Posthumously, the Rat Pack has experienced a popular revival, inspiring the George Clooney/Brad Pitt Ocean's Trilogy.[54]
The Dean Martin Show
[edit]
Main article: The Dean Martin Show
In 1965, Martin launched his weekly NBC comedy-variety series, The Dean Martin Show, which ran for 264 episodes until 1974. He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Television Series Musical or Comedy in 1966 and was nominated again the following three years.[55] The show exploited his image as a carefree boozer. Martin capitalized on his laid-back persona of the half-drunk crooner, inappropriately hitting on women, and making snappy if slurred remarks about fellow celebrities during his roasts. During an interview on the British TV documentary Wine, Women and Song, aired in 1983, Martin stated, perhaps tongue-in-cheek, that he had someone record them on cassette tape so he could listen to them. Martin's TV show was a success. The show's loose format featured quick-witted improvisation from Martin and his weekly guests. This prompted a battle between Martin and NBC censors, who insisted on more scrutiny of the content. He later had trouble with NBC for his off-the-cuff use of obscene Italian phrases, which brought complaints from viewers who spoke the language. The show was often in the Top Ten. Martin, appreciative of the show's producer, his friend Greg Garrison, made a handshake deal giving Garrison, a pioneer TV producer in the 1950s, 50% of the show. However, the validity of that ownership is the subject of a lawsuit brought by NBCUniversal.
Despite Martin's reputation as a drinker—perpetuated via his vanity license plate "DRUNKY"—his alcohol use was quite disciplined. Martin was the first to call it a night and, when not on tour or on a film location, liked to go home to see his family.[57] Martin borrowed the lovable-drunk shtick from Joe E. Lewis, but his convincing portrayals of heavy boozers in Some Came Running and Howard Hawks's Rio Bravo led to unsubstantiated claims of alcoholism. Martin starred in and co-produced four Matt Helm superspy comedy adventures during this time, as well as a number of Westerns. By the early 1970s, The Dean Martin Show was still earning solid ratings, and although he was no longer a Top 40 hitmaker, his record albums continued to sell. He found a way to make his passion for golf profitable by offering a signature line of golf balls, and the Dean Martin Tucson Open was an event on golf's PGA Tour from 1972 to 1975. At his death, Martin was reportedly the single largest minority shareholder of RCA stock.[citation needed]
Martin began reducing his schedule once comfortable financially. The final (1973–1974) season of his variety show was retooled into one of celebrity roasts, requiring less involvement. In the roasts, Martin and his panel of pals made fun of a variety of popular entertainment, athletic, and political figures. After the show's cancellation, NBC continued to air The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast as a series of TV specials through 1984.
Later career
[edit]
For nearly a decade, Martin had recorded as many as four albums a year for Reprise Records. Martin recorded his final Reprise album, Once in a While in 1974, which was not issued until 1978. His final recordings were made for Warner Bros. Records. The Nashville Sessions was released in 1983, from which he had a hit with "(I Think That I Just Wrote) My First Country Song", which was recorded with Conway Twitty and made a respectable showing on the country charts. A follow-up single, "L.A. Is My Home"/"Drinking Champagne", came in 1985. The 1974 film drama Mr. Ricco marked Martin's final starring role, in which he played a criminal defense lawyer.[citation needed]
In 1972, Martin filed for divorce from his second wife, Jeanne. A week later, his business partnership with the Riviera hotel in Las Vegas dissolved amid reports of the casino's refusal to agree to Martin's request to perform only once a night. Martin joined the MGM Grand Hotel and Casino, where he was the featured performer on the hotel's opening night of December 23, 1973, and Martin's contract required him to star in a film (Mr. Ricco) for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.[citation needed]
Martin also made a public reconciliation with Lewis on his partner's Labor Day telethon, benefiting the Muscular Dystrophy Association, in September 1976. Sinatra shocked Lewis by bringing Martin out on stage and as the two men embraced, the audience gave them a standing ovation and the phones lit up, resulting in one of the telethon's most profitable years up to that time. Lewis later reported the event was one of the three most memorable of his life. Lewis quipped, "So, you working?" Martin, playing drunk, replied that he was appearing "at the 'Meggum'" (meaning the MGM Grand Hotel). This, with the death of Martin's son Dean Paul Martin more than a decade later, helped bring the two men together. They maintained a quiet friendship, but only performed again once, on Martin's 72nd birthday in 1989.[60]
Martin returned to films briefly with appearances in the star-laden, critically panned but commercially successful The Cannonball Run and its sequel Cannonball Run II.[61][62] He also had a minor hit single with "Since I Met You Baby" and made his first music video, which appeared on MTV and was created by Martin's youngest son, Ricci. On March 21, 1987, Martin's son, actor Dean Paul Martin (formerly Dino of the 1960s "teeny-bopper" rock group Dino, Desi & Billy), died when his F-4 Phantom II jet fighter crashed while flying with the California Air National Guard. Martin's grief over his son's death left him depressed and demoralized. Lewis stated in an on-stage interview in 2005 that subsequent to his son's death Martin became a reclusive alcoholic.[63] Later, a tour with Davis and Sinatra in 1988, undertaken in part to help Martin recover, sputtered.[64]
Personal life
[edit]
Martin was married three times. He wed Elizabeth Anne "Betty" McDonald, (July 14, 1922 – July 11, 1989) of Ridley Park, Pennsylvania in 1941. The couple had four children:
Craig Martin (born 1942).
Claudia Martin (March 16, 1944 – February 16, 2001).
Gail Martin (born 1945).
Deana Martin (born 1948).
Martin then married Dorothy Jean "Jeanne" Biegger (March 27, 1927 – August 24, 2016), a former Orange Bowl queen from Coral Gables, Florida. Their marriage lasted 24 years (1949–1973) and produced three children:
Dean Paul Martin (November 17, 1951 – March 21, 1987).
Ricci Martin (September 20, 1953 – August 3, 2016).[67]
Gina Martin (born 1956).
Less than a month after his second marriage had dissolved, Martin, at 55, married 26-year-old Catherine Hawn on April 25, 1973. Hawn had been the receptionist at the chic Gene Shacove hair salon in Beverly Hills. They divorced November 10, 1976. He was also briefly engaged to Gail Renshaw, Miss World–U.S. 1969. Eventually, Martin reconciled with Jeanne, though they never remarried.[citation needed]
Martin and Hawn had no biological children of their own but Martin adopted Hawn's daughter, Sasha. After their divorce, Martin had a brief relationship with model and longtime friend Patricia Sheehan.[71]
Martin's uncle was Leonard Barr, who appeared in several of his shows.[72] In the 1960s and early 1970s Martin lived at 363 Copa De Oro Road in Bel Air, Los Angeles,[73] before selling it to Tom Jones for $500,000 in June 1976.[74]
Martin's son-in-law was the Beach Boys' Carl Wilson, who married Martin's daughter Gina. Figure skater Dorothy Hamill and actress Olivia Hussey were his daughters-in-law during their marriages to Martin's son, Dean Paul Martin. Craig, Martin's elder son, was married to Lou Costello's daughter Carole (1938–1987) until her death from a stroke at age 48.
Dean Martin bred Andalusian horses at his Hidden Valley Ranch, Thousand Oaks Ventura County, California.[78]
Martin volunteered to perform fundraisers for the Bergson Group in the late 1940s.[79]
Although a Republican, Martin supported Democratic candidate Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964.[80]
Illness and death
[edit]
Martin, a lifelong heavy smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer at Cedars Sinai Medical Center in September 1993. He was told that he would require surgery to prolong his life, but he rejected it. Martin retired from public life in early 1995 and died of acute respiratory failure resulting from emphysema at his Beverly Hills home on Christmas Day, 1995, at the age of 78.[81] The lights of the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honor. Martin was interred at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.[82] The crypt features the epitaph "Everybody loves somebody sometime", the first line of his signature song.
Tributes and legacy
[edit]
In 1997, Ohio Route 7 through Steubenville was rededicated as Dean Martin Boulevard. Road signs bearing an Al Hirschfeld caricature of Martin's likeness designate the stretch with a historical marker bearing a small picture and brief biography in the Gazebo Park at Route 7 and North Fourth Street. An annual Dean Martin Festival celebration is held in Steubenville. Impersonators, friends and family, and entertainers, many of Italian ancestry, appear. In 2005, Clark County, Nevada, renamed a portion of Industrial Road as Dean Martin Drive. A similarly named street was dedicated in 2008 in Rancho Mirage, California. Martin's family was presented a gold record in 2004 for Dino: The Essential Dean Martin, his fastest-selling album, which also hit the iTunes Top 10, and in 2006 it was certified "Platinum".[84]
For the week ending December 23, 2006, the Dean Martin and Martina McBride duet of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" reached No. 7 on the R&R AC chart. It also went to No. 36 on the R&R Country chart – the last time Martin had a song this high in the charts was in 1965, with the song "I Will", which reached No. 10 on the Pop chart. An album of duets, Forever Cool, was released by Capitol/EMI in 2007. It features Martin's voice with Kevin Spacey, Shelby Lynne, Joss Stone, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy, Robbie Williams, McBride and others. His footprints were immortalized at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1964. Martin has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame: one at 6519 Hollywood Boulevard for movies; the second at 1617 Vine for recordings; and a third at 6651 Hollywood Boulevard for television. In February 2009, Martin was honored with a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. Four of his surviving children, Gail, Deana, Ricci and Gina accepted it on his behalf. In 2010, Martin received a posthumous star on the Italian Walk of Fame in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[85]
The town of origin of Dean's father, Montesilvano, dedicated to him a square between via Sarca and via Torrente Piomba and a congress palace called Pala Dean Martin congress center in via Aldo Moro adjacent to the Porto Allegro structure (former cinema Warner).[citation needed]
In popular culture
[edit]
A number of Martin songs have been featured across popular culture for decades. Hits such as "Ain't That a Kick in the Head", "Sway", "You're Nobody Till Somebody Loves You", "That's Amore", and Martin's signature song "Everybody Loves Somebody" have been in films (such as the Oscar-winning Logorama, A Bronx Tale, Casino, Goodfellas, Payback, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, Sexy Beast, Moonstruck, Vegas Vacation, Swingers, and Return to Me), television series (such as American Dad!, Friends, The Sopranos, House MD, Samurai Jack, and The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air), video games (such as The Godfather: The Game, The Godfather II, Fallout: New Vegas, and Mafia II), and fashion shows (such as the 2008 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show).
Danny Gans portrayed Martin in the 1992 CBS miniseries Sinatra.[86] Martin was portrayed by Joe Mantegna in the 1998 HBO movie about Sinatra and Martin titled The Rat Pack.[87] Mantegna was nominated for both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for the role. British actor Jeremy Northam portrayed the entertainer in the 2002 made-for-TV movie Martin and Lewis, alongside Will & Grace's Sean Hayes as Jerry Lewis.[88]
Martin is the subject of Dean Martin's Wild Party and Dean Martin's Vegas Shindig, a pair of video slot machines found in many casinos. The games feature songs sung by Martin during the bonus feature and the count-up of a player's winnings. A compilation album called Amore! debuted at Number One on Billboard magazine's Top Pop Catalog Albums chart in its February 21, 2009, issue.[89]
In 1998, The MTV animated show Celebrity Deathmatch had a clay-animated fight to the death between Martin and comedian Jerry Lewis. Martin wins by whacking Jerry out of the ring. The Rat Pack: Live from Las Vegas has been a successful tribute show, featuring Martin impersonators, on stage in Europe and North America since 2000. The popular Las Vegas show, "The Rat Pack is Back" has played The Copa Room at the Tuscany Suites Casino for several years. The walk-up song for Francisco Cervelli, a catcher for the Atlanta Braves, is the Dean Martin tune "That's Amore". In DePatie-Freleng's animated theatrical cartoon series The Ant and the Aardvark, the Ant's voice was performed by John Byner as an imitation of Martin.[90][91]
Martin appears as Matt Helm in Quentin Tarantino's 2019 period piece Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Sharon Tate (played by Margot Robbie) goes to a cinema to see The Wrecking Crew.[92]
Discography
[edit]
Main article: Dean Martin discography
The list below shows the singer's studio albums only. His full discography, singles, compilations and other releases are described in a separate article.
Filmography
[edit]
Film
[edit]
Year Film Role Notes 1946 Film Vodvil: Art Mooney and Orchestra Short 1949 My Friend Irma Steve Laird Martin and Lewis 1950 My Friend Irma Goes West Martin and Lewis At War with the Army 1st Sgt. Vic Puccinelli Martin and Lewis Screen Snapshots: Meet the Winners Short Screen Snapshots: Thirtieth Anniversary Special Short 1951 That's My Boy Bill Baker Martin and Lewis 1952 The Stooge Bill Miller Martin and Lewis Sailor Beware Al Crowthers Martin and Lewis Jumping Jacks Corp. Chick Allen Martin and Lewis Road to Bali Man in Lala's dream Cameo, Uncredited 1953 Scared Stiff Larry Todd Martin and Lewis The Caddy Joe Anthony Martin and Lewis Money from Home Herman 'Honey Talk' Nelson Martin and Lewis 1954 Living It Up Dr. Steve Harris Martin and Lewis 3 Ring Circus Peter 'Pete' Nelson Martin and Lewis 1955 You're Never Too Young Bob Miles Martin and Lewis Artists and Models Rick Todd Martin and Lewis 1956 Screen Snapshots: Hollywood, City of Stars Short Pardners Slim Mosely Jr. / Slim Mosely Sr. Martin and Lewis Hollywood or Bust Steve Wiley Martin and Lewis 1957 Ten Thousand Bedrooms Ray Hunter 1958 The Young Lions Michael Whiteacre Some Came Running Bama Dillert (professional gambler) 1959 Rio Bravo Dude ('Borrachón') Career Maurice 'Maury' Novak 1960 Who Was That Lady? Michael Haney Nominated—Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy Bells Are Ringing Jeffrey Moss Ocean's 11 Sam Harmon Pepe Dean Martin Cameo 1961 All in a Night's Work Tony Ryder Ada Bo Gillis 1962 Sergeants 3 Sgt. Chip Deal The Road to Hong Kong The 'Grape' on plutonium Cameo, Uncredited Who's Got the Action? Steve Flood Something's Got to Give Nicholas 'Nick' Arden (unfinished) 1963 38-24-36 Self Come Blow Your Horn The Bum Uncredited Toys in the Attic Julian Berniers 4 for Texas Joe Jarrett Who's Been Sleeping in My Bed? Jason Steel 1964 What a Way to Go! Leonard 'Lennie' Crawley Robin and the 7 Hoods Little John Kiss Me, Stupid Dino 1965 The Sons of Katie Elder Tom Elder Marriage on the Rocks Ernie Brewer 1966 The Silencers Matt Helm Birds Do It Dean Martin Texas Across the River Sam Hollis Murderers' Row Matt Helm 1967 Rough Night in Jericho Alex Flood The Ambushers Matt Helm 1968 Rowan & Martin at the Movies Short How to Save a Marriage and Ruin Your Life David Sloane Bandolero! Dee Bishop 5 Card Stud Van Morgan 1969 The Wrecking Crew Matt Helm 1970 Airport Capt. Vernon Demerest 1971 Something Big Joe Baker 1973 Showdown Billy Massey 1975 Mr. Ricco Joe Ricco 1981 The Cannonball Run Jamie Blake 1984 Cannonball Run II Terror in the Aisles (archival footage) 2019 Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Himself / Matt Helm (archival footage from The Wrecking Crew)
Television
[edit]
Year Program Role Notes 1950–1955 The Colgate Comedy Hour Himself 28 episodes 1953–1954 The Jack Benny Program Two episodes 1956 Make Room for Daddy Episode: "Terry Has a Date" 1957 The Frank Sinatra Show Episode 7, aired November 29, 1957 1958 The Phil Silvers Show Unnamed Las Vegas Gambler Episode: "Bilko's Secret Mission" The Danny Thomas Show Himself Episode: "Terry's Crush" 1959 The Frank Sinatra Timex Show Television special 1959–1960 The Dean Martin Variety Show Two episodes 1962 The Judy Garland Show Television special 1964 Rawhide Gurd Canliss Episode: "Canliss" 1965–1974 The Dean Martin Show Himself 264 episodes
Won – Golden Globe Award for Best TV Star – Male 1966 The Lucy Show Episode: "Lucy Dates Dean Martin" 1967 Movin' with Nancy Nancy's Fairy Goduncle Television special 1970 Swing Out, Sweet Land Eli Whitney Television special 1971 The Powder Room Host Unsold pilot 1973 The Electric Company Himself Episode: "223" 1974–1984 The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast 54 episodes 1975 Lucy Gets Lucky Television film Dean's Place Television special Dean Martin's Christmas in California Television special 1976 Dean Martin's Red Hot Scandals of 1926 2-part television special 1977 Dean Martin's Christmas in California Television special 1978 Charlie's Angels Frank Howell Episode: "Angels in Vegas" Dean Martin’s Christmas in California Himself Television special 1979 The Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo Episode: "Dean Martin and the Moonshiners" Vega$ Episode: "The Usurper" Dean Martin’s Christmas in California Television special 1980 The Dean Martin Christmas Special Television special 1981 Dean Martin’s Christmas at Seaworld Television special 1982 Dean Martin at the Wild Animal Park Television special 1985 Half Nelson Six episodes
References
[edit]
Sources
[edit]
Lewis, Jerry; Kaplan, James (2005). Dean & Me (A Love Story). New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0-7679-2086-4.
Martin, Deana; Holden, Wendy (2010). Memories Are Made of This: Dean Martin Through His Daughter's Eyes. New York: Three Rivers Press. ISBN 978-1-4000-9833-0.
Martin, Ricci; Smith, Christopher (2002). That's Amore: A Son Remembers Dean Martin. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-58979-140-4.
Tosches, Nick (1992). Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams (1st ed.). New York: Delta Trade Paperbacks. ISBN 0-385-33429-X.
Further reading
[edit]
Arthur Marx. Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime (Especially Himself): The story of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, New York, NY: Hawthorn Books, 1974, ISBN 978-0-8015-2430-1
Smith, John L. The Animal in Hollywood: Anthony Fiato's Life in the Mafia. Barricade Books, New York, 1998. ISBN 1-56980-126-6
Dean Martin at the American Film Institute Catalog
Biography portal | ||||||
4334 | dbpedia | 1 | 78 | https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/martin-weiss | en | Martin Weiss | [
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Transcript
Martin Weiss:
Now there was 125 to 135 people per boxcar. You have to remember young, old... I had one uncle, he had tuberculosis. He had TB and he was in a sanitarium. They even picked him up on a stretcher and brought him in. They wouldn’t leave him behind. And shipped him to . . .
Bill Benson:
And shipped him to Auschwitz.
Martin Weiss:
Well he died just before the shipping, but the point is that they would not leave anybody behind. And it was that kind of a situation. And what happened is that—they put us on train. Again they put us on a train with 125, 135 per boxcar with these bundles. No toilet facilities, no water, no food. And for three days and nights we were on a train.
Finally we did get to Poland. And then, frankly, we got very frightened because we heard of all the things that were happening in Poland, and the reason. We saw through the crack of the door the names of the cities and we also heard the Polish language spoken outside. So people knew we were in big for trouble.
But we never heard of Auschwitz until we got there. When we got to Auschwitz, it was during the night like about twelve . . . I don’t know, sometime, it was late at night, twelve o’clock at night. Anyway, they opened the doors and there were floodlights surrounding us. And you got off the train. If you ever saw bedlam, or if you could imagine hell, that must have been it. Because everybody was trying to hold on to their children; they tried to hold on to each other. And in the meantime, people in those striped clothes that you see in the Museum, which prisoners wore, which was the first time we saw them, walking around with big sticks screaming and shouting “Schnell, schnell!” “Get out!” and “Move, move fast!” And so everybody was trying to hold on and everybody was scared out of their wits. And the floodlights, like I said, were shining in your eyes.
But in the meantime, they had guards, with their finger on the trigger, I should say, and German police dogs are surrounding us. And until this day I don’t know why because it was all enclosed in a yard with electrified fences. And nobody could run any place.
As soon as we got off, they started separating us, men from women and so on. And then we had to go through a line. Everything had to move very very fast, high speeds. And these guys with the sticks were going around and forcing that. And the Gestapo was overseeing that. And they all, whether they were nasty or not, they had to act nasty. And some were, some were just acting that way. But nevertheless, they separated the men from the women. Then we had to go through a line, and the officer would stand there and go like this, left or right. If you went to left, you went to your death. If you went to right, you went to work. And so basically this was our initiation or our first experience in Auschwitz.
And of course we never heard of the crematoriums. We never heard of anything like this. It wasn’t even in our vocabulary, it just didn’t exist. But anyway, we went through, we were picked—my father, some of my relatives, a lot of other people from my town. We went through the line. I was not that big. I was like just about 15 years old; I was actually small for my age. Turned out to be, I was the only one from the boys in my age to come through.
From about 30 to 35 boys, all of them went first to their death the first night we came to Auschwitz. And the reason I attribute it to—I put on like two or three jackets because they told us about work, so I wanted to make myself look bigger and somehow I passed. And it was just a matter of luck actually.
And so we went through the showers. Or before we went there . . . OK, we were separated and we were picked for work. And so they grouped us together and all the other people went to another side. And while we were standing there I noticed there was a little empty space between us and there was a group of people, and I noticed my mother and my two little sisters on the other side. So I said to my father, “You know, I’m going to run across this space and I’ll go with my mother because I’ll be able to get some food or something.” Because my sisters were too young to be able to do it and this way I could be of help to them.
So my father said OK, so I tried to make a dash across the space. And this man with a stick in the striped uniform comes and grabs a hold of me and says, “Go back there, you can’t go there!” Like I said, very nasty. And I came back and I complained to my father, “Could you imagine? I found out he was a prisoner. He acts like that.”
And, to make a long story short, we went through the showers, we came out on the other side, they cut all our hair off. With a grown man they even took a razor and shaved their body hair off. That’s to prevent them from having lice, they said. We came out on the other side. We also had these striped clothes; they gave us striped clothes. And they took us to the barracks. And they were big barracks, almost like they were made for horses. They had like something in the middle to tie up the horses and stuff. Anyway, they were big barracks with bunks. They put in 12 people in a bunk, believe it or not, we had to sleep there.
We came out . . . oh, next morning . . . oh no, when we got to the barracks, before we went into the barracks, dawn was coming up. All of the sudden we saw these big flames coming out from under a bunch of pine trees. But the flames were shooting up very high into the sky. And we could also smell flesh burning. And then we saw the chimneys, the big five chimneys with black smoke coming out. And all of the sudden at that time somebody found out what it was and they told us what had happened.
And so by next morning, when we saw those fires and stuff, we realized all our families were already going up in smoke by that time.
Biography
Martin “Marty” Weiss was born Meier Weiss on January 28, 1929 in Veľká Poľana, Czechoslovakia to Jacob and Golda Weiss. Jacob was a subsistence farmer and a meat distributor, and Golda managed their orthodox Jewish household and raised their nine children (Mendl, Issac, Ellen, Cilia, Moshe, Hannah, Marty, Esther, and Monica). Czechoslovakia had become an independent democracy after World War I, and the Weiss family were proud citizens of the newly-formed nation.
In 1938–1939, Nazi Germany and other countries dismantled Czechoslovakia and annexed and occupied much of its territory. Hungary took control of the southeastern part of Slovakia, where Marty and his family lived. The Hungarians implemented antisemitic laws, which were similar to the Nuremberg Race Laws and defined Jews in Hungary racially. Jews in Hungary lost their equal rights as citizens, and economic opportunities for Jews were restricted. The Hungarian regime also required Jewish men, including Marty’s two oldest brothers, Mendl and Issac, to serve in forced labor battalions. Beginning in 1941, tens of thousands of Jewish men were sent to the eastern front, where the vast majority died from dangerous and deadly conditions. Although the rights of Jews to engage in trade and own businesses were heavily restricted, Jacob managed to retain his business license. He continued to earn money by performing ritual slaughter on animals, which had been banned by the government, at night and selling the meat on the black market.
In March 1944, Nazi Germany occupied its ally Hungary and enacted even more restrictive antisemitic measures, including requiring Jews to wear the yellow star badge on their clothing. Beginning in April 1944, Germans and their Hungarian collaborators forced hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews into ghettos. The Weisses were imprisoned in the Munkács ghetto for several weeks. In the ghetto, the Hungarian guards forced the Weisses and others to move bricks by hand from one side of the factory to the other and back again. This pointless but grueling task was an act of torture and humiliation. Over a two-month period beginning in May 1944, nearly 440,000 Jews were deported from Hungary. Most were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau killing center, including Marty and most of his family who were deported to Auschwitz in May 1944. When they arrived, the transport underwent a selection process, in which a small percentage of people were selected for forced labor. Marty, his brother Moshe, his sisters Cilia and Hannah, their father Jacob, and two uncles were selected for forced labor. The Nazi-SS murdered his mother Golda and two younger sisters Esther and Monica in gas chambers, along with other extended family members.
Marty and Jacob were then transported to the Mauthausen concentration camp, where they were forced to work in the stone quarries, and then to Melk, a subcamp of Mauthausen. In Melk, the Germans forced prisoners to carve tunnels into the sides of mountains. Jacob died from exhaustion and starvation. As the Allies advanced into Germany in the spring of 1945, the Nazi-SS evacuated the Melk camp. Marty and other inmates were sent back to the main camp. Marty was then forced on a death march from Mauthausen to Gunskirchen, a Mauthausen subcamp located in a forest with extremely primitive and overcrowded conditions. He was liberated at Gunskirchen by the United States Army on May 5, 1945.
After liberation, Marty returned to Czechoslovakia. There he reunited with Cilia who was liberated by the British at Bergen-Belsen in April 1945. He learned from Cilia that their sister Hannah had died in the camps. Cilia married fellow survivor Fred Moss. He also reunited with his oldest brother, Mendl, who had survived the war in a Hungarian labor battalion. The siblings located their sister Ellen who had immigrated to the United States in 1939. Ellen helped secure United States immigration visas for Marty, Mendl, Cilia, and Fred, and they arrived in New York in July 1946. They later learned the fate of their other brothers. Issac had survived his service in the Hungarian labor battalions. Moshe had survived the camps, but died shortly after liberation under unclear circumstances. Of the eleven members of Marty’s immediate family, five survived the Holocaust.
Marty served in the United States Army during the Korean War before entering the grocery business in 1955. In 1957 he married Joan Merlis. They had two children. Marty volunteered at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum from 1998 until his death in 2023. | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 36 | https://hueylewisandthenews.com/askhuey | en | Question of the Week – Official Huey Lewis and the News Website | [
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] | null | [] | null | en | https://hueylewisandthenews.com/askhuey | Welcome to the “Ask Huey” Question of the Week page where Huey will select and answer one fan question per week to answer here on the site. Please submit your question to qow@hueylewisandthenews.com.
AUTOGRAPH REQUESTS: Due to the increased number of autograph inquiries and items being sold on the internet, we are unable to accommodate such requests at this time.
August 26, 2024
Question:
I read somewhere that you got a perfect score on your Math SAT—very impressive! Did your advanced quantitative skills ever come in handy in your rock and roll career? I would think maybe in negotiating a record deal or tallying up the earnings from a hit single? Please let me know so I can tell our high schooler that even rock stars think it’s important to pay attention in math class.
Scott
Answer:
All true, but I’m not sure how my math skills aided in my career, except to account for the revenue received, but hey, that’s important right?
August 19, 2024
Question:
I was born in 2002 and have been a huge fan for some years now. Independently, I became a huge Kenny Loggins fan and was blown away when I learned that you worked together on several occasions. Can you tell us a bit about your friendship/cooperation?
Greetings from Germany,
Linus
Answer:
As you know, Kenny is a great collaborator, and he suggested a chord progression, that I wrote melody and words to for our Fore album. Since then we’ve seen each other several times, usually at a music biz function of sorts. He’s a very nice guy, and very talented.
(*note: the song was “Forest for the Trees”)
August 12, 2024
Question:
I loved the song, “is it me.” Why was it not released as a hit?
Don Salice
Answer:
I don’t know. That was a record company decision.
August 5, 2024Question:
Have you (either alone or with the News) ever thought of recording with a female artist?
Which female artists do you prefer?
What made you decide to move out to Montana?
Baci from Italy!Phyllis Cindolo
Answer:
We cut I’M NOT IN LOVE YET with Wynona Judd.
Bonnie Raitt, Susan Tedesco, and many more.
More cheese, less rats.
July 29, 2024
Question:
I just watched the Da Bois Podcast interview with you from last December. The podcaster hit on something that I have noticed for quite some time. Your music is all upbeat, positive, and happy, which is a large part of the reason why I love listening to HLN and watching your videos. Was this a conscious decision by you and the band, or is it just a natural outcome of the types of music that you love?
Janet
Answer:
The latter. Interestingly, the happiest music comes from the people who have little. Blues music is meant to help us lose The Blues … to celebrate in the face of adversity. And, that’s just the music I’ve always gravitated to.
July 22, 2022
Question:
All your albums are absolutely great but some have been recognized for their greatness more than others, obviously like Sports and Fore. I happen to think the Plan B is a great album that doesn’t get talked about enough. What album do you feel doesn’t get the love it deserves?
Todd B
Answer:
Our latest, WEATHER. I really think it’s our best work.
July 15, 2024
Question:
What are your five favorite records of all time? The ones you would take with you to a desert island.
Marco Galvagni – Rovereto, Italy
Answer:
Live at the Sands (Frank Sinatra with Count Basie)
Satch plays Fats (Louis Armstrong plays the music of Fats Waller)
Ella Fitzgerald, the Early Years (with Chick Web)
The Best of Little Walter
The Real Folk Blues Sonny Boy Williamson
But, if you ask me again, I’d probably change my mind.
July 8, 2024
Question:
I know former newsman Mario once said in an interview he auditioned for Foreigner before you guys formed. Did you or any other News members audition for other known bands as well?
Eric Senise
Answer:
I auditioned for Manfred Mann, in 1977, and a couple college bands before that. I’m pretty sure the other guys have auditioned for others. Johnny was with Sly Stone for a few years.
July 1, 2024
Question:
You enjoy both flyfishing and reading. I’m wondering if you have read Norman Maclean’s “A River Runs Through It” about fly fishing, along with two short stories in the same volume. All three stories are set in your neck of the woods.
Best regards,
Janet R.
Answer:
Of course, and I recommend them to everyone. Thanks for mentioning them.
June 24, 2024
Question:
What was the first song that you sang that you heard on the radio, and where were you when it came on? Were you elated and did your heart rate increase?
John Melvin Parnell
Answer:
We all gathered at my house in Marin for a listening when KFRC added our record and then announce that they were going to play it that afternoon. It was surreal to hear it. I remember it almost sounded like someone else (I attribute that to the compression those powerful top forty stations used), and it sounded like a hit!
June 17, 2024
Question:
Which song have you felt most emotionally attached to, and the reason behind that particular song?
Maria Campbell – Healesville, Vic, Australia
Answer:
Maybe “Walkin’ with the Kid” cause I wrote it about my son, but also Power of Love for the same reason.
June 10, 2024
Question:
Did you ever think your “Cruising” duet with Gwyneth Paltrow would turn out so good? And who would you have liked to have done a duet with? I’m a DJ on a local radio station in the UK and I play at least one of your tracks every day.
John Bailey
Answer:
Good question, and no, I didn’t. But, having said that, the record was produced by Larry Klein, and he’s very talented and gets a lot of the credit for a very modern arrangement.
June 3, 2024
Question:
I recently found an old copy of Videowest featuring a version of “Sooner or Later” that is different than the album mix (btw, this was my first intro to HLN!). Was there something about that mix (and the video) you didn’t like resulting in an audio and video re-recording for the first album?
Greg Argendeli
Answer:
Wow. That’s very interesting. We’d love to see that or maybe get a copy. That would have to be our demo which we rerecorded for our first album. We’d love to hear that. Maybe Michelle can communicate with Nina?
* note: Original demo version of “Sooner or Later” (later titled “Some Of My Lies Are True (Sooner or Later)” was used for the first version of Videowest’s video (filmed at Ocean Beach, San Francisco) and can be seen here.
May 27, 2024
Question:
Being a Marin brat myself, I often wonder whatever came of Uncle Charlie’s and the woman (Jeanie?) who pulled the levers? Shortly after I graduated from college, I was hired to work the front door. You and a smattering of band members would frequent the establishment. I’d be honored for you to share a couple memories of what Uncle Charlie’s meant to you (and the band?)
Mark B.
Answer:
Good question. I think I heard Jeannie and her husband moved to Florida, or maybe just southern Cal. Uncle Charlie’s was our workshop, and I remember it fondly even though there wasn’t much there. We wrote a lot of our songs and debuted them there.
May 20, 2024
Question:
Is there a particular song that you loved that didn’t do as well in the charts as you thought it would?
Kathy Schwabenlender – Charlotte, NC
Answer
“But It’s Alright” from our album “4Chords and Several Years Ago” showed great early promise but sputtered when the record company collapsed and everyone got fired.
May 13, 2023
Question:
I recently revisited your complete discography with The News and not too long after, watched the film “American Psycho” for the first time in several years. When I paid more close attention to Patrick Bateman’s monologue about the band’s career, it appeared to me to be an accurate take on your music. Would you agree with that assessment and what are your feelings on being represented in such an iconic film and book? Thank you ever so much.
Nicholas Malfitano – Philadelphia, PA
Answer:
Yeah, he clearly had listened more than a little. But what he couldnt have known is that our best album would be our latest “Weather”!!!
May 6, 2024
Question:
How was it working with Roger Daltrey and Niko Mastorakis in .com for Murder? And how did you come across that role for the film?
Harry Acton
Answer:
I never saw them. I did that as a favor.
April 29, 2024
Question:
I love the video, “If This Is It” and I love how the guys allowed themselves to be buried in the sand, which I’m sure was miserable for them after while. How long were the guys buried in the sand for the shoot of that sequence, and did they beg to get dug up? Is there a funny story behind this?
Liz Landes
Johnny: As I’m sure Sean and Bill will attest, the heat and sand wasn’t so bad (we were actually in a pit, not buried!) but the black flies and sand gnats were intolerable!!!!! The moment we finished a take, a whole crew would charge in with towels and fans, smith the sand, and charge back out for another take. How many takes? I must have blocked that part out!!!
Bill: I recall it was pretty toasty. We sat on wooden boxes in a big hole dug in the sand, with plywood covering the hole and cutouts around our necks.
I remember it being hot, and between every take the makeup folks had to come in and blot the sweat away and fix some of the guy’s makeup. Not really any funny stories about it , but the finished video was proof positive that the gag worked!
April 22, 2024
Question:
I grew up in San Francisco during the 80s. My dad (who lived in Sausalito during the 70s) would often tell me you can be found having drinks at The 2AM Club, Mill Valley. I’ve never been to The 2AM Club and don’t know if he was being funny or being serious. I wanted to ask… were you a regular at The 2AM Club?
Tyler
Answer:
I’ve been there enough over the years to be thought of as a regular, but in truth we also hung out at a bar across the street called The Brothers.
April 15, 2024
Question:
I saw Clover at the Hammersmith Odeon. You were the support band. But for which headliner?
PS. I also saw you there with the News & I sneaked in my camera. I have some great pics of you taken from the balcony.
Alan
Answer:
ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL
April 8, 2024
Question:
I’ve always wondered. Was Mario’s mister cool and chilled image with the cigarette always hanging out of his mouth the genuine man or was it a caricature?
Surely no one can be that hip!
Jeremy
Answer:
Ha ha. You’ll never know, and that’s the beauty of it right? That’s up to Mario. I’m not sure myself.. but, Mario was always very hip.
April 1, 2024
Question:
I’m a 42 year old lifelong fan and music fanatic in general and I still prefer listening to entire albums/LPs when I consume music much of the time. I’m woefully undereducated when it comes to blues, but recently checked out James Cotton after hearing your drop his name in a podcast and was blown away. Can you recommend some albums in that vein (or any other you think should be mentioned) for me to start down the rabbit hole?
Thanks and best wishes, Andrew Jenco
Answer:
Sure. Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, and Big Walter Horton are the big 3 for me. All harmonica players like James Cotton who was mentored by Sonny Boy.
March 25, 2024
Question:
I’m going to see Tower Of Power live this summer! What’s your favorite song or memory with them?
Janelle
Answer:
So many great memories … London, Paris, Oakland Coliseum 4 nights etc.
Also, hard to pick one song. I’ve always loved THIS TIME ITS REAL.
March 18, 2024
Question:
During one of your concerts you mentioned we would hear from your roommate, Billy Gibson – did you always room with Billy when you were on the road? Or, did you fellows change it up & room with someone different every time you were on tour? Ok, tell the truth, did Billy snore?
Kim
Atlanta, Ga
Answer:
Yes, Billy and I always roomed together, and he never snored, or at least I never heard him!
March 11, 2024
Question:
Did you guys ever cover a Christmas song like some artists do?
Tom
Answer:
We recorded an accapela version of Winter Wonderland, and sent a Xmas cassette to some of our newsliner fans years ago, but that’s the only Xmas song we ever recorded. Thought about doing a Xmas album, but couldn’t find a way to make it special.
March 4, 2024
Question:
Along the lines of the “They All Come to Suzie” question, what about “Running with the Crowd” also from 1980? The sax solo’s great, and it sounds very much like Huey Lewis and the News. Was that your song? Could it/should it have gone on an album, in hindsight?
Cheers from London, Matt
Answer:
Yes, it was our song, and perhaps should have been on an album. I’m not sure why we never released it.
February 26, 2024
Question:
Just watched the Netfix Documentary you posted on your site “The Greatest Night in Pop”. I have 2 questions on it. Your band was the only full band that was there, did you make that happen, or were The News the only full band to get an invite? And was your line done in only 2 takes as it was shown? That looked like a brutal recording session!
Eric Senise
Answer:
Actually the Jacksons were also there (Jackson 5), but our manager Bob Brown convinced them to do that.
February 19, 2024
Question:
I have been a huge fan for many years and saw you in concert in Grand Rapids, Mi. I recently purchased an album by Southern Pacific and you play harmonica on a couple of songs. That was during your peak years with the News. How did you find time to do that and how did that come about?
Jim Leonardo
Answer:
John McFee, who was a founding member of South Pacific asked me. He was a fellow band member in Clover before that, and was instrumental in helping me get in the business to begin with.
February 12, 2024
Question:
I just finished watching the Greatest Night in Pop on Netflix. I noticed everybody at one point getting each other’s autographs on the sheet music. Did you get one? Do you still have it? What an incredible experience. Would you say that was one of the best / most thrilling nights of your life?
Michelle
Answer:
Yes, I have a script, but only got a couple autographs. Was too intimidated. Definitely one of the most thrilling nights of my life, yes.
Question:
Who would you say were you most intimidated by?
Answer:
Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder.
February 5, 2024
QuestionDo you remember back about or around 1979 in Hawaii (Honolulu) being out on a raft all day and meeting some guy. We talked all day and you invited to meet you in the lobby. We took the bus to the concert. I had a great time. Do you remember this at all.
Jeff
Answer:
Unfortunately, no. But, then, I don’t remember much about yesterday. I’m sure it happened.
January 29, 2024
Question:
Your music is the soundtrack of my life. My daddy was in the navy and he’d go away on deployment but when he would come back we got to listen to Huey tapes again. We’d sit in our Astro van, in the San Francisco Traffic, and make my dad start Heart of Rock N Roll and we would giggle hysterically when the music finally really hit after the crescendo of the heart beat. I was five years old. My dad is six months older than you, and you both helped raise me in your own ways. Im a singer and public school music teacher now. Thank you for the memories.
My question: What is a specific song that brings back that special type of memory for you?
Sam
Answer:
Cool story. Thanks for your kind words. Early James Taylor songs like “Fire and Rain” bring back big memories for me, as do a couple big band jazz standards my father used to love, like “Alright, Ok, You Win” from Count Basie
January 22, 2024
Question:
I have noticed that Weird Al Yankovic did a parody of “I Want A New Drug” being “I Want A New Duck.” I personally find it funny, but I’m curious if you were ever hesitant to allow it. And what your opinion is on the song?Jacob
Answer:
I also thought it was funny.
January 15, 2024
Question:
I saw many of your shows. Amazing fun! One of my favorites was at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park when you guys were touring incognito as “The Sports Section.” Whose idea was this and how did you get everyone to agree to it? Brilliant.
Jim Alexander
Answer:
The idea was to road test some new songs in a small venue before we recorded them. It was also fun playing such an iconic venue.
January 8, 2024
Question:
I’m going to see Tower Of Power live this summer! What’s your favorite song or memory with them?
Janelle Tubbs
Answer:
Tough question. There are so many. I’m going to go with “This Time It’s Real” as my favorite song. There are too many good memories to mention. We worked with the horn section for more than 2 years. Touring Europe was especially great. Enjoy their show … they still sound great.
January 2, 2024
Question:
First off … huge fan … still have my Sony cassette with Auto Reverse that I repeatedly played Sports on! I wanna know what harmonica you played. I know it was a Dannecker …. But 10 or 12 hole? The 12 hole is for Jazz … so I could see you going that way as well as the 10 hole for blues , rock , country, and folk. Think you did the 10 hole. Trying to get my hands on a Dannecker … not much luck … lol.
Gary Carroll
Answer:
10 hole diatonic Dannecker. I played chromatic harp on a couple things, but the diatonic harp is much more expressive, and the beauty of it is the ability to “bend” notes.
December 18, 2023
Question:
What did you think when Weird Al asked to do a parody of I Want a New Drug?
Michael Gross
Answer:
I was flattered.
December 11, 2023
Question:
One of my favourite HLN albums is “Four Chords And Several Years Ago”, as I love your interpretation of those classics (and got introduced to some songs I didn’t know before). I remember there was also a video released, and I was wondering if that might see a re-release on DVD (at least). I missed out on that tape, though I do have all your albums. Kind regards and all the best from Germany.
Juern
Answer:
Yes, that was a video of a live performance at the Public Broadcasting Service in Chicago. I believe we own that video, and I will now endeavor to find where you may be able to see it.
December 4, 2023
Question:
I was recently introduced to the music of Little Feat through my husband and became a fan myself. After seeing them live last year, they reminded me so much of your shows. (I’m a sucker for a good horn section.) Other than both bands using the Tower of Power horns in the past, is there any other connection?
Marcie – Las Vegas, NV
Answer:
I’m flattered by the comparison. They are one of my favorite bands. We worked together a few times and got to know them a little … great guys, and great players.
November 27, 2023
Question:
Are there any albums you would go back and change or do something different for them?
Sarah
Answer:
Yes. All of them! Mostly just little things, but when making a record, you never really finish, you just run out of time!
November 20, 2023
Question:
Hello, I’ve been a huge fan of yours since the mid-eighties and never tire of listening to the entire back catalogue of your music. I was wondering if you could explain the reasoning for not including ‘They all come to Suzie’ on any of your albums? I personally think it’s a banger of a song, and it’s one of my long term favourites of yours.
Scott Webster
Answer:
It was a mistake … should have put it on one of our records.
November 13, 2023
Question:
My husband and I recently had the pleasure of sharing a Scottish breakfast with Warner E Hodges. I was wearing a Huey Lewis and the News t-shirt, which he complimented. He told us you’d given him the best piece of career advice he’d ever been given……..his band had supported you at a very early stage of their career and he said their set one night ‘truly sucked!’ He was gutted, but you came to see him and told him sometimes you’re shit, but keep going because the next time you won’t be!! So my question for you is this…What’s the best advice you’ve been given in your career, and who gave it to you?
Trish – Northern Ireland
Answer:
Elvis Costello’s manager, Jake Riviera, articulated a strategy for how to deal with record companies; “Infiltrate, and then double cross”. It’s a funny line, but the upshot is, listen to everyone, but trust your own instincts finally.
November 6, 2023
Question:
I’m a 42 year old lifelong fan and music fanatic in general and I still prefer listening to entire albums/LPs when I consume music much of the time. I’m woefully under-educated when it comes to blues, but recently checked out James Cotton after hearing your drop his name in a podcast and was blown away. Can you recommend some albums in that vein (or any other you think should be mentioned) for me to start down the rabbit hole?
Thanks and best wishes, Andrew Jenco
Answer:
Sure. Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson and Big Walter Horton invented blues harmonica (Cotton learned originally from Sonny Boy) and all their records are good. James Cotton, Junior Wells, Paul Butterfield, Charlie Musselwhite are probably the best known 2nd generation harp players, and there are a number of modern guys who are great … and that’s just harmonica players. Enjoy.
October 30, 2023
Question:
I’ve enjoyed building up my HLN vinyl record collection and now have most of the albums. I only can’t seem to find Plan B though. Was it ever released as a vinyl?
Thank you
Suraj Maraj
Answer:
I have no idea, but I think so … Universal Music?
October 16, 2023
Question:
Did you ever consider making a double LP? And if so, do you think it would have been a concept album? “Small World” is slightly something like that, as most of the songs are touching a “living together, at best in harmony” topic.
Niklas Nowak
Answer:
Not really. Ten original tunes is enough of a challenge.
October 9, 2023
Question:
When you were in Europe playing your harmonica, how many different countries did you travel to, and were you stuck eating rubbish food?.
Scott Fowkes
Answer:
All the countries of Western Europe. The food was excellent.
October 2, 2023
Question:
Some of my favorite tracks were on Time Flies. Will you ever release digital version of 100 Years from Now, Til the Day after and When the Time has Come?
Glen
Answer:
I agree. And, I love some of that. I wasn’t aware that digital versions weren’t available. I’ll try to check. Thanks.
September 18, 2023
Question:
Have you ever been to Graceland? If so, what’d you think? Are you an Elvis fan?
Janis Rudolph – New Milford, NJ
Answer:
Yes. I thought it was a little weird, although I am a huge Elvis fan.
September 11, 2023
Question:
I have always loved your music. What song did you do a video that had a scene in a weight room? My brother was in the scene and I would love to show it to his nieces and nephews, my children, but I cannot remember which song/video it was. I would greatly appreciate you answering my question.
Anonymous
Hey, Anonymous … I have no ideas.
(note: I believe the video you are referring to is “Couple Days Off.” – Michelle)
September 4, 2023
Question:
Hi there. I’m obsessed – none of us can remember who was the headliner at Oakland Coliseum, late 70s, when Huey & American Express opened. We were blown away. Enough that we’re not sure who you opened for. Bob Seger? Doobies? Boston?
Cheerio, and thanks.
Anne
Answer:
Never played Oakland Coliseum in the 70’s that I can recall. We spend for Kenny Loggins at the Greek Theater in the late 70’s.
August 28, 2023
Question:
A question from a Scottish fan.
I saw you & the band at a gig in Glasgow, Scotland many years ago. Fab!
I know you’ve also been to Scotland in your youth/younger days.
Have you ever been called “Shug” or “Shuggie”? This is quite a common derivation of “Hugh” here.
June
Answer:
Absolutely. All the guys in Thin Lizzy called me “wee Shug”, or “wee shuggie.”
August 21, 2023
Question:
I was born in 1974 and I have been a HUGE fan since Sports. Needless to say, when Back to the Future came out, it was instantly my favorite movie and I have held both the movie and the band closely as my favorites of all-time. My question to you is, what is your favorite movie and band? Thanks for being there my whole life when I need a pickup.
Don Warling
SFC, US Army Retired
Answer:
Impossible question cause I like so many, but I loved “The Last Picture Show”, “Wag the Dog”, and a small independent film called “Into the West”, and so many others. As for bands; Tower of Power, Little Feat, Tedeshci Trucks Band, Neville Brothers and others.
August 14, 2023
Question:
I’m a huge fan of Reba. Loved the video for “Is there life out there.” What was it like working with her?
Diana Hudson
She was terrific. During the breaks, we sang, and I played harmonica … had a ball.
July 31, 2023
Question:
Perfect World video…Just curious where that video was filmed. Looks like the landfill in Granda Hills area.
Anonymous
Answer:
Landfill in Novato, California, the owner of which lived across the street from our manager. I love that video.
July 24, 2023
Question:
One of my all time favourite news tracks is “It Hit Me Like A Hammer.” That song was co-written with Mutt Lange and I’ve always been curious, is that an idea/hook you had been working on for a while and you took to him for help finishing or did Mutt Lange bring the idea to you? While the song was a solid hit, hitting Top 25 on the Hot 100 and Top Ten on A/C, I honestly think had it come out in ‘89 instead of ‘91, it would have been another monster hit for you guys. Such a perfect catchy summer tune and is quite possibly the most underrated single from the whole News catalogue.
Alex
Answer:
The song was all Mutt. I think I rewrote some of the lyrics.
July 17, 2023
Question:
I have always enjoyed the songs where the 49ers were singing backup vocals. What is the story behind that? Did the 49ers approach you, or did you reach out to them? In addition to “I Know What I Like” and “Hip to be Square” – were any other tracks considered?
Bret Ellsworth – Saratoga Springs, Utah
Answer:
We met Joe and Dwight at a Bay Area Music award show, and Joe jokingly offered to let me take some “snaps” if I would let them sing on a song. We took him up on it, although I never got the snaps.
July 10, 2023
Question:
What was the most fun video you guys ever did?
Ray Begin
Answer:
Probably, Stuck with You cause we had 4 days in the Bahamas, but we had a lot of laughs doing “Heart and Soul”.
July 3, 2023
Question:
I remember the Sports album having the same popularity of a “Frampton Comes Alive” with what seemed like everyone had a copy of it. “If This Is It” is my all-time favorite HLN song.
When the album was finished and ready to be released, did you and the band have an inkling of the success it would have?
Johnnie Parnell
Answer:
No idea. Although record promoter and soon to be Michael Jackson’s manager, Frank DeLeo told me at a listening party we had in New York; “Don’t worry … you’re gonna be ok”.
June 26, 2023
Question:
What was your take on 1980s MTV? Did you watch any of it back then? Did the band create your music videos with MTV in mind? Do you think MTV contributed to your band’s success?
Peter Skiera
Answer:
MTV was huge in the early 80’s. Of course we all had to suddenly make videos for the singles. We tried to have fun, be funny, and avoid a literal translation of the song … to, sort of, stay out of the tune’s way, if you know what I mean. And, yes, MTV was important to our success. I like to think that we’d have done well anyway, but MTV certainly helped break us.
June 19, 2023
Question:
The video of Perfect World is very unique as there very few bands shooting a video in a garbage dump except Kiss’ “Lick it Up” and The Police “Synchronicity II”. Where did the concept come from? It is a shame that Small World was not better received. I think by this point, your fans were with you regardless.
Roger Zeidman
Answer:
I confess the idea was mine. I still think it’s one of our best videos, and I agree that it’s a shame Small World wasn’t better received. Stan Getz’s solo on Small World still makes my hair stand on end.
June 12, 2023
Question:
Working with Thin Lizzy, what was one of your favourite memories of working with Phil and the lads?
Richard
Answer:
I have so many great memories of Phil. I think my favorite ones are from the studios in Compass Point in Nassau, and the Record Plant in Sausalito where we endeavored to cut new songs with him just before he passed. He was a mentor to me, and I learned everything I know about being a “rock star” from him.
June 5, 2023
Question:
“Change of Heart” is a special song to me, as it in my opinion, illustrates what was about to come for you and your band: It’s rocky and powerful, yet it’s also catchy and revolves around the topic of love, which is so essential in the bulk of your songs. Do you remember how the song and the lyrics emerged?
Niklas Nowak
Chris and I wrote that song together. I think he had the progression, I wrote the lyric and we collaborated on the melody. I really like that song also. We opened our live show with that tune for a long time.
May 29, 2023
Question:
I love how you were an early advocate for Stevie Ray Vaughan’s enormous talent. Is there any footage (audio or video) of him playing “Bad is Bad” with HLN on that tour that might see the light of day?
Shawn Streifel
Answer:
I don’t know, but I’m thinking there must be somewhere although that was a little before sophisticated cell phones.
May 22, 2023
Question:
Did you ever sing “Fooled Around and Fell in Love” by Elvin Bishop? To me, the song has a HL&TN vibe.
Thanks,
John Parnell
Answer:
No, but I agree that it has an R&B vibe like many of our songs. Micky Thomas sang that song well. He’s a really good guy.
May 15, 2023
Question:
I’ve heard you say in a few interviews that at some point before you released your first record, the record label wanted you to replace your drummer (Bill Gibson). Why did they want to replace Bill? After all, Bill is a really good drummer and a good guy so I don’t get it.
Mike Karwisch
Answer:
I didn’t get it either. Bill is as good as they come.
May 8, 2023
Question:
Nick Faldo said on the Dan Patrick show that he would be fly fishing with you. Who are the other celebrities that you have gone fly fishing with?
John Stimson, California
Answer:
Jimmy Kimmel, Kevin Costner, Joe Montana
May 1, 2023
Question:
I’m a 19 year old guy from Chico planning on moving to San Francisco for school and you seem pretty knowledgeable about the city. Are there any good spots you liked to hang out at when you were my age?
Ryan Stanley
Answer:
Yes, but they‘ve all changed in the last 53 years! You’ll find plenty of good food, music, and entertainment. San Francisco is still a good town.
April 24, 2023
Question:
Hi Huey, here a long time fan from Argentina. In the early 80’s we lived during a military dictatorship. Like any totalitarian regime, they applied censorship and modified some song titles, softening them. When Sports arrived, I want a new drug was printed on LPs and Cassettes as I want a new drug (called love), a line that is neither in the song nor in the title of the American edition. I saw it happen in other countries as well. What did you think of this modification and did you participate in the decision or was it entirely up to the companies?
Jorge Drot de Gourville
Answer:
Actually, CBS did the same thing in America on the single. (I Want A New Drug (called love)
April 10, 2023
Question:
Huey, on your famous sunglasses that were in your iconic videos and a multitude of promo shots and posters, what brand were they? They don’t look like Ray Bans. I know you lost a pair on the boat filming I Want A New Drug video!
Eric S.
Answer:
Vuarnet
April 3, 2023
Question:
Forest for the Trees is one of my favorite deep cuts from the studio albums of the 80s/90s. I’ve always wanted to know the background on this tune and what the intention was with it. It’s too good to be “filler” but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t a single. Can you give some background on the genesis of this tune and what you remember about recording it?
Chris Jones
Answer:
“Forest” was written by Kenny Loggins and myself. The lyric was inspired by a letter I received from a confused young fan who contemplating his demise, but, was dissuaded and helped by our music.
March 27, 2023
Question:
I heard that you were going to do a solo album in the early 90s but the project was scrapped. Any reason why? I know some songs like “100 Years From Now” and the first release of “So Little Kindness” were written for the album but were there any more songs that were never released?
Ricky
Answer:
The truth is, no one was really knocked out by the results. Most of the songs were written by Chris Hayes and myself, and attempted to show some more serious and sophisticated material, and people don’t expect that from me. That said, we have used 3 or 4 of the ideas from that record and rewritten some.
March 20, 2023
Question:
I’m a Canadian fan in New Brunswick, over on the east coast. In high school we used to have lip synch “shows” where students would impersonate their favorite (then ‘80s) group in the auditorium, a theatre-style setting. That’s one of my great memories and your group was among those portrayed (Walking on a Thin Line). My question is about your great vocals, I wondered if you ever had lessons or is it natural ability, when you belt out those big powerful notes like in “Sometimes, bad is bad” and “Hip to be square”? Take care Huey.
Jeff Kelly
Answer:
Thanks for your kind words, Jeff. It’s all just natural with me. I did go to a vocal coach early in my time with Clover (we all did), but I only attended one session.
March 13, 2023
Question:
Huey, your father encouraged you to take a year off before starting college to do some traveling. You found your way and passion thru your travels playing the harmonica. Do you think you would’ve found your path as a serious musician if you went straight to college?
Ellen Lang
Answer:
I suspect not. Of course we’ll never know, but the year off was a enlightening, and showed me a new path.
March 6, 2023
Question:
What impact did Bill Schnee have on the band and can you share a behind the scenes story involving Schnee’s work with the News?
David Marks
Answer:
Bill produced our first album, and helped produce Hard at Play. He was introduced to us by our manager Bob Brown who had employed him to produce Pablo Cruise. Unfortunately we never enjoyed much success together although we remain good friends.
February 27, 2023
Question:
One of my favorite shows was Hot In Cleveland. You were a highlight in the series. How was it playing your character, Johnny Revere, and working with the great ladies, Wendie Malick, Betty White, Valerie Bertinelli and Jane Leeves?
Regards and best wishes, Alba
Answer:
It was really fun. They are all great ladies, and the show was very well written. I got to act in the very last episode (a double episode), and had a dressing room next to Bob Newhart. Got to act and hang out with Bob and Betty White for 2 weeks.
February 20, 2023
Question:
Hello. I like the production on your albums (for instance, the rhythm guitar sounds on Picture This) and admire that you produced so many of them. Did any of you have specific production influences or favorite producers, whether they were producing themselves or others? And do you have an opinion of the trend in the Eighties of engineers increasingly becoming producers (at least in certain genres)?
Jeff Falk
Answer:
We were more a fan of certain records, rather than the producers, but certainly recognized great producers. I worked with Mutt Lange in my previous band (Clover), and he might be the most successful producer of the last 30 years. I learned a lot from him, and we’re still friends today.
The trend of engineers becoming producers makes sense when you consider the technological advances and who is most apt to take advantage of them. Today pro-toolers are the most important and most in demand.
February 13, 2023Question:
I am a longtime fan and have seen you several times in concert. There is nothing better than seeing you and The News perform your music live. I have had the opportunity to meet you once and I cannot begin to tell you the positive impact that you have had in the most difficult times in my life. Thank you for that. How did the advancements in technology change your approach to writing music over the years if at all? Did you approach your debut album differently than you did your latest release Weather?
Keith Tozlian
Answer:
Yes. Our debut album was simply “captured” in the studio. Our Sports album was cut with more technology (some drum machine and synthesizers), as was Weather.
February 6, 2023
Question:
I read where you describe music as sounding like a “cacaphony” in your head now. My question is: Does that apply only to music where there are several instruments playing at once and, if so, could you still sing those wonderful multi-part harmonies acapella?
Donnita
Answer:
I can sing by myself, but I can’t hear pitch well enough to sing TO anything. So, no, I couldn’t sing with the boys acapella.
January 30, 2023
Question:
Huey, do/did you know anyone from Van Halen personally?
Greg – New Fairfield, CT
Answer:
No, but I opened for them in my previous band (Clover), and of course, I admired them a lot.
January 23, 2023Question:
Hey Huey! I’m a 15yo boy that for some odd reason loves your era of music. What music did you enjoy as a youngster?Archie, NSW Australia
Answer:
I was an R&B snob until I joined my first college band and had to play more commercial stuff. That taught me that although I preferred to listen to certain types of music (R&B), all music was fun to play!
January 16, 2023
Question:
In your song, “Thank You #19,” you make reference to a song by Marvin Gaye. What specific song are you referencing. Oh, and by the way, what a GREAT song! My boyfriend played it for me and, well, I melted!
Shanna Smith
Answer:
No specific song … I referenced his live album called “Thanks.”
January 9, 2023 Question: Hi! I’m 24 years old, you are one of my favorite artists. I’m finding this age at this time to be so strange. What was being 24 like for you? If you could talk to younger Huey, is there anything you would tell him? Have your priorities changed over time with perspective? Margaux
Answer:
Great question. At 24, I was playing music 6 nights a week in clubs. I was laser focused on trying to make a living playing music. If I could have told a young Huey anything, it would be to relax and enjoy the journey because it work out.
January 2, 2023 Question: So I always wondered which music video was your favorite to film. Kristen Helkowski
Answer:
Probably the 2 we did before we got signed to a record contract. That would be “Some of MyLies are True”, and “Don’t Ever Tell Me That You Love Me”. Also 2 of my favorite songs.
December 19, 2022
Question: Hi Huey, l saw you played harmonica and backing vocals on Jimmy Barnes’ song ‘l wanna get started with you’. How did you happen to play on that one song?
Charles Coates
Answer:
He asked me. I met him in Australia when we toured there. Great guy.
December 12, 2022
Question:
I understand that you had to change the name of your band from Huey Lewis and the American Express to Huey Lewis and the News. My question though is why the News? What does the News have to do with anything that you’re doing?
Allen Martin
Answer:
In order to confuse people as to why we were called The News?
December 5, 2022
Question:
Does anyone in your camp still have access to the recordings of “Heart of Rock and Roll” where you give a shout out to other cities? Specifically I’d love to hear the St. Louis one.
Mike Sieli
Answer:
We don’t, and never have. The record label (Chrysalis, then) would, but who knows where they’d be, and, since they are analog, even if they would play without being baked or treated someway. I suspect that there’s some 2-tracks of them somewhere in the Universal Music Vault.
November 28, 2022
Question:
Is that you playing an uncredited role in Rock n’ Roll High School (as well as “Who Cares” appearing in the film)? How did you get connected with the Ramones and how was that final scene with the concert/ explosion? Mike S.
Answer:
Unfortunately, I think you have me mixed up with someone else. I would have welcomed the opportunity.
November 21, 2022
Question:
You were my first concert in NJ when I was five at the PNC Arts Center and am still thankful you played before Chicago, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stay up so late back then. Is there a genre of music that you like to listen to that most people wouldn’t have guessed? How about any up-and-coming artists that interest you? Brandon Lutz
Answer:
Unfortunately, I can’t hear music anymore. Since I lost my hearing 4 1/2 years ago, I can’t enjoy music. It’s cacophony. But, I used to love to listen to jazz. Straight ahead jazz. From Old Big Band, to Bop.
November 14, 2022
Question:
Love the emotion of the song “Tell Me a Little Lie.” Was it based on a real relationship/break up?
Sal Montalbano
Answer:
Uh … no … made it all up, I’m afraid. But, I have felt that way, so I guess there’s that.
November 7, 2022
Question:
Duets was such a cool movie, think you might act again? Would love to see you on the big screen. Will never forget seeing you at the mid-state fair in the 80s; small venue, fantastic music!
Helen Bowers
Answer:
Only if they ask me! Seriously, I find acting very rewarding if the material is good. Duh.
October 31, 2022
Question:
Just read Dave Grohl’s book and he mentioned a time when you hung out with him in Japan and you played a toy harmonica with the Foo Fighters. Can you elaborate on that that night? How fun was that for you?
Chris, Nashville, TN
Answer:
It was a really fun night. We were already fans, but to get to know them a little was a treat. We all wentout to dinner together after the show. Dave Grohl is a huge talent who wears it exceptionally well.
October 24, 2022
Question:
I’ve been a fan forever ! It was awesome to catch you fishing on tv. I’ve been a fisherman in Florida for 30 plus years and love to sight fish. What’s your favorite fish to fish for and type of fishing? Jason – Ormond Beach, FL
Answer:
I love to fly fish for trout, Bonefish, Tarpon, Permit, Snook and Redfish. I grew up fishing for trout, so I suppose that might be my favorite, but I love salt water fishing as well, and am looking forward to doing a lot more.
October 17, 2022
Question: How did you get into acting? Growing up did you imagine acting in your future?
Lisa Hoogervorst – Phoenix, AZ
Answer:
No. I met an agent who was a fan and told me he thought I’d be a great actor. He got me my first role in “Shortcuts” the Robert Altman picture. Working with Altman was like acting school.
October 10, 2022
Question:
Huey, Bill, and co.,
I’m a writer and author near Washington, DC, and am working on a major biography about Creedence Clearwater Revival to be published by Hachette Books next year. In my interviews with the band, I was told that they used to play football with Clover in SF in 1972–and that Huey broke his collarbone in one of these games. Can someone confirm this detail? It’d be a good one to include if it’s accurate. Thank you!
John Lingan
Answer:
All true. I was trying to cover Doug Clifford on a pass play.
October 3, 2022
Question:
What is your favorite leisure activity ie. Golf, Fishing, Hunting, Hiking, Horseback riding, Travel or ?
Curious in Kiawah
Answer:Fly Fishing, Golf, Horseback riding.
September 26 2022 Question:
What’s your favorite acting role or acting moment? Did you ever plan to go into acting, or did it sort of happen unexpectedly because of Back to the Future?
Lisa Hoogervorst – Phoenix
Answer:
Unfortunately, my favorite acting moments ended up on the cutting floor. Gwenyth Paltrow and I had 4 or 5 scenes cut from the film “Duets” because it was too long, and 2 of them were my favorite.
September 19, 2022 Question:
Hey Huey, I’ll tread lightly here with this question. You said you didn’t want to do music for Ghostbusters and you didn’t. What was it about Back to the Future that you liked enough to provide two songs for?
Sam Bennett
Answer:
It was all about timing. The Ghostbuster song was proposed right in the middle of our Sports album’s long run. We were busy on the road, and they wanted the song to be called “Ghostbusters” which I wasn’t fond of. BTTF wanted any original song with no parameters, and the timing was perfect for us. It was between albums, and bought us some time to write.
September 12, 2022Question:
Jumping off of the drum riser platform at the start and having the Tower Of Power Horns made it even more exciting! You also created a version of the song with Garth Brooks. Is there anyone else you’d like to collaborate with on this song or any other?
Matt Zeugin – Valley Springs, CA
Answer:
Well, it’s a mute point now that I’ve lost my hearing. But I’m a big fan of George Strait, and I have a couple countryish songs that I’d love to hear him sing.
September 5, 2022
Question:
Relatively new fan here aged 24, And I just can’t stop sharing your music with Friends and Family right now, So much so that I have just bought a Harmonica and am about to begin ‘THAT’ journey for myself…Just hoping for a few pointers or suggestions if possible as to how best get a start in playing the Harp – I have gone for the Standard C Diatonic and would love to know a few things from your good-self as to how best approach starting.
Cheers, Sam Willis
Answer:
Congratulations …. You’ll never be a loner now! Honestly, I’d suggest taking a few lessons to get started, and listen to Little Walter, Sonny Boy Williamson, Big Walter Horton, and Charlie McCoy.
August 29, 2022
Question:
After the smash success of Sports, I was mind blown with Fore back in the day. Outside of the rock numbers, “Whole Lotta Lovin’” and “Naturally” remain personal faves. 😉 Will Fore ever be given the deluxe remaster treatment like Sports was, and would there be any unreleased tracks or live material from that period that us fans may not have yet heard?
Thanks and cheers from Down Under,
Wardy
Answer:
It’s possible that Fore will get remastered at some point … I always wished we could remix it … it’s one of our only records not mixed by Bob Clearmountain and I’d love to hear his version.
August 8, 2022 Question:
Hi Huey. I recently bought a few of your albums on vinyl including the first album. I know it wasn’t a huge hit, but I quite like the album. Especially ‘Don’t Make Me Do It’. I would like to know which song on the album you’re most proud of. Just curious where that video was filmed. Looks like the landfill in Granda Hills area. Thank you. You’re my hero by the way.
Unknown
Answer:
I’m not allowed to play favorites since I produced the record, but I quite like “Some of My Lies”, “Don’t Ever Tell Me That You Love Me”, and “Hearts.” “Some Of My Lies” video was shot at Ocean Beach in San Francisco, and “Don’t Ever Tell Me” was filmed at the Mountain Amphitheater on Mt. Tamalpais.
August 1, 2022
Question:
Hi, Huey, i love your songs, your voice, your sense of humor. Lately i found out your Mother was Polish. I would like to ask if you’ ve ever been to Poland and speak a little bit polish. Malgorzata from Poland
Answer:
No, although my mother was born in Poland, I’ve never been there, and I speak no Polish. But,
I am smart, artistic, funny and loyal, like all Polish people!
July 18, 2022Question:
What was your favorite song to play live during your tours in the 1980s? I saw you guys multiple times during that amazing decade and it was always obvious that you and the band were having the time of your lives together on stage. But if you had to pick one song that you and the band most enjoyed performing live in those days, what was it?
Answer:
Jon, I’ll bet you’re a nice guy, and, you live in a gorgeous place, but that’s an impossible question.
Honestly, asking the band their favorite song on even one night might elicit 6 different answers.
July 11, 2022
Question:
You often say that a big part of the band’s longevity is how much you and the guys enjoy each other’s company. So, who’s the funniest guy in the News? I’m gonna guess Sean after seeing the Doing it all for my baby video.
Answer:
Really? I say that often? The funniest; Me. No, actually it’s a toss up between Sean and John Pierce.
July 5, 2022
Which album do you feel was your best. Why?
David Hooker – DeLand, Florida
Answer:
Our latest “Weather”. But, I always think of our most recent work as the best. It really is among our bestwork, however. Of that I’m sure.
June 27, 2022What band or musician do you contribute your inspirations in writing of songs? And have any of your children ever been interested in following some aspects of the industry of music?Anne
Answer:
Not sure I understand the first question, but neither of my children work in the music industry per say, but they both are keen music lovers, and my son is a pretty good guitar player.
June 20, 2022
Question:
I was thrilled and still flattered that my suggestion for doing “A Little Bit of Soap” a capella was done in your shows. (Thanks Sean!) Did the band ever take any other fan suggestions for a cappella and do it on stage?Vic Dubrow – Indianapolis, IN
Answer:
The honest answer is, I don’t know, especially since I never knew that it was your idea to do “A Little Bit of Soap.”
June 13, 2022
Question:Hi Huey, when are you going to be on tv again? I saw you on the Blacklist show. You were very good and funny.
Linda Shaskas
Answer:
No telling, but I am in show business, which means I’ll do anything for attention or money! Hahaha.
June 6, 2022
Question:
I know most of the News came from Clover and Sound hole, but how did you guys meet Chris Hayes?
Chad Elzy
Answer:
I was introduced to him by a mutual friend called Donald Maus. Don was a jazz bass player and he had played a lot with Chris.
May 31, 2022Question:
What is your impressions of the mashup of Metallica’s ‘Enter Sandman’ and ‘Hip To Be Square’ ?
Maxwell
Answer:
I don’t like the fact that anyone can take “content” that has been conceived, accomplished (filmed and paid for), and then use it however they want without even consent, let alone compensation. I have nothing against Metallica, and, in fact, know and like both James and Lars, but I think the whole exercise is ridiculous.
May 16, 2022
Question:I’m a long time fan from Jamaica. I think my chin hit the floor when I heard you guys play give a nod to my little island and played reggae on Bobo Tempo 🙂 I just never understood what the song was about, apparently it’s a California thing. Can you explain and also what got you into reggae?
Greg – Guatemala City, Guatemala
Answer:
The movie “The Harder They Come” with Jimmy Cliff was a huge influence, and got me/us into reggae. The song is about a town called Bolinas which all locals refer to as Bobo.
May 9, 2022
Question:
Hello Huey, I’m 13 years old and I was wondering how you or the band members came up with “The News” as your name. Do you know who chose that name?
Sears
Answer:
I did. We were calling ourselves Huey Lewis and American Express, and just before the release of our first album, the record label got worried we’d be sued over the name. We had literally 24 hours to come up with a name, and The News was as good as we could do.o.
May 2, 2022
Question:
Did you play at the 1973 Tam High Prom on a Ferry Boat that left from Tiburon? If you did, was that Clover? The music grabbed me and I had to dance which I had never done before. If that was you, take credit for getting an introvert to break out and boogie. Haven’t stopped. (I am the guy who was in your brother’s class at Richardson Bay and at Tam. I think he sent you the picture of us on our teacher’s sailboat on SF Bay in 1965-66.)
David Healy
Answer:
I’m not sure. I know HLN did a very early gig on the Ferry Boat, and, I do vaguely recall an earlier ferry gig with Clover, but thetruth is, I can’t remember…
April 25, 2022
Question:
Besides the News, what group/artist do you like listening to most from the 80s?
Answer:
I can’t listen to music anymore because of my hearing. I literally can’t tell one song from another. It’s been a bitter pill to swallow. I must remind myself that there are so many others worse off than I, and I’m still a lucky guy.
April 18, 2022
Question:
Where is your good spot to fly fish in the Caribbean?
Tracy Pitts
Answer:
A smart fisherman never gives away his secret spots! There are innumerable good spots in the Caribbean. My advice is always to hire a guide, at least til you learn the lay of the land.
April 11, 2022
Question:
My wife and I have a 24 y/o daughter with Cerebral Palsy. She loves the cartoons on Disney Jr, especially T.O.T.S. and Puppy Dog Pals. We love you as Bullworth, and I’m really curious as to how you became involved with the show. Did they reach out to you, or did your representative contact them.
Dennis, Lauren, and of course, K
Answer:
They reached out to me, and I love doing it. It’s fun.
April 4, 2022
Question:
Was the band ever close to performing during halftime at a Super Bowl? What was the biggest sporting event at which the band sang the National Anthem?
Derek Hayden
Answer:
We never did a Super Bowl halftime. Did anthems for lots of football and baseball playoff games (NFC Championship,NLCS etc.), and baseball and basketball All Star games.
March 28, 2022
Question:
I’ve been loving your ‘80’s radio show on Apple Music! I’m also thrilled to know you’re a fellow Stevie Wonder fan. Do you have any favorite Stevie albums? (I know it’s hard to choose…)
Maggie Frantz – Alameda, CA
Answer:
It’s too hard to choose. I think Stevie Wonder is far and away the most important musical artist of our generation. And, I’m getting ready to do another season of Huey’s 80’s Radio on Apple Music. I’m going to have some very cool guests.
March 21, 2022
Question:
I heard you mention that you’ve been reading a lot during the pandemic. Any book recommendations?
Mary Wacker
Answer:
I just finished “Wrecking Crew” about LA session musicians. It’s fabulous, and a page turner. “The Overstory” by Richard Powers is smart and informative.
March 14, 2022Question:
I saw your recent post on Facebook regarding your dad’s love for jazz music and was curious who he liked to listen to. My dad played trombone with Woody Herman for several years, among others. Do you have any jazz favorites?
Marcie Collins
Answer:
I love Chick Webb, and old Count Basie. My Dad loved Woody Herman, and took me to see him a couple times … I wonder if your dad was on the bandstand.
March 7, 2022
Question:
How involved are you and the band choosing each album’s singles? Would you deliver an album to the label and they’d go “Heart & Soul” is first, “Drug” second, or “Small World” instead of “Old Antone’s,” or whatever, or did you have any (or all) say?
James Kenney
Answer:
A little. Usually the label picks the singles, but it’s sometimes fairly obvious. It’s a strategy, of course, and sometimes they get it right (Sports), and sometimes get it wrong (Picture This, where “Workin’” should have been the 2nd single).
February 28, 2022
Question:
What I really liked about your concerts many years ago were your support groups.
I can remember Bruce Hornsby and the Range and Melissa Etheridge. Just wonderful.
Question: Did you choose these artists or was your management doing it?
Can you give me 2-3 others Singer/Bands names that impressed you?
Greetings from Swiss-Italian region.
Mauro Londero
Answer:
We did. We also took Stevie Ray Vaughan and the Neville Brothers on national tours. Very proud of that.
February 21, 2022
Question:
Your talent and energy has affected and influenced so many people. I am in a Huey tribute and wondered why you don’t continue to pursue your harp playing during your battle with Meniere’s disease? You are truly one of the best harp players I have ever listened to. Also, been trying for some time to purchase a few harmonicas from Anthony Dannecker and his website just says, “coming soon.” Any advice on an alternative choice to Dannecker harmonicas?
Brian – Temecula, CA
Answer:
My hearing is so bad, I can’t find pitch … therefore, I can’t bend notes in tune. Harmonica is not like a piano. You need an ear to be in tune. Also, it’s a struggle … definitely no fun. Cacophony.
February 14, 2022
Question:
What year did you open for the Doobie Brothers at the Oakland Colosseum Arena?
Lee Prevost
Answer:
Huey: I think it was 1980, but Bill has a much better memory than I.
Bill: 1980
January 31, 2022
Question:
I was listening to a live show from 1988 in Birmingham, England where you mention to the crowd that you were recording the show. My questions are what kind of live archive does HLN have and will we ever be able to hear these complete classic shows? The live cuts on the Sports 30th Anniversary bonus disc sound great and I think a lot of people would love to have access to complete shows from throughout your history available!
Chris Burke
Answer:
We have some stuff. Most is still in analog form, but Johnny is baking the tapes, and transferring it to the digital domain. Once we get that done, we can begin to assess what we have. I’m sure something will be available sometime. (Sorry if that’s a little vague.)
January 24, 2022
Question:
A few years back, I heard HLN in Raleigh, and that night Huey gave a ‘Tip of The Hat’ to beach music, which is sort of an R&B/Soul sub-genre that’s popular almost exclusively in the southeast. You guys do quite a few covers that would be considered in that genre (But It’s Alright, Never Found A Girl, It’s Alright, Green Grass and others). Being a west coast band, how did you discover Beach Music, and what can you add to the Beach Music story? That flavor of music certainly is a natural fit for the blue-eyed soul HLN is known for!
John Hackney – Wilson, NC
Answer:
I went to Prep School in New Jersey, and had a lot of southern guys as classmates. I always liked soul music, and after all, that’s what Beach music is. I still love the Tams, General Johnson, Clifford Curry, and all those great beach music bands.
January 17, 2022
Question:
I’ve heard Billy Joel mention on a few occasions that as a great piano player, he still wishes he could play the ivories…like his hero…Jazz Great…Oscar Peterson. As a great Harmonica Player, is there any harp player that you wish you could play more like?
Ben Kent
Answer:
Several. My hero was always James Cotton, but Howard Levy is probably the most accomplished harp (diatonic harmonica) player I’ve ever heard.
January 10, 2022
Question:
I was in university when “Sports” exploded. Did you know after recording the album how popular many of the songs would become?
Rob Christian
Answer:
I wish I had. I would have relaxed a little bit!
January 3, 2022
Question:
Performing a capella songs and being in amazing polyphonic sync, just like on “Naturally” or “Bad Is Bad”, has always been one of your greatest merits. I especially like your rendition of “So Much In Love” from the early 80s. What’s your favorite a capella song?
Niklas Nowak – Germany
Answer:
Not sure. I like “So in Love’ a lot, and always thought that “This is dedicated … to the one I love” would’ve been great acapella, but we never got around to working it up.
December 27, 2021
Question:
Hello! I’m in a debate with my mom right now about my first concert (you) and when it was. You guys played a free concert at Camp Pendleton with Sheila E. We conflict on what year that was (89 or 91). Do you happen to remember? You’ll settle a mother/daughter bet and we will forever be grateful (and fans). Thanks!
Julie Suarez
Answer:
You have to be kidding me. Julie, I’m much too old to remember that far back. Bill Gibson is the only guy I can think of who might be able to settle your argument. Sorry. – Huey
I couldn’t be certain . Lol Halsey could probably tell you. – Bill
I’d have to look in my basement as my computer only goes back to 1993. – Lol
December 20, 2021
Question:
My question is, as, unfortunately you currently aren’t singing. Have you consider collating some live releases from over the years to put out, either, preferably as a physical product?
Derek
Answer:
Quite possibly. We’re only now sorting through all that we have. We’ll see. Thanks for the impetus.
December 13, 2021
Question:
My daughter loves music and is interested in playing the harmonica. I figured I ask the best harmonica player I know, what harmonica would you recommend for her to start with? Also, I know that your Meniere’s Disease has severely limited your music capabilities, but are you able to still play the harmonica? BTW, love, love Weather!
Answer:
I play Dannecker harmonicas. I think they are by far the best commercial harmonica, but they are expensive. A Hohner Marine Band or Special 20 is a good harp to start with.
December 6, 2021
Question:
First I like to tell you I love your music I bought your new album Weather and absolutely love it. My most favorite song on the album is “Her Love Is Killing Me.” I was thinking why did you name the album Weather? Just wondering and sorry about your hearing loss hope your hearing gets better.
Andrew Stahl
Answer:
Huey Lewis and the NEWS … SPORTS … WEATHER.
November 29, 2021
Question:
I’ve noticed that starting from 2005 or so, you guys started performing Hip as “(Too) Hip to be Square.” Was there any reason for the name change?
Randy K.
Answer:
Good question. I originally wrote the song in the third person; “He used to be a renegade …etc.”, but thought it would be funnier (or more ironic) if I told it on myself. Some people took it as a kind of anthem for square people, and so I began to fool with the title.
November 22, 2021
Question:
In a few of your recent interviews, you had mentioned how “One of the Boys” is a song that describes your life, but I noticed that “Finally Found a Home” also seems to do the same. Is this the case?
Matt Zeugin – Valley Springs, CA
Answer:
Yes.
November 15, 2021
Question:
As a child of the 80s, I’ve always been a fan of the live “Trouble In Paradise” that appeared on the USA For Africa album. It’s a great song, a terrific performance, and the message is fantastic. The problem is, I’ve never figured out the final verse. “Five long years since I wrote this song, many people dying, so many gone.” What’s the next line after that? The lyrics I found online don’t make any sense, so I thought I’d go straight to the source.
George
Answer:
I was never happy with that line, and I would change it when we played it live. I tried a number of phrasing ideas, but, something like “I’ve said it before but it’s still good advice” …
November 8, 2021
Question:
I have heard the live versions of “Free Love” that were kicking around in 89 or so…what led you to bring in Nick Lowe and change up the song a bit? Did he mostly work on lyrics with you? Is the “Do You Love Me, or What?” line his?
James Kenney
Answer:
Nick had nothing to do with that tune. I can barely remember it! “Do you love me or what?” was my convoluted idea. I now look upon that tune as a good try!
October 25, 2021
Question:
Am I imagining this memory, or did baseball great George Brett sit in with the horn section at a show in the 1980s? Also, did you know Darrell Evans when he played for the giants?
Gabe – San Rafael, CA
Answer:
Yes, George “sat in” with the horn section pretending to play horn. We had a very late night that night (baseball was on strike), and then heard that baseball strike had just been settled about 1:00 AM. George got up earliesh the following day and went 5 for 8 in a double header.
\October 18, 2021
Question:
I was watching some clips of you guys singing the National Anthem, and it’s amazing how you all sang a fantastic acapella arrangement (especially your high notes!) in such a different environment from your shows. Was performing the anthem for a huge sporting event in a huge stadium a completely different experience than singing for a regular live show, or would you say it’s around the same?
Randy K – Sunnyvale, CA
Answer:
Similar, but different in that the song (Anthem) isn’t very “groovy”, and is therefore difficult, and the venue (stadium) is not the easiest to negotiate sound wise. But, it only lasts 2 minutes and we get great seats to the game!
October 11, 2021
Question:
I recently saw the cover for the 1965 Paul Butterfield Blues Band album and it reminded me of the Fore album cover. Was your photo a subtle reference to that influential album?
Jason Tresser
Answer:
No, it was a complete rip off. Good call.
October 4, 2021
Question:
I’d like to know if Huey and the band remembers appearing at an evening concert in a club in Chappaqua NY, next to the railroad tracks? I was still living in NY, so it had to be in 1980, since that’s when they started using the name Huey Lewis and the News. I had never heard of the band, but I went and stayed for the whole show. Six years later, I was at Camp Lejeune with the Marines, and would walk to the mall along the railroad tracks with Huey and the news on my walk-man cassette player giving me such positive vibes and a beat to walk by. I hear their tunes now, and it takes me right back, THANKS!
Paul Martinello – Somers, CT
Answer:
I almost remember that club gig. Meaning, I don’t really remember it specifically, but I do remember a small club near the railroad tracks from our Workin’ for a Living Tour in ‘82.
September 27, 2021
Question:
Who was better to jam with? Umphrey’s, Foo Fighters, or Grateful Dead?
Sean – Morton Grove, IL
Answer:
Silly question. Three great bands, wildly different, and all big fun to sit in with.
September 20, 2021
Question:
Huge fan since ‘Picture This’ came out. Wondering how you feel about tribute band’s performing your music?
Roger Langdon
Answer:
I’m flattered, and love to see the music live on, especially since I can’t hear well enough to sing anymore.
September 13, 2021
Question:
I found it interesting you list Newport as one of your favorite courses, mine too. It is interesting that when they were awarded the US Am that Tiger won they were told not to put in irrigation or they would lose the event. Have you ever played Fishers Island or played in Ireland? I was a teacher for 35 years and used “The Heart…” to introduce US Geography. Thanks for making my life happier.
James Doherty
Answer:
I have never played Fisher’s Island, although I know all about it. And, I’ve never played in Ireland, I’m embarrassed to admit, although I’ve had some fabulous times there.
September 6, 2021
Question:
In the summer of 1982, I stood inline behind Huey at JC Penny’s in Corte Madera Shopping Center. I approached Huey after his purchase and said “You’re Huey Lewis.” You were more surprised I knew you than I was at knowing who you were. Had a nice 5 minute conversation after which a lady came up to me and asked “Huey Newton and the who?” I told her Huey Lewis. Picture This had come out and you were just hitting it big. In our short conversation, I thought you mentioned a photo shoot for an album cover in which you and the News were “News Broadcasters”. Standing in front green screen, at the sports desk, etc. Was there ever such a shoot?
John Quinn
Answer:
It seems like there must have been, right? I mean, it’s an obvious idea. I do remember a shoot at Channel 7 in San Francisco, but it wasn’t for an album cover. I can’t remember what it was for, but it was around that time, so maybe that’s it.
*note: This photo can be found in the photo gallery “Early News” in the Photos section of this website.
August 30, 2021
Question:
I watched your interview on Jimmy Kimmel and enjoyed your stories so much! What I loved most was how music really served as an international language for you as you hitchhiked across Europe. Wondering, if you would consider writing a memoir?
Karen George
Answer:
I have, but it’s a lot of work, and I guess I’m lazy. Maybe one day.
August 23, 2021
Question:
Kudos to your band mate Bill for the recent heartfelt tribute to late drummer Neil Peart of Rush.
Rush also has a song titled ‘Jacob’s Ladder’. Have you heard it?
Darren
Answer:
I have not, unfortunately. And I won’t be able to until my hearing changes.
August 16, 2021
Question:
Did the 60’s band The Rascals have an influence on you? I would love to hear you cover “Groovin’” or “It’s A Beautiful Morning.”
Robert Wright
Answer:
Not really, but I loved them. I love Felix’s voice … great singer.
August 9, 2021
Question:
I enjoyed the Weather album, one of the real standouts is “Remind Me Why I Love You Again,” which is a real R&B funk jam. I’ve heard you guys touch on funk with “Attitude” and “Do You Love Me or What?” from Hard at Play, and Clover had “Chicken Funk.” Who are your funk influences?
Greg, Guatemala City
Answer:
It all started with James Brown and Sly Stone for me.
August 2, 2021
Question:
The song “Heart and Soul” starts out with the lyric “Two o’clock this morning”, my question is was this line inspired by the 2AM Club where the cover photo for Sports was taken?
Ryan Gray
Answer:
Unfortunately no. That tune was written by Mike Chapman and Nicky Chinn.
July 26, 2021
Question:
I often was the ball boy when my father would umpire at Lawrenceville, and when I played at Notre Dame later would tell them you were the same guy that was the clutch player at L’ville. My father was a birddog for 2 or 3 scouts, SO the question is what happened at Cornell that you stopped playing and went to Europe…. baseball was who you were at Lawrenceville and you were looked at by plenty of teams.
Bruce Brown
Answer:
My father insisted I take a year off between high school and college and “bum around Europe” (his words). I was already playing harmonica, and after a year was determined to pursue music, so I never even went out for the team at Cornell.
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July 19, 2021
Question:
How did you get from San Francisco to the Lawrenceville School? And then to Cornell— do feel you missed out on growing up in the Bay Area during the late 1960s by being on the east coast? Which circle house were you in at Lville?
John Henderson
Answer:
My father convinced me it was a good idea. I was in Hamill House. I didn’t miss much about the Bay Area as I was there all summer and vacations.
July 12, 2021
Question:
Huey, I have been a fan since when I was 7 years old. I’m now 13. My dad constantly had your cassette tapes in the car and we would listen to them. At school, I kept on banging the pencils against the table and they would break… (mainly your songs). I eventually got my first drum set (which was a kid’s set) on Christmas of 2014. I can remember using the drum set to mainly play your songs. Two questions: Why is the single version of NOW HERE’S YOU sound different than the one on the album and did you ever play IF YOU REALLY LOVE ME YOU’LL LET ME in concert?
Gregory – New Fairfield, CT
Answer:
I have no idea why the single sounds different than the album version. I’m guessing Bill Schnee who produced our first record did a remix for the single. And, yes, I believe we played IYRLYL live but only a time or two.
July 5, 2021
Do you remember those times when HLN performed at The Bodega Club in Campbell, CA (no longer exists) and another favorite, The Catalyst in Santa Cruz, CA, and when you guys would sing a capella at an after party in Carmel… “Under the Boardwalk”? A lot of years since those days have gone by but those are all good times and memories .
Julie – San Jose, CA
Answer:
Yes. Of course, I don’t remember any of those gigs as much as I once did, hahaha, but they were good times.
June 28, 2021
My all-time favorite film is “Back To The Future”. How long did it take in wardrobe and makeup to disguise yourself for your role as the band audition judge? It must have been a wonderful experience to work with that cast and crew. From a fan who will never think you’re “too darn loud”, thank you so much.
Nicholas Malfitano
Answer:
Not long. The scene was shot at night because Michael J Fox was working on a network show during the day, and BTTF had to be shot at night. Bob Zemekis, and Bob Gale were so great to work with, and Michael was and is a prince.
June 21, 2021
Question:
What can you say about the Small World recording sessions? Do you plan to make a deluxe version? It’s one of my favourite LPs from Huey Lewis & The News! And not only because you said some french word on a song on it!
Arnaud – Paris, France
Answer:
So glad to hear you like that record. I do too. I also think Stan Getz’s solo on “Small World Part 2” is brilliant. It was so great to work with him. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have split the song up into 2 parts. There is a single edit somewhere that we did, which is, I think, the definitive version of the song. BTW, “Small World” was awarded “worst album of the year” by Rolling Stone.
June 14, 2021
Question:
My question is why was the song “So Little Kindness” included on both “Time Flies” and “Plan B”? Was it re-recorded for “Plan B” and if so, why?
Jen Bosley – Philadelphia, PA
Answer:
We weren’t real happy with the Time Flies collection, and felt like “So Little Kindness” was lost on that record, and belonged on the Plan B record, so we re-recorded it. We own that master record (Plan B), and wanted SLK to be included.
May 31, 2021
Question:
Hi Huey, I am a great fan, and also a great fan of Phil Lynott. I know you guys recorded stuff together and have just istened to your version of The Boys are Back in Town (a great version by the way). My question is are there any plans to release the recordings that you and Phil did. Given the resurgence in all thigs Lizzy it would be a shame if they were not released for us all to enjoy?
Geoff Thompson
Answer:
Unfortunately, I don’t think so … the tunes were never finished … Phillip was hoping to return to finish up the vocals.
May 24, 2021
Question:
1) How did you get from San Francisco to the Lawrenceville School? 2) And then to Cornell— do feel youmissed out on growing up in the Bay Area during the late 1960s by being on the east coast? 3) Which circle house were you in at Lville?
John Henderson
Answer:
1) By airplane. 2) I was home summers, and I graduated Lawrenceville in 1967, and took a year off before college, so I got to experience plenty of west coast. 3) You mean there isn’t a plaque? Hamill.
May 17, 2021
Question:
Just heard “Back In Time” on the radio and I was wondering at what point in the film production process did you write the song. It clearly has direct reference to the story line of the film.
Pete West
Answer:
“Back in Time” was written after I saw a rough cut of the film. “Power of Love” was written before the film was shot.
May 10, 2021
Question:
“Give Me the Keys (And I’ll Drive You Crazy)” is one of my favorite songs from you and your band and my pick for most underrated. I adore the frenetic pace!! Was there any sort of inspiration or influence for writing the song? Was a music video ever made for the song
JL
Answer:
That phrase was coined by our assistant manager Steve Lewis (no relation), who unfortunately, is no longer with us. We did the rest, and yes, there was a goofy video done for the song.
May 3, 2021
Question:
One of my favourite songs released as a single is ‘World to Me’. I know it wasn’t one of the groups best selling releases and I was wondering why a video was never made for this song.
Jeremy Keane
Answer:
I’m not sure it was released as a single, but I agree with you, Jeremy. It’s one of my favorite tunes as well. It’s featured beautifully in our new musical “The Heart of Rock and Roll” which we hope to present on Broadway soon.
April 26, 2021
Question:
I have seen numerous concerts of yours, dating back to the 80’s when you toured with Tower of Power. That show was in Weedsport, NY, an outdoor venue at a dirt race track. One of my favorite concerts ever! I think my favorite part of all of the concerts was when you would do an a cappella song. What is your favorite song that you and the band did a cappella?
Jennifer in Alaska
Answer:
I suppose I’d have to say “They Say It’s Alright”, only because it was released on a Curtis Mayfield tribute album, was the single and was an adult contemporary hit.
April 19, 2021
Question:
With the announcement of the 7-song WEATHER, I was wondering about lost songs that have either been mentioned or appeared in the past. Whatever happened to the rest of the Back in Blue session songs, as well as songs like “Sell Out” “Just an Hour in Memphis” “You Hurt Me” (am I getting that title correct? From around 2008) “I’m Only In It For The Money” and any other lost songs? A b-sides and rarities release would be ideal for such treasures.
Jeff M – Asheville, NC
Answer:
Good question. I suppose most of them aren’t as good as we remember them, or as they should be, or they would have appeared on one of our albums, but it might be interesting to reconsider. I’ll give it a think. Thanks.
April 12, 2021
Question:
I was wondering: Did you give a lot of thought to the cover images of your LPs or was it usually a spontaneous endeavor? I am a big fan of “Picture This” (both the cover image AND the music, haha), maybe you could elaborate on the cover image of this one.
Niklas – Germany
Answer:
Nothing much to elaborate on. The record company wanted a close up of me for the cover, and I thought it would be cool if it was an enlarged shot of me as part of a group shot on the back, and the idea flowed from there.
April 5, 2021
Question:
I’ve been a fan for over 30 years and I’ve been to see you on nearly every UK tour. I briefly met you and the band a couple of times and those are special memories. I look on YouTube now and then to see if there is any footage of you and the band that I have not see before. Last week I found a clip of you and Phil Lynott on the UK TV show ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’, you were playing harmonica on one of his songs. I know that you were both great friends. What puzzled me though is that you were introduced on that show with a totally different name, not even your real name. I think the clip is from 1979. Were you going incognito, or was it some kind of inside joke?
Sally Hickling
Answer:
Probably trying to dodge the work permit thing. That was all Phillip and his manager’s doing.
March 29, 2021
Question:
With the exception of your bandmates, whom have you performed with that gave you a ‘My life is now complete’ moment?
Colleen Young
Answer:
Stevie Wonder, and half of the folks on We Are the World.
March 22, 2021
Question:
Hi Huey! Who is your all time favorite San Francisco Giant?
Mark Sarley
Answer:
Not even close. Willie Mays.
March 15, 2021
Question:
I miss the music and the tours and continue to pray for a recovery and comeback. But in the meantime. Have you considered doing more voice work in animation? I know you have done puppy dogs pals. And that’s an Easter egg for parents I hope. No one can mistake that voice and the value attached. But I do hope that, in leiu of recording music, that you will lend your voice to more animated projects or just acting in general.
Cory
Answer:
From your lips to Disney/Pixar’s ears.
March 8, 2021
Question:
I’m trying to be a singer just like you I know how to sing all your songs and some other bands as well I was wondering if you could tell me what is your favorite song to play live ?
Jesse Caceres
Answer:
I’m going to say the new song is always our favorite … that is, whichever songs are the most recently written and performed. I know it kind of dodges the question, but it’s true.
March 1, 2021
Question:
What is your current handicap index?
Russell T. Ries
Answer:
9.2
February 22, 2021
Question:
I’ve enjoyed the times I’ve seen you acting. Do you have any upcoming plans to do any acting?
John K.
Answer:
I’m open to it if it’s creative. I enjoy acting.
*editors note: Last week, Huey appeared in an episode of NBC’s The Blacklist.
February 15, 2021
Question:
Thank you for all the joy you have brought in to the world! I first saw you live at the House of Blues in New Orleans in Feb (it was the first week of Mardi Gras) sometime in the mid 90’s I can’t remember exactly. The show was professionally filmed (big boom cameras, the works). It was a magical evening, one of the greatest shows I have ever seen! I have never been able to find it anywhere. Is it out there somewhere?
Tom Outwater
PS- Praying your hearing improves so we can have you back singing!!
Answer:
I think that may have been an in-house video that they had set up there, but it’s an interesting question. Perhaps they have it somewhere? Not sure.
February 8, 2021
Question:
Thanks for helping me grow up in the ‘80s! “Sports” was my fav album in middle school and I still listen to your 80s albums a lot. My question is about “We Are the World”. Were you in awe of anyone in the room? Either by reputation or maybe someone whose voice just knocked your socks off during the recording?
Mike Burman – Appleton, WI
Answer:
Ray Charles … I was so nervous, I couldn’t summon the courage to introduce myself to him. I just sort of shadowed him, just to be near the great man.
February 1, 2021
Question:
I’m a great fan of yours and I had the chance to enjoy your fantastic concert here in Rome in 1988. Don’t you know that you have lots of fans in Italy? What do you remember from that experience in 1988? How many times did you come to Italy and especially in Rome?
Fabrizio Galassi
Answer:
I remember everything about that show and the days before and after, because I have relatives in Rome who wined and dined me the whole time I was there. It was a wonderful trip only dampened by the sound in that huge stone dome. We’ve played Italy since, but not Rome. Go figure. I love Rome.
January 25, 2021
Question:
Can you talk about how you ended up working with the legendary San Francisco punk band Crime? It’s such an unlikely pairing, and I’d love to know how it came about.
Nate K.
Answer:
Patty Gleason, who managed Different Fur Recording where we had made our demos, suggested me to produce that record. It was fun. They were great guys and way more with the “scene” than I was … I actually learned a lot.
January 18, 2021
Question:
Hi!! Huge fan for more years than I care to admit because that would give away my middle aged status. I know you have a ranch in Montana and wondering what animals you have there? Are there livestock you prefer to raise and what breeds of horses do you like?
Jennifer Serling – Tucson AZ
Answer:
We fall graze a few black Angus cattle, and we have 4 horses at the moment, 3 quarter horses and a warm blood that we inherited. But mainly we nurture the wildlife. Deer, Elk, ducks, geese, birds etc.
January 11, 2021
Question:
Would you ever attend a comic con with fellow BTTF cast members to meet fans and sign autographs?
Matt – Nottingham, P
Answer:
Sure, I mean after all, I am in show business, meaning I’ll do anything for attention or money, (usually in that order). But seriously, I’ve done a few BTTF reunions on TV and in Hollywood theaters, and it’s always fun. Michael J. Fox is a great and a very funny guy.
January 4, 2021
Question:
I have been a die hard fan since “Do You Believe in Love” came out back in 1982. You have had some awesome collaborations over the years with Tower of Power and a great duet with Gwyneth Paltrow. Do you have a bucket list of artists that you want to work with and who are they?
Ann Fisher
Answer:
I lost my hearing almost 3 years ago and haven’t sung with the band since …. I’m hoping I can one day regain enough hearing to sing with the band again.
December 28, 2020
Question:
I’ve been a fan for pretty much my whole life (and I’m 52). So first of all, thanks for creating such great music that has been the backdrop for some really amazing times in my life. My question is actually about golf. I was watching your shot from the 2019 Pebble Beach Pro-Am where you put it in from the greenside bunker, and I was curious what you consider the strongest part of your game is?
Bill Courtney
Answer:
Unfortunately, the word “strong” or “strongest”, and my game, have no reason to be in the same sentence. The best part of my game is my equipment.
December 21, 2020
Question:
Hi Huey! Did you ever have a percussionists by the name of Dave Rozelle on one of your tours in the 1980s. He became my drum teacher in 1992 and said he toured with you. Is this true?
Nate
Answer:
Huey: I don’t recall him, but then, nowadays I don’t recall much (!#!#). Bill would know.
Bill: We never had a Dave Rozelle play percussion with us but he may have been in a band that opened up for us ? Pete Esovedo is the only percussionist we ever had on tour. Cheers.
December 14, 2020
Question:
Starting with the tremendous success of Sports and the next couple releases, did you find that ‘making it’ added pressure to follow up with something just as successful, or did it give you more motivation to explore new creative territory that you might not have previously?
Mike Grzybowski – Phoenix, AZ
Answer:
Great question, and the answer is; both.
December 7, 2020
Question:
Huey, I’ve always been a fan of your music in movies. However, one in particular has always stood out to me; that being the part of “Hip to be Square” in American Psycho. I know how you originally did not like the use of it, but as time has gone on, have your thoughts changed at all? Personally for me it’s one of the things that got me listening to you in the first place!
Jack Skrump
Answer:
I had, and have no problem with the use of HTBS in the film. My outrage was a publicity stunt by the movie studio to get the film attention. The publicity department issued a press release on the eve of the release of the film that stated that I had seen the film, judged it too violent and pulled my song from the soundtrack … all made up. So, I boycotted the film and have still not seen it. I saw the musical (American Psycho) on Broadway, and loved it.
November 23, 2020
Question:
I read that you like to cook. What are your favorite dishes to make ? What’s your signature dish ??
Answer:
I do a pretty good jambalaya.
November 16, 2020
Question:
I am a college student with a major in music education. I love classic rock, and your music is very soulful and relaxing for me. My “Ask Huey” question is meant to address the arc of your career: How did the musical style of The News evolve over the years with the changes to rock/pop music? Were you looking to stand out from others?
Ryan Lueschen – Lakeville, MN
Answer:
Yes, we were looking to stand out from the others, but also making music based on the music we love … more R&B based. If our style has changed it’s because of creative decisions, not commercial ones.
November 9, 2020
Question:
I remember seeing you play at the Fresno Fair back in the early 90’s, and right in the middle of your set a bunch of pre-planned fireworks went off for about 3 or 4 minutes (ironically right during “Bad is Bad”). This made me wonder what was the most irritating or distracting thing that ever interrupted or happened during one of your concerts?
Bret Ellsworth – Saratoga Springs, UT
Answer:
Outdoor concerts with festival seating in 110 degree weather where I’m singing to the crowd and the medical people are pulling unconscious people over the fence … and, I’m singing a love song like “Do You Believe” … distracting.
November 2, 2020
Question:
Hi my name is Jesse and was wondering if you could say something about the song “Free” on the Soulsville album. I really love that song and can’t find the original singer.
Answer:
The original singer is Johnnie Taylor. He might be my favorite soul singer.
October 26, 2020
Question:
I just finished watching “The Big Interview with Dan Rather.” Very good interview. But it didn’t cover how and/or why you started playing harmonica. Do tell.
Clarice
Answer:
My mother rented a room to a folksinger named Billy Roberts (who wrote “Hey Joe” by the way), and he gave me a bunch of his old harps. My mother gave me a Bob Dylan record, and when I discovered Paul Butterfield, I was hooked.
October 19, 2020
Question:
I have always loved the energy at your shows! Thinking back specifically to seeing you live in the eighties and nineties, you jumped off of a lot of tall speakers and high platforms on the stage, and Chris used to run around like the energizer bunny…were there ever any mid-stage collisions or injuries associated with these antics? You guys always made it look seamless and fun, but I still don’t know how you could drop to your knees so quickly without popping a kneecap!
Anne Scheetz
Answer:
Yes there were some accidents. I broke my wrist when I fell off a stage in Northern California, and we used to bang into things (and one another) now and again. We were adhering to the advice of my mentor Phil Lynott concerning stage direction; “Move!”
October 12, 2020
Question:
My name is Sarah. I am 15 years old, I love your band, and I am probably your youngest fan. I have a few questions for you: Which music video were you in, that was the most fun to film? Did you travel to different places to film the music videos? If so, where are some places you have traveled to?
Sarah
Answer:
I have a 2 1/2 year old granddaughter who is a fan, so maybe you’re my 2nd youngest. My favorite video to film was probably “If This is It” cause we laughed the whole time. We’ve shot videos mostly in the Bay Area, but we did “Stuck with You” in the Bahamas, and a few in New York and LA.
October 5, 2020
Question:
Do you ever regret pulling out of Live Aid?
Jason – London, England
Answer:
No. I still think it was the right thing to do. Very little of the food or money from “We Are the World” got to the starving people and I think it was irresponsible to raise even more money with that as a back drop. Also, I argued with Bob Geldof who insisted that the concert would be “conscience raising”. I made the point that it would only be such if someone on stage kept the focus on the famine, which I think Bob did fairly well in London, but in Philadelphia, it was just a large rock concert.
September 28, 2020
Question:
With all your musical experience, knowledge and success in the business have you ever run across a musical talent that couldn’t catch a break but impressed you enough to help them get to the next level? If so, who was it?
Rob Harvey
Answer:
I’ve certainly championed many of the under appreciated artists like Bruce Hornsby, Mike Duke, Alex Call, Paul Thorn, and others. Several of them have gone on to big things, but I must honestly say very little of their success was my doing.
September 21, 2020
Question:
Do you know if it’s possible to find the radio-version of “The Heart of Rock and Roll” where you added Minneapolis and Milwaukee (after Detroit)? The old radio station the used to play it, WKTI, isn’t around anymore.
Tom from Tucson
Answer:
Good question, but unfortunately I have no idea … if so, it would probably be a cassette.
September 14, 2020
Question:
Can you clear up something for me – did you stay at White Horse Inn, Balmedie, Aberdeenshire in late 1970’s, get friendly (i.e. have a pint or two) with the chefs Keith, Larry, Peter – I recall being introduced to ‘Hughie from America’ one evening in the kitchens and remember saying when you first appeared with ‘The News’ on UK TV, that “I know him” – my friends say I’m batty, but . . . . .This has all come back to me again as just stumbled over and listening to Frankie Miller’s ‘Double Take’ album on Spotify!!
Sandra
Answer:
Probably. It was a long time ago, but my group CLOVER performed there so it’s extremely possible.
September 7, 2020
Question:
One of your answers to another fan question was, “I’ll tell you in my book.” My question is, are you really writing a book or was that a roundabout way to say, “I’ll tell you later?”
Cindy McNeal, Denver
Answer:
I’m not writing a book…yet. I’ve thought about it, but it’s a lot of work, and I’m still making and collecting stories I hope.
August 31, 2020
Question:
Your music has always been permeated by a great horn section. Therefore I was wondering: Have you been influenced by the music of Chicago (the band, not the city)? And if so, have you met some of the guys from the band and do you have a favorite Chicago song?
Niklas – Augsburg, Bavaria
Answer:
Not really, although I very much like them and have worked with them. We were more influenced by Tower of Power who were from the Bay Area as we were. Chicago has so many great tunes, it’s hard to pick one, but I’ll say “Does Anybody Really Know What Time It Is” because when we toured with them they let me sing it every night.
August 24, 2020
Question:
Will there be an album release from the musical ‘The Heart of rock n’ Roll’?
I’ve read some great reviews of this theatre show.
Jeremy
Answer:
I hope so, and expect so, but first we have to get it to Broadway which is very challenging amidst this pandemic.
August 17, 2020
Question:
I wanted to ask if you still had horses and how many you have? And anything else you would like to share about them.
Margaret Lyons – VA
Answer:
Yes, I have three. We lost my favorite quarter horse MOX last year (he was very old), and I will probably get another one this summer. I really enjoy them and they are the best way to travel here in Montana.
August 10, 2020
Question:
Is there a song from any album that you wish had been a single or that you were particularly proud of (for whatever reason) that never made it out as a single and/or was overlooked by fans? If so, what’s the song and why is it so special for you?
Ernest Sewell – Latham, NY
Answer:
Not really any that I wish were a single. There are a few that are kind of personal favorites that never got a lot of attention, like WORLD TO ME, WALKING WITH THE KID, and SMALL WORLD part 2.
August 3, 2020
Question:
Good to enjoy your new songs again. I just heard your Seville story back in 1968 when you played together with Nuevos Tiempos (which was the origins of an awesome rock musical movement in Spain called “rock andaluz”.). Did you continue your “North African-Spanish connection” after that or you just went back to USA and forget it?
Diez Guerra
Answer:
I’m embarrassed to admit that I just went back to USA and forgot it. I went to college and joined my first organized band.
July 27, 2020
Question:
I’ve noticed that you’ve always liked soul music. Your favorites such us Johnnie Taylor, Otis Redding, etc… also sing Gospel music. Are you also a fan of Gospel music?
Aaron Armendariz
Answer:
I am. Have always loved Gospel music, and yes, many of my favorite singers started out singing the gospel.
July 20, 2020
Question:
First saw you when you were in Clover and playing harmonica with Thin Lizzy at the Hammersmith Odeon. How did that harmonica contribution that ended up on Live and Dangerous come about?
Raymond Hill
Answer:
Phillip (Lynott) asked me to jam on that tune for that whole tour (Live and Dangerous), and we recorded it at Hammersmith.
July 13, 2020
Question:
One artist dead or alive that you would want to work with on a song or album who would it be and why?
Brian Pirtle – Atlantic Beach, Florida
Answer:
Ray Charles because he was always my favorite singer.
June 22, 2020
Question:
Why did the band decide to leave “Your Love Is Killing Me” off of Plan B?
Sal Montalbano, Kansas City
Answer:
We rewrote it, and have rerecorded it for our new album, Weather.
June 15, 2020
Question:
I’m a 28 year old female and I’ve been told that I was singing Huey Lewis & The News in my car seat at age 2. What is your most memorable encounter with a young fan?
Lindsay Lee
Birmingham, AL
Answer:
Obviously, you were born with excellent musical taste! I can’t think of a particularly memorable encounter with a young fan, but I can remember meeting many.
June 8, 2020
Question:
How did it come about doing a cover of Bruce Hornsby’s Jacob’s Ladder?
Roger Quehl
Answer:
When I produced tracks for Bruce’s first record, I had our version of Jacob’s ladder in mind … Bruce didn’t like the arrangement for his band but suggested we (The News) do it that way.
May 25, 2020
Question:
As a big Phil Lynott and Thin Lizzy fan, Phil made his last recordings with you. They are all out there on the internet. Why have they never been properly released? They are great songs .Who holds the rights? I met Phil many times, he was a great guy to talk to. A TRUE Legend!!
Paul Williams
Answer:
I have no idea why those things are or aren’t released, or on the internet … I only know we hadn’t finished them when Phil passed, unfortunately … and yes, he was a legend.
May 18, 2020
Question:
Have been a fan since age 12 or 13 when I heard Do You Believe In Love on WLS AM in Chicago when I woke up for school one morning back in the 80s. Have been to 12 or 13 of your shows around the Midwest over the years. The new live version of Jacob’s Ladder with the harmonica at the beginning and the long guitar solo is my all-time favorite. I finally heard it live at the Hammond, Ind., show earlier this year. Any chance of a studio or live version of the current Jacob’s Ladder being released in the near future?
Mike Miazga
Answer:
No plans for a live recording as yet, but you never know.
May 11, 2020
Question:
Hi Huey. I’m probably your biggest fan, at least under 10. My favorite song is “Back In Time” from Back to the Future. Here’s my question: Were you reluctant in agreeing to be the nerdy music teacher in Back to the Future?
Derek Fricke
Answer:
Actually, I enjoyed it. The idea was for me to be almost unrecognizable, and uncredited as a kind of inside joke.
Question:
On the Showtime special for the Sports tour, you are shown warming up backstage. What was the song? Some of the lyrics were, “Ain’t nothing stopping us now. Oh no. Ain’t nothing gonna stop us no how.” Is there a full version of that song available?
P McCormick
Answer:
“Ain’t Nothing” is a Tower of Power tune, available on one of their albums.
April 27, 2020
Question:
Hi Huey. I actually met you at SF Giants Game this past season. I work on the Giants TV Crew. Your car was parked next to the TV trucks. Anyway I can’t believe I did not ask you about the Great Phil Lynott. I know you played on one of my favorite albums of all time. Thin Lizzy Live and Dangerous! Your were credited as the bluesy Huey Lewis. What an honor. How was Phil as a person were you friends with him? I remember when Phil passed in 1986. I was deeply saddened.
Steven Benjamin – Walnut Creek, CA
Answer:
Philip was a good friend, a mentor, and one of the best performers I’ve ever seen. I learned more from him than anyone else I’ve ever known. He was a great artist with a huge heart. I loved Philip, and still think of him often.
April 20, 2020
Question:
I am so thankful for having grown up on your music, I’m a life long fan! It not only takes me back but it’s just as relevant today with the exception of all you can eat prices for $1.99, lol. You’ve really inspired me to start playing the harmonica, you are an am | |||||||
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] | 2024-08-07T04:53:52+00:00 | The greatest rock albums ever made vary wildly in era and tone. From Chuck Berry to Blink-182, these are the best. | en | uDiscover Music | https://www.udiscovermusic.com/stories/the-greatest-rock-albums/ | After many hours of head-scratching and more than a few worn grooves, we present one of the most ambitious and hopefully provocative lists we’ve ever done: The 100 Greatest Rock Albums of all time.
A few ground rules here: We’ve tried to cover the entirety of rock history, while making sure that each album still sounds great a few years after its release. This list adheres to a fairly narrow definition of “rock,” confining it to largely guitar-based music, and making exceptions only in a few cases where the album was too important to leave off. Which means, you won’t find a lot of blues, country, or R&B on this list, even though we realize how important they were as rock influences. (A few entries do fall into the R&B realm, but with so much of a rock sound that they had to be here). We’ve also left off certain genres, like electronica and acoustic singer-songwriter, that are closely related to the rock world but not really part of it. We have (or will) have other lists for that.
That said, we’ve tried to spread the wealth around, not favoring one genre of rock over another. Hence the presence of some highly mainstream albums right alongside the indie/underground entries. Punk and prog, hardcore and AOR, glam and metal, roots and arena rock – they’ve all got a place on this list, and your ears are better off for absorbing all of it.
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Finally, this list has been confined strictly to one album per band/artist. When an artist obviously has more than one essential album, we’ve made a case for the one that we believe to be the most important of the lot. Only one artist appears twice, as a group member and solo, but if you were a Beatle and then made a game-changing solo debut we can cut you some slack. And yes, some of your favorites – and for that matter, some of ours – may be missing, but rock history is so loaded by now that 100 albums can only begin to tell the story.
One thing we’ll say without hesitation: Every one of these albums is worth a listen, whether you’re discovering it for the first time or reconnecting with a longtime favorite.
100: Blink-182 – Enema of the State
Skate-punk produced a number of the greatest rock albums ever. But few were catchier, funnier, or savvier than Enema of the State. For all their bluster, this was a band that knew and loved its audience: If you were hitting your late teens around 1999, “What’s My Age Again?” offered reassurance that you didn’t have to grow up just yet. In time, blink-182 proved they had a serious side; at this point nobody needed one.
99: Pearl Jam – Ten
While their Seattle brethren Nirvana distrusted everything about traditional hard rock, Pearl Jam saw the opportunity to make it meaningful again. There were plenty of visceral thrills in Mike McCready’s leads and Eddie Vedder’s vocal flights, but it was all channeled into the dark, sympathetic observations of “Alive,” “Even Flow” and “Jeremy.” Misfits seldom had this much power on their side.
98: Smashing Pumpkins – Siamese Dream
Billy Corgan reaches for the heavens, pouring all of his guitar virtuosity and studio wizardry into a richly detailed album that still reveals new subtleties over two decades later. The wonder is that Siamese Dream’s songs, including hunting gems like “Today” and “Mayonaise,” don’t get lost in the mix.
97: Frank Zappa – Apostrophe
There’s a reason many fans remember this fondly as their first favorite Frank Zappa album: Apostrophe had so much musical invention and lyrical hilarity that it even had commercial potential (yes, “Don’t Eat the Yellow Snow” was even a single). The title track is his great power-trio moment, and it’s a wonder the New Age movement survived “Cozmik Debris.”
96: Television – Marquee Moon
A New York landmark, this album expanded the scope of punk rock by taking in the influence of free jazz and French Symbolist poetry; not for nothing, the leader did rechristen himself Tom Verlaine. And it’s still energetic as all get-up, especially on the classic opener “See No Evil” and the title track’s epic guitar jam.
95: Deep Purple – Machine Head
This isn’t just one of the loudest and greatest rock albums ever – it’s also one of the most joyful. Deep Purple’s darker side (in full display on the last album Fireball) is largely checked this time, on an album of pure rocking celebration. If the interplanetary stomp of “Space Truckin’” and the high-speed cruising anthem “Highway Star” don’t get your blood pumping, call the doctor.
94: Husker Du – Zen Arcade
The protean trio poured everything into this double epic, working psych, hardcore, avant-rock and noisy pop into a loose concept about a young man’s first year of freedom. Bob Mould and Grant Hart both emerge as first-class songwriters, and the band as a formidable power trio. It was famously recorded in a speed-fueled three-day session, and you can hear that too.
93: The Jam – Sound Affects
The trio’s fifth and best album shows why Paul Weller’s been a world-class rock songwriter ever since. They expand in all directions here, from furious commentary to open-hearted love songs to the sardonic classic “That’s Entertainment.” Note that The Jam regularly left their singles off the albums, and you must be at your peak when you can afford to omit a monolith like “Going Underground.”
92: Pavement – Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
With a thoroughly original songwriter in Stephen Malkmus and a guitar sound to die for, Pavement avoided production trappings and delivered songs that rocked with heart and charmed with cerebral wit. The album’s influence ran deep. For one thing, it proved you didn’t need a massive studio budget when you had the songs.
91: Pretenders – Pretenders
Chrissie Hynde became an instant icon on this debut, but the original Pretenders were also a true band, taking in everything from pure punk to near-arena rock to disco and dub. But Hynde always dazzled as a singer, whether it was the personal revelations of “Tattooed Love Boys” or the cool swagger on “Brass in Pocket.”
90: The Yeah Yeah Yeahs – Fever to Tell
This album almost had too much going for it: A stack of between the eyes hooks, a band that could swing from raucous punk to classic-level pop, and Karen O’s vocal charisma and instant star quality. They’d get more polished later on, but the try-anything spirit on Fever to Tell makes it a winner – as does “Maps” one of the best rock singles of its time.
89: Wilco – Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Jeff Tweedy had to fight hard for this album, with his label and even some of his band – but he knew he was on to something. The dense electronic touches prove an essential part of the picture, as the songs (largely written with the late and brilliant Jay Bennett) wrap up a fractured America headed to an uncertain future. The future of musical Americana proved brighter, making this one of the greatest rock albums ever made.
88: Boston – Boston
Originally rejected by nearly every record label, this record-breaking debut wrote the book on AOR rock. But while Boston’s countless imitators got the sound nearly right, they couldn’t get the underlying heart in Tom Scholz’s songs – especially when sung so emotively by the late Brad Delp. Besides, the imitators spent millions getting the kind of sounds that Scholz dreamed up in his living room.
87: The Kinks – The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society
The Kinks wasted no time in growing from their beat-group beginnings to a vehicle for Ray Davies’ sharp-eyed social comments. That trend hit its first peak on Village Green, an album of bittersweet wit, well-drawn characters, and indelible melodies. And The Kinks could still rock hard, anticipating punk on “Johnny Thunder” and becoming a rustic English blues band on “Last of the Steam-Powered Trains.”
86: The Cars – The Cars
Five savvy Boston-based guys give New Wave its first commercial blockbuster. With virtually every song becoming a radio hit, The Cars were the perfect mix of cool artsiness and rock’n’roll heart. Ric Ocasek’s songs put an ironic spin on rock catchphrases – shake it up, let the good times roll – but still invited you to clap along.
85: Siouxsie & the Banshees – Juju
An album full of dark allure, Juju was one of the goth movement’s seminal texts. Having long realized that punk rock didn’t suit her, Siouxsie Sioux became an otherworldly siren, delivering two of her most grabbing vocals in the singles “Arabian Knights” and “Spellbound.” The other key to the Banshees’ golden era was guitarist John McCeogh, whose array of guitar sounds meshed perfectly with the throbbing Severin/Budgie pulse.
84: Van Morrison – Astral Weeks
Fresh from a trailblazing R&B band and a war with his previous label, an angry young man makes an album of meditative, transcendental beauty. It’s arguably the least “rocky” album on this list, but then Astral Weeks – produced like a rock album, played mainly by jazz musicians, and sung with some kind of divine influence – doesn’t fit into any category but classic.
83: Elvis Costello – Armed Forces
Just when the world had him pegged as an angry young man, Elvis Costello hit back with an album of brilliant melodies, textured arrangements, multi-layered wordplay…and plenty of anger as well. As a bonus for the US album, he turned a perfectly lovely Nick Lowe song, “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace, Love and Understanding,” into an anthem for the ages.
82: Genesis –- Selling England By the Pound
One of prog’s pinnacles, Selling England By The Pound finds Genesis at their grandest. On “Dancing With the Moonlit Knight,” Peter Gabriel’s flights of lyrical fancy meet guitarist Steve Hackett’s landmark tapped solo. The instrumental breaks on “Cinema Show” and “Firth of Fifth” are among prog’s most majestic, while Gabriel’s surreal wit runs wild on “The Battle of Epping Forest.”
81: TV on the Radio – Return to Cookie Mountain
This was and is a band bursting with ideas, and found space on this album to try them all out. This is an album to get immersed in, with endless sonic textures to explore, and an underlying sense of existential dread. They made this an old-fashioned album experience, putting the most jarring track “I Was a Lover” right up front and letting you dig for catchier tunes like the single “Wolf Like Me.”
80: Hole – Live Through This
Just before Courtney Love became an endlessly controversial personality, she made one of the greatest rock albums ever. Live Through This was designed to be pretty on the outside, with an attractive alt-pop sound that would get its frank, feminist lyrics on the air. She gives a vocal performance to match, with venom behind the sweetness.
79: The White Stripes – White Blood Cells
Jack and Meg White took the world by storm, with enough raw nerve for their underground fans and enough wattage for the Zeppelin lovers. Few two-piece bands ever had this much intuitive chemistry, and the tracklist bears out their ability to do just about anything – from grisly blues-rockers to the giddy bubblegum of “I Think We’re Going to Be Friends.”
78: The Doors – The Doors
During the first week of 1967 when this album was released, the future of rock could be anything, including a jazz-identified band with a Dionysian Beat poet upfront. The Doors’ self-titled debut is remarkably diverse, with covers of songs by both Willie Dixon and Bertolt Brecht. The first side closes with the sexual release of “Light My Fire” while the second ends with the Apocalypse on “The End.”
77: PJ Harvey – Rid of Me
PJ Harvey was still messing with the blues on her sophomore album Rid of Me, but her songs had taken on more of a raw, personal tinge. Key tracks “50 Ft. Queenie,” “Rub Til It Bleeds” and the previous album’s belated title track “Dry” look fearlessly into the darkest corners of romantic relationships, and producer Steve Albini makes it all razor-sharp.
76: The Police – Synchronicity
By their fifth and final album, The Police had largely dropped their trademark reggae grooves, but by now their sound was so distinctive it was even recognizable on a ghostly textured piece like “Tea in the Sahara.” Side two is Sting’s post-breakup outpouring, while the band’s creative eccentricity is all over Side One. It also marked the first (and probably the only) use of the phrase “humiliating kick in the crotch” in a hit single.
75: Love – Forever Changes
Love’s 1967 classic really stands apart from the rest of the psychedelic masterpieces. There are no studio effects, no freeform jams, and barely any electric guitars. The psychedelic influence came entirely from the mind of Arthur Lee, whose lyrics were always otherworldly and never fully possible to pin down, and whose melodies were completely unforgettable. ‘You Set The Scene’ still ranks as one of rock’s great existential statements.
74: Thin Lizzy – Jailbreak
Thin Lizzy had so much going for them that it still boggles the mind that they were essentially a one-hit-wonder in the US. But the UK knew all about Phil Lynott’s resonant street poetry and the band’s distinctive harmony guitars. “The Boys Are Back in Town” and “Cowboy Song” are the epics on this, their greatest album, but the Irish rock group’s secret weapon was always its musical roots, put to memorable use in “Emerald.”
73: R.E.M. – Murmur
They’d have many peaks over the years but R.E.M.’s long-playing debut really defined their sound, embracing unfashionable things (in 1983) like subtlety, Southern-ness, and jangly Rickenbackers. They already had a flair for hauntingly lovely tunes (see the acoustic “Perfect Circle”) and “Radio Free Europe” became a rallying call for the 80s musical underground. And for all that was said about his enunciation, the poetic imagery in Michael Stipe’s lyrics was immediately apparent.
72: Megadeth – Rust in Peace
Dave Mustaine and his crew had been raising hell for nearly a decade by this time, but Rust in Peace marked the debut of Megadeth’s classic lineup with guitarist Marty Friedman. It was also where Mustaine refined his vision, with equal parts personal dread, dark political forecasts, and just a bit of superhero fantasy. With its tricky structure and underlying fury, “Holy Wars…The Punishment Due,” is one of thrash’s pinnacles.
71: Sleater-Kinney – Dig Me Out
Sleater-Kinney wanted to say resonant things about society and sexuality; they also wanted to be a rock’n’roll band for the ages. Their third album succeeds grandly at both: Though steeped in heartache and discontent, it’s also one of the more exhilarating albums of its time. Credit that to Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein’s perfect synchrony as singers and guitarists.
70: Queens of the Stone Age – Songs for the Deaf
Rock in 2002 needed a swift kick, and Josh Homme was the man to do it. On one hand, this is an album that a bunch of music-loving guys made for fun, daring to be quirky with the songwriting and production. But there are so many massive hooks and killer riffs that it couldn’t help being a mainstream smash – especially with Dave Grohl going wild on drums throughout.
69: Grateful Dead – Workingman’s Dead
After four albums of unabashed psychedelia, the Grateful Dead pulled a classic shapeshifting trick and invented (or at least perfected) cosmic Americana. You didn’t have to be a Deadhead to catch the groove on “New Speedway Boogie,” the words of wisdom in “Casey Jones” or the profundity of “Uncle John’s Band.” This has to be taken as a whole with the equally essential American Beauty, released just five months later.
68: Soundgarden – Superunknown
The Seattle underground produces a hard rock monolith, as producer Michael Beinhorn brings out the band’s psychedelic tinge. Superunknown had emotional power to match its sonic heft, thanks largely to Chris Cornell’s singing. “Black Hole Sun” and “The Day I Tried to Live” are heavy rock at its most expressive.
67: Arcade Fire – Funeral
Probably the greatest band ever rooted at a prep school, Arcade Fire made their debut at a time when modern rock was in danger of getting soulless. Funeral hit like a blast of pure emotion, with the urgency of Win Butler’s lead vocals as the immediate grabber, but further listens revealed how much was going on instrumentally. The semi-conceptual Funeral is a cry of desperation that ultimately provides hope.
66: Arctic Monkeys – AM
Take Arctic Monkeys away from the nightclub scene, and what do you get? An even better and more thoughtful band, one that can embrace electronica and textured pop without losing the raw edge. AM marked a personal turn in Alex Turner’s writing; it also gave a long-deserved payoff to the band’s mentor, street poet John Cooper Clarke, who gets a song covered.
65: Betty Davis – They Say I’m Different
Whoever said that sure wasn’t kidding. With its groundbreaking funk-rock fusion, edgy sexual talk, and Betty Davis’ over-the-top singing and female strength, They Say I’m Different was just too much for the early 70s. But if it had gotten its due upon release, rock history would have been very different.
64: Rush – Moving Pictures
Rush’s best-loved album caught them halfway between the three-piece rock of their early days and the heavily textured prog to come. There’s a thrill of discovery on every track on Moving Pictures, from the arena-shaking “Tom Sawyer” to the reggae-inspired “Vital Signs.” And there’s a peak Rush moment in “Red Barchetta,” where high ambitions ride along with cheap thrills.
63: The Go-Go’s – Beauty and the Beat
Historically, the Go-Go’s debut ranks as the first No.1 album ever performed, and largely written, by an all-female band. It’s also a blast of pure fun, showing Charlotte Caffey, Jane Wiedlin, and Kathy Valentine as first-class songwriters who’d absorbed everything great about California pop. “We Got the Beat” and “Our Lips Are Sealed” never get old.
62: The Strokes – Is This It?
With Is This It?, The Strokes delivered New York punk for a new era, taking the best from the past – mainly the Cars, Stooges, and Velvets – and channeling them into songs that are invariably short and tasty (all under four minutes) and never quite linear. Originally catching on in late 2001, it became a welcome reminder that New York was never going to lose its attitude.
61: Motörhead– Ace of Spades
Leader and mastermind Lemmy always insisted that Motörhead wasn’t heavy metal, it was rock’n’roll. Which may be why the punks and metalheads both got behind them – or it maybe because they were too much fun to resist. Of all the albums from Motörhead’s classic stretch, this has the most anthems – “We Are the Road Crew,” “The Chase is Better Than the Catch” and the title track – and exemplifies the Motörhead philosophy: Not so much “Live fast, die young” as “Live even faster and die old.”
60: Blondie – Parallel Lines
Like many 70s punks, Blondie grew up on classic AM radio and loved everything about it. The third album was where they became a world-class pop band, finding room on their dial for punk, disco, Brill Building pop, and even a bit of prog (with Robert Fripp on “Fade Away & Radiate”). Three songs on Parallel Lines were hit singles, at least a half-dozen others could have been.
59: Joy Division – Closer
Ian Curtis left the world with an influential album that defined the dark and moody, yet still danceable territory that would characterize post-punk. None of Joy Division’s best-known singles are here, but the soundscapes of Closer create a world that’s equally forbidding and enticing.
58: KISS – Alive!
If you grew up at a certain time, Alive! was your Bible – and the future superstars who did grow up on it are a legion. Early KISS was nothing but anthems and attitude, and these songs were made for an arena in Detroit Rock City. This is one of the few live albums where you can literally catch the roar of the greasepaint.
57: ZZ Top – Tres Hombres
Before the synthesizers and the videos, ZZ Top was that little ole band that lived and breathed Texas. The spare, tasty sound of Tres Hombres evinced the trio’s chemistry, Billy Gibbons’ knack for a great lick, and their solid blues roots, with “La Grange” treating the classic rock audience to a John Lee Hooker groove.
56: Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
Daydream Nation was simultaneously Sonic Youth’s most accessible album to that point, and the most packed with ideas. The mini-epic “Teen-Age Riot” opened with Kim Gordon’s spooky invocation, giving way to an onslaught of guitars and a surprisingly joyful hook. The roller coaster ride continues for two LPs packed with volume and invention.
55: Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers – Damn the Torpedoes
After two albums full of should’ve-been hits (yes, “Breakdown” and “American Girl” flopped at the time), Tom Petty and company decided it was time to haul out the big guns. So they pulled in producer Jimmy Iovine, amped up the sound, and treated each song like the last one they’d ever play. “Refugee” and “Don’t Do Me Like That” kicked the doors open, while deeper cuts like “Louisiana Rain” made Damn the Torpedoes the perfect road-trip album.
54: Derek & the Dominos – Layla
A broken heart never did a bluesman any harm, and Eric Clapton made his defining statement while his muse Pattie Harrison was out of reach. Guitar heroics abound, but every big-guitar moment – some by Clapton alone, some in tandem with Duane Allman – is a cry from the heart. The unsung hero of the band and album is keyboardist Bobby Whitlock, whose harmonies add a deeper shade of soul.
53: Bad Brains – Bad Brains
Bad Brains found a world of possibilities in the hardcore movement; as African-American Rastafarians they also saw that it could embrace positivity and spirituality. For all that, they could be fast and furious with the best of them, and were one of the first hardcore bands to dabble both in heavy metal and in almost-pop chorus hooks.
52: Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine
A groundbreaker in a few respects, Rage Against The Machine remains the most powerful case of a rock band absorbing hip-hop. Key tracks “Bullet in the Head” and “Killing in the Name” were made to provoke discussion, and the lyrics dared to be multi-layered. It’s still a fist-waver from start to finish, and Tom Morello took his place among modern guitar heroes.
51: Talking Heads – Remain in Light
Plenty of artful rock bands fell in love with Fela Kuti and James Brown, but nobody did more with that influence than Talking Heads in 1980. Remains in Light was not quite rock and not quite funk, but a new invention capped by David Byrne’s endlessly fascinating lyrics. It was also one of Brian Eno’s landmark productions, even if he fell out with the band afterward.
50: The Cure – Disintegration
Having scored a left-field breakthrough with the pop-friendly Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Robert Smith turned the other direction, reportedly dabbled in acid, and returned The Cure to its gothic roots. The result was the band’s darkest and most daring album – and perversely enough, one that stands as their greatest.
49: Metallica – Master of Puppets
After mastering thrash on their first two albums, Metallica was now reaching for grandeur – very loud grandeur of course. Monolithic tracks like “Battery” and “Welcome Home (Sanitarium)” broke musical boundaries with acoustic breaks and prog-like complexity, while the lyrics evince social conscience and a general sense of dread. The loose theme was power, which was something Metallica had to spare.
48: Liz Phair – Exile in Guyville
One of the wonders of the 90s indie scene was that an album this good could appear out of nowhere. Liz Phair’s songs were disarmingly frank, with pop hooks all over the place, but she was always a step ahead of the listener – for starters, nobody’s ever figured out if she was entirely serious about modeling the album after the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street. Either way, it remains one of the best albums of the 90s.
47: Allman Brothers Band – At Fillmore East
Has there ever been a better jam-heavy, live rock album than At Fillmore East? Much has been said about the Duane Allman/Dickey Betts guitar magic and Gregg Allman’s deep-soul vocals, but don’t overlook the band’s secret weapon, its hypnotic double-drum interplay. The Allmans didn’t even headline these historic shows (Johnny Winter did), but they’d never be just the “special guest” again.
46: U2 – Achtung Baby
How often does the most popular band in the world do something completely unexpected? With its innovative electronic sound, Achtung Baby redefined U2 while presenting five of its most indelible singles. And it spawned Zoo TV, which forever upped the ante for rock tours as conceptual spectacle.
45: The Replacements – Let It Be
The wonder of the Replacements was that they could play a glorious shamble of a live show, then go home and write an anthem for the ages. By now Paul Westerberg’s songs were evincing self-doubt, sympathy, and dogged hope (all three on “I Will Dare”), and they could still come up with a hilarious aside or two.
44: Van Halen – Van Halen
Perhaps the greatest party album ever made, Van Halen’s debut immediately upped the hard rock ante for technical skills and pure attitude. The album’s 1978 release immediately sent a generation of guitarists to their basements to figure out “Eruption.” Many of them are still working on it.
43: Bon Jovi – Slippery When Wet
If Bruce Springsteen gave voice to everyone living to escape from New Jersey, Bon Jovi spoke for those who stuck around. Their greatest rock album had three smashes, but “Livin’ on a Prayer” was the kind of street-life story-song – with a whooping radio hook, of course – that would be their specialty from here on in.
42: Pixies – Doolittle
An aptly-named band makes an album that gets your blood pumping while it messes with your head. The Pixies were writing some of the catchiest hooks in indie rock, then harnessing them to songs about mutilation, strange sex, and lab monkeys. Plenty of important bands borrowed the Pixies’ sound, but nobody could match the sense of mischief of Black Francis’ screams.
41: Bikini Kill – The First Two Records
Ground zero for the riot-grrl movement, Bikini Kill delivered on punk’s promise of liberation. But this is more than a feminist manifesto with a soundtrack: It’s jarring, exploratory punk rock that shouts truth. This essential album begins by calling for a revolution, then it goes ahead and starts one.
40: Black Sabbath – Paranoid
Retaining the killer riffage of their first album, Black Sabbath turned their attention to various social ills, from the war machines to guys with bad taste in footwear. They also inspired punk metal with the title track, one of the few (pre-Motörhead) heavy rock classics under three minutes. Buried treasure: “Hand of Doom,” perhaps the strongest anti-heroin statement that metal ever produced.
39: Creedence Clearwater Revival – Willie and the Poor Boys
Willie and the Poor Boys was CCR’s only concept album, and the one where John Fogerty’s social conscience came to the fore. And a perfectly symmetrical album too: Each side begins with one side of the classic “Down on the Corner”/”Fortunate Son” single, followed by a searing topical rocker, a country/folk cover, an instrumental, and finally one of the two longer, darker pieces that give this album its depth.
38: Def Leppard – Hysteria
Hysteria is the pinnacle of high-tech, 80s style hard rock, where digital wizardry and a hopped-up band could find common ground (producer Mutt Lange was the ultimate, painstaking studio rat). Def Leppard sweated blood over this album; including the loss of drummer Rick Allen’s arm. But they somehow kept their heads in party mode, and produced one of the greatest rock albums ever.
37: Patti Smith – Horses
Punk and poetry collide on a game-changer of an album that imagines Arthur Rimbaud and Cannibal & the Headhunters as kindred spirits. Patti Smith’s “Gloria” remains one of the strongest statements of purpose ever to open a debut album. Extra points for the Robert Mapplethorpe cover photo, by now as iconic as the album itself.
36: My Bloody Valentine – Loveless
Less an album of songs than an immersive sonic experience, Loveless both influenced and transcended the shoegaze trend. With its sensual layers of guitars and voices, it’s the perfect soundtrack for dreaming, and other bedroom activities. Easily one of the greatest rock albums ever made.
35: Neil Young – After the Goldrush
Sometimes Neil Young picked up his acoustic for tender intimate albums, sometimes he called in Crazy Horse and became the godfather of punk (or grunge or metal, depending on the year). After the Goldrush handily does both: You get soft and touching Neil on “Only Love Can Break Your Heart” and searing topical Neil on “Southern Man,” and those tracks even come back to back.
34: Green Day – American Idiot
The breakout success of Dookie wound up fueling Green Day’s ambitions; they wanted to get beyond pop-punk and take their place as a great American band. Even so, the giant step they took on American Idiot came as a surprise, with epic tracks that rocked and a satirical narrative that actually hung together. They also pulled off a great ballad with, “Wake Me Up When September Ends,” which they’d been trying to nail for years.
33: Janis Joplin – Pearl
The sad part here is that Janis Joplin was really hitting her stride on her last album: She’d formed her first really great band in Full Tilt Boogie, and moved beyond the Big Brother acid blues to a more rootsy mix, showing what a soulful and versatile singer she was. Though not a hit, “Get It While You Can” was the statement of her life. Just think of the follow-ups we missed out on.
32: John Lennon – Plastic Ono Band
At least three Beatles made big musical statements in the year after their breakup, but John Lennon took the occasion to bury both The Beatles and the 60s – yet accomplished this in songs that still had a bit of Beatlesque magic to them. Characteristically, he provided a few beautiful songs to go along with the dark cathartic ones.
31: Steely Dan – Aja
Walter Becker and Donald Fagen’s masterstroke puts all of their hipster inflections into an album that’s still heavy on film-noir romance and cerebral wit. “Deacon Blue” remains the most sympathetic portrait of a jazzman that any rock band has written, while “I Got the News” includes a couple of rock’s funniest sexual one-liners. Still a sonic wonder, Aja proves that spending weeks to get a drum sound isn’t always a bad idea.
30: AC/DC – Back in Black
How many bands can simultaneously bounce back from tragedy, pay a fitting tribute to their lead singer Bon Scott, have a great party, and double their fanbase while they’re at it? AC/DC’s Back in Black is one of classic rock’s greatest albums, with “You Shook Me All Night Long” going right to the history books.
29: The Who – Who’s Next
The Who truly became larger than life on Who’s Next, with “Baba O’Riley” and “Won’t Get Fooled Again” setting the tone for decades of arena rock to come. But there was still room for Pete Townshend’s spiritual yearnings, a bit of lighthearted fun on “Goin’ Mobile” and as always, a touch of dark humor from John Entwistle.
28: David Bowie – The Rise & Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders from Mars
On one hand, this was a conceptual masterstroke: David Bowie created the character of a pansexual, otherworldly rock star and that’s just what he became. But on a more down-to-earth level, it takes all the musical styles Bowie had been experimenting with for a few years – theatrical cabaret, Dylanesque folk-rock, proto-prog, and tough Stonesy rock – and rolls them into one of the greatest rock albums ever.
27: Ramones – Ramones
This album upended everything we know about rock’n’roll in 1976: It wasn’t supposed to be this raw, this snotty, or this much fun. The punk movement started here, but few at the time noticed how smart the Ramones really were: Just try writing a song (“I Don’t Wanna Walk Around With You”) that creates recognizable characters and a situation with exactly 10 words.
26: Queen – A Night at the Opera
It was typical of Queen in 1975 that they could record something this grand and symphonic, then poke fun at it with a Marx Brothers album title. Starting off with the nastiest song ever written about an ex-manager (“Death on Two Legs”), A Night at the Opera goes everywhere from metal to music hall. Rock opera “Bohemian Rhapsody” had to come near the end, because few things could follow it.
25: Pink Floyd – Dark Side of the Moon
Dark Side of the Moon is all about insanity and alienation, and it’s one of the best-selling and greatest rock albums of all time. Toured live for a good year before its recording, Dark Side found both Pink Floyd’s improvisational skills and their studio wizardry at a pinnacle. David Gilmour’s classic “Money” solo created plenty of new Floyd fans by itself.
24: The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground & Nico
For all the hippies it scared in 1967, The Velvet Underground’s debut was anything but an avant noisefest (that came next, on White Light/White Heat). It was a provocative and often beautiful collection of songs, where love and heroin were treated with the same care. Dark and dangerous they may be, Lou Reed’s characters treat the listener as a trusted confidante.
23: Elton John – Goodbye Yellow Brick Road
Elton John truly became a larger-than-life rock star on an album about larger-than-life movie stars. The fantasy Hollywood theme proves the perfect occasion for him and Bernie Taupin to let their imaginations flow. It was his most musically adventurous album to date, while the lyrics range from poetic to downright raunchy.
22: Bruce Springsteen – Born to Run
Everybody has a favorite Springsteen album but Born to Run is the most mythic of them all, an epic ride from the great escape on “Thunder Road” to the dead-end highway exit of “Jungleland.” No Springsteen concert – and for that matter, no young adult life – has since been complete without it.
21: Buddy Holly & the Crickets – The ‘Chirping’ Crickets
The ‘Chirping’ Crickets is one of the earliest rock albums that holds together as a full LP, where the deeper cuts (covers of Roy Orbison, Chuck Willis, and Little Richard) show the band’s roots and give context to the hits. Of course, it doesn’t hurt when those hits are “Not Fade Away,” “Oh Boy” and “That’ll Be the Day.”
20: Sex Pistols – Never Mind the Bollocks
The singles brought England to its knees during the Silver Jubilee summer, with “God Save the Queen” throwing a monkey wrench into the royal festivities. Never Mind The Bollocks wrapped up most of the Sex Pistols’ setlist during their crash-and-burn existence, just in time for them to implode – making the original Pistols a punk band that never released a bad track.
19: Iggy & the Stooges – Raw Power
Funny how things can change over time: Upon release, Raw Power was called a punk record before that was a compliment – way too rough and scary for the mainstream. But listen to it now and you hear how much thought went into Iggy Pop’s lyrics, how well those guitars are layered (Bowie wasn’t in the studio just to look good), and how many killer riffs and tunes Pop and James Williamson came up with. In short, there was never a reason not to love one of the greatest rock albums of all time.
18: Funkadelic – Maggot Brain
The title track to Maggot Brain is rightly acclaimed as one of George Clinton’s masterpieces, with his doomsaying monologue and Eddie Hazel’s heavy guitar solo telling the hippies everything they weren’t yet ready to hear. But not to forget, this was an album; and some of its less celebrated tracks are just as notable – like “Wars of Armageddon,” which works Afro-Cuban rhythms, acid-drenched studio tricks, and the Apocalypse into 10 mind-blowing minutes.
17: Ike & Tina Turner – River Deep-Mountain High
The Phil Spector-produced title track is arguably the greatest flop in pop history, a passionate outpouring that proved too intense for the charts. As a result, only the UK got the original release of River Deep-Mountain High – with more Spector tracks (some of his last great ones, Beatles and Ramones aside) and tougher rock/R&B overseen by Ike. Tina of course wails throughout.
16: Radiohead – OK Computer
Radiohead’s triumph here was to revive the multi-layered concept album, one that demanded you put on headphones, ponder all the musical surprises, and absorb its take on modern alienation. And wouldn’t you know it, this wilfully noncommercial album produced their biggest singles, at least in the UK, and remains a classic.
15: Prince & the Revolution – Purple Rain
During his 1984 peak, Prince verged on superhuman. You want funkafied Ramones? “Let’s Go Crazy.” You want modernized Hendrix? The title track. You want a classic pop single with no bass? “When Doves Cry.” You want a gorgeous ballad? “The Beautiful Ones.” You want wild sexuality and the best party in town? The whole damn album.
14: The Clash – London Calling
In 1979 the Clash weren’t just the “only band that matters,” they were arguably the most ambitious band in rock. They wanted to take every sound they loved – reggae, vintage R&B, rockabilly, vocal jazz, Motown – and put it into an empowering punk-rock format. Above all, this double LP shows the majesty of the Strummer/Jones songwriting team – delivering one of punk’s definitive battle cries in the title song, and a gem of an accidental hit single in “Train in Vain.”
13: Fleetwood Mac – Rumours
Fleetwood Mac weathered every kind of interpersonal drama and studio misadventure – and somehow they came up with a collection of perfect pop songs whose delivery sounds absolutely effortless. In addition to the music, listeners were entranced by the backstory of the members that made it: Christine McVie, John McVie, Mick Fleetwood, Lindsey Buckingham, and Stevie Nicks. To this day, no couple in a band can break up without drawing Mac comparisons.
12: Led Zeppelin – IV
Their untitled fourth studio album represented the peak of everything Led Zeppelin did – their hardest rockers, their heaviest blues, their loveliest folk tunes (including the one that introduced Sandy Denny to US ears) and of course, “Stairway to Heaven.”. Robert Plant becomes a mythic figure, John Bonham and John Paul Jones jell into an earthshaking rhythm section, and Jimmy Page is Jimmy Page.
11: The Beach Boys – Pet Sounds
Brian Wilson takes pop arrangements to new levels of sophistication, getting the Wrecking Crew’s performances of their lives. But what really lingers on Pet Sounds is the sheer beauty of the singing and the timeless nature of the songs, which trace a young-adult relationship from a hopeful start to its gorgeously sad finish.
10: The Rolling Stones – Exile on Main Street
Exile on Main Street is dirty, messy, and The Rolling Stones at their absolute peak. Steeped in blues, country, and gospel, recorded in countless all-night sessions and fueled by Lord only knows what, Exile is above all the work of serious blues scholars – and one of the greatest rock albums ever written.
9: Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction
Both Guns N’Roses and Appetite for Destruction revitalized heavy rock, making it dangerous and fun again – and made instant icons out of Slash and Axl Rose. On an album full of gritty street-life lyrics, GNR could somehow do a timeless love song (what else but “Sweet Child o’Mine”) without breaking character.
8: Jerry Lee Lewis – Live at The Star Club, Hamburg
It’s 1964, Jerry Lee’s career is in limbo, and his band for the night is one of the least-known British Invasion bands, the Nashville Teens. And Jerry Lee Lewis absolutely kills, rampaging through his own and other peoples’ hits. The definitive version of “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On” is here, with its raunchy breakdown and furious finale.
7: Bob Dylan – Highway 61 Revisited
It was the first fully electric Bob Dylan album, the first without a ballad, the one where his surreal wordplay really takes flight, and the one that demanded he wear a motorcycle jacket on the cover. With the number of landmark tracks here, Highway 61 Revisited would still be one of the greatest rock albums ever if it didn’t have “Like a Rolling Stone.” But of course, it did.
6: Elvis Presley – From Elvis in Memphis
It doesn’t seem like a tall order to put Elvis Presley in the studio with a great band, a sympathetic producer, and songs worthy of his gifts – but this was one of the few times post-Army when it actually happened. He stepped forward with the vocal performances of his life, completing the triumph of the ‘68s comeback and delivering one of the greatest rock albums to date.
5: Jimi Hendrix Experience – Electric Ladyland
There is no bad Jimi Hendrix album, but this double LP was where he harnessed the album format to create a real experience. The two long tracks are a lowdown late-night blues and a heady sonic trip; elsewhere there’s proto-metal, slinky R&B, New Orleans rock’n’roll, and with “All Along the Watchtower,” one of the all-time top Dylan covers.
4: Nirvana – Nevermind
Nevermind wound up having a far greater cultural impact than its creators intended or even wanted. But at the end of the day, songs like lead single “Smells Like Teen Spirit” really were strong enough to make this one of the greatest albums of all time. Kurt Cobain’s lyrics really were that sharp, and his singing that effective – and of course, the drummer clearly had a future ahead of him. Not to mention Butch Vig’s savvy production, which became the grunge-era standard.
3: The Beatles – The Beatles (The White Album)
Revolver stands as one of the best rock albums ever. And Sgt. Pepper inspired a million bands to get psychedelic. But the “White Album” created its own template too: The wildly eclectic, everything-goes double album. But nobody ever had the stylistic reach the Fab Four had here. Just try to name another album with a protest song, a vaudeville novelty, a nursery rhyme, a tough rocker, an easy-listening lullaby, and an avant-garde sound collage – and that was only Side Four.
2: Chuck Berry – The Great Twenty-Eight
Chuck Berry was such a master of the rock 45 that his definitive statement has to be this greatest hits album. There’s no filler or deep cuts in sight: Every track is a touchstone, from the debut single “Maybelline” to the Merseybeat nod on “I Wanna Be Your Driver.” If rock’n’roll has an Old Testament, this is it.
1: Little Richard – 17 Grooviest Original Hits
This is it, the essential sound that made most of the greatest rock albums possible. The deeper tracks here, like “Boo-Hoo-Hoo-Hoo” and “Send Me Some Lovin’”, bear out the gospel and blues roots that Little Richard channeled into rock’n’roll. But to listen to “Tutti Frutti” and “Long Tall Sally,” you have to wonder if rock ever got any wilder. | |||||
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Edward VII, King of Great Britain, 1841-1910
Alekseĭ Aleksandrovich, Grand Duke of Russia, 1850-1908
Alexandra, Queen, consort of Edward VII, King of Great Britain, 1844-1925
Alger, Horace Chapin, 1857-1906
American Horse, Dakota Chief, 1840-1908
Applin, Vincent Augustin
Argyll, John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Duke of, 1845-1914
Armes, George A. (George Augustus), 1844-1919
Augur, Christopher Columbus, 1821-1898
Bailey, James Anthony, 1847-1906
Baker, Lewis H., 1869-1931
Bangs, John Kendrick, 1862-1922
Bankhead, Henry Cary
Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor), 1810-1891
Bates, Gilbert Henderson
Beck, George Washington Thornton, 1856-1943
Black Fox, Joe
Black Heart (Oglala Sioux chief)
Bleistein, George, 1861-1918
Bogardus, Adam H.
Bonfils, Frederick Gilmer, 1860-1933
Brennan, John R., 1847-1919
Brown, George LeRoy, 1849-1921
Buntline, Ned, 1822 or 1823-1886
Burdick, Charles W. (Charles Williams), 1860-1927
Burke, John M., 1842-1917
Canfield, George, 1836-1899
Canfield, Sherman D., 1865-1939
Carr, E. A. (Eugene Asa), 1830-1910
Carver, William F. (William Frank), 1840-1927
Charging Thunder (Wakinyan Watakpe or Wakiinya Wakuwa)
Clapp, William H., c. 1836-1905
Clifford, Henry Marsh
Cody, Isaac, 1811-1857
Cody, Louisa Frederici, 1843-1921
Craft, Francis M., 1852-1920
Crager, George Carlton, 1859-1920
Crook, George, 1829-1890
Cunningham, Dennis, 1843-
Custer, George A. (George Armstrong), 1839-1876
Daly, Claude Lorraine
Darrah, Hudson W., 1864-1929
DeMaris, Charles, 1827-1914
Dodge, Richard Irving, 1827-1895
Dudley, Nathan Augustus Monroe
Duncan, Thomas
Dunraven, Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, earl of, 1841-1926
Dyer, Daniel Burns, 1849-1912
Eagle Star, Paul, 1864-1891
Elwell, Robert Farrington, 1874-1962
Emory, William H. (William Hemsley), 1811-1887
Esquivel, Antonio "Tony", 1862-1914
Ferrel, Della
Flies Above (Wakani Kinyan)
Flying Hawk, 1852-1931
Forsyth, George Alexander, 1837-1915
Frenzeny, Paul
Fry, James B. (James Barnet), 1827-1894
Garlow, Frederick H., 1881-1918
Garlow, Irma Louise, 1883-1918
Gerrans, Henry M., 1853-1939
Gibbon, John, 1827-1896
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart), 1809-1898
Goodman, Edward Robert, 1868-1949
Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord, 1845-1916
Grouard, Frank, 1850-1905
Hall, Samuel Stone, 1838-1886
Hammitt, Frank M., 1869-1903
Hancock, Winfield Scott, 1824-1886
Harney, William S. (William Selby), 1800-1889
Hayden, Charles E., 1866-1938
Hazen, William Babcock, 1830-1887
Heckert, Theodore
Hickok, James Butler "Wild Bill", 1837-1876
Hinkle, Lorin Curtis, 1869-1931
Holdrege, George Ward, 1847-1926
Hughes-Hallett, Francis 1838-1903
Hymer, William Ebert, 1853-1933
Ingraham, Prentiss, 1843-1904
Iron Tail, or Siŋté Máza, 1842-1916
Irving, Henry, Sir, 1838-1905
Irving, William "Broncho Bill", 1856-1903
Kelsey, Frank C., c. 1863-1933
Kicking Bear (Mato Wanartaka) 1846-1904
King, Charles, 1844-1933
Landreth, Burnet, 1842-1928
Lillie, Gordon William, 1860-1942
Little Chief, b. 1851
Little Horse (Tasunke Ciqala)
Lone Bull
Louise, Princess, Duchess of Argyll, 1848-1939
McGinty, William M., 1871-1961
Mead, Elwood, 1858-1936
Merritt, Wesley, 1834-1910
Miles, Nelson Appleton, 1839-1925
Morgan, Matthew Somerville, 1839-1890
Moses, Mollie
Nelson, John Young, 1826-1903
No Neck (Tahu Wanica)
No Neck, Johnny Burke, 1883-1921
North, Frank J. (Frank Joshua), 1840-1885
Oakley, Annie, 1860-1926
O'Beirne, James Rowan, 1844-1917
Omohundro, John Burwell, 1846-1880
Otakte, d. 1890
Paxton, William A., 1837-1907
Peake, John H., 1848-1905
Penney, Charles G., 1844-
Plenty Wounds
Red Shirt, 1845?-1925
Richards, William Alford, 1849-1912
Richmond, Frank, -1890
Robinson, Emma Lake Thatcher
Rocky Bear
Rowley, Clarence W., 1871-1943
Royall, William B. (William Bedford), 1825-1895
Rumsey, Bronson, II, 1854-1946
Russell, Henry Sturgis
Russell, Michael R. "Mike", 1847-1930
Ryan, Jerry
Salsbury, Nathan, 1846-1902
Shangreaux, John, c. 1854-1926
Sheridan, Philip Henry, 1831-1888
Sherman, William T. (William Tecumseh), 1820-1891
Short Bull (Tatanka Ptecela) c.1845-1923
Sitting Bull, 1831-1890
Smith, Lillian Frances, 1871-1930
Spoor, George K., 1872-1953
Standing Bear, Luther, 1868?-1939
Sweeney, William, 1856-1917
Schwoob, Jacob M., 1874-1932
Tait, John H., c.1873-1940
Tammen, Harry Heye, 1856-1924
Taylor, William Levi, 1857-1924
Terry, Alfred Howe, 1827-1890
Terry, Ellen, Dame, 1847-1928
Van Dreveldt, Ernest
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
Whitley, John Robinson, 1843-1922
Whittaker, Margaret "Ma", 1827-1893
Wilde, Oscar, 1854-1900
Wiley, Solon Lysander, 1840-1926
Willoughby, James W.
Woods, Alfred Wilderman, 1857-1942
Wovoka, approximately 1856-1932
Yellow Hair (Hay-o-wei or Heova'ehe), c.1850-1876
Edward VII, King of Great Britain, 1841-1910
Albert Edward (1841-1910), the second child and eldest son of Queen Victoria and Prince Consort Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, became the Prince of Wales a month after his birth. He married the Princess Alexandra of Denmark in 1863; together they had five children, four of whom survived to adulthood, including the future King George V. For 59 years Albert Edward held the title of Prince of Wales until the death of Queen Victoria on January 22, 1901. He ascended the throne as King Edward VII of the United Kingdom and The British Dominions and Emperor of India; he reigned until his death in 1910.
Alekseĭ Aleksandrovich, Grand Duke of Russia, 1850-1908
At the invitation of General Philip Sheridan, Alekseĭ Aleksandrovich, Grand Duke of Russia, arrived in the United States in November 1871 for a tour of the country, including an elk and buffalo hunt in Nebraska, guided by William F. Cody and supported by United States Cavalry under General Sheridan's command.
Alexandra, Queen, consort of Edward VII, King of Great Britain, 1844-1925
Princess Alexandra of Denmark (Alexandra Caroline Marie Charlotte Louise Julia, 1844-1925) became the Princess of Wales when she married Prince Albert Edward in 1863; together they had five children, four of whom survived to adulthood, including the future King George V. Upon Queen Victoria's death, Prince Albert, Prince of Wales, became Edward VII, King of Great Britain, and the Princess Alexandra became Queen Alexandra.
Alger, Horace Chapin, 1857-1906
Horace Chapin Alger (1857-1906) was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, where his father was a prominent attorney. Alger graduated from Harvard in 1879 and briefly attended medical school before settling on banking and finance as his career. He moved to Miles City, Montana, in 1884 and went on to Sheridan, Wyoming, in 1885. Alger spent the next twenty-one years as an officer of various banks in Sheridan. Along with George Beck, Alger was one of the original partners in the venture that became the Shoshone Irrigation Company. Alger served on the company's board of directors until his death in 1906. Alger also had an active political career, serving as Sheridan County treasurer, mayor of Sheridan, and as a member of the Wyoming legislature at various times in the 1890s. He ran unsuccessfully for governor on the Democratic ticket in 1898.
American Horse, Dakota Chief, 1840-1908
American Horse, Wasechun-Tashunka, literally translated "White Man's Horse" (1840-1908), was a member of the Oglala Sioux Nation. American Horse was the son of Sitting Bear and Walks With Her. He and wife Fanny Hard Woman had three children. American Horse joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1886, replacing Sitting Bull as the leading American Indian performer. It is unclear how many seasons he toured with Buffalo Bill's Wild West. There were several Indian performers named American Horse: Julia American Horse and Thomas American Horse in the 1902 season; Alfred American Horse in the 1910-11 season.
Applin, Vincent Augustin
Vincent Augustin Applin (1850-1895) was a member of the Incorporated Law Society and Solicitor of the Supreme Court in England. Applin became secretary of The American Exhibition of 1887, along with fellow appointees Colonel Henry S. Russell (president) and John Robinson Whitley (director-general).
Argyll, John Douglas Sutherland Campbell, Duke of, 1845-1914
John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell (1845-1914), 9th Duke of Argyll, was also known by the title of Marquis of Lorne from 1847 to 1900. In 1871 he married Princess Louise Caroline Alberta, daughter of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, at St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle.
Armes, George A. (George Augustus), 1844-1919
George Augustus Armes (1844-1919) began his military life on September 1, 1862, as a private of Company B, Sixteenth West Virginia Volunteer Infantry. In a little over two months he rose to first lieutenant. Despite the promotion Armes elected to muster out of the regiment on June 10, 1863. On July 1, 1863, he accepted a commission at the lower grade of a second lieutenant. Late the next year he resigned to become a captain in the Second New York Artillery, which brought him a brevet (honorary title of recognition but not a permanent rank) as a major of volunteers for gallantry and meritorious service during the campaign of 1864-1865. He left the service on September 29, 1865, but was able to secure an appointment as a second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry on April 19, 1866. Within a matter of three months he managed to advance to captain of the Tenth U.S. Cavalry (buffalo soldiers) as commanding officer of Troop I posted to Kansas. It was here Armes met W. F. Cody, who served as a scout and hunted game to supply Armes' troops in the field. The captain admired Cody, who by then had been nicknamed "Buffalo Bill." Not one to pay compliments, Armes nevertheless recollected Cody was "one of our scouts and one of the best shots on the plains… He gets $60 per month and a splendid mule to ride, and is one of the most contented and happy men I ever met." The often contentious captain would be dismissed from the army on June 7, 1870, but reinstated with full back pay and rank of captain on May 11, 1878. He retired September 15, 1883.
Augur, Christopher Columbus, 1821-1898
Christopher Columbus Augur (1821-1898) graduated from West Point Military Academy in the same year as U. S. Grant, 1843. During the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, Augur acted as aide-de-camp to Generals Enos D. Hopping and Caleb Cushing. He subsequently fought in the Rogue River War in Southern Oregon in 1855-56, then served briefly as commandant of cadets at West Point in 1861, and reported in the same year to Washington, D.C. as part of the forces defending the Union capitol. At the end of the war he served as the officer in charge of escorting Abraham Lincoln's body to the White House after the president's assassination on the evening of April 14, 1865. Augur later commanded the Department of the Platte from 1867-1871 and the Department of Texas from 1871-1875. He retired from the service in 1885 with the rank of brigadier general.
Bailey, James Anthony, 1847-1906
James A. Bailey (1847-1906) was born James Anthony McGinnes in 1847. As a teenager McGinnes became an assistant to Frederic Augusta Bailey, a nephew of circus pioneer Hachaliah Bailey. McGinnes eventually changed his name to James Anthony Bailey. His business associations included James E. Cooper, manager of the Cooper and Bailey circus, and P. T. Barnum, becoming full partners to establish Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1881, which became Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus in 1919. Under the astute management skills of James A. Bailey, Barnum and Bailey managed Buffalo Bill's Wild West for William F. Cody from 1895 until Bailey's death in 1906.
Baker, Lewis H., 1869-1931
Lewis H. Baker (1869-1931), better known as Johnny Baker, was for many years a fixture in William F. Cody's personal and professional life. As a young boy in North Platte, Nebraska, Baker idolized Cody, who came to look upon Baker as a foster son. Baker accompanied Cody's Wild West on tour from its inception, and was a regular cast member by 1885. Originally billed as the "Cow-Boy Kid," Baker often competed with Annie Oakley in trick shooting contests (consistently won by Oakley), among other roles. Baker remained with the various iterations of the Wild West as long as Cody had an ownership interest in the show. After Cody's death, Baker became one of the chief custodians of the Cody legacy in 1921 as founder of the Buffalo Bill Memorial Museum (now the Buffalo Bill Museum and Grave) in Golden, Colorado. Baker operated the museum until his death in 1931.
Bangs, John Kendrick, 1862-1922
John Kendrick Bangs (1862-1922) was a popular American author of satire and humorous fiction of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Bangs was a correspondent and editor for such magazines as Life, Harper's Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, Munsey's Weekly, and Puck. Bangs also wrote numerous works under the pseudonym of Carlyle Smith.
Bankhead, Henry Cary
Henry Cary Bankhead (1828-1894) graduated from West Point in 1850 and in that year reported to his first assignment, Fort Gibson in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). For the next decade he served at several frontier posts in that territory as well as in Arkansas and Texas, and formed part of the Utah Expedition of 1857. In 1860 he left the West to conduct recruiting duty, and with the outbreak of the Civil War assumed a staff position with Major General Don Carlos Buell in which capacity he was present at the Battle of Shiloh. After taking part in many key engagements, Bankhead personally witnessed an end to the war at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1865. The next year Bankhead returned to the West as an officer in the Fifth U.S. Infantry. During that assignment he served at Forts Wallace and Harker in Kansas, posts well known to William F. Cody. Bankhead came to the aid of Major George Alexander Forsyth's besieged command at the Battle of Beecher's Island in 1868. By 1873, as a major of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry, he saw considerable campaigning in Texas and Indian Territory but ended his career under arrest and suspended from rank. On November 12, 1879, he retired "on account of wounds and disability contracted in the line of duty."
Barnum, P. T. (Phineas Taylor), 1810-1891
Phineas Taylor Barnum (1810-1891) was an American businessman, an author, publisher, philanthropist, showman, and founder of the American Museum in New York City. He was the originator of Barnum's "Greatest Show on Earth," which later became Barnum and Bailey's "Greatest Show on Earth" when Barnum partnered with James A. Bailey.
Bates, Gilbert Henderson
Sergeant Gilbert Henderson Bates (1838-1917), a Civil War veteran, first gained notoriety due to a wager with his neighbor regarding safety in the South. In 1868 Bates walked 1,400 miles carrying the American flag through southern states—from Mississippi to Washington, D.C.—for which the neighbor paid him a dollar a day. Bates walked without weapons or money and was met with respect, hospitality, and collegiality all along his march, earning positive publicity. In 1872 he carried the American flag while trekking through England to prove the existence of friendship between the United States and Great Britain; again he was met with respect and hospitality. Bates became an author and famed guest lecturer, speaking on various social and political issues of the time. Sergeant Bates appeared as the Color-bearer for Buffalo Bill's Wild West during the 1886 and 1887 seasons, presenting the American flag to Queen Victoria at the American Exhibition in London in May 1887.
Beck, George Washington Thornton, 1856-1943
George Washington Thornton Beck (1856-1943) was born near Lexington, Kentucky. His father, James B. Beck (1822-1890), represented Kentucky in the U.S. Congress for over twenty years, first in the House and later in the Senate. George Beck studied civil engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and moved to the West in 1877. Beck became involved in numerous business enterprises in Wyoming, including sheep ranching, mining, irrigation, and later the development of oil fields. Beck was a key partner with William F. Cody in founding the town of Cody in 1896. Beck managed the construction and day-to-day operations of the Cody Canal for the Shoshone Irrigation Company, of which William F. Cody was president. Although the Shoshone Irrigation Company was not a success, Beck's other investments were profitable, and he became an important local leader in both business and politics. Beck served as mayor of Cody in 1903 and was a Wyoming state senator from 1913 to 1917. He ran unsuccessfully for governor of Wyoming in 1902.
Black Fox, Joe
Black Fox (Joe Black Fox), or Strigi-La-Sapa (c1844-c1928), was an Oglala Lakota who joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1889. He was nephew to Sitting Bull and cousin to Crazy Horse. In 1890 Black Fox was one who testified to the United States Commissioner of Indian Affairs, strongly defending Cody's treatment of the Indian performers. In 1898 Black Fox and other Lakota were photographed by Gertrude Käsebier in her New York studio. Black Fox left Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1907 and is alleged to have died blind and destitute at Pine Ridge circa 1928.
Black Heart (Oglala Sioux chief)
Black Heart (William Black Heart), or Cante Sapa (born 1855), was an Oglala Lakota veteran of the 1887 visit to London. Black Heart was one who spoke out strongly in defense of Cody's treatment of his Indian performers during the 1891-92 controversy which almost led to the prohibition of the recruitment of Indians for the Wild West shows. On August 8, 1891, Black Heart married Calls-the-Name (Calls-Her-Name) in St. Bride's in Stretford, England. Black Heart remained with Buffalo Bill's Wild West until 1905 or possibly later.
Bleistein, George, 1861-1918
George Bleistein (1861-1918) was born in Buffalo, New York, the son of German immigrants. While still in his teens, Bleistein began work for the Courier Printing Company in Buffalo, and rose through the ranks to become the firm's president in 1884. Bleistein's company provided printed materials for Buffalo Bill's Wild West in the 1890s. Bleistein invested in the Shoshone Irrigation Company, served on its board of directors, and had other business interests in the Big Horn Basin. Bleistein remained prominent in Buffalo, serving on the board of directors for the Pan-American Exposition in 1901. He was U.S. customs collector for the port of Buffalo from 1914 until his death in 1918.
Bogardus, Adam H.
Adam H. Bogardus (1834-1913), a carpenter by trade, then a wild game hunter in the Chicago area, and a professional shooter and world wing shot champion, was a featured sharpshooter in William F. Cody's and Doc Carver's Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition of 1883. When the Cody-Carver partnership dissolved at the end of that initial Wild West season, Bogardus became a one-third partner with Cody and Nate Salsbury for the 1884 season, joined by his sons Peter, Eugene, Edward, and Henry—all accomplished marksmen performers in Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Bonfils, Frederick Gilmer, 1860-1933
Frederick Gilmer Bonfils was born in Troy, Missouri, in 1860. He attended West Point from 1878 to 1881 but left the academy without graduating. Bonfils became a financial success through land speculation in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas. In 1895 Bonfils and Harry Heye Tammen bought the struggling Denver Post. Bonfils and Tammen built the Post into Colorado's largest-circulation newspaper through the practice of highly sensationalistic journalism amidst a bitter rivalry with the Rocky Mountain News. Bonfils and Tammen were partners in several other businesses, including the Kansas City Post (1909-1922) and the Sells-Floto Circus (1904-1921). Bonfils was known for his quick temper, becoming involved in physical altercations with several political and business rivals over the years. In 1907 he was convicted of assaulting the publisher of the rival Rocky Mountain News. Bonfils died in 1933, apparently feared by many but truly loved by few in Denver.
Brennan, John R., 1847-1919
John R. Brennan (c. 1847-1919), a prominent South Dakota businessman who had been one of the founders of Rapid City, became U.S. Indian agent for the Pine Ridge reservation on November 1, 1900, and remained in charge at Pine Ridge until July 1, 1917. In correspondence, Cody often addressed Brennan as "Major," a courtesy title commonly used at the time for those Indian agents who (like Brennan) were not actual army officers.
Brown, George LeRoy, 1849-1921
George LeRoy Brown (1849-1921) graduated from West Point in 1872. A career Army officer, Brown served as acting U. S. Indian agent at Pine Ridge from December 1891 to July 1893. He later served during the Spanish-American War as commander of the 4th Tennessee Volunteer Infantry and retired from the Army as a colonel in 1907.
Buntline, Ned, 1822 or 1823-1886
Ned Buntline (Edward Zane Carroll Judson,1822 or 1823-1886) was an American writer, journalist, publicist, and publisher who was instrumental in bringing fame to James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok and William F. Cody. He wrote prolifically under the pseudonym Ned Buntline including plays and novels. He was also a temperance lecturer and political activist (most notably for the nativist Know-Nothing Party). He introduced Buffalo Bill to a national audience with Buffalo Bill, the King of the Border Men, a serialized story published in New York Weekly in 1869. He later wrote a stage drama, The Scouts of the Plains, which launched Cody's acting career.
Burdick, Charles W. (Charles Williams), 1860-1927
Charles W. Burdick (1860-1927) was a prominent Cheyenne lawyer, and served as the first Wyoming state auditor (1890-94) and later as Wyoming secretary of state (1895-99).
Burke, John M., 1842-1917
"Major" John M. Burke (1842-1917), sometimes known as "Arizona John," played a pivotal role in cultivating William F. Cody's public image for 34 years. He was associated with all the various iterations of Buffalo Bill's Wild West from 1883 until 1916, often holding the title of general manager. His actual duties combined those of advance agent, location scout, press agent, and public-relations manager. Known for his florid language, Burke composed much of the copy for the Wild West's programs and advertising materials. In 1893 he published a biography of Cody entitled Buffalo Bill from Prairie to Palace, which was timed to coincide with the Wild West's appearance at the Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Details of Burke's own life are scarce, but it is unlikely that he ever held an actual military rank. Burke was of Irish descent, was born in Delaware, and apparently had some experience as an actor. He first met Cody in 1873 while serving as manager for the Italian actress Giuseppina Morlacchi, a cast member in Cody's first theatrical troupe and wife of John B. "Texas Jack" Omohundro.
Canfield, George, 1836-1899
George Canfield (1836-1899), an old friend of Cody's from Omaha, was the owner of the Cozzens House Hotel in downtown Omaha, later known as Canfield House which Canfield ran until 1894. Canfield and an investment partner also established the Farnam Street Boarding and Sales Stables in 1881, which George Canfield owned by 1885. George Canfield is father of Sherman D. Canfield, Cody's personal representative and confidential secretary during the first two European tours of Buffalo Bill's Wild West.
Canfield, Sherman D., 1865-1939
Sherman D. Canfield (1865-1939), son of Cody's old friend George Canfield of Omaha, was personal representative and confidential secretary to William F. Cody in Europe and America from 1887-1888 and 1890-1903. Canfield was superintendent of the railroad facilities for the Union Stockyards Company in South Omaha, Nebraska, during 1888 through 1890. In 1892 Canfield relocated to Wyoming as one of the proprietors in the W. F. Cody Hotel Company and managed the Sheridan Inn in Sheridan from 1893 to 1896. Cody incorporated the W. F. Cody Hotel Co. in 1894 and purchased the inventory of the Sheridan Inn, making him one third owner with Sherman Canfield who managed both the Inn and the W. F. Cody Transportation Company.
Carr, E. A. (Eugene Asa), 1830-1910
Eugene Asa Carr (1830-1910) graduated from West Point in 1850. He served in the West until 1861, by which time he had been promoted to captain in the old First U.S. Cavalry and appointed commander of Fort Washita in Indian Territory (Oklahoma). Carr soon moved east to participate in numerous campaigns of the Civil War, which earned him the Medal of Honor for gallantry in action after being wounded at the Battle of Pea Ridge in March, 1862. Three years later Carr was appointed major general of volunteers. In 1866 President Andrew Johnson nominated Carr as a major general in the U.S. Army. After the Civil War he conducted several successful campaigns on the frontier, becoming known as "War Eagle." He arrived on the plains in October, 1868, as lieutenant colonel of the Fifth U.S. Cavalry, in which grade he took part in the battles of Summit Springs (1869) and Warbonnet Creek (1876), two incidents which William F. Cody dramatized on stage and in Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Carr later dubbed Cody "king of all guides, scouts, trailers, and hunters." On April 29, 1879, Carr became the colonel of the Sixth U.S. Cavalry and served in the Apache campaigns in Arizona. He retired as a brigadier general in 1893.
Carver, William F. (William Frank), 1840-1927
William "Doc" Carver (Dr. William Frank Carver, c1840-1927) was born in Winslow, Illinois. Trained as a dentist, Carver relocated to Nebraska in 1872 where he began to acquire frontier skills such as hunting, riding, and, most notably, marksmanship. In 1876 he launched a career as a showman touring the country giving shooting exhibitions and billing himself as "Champion Rifle Shot of the World." In 1883 he joined with William F. Cody to launch "Hon. W. F. Cody and Dr. W. F. Carver's Rocky Mountain and Prairie Exhibition." The partnership lasted just one season, ending in acrimony. Cody formed Buffalo Bill's Wild West the following year and Carver developed various rival enterprises, eventually creating a small-scale exhibition of trained animals—most notably a diving horse attraction—and feats of marksmanship.
Charging Thunder (Wakinyan Watakpe or Wakiinya Wakuwa)
A Wablenica Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, Charging Thunder (Wakinyan Watakpe or Wakiinya Wakuwa) was born about 1868. He sailed to Europe aboard the Switzerland, arriving in Antwerp in April 1891 to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West on the second European tour. Charging Thunder attained notoriety in Glasgow, Scotland, when he was arrested in December 1891 for drunkenness and an unprovoked assault on the Lakota interpreter George C. Crager. Charging Thunder was sentenced and appears to have served his thirty days in Barlinnie Prison. He was among the 24 Indians who departed early from Buffalo Bill's Wild West, sailing from Glasgow aboard the Corean in early March 1892. Upon arrival in Chicago, eleven of the Indians returned to Fort Sheridan for incarceration to avoid any chance of reviving the Ghost Dance mania; Charging Thunder and twelve others traveled with George C. Crager to Pine Ridge Reservation. In 1898 Charging Thunder was among those Indians photographed by Gertrude Käsebier in her New York studio. Following his departure from Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1903, little is known of Charging Thunder, and his death date is unknown.
Clapp, William H., c. 1836-1905
William H. Clapp (c. 1836-1905) served in the 42nd Ohio Volunteer Infantry during the Civil War. He became an officer of the Regular Army in 1866 and served until his retirement as a lieutenant colonel in 1900. Clapp was acting U.S. Indian agent at Pine Ridge from January 1896 to July 1900. He was promoted to colonel on the retired list in 1904.
Clifford, Henry Marsh
Henry Marsh Clifford, British actor and orator, became the voice of Buffalo Bill's Wild West following the death of Frank Richmond in January 1890. At the conclusion of the tour in October 1892 Clifford was invited to return to the United States with the troupe to continue as orator; he chose to remain in Britain to continue his career performing in the theater.
Cody, Isaac, 1811-1857
Isaac Cody was born September 15, 1811, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He married Martha Miranda O'Connor in 1834 in Cleveland, Ohio, who died in 1835 following the birth of a daughter, Martha Cody (1835-1858). Cody then married Rebecca Summer in 1836 in Ohio, who died that same year. His third marriage was to Mary Ann Bonsall Laycock in 1840 in Cincinnati, Ohio; they had seven children: Samuel (1841-1853); Julia Melvinia (1843-1928); William Frederick (1846-1917); Eliza Alice (1848-1902); Laura Ella (1850-1911); Mary Hannah (1853-1926); and Charles W. (1855-1864). In September 1854 at a settlers' meeting in Leavenworth, Kansas, an argument ensued over the "free states" issue, and Isaac Cody was stabbed by Charles Dunn. Cody died from a fever on March 10, 1857, in Leavenworth County, Kansas.
Cody, Louisa Frederici, 1843-1921
Louisa Maude Frederici was born in 1843, the daughter of a St. Louis merchant family. Her 1920 memoir states that she met William Cody on May 1, 1865, while he was a private in the Seventh Kansas Cavalry on detached duty in St. Louis. The couple married on March 6, 1866. The Codys had four children: daughters Arta (1866-1904), Orra (1872-1883), and Irma (1883-1918), and son Kit Carson Cody (1870-76). The Cody marriage was often strained; with financial disputes, the premature deaths of two children, William Cody's long absences from his family, and his marital infidelities all contributing to the troubles. William Cody twice filed divorce petitions. The first was withdrawn upon the death of Orra Cody in 1883, while the second went to trial in Cheyenne, Wyoming, in 1905. Louisa won the court case, thus, William Cody's petition for divorce was denied. The Codys eventually reconciled after 1910, and Louisa often accompanied William Cody in his travels with the Wild West during the show's final years. After William Cody's death, Louisa published a memoir (co-authored with Courtney Ryley Cooper) entitled Memories of Buffalo Bill, an account that portrayed her marriage as consistently loving and happy. She died in 1921.
Craft, Francis M., 1852-1920
Francis M. Craft (1852-1920) entered medical school at Columbia University at the age of twelve, attended the University of Louvain for advanced study in surgery, and ultimately joined his father's medical practice in Pennsylvania. Craft became a Catholic in 1876; was recruited to the Dakota Territory and ordained as a priest in 1883; and practiced medicine among the Sioux for nearly twenty years. He was present during the massacre at Wounded Knee where he suffered a knife wound to the back. Father Craft was revered among the Sioux for defying both the Indian Agency bureaucracy and the Catholic Church to improve the horrible conditions the Sioux people endured on the reservations. Following his founding a sisterhood for Indian women, Craft and four of the sisters went to Cuba to serve during the Spanish-American War. When the sisterhood disbanded, Father Craft served as parish priest in Pennsylvania until his death in 1920.
Crager, George Carlton, 1859-1920
George Carlton Crager (1859-1920), an American linguist and interpreter who spoke many Native American dialects and several European languages, was a soldier, a U.S. Special Agent for Indian Affairs, and a theatrical impresario. Crager lived with the Lakota for many years and was the Lakota interpreter for Buffalo Bill's Wild West during 1891 in Britain.
Crook, George, 1829-1890
George R. Crook (1828-1890) graduated from West Point Military Academy in 1852 and with the exception of Civil War service spent his entire thirty-eight year army career on frontier duty. During the latter half of the 1860s Crook campaigned against the Bannock, Shoshone, and Paiute people from 1864-1868, and fought in the Great Sioux War of 1876-1877. His command suffered a defeat at the Battle of the Rosebud on June 17, 1876, but he obtained somewhat more notable, albeit spotty success in the Apache Wars of the Southwest where he received the nickname "Gray Fox." Crook spent the last part of his life advocating for the fair treatment of American Indians. Few army officers of the late 19th century matched his record in Indian affairs, in extensive field operations, negotiations, or in efforts to promote acculturation on the reservation.
Cunningham, Dennis, 1843-
Dennis Cunningham was born in Ireland in 1843, and came to the United States in 1866. He settled in Omaha, Nebraska, in 1868, and practiced the trades of blacksmith and farrier. He became prosperous through shrewd investments in Omaha real estate, making a particularly tidy profit by selling the lot on which a post office was to be constructed. Cunningham later expanded his business interests into construction. He is known to have visited William F. Cody at North Platte, Nebraska, during the Christmas holiday season in 1888-89. An 1891 gazetteer of Omaha lists his business address as 524 South 13th Street. According to a 1914 city directory, Cunningham resided at 626 South 19th Street.
Custer, George A. (George Armstrong), 1839-1876
George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) graduated last in the class of 1861 at the United States Military Academy. Despite his poor West Point record he went on to a distinguished career as a Union officer, rising to the grade of major general of volunteers while still in his twenties. After the Civil War he gained a commission as lieutenant colonel of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry regiment. In 1872 he joined Grand Duke Alexis of Russia for an elaborate hunting expedition in the West. The party included Buffalo Bill Cody and Lieutenant General Philip Sheridan. Four years later, on June 25, 1876, Custer died with much of his command at Little Big Horn, or as the native peoples knew it, the Greasy Grass River. From that day Custer began to transform from an historical figure to a legend, in part because of Cody's Wild West depiction of the fabled "Last Stand" that was performed in front of many thousands of audience members in North America and Europe.
Daly, Claude Lorraine
Claude Lorraine Daly (also 'Daily'), an expert with a revolver and a champion pistol shot from Pennsylvania, joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1889 at age 25. His promotional material describes him as five feet, ten inches tall ". . . with the biceps of a gladiator . . ." and claimed that he had not participated in any shooting matches in recent years ". . . for the good and sufficient reason that he cannot find an opponent." Daly's life and his promising shooting career ended abruptly in November 1892 when he succumbed to cholera in Brussels, Belgium, following the close of Buffalo Bill's Wild West in London in October.
Darrah, Hudson W., 1864-1929
Hudson W. Darrah (1864-1929), a sawmill owner with other business interests in and around the town of Cody, Wyoming, had a history of legal disputes with the Shoshone Irrigation Company. In 1899 Darrah filed a protest against the issuance of land patents for portions of the Shoshone Irrigation Company's Carey Act segregation including the Cody town site, claiming that the Shoshone Irrigation Company had not yet adequately irrigated the area in question. While Darrah's protest was not upheld when adjudicated by government authorities in July 1900, it did delay the acquisition of clear title to these lands by settlers and investors who had filed claims for them. Since the Shoshone Irrigation Company's profitability depended on selling water rights to settlers who expected to gain clear title to the irrigated lands under the Carey Act, protests such as Darrah's were a threat to the business interests of William F. Cody and his partners.
DeMaris, Charles, 1827-1914
Charles DeMaris (1827-1914) was an early settler in the Big Horn Basin who had previously been involved in mining and ranching ventures in Idaho and Montana. He settled near hot springs along the Shoshone River, about two miles west of the present town of Cody. The springs became known as DeMaris Springs. DeMaris filed for and received water rights at the site, and built tourist facilities there.
Dodge, Richard Irving, 1827-1895
Richard Irving Dodge (1827-1895), a career soldier, served in the U.S. Army from the age of twenty-one until four years before his death at age sixty-eight. Between 1881 and 1882, Irving acted as aide-de-camp to General William Tecumseh Sherman; in 1882 he received his promotion to colonel and continued on duty in the West. Dodge authored several published personal accounts of his time on the frontier, including The Plains of North America and Their Inhabitants, published in 1876, and Our Wild Indians: Thirty-Three Years' Personal Experience among the Red Men of the Great West – A Popular Account of Their Social Life, Religion, Habits, Traits, Customs, Exploits, etc., published in 1882.
Dudley, Nathan Augustus Monroe
Nathan Augustus Monroe Dudley (1825-1910) received his commission on March 3, 1855, as a second lieutenant in the Tenth U.S. Infantry directly from civilian life. Six years later he commanded a company in that regiment as captain. By March 1, 1862, he became the colonel of the Thirtieth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry where he earned laurels as a "lead from the front" officer during several fights in Louisiana. Before the Civil War's conclusion, he had become a major in the Fifteenth U.S. Infantry, and with a reorganization of the army in 1866, served in that grade in the Twenty-fourth U.S. Infantry. Three years later, when another major army reorganization took place, Dudley transferred to the Third U.S. Cavalry, serving with that regiment until a vacancy in the Ninth U.S. Cavalry, a regiment of buffalo soldiers, resulted in his promotion to lieutenant colonel on July 1, 1876. He was post commander at Fort Stanton, New Mexico, as well as the regiment's second in command at the onset of the Lincoln County War (1877-1879), a conflict in which "Billy the Kid" played a dubious role. Dudley, too, came out with a mixed reputation from the part he played in this controversial episode. He fared somewhat better in the campaign against the Apache chief Victorio. Later, on June 6, 1885, he transferred to the First U.S. Cavalry when he received a promotion as the regimental colonel. Dudley retired on August 20, 1889.
Duncan, Thomas
Thomas Duncan (1819-1887) enlisted in the Black Hawk War of 1832 at the age of thirteen. Fourteen years later he numbered among the original members of the newly formed Regiment of Mounted Rifles, originally as a first lieutenant and by March 15, 1848, as a captain. Duncan fought in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. Stationed in the West during the Civil War, he commanded the Third U.S. Cavalry (formerly the Regiment of Mounted Rifles) at Fort Craig, New Mexico. He led troops at the Battle of Valverde in February, 1862. Four years later, in 1866, Duncan became lieutenant colonel of the Fifth U.S. Cavalry, for which William F. Cody served as a scout. Duncan retired from the service due to ill health in 1873 in that rank. Captain Jack Crawford once recalled that he and Cody "played one night at a fort at which General Duncan was stationed, and he and his wife came to see the performance." Crawford also remarked Duncan, like many frontier officers, over-imbibed on occasion.
Dunraven, Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, earl of, 1841-1926
Windham Thomas Wyndham Quin (1841-1926), the 4th Earl of Dunraven, was an Irish politician, journalist, and sportsman. At the invitation of General Philip Sheridan, the Earl of Dunraven came to the U.S. in 1871 for an elk hunting expedition in Nebraska, employing as guides William F. Cody and John B. (Texas Jack) Omohundro.
Dyer, Daniel Burns, 1849-1912
Daniel Burns Dyer (1849-1912) was a friend of William F. Cody, and was Cody's principal partner in the Cody-Dyer Mining and Milling Company, which operated gold and tungsten mines near Tucson, Arizona, after 1903. A Civil War veteran, Dyer served as a U.S. Indian agent on two reservations in what is now Oklahoma between 1880 and 1885. Dyer later made successful investments in Kansas City real estate and in electric-powered streetcars in Augusta, Georgia. His title of "Colonel" may have reflected an honorary appointment in the Georgia state militia. In 1904, Dyer donated a significant collection of American Indian, Filipino, and Mexican artifacts to the city of Kansas City, Missouri, where he resided for much of his later life.
Eagle Star, Paul, 1864-1891
Paul Eagle Star (1864-1891), a Lakota Sioux who grew up at Rosebud Agency in South Dakota, attended the Carlisle Indian Industrial School from 1882-88. He returned to Rosebud and became a blacksmith in 1889. In early 1891 he was recruited to perform in Buffalo Bill's Wild West during the exhibition's second European tour. While performing in Sheffield, England, Eagle Star's horse fell upon him, fracturing his ankle severely. He was admitted to Sheffield Infirmary and given excellent care, but his condition worsened, tetanus set in, and his foot was amputated to save his life. Unfortunately, the tetanus worsened, and Paul Eagle Star died at age 27. He was buried in Brompton Cemetery in a plot purchased by Buffalo Bill until his remains were repatriated to his native lands in South Dakota in 1999.
Elwell, Robert Farrington, 1874-1962
Robert Farrington Elwell (1874-1962) was born near Boston. A self-taught artist, Elwell met William F. Cody when Buffalo Bill's Wild West played Boston, probably about 1895. Cody hired the young artist to work on the TE Ranch (near Cody) and attempted to promote Elwell's artistic career.
Emory, William H. (William Hemsley), 1811-1887
William Hemsley Emory (1811-1887) graduated from West Point in 1831 and because of his academic standing secured a desirable commission as a second lieutenant in the Fourth U.S. Artillery. He served with the regiment for nearly five years before resigning in 1836 to pursue civil engineering. The formation of the prestigious Corps of Topographical Engineers brought him back to the military in 1838, as a first lieutenant specializing in mapping the United States border, including the Texas-Mexico border and the Gadsden Purchase. Emory also saw action in the Mexican American War at the Battle of San Pasqual, California, in 1847. Known as an excellent cartographer, topographical engineer, and explorer, Emory became a leading authority on the topography of the trans-Mississippi West. In 1855 he received a promotion to major in the newly formed Second U.S. Cavalry but less than two months later transferred to the First U.S. Cavalry. Emory served with distinction during the Civil War, rapidly advancing as the lieutenant colonel of the Third U.S. Cavalry that would be re-designated as the Sixth U.S. Cavalry. Early the next year the capable Emory earned his first star as brigade commander in the Army of the Potomac, eventually becoming a major general of volunteers as well as commander of the XIX Corps. Near the end of the war he joined a distinguished list of colonels of the Fifth U.S. during the days when Cody first acted as chief of scouts for the regiment. Emory later went on to command the Department of the Gulf. On July 1, 1876, he retired as a brigadier general.
Esquivel, Antonio "Tony", 1862-1914
Antonio "Tony" Esquivel (1862-1914) was born on a ranch in Bandera, Texas, to his Spanish father and Polish mother. In 1882 Tony and his brother Joe (1863-1936) drove cattle from Texas to Wyoming, where their skills with horses caught the attention of William F. Cody, who was assembling his troupe for the first season of the Wild West exhibition. Joe was hired as "chief of cowboys," and Tony was hired as a bucking-horse rider and trick rider. Tony also raced horses, drove the Deadwood Stagecoach, and was proficient in several languages, including Lakota Sioux. Esquivel left Buffalo Bill's Wild West after the 1893 season but rejoined the show for the final European tour in 1902-06.
Ferrel, Della
Della Ferrel (spelled variously Farrell, Ferrell, and Ferrall, ~1869-1896), was born in Colorado where she learned to ride horses. She was a cowgirl and trick rider, performing with Buffalo Bill's Wild West in England during the first European tour of 1887-88 and the later European tour of 1889-1892. In 1886 Ferrell married Lewis H. "Johnny" Baker (1869-1931) but continued to perform using her maiden name. The couple had daughters Della C. (1892-1986) and Gladys K. (1893-1990). Della Ferrell Baker died of pneumonia in 1896 at age 26.
Flies Above (Wakani Kinyan)
Flies Above, Wakani Kinyan, (b.~1855) was a Sioux Chief from Pine Ridge who appeared with Buffalo Bill's Wild West at the American Exhibition in London in 1887, including performances before the United Kingdom's Queen Victoria and other British and European royalty. Flies Above is also listed on the S.S. Bohemia's manifest for the return trip to New York from Hamburg, Germany, in November 1889.
Flying Hawk, 1852-1931
Moses Flying Hawk (b.1852), an Oglala Lakota, was born near present day Rapid City, South Dakota, in 1852, the son of the elder Black Fox and Iron Cedar Woman. Flying Hawk was brother to Kicking Bear and half-brother to Black Fox, both with Buffalo Bill's Wild West; he was also cousin to Crazy Horse. Flying Hawk married two sisters, White Day and Goes Out Looking, the latter bearing him a son. Flying Hawk fought in the Great Lakota War and the Battle of the Little Bighorn; he was a prominent performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, carrying a staff and riding next to William F. Cody in parades. Flying Hawk was a model for photographer Gertrude Käsebier in her New York studio in 1898. In 1923 Flying Hawk and others visited Cody's grave near Denver where he laid his staff upon the grave. After Cody's death Flying Hawk continued to perform in Miller's 101 Ranch and Sells-Floto Circus. He recounted his life stories in Chief Flying Hawk's Tales: The True Story of Custer's Last Fight, published in 1936. Flying Hawk died at Pine Ridge in 1931, the cause rumored to have been starvation.
Forsyth, George Alexander, 1837-1915
George Alexander "Sandy" Forsyth (1837-1915) enlisted as a private in the Chicago Dragoons on April 19, 1861. Within a few months he gained a commission as a first lieutenant in the Eighth Illinois Volunteer Cavalry, and served during the Civil War in the Army of the Potomac as well as later in the Army of the Shenandoah. He eventually attained the rank of brevet (honorary title of recognition but not a permanent rank) brigadier general of volunteers in recognition of "gallant and meritorious service" in such engagements in Virginia as Opequan, Fisher Hill, Middletown, and Five Forks. After the war Forsyth entered the regular army and received a commission as a major in the Ninth U.S. Cavalry (buffalo soldiers). In 1868, at General Philip H. Sheridan's order, Forsyth organized "Forsyth's Scouts," a band of fifty frontiersmen who served as a shock force in the Indian wars in Kansas and Colorado. That same year Forsyth's Scouts fought an engagement against several hundred Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe warriors, which would come to be known as the Battle of Beecher's Island. For this action Forsyth received another brevet as brigadier general, but this time in the U.S. Army. Forsyth went on to serve as military secretary and aide-de-camp to Sheridan, during which time he participated in Custer's Black Hills expedition of 1874. Forsyth received the permanent rank of lieutenant colonel in the Fourth U.S. Cavalry in 1881 and retired from the army in 1890.
Frenzeny, Paul
Paul Frenzeny (1840-1902) was born in France and served in the French cavalry in Mexico before being hired by Harper's as part of a United States sketching tour with fellow artist Jules Tavernier in 1873. Together, the artistic team traveled by rail through Missouri, Kansas, and Texas, completing sketches and scenes documenting the frontier. Frenzeny settled in San Francisco and continued to illustrate for Harper's and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, among other newspapers. Frenzeny's drawings appear in some of Buffalo Bill's Wild West promotional material, including posters and programs. Eventually, Frenzeny returned to New York. He died in London in 1902.
Fry, James B. (James Barnet), 1827-1894
James Barnet Fry (1827-1894), USMA Class of 1847, received his commission as a second lieutenant in the Third U.S. Artillery. After graduation he spent a brief period as an assistant instructor in that branch but with the outbreak of the Mexican-American War of 1846-1848, he left West Point for occupation duty in Mexico City. From there he took on far-flung assignments from Fort Columbus, New York, to Fort Vancouver, Washington, as well as New Orleans Barracks, Fort Brown, Texas, and eventually back to West Point to teach gunnery from 1853 through 1859 as well as serving as the Academy's adjutant for five years. In 1859 he reported to the Artillery School of Practice at Fort Monroe, Virginia. When John Brown raided Harper's Ferry, Fry accompanied Robert E. Lee and a detachment of U.S. Marines to quell the siege on the arsenal. Over the next two years he continued his duties as an artillery officer. When the Civil War began he joined a battery of light artillery in Washington, D.C., but soon assumed temporary duties as an assistant in the adjutant general's department. He left Washington for a staff assignment under Irvin McDowell and spent much of the remainder of the war in similar capacities. Fry's administrative abilities brought him a posting as adjutant general of the Division of the Pacific (December 3, 1866-May 17, 1869), eventually followed by like duties in the Division of the Missouri (June 24, 1871-November 26, 1873), the vast command overseen by Philip H. Sheridan. Based on frontier experiences during this time, which included some history relevant to William F. Cody's scouting days in Kansas, Fry authored Army Sacrifices, or Briefs from Official Pigeon-holes (1879) as well as other writings. He retired as a colonel of the adjutant general's department on July 1, 1881.
Garlow, Frederick H., 1881-1918
Frederick H. Garlow was born in Panora, Iowa, in 1881. He was the second husband of Irma Cody Garlow (1883-1918), the youngest daughter of William F. Cody. The couple was married in North Platte, Nebraska, in 1908. For several years, Garlow managed Scout's Rest Ranch, then legally owned by Buffalo Bill's wife, Louisa Frederici Cody. Garlow managed the Irma Hotel in Cody, Wyoming, for the last five years of his life. In October 1918, Fred and Irma Garlow died within a few days of each other. Both were victims of the influenza pandemic that killed millions worldwide during 1918-1919. Their three children survived and lived long lives.
Garlow, Irma Louise, 1883-1918
Irma Louise Cody Garlow (1883-1918) was the youngest child of William F. Cody and Louisa Frederici Cody. She was the only one of Buffalo Bill's children still living at the time of his death in 1917. Much of her education was received at private boarding schools. She was married twice. Her first marriage was in 1903, to Army Lt. Clarence A. Stott (1876-1907). After Lt. Stott's death, she married Frederick H. Garlow in 1908. Irma was the namesake for the Irma Hotel, built by her father in the town of Cody, Wyoming. In October 1918, Fred and Irma Garlow died within a few days of each other. Both were victims of the influenza pandemic that killed millions worldwide during 1918-1919. Their three children survived and lived long lives.
Gerrans, Henry M., 1853-1939
Henry M. Gerrans (1853-1939) lived much of his life in Buffalo, New York, where he was co-owner of the Iroquois Hotel Company from the late 1880s to the early 1920s. Gerrans appears to have been prominent in Buffalo's civic affairs, as he was on the board of directors for the Pan-American Exposition of 1901, which was held in that city. He invested in the Shoshone Irrigation Company in the 1890s, and became one of three members of the company's board with personal and business ties to Buffalo. Although Gerrans apparently did not make the Big Horn Basin his home, he did invest in oil fields and other business interests in the Basin in addition to the irrigation venture.
Gibbon, John, 1827-1896
John Gibbon (1827-1896) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy in 1847 and carried out assignments in the Mexican-American War and The Third Seminole War (1855-1858). In between these conflicts, in 1854, he returned to West Point as an instructor of artillery tactics and eventually authored The Artillerist's Manual, a widely-read text which would become known as a definitive work on its subject. Gibbon served with distinction in the U.S. Army in several Civil War campaigns including as a general in the famous "Iron Brigade" of the Union Army of the Potomac. Gibbon served during the Great Sioux War of 1876; he and his troops being the first to reach the scene following the Battle of the Little Bighorn. A year later Gibbon and the Seventh Infantry pursued and engaged Chief Joseph's Nez Perce on their flight to sanctuary in Canada. In 1885 Gibbon was promoted to brigadier general, commanding the Department of the Columbia at Fort Vancouver, Washington, until he retired with the rank of major general in 1891.
Gladstone, W. E. (William Ewart), 1809-1898
William Gladstone (William Ewart Gladstone, 1809-1898) served four terms as Prime Minister of Great Britain. In 1887, between his third and fourth stints as Prime Minister, Gladstone's visit to the Wild West exhibition and encampment was widely reported in the British and American press.
Goodman, Edward Robert, 1868-1949
Edward R. Goodman, 1868-1949, was Cody's nephew and son of Julia Cody Goodman and James Alvin Goodman. During 1896 Goodman was appointed postmaster in Cody, Wyoming; he was also Cody's "man on the scene" during the construction of the Cody Canal, making regular reports to Cody on the progress of the irrigation project.
Gower, Ronald Sutherland, Lord, 1845-1916
Lord Gower (Lord Ronald Charles Sutherland-Leveson-Gower, 1845-1916). A Scottish aristocrat who served as a Liberal MP representing Sutherland from 1867-1874, he was appointed "Honorary Chair" of the American Exhibition in 1887.
Grouard, Frank, 1850-1905
Frank Grouard (1850-1905) managed Cody's horses and may have been manager of Cody's TE Ranch during 1896. Grouard was a scout and interpreter for General Crook during the American Indian War of 1876, participating in the Little Bighorn Campaign, the Battle of the Rosebud, the Battle of Slim Buttes, and the Wounded Knee Massacre. Cody and Grouard were scouts for Crook on the Big Horn and Yellowstone Expedition of 1876. Grouard was known as "Yugata" by the Sioux.
Hall, Samuel Stone, 1838-1886
Samuel Stone Hall (1838-1886), known as "Buckskin Sam." Born in Massachusetts, Hall joined the Texas Rangers before the Civil War. Deserting the Rangers in 1864, he served briefly in the Union army as a member of a Massachusetts militia regiment. Drawing on his western experiences, Hall wrote over fifty dime novels for the firm of Beadle and Adams between 1877 and 1886, at least one of which featured Buffalo Bill as the title character. Hall lived the last years of his life in Wilmington, Delaware.
Hammitt, Frank M., 1869-1903
Frank M. Hammitt (1869-1903), a native of Denver, Colorado, was Chief of Cowboys for Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1893; in 1894 he bought horses for the show. Along with cowboy Lee Martin (also with Buffalo Bill's Wild West), Hammitt is featured in an 1894 Edison film entitled "Bucking Broncho." Without any forestry experience but with great knowledge of the mountains, Hammitt went to work in the summer of 1898 on the Yellowstone Park Timberland Reserve, becoming the first ranger appointed to work in the Shoshone National Forest of Wyoming that year. In August 1903 Hammitt died at age 34 after falling from a cliff in the Reserve.
Hancock, Winfield Scott, 1824-1886
Winfield Scott Hancock (1824-1886) graduated from West Point in 1844 and served in the U.S. Army for more than four decades. His first assignment was Fort Gibson, Indian Territory (Oklahoma), as a second lieutenant in the Sixth U.S. Infantry. He then fought in the Mexican-American War of 1846-48 at the Battles of Churubusco and Molino del Rey, held administrative posts in Minnesota and Missouri, and went to Florida during the Third Seminole War (1855-1858). He subsequently transferred to Fort Leavenworth, during the "Bleeding Kansas" period. Hancock served with distinction in various campaigns in the Civil War, earning the nickname "the Thunderbolt of the Army of the Potomac." Hancock's postbellum promotion to major general in the U.S. Army included commanding the Department of the Missouri, where in 1867 he took part in field operations against the Plains Indians along with W. F. Cody and many other Civil War veterans. He went on as commander of the Division of the Atlantic and other command assignments such as the Department of Dakota from 1869 through 1872. In 1880 Hancock became the Democratic presidential nominee but was narrowly defeated by James A. Garfield. Following the election, Hancock returned to the military and died in 1886 at Governor's Island, New York, while serving a second time in command of the Military Division of the Atlantic.
Harney, William S. (William Selby), 1800-1889
William Selby Harney (1800-1889) was a controversial military figure whose decades in uniform read like a novel. In 1818 he began his military career as a second lieutenant in the First U.S. Infantry. On January 7, 1819, he received his promotion to first lieutenant. Two years later he temporarily transferred to First U.S. Artillery, but would return to his old infantry regiment on December 21, 1822, making captain on May 14, 1825. The ambitious officer left the infantry on May 1, 1833, to become a major in the paymaster department, but not before participating in the sharp, brief Blackhawk War (1832) where Abraham Lincoln also served as a militiaman. On August 15, 1836, Harney returned to the combat arms, in this instance as the lieutenant colonel of the newly established Second U.S. Dragoons. A decade later he became the regiment's colonel. During his time with the dragoons (the forerunner of the cavalry) he fought in the First Seminole War (1835-1842), the Mexican War (1846-1848), the First Sioux War (1854-1855), as well as serving during the "Bleeding Kansas" period, the Mormon Uprising (1857-1858), and the Civil War as a brigadier general, a rank he held since June 14, 1858. Harney retired from service in 1863 after having been relieved of his command of the Department of the Missouri in part due to perceived Confederate sympathies during the Missouri secession crisis. Harney later returned as a member of the Indian Peace Commission of 1867-1868, and was instrumental in the negotiation of several treaties.
Hayden, Charles E., 1866-1938
Charles Emory Hayden (1866-1938) was hired to survey the Cody, Wyoming, town site, which was south of the Shoshone River near the DeMaris sulphur springs. Hayden was the surveyor-assistant manager of Shoshone Irrigation Company. Over the next several years Hayden was hired by William F. Cody to survey other parcels and sections, including oil and placer claims south of Cody, Wyoming.
Hazen, William Babcock, 1830-1887
William Babcock Hazen (1830-1887) graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1855 from where his earliest postings brought him to Texas as a second lieutenant in the Eighth U.S. Infantry. He received his promotion to first lieutenant on April 1, 1861, and advanced to captain just over a month later. Hazen served through the Civil War eventually becoming a major general of volunteers in recognition of "long and continued service of the highest character and for special gallantry… ." Later Hazen spent time in the American West as colonel of the Thirty-eighth U.S. Infantry, assigned duties such as guarding the construction of the Kansas-Pacific Railroad, which employed W. F. Cody to hunt bison to feed its workers. Hazen negotiated with Cheyenne chief Black Kettle in the days before George Armstrong Custer's November, 1868, attack on the Southern Cheyenne's village along the Washita River in Oklahoma. Hazen became embroiled in controversy with George Custer, publicly criticizing the account of the fight in George Custer's My Life on the Plains. (New York: Sheldon & Company, 1874). Hazen sailed to Europe as a military observer during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, and in 1880, President Rutherford B. Hayes appointed him brigadier general and chief signal officer of the U.S. Army. He died in 1887 while still in this assignment.
Heckert, Theodore
Theo or Theodore Heckert was a railroad contractor who owned grading equipment used in land development. In 1895 George Beck, Chief Surveyor Charles Hayden, and Heckert set up a grading camp and started construction of the head gate and flume of the Cody Canal.
Hickok, James Butler "Wild Bill", 1837-1876
James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok (1837-1876), one of the most notable figures of the American West, was a lawman, gunfighter, marksman, professional gambler, and army scout. He served in the Union Army during the Civil War and gained publicity after the war for his exploits as a scout, marksman, and professional gambler. He was something of a hero to William F. Cody, who based a number of elements of his public image on Hickok. In 1873 Cody invited Hickok to join the Buffalo Bill Combination, along with John Burwell "Texas Jack" Omohundro (1846-1880), on stage in their new play, Scouts of the Plains; he left the Combination in March 1874. In March 1876 Hickok married Agnes Lake and thereafter organized gold prospectors in the Black Hills. In August 1876, while playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, Dakota Territory, Hickok was shot and killed by Jack McCall; McCall was eventually found guilty and hanged for the crime.
Hinkle, Lorin Curtis, 1869-1931
Lorin Curtis Hinkle (1869-1931) was born in Ohio. He moved to Wyoming in 1889 as a telegraph operator for the Union Pacific Railroad and was later promoted to dispatcher. Hinkle served in the Wyoming legislature in 1893, as chief clerk of the Wyoming Board of Land Commissioners from 1898 to 1904, and as deputy secretary of state of Wyoming from 1904 to 1910. After leaving public office, Hinkle was active in private business in Cheyenne, particularly in the oil industry. He apparently was known as Curtis L. Hinkle for much of his public life.
Holdrege, George Ward, 1847-1926
George Ward Holdrege was born in New York City in 1847. His father, Henry Holdrege, Jr., was a merchant in New York. After attending Harvard, Holdrege moved to Plattsmouth, Nebraska, as a clerk for the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad about 1869. Due to corporate mergers, this railroad would be known as the Chicago, Burlington, and Quincy at the turn of the twentieth century. It is now part of BNSF Railway. Holdrege rose steadily through the company's ranks, holding a series of increasingly responsible posts in Iowa and Nebraska. By 1882, he was general manager of the company's Omaha office. Until his retirement in 1920, Holdrege played a key role in managing the railroad's operations west of the Mississippi. He died in Omaha in 1926.
Hughes-Hallett, Francis 1838-1903
Francis Charles Hughes-Hallett (1838-1903) was a Royal Artillery officer who was twice elected as a Conservative politician representing Rochester in the British House of Commons from 1885 to 1889. In 1882 Hughes-Hallett married a well-known American heiress, Miss Emilie Page von Schaumberg of Philadelphia. Hughes-Hallett was an active member of the Executive Council for the American Exhibition in London in 1887.
Hymer, William Ebert, 1853-1933
William Ebert Hymer was born near Rushville, Illinois, in 1853. He settled in Nebraska in 1878, where he became one of the first merchants in the new town of Holdrege in the early 1880s. He later became involved in real estate and banking, and was the first cashier of the National Bank of Holdrege in 1888. Hymer later became the bank's president. The bank went into receivership in March 1895. Hymer was an early partner in the Cody Canal project but contributed little capital and was eventually forced out of the venture by the other partners. He faced at least one lawsuit in Nebraska connected to the Holdrege bank failure. Hymer went on to other business ventures in and around Red Lodge, Montana, where he died in 1933.
Ingraham, Prentiss, 1843-1904
Prentiss Ingraham (1843-1904) was born near Natchez, Mississippi, and served in the Confederate army during the Civil War. He spent much of the five years after the Civil War as a soldier of fortune. Ingraham began his writing career about 1870, becoming an incredibly prolific author of dime novels, stage plays, and short stories. By his own estimate, Ingraham had written over six hundred novels and stories by 1900. He wrote over one hundred Buffalo Bill stories and dime novels under his own name and several pseudonyms. He is believed to be the actual author of a number of dime novels signed by Buffalo Bill, and some of his stage plays were performed by the Buffalo Bill Combination in the 1870s and 1880s.
Iron Tail, or Siŋté Máza, 1842-1916
Born an Oglala Lakota in South Dakota in 1842, Siŋté Máza or Iron Tail joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1889 and would remain with the exhibition until it closed in 1913. William F. Cody and Iron Tail became close friends, and Iron tail often accompanied Cody on the annual hunt following the close of the Wild West's touring season. Iron Tail was among the show Indians photographed by Gertrude Käsebier in her New York studio in 1898. In 1913 Iron Tail worked with Cody on his film The Indian Wars and was one of the models for the Indian-head nickel which was minted that year. When Buffalo Bill's Wild West closed in 1913, Iron Tail began working for Miller Brothers & Arlington 101 Ranch Real Wild West. While traveling by train to return to his home in South Dakota, Iron Tail contracted influenza and died in Chicago on May 29, 1916; he is buried in Red Cloud Cemetery at Pine Ridge Reservation, South Dakota.
Irving, Henry, Sir, 1838-1905
Sir Henry Irving (John Henry Brodribb, 1838-1905) was a leading figure on the English and American stage. He was actor-manager at London's Lyceum Theatre, where he worked with manager Bram Stoker for many years. Having attended the exhibition during a visit to the U.S., Irving publicly endorsed Buffalo Bill's Wild West to the British public before its arrival in 1887.
Irving, William "Broncho Bill", 1856-1903
William "Broncho Bill" Irving (1856-1903), an occasional interpreter of Sioux (Lakota) during the 1887 tour and also the actor who played Yellow Hand (Yellow Hair). Irving, who was white and married to a Lakota woman named Ella Bissonette (1867-1908), daughter of Chief Rocky Bear, was also an interpreter in the 1890 European tour.
Kelsey, Frank C., c. 1863-1933
Frank C. Kelsey (c.1863-1933), a civil engineer. In 1901, William F. Cody hired Kelsey (who was then city engineer for Salt Lake City) to make a preliminary survey for the Cody-Salsbury Canal.
Kicking Bear (Mato Wanartaka) 1846-1904
Kicking Bear, Mato Wanartaka (Lakota, Matȟó Wanáȟtake) (1846-1904), born to Black Fox and Iron Cedar Woman of the Oglala Sioux, was brother to Moses Flying Hawk and first cousin to Crazy Horse (their mothers were sisters). With Kicking Bear's marriage to Chief Big Foot's daughter, Woodpecker Woman, Kicking Bear became a band chief of the Minneconjou Sioux and fought for the Lakota Nation during major battles, including the Rosebud and the Battle of Little Bighorn. Kicking Bear accompanied Short Bull to Nevada in 1889 to learn about the Ghost Dance from Wovoka, leader of the Ghost Dance movement. The Ghost Dance was effectively subdued following the Massacre at Wounded Knee Creek in 1890, and leaders of the movement, including Kicking Bear and Short Bull, were imprisoned at Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Kicking Bear and other incarcerated Native men and women were released from prison to join the European tour of Buffalo Bill's Wild West for the season of 1891-92. Kicking Bear and Short Bull, among others, were sent back to Fort Sheridan when they insisted on returning home prematurely, sailing from Glasgow on board the Corean March 4, 1892. Kicking Bear and Short Bull were the last to be released from Fort Sheridan. During the 1891-92 tour, Kicking Bear was widely promoted as the "Fighting Chief of the Ghost Dancers."
King, Charles, 1844-1933
Charles King (1844-1933) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy on June 18, 1866, receiving his commission as a second lieutenant in the First U.S. Artillery. His first posting took him to the South during Reconstruction in Louisiana then to New York. King also was twice assigned briefly at West Point as an instructor and went on temporary recruiting duty during 1869. The next year he advanced to first lieutenant while on duty at Fort Hamilton, New York. He sought a transfer to the cavalry which led him to the Fifth U.S. Cavalry on December 30, 1870. It was with this regiment that he met William F. Cody and formed a lifelong bond. Years after their first encounter King would recall in a somewhat embroidered interview with the St. Paul Dispatch: "I remember well one night of the 17th of July, on War Bonnet River. I see Bill closing on a superbly accoutered warrior. It is the work of a moment; the Indian has fired and missed; Cody's bullet has torn through the Indian's leg into his horse's heart, and they tumble into a confused heap on the prairie; the chief struggles to his feet for another shot, but Bill's second bullet crashes through the brain and then famous chief Yellow Hand drops lifeless in his tracks, and Buffalo Bill cries, 'The first scalp for Custer!' The Fifth had a genuine affection for Bill. He was a tried and true comrade, one who for cool daring and judgement had no superior. He was a beautiful horseman, an unrivaled shot, and as a scout unequalled. We have tried them all; our western scouts are all noted men in their way. But Buffalo Bill was the Paragon." On June 14, 1879, King retired as captain because of wounds received in the line of duty during the Apache campaigns in Arizona. This situation led to an unlikely turn for King who went on to become a prolific writer with scores of titles to his credit, most of which treated U.S. Army topics. In addition to historical accounts and popular novels, King wrote stage plays and some silent motion picture scripts, even collaborating with Cody in 1913 on the ambitious silver screen production The Indian Wars. During the course of this project King and Cody had a falling out, but eventually reconciled. Nowhere was their mutual respect more evident than in the fact that as King biographer Don Russell noted: "Whenever Cody's shows performed in Milwaukee [King's longtime residence], Chicago or Minneapolis, King tried to make at least one performance. After the show the two would go on a drinking spree and inevitably King would suffer physically for the next several days."
Landreth, Burnet, 1842-1928
Landreth, Burnet (1842-1928), a Civil War officer and a principal in David Landreth & Sons, a seed company of Philadelphia, was Chief of the Bureau of Agriculture at the United States Centennial Exhibition of 1876. In 1886 Landreth was appointed as the United States Director and Vice President for the American Exhibition in London in 1887.
Lillie, Gordon William, 1860-1942
Gordon William Lillie was born in Bloomington, Illinois, in 1860. His family moved to Wellington, Kansas, in the 1870s. In Kansas, Lillie encountered Pawnee Indians en route to reservations in Indian Territory (now part of Oklahoma). Beginning in 1879, Lillie worked as an interpreter and later a teacher for the Pawnee agency. In 1883 Lillie served as a Pawnee interpreter for the first season of Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Lillie later created his own show, Pawnee Bill's Historic Wild West. Lillie was also involved in leading groups of so-called "boomers" (settlers) into parts of present-day Oklahoma as they were opened to white settlement in 1889 and 1893. After 1893 Lillie and his wife May made their off-season home in Pawnee, Oklahoma. Although never as prominent as Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Lillie's show was generally profitable, enabling the Lillies to invest in land, livestock, and oil development ventures in Oklahoma. A long-time admirer of William F. Cody, Lillie formed a partnership with Cody in 1908. Their joint venture was formally known as Buffalo Bill's Wild West Combined With Pawnee Bill's Great Far East, but colloquially as the "Two Bills." Lillie retired from show business after the "Two Bills" show was seized by the sheriff in Denver in 1913 but was able to live comfortably from the proceeds of his investments for the remainder of his life. Pawnee Bill was often billed as "Major" Lillie, but he is not known to have served in the active military. Because "major" was a common courtesy title for U.S. Indian agents in the nineteenth century, Lillie's work on the Pawnee reservation (though not as an actual agent) may have been the basis for his use of the title.
Little Chief, b. 1851
Little Chief (b.1851), next in authority to Red Shirt, was a sub-chief of the Oglala Lakota at Pine Ridge Reservation, with family ties to the Sicangu at Rosebud Reservation. Little Chief appeared with Buffalo Bill's Wild West from 1887 through 1892 and possibly longer. British newspapers of the time reported that "Good Robe" was the name of Little Chief's wife and the mother of daughter Frances Victoria Alexandra.
Little Horse (Tasunke Ciqala)
Little Horse, Tasunke Ciqala, (1857-1932) was Hunkpapa Lakota but considered a chief among the Oglala Sioux. He was billed incorrectly as a Cheyenne in Buffalo Bill's Wild West official programme of 1887-88 when he appeared before Queen Victoria and other royalty during the American Exhibition in London. Little Horse appears on the Persian Monarch passenger manifest, returning to New York from Hull, England, in May 1888.
Lone Bull
Lone Bull or One Bull, Tatanka Winjila, a Brulé Sioux born about 1855, was among those Indians who were imprisoned in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, following the Wounded Knee Massacre of December 1890. Nearly all the incarcerated Indians, including Lone Bull, were recruited by Buffalo Bill's Wild West to perform in France, Germany, Belgium, England, Scotland, and Wales in 1891-92. Lone Bull was one of four principal chiefs in Buffalo Bill's Wild West during the second European tour.
Louise, Princess, Duchess of Argyll, 1848-1939
Princess Louise Caroline Alberta (1848-1939), Duchess of Argyll, was the fourth daughter and sixth child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert; she was a gifted sculptor and a dedicated advocate of many issues including the education of women. In 1871 she married John George Edward Henry Douglas Sutherland Campbell (1845-1914), the 9th Duke of Argyll and Marquis of Lorne.
McGinty, William M., 1871-1961
William M. "Billy" McGinty (January 1, 1871 – May 21, 1961), a diminutive, extraordinarily skilled cowboy from Oklahoma, served as a Private in Troops D and K with Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders in the Spanish-American War. He fought in the Battles of Las Guasimas and San Juan Heights. In 1899, the year following the Spanish American War, veterans of Roosevelt's Rough Riders formed an organization, aptly titled Roosevelt's Rough Rider Association. McGinty was greatly involved with the Association throughout his life and even served as its President in 1951. He also maintained a friendship with Theodore Roosevelt for years after the war. Part of preserving and bolstering Rough Rider memory came as William F. Cody recruited 16 of Roosevelt's Rough Riders to join Buffalo Bill's Wild West for the 1899 season and beyond. Roosevelt's Rough Riders in the Wild West became part of the Congress of Rough Riders and re-enacted the Battle of San Juan Hill, a martial drama that celebrated the United States victory in Cuba over the Spanish and met tremendous applause at each presentation. McGinty participated as the Color Bearer in the San Juan Hill performance during the 1899 and 1900 seasons. Upon learning of the act, Theodore Roosevelt wrote to William F. Cody in March 1899, giving his approval for the re-enactment and his soldiers' involvement. He wrote, "I am delighted that McGinty and [Thomas] Isbell are in it. They are thoroughly good men." The San Juan Hill routine was the zenith of the program through the 1901 season when it was replaced by the Battle of Tien-Tsin. McGinty became a world champion bronco rider, led a nationally known cowboy music band, and authored stories on the Spanish American War and western life. His lifetime achievements as a cowboy, Rough Rider, and Wild West performer led to his enshrinement in the National Cowboy Museum's Hall of Great Westerners in 2000.
Mead, Elwood, 1858-1936
Elwood Mead (1858-1936) was a central figure in the history of reclamation projects in the arid West for several decades. Born and raised in Indiana, Mead graduated from Purdue University in 1882 and then received training in civil engineering at Iowa Agricultural College (now Iowa State University). As a faculty member at Colorado State Agricultural College (now Colorado State University), Mead assisted the Colorado state engineer's office and quickly became recognized as an expert in irrigation engineering. Mead was appointed Wyoming territorial engineer in 1888, and was Wyoming's first state engineer, serving until 1899. As such, Mead was intimately involved in the drafting and administration of Wyoming's water laws. Mead's engineering reports on the Shoshone River provided crucial backing for William F. Cody and his partners in the Cody Canal project. After leaving the state engineer's office, Mead served as an irrigation advisor for the U.S. Department of Agriculture and later for the Australian state of Victoria. In 1924, Mead was appointed commissioner of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. In that capacity, he oversaw the construction of what is now called Hoover Dam. The reservoir behind Hoover Dam is named Lake Mead in his honor.
Merritt, Wesley, 1834-1910
Wesley Merritt (1834-1910) graduated from the U.S. Military Academy on July 1, 1860, receiving his commission as a second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Dragoons, a regiment that would be re-designated the Second U.S. Cavalry early in the Civil War. It was with this unit that he served as a troop officer for the early part of that conflict. On July 11, 1863, Merritt's leadership skills brought about his promotion from a captain with the Second to a brigadier general of volunteers and by the war's end he wore the two stars of a major general of volunteers. His wartime experience included assignments as aide-de-camp, adjutant, and commander of the Reserve Brigade, First Division, Cavalry Corps of the Army of the Potomac in the Gettysburg campaign. Following the Civil War, Merritt continued to serve in the cavalry along the American frontier starting with his first frontier duties as the lieutenant colonel of the Ninth U.S. Cavalry (buffalo soldiers) in Texas. On July 1, 1876, he transferred upon his promotion to colonel of the Fifth U.S. Cavalry. Merritt immediately joined the regiment in the field, where on July 17, 1876, he led his men at Warbonnet Creek in a battle that brought W. F. Cody increased fame and became a linchpin of his legend—"The First Scalp for Custer." Afterward Merritt was assigned as chief of cavalry for the Big Horn and Yellowstone expedition in which role he participated in the fighting at Slim Buttes. Not long after these field operations Merritt became superintendent of West Point from 1882 to 1887, and later was appointed brigadier general in the U.S. Army. His promotion to major general came in 1895. At the advent of the Spanish-American War Merritt served as commander of the Department of the East and later, following the Battle of Manila, became the first American military governor of the Philippines. He filled this position for a short time before being relieved to advise the U.S. delegation in the peace negotiations leading to the Treaty of Paris that formally ended hostilities between Spain and the United States. Merritt retired from the Army in 1900.
Miles, Nelson Appleton, 1839-1925
Nelson A. Miles (1839-1925) joined the Union Army in 1861 as a lieutenant in a Massachusetts volunteer regiment. Miles distinguished himself in combat during the Civil War and was a major general of volunteers by October 1865. Mustered out of volunteer service in 1866, Miles became a colonel in the regular Army. He was an important field commander in several military campaigns against Plains Indians during the 1870s, thus becoming acquainted with William F. Cody, who served as a civilian scout for the Army for much of the decade. Miles was promoted to brigadier general in the regular Army in 1880, major general in 1890, and lieutenant general in 1900. Miles requested Cody's assistance to arrest Sitting Bull in December 1890 during the Ghost Dance crisis, but his orders to Cody were rescinded by authorities in Washington shortly before the Lakota leader was killed by tribal police. Miles was the most senior officer in the U.S. Army from 1895 until his retirement in 1903; he led the U.S. invasion of Puerto Rico during the Spanish-American War. In retirement Miles participated in the production of Cody's motion picture The Indian Wars.
Morgan, Matthew Somerville, 1839-1890
Matthew Somerville Morgan (1839-1890), an English artist from New York City, was an illustrator, cartoonist, and painter employed by Frank Leslie's Weekly. To enhance the performance area of Madison Square Garden for the late 1886 – early 1887 run of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, Morgan was asked to design and paint the massive panoramas measuring thirty to forty feet high by up to two hundred feet long—along with many other smaller scenes—on canvas backdrops mounted and manipulated on huge drums. Rigging was assembled and painting was completed by Morgan from a chair-swing which was suspended from the roof of Madison Square Garden. These enormous canvas backdrops were transported to England and reused for the 1887-88 performances in London, Manchester, and Birmingham.
Moses, Mollie
Mollie Moses (born c. 1840) resided in Morganfield, Kentucky, for most of her life. Known as Mollie Payne at birth, she had been married twice by the time William F. Cody made her acquaintance in 1884. The 1880 federal census lists her marital status as "divorced," while the 1900 census lists her as "widowed." The surviving correspondence between Cody and Moses indicates that the two formed a romantic attachment between 1884 and 1886. Cody gave Moses a fine set of riding equipment and invited her to a rendezvous in St. Louis at the beginning of the Wild West's 1886 season. The relationship apparently did not endure. Moses returned to Morganfield, where she was reported to have fallen into dire poverty by the end of her life.
Nelson, John Young, 1826-1903
John Y. Nelson (1826-1903) worked as a trapper and scout in the far west before joining Buffalo Bill's Wild West. Married to a Brulé, Jenny Yellow Elk Woman, Nelson served as an interpreter while also performing various roles in the show, such as driver for the Deadwood stagecoach. Several of Nelson's children also performed in the show.
No Neck (Tahu Wanica)
Chief No Neck (Tahu Wanica, born about 1850), was a Hunkpapa Sioux who married an Oglala Sioux woman. No Neck became an Indian scout of the U.S. Ninth Cavalry and was Chief of Indian Police at Pine Ridge Agency, where he was known as a peacemaker during the second Ghost Dance movement of 1890. Chief No Neck and John M. Burke jointly adopted a small child who was found after the 1890 massacre at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The boy became known as Johnny Burke No Neck. Both Chief No Neck and Johnny performed with Buffalo Bill's Wild West until at least 1901.
No Neck, Johnny Burke, 1883-1921
Johnny Burke No Neck (1883-1921) was one of two small children purported to have been orphaned and discovered at the battlefield at Wounded Knee following the annihilation of Big Foot's Band on December 29, 1890; his parents are not known. The small boy was "adopted" by Chief No Neck but widely promoted as being jointly adopted by Major John M. Burke. Johnny Burke No Neck was among the first Indians to appear on film, recorded by Thomas Edison in September 1894 at his studio in West Orange, New Jersey; the film of the Sioux Ghost Dance is the earliest known recording of Indians. Johnny Burke No Neck traveled with Buffalo Bill's Wild West from 1891 until 1901.
North, Frank J. (Frank Joshua), 1840-1885
Frank Joshua North (1840-1885) was a farmer, a clerk and interpreter at the Pawnee Indian Agency, and a U.S. Army Captain who was later promoted to Major in charge of the Pawnee scouts during the Indian Wars, 1864-1876. North became a ranching partner with William F. Cody and was a member of the Nebraska legislature. In 1884 North joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West as manager of the show Indians at which time he sustained serious injuries in a horse accident. North died in 1885 as result of those injuries and the illness that followed.
Oakley, Annie, 1860-1926
Annie Oakley, born Phoebe Ann Moses (or Mosey) (1860-1926), learned to shoot at the age of eight, then honed her shooting skills as a teenager hunting and supplying game for locals and businesses in and around Greenville, Ohio. At age 15, Annie met her future husband when she bested him in a shooting contest in Cincinnati, Ohio. Frank Butler (1850-1926) and Annie were married in 1876 and in 1882 began performing marksmanships shows together. Annie adopted the stage name Oakley, the name of the city neighborhood in Ohio where the couple lived for a time. In 1885 the couple joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West--Annie Oakley as a female sharpshooter and Frank Butler as her manager; they remained with Buffalo Bill's Wild West until 1901. With the combination of her ladylike demeanor and professional shooting talent, Annie Oakley enthralled audiences throughout the United States and Europe.
O'Beirne, James Rowan, 1844-1917
James Rowan O'Beirne (1844-1917) was a graduate of Fordham University, a Union general and recipient of the Congressional Medal for bravery in the Civil War, deputy U.S. marshal and provost of Washington, D.C., and officially in charge at the deathbed of President Abraham Lincoln. O'Beirne became Commissioner of Immigration at the barge office at the Port of New York in 1890.
Omohundro, John Burwell, 1846-1880
Texas Jack (John Burwell Omohundro, 1846-1880), the son of a Virginia planter, made his way west after the Civil War and worked as a cowboy in Texas during the late 1860s. In 1869 Texas Jack drove a herd of cattle from Texas to North Platte, Nebraska. He became a U.S. Army Scout at Fort McPherson, along with William F. Cody. Omohundro accompanied Cody on hunts and was one of the original stage performers in the Buffalo Bill Combination in the 1870s. In 1873 Omohundro married actress Giuseppina Morlacchi, who was also a performer with the Combination. Omohundro died of pneumonia in 1880.
Otakte, d. 1890
Otakte (d.1890), a young Lakota of eighteen or nineteen from Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, was known by various translated names: Kills Many, Kills (Killed) His Pony, and Kills Plenty. Otakte appeared with Buffalo Bill's Wild West in Europe during 1889 and 1890. While performing in Germany, Otakte's horse fell on him, crushing his arm; blood poisoning soon resulted. Cody covered all expenses for Otakte's return to his home at Pine Ridge Indian Reservation. When the ship docked in New York Harbor, Otakte was too ill to continue traveling and was admitted to Bellevue Hospital in New York for treatment. He was attended by Father Francis Craft until his death during the night of June 17-18, 1890. The cause of death was likely a combination of blood poisoning and consumption. His remains were conveyed to Pine Ridge Reservation for interment in the Mission Cemetery.
Paxton, William A., 1837-1907
William A. Paxton (1837-1907) was born in Kentucky but made most of his fortune in Nebraska. He was one of the most successful businessmen in Omaha at the turn of the twentieth century, with interests in the South Omaha stockyards, downtown real estate, and a well-known wholesale grocery company. The "Paxton Block" of buildings at 16th and Farnam Streets in downtown Omaha was named for him, as was the town of Paxton in Keith County, Nebraska. William F. Cody and George Beck attempted to persuade Paxton to invest in the Shoshone Irrigation Company, but ultimately did not succeed.
Peake, John H., 1848-1905
John H. Peake (1848-1905), editor at one time of the North Platte Enterprise and The Duluth Press, would eventually become editor of Cody Enterprise, which Peake and Cody co-founded in August 1899. Peake and his wife Anna came to Cody in 1899 from Washington, D.C.
Penney, Charles G., 1844-
Charles G. Penney (b. 1844), a Civil War veteran and career Army officer, served as acting agent at the Pine Ridge Reservation from February to October 1891 and again from July 1893 to the end of 1895. He later served in the Spanish-American War and retired from the Army as a brigadier general in 1903. Military officers in charge of Indian reservations at this time were referred to as "acting Indian agents" by Interior Department policy.
Plenty Wounds
Plenty Wounds was born in 1871 in the Oglala Sioux Nation. His parents were Big White Horse and White Face; he married Ada Hard Forehead. Plenty Wounds was a performer in Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1891-92 while the exhibition was in Europe and Britain. He was a model for photographer Gertrude Käsebier in her New York studio in 1898. Plenty Wounds' death date is unknown.
Red Shirt, 1845?-1925
Red Shirt (1845?-1925) was a Lakota from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation (formerly Red Cloud Agency) in southwest Dakota Territory and leader of the Show Indians during the 1887-88 English tour. He joined the show in 1884 and was featured as a principal performer in the show's promotional materials which included his audience with Queen Victoria.
Richards, William Alford, 1849-1912
William Alford Richards (1849-1912) served as governor of Wyoming from 1895 to 1899. Shortly after his term as governor ended, Richards was appointed assistant commissioner of the U.S. General Land Office by President William McKinley. In 1903, Richards was elevated to commissioner of the Land Office by President Theodore Roosevelt and served until 1907.
Richmond, Frank, -1890
Frank Richmond (d.1890) was the stage name of James E. Twitchell, an actor who was hired as the 'lecturer' with Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1885. With his stunning voice, Richmond became the arena announcer and director of performances for Buffalo Bill's Wild West until his sudden death in early January 1890 in Barcelona, Spain, from typhoid fever (some newspapers report influenza or small pox).
Robinson, Emma Lake Thatcher
Emma Lake Thatcher Robinson (1856-1911), the daughter of famous equestrians and circus proprietors William "Bill Lake" Thatcher (~1810-1869) and "Agnes Lake" Thatcher (1826-1907), became an expert rider at an early age. She gained popularity in the circus world and was soon billed as "the most fearless and dashing horsewoman on earth." Emma Lake Thatcher married fellow circus performer Gilbert Robinson (1845-1928) in 1875 and continued to perform as Emma Lake. In 1876 Emma became step-daughter to James Butler "Wild Bill" Hickok (1837-1876) when her mother married Hickok a few months before his death. Under the show name Emma Lake Hickok, she performed with Buffalo Bill's Wild West in England during 1887-88. Given almost imperceptible cues by their riders, her horses, trained in the style of the Spanish Riding School, jumped to music, stood on hind legs, and bowed to the audience. Emma Lake Thatcher Robinson died in 1911 of injuries sustained from a severe riding accident.
Rocky Bear
Rocky Bear, Inyan Mato or Eya Matao (1836-1909), an Oglala Sioux chief, appeared intermittently with Buffalo Bill's Wild West from 1884 until his death in 1909; he was High Chief of the Sioux members of Buffalo Bill's Wild West before Chief Iron Tail became High Chief. Described as noble and articulate and with an impressive and powerful physical appearance, Rocky Bear was a defender of Cody's treatment of Indian performers; he interacted with royalty, had an audience with Pope Leo XIII, and met President Cleveland.
Rowley, Clarence W., 1871-1943
Clarence W. Rowley (1871-1943) was a successful attorney in Boston who apparently did legal work related to William F. Cody's mining ventures in Arizona. Rowley may have been an investor in Cody's mines himself. He was a personal friend of Cody as well. Cody was not Rowley's only celebrity legal client, for Rowley was the executor of the famous boxer John L. Sullivan's estate upon Sullivan's death in 1918.
Royall, William B. (William Bedford), 1825-1895
Virginia-born William Bedford Royall (1825-1895) was a career soldier who served as a lieutenant with the Missouri Mounted Volunteers during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48, and was commissioned as first lieutenant in the 2nd U.S. Cavalry in 1855. He committed to the Union cause at the outbreak of the Civil War, serving with the Army of the Potomac and holding the rank of major and the brevet (honorary title of recognition but not a permanent rank) rank of colonel by the war's end. Royall served with the Fifth U.S. Cavalry on the western plains through 1875. It was with that regiment that he crossed paths with W. F. Cody, who spent considerable time with this unit as a scout. On December 2, 1875, Royall's promotion to lieutenant colonel brought him to the 3rd U.S. Cavalry, an assignment that placed him at the Battle of Rosebud Creek on June 17, 1876. During the so-called Great Sioux War of 1876-77, in addition to leading the Third, he also commanded five troops of the Second Cavalry. After Ranald S. McKenzie relinquished his command of the Fourth U.S. Cavalry in 1882, Royall rose to colonel of that regiment. In 1887 Royall retired with the rank of brigadier general.
Rumsey, Bronson, II, 1854-1946
Bronson Rumsey II (1854-1946) grew up in Buffalo, New York, the son of Bronson Case Rumsey (1823-1902), who owned a successful tannery business. As an investor and board member in the Shoshone Irrigation Company, Bronson Rumsey II was one of the founders of the town of Cody, Wyoming. Among other business interests in the Big Horn Basin, Rumsey was one of the original partners in the Cody Trading Company. His son, Bronson C. Rumsey (b. 1879) developed a noted dude ranch, the "UXU", and served in the Wyoming state senate in the 1930s.
Russell, Michael R. "Mike", 1847-1930
Michael R. "Mike" Russell (1847-1930), also known as "Deadwood Mike," a long-time friend of Cody's, was owner of the Buffalo Saloon in Deadwood, S.D. Cody purchased cattle and horses from Mike Russell under Russell's TE brand, which later inspired Cody's TE Ranch in Ishawooa, Wyoming. Russell was born in Ireland and met Cody in Kansas in the late 1860s. Russell was probably Cody's oldest and closest friend; he remained friends with the entire Cody family long after Cody's passing, frequently traveling to the town of Cody to visit them.
Ryan, Jerry
Jerry Ryan was an engineer living in Sheridan, Wyoming, when George T. Beck sent him, along with Laban Hillberry, to determine if waters from the Shoshone River could be diverted to irrigate a large area of the Big Horn Basin; Ryan would move to Cody and become a shareholder in Shoshone Land and Irrigation Company, which was formed in 1895 and later became Shoshone Irrigation Company.
Salsbury, Nathan, 1846-1902
Nathan Salsbury (1846-1902) was a veteran of the Civil War who later became an actor and a successful theatrical producer and manager. He joined Cody in 1884 as co-owner of Buffalo Bill's Wild West. His show business skills contributed greatly to the venture's success until his death in 1902.
Shangreaux, John, c. 1854-1926
John Shangreaux (c. 1854-1926) was an Army scout of mixed Lakota and French ancestry. After witnessing the tragedy at Wounded Knee, he joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West as an interpreter and chaperone for "hostile Indians," Lakotas who had been taken into custody by the Army but permitted to tour with Cody in Europe. Shangreaux married Lillie Orr, an Englishwoman, in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1892. The couple continued to tour with the Wild West until about 1897. While several published references spell the family name "Shangrau," as Cody did, John and Lillie's descendants used the spelling "Shangreaux." The couple's collection of Northern Plains Indian artifacts is at the Wyoming State Museum in Cheyenne.
Sheridan, Philip Henry, 1831-1888
Philip Henry Sheridan (1831-1888), a fearless and determined U.S. Army officer, played a key role in both the Civil War and the Indian Wars. He is known particularly for his defeat of Confederate forces in the Shenandoah Valley in 1864 and his role in forcing the surrender of General Robert Lee in 1865. He also contributed to the development of Yellowstone National Park and had risen to the rank of General of the Army by the time of his death. His own memoirs were published in two volumes as Personal Memoirs of P. H. Sheridan (New York: Charles L. Webster & Company, 1888), and the key study of his role in the Indian Wars is Paul A. Hutton's Phil Sheridan and His Army (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1985). It was Sheridan who engaged W. F. Cody as a scout, thereby starting the frontiersman on his incredible journey to fame.
Sherman, William T. (William Tecumseh), 1820-1891
William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891) was one of the best-known military figures of the nineteenth century. Sherman played a crucial role in the Union victory in the Civil War, famously developing policies that are often seen as the forerunner of twentieth-century "total war" tactics. Sherman advanced to Commanding General of the Army after Ulysses S. Grant became president in 1869. Thereafter he emerged as a key figure in the Indian Wars, during which he continued to employ harsh "scorched earth" tactics against his adversaries.
Short Bull (Tatanka Ptecela) c.1845-1923
Arnold Short Bull, Tatanka Ptecela (Lakota: Tȟatȟáŋka Ptéčela) (c.1845-1923), was a medicine man and member of the Sicangu (Brulé) Sioux. Brother-in-law and close friend to Kicking Bear, the two traveled to Nevada in 1889 to visit the Northern Paiute spiritual leader Wovoka whose vision was the basis for the Ghost Dance movement. Kicking Bear and Short Bull became the principal leaders of the Ghost Dance religion among the Sioux at Pine Ridge and Standing Rock Agencies. In order to calm the unrest following the Wounded Knee Massacre, Short Bull and other Native men and women were imprisoned in Fort Sheridan, Illinois. Many of these prisoners, including Short Bull and Kicking Bear, were r | ||||||
4334 | dbpedia | 0 | 35 | https://www.beachamjournal.com/p/linda-ronstadt-singer-songwriter | en | Linda Ronstadt, singer-songwriter, is 77 years old today | [
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] | 2023-07-15T12:10:17+00:00 | Linda Ronstadt is 77 years old today. | en | https://substackcdn.com/icons/substack/favicon.ico | https://www.beachamjournal.com/p/linda-ronstadt-singer-songwriter | Linda Ronstadt is 77 years old today.
A singer and songwriter who has performed on over 120 albums, Ronstadt has collaborated with artists from a diverse spectrum of genres including Billy Eckstine, Frank Zappa, Rosemary Clooney, Flaco Jiménez, Philip Glass, Carla Bley, The Chieftains, Emmylou Harris, Gram Parsons, Dolly Parton, Neil Young, Johnny Cash and Nelson Riddle.
Christopher Loudon of Jazz Times noted in 2004, Ronstadt is "blessed with arguably the most sterling set of pipes of her generation ... rarest of rarities — a chameleon who can blend into any background yet remain boldly distinctive ... it's an exceptional gift; one shared by few others."
In total, she released over 30 studio albums and 15 compilations or greatest hits albums. Ronstadt charted 38 Billboard Hot 100 singles with 21 reaching the Top 40, 10 to the Top 10, three to #2 and "You're No Good" to #1.
In the UK, her single "Blue Bayou" reached the UK Top 40 and the duet with Aaron Neville, "Don't Know Much," peaked at #2 in December, 1989. In addition, she has charted 36 albums, 10 Top 10 albums and three #1 albums on the Billboard Pop Album Charts.
Born in Tucson, Arizona, Ronstadt was raised on her family's 10-acre ranch with siblings Peter (who served as Tucson's Chief of Police for ten years, 1981 – 1991), Michael J. and Gretchen (Suzi). The family was featured in Family Circle magazine in 1953.
Linda's father, Gilbert, came from a pioneering Arizona ranching family and was of German and English American descent, with some Mexican ancestry. Their influence and contributions to Arizona's history, including wagon making, commerce, pharmacies and music is chronicled in the library of the University of Arizona.
Her mother, Ruth Mary, of German, English and Dutch descent, was raised near Flint, Michigan. She was the daughter of Lloyd Groff Copeman, a prolific inventor and holder of many patents.
Lloyd, with nearly 700 patents to his name, invented an early form of the toaster, many refrigerator devices, the grease gun, the first electric stove and an early form of the microwave oven. His flexible rubber ice cube tray earned him millions of dollars in royalties.
Ronstadt established her professional career in the mid-1960s at the forefront of California's emerging folk rock and country rock movements — genres which later defined post-60s rock music. She joined forces with Bobby Kimmel and Kenny Edwards and became the lead singer of a folk rock trio, The Stone Poneys.
Later, as a solo artist, Ronstadt released Hand Sown...Home Grown in 1969, which has been described as the first alternative country record by a female recording artist. Although fame eluded her during these years, Ronstadt actively toured with The Doors, Neil Young, Jackson Browne and others. She made numerous television show appearances and began to contribute her voice to a variety of albums.
However, with the release of chart-topping albums such as Heart Like a Wheel, Simple Dreams and Living in the USA, coupled with the fact that Ronstadt became the first female "arena class" rock star, she set records as one of the top-grossing concert artists of the decade.
Referred to as "First Lady of Rock" and the "Queen of Rock," Ronstadt was voted the Top Female Pop Singer of the 1970s. Her rock and roll image was equally as famous as her music, appearing six times on the cover of Rolling Stone, as well as on the covers of Newsweek and Time magazines.
In the 1980s, Ronstadt went to Broadway, garnered a Tony nomination, teamed with composer Philip Glass, recorded traditional music and collaborated with famed conductor, Nelson Riddle — an event at that time viewed as an original and unorthodox move for a rock and roll artist.
This venture paid off, and Ronstadt remained one of the music industry's best-selling acts throughout the 1980s with multi-platinum selling albums such as What's New, Canciones de Mi Padre and Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind. Ronstadt continued to tour, collaborate and record celebrated albums, such as Winter Light and Hummin' to Myself.
Ronstadt's 30-plus album catalog continue to be best-sellers, with the vast majority of them certified gold, platinum and multi-platinum. Having sold in excess of 100 million records worldwide and setting records as one of the top-grossing concert performers for over a decade, Ronstadt was the most successful female singer of the 1970s and stands as one of the most successful female recording artists in U.S. history.
Ronstadt opened many doors for women in rock and roll and other musical genres by championing songwriters and musicians, pioneering her chart success onto the concert circuit and being at the vanguard of many musical movements.
Sadly, now Ronstadt’s voice is silenced. In a 2011 interview with the Arizona Daily Star, she said, "I am 100 percent retired and I'm not doing anything any more." It was announced publicly in August, 2013 that Ronstadt had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in December, 2012, which left her unable to sing.
Her autobiography, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir, was released in September, 2013.
Here, Ronstadt performs “Desperado” with the Eagles.
D.A. Pennebaker, 1999
Photo by Frank Beacham
Donn Alan "D. A." Pennebaker was born 98 years ago today.
Pennebaker was a documentary filmmaker and one of the pioneers of Direct Cinema. Performing arts and politics were his primary subjects. In 2012, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences recognized his body of work with an Academy Honorary Award or "lifetime Oscar.”
Described as "the pre-eminent chronicler of sixties counterculture,” Pennebaker was born in Evanston, Illinois, the son of Lucille Levick and John Paul Pennebaker, who was a commercial photographer. He was known as “Penny” to his friends.
He served in the Navy and later worked as an engineer, founding Electronics Engineering (the makers of the first computerized airline reservation system), before beginning his film career. Under the influence of experimental filmmaker Francis Thompson, Pennebaker directed his first film, Daybreak Express, in 1953.
Set to a classic Duke Ellington recording of the same name, the five-minute short of the soon-to-be-demolished Third Avenue elevated subway station in New York City is the earliest known example of Pennebaker's penchant for blending together documentary and experimental filmmaking techniques. According to Pennebaker, Ellington responded favorably to the film.
In 1959, Pennebaker joined the equipment-sharing, Filmakers' Co-op. He co-founded Drew Associates with Richard Leacock and former LIFE magazine editor and correspondent, Robert Drew. In a crucial time in the development of Direct Cinema, the collective produced documentary films for clients like ABC News (for their television series, Close-up) and Time-Life Broadcast (for their syndicated television series, Living Camera).
Their first major film, Primary (1960), documented John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey's respective campaigns in the 1960 Wisconsin Democratic Primary election. Drew, Leacock and Pennebaker, as well as photographers Albert Maysles, Terrence McCartney Filgate and Bill Knoll, all filmed the campaigning from dawn to midnight over the course of five days.
Widely considered to be the first candid and comprehensive look at the day-by-day events of a Presidential race, it was the first film in which the sync sound camera could move freely with characters throughout a breaking story, a major technical achievement that laid the groundwork for modern-day documentary filmmaking. It would later be selected as an historic American film for inclusion in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1990.
Drew Associates would produce nine more documentaries for Living Camera, including Crisis, which chronicled President Kennedy and Attorney General Robert Kennedy's conflict with governor George Wallace over school desegregation.
Then, in 1963, Pennebaker and Leacock left the organization to form their own production firm, Leacock-Pennebaker, Inc. Pennebaker would direct a number of short films over the course of two years. One of them was a rare recording of jazz vocalist Dave Lambert, as he formed a new quintet with singers such as David Lucas, and auditioned for RCA.
The audition was not successful, and Lambert died suddenly in a car accident shortly thereafter, leaving Pennebaker's film as one of the few visual recordings of the singer, and the only recording of the songs in those rehearsals. The documentary got attention in Europe, and a few weeks later, Bob Dylan's manager, Albert Grossman, approached Pennebaker about filming Dylan while he was touring in England.
The resulting work, Dont Look Back (there is no apostrophe in the title), became a landmark in both film and rock history, "evoking the '60s like few other documents," according to film critic Jonathan Rosenbaum.
The opening sequence alone (set to Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues" with Dylan standing in an alleyway, dropping cardboard flash cards) became a precursor to modern music videos. It would later be included in the Library of Congress' National Film Registry in 1998, and it was later ranked at #6 on Time Out magazine's list of the 50 best documentaries of all time.
Pennebaker would also film Dylan's subsequent tour of England in 1966, but while some of this work has been released in different forms. The footage supplied the framework for Martin Scorsese's Bob Dylan documentary, No Direction Home.
It was also re-edited by Dylan himself in the rarely distributed, Eat the Document. Pennebaker's own film of the tour, Something Is Happening, remains unreleased. Nevertheless, the tour itself has become one of the most celebrated events in rock history, and some of the Nagra recordings made for Pennebaker's film were later released on Dylan's own records.
The same year that Dont Look Back was released in theaters, Pennebaker worked with the author, Norman Mailer, on the first of many film collaborations.
He was also hired to film the Monterey Pop Festival, which is now regarded as an important event in rock history on par with 1969's Woodstock Festival. Pennebaker produced a number of films from the event, capturing breakthrough performances from The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Otis Redding and Janis Joplin that remain seminal documents in rock history.
The first of these films, Monterey Pop, was released in 1968 and was later ranked at #42 on Time Out magazine's list of the 50 best documentaries of all time. Other performers like Jefferson Airplane and The Who also received major exposure from Pennebaker's work.
Pennebaker continued to film some of the era's most influential rock artists, including John Lennon (whom he first met while filming Dylan in England), Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and most notably, David Bowie, during his famous "farewell" concert in 1973.
He also collaborated with Jean-Luc Godard, who had been impressed by Primary. Their initial plan was to film "whatever we saw happening around us" in a small town in France, but this never came to fruition.
In 1968, the two worked on a film that Godard initially conceived as "One AM" (One American Movie) on the subject of anticipated mass struggles in the United States – similar to the uprisings in France that year.
When it became clear that Godard's assessment was incorrect, he abandoned the film. Pennebaker eventually finished the project himself and released it several years later as One PM, meaning "One Perfect Movie" to Pennebaker and "One Pennebaker Movie" to Godard.
Around 1976, Pennebaker met experimental filmmaker turned documentarian, Chris Hegedus. The two soon became collaborators and then married in 1982.
In 1988, Pennebaker, Hegedus and David Dawkins followed Depeche Mode as they toured the U.S. in support of Music for the Masses, their commercial breakthrough in America. The resulting film, 101, was released the following year.
In 1992, during the start of the Democratic primaries, Pennebaker and Hegedus approached campaign officials for Arkansas governor Bill Clinton about filming his presidential run. They were granted limited access to the candidate, but were allowed to focus on lead strategist, James Carville, and communications director, George Stephanopoulos.
The resulting work, The War Room, became one of their most celebrated films, winning the award for Best Documentary from the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures and earning an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature.
Pennebaker and Hegedus continued to produce a large number of documentary films through their company, Pennebaker Hegedus Films, most notably Moon Over Broadway (1998), Down from the Mountain (2001), Startup.com (2001), Elaine Stritch: At Liberty (2004), Al Franken: God Spoke (2006) and Kings of Pastry (2009).
Pennebaker's films, usually shot with a hand-held camera, often eschewed voice-over narration and interviews in favor of a "simple" portrayal of events typical of the direct cinema style. An accomplished engineer, Pennebaker developed one of the first fully portable, synchronized 16mm camera and sound recording systems which revolutionized modern filmmaking.
His aesthetic and technical breakthroughs also had a major influence on narrative filmmaking, influencing such realist masterworks as Barbara Loden's Wanda, which was filmed and edited by one of Pennebaker's protégés, Nicholas Proferes, and even popular satires such as Tim Robbins' Bob Roberts.
Pennebaker died at his home in Sag Harbor, New York on August 1, 2019.
D.A. Pennebaker photographs Bob Dylan for Eat the Document, 1966
Cowboy Copas was born 110 years ago today.
Born as Lloyd Estel Copas, he was a country music singer popular from the 1940s until his death in the 1963 plane crash that also killed country stars Patsy Cline and Hawkshaw Hawkins.
Born in 1913 in Blue Creek, Ohio, Copas began performing locally at age 14, and appeared on WLW-AM and WKRC-AM in Cincinnati during the 1930s. In 1940, he moved to Knoxville, where he performed on WNOX-AM with his band, the Gold Star Rangers.
In 1943, Copas achieved national fame when he replaced Eddy Arnold as a vocalist in the Pee Wee King band and began performing on the Grand Ole Opry. His first solo single, "Filipino Baby," released by King Records in 1946, hit #4 on the Billboard country chart and sparked the most successful period of his career.
While continuing to appear on the Opry, Copas recorded several other hits during the late 1940s and early 1950s, including "Signed Sealed and Delivered," "The Tennessee Waltz," "Tennessee Moon," "Breeze," "I'm Waltzing with Tears in My Eyes," "Candy Kisses," "Hangman's Boogie" and "The Strange Little Girl."
Copas' 1952 single, "'Tis Sweet to Be Remembered," reached #8 on the Billboard country chart, but it was his final Top 40 hit for eight years. Although Copas didn't maintain his stellar popularity of the late 1940s through the next decade, he continued to perform regularly at the Grand Ole Opry and appeared on ABC-TV's Ozark Jubilee.
After a lackluster partnership with Dot Records, Copas surged to the top of the charts again in 1960 with the biggest hit of his career, "Alabam," which remained #1 for three months. Other major hits during his successful period with Starday Records in the early 1960s, including "Flat Top" and a remake of "Signed, Sealed And Delivered," held promising implications for the future of his career.
On March 3, 1963, Copas, Patsy Cline, Hawkshaw Hawkins and others performed at a benefit concert at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Hall in Kansas City for the family of disc jockey Cactus Jack Call, who had died the previous December in an automobile accident.
On March 5, they left for Nashville in a Piper Comanche piloted by Copas' son-in-law (and Cline's manager), Randy Hughes. After stopping to refuel in Dyersburg, Tennessee, the craft took off at 6:07 p.m. central time. The plane flew into severe weather and crashed at 6:20 p.m. in a forest near Camden, Tennessee. It was 90 miles from the destination.
There were no survivors. A stone marker, dedicated on July 6, 1996, marks the location of the crash.
Copas was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Gardens in Goodlettsville, Tennessee in "Music Row" with Hawkins and other country music stars. He was 49 years old.
Here, Copas performs “The Strange Little Girl” in 1951.
Rembrandt’s self portrait
The Dutch master painter, Rembrandt van Rijn, was born in Leiden in South Holland on July 15, 1606 — 417 years ago today.
Born the son of a miller, Rembrandt’s humble origins may help account for the uncommon depth of compassion given to the human subjects of his art. His more than 600 paintings — many of them portraits or self-portraits — are characterized by rich brushwork and color, and a dramatic interplay of shadow and light.
After deciding to pursue painting, the young Rembrandt was taught by various teachers, among them Amsterdam painter Pieter Lastman, who interested him in biblical, mythological and historical themes.
Rembrandt was also deeply influenced by the Italian painter, Caravaggio, whose chiaroscuro technique — the strong use of light and shadow — would become central to Rembrandt's work.
He soon developed his own distinct style and by the age of 22 was accomplished enough to take on his own students in Leiden. During this period, he painted the first of nearly 100 self-portraits produced during his lifetime.
Moving to Amsterdam in 1631, Rembrandt began to achieve fame and commercial success as a portrait painter. Notable works from this period include the group portrait Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp (1632), the biblical-themed Sacrifice of Isaac (1635) and the mythological masterpiece, Danae (1636).
In the 1630s, Rembrandt also began to produce ambitious etchings of biblical subjects. These masterful prints, such as Annunciation to the Shepherds (1634), had a lasting effect on printmakers for centuries. During his prosperous decade, Rembrandt's studio was filled with numerous assistants and students, many of whom became accomplished artists in their own right.
As a fashionable portraitist, he began to go out of style after the 1630s. Popular taste preferred Baroque refinement and detail over his increasingly expressive brush strokes and use of shadow. His human figures, inspired by the real people around him, were criticized as being coarse and indecorous.
Despite the decline in prominent commissions, Rembrandt maintained an extravagant lifestyle, particularly as a collector and this ultimately would lead to his bankruptcy in 1656. Financial difficulties were also coupled with personal miseries, particularly the death of his wife in 1642, the death of his mistress in 1663 and the death of his only son in 1668.
These troubles scarcely affected his artistic output, however, and the 1640s saw such masterworks as the 1642 painting The Militia Company of Captain Frans Banning Cocq (also known as The Night Watch) and the monumental etching Christ Healing the Sick (1643-1649). He also developed an enduring interest in landscape during this time.
Financial ruin came in the 1650s, but he continued to work with undiminished energy and power. Many of the Rembrandt paintings most celebrated today came from this later period, which saw a profound penetration of character in pictures like Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer (1653) and Bathsheba (1654).
Some of his biblical-themed works from this period so closely resemble portraits that their religious subjects are obscure, such as the Jewish Bride (1664). Many soulful self-portraits were also produced in the last years of his life.
Rembrandt died in 1669.
Jane Jacobs is the woman whose brilliant protest in the 1960s ended the reign of terror wrought by power broker Robert Moses in New York City, the bureaucrat who wanted to turn the city into an interlacing urban net of highways.
Jacobs, who died 2006, was a writer and activist with primary interest in communities and urban planning and decay. She is best known for The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961), a powerful critique of the urban renewal policies of the 1950s in the United States.
The book has been described as "one of 20th century architecture's most traumatic events,” but also credited with reaching beyond planning issues to influence the spirit of the times.
Within months of the completion of her book (1961) which promoted a grassroots, organic, neighborhood-based process to rehabilitate buildings, Jacobs learned that her 555 Hudson Street home in Greenwich Village was in an area targeted by Robert Moses for a $7 million urban renewal which would mean evictions and clearance of old buildings replaced by carefully-planned middle-income housing project.
The influential Harvard Economist Edward Glaeser, renowned for his work on urban studies, said Jacobs was prescient in attacking Moses for "replacing well-functioning neighborhoods with Le Corbusier-inspired towers."
Glaeser agreed that these housing projects proved to be Moses' greatest failures: "Moses spent millions and evicted tens of thousands to create buildings that became centers of crime, poverty and despair.”
Along with her well-known printed works, Jacobs is equally well known for organizing grassroots efforts to block urban-renewal projects that would have destroyed local neighborhoods. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway.
Today, many New York City neighborhoods — including Greenwich Village — have survived due to the work of Jacobs.
New York City always remains one of the few U.S. urban areas where walking is easy, largely thanks to Jacobs, who stopped Moses plan for a “go everywhere” by car culture.
Street shot of Harrison Ford | |||||
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"The Des Moines Register"
] | 2020-10-12T00:00:00 | More than 6,100 Iowans have died due to coronavirus. Behind that number are mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. | en | Des Moines Register | https://www.desmoinesregister.com/story/news/iowa-mourns/2020/10/12/coronavirus-covid-deaths-in-iowa-lives-remembered/3477467001/ | The numbers associated with Iowa’s coronavirus pandemic come regularly. They appear in our inboxes and on our feeds like clockwork, sandwiched between big box store discounts and emails from friends.
4,706 positive cases one day.
40 deaths another.
Over 400,000 recovered to date.
More than 6,100 lost.
In the routine of it all a callus grows, a protection against what these numbers actually stand for — people.
Behind these figures are storytellers and hard workers, Cubs fans and pie bakers, mothers and daughters, fathers and sons. Behind these numbers are our fellow Iowans.
The Iowa Mourns project is a result of months of research to reveal the stories of neighbors and friends lost to the pandemic. In writing about them, we focused on the light of their lives instead of the darkness of their diagnoses, and sought to chronicle who they were, what they did and how they’ll be remembered.
Iowa Mourns was made possible by an unprecedented partnership of nine daily newspapers across Iowa’s two premier newspaper organizations — the Register, Ames Tribune, Burlington Hawk Eye and Iowa City Press-Citizen of the USA TODAY Network; and the Council Bluffs Daily Nonpareil, Mason City Globe Gazette, Quad-City Times, Sioux City Journal and Waterloo Courier of Lee Enterprises. Journalists from all over the state contributed, ensuring we painted a true picture of how Iowa has changed from river to river.
We remain committed to telling these stories. If you would like your loved one remembered in this way, email me at ccrowder@dmreg.com or submit their name here.
Together, we can make certain the Iowans lost will always be more than a number.
— Courtney Crowder
REMEMBERING:
A
Connie Abegglen, 74, Merrill. Loved the color red whether on clothes or cardinals.
George Abodeely, 83, Marion. Competed in Special Olympics.
Alonzo Adams II, 95, Davenport. Creator of the Slim Jim.
Clifton Adams Jr., 76, Cedar Falls. Raised English springer spaniels and Brittany spaniels at Ada's Kennels.
Doris Adams, 93, Riceville. Enjoyed gardening and hunting mushrooms.
Duane Keith Ahrens, 83, West Des Moines. Served at least four Iowa school districts as an award-winning counselor.
Forrest Alcott, 65, Waterloo. Loved spending time with his great-grandchildren.
Geoff Amble, 61, Cedar Falls. Often found tinkering in his garage, whether working on his Jeep or building furniture for his wife.
Tyler Amburgey, 29, Dubuque. A Texas native who played hockey with the Dubuque Fighting Saints.
Marilyn June Andersen, 90, Center Point. Spunky with a penchant for everything leopard-print.
Paul Andersen, 78, Sioux City. Active in Via de Cristo for more than 40 years, often serving as rector.
Annabelle Anderson, 79, Council Bluffs. Worked for Congressman Jim Ross Lightfoot for 12 years.
Edith Elida Anderson, 95, Coralville. Proud of her Swedish heritage.
Joan Anderson, 89, Quad Cities. Knit hats for newborn babies at the Bettendorf hospital.
Keith Wayne Anderson, 73, Kalona. Served in Vietnam as a sergeant during the Tet Offensive.
Martha Anderson, 89, Cedar Falls. Worked at the University of Northern Iowa's Rod Library for 31 years.
Leora Andorf, 92, Cedar Falls. Contributed her finest homegrown plants to organizations for annual plant sales.
Gene Andrews, 83, Anita. Owner and editor of the Anita Tribune for half a century.
Mitchell Andrews, 90, Iowa City. A pianist who played solo, with orchestras and as a chamber musician across the U.S. and abroad.
Patricia Androy, 58, Dunlap. Worked as a registered nurse at a nursing home.
Jose Andrade-Garcia, 62, Marshalltown. Was days away from retiring from JBS Swift & Co. meatpacking plant.
Siddiq Mohamed Arab, 83, Waterloo. Worked as a ship's surgeon sailing the eastern coast of Africa before becoming a pediatrician.
Darla Arends, 58, Charles City. A special education instructor at Charles City High School.
Peter Anthony Armatis, 54, West Des Moines. Coached his son's soccer team.
Jose Ayala, 44, Waterloo. Would open his Atari and VHS player to see its internal mechanics.
B
David Backus, 74, Ventura. A master bonfire builder who always shared his ice cream.
Lonnie Bailey, 61, Fertile. Took a family trip to the Mississippi river and apple orchards every October, rain, snow or shine.
Mark Bailey, 63, Fort Madison. Department of Corrections inmate.
Robert Lee Bailey Jr., Oakland, 56. Ran the Las Vegas half-marathon with his youngest daughter Katelyn in 2018.
Jeanette Marie Baldwin, 88, Mingo. Former postmaster at the Mingo Post Office.
Larry Ball Sr., 78, Des Moines. Fielded cars from 1985 to 1995 in the 410 division at Knoxville Raceway and other tracks throughout the Midwest under Ball Racing Inc.
Shirley Rae Barbieri, 88, Des Moines. Advocated developing more group homes for special-needs adults.
Tom Barnabo, 57, Des Moines. Original member of the Grand View University football program's coaching staff. Also a physical education teacher at Dowling Catholic.
Faye Ann Barr, 79, Cedar Falls. Managed produce at Red Owl Food Store and IGA Supermarket.
Patricia Pat Bartels, 86, Oelwein. A switchboard operator and union steward for Northwestern Bell Telephone Co.
Shirley Louise Barton, 75, Ankeny. Enjoyed crocheting, cross-stitching and attending stock car races.
Joan Bauer, 86, Manilla. Taught Catholic classes at Sacred Heart Church for over 30 years.
Kenneth "Ken" Baxa, 77, Cedar Rapids. A devotee of country and gospel music.
Theodore "Butch" Bean Jr., 81, Cedar Rapids. Built flag display boxes for families of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Dorothy Beaton, 92, Iowa City. A world traveler who searched for faeries in the woods and walked along the Great Wall of China in her 80s.
David Bedard, 78, La Porte City. Made his stockcar racing debut in the early 1960s driving his '57 Plymouth with "Dirt-track Dave" lettered on its tailfins.
Jack Beghtol, 92, Des Moines. Charter member of the Des Moines Ski Hawks waterskiing team known for his trick skiing.
Ronald "Beans" Behrends, 86, Monticello. Helped bring the DuTrac Credit Union to Monticello, and later worked on its board.
Ruthmarie Beisner, 87, Readlyn. Sang German songs for her family during the winter holidays.
Aylo Bell, 100, Marion. An expert seamstress known around the Coggon area for her fine alterations.
David Belluchi, 57, Des Moines. Coached his sons and nephews at Plaza Lanes and AMF in Des Moines.
Diane Bennington, 80, Cedar Rapids. Spent childhood Saturday nights roller-skating with her sister, Nancy.
Patricia Berends, 84, Parkersburg. Worked at Lad's and Lassie's in Black's Dept. Store.
Elaine May Bergan, 91, Lake Mills. Known as the "town historian" for writing books on the histories of Lake Mills and Joice.
Gail Berggren, 85, Iowa City. An avid tennis player who won several club doubles championships.
Janet Marie Besh, 80, Cedar Falls. Managed the Besh Trucking office with her family.
Jacqueline Lucille Biber, 89, Des Moines. Volunteered with the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society and at Temple B'nai Jeshurun.
Brandon Biddle, 43, Tripoli. Traveled the state for bowling, even competing in the Iowa state tournament.
Danny Ray Bierman, 61, Muscatine. A passionate St. Louis Cardinals and Minnesota Vikings fan.
Eugene Bird Sr., 85, Dubuque. Started his own business, Sign Service, with just a pick-up truck, ladder and toolbox.
Phil Birk III, 83, Middle Amana. Enjoyed trains and collecting railroad memorabilia.
Staci Birmes, 50, Hawarden. Loved crafting in all forms, regularly finding fun, new things to create.
Diana Bixenman, 74, Le Mars. Instilled a great appreciation for cards and golf in her family.
Gerald Bixler, 83, West Des Moines. A Union Pacific "railroader" for 40 years.
John Johnny Bjornsen, 68, Cedar Rapids. Avid cyclist and garage sale bargain hunter.
Janice Blake, 79, Waterloo. Enjoyed studying the Bible, baking and crocheting.
Todd Blanford, 63, Cedar Falls. Served his community as Cedar Falls Human Rights Commissioner.
Juanita Blaser, 88, Cedar Falls. An avid seamstress who made countless outfits, costumes and beautiful quilts for each member of her family.
Delores Block, 91, Cedar Rapids. Worked as church secretary at Bethany Lutheran Church for two decades.
Bernette Bloomquist, 97, Estherville. Made amazing Norwegian lefse, kringla, krumkake and rosettes.
Jeryle Gene Blubaugh, 88, Des Moines. Loved telling corny jokes and sharing fun history facts.
Michael "Mick" Blubaugh, 65, Des Moines. Emceed karaoke nights at the Iowa State Fair.
Carole Jeanne Blumberg, 86, Clinton. Owned and operated Clinton Tobacco and Candy.
James F. Boesen Sr., 87, Des Moines. Started family florist business after serving in the Marines.
Vernelle J. Bonar, 89, Treynor. A fervent cheerer at Treynor school events.
Donna Boomershire, 86, Ames. Survived scarlet fever as a child.
Daniel Lee Boon, 69, Rock Rapids. A car aficionado who carefully restored a 1957 Chevy police cruiser to pristine condition.
Rudolph Boonstra, 86, Orange City. Owned an expansive collection of classical music.
Beverly Jean Bousseta, 85, Sioux Falls. Loved dancing and dining out.
Lee E. Bossom, 83, Blairstown. Mayor of Quasqueton for 10 years.
Gilbert Bovard, 93, Clear Lake. Served on the Iowa District Court bench for 22 years.
Donald Bowlin, 74, Des Moines.
Warren Coleman Bowlus, 90, Davenport. Served as Athletic Director for Davenport City Schools.
Shirley Bowman, 95, Marshalltown. Opened the Yarn Barn with her sisters to teach others to knit.
Mary Boyd-Doehrmann, 94, Coralville. Bowled a 189 in a single game in November 2020.
Robert Boyle, 84, Dexter. Received a Quilt of Valor for his Army service in 2017.
Mary Ann Bradford, 91, Iowa City. Held lifelong passions for birds, dachshunds and women's rights.
Kenneth Eugene Bratney, 94, Urbandale. In his basement, started the Ken Bratney Co., which has branches around the country and in Argentina.
Robert Brecht, 69, Keystone. A loyal fan of the Watkins Mudhens, attending games whenever possible.
Norma Breitbach, 93, Charles City. Spent hours on a weekend traveling in search of the perfect crock or jar.
Brenda Brewer, 60, Chariton. Remembered for her uniquely painted fingernails and delicious desserts.
Bill Bride, 77, Bloomfield. Involved with the area Johnny Poppers Two-Cylinder Club, riding around with his "tractor buddies."
Dale Bright Sr., 83, Waterloo. A member of the Local International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 288.
Milo Brokaw, 65, Monticello. Cheered for Kevin Harvick while watching NASCAR.
Nancy Brokaw, 89, Monticello. Held Order of the Eastern Star membership for a half-century.
Carol Bronson, 83, Council Bluffs. Enjoyed a long career at Union Pacific Railroad.
Darla Eileen Brown, 54, Sioux City. Loved playing with her family members' dogs.
David Brown, 76, Wilton. A fifth-generation farmer and true steward of the land.
Donald Brown, 82, Independence. Proud 58-year member of IBEW.
Kyle Brown, 54, Marshalltown. Won awards for perfect attendance at TPI Composites.
Richard W. Brown, 93, Des Moines. Made three cross-Atlantic trips aboard naval ships to bring troops home after World War II.
John Pearson Brucher, 81, Cedar Rapids. Sang in the Janesville United Methodist Church choir.
Marie Brumbaugh, 40, Davenport. Loved being a caregiver, both as a medical assistant and mother.
Bill Brunsmann, 85, Manchester. Famous for his growing his own tomatoes and making his own blood sausage.
Marilyn Ann Brunsvold, 77, Mason City. Often found with a word search puzzle book nearby.
Timothy Christopher Bryant, 59, Anamosa. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Tom Warren Buchacker, 77, Des Moines. A passionate fly fisherman, who tied his own flies and passed along his knowledge through Boy Scouts lessons.
Joy Buchan, 93, Waterloo. Longtime art teacher at West High School in Waterloo.
Douglas Doug Lee Budd, 61, Sioux City. Received a U.S. Army expert marksmanship badge for use of hand grenades.
Walter Budde Jr., PhD, 95, Iowa City. World-renowned in peroxygen chemistry, especially the formation of peroxyacids and their use for the synthesis of epoxides.
Forrest Buffington, 80, Mason City. Loved rocks and "anything with wheels and a motor."
Sedika Buljic, 58, Waterloo. Came to the United States as a refugee from Bosnia.
Jane Bullard, 87, Decorah. Never wore a bigger smile than when making fresh tracks on a snowy hike.
Raymond Gayle "Coach" Burgett, 86, Des Moines. Coached teams at schools in Leon, Urbandale and Des Moines.
Patricia Burrage, 72, Des Moines. Favorite adventures were to the Carribean and Europe.
Frank Burton, 92, Des Moines. Loved jazz and classical music.
Ronnie Butler, 67, Montrose. Drove and competed in classic car shows.
Joe Butterfield, 84, Marion. Led Marion park improvement projects, including getting the city a swimming pool, senior center, farmers market, and softball complex.
Bruce Byerly, 70, Marion. Lived his dream career as a model designer working for Mattel, Tomy and more toy and model companies.
C
James Quinten Cahill, 91, West Branch. Wrote the Cahill Cooperative Newsletter, which covered history and current events for those connected by the Cahill surname.
Paul Wesley Calhoun, 85, Atlantic. Ran a concession stand at the Vais Auction House with his wife, making popcorn with his popcorn machine.
Charles Callahan, 77, Bettendorf. Worked for UPS for 33 years in New Jersey, Illinois, Massachusetts, Kansas and Nebraska.
Elaine Callahan, 98, Sheffield Village. Spent her time on arts and crafts projects making gifts for family and friends.
Jean Calligan-Salmons, 71, Sioux City. Managed her family's restaurant, Tastee Inn and Out.
Janice Campell, 83, Sioux City. Retired from Farmland Insurance Companies after 25 years.
Cynthia Carey, 63, Council Bluffs. Worked for Physicians Mutual Insurance for 22 years.
Carol Carlson, 79, Quad Cities. Spent summers boating and waterskiing at her family's Mississippi River cabin.
Michael Carr, 59, Fairfield. A two-time kidney transplant recipient.
Loretta Caruthers, 64, Keokuk. Loved watching television with her husband — even when they argued about programs.
Ruth Casteel, 95, Maquoketa. A 4-H leader who loved quilting, baking and traveling.
Thomas "Snappy" Catron, 65, Adel. Founded Snappy's Stick Fire BBQ.
Louis Cauterucci, 70, Des Moines. Started his decades-long music career at the tender age of 14.
Richard Allan Chamney, 65, Charles City. Could recite the lines of his favorite movie, "The Wizard of Oz."
Doris "Jo" Chandler, 93, Cedar Rapids. A fierce competitor at cards, frequently besting family members.
Joe Chastain, 81, Afton. A ham radio operator and member of the Amateur Radio Relay League.
Judy Chastain, 74, Afton. An active member of her community, she led the establishment of the New Afton Community Building.
Marvel Chapman, 74, Des Moines. Collected Elvis Presley memorabilia.
Lou Christiansen, 84, Manchester. Worked on the Apollo program at Collins Radio.
Rodger Christensen, 92, Union. Read to children as a volunteer at Union Library.
George Christoffersen, 68, Missouri Valley. Absolutely loved Dunkin Donuts' hazelnut iced coffee and its chocolate cake donuts with chocolate frosting.
Steven Joe "Chromey" Chramosta, 61, Cedar Rapids. An outdoorsman who loved to fish and hunt.
Marvin Maynard Clark, 84, Carson. A collector of marbles, John Deere toys and beer steins.
Ruth Clark, 102, Des Moines. Gave tours of the Flynn Mansion at Living History Farms.
Terri Lynn Clark, 60, West Des Moines. Loved photography, fishing and road trips.
Dorothy Clausen, 93, Lake View. A member of the American Legion Women’s Auxiliary for more than 50 years in Soldier and Wall Lake.
Elmer Clausing, 96, Parkersburg. A lifelong farmer in Bremer County.
Arlene Clement, 103, Washington. Loved dancing, participating in the Neighborhood Social Club, and having weekly lunches with friends.
Dorinda Coates, 65, Cedar Rapids. Famous for penning birthday cards to her fellow residents at Heritage Specialty Care.
Roger Coe, 86, New Sharon. Loved bowling.
Mary A. Cole, 93, Cedar Rapids. Known for her delicious baked goods and her Schnauzers.
Keith Danny Conrad, 65, Cedar Rapids. Taught Sunday school and led Ashram Group retreats.
Darrin L. Cook, 57, Atlantic. Loved playing slots and keno.
Willie Eva Cook, 85, Waterloo. A nurse at Allen Memorial Hospital for more than three decades.
Larry "Cookie" Cookman, 71, Coralville. Always had a need for speed, enjoying Harley Davidson, Corvettes and NASCAR.
Jerome Coolidge, 60, Mason City. Always remembered a person's face, even if he forgot their name.
Elizabeth Coovert, 82, Fort Madison. Grew up with six siblings on a family farm at String Prairie.
Rebecca Copple, 86, Iowa City. Lived with her husband in Japan for two years and visited Turkey, Mexico, China and many places in Europe.
Reents Cordes, 73, Cedar Falls. An avid gardener.
Raymundo Corral, 64, Sioux City. Worked at Tyson Fresh Meats beef plant in Dakota City, Nebraska.
Roger Cory, 72, Elkhart. Served a year as Grand Chaplin of the Order of Eastern Star.
Andrew Cousineau, 57, Sioux City. Loved grilling out for family get-togethers.
James Craig, 88, Pocahontas. Built and repaired clocks of all kinds.
Harriet "Joan" Crandell, 88, Marion. Taught second and third grade, as well as opening and directing Kiddie Korner Preschool.
Ken Crane, 77, Atlantic. A school bus driver for Atlantic Community Schools who referred to the students as "his kids."
Michael Croft, 52, Perry. Moved to Utah and became an avid biker, skier, hiker and camper.
Jennifer Crawford, 53, West Des Moines. A special education assistant at Indian Hills Junior High School.
Thomas Cross, 82, Ankeny. Loved flying and obtained a pilot's license.
Raymond L. Curl, 83, Washington. Worked at the Washington County Developmental Center.
Cynthia Curran, 73, Marion. Enjoyed listening to the "oldies."
Ivan Current, 64, Maquoketa. Loved riding his Harley Davidson with his wife and friends.
D
Cherie Dandurand, 53, Moville. Loved teaching about the history of ancient Egypt and Europe in the Middle Ages to her middle school students.
Jay S. Daniels, 92, West Des Moines. An active member of the Za-Ga-Zig Masonic Temple and Scottish Rite.
Alvin Darling, 88, Decorah. Worked as a maintenance man at Luther College and as a truck driver for Featherlite.
Robert "Scott" Darrah, 57, Council Bluffs. Loved all things Disney and often took his family on trips to Disney World.
Ruth David, 91, Ames. Avoided a concentration camp through the Kindertransport and came to Iowa years later.
Edison James Davis, 94, State Center. Awarded the Purple Heart after getting wounded in action in Okinawa.
Ronald Davis Sr., 73, Perry. A Juvenile Probation Officer who loved hearing about the new lives of his former clients.
Dixie Deitchler, 90, Glenwood. Published poems and prose in Cappers Weekly.
John DeMarco, 73, Coralville. Longtime football coach at Iowa City's Regina High School.
Margaret "Peggy" Demke, 87, South Sioux City. Always cheered on the Nebraska Cornhuskers and Notre Dame Fighting Irish.
Patrick Deutmeyer, 63, Manchester. Lived his whole life on his family farm, loving to quiz his grandchildren on agriculture.
Howard DeVore, 78, Council Bluffs. An avid woodworker and carver, who always had several projects going at once.
Larry Dewell, 83, Clarence. A 50-year member of the Eastern Star and the Masonic Lodge.
Delbert Dittman, 66, Hospers. Loved older International tractors as much as the Albert City Threshing Bee he attended every year.
Beverly Dixon, 83, Lucas. Kept the books for her son's business for two decades.
James Dixon, 93, Waterloo. Put himself through college working as a metallurgist at John Deere.
Richard Doerr, 67, South Sioux City. Opened Dicky G's restaurant.
Thelma Doescher, 91, Mason City. A "from-scratch" baker who handwrote dozens of Christmas cards every year.
Harry Delmar Donald, 87, Bennett. Served his community as a volunteer fireman and treasurer for the Bennett Fire Department for more than four decades.
Kadene Donlon, 46, Cedar Falls. Always looked for koala trinkets too add to her collection.
David N. Dontje, 84, Forest City. Inducted into the Forest City Bowling Hall of Fame.
Shirley Doornbos, 85, Coralville. Lucky, especially when playing bingo.
Betty Dorenkamp, 89, Belmond. Skilled with a butcher knife, expertly cutting corn off the cob and carving chicken for frying.
Patricia Dorn, 88, Runnells. A retired nurse who loved anything about ancient Egypt.
Duane Dostal, 93, Dysart. Prided himself on his corn and soybean yields, once winning second place in the state for his corn yield.
Robert Dotson, 97, Urbandale. Proudly served on the USS Oconto in the Pacific Theater during WWII.
Henry Earl Drake, 47, Des Moines. A diehard Oakland Raiders fan who watched games every week.
Gene Edward Dryer, 72, Clarinda. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Richard Duclos, 89, Muscatine. Took a boat across the Mississippi River each day to attend grade school.
Anna Dudgeon, 93, Durant. Former president of the Liedertafel Ladies.
Kenny Duke Jr., 87, Keosauqua. Helped students get their GED diplomas through decades of work at Indian Hills Community College.
Harold Arthur Duncan, 89, Coralville. Iowa Department of Correction inmate.
Verl Fredrick Duncan, 73, Hubbard. Known by family members as the "Baby Whisperer” because he could soothe a wailing infant, having them snuggling contently within minutes.
Mary "Lorraine" Dunne, 91, Council Bluffs. Worked as director of the Lewis Central school food service program.
George L. Dyer Sr., 78, Ottumwa. Served two tours of duty in Vietnam as a U.S. Marine.
Marian Dyer, 87, Davenport. Worked as a secretary at Augustana College.
E
Bob Eatock, 86, Centerville. An educator who loved musical theater and horror fiction.
Bonnie Ebel, 79, Cherokee. Farmed with her husband for two decades in the Mt. Olive area.
Julie Ebel, 44, Hartley. Fought cancer and beat it twice.
Carlene Suzanne Edwards, 68, Cedar Rapids. Member of St. Paul's Lutheran Church in Marion.
Abbie Irene Eichman, 36, Des Moines. Built Legos and tackled corn mazes with her husband.
Sandra Sue Eick, 85, Denver. Longtime employee at Denver Saving Bank.
Christine Ellis, 65, Rockwell City. A crafter who always had a project, whether making flower arrangements or crocheting scarfs, blankets and dog sweaters.
Shirley Elsberry, 90, Waterloo. A snowbird who camped in Weslaco, Texas, every winter with her husband Chuck.
Florence "Mary" Emrick, 97, Iowa City. Awarded the Governor's Volunteer Award in 1999.
Nancy Emery, 72, Savanna.
Jason Englert, 38, Belmond. In his first year of teaching in the Belmond-Klemme Talented and Gifted program.
Kristi Jo Ernst, 66, Eldridge. Loved to spoil her children with homemade scotcheroos.
Gary Lee Eschen, 69, Cedar Rapids. Enjoyed making bracelets and necklaces.
Dorothy M. Etzen, 94, Forest City. A member of the women's American Legion Auxiliary.
Kathy Jo Everett, 60, Fairfax. Volunteer extraordinaire with the Fairfax Lions Club.
Stephen Evert, 77, Prairie du Chien. An out-patient counselor who worked in hospitals in Las Vegas, Nevada, Modesto and Sacramento, California, Fond du Lac, Wisconsin., and Des Moines.
Michael Everhard, 65, Fonda. Served in the U.S. Navy in Vietnam and Guam and did tours in India and Cambodia.
F
Mary Fain, 88, Cedar Falls. A classical piano prodigy who became director of classical music and senior fine arts producer for KUNI/KHKE.
Shirley Farley, 83, Sioux City. Proud of her membership with Catholic Daughters of America.
John Fellenzer, 74, Waterloo. From musician to realtor, car salesman to locksmith, a man of many trades.
Isidro Fernandez, Waterloo. Left behind a wife and children.
Judith Ann Fetters, 82, West Des Moines. Met her husband at a Des Moines skating rink.
Barbara Finch, 104, Battle Creek. Farmed with her husband for 41 years, and went on to work another 16 at Ida County Bank.
Duane Fisher, 95, Pacific Junction. Stood honor guard for President Franklin Roosevelt at Pearl Harbor.
William Flaherty, 80, Des Moines. Finished every sentence with "and everything."
Robert Michael Flanders, 63, Muscatine. A radar designer and engineer.
Delores Flesner, 80, Cedar Falls. Loved reading the Waterloo Courier and Parkersburg Eclipse.
Dorthe J. Flick, 97, Clinton. Learned to read in a one-room schoolhouse.
Doris L. Flynn, 96, Cedar Rapids. Worked in the Roosevelt Junior High cafeteria for 21 years.
Estle Foster, 94, Clarinda. Relished raising his family on his Century Farm.
Joseph Robert Fouts, 57, Onawa. Nicknamed "Joe Dirt" for starting his business with just one dump truck.
Eugene Fraise, 88, Fort Madison. Passionate about his community, serving as Lee County Supervisor for seven years as a state senator for 27 years.
Goldie Frank, 88, Sioux City. Crocheted a baby blanket to celebrate the birth of each grand- and great-grandchild.
Ronald Frantz, 84, Mount Vernon. Friends and family raved about his chili and beef and barley soup.
Glenn William Frazier, 81, Des Moines. Downhill skied in the snow, golfed in the sun.
M. Patricia Pat Freeland, Bondurant. Advocated for building Anderson Elementary School and Bondurant High School on her family's land.
Mark Friedow, 71, Jefferson. Raised Poland China hogs with his grandfather and uncles.
Judi Frondle, 74, Hiawatha. Enjoyed doing puzzles, painting and playing computer games.
Daryl Fuller, 59, Waterloo. Loved American muscle cars.
Jean Fuller, 96, Mount Pleasant. Raised show horses with her husband.
Judy Fuller, 76, Blue Grass. Listened to pastor Joel Osteen and shopped from the QVC network.
Richard Fust, 84, Des Moines. Coached youth ice hockey for many years.
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John Galles, 83, Kingsley. The voice of Kingsley Panthers baseball and softball teams.
Marguerite Ganoe, 102, Stuart. Loved playing with her grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
Judith Garbers, 79, Keystone. Taught as a teacher for 30 years, and spent the next 20 years as a substitute teaching her former students' children.
Roberta Jean Gardner, 100, Des Moines. A green thumb, who loved caring for her flower and vegetable gardens.
Blas Chavarria Garcia, 48, Marshalltown. A hobby mechanic with a garage full of tools.
Reberiano Garcia, 60, Waterloo. Father of 10 who lost his wife to cancer in 2019.
Betty Garner, 76, Sioux City. Loved to wear sparkly blouses and hats.
Donna Garvey, 75, Bettendorf. Enjoyed bingo, shopping and playing with her grandchildren.
Terry Geistler, 56, Osage. Volunteered his time to take residents of the Faith Lutheran Home on motorcycle rides, to family events and fishing.
Duane Charles Gettler, 74, Adair. Loved telling people his favorite stories, such as the abundance of twins in his family.
David Gierlus, 67, Iowa City. Served as a doctor at the University of Iowa and taught Respiratory Therapy at Black Hawk College.
Sharon Gile, 75, Creston. An avid bowler who passed her love for the sport to her children.
Raymond Gill, 95, Coralville. Opened the Coralville's first dental practice in 1956.
Shawna Elaine Gilleland, 44, Burlington. A graduate of Jefferson High School in Cedar Rapids.
James Nicholas Gillman, 93, Marshalltown. Honored for his work in veterans affairs.
Darlene Catherine Goddard, 95, Iowa City. Worked in the Oral-B laboratories until 1987.
Leroy Goeden, 70, Sergeant Bluff. Volunteered with the Sergeant Bluff Fire Department, EMT Service and as president of the Northeast Nebraska Handicap Group.
John Z. Gomez, 70, Mason City. Worked as a diesel mechanic at National Byproducts.
Jessie Gonzales, 67, Fort Dodge. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Mary Gorsh, 84, Iowa City. Sang as a member of the Sweet Adelines for years.
Joyce Gould, 63, West Des Moines. Worked in West Des Moines' human services department.
Ron Graf, 72, Waterloo. A farmer who so loved learning new trades that he got certified as a master electrician and a pilot.
Genevieve M. Gray, 91, Evansdale. Worked at West High School in Waterloo.
Jeannette L. Green, 92, Davenport. Studied home economics, but excelled at chemistry.
Chad Greening, 48, Ankeny. An "arm-chair manager" with immense statistical knowledge and enthusiasm for the St. Louis Cardinals.
Jerry Grings, 80, Moscow. Known for his iconic black flat top.
Jane Gronert, 89, Cedar Rapids. Worked as a teacher's aide in Alburnett Community Schools.
Norris Gronert, 90, Cedar Rapids. Earned many awards for service with Otter Creek Lions Club and American Legion of Toddville.
George Grubb, 68, Des Moines. A "sweet-spirited" man.
Lois Gruis, 93, Sioux City. Taught more than 100 private lessons in piano, organ and vocal music each week.
John Grzybowski, 76, Urbandale. Loved puttering with his bonsai trees and playing video games with his sons.
Gary Guehrn, 76, Marengo. Loved all things tractor, including buying, selling, collecting and, most importantly, driving his Dad's restored 1950 International M.
Victoria Gutierrez, 57, Des Moines. Loved spending time with family and her little dog, Chico.
Jason Gwin, 42, Sioux City. A collector of Superman comics who loved the DC Universe.
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Wilma Haberkamp, 90, Fairbank. Ran Jo's Thread and Thimble in Fairbank with her sister after retiring from teaching.
Duane Hagberg, 87, Orion. Maintained a Cubs vs. Cardinals rivalry with his Heartland Health Care Center roommate, Jim Dodd.
Eldon Haines, 90, Quad Cities. A proud member of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local Union 25.
David "Doug" Hall Jr., 80, Cedar Rapids. A professor of art at Kirkwood Community College.
James Lynn Pete Hall, 72, Wapello. Delivered meals to the elderly.
Marian Hankner, 89, Waterloo. A homemaker and mother of three.
Paul N. Hanson, 82, Cedar Rapids. Born in a log cabin.
Marina Harbit, 88, Iowa City. Met her husband as a telephone switchboard operator at the University of Iowa.
Robert Harle, 77, Kanawha. A perfectionist in the fields who farmed in Norway Township for more than 50 years.
Donna Harman, 94, Waterloo. Established veterinary scholarships at Iowa State University.
Glenda Harms, 58, Fort Dodge. A fierce and passionate champion for her students in the Fort Dodge public school system.
Mildred M. Harmon, 108, Windsor Heights. A master floral artist who decorated the Epworth United Methodist Church's altar.
Therese J. Harney, 73, Iowa City. Organized Iowa City's first recreational basketball league.
Marilyn Harnish, 84, Hiawatha. Worked as a licensed practical nurse until her retirement in 2000.
Helen Louise Harrison, 98, Muscatine. Worked at Kelly Field supporting B-17 bomber production in San Antonio during World War II.
Michael Harrington, 61, Adel. Co-owned Cool Beans Coffee Bar, serving as "Chief Turkey Roaster."
Ann Harris, 63, Cedar Rapids. Deeply passionate about preserving Iowa's history.
Gary Harris, 87, Waterloo. Managed Younkers department stores around Iowa and Minnesota.
Charmeda Harrison, 91, Cedar Rapids. Enjoyed attending church and going to the Milestones senior club.
Harold Haskin, 80, Denver. Made delicious lefse and maple syrup for his church family.
Roy Allen Hassman, 77, Parkersburg. Enjoyed drinking coffee at Willie’s Feed Store, Sinclair Elevator and in Darwin’s shed.
Paul G. Haywood, 62, Waterloo. A union pipefitter and welder for 40 years.
Geraldine Hearn, 93, Marion. Owned and operated Vickroy Jewelry in Montezuma for a decade.
Tom Heath, 61, Iowa City. Drove a cab and worked as an accountant.
Marie Heiar, 51, Dubuque. Ran a home daycare with her mother for many years.
Rachel Heller, 87, Grundy Center. A hard-working woman who started her career at the Grundy Center Richelieu factory.
Merlyn Helm, 84, Clear Lake. The mayor of Crystal Lake for several years.
Maurice Helt, 84, Burlington. A lifelong race car enthusiast, starting with a young fandom of Bob Riddle's stock car crew and races at the 34 Raceway.
Mark Henry, 64, Davenport. Took mission trips to Zimbabwe, Moldova and the Philippines.
Tom Henry, 88, Waterloo. A machinist, gauge inspector and gauge repairman at John Deere.
Geraldine Gerry Marie Hearn, 93, Marion. 50-year member of the Order of Eastern Star, a Masonic organization.
Richard Heggen, 72, Des Moines. Had a deep interest in vehicles, photography and good music.
Roger Henn, 73, Forest City. Retired in Arkansas to fulfill his dream of golfing year-round.
Owen Henning, 90, Latimer. Founded a grain handling business while running his father's construction company.
Manfred Joseph Hepke, 84, Manchester. Loved sharing stories about his early life in Germany.
James Dale Herbert Sr., 77, Muscatine. Worked at HON Industries and enjoyed a good casino.
David Herndon, 61, Des Moines. A collector of toy helicopters and cars who always sported a fancy hat and belt.
Lucille Herndon, 91, Des Moines. Made fried chicken every Saturday night.
Arlyn Hesse, 87, Johnston. Loved volunteering, gardening and birdwatching.
Gilbert Hewett, 85, Cedar Falls. A lifelong teacher at high schools, colleges and education organizations across Iowa.
Fred Hickman, 78, Evansdale. Achieved the rank of lance corporal in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Jerry Hicks, 86, Sioux City. Met Babe Ruth in Sioux City when he was 7 years old.
Thelma M. Hidlebaugh, 93, Muscatine. Loved crafting, cooking and baking.
Velma Hildebrandt, 93, Sumner. Farmed on four different farms with her husband in the 1960s.
Marlan Hill, 83, Sioux City. Loved motorcycles, corvettes and horses.
David Hindal, 64, West Des Moines. Played trumpet and French horn in the ISU Alumni Band and in pit orchestra for Urbandale Community Theatre, among others.
Harold D. Hinderaker, 80, Forest City. Earned his GED and became a born-again Christian in his middle age.
Ann Hinkhouse, 74, Tipton. Worked as a parish nurse for Zion Lutheran Church.
Michael Hinton, 49, Cedar Rapids. A perfectionist who enjoyed playing darts.
Doris Hintz, 92, Urbandale. Had a special talent for making costumes for the Urbandale 4th of July parade.
Clarence "Jack" Hird, 100, Farley. Established the Senior Citizen Meal Sites of Farley and Epworth, setting up the weekly meal service and delivering meals to people who couldn't leave the house.
Carl Hoffman, 84, Cedar Rapids. Sold his family insurance business after 13 years to pursue his boyhood dream of driving an "18-wheeler" across the country.
Benedict Howard Hofmann, 91, Iowa City. Childhood neighbors with his wife.
Donald Hohnbaum, 89, West Des Moines. Put himself through law school by playing drums.
Sharyl Hohnecker, 70, Marion. Her Maquoketa home was known as the "Christmas House" because of how many lights and decorations she and her husband put up each winter.
Ronald Eugene Holdsworth, 62, Fort Dodge. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Louis Holly, 86, Cedar Rapids. An active member and "guest speaker" at his local coffee club.
Scott Holtan, 62, Thor. Volunteered at Davenport's All Saints Lutheran Church food pantry every Saturday.
Sister Annelda Holtkamp, 102, St. Paul. Served as a nun for 77 years.
Delbert Holtkamp, 82, West Burlington. Always requested lasagna at meals.
Wayne Holst, 81, LeClaire. Farmed all his life and drove a dump truck for 40 years.
Larry Hon, 78, Des Moines. Drove the 24, 21 and 42 buses for Johnston Community Schools.
Irwin "Red" Horsfield, 80, Epworth. Drove slowly on highways he helped build as a superintendent with Tschiggfrie Excavating.
David Hosier, 61, West Branch. Knew he liked you if he made fun of you.
Allen Lee Houang, 59, West Liberty. Immigrated to the United States in December 1981 as part of the Southeast Asian Refugee settlement program.
Myron James Houghton, 78, Ankeny. Earned two bachelor's degrees, three master's and three doctorates.
Adrienne Eugina Doolin Howard, 75, Cedar Rapids. Cooked soul food.
Thomas Howes, 74, Dubuque. A longtime fast-pitch softball catcher who had scars on his legs to prove it.
Marcella Hubbard, 86, Anamosa. A member of the Anamosa Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses.
Dorothy Mae Hubert, 90, Salix. Wrote for the Sioux City Journal, drove school buses and sold Mary Kay cosmetics.
Dianne Huddleson, 63, Fort Madison. Always called the students her husband taught and coached "our kids."
Gary Hudgens, 74, Altoona. Worked as a pressman for the Des Moines Register for more than 20 years, and retired, along with the presses, when the company automated.
Harry Huebbe, 91, Baldwin. Sold hand-carved wooden toys at flea markets.
Richard Hunt, 96, Cedar Falls. Traveled to the Black Hills in the summer to camp with his family.
Donald Hunter III, 60, Council Bluffs. Worked as a United States Postal Carrier for more than three decades.
Kevin Huss, 54, Des Moines. A volunteer firefighter and EMT for the Northern Warren Fire Department.
Donald Husted, 77, Davenport. Drank chocolate malts with his brother Frank as they drove around the Quad Cities in Frank's vintage Camaro.
Ann Scannell Huxol, 93, Iowa City. A Scrabble enthusiast who played to win.
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Gayle Muggs Isaac, 71, Des Moines. Told his wife every day how much he loved her.
Dorothy Irene Iseminger, 93, Des Moines. Sold Avon for 30 years, earning many President's Club awards.
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Peggy Ann Jackson, 86, Des Moines. Co-owned Research Industries with her husband, Paul, hauling for Alter Metal Recycling for 30 years.
Katie G. Jacobs, 96, Council Bluffs. Lived on her family farm her entire life.
Gloria Eileen Jacobsma, 68, Rock Rapids. Loved her family, her country, the Twins and Vikings, and eagles, two of which soared over her burial.
Allan Jacobson, 89, Cedar Falls. Never missed one of his sons or grandsons' performances.
June Marie Jaehnel, 92, Des Moines. Taught piano and participated in women's circles at church.
Husen Jagir, 56, Sioux City. A Sudanese refugee who worked at the Seaboard Triumph Foods plant.
Margaret James, 81, Monticello. Always up to attend a Hawkeye tailgate and enjoyed following the Hawks to bowl games.
John Steve Jansen, 74, Sioux City. Trained, bred, raced and bet on thoroughbred horses.
Daryle Jass, 84, Ankeny. Tried to retire twice, but couldn't sit still.
Raymond Jennings, 77, Muscatine. Taught his grandchildren the bounty of catfish ponds and how to keep their eye on the ball.
Christine Jensen, 67, Des Moines. Loved to sing songs with her twin sister, Andrea.
Barbara Johnsen-Earlanson, 75, Dubuque. Enthusiastically spent hours preparing meals for families and friends.
Alene Johnson, 79, North Sioux City. Raised chickens and other animals on her acreage.
Brian Johnson, 63, Waterloo. A pool player who made many friends through his time in the Waterloo and Cedar Falls leagues.
Carroll Johnson, 81, Mason City. Always cheered on her favorite NASCAR drivers, Dale Earnhart and Dale Earnhart Jr.
Duane Bud Johnson, 86, Merrill. Enjoyed his corn shelling and custom combining business.
Everett Johnson, 82, Boone. Grew up surrounded by music, which eventually led to his role as executive secretary of the Iowa High School Music Association.
Larry Johnson, 83, Charles City. Student council president at Harvard.
Leonard Johnson, 89, Tama. Danced at the annual Meskwaki pow-wow.
Mark Johnson, 57, Cedar Falls. Worked for Blue Diamond in warm seasons and at Godfather's Pizza in cold.
Mark Johnson, 64, Maurice. Laid to rest near his family farm in rural Hinton where he can always watch over his herd.
Melvin Johnson, 84, Packwood. A gifted cattleman who farmed his whole life.
Barbara Jones, 56, Monticello. Sold her baked goods, including her famous monster cookies, at the Hiawatha Farmers Market.
Dorothy Jones, 77, Grinnell. Bought her younger sister her first tube of lipstick in seventh grade.
Gladys "Jeannie" Jones, 91, Eldridge. Hosted a WOC Radio talk show about her business on Saturday mornings.
Kenneth "Kenny" Jones, 60, Storm Lake. The ultimate fan of every Chicago sports team.
Randall Jones, 63, Cedar Rapids. Brought people together with a good meal and a strong Grey Goose martini.
Marie Jordan, 88, Urbandale. Survived polio, breast cancer and a few broken legs and hips.
Pamela Jane Juhl-Mennes, 76, Atlantic. Specialized in making soups and cakes as an amazing cook and baker.
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Axel Kabeya, 35, Waterloo. Was a French interpreter at Tyson Fresh Meats after immigrating from the Congo.
Alice Kauten, 73, Jesup. Taught and counseled students in New Hampton and Jesup.
Nicole Keller, 76, Waukee. Instrumental in taking Principal Financial Group public on the New York Stock Exchange.
David Kelley, 64, Stratford. Spent his free time playing and listening to bluegrass.
Harold "Gary" Keplinger, 77, Mount Ayr. Earned his doctorate in education, helping students learn math in high school, adult education and college.
Donald Kerker, 90, Newhall. Toured over 30 countries with his wife while working in Germany.
Darlene Kern, 94, Johnston. Died with her husband, Donald, by her side.
Donald Kern, 99, Johnston. Died with his wife, Darlene, by his side.
Viengxay Khuninh, 69, Sioux City. Framed his certificates from 37 years at Tyson Fresh Meats.
Jim Killam, 70, Des Moines. Passionate about teaching, whether through church or through soccer.
Doug King, 69, Mason City. Called Bompa by his grandkids.
Beverly Kinnander, 87, Estherville. Worked as a cleaner for several local businesses and Fairmont Hospital.
Everett Kintzel, 97, Blairstown. Farmed at his "home place" in Olin and Luzerne with his wife, Doris.
Jim Kirkendall, 75, Sloan. Took many friends and family on their first hunting and fishing trips.
Jerry Robert Kilpatrick, 84, Davenport. Took two mission trips to Honduras building a hospital.
James Kleppe, 79, Coralville. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Larry Klindt, 76, Sac City. Spent free time collecting model trains and guns.
Elizabeth Betty Kline, 81, Iowa City. Traveled the country in a motor home.
Mary Kline, 93, Chariton. Moved from Pennsylvania to Iowa as a child, where she remained in rural Chariton her whole life.
Jack Klingborg, 83, Cherokee. An activity therapist and teacher at Cherokee Mental Health Institute.
Ruth Klotz, 98, Des Moines. An inspiration and mentor to two generations of women in the law in Iowa as an attorney and judge.
Raymond Klyn, 94, Pella. Served as an elder and deacon at Second Christian Reformed Church.
Norma J. Knight, 93, Des Moines. Loved her two great-great-grandchildren.
Donald Knudsen, 87, Dike. Helped move his community forward as mayor for 44 years
Ellen Koch, 74, Maquoketa. Coached speech, taught drama and directed school plays as an English teacher in many Iowa school districts.
John "János" Kokity, 92, Quad Cities. Member of the Over 50 Ballroom Dance Club.
Irene Konecny, 89, Cedar Rapids. A 50-plus year member of Soroptimist International of Cedar Rapids.
Betty Sonner Kooker, 78, Altoona. Volunteered with prison ministries.
Louie Kopsas, 89, Doon. Took the train from Doon to Sioux Center on weekends to see movies as a child.
Marjorie Ann Kramer, 86, Shell Rock. An avid bird watcher and skilled seamstress.
Marlyn Kramer Sr., 86, Maquoketa. Worked as a powder coater in Collis Inc. in Clinton for many years.
Rhonda Krantz, 63, Des Moines. Fond of the mountains from her time living in Colorado.
Chad Kuehl, 45, Garber. Chief of the Garber Fire Department and member of the Garber City Council and Iowa Firefighters Association.
Herman Kurk III, 94, South Amana. Enjoyed wandering the Iowa countryside to visit his neighbors.
Michael Kurylo, 85, Bettendorf. Born in Ukraine and grew up on a German Farm alongside Allied prisoners of war during World War II until an an American flyer landed to tell them they were liberated.
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Evelyn Lacock, 102, Cedar Rapids. Loved supporting her family as a classroom volunteer, carpool driver and cheerleader-in-chief.
John Laflen, 84, Buffalo Center. Won awards for his research on the development of a new generation of erosion prediction technologies.
Wade Lampe, 46, Readlyn. Spent his free time outdoors or in the garage working on his family's used car collection.
Jerry Lang, 74, Waterloo. Started Lang's Home Maintenance.
LeRoy "Puttball" Lanxon, 88, Cherokee. Known as "everyman's friend, everyman's confidant and everyman's best buddy" in Cherokee.
Richard Larsen, 77, Des Moines. Loved classic cars and going to the races.
Tricia Larson, 55, Fort Dodge. Devoted her life to teaching at Manson Northwest Webster Elementary.
Sarah Latimer, 98, Iowa City. Trained in a segregated Black unit at Fort Des Moines for the Women's Auxiliary Army Corp.
Geanell Shavon Latimore, 38, Des Moines. Loved books so much she would read one while listening to another.
Keith Lawrence, 95, Decorah. An ISU-certified master gardener who inspired his children's love for horticulture.
Cloris Leachman, 94, Des Moines. An actress who won eight Primetime Emmy Awards and an Oscar.
LaVirta Lee, 91, Mapleton. Cherished the Eastside Homemakers Club and the Soldier Lutheran Ladies Aid.
Lorne Lee, 54, Independence. Helped organize ATV trails in Buchanan County and served as president of the Trailblazers Off Road Club.
Stuart Lefstein, 86, Quad Cities. Successfully argued a patent law case before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987.
Antonia C. Leon, 94, Valley Junction. Adored her 24 nieces and nephews and her Shih Tzu, Hamilton.
Kay Lenox, 79, Davenport. An avid collector of Lenox figurines and ornamental pigs.
Willie Levi, 73, Waterloo. Freed from a decrepit Iowa bunkhouse by a Des Moines Register investigation.
Frederick William Lewis, 68, Anamosa. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Chester Franklin Lief Jr., 75, Wyoming. Enjoyed mushroom hunting.
Kenneth Lien, 101, Nora Springs. Awarded the Purple Heart and Bronze Star after being wounded in 1944 in Italy.
Nelda Lindhorst, 88, Council Bluffs. Worked as a Medical Transcriptionist for Mercy Hospital.
Bernard Bernie Lee Lindstrom, 80, Wheatland. A handyman who could fix almost anything.
Bill Lingle, 64, Davenport. Coached coached Friendly House basketball, travel basketball, Little League and Pony baseball, and helped form the Quad City Bronco League. the Quad City Heat baseball club and Davenport Youth Football League.
Phyllis Link, 90, Estherville. Raised chickens and sold eggs from her farm in rural Swea City.
Phyllis Liston, 86, Granger. Could read a 500-page book easily in two days.
Cindy Litwiller, 65, Fort Dodge. Helped many small businesses through her work with Professional Developers of Iowa and other economic development groups.
Emma Lohmann, 97, Wheatland. Won the women's club championship at Wapsi Oaks Country Club.
Mary Jill Long, 79, Dubuque. Her husband stood outside her nursing home window in the rain as she died.
Lucy Lorence, 96, Oskaloosa. Found time for P.T.A., Girl Scouts, Cub Scouts, and raising money for the debate team while working two jobs.
Patricia Loter, 87, Keokuk. Enjoyed going on bus trips with friends.
Helen Lowery, 97, Davenport. A part of the "Groovy Girls," a women's lunch group.
Dwayne Lucht, 66, Council Bluffs. Worked many jobs, including remodeling homes and farming.
Jim Luensman, 43, Atkins. Worked as a paramedic in Monticello, North Benton and Atkins.
Louis Luiken, 79, Radcliffe. Served his community as city council member and mayor.
Mary Lund, 59, Davenport. Loved going to concerts, especially to see Bon Jovi.
E. Joe Ann Lutz, 84, Des Moines. Taught real estate ethics.
Edward "Jazzman Joe" Lynch, 86, Ankeny. An accomplished tenor sax and harmonica player with an expertise in Traditional Dixieland Jazz.
Donald Lyons, 74, Boone. Ran his family's farm while serving as a Boone County Farm Bureau agent for more than 20 years.
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Maurice Maakestad, 95, Osage. A card shark who often won at 500 with wild bids.
Jimmie Lee Maclin, 66, Cedar Rapids. An entrepreneur who lived in Cedar Rapids for over 40 years.
Randall Magee, 64, Cedar Falls. Devotedly followed Ricky "the Rooster" Rudd in NASCAR.
Jerry Parsons Mahacek, 76, Waverly. Volunteered with Iowa Missions of Mercy, a community dental clinic, after health problems forced him to retire from his practice.
Jeffrey Duane Mahrt, 64, Spencer. A proud, founding member and head coach of the Spencer Cardinals baseball team.
Barbara Malone, 65, Dunlap. Enjoyed watching rodeos on television.
Arlene Duggan Maloney, 92, Cedar Rapids. Proud of her volunteer work at Whitwer Senior Center.
Melvin Manternach, 87, Monticello. Proud member of "Table of Knowledge" at Darrell's family diner.
Marilyn Louise Markman, 90, Des Moines. An artist who made beautiful painted rice paper collages.
John Marks, 61, Urbandale. Worked as an independent contractor for the real estate division at the U.S. Postal Service.
John Marino, 68, Clear Lake. An avid rider of both bicycles and motorcycles.
Gary Marple, 83, Mount Pleasant. Chief inventor and co-founder of Lessac Technologies Inc., which developed text-to-speech software for expressing a wider vocal range of emotions.
Bill Martin, 72, Boone. Stayed lifelong friends with people in his high school marching band, forming the Bill Martin Group to keep playing music.
Jose Gabriel Martinez, 58, West Liberty. Did impressions while telling stories to his family.
Willene "Willy" Marvin, 90, Ames. Used his "gift of gab" to talk with anyone and everyone.
Bart Mason, 52, Coralville. Came back every year to his hometown of Slater to help his dad with the Fourth of July Fireworks.
Nancy Chilton Maxwell, 92, Des Moines. Loved playing the lottery and the Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes.
Harry McBride, 89, Anamosa. An active member of the Iowa Funeral Directors Association, directing funerals for over 60 years.
Ed McCliment, 86, Iowa City. Traveled the world as a physics professor.
Charline Lorraine McDermott, 86, Toddville. The best baby whisperer.
Walter McDonald, 84, Nevada. Devoted his career to safety research and special projects with the Iowa Department of Transportation.
Kevin McDonnell, 63, Newton. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Sang Hae McDowell, 92, Davenport. Grew up under Japanese occupation of Korea.
Roy McElfish, 68, Leon. Enjoyed tractor pulling competitions.
Timothy Louis McGhee Jr., 48, Fort Dodge. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Christine McGowan, 70, Washington. Treasured her four guide dogs.
Barbara McGrane-Brennan, 61, Fairbank. A garage sale fanatic with a collection of blankets and stuffed animals.
James "Bert" McGrew, 92, Cedar Rapids. A "numbers" man who loved Sudoku.
Beverly McGuire, 92, Cedar Rapids. Sent visitors off with a homemade jar of jam, pickles or fresh tomatoes.
Lucy McKenzie, 91, Des Moines. Her front yard was featured on the cover of Better Homes and Gardens magazine.
Earnest McKeown, 89, Sioux City. An accomplished woodworker.
Claudie Mclain, 83, Marshalltown. Could be seen walking every day, often on his way to his daily visit to the YMCA.
William Mclaughlin, 89, West Des Moines. Started his own engineering, urban planning and construction business in 1971.
John McMahon, 78, Newton. Never without a story to tell about his years hunting, fishing and working in law enforcement.
Garold McMeins Jr., 67, Urbandale. Volunteered at the Midwest Old Settlers and Threshers Association.
John Allen McMurchy, 76. Charles City. A farmer and expert hay baler.
Joyce McMurrin, 82, Cedar Falls. Loved playing bingo, cards, and going to the casino.
Terie McNamara, 70, Waterloo. A supervisor at Osco Drug/CVS.
Janice L. McNelly, 79, Cedar Falls. Served as the Iowa president of the League of Women Voters.
Darlene McWhirter, 91, Traer. Learned to cook on a farm, helping her parents feed seemingly countless siblings, cousins and threshers.
Betty Jean Meis, 89, Cedar Rapids. Worked at Collins Radio as a graphic artist.
Phil Menke, 72, Algona. Enjoyed doing the finish carpentry in new homes.
Wilma Merritt, 84, Maquoketa. Enjoyed life on the farm, caring for her family, animals and plants.
Barry Mertes, 65, Des Moines. A member of the VFW and Adventure Life Church in Altoona.
John Mertz III, 60, West Bend. Loved the color green and anything John Deere.
Roy Wendell Messerschmidt, 94, West Des Moines. Always looked forward to playing in the father and son golf tournament with his sons, Rick and Bill, at the Des Moines Golf and Country Club.
Cecelia Meyer, 90, Iowa City. Worked for 24 years at the University of Iowa College of Education.
Corinne Meyer, 26, Sioux City. Loved her trips to Disney World with her family, where she met all her favorite characters.
Fred Meyer, 78, Wheatland. Enjoyed having coffee with friends at the Blue Grass McDonalds.
Richard Meyer, 82, Davenport. Ran a wholesale grocery business.
Lee Mickey, 79, Cedar Falls. Retired from Cedar Falls Community School District to run a Bed and Breakfast with his wife in Vermont.
Marilyn Millage, 82, Sioux City. Collected souvenir spoons and memorabilia of Mickey Mouse, her favorite character.
James "Jim" Lowell Miller Jr., 64, Cedar Rapids. An expert handyman and bonfire builder.
Eric Ridgway Miller, 83, Waterloo. Held himself and the law to high ethical standards as a lawyer and community leader.
Gary Miller, 64, Coralville. A reverend at Grace Fellowship Church in Iowa City.
Ray Miller, 43, Sioux City. Loved making people laugh.
Rick Miller, 62, Ankeny. Started his salesman career at age 7 by selling flowers.
Sherry Miller, 65, Britt. Worked side by side with her husband at Miller & Sons Golf Cars.
Stephen Miller, 77, Marquette. Had fun rituals with his children from Friday family nights at the YMCA to group outings to Badgers basketball and football games.
Lyle Minnick, 86, Kellerton. Met his wife at the Mount Ayr skating rink when he was 16 years old.
Judy Minnick, 84, Kellerton. Drove go-carts and four-wheelers around the farm with her children and grandchildren.
Judy Mohr, 69, Boone. Loved crocheting, crafting and playing Bingo.
Shirley Ann Mommsen, 83, Maquoketa. Worked as a nurse's aide at the Jackson County Public Hospital.
Jeffrey Mondry, 61, Mason City. Often found fixing and tending to problems for his friends and family, no matter how small.
Norman Montgomery, 64, Waterloo. Led the Ferguson Field Youth Baseball Team to a city championship as a coach.
Olive Morris, 100, Cedar Falls. Loved her 5 children, 16 grandchildren, 44 great-grandchildren and five great-great-grandchildren.
Craig Morris, 55, Shenandoah. Defeated Hodgkin's Lymphoma twice in 2013 and 2015.
Richard Morris, 81, Indianola. Took over the family business, Indianola Memorial Works.
Phyllis Jean Morrison, 96, Clear Lake. Percussionist in high school and college.
Jerry Morrow, 63, Cedar Rapids. Died less than 12 hours apart from his wife, Rosie with family saying their love was a true meaning of “until death does us apart.”
Rosie Morrow, 81, Cedar Rapids. Died less than 12 hours apart from her husband, Jerry with family saying their love was a true meaning of “until death does us apart.”
Donald Mott, 96, Paullina. Registered for the draft as a conscientious objector and did Civilian Public Service work from 1944 to 1946 in five states.
Marietta Muchow, 86, Clear Lake. Lived in Oklahoma, Texas and Iowa as her husband's career as a commercial pilot took them across the country.
Wanda M. Mullan, 94, Des Moines. A homemaker devoted to her husband of 73 years.
Patricia "Pat" Craven Mulvihill, 99, Des Moines. A dancer who loved volunteering at local recitals.
Mark Munday, 61, Le Mars. Born the day the Dodgers won the 1959 World Series and remained a lifelong fan.
Terry Munyon, 65, Kellerton. Asked his wife three times to marry him while they were growing up and each time she said no. They spent 43 years together after she asked him to marry her and he said yes.
Ricky Murga, 53, Quad Cities. Enjoyed Mexican art, culture and vintage automobiles.
Elizabeth "Bette" Murphy, 93, Silvis. Enjoyed her great-grandchildren's baseball games and playing euchre with friends.
Melinda Mutti, 55, Pella. Taught as a substitute teacher in Knoxville and Pella schools.
L. Merle Deke Myers, 90, Iowa City. Recruited at the Packwood train stop to work for the FBI.
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Carla Naeve, 82, Le Mars. Loved to golf and birdwatch.
Lynn Charles Naibert, 83, Cedar Rapids. Married his wife six months after their first coffee date.
Sanford Naiditch, 97, Ankeny. Knew the Ohio State University fight song by heart.
Linda Nassif, 76, Cedar Rapids. A role model to her sixth-graders at St. Pius Grade School.
Kenneth G. Nations Sr., 73, Wapello. Took his grandchildren to see Old Threshers Reunion.
Marjorie Nearmyer, 84, Marion. A resident of Winslow House Care Center.
Charlie Nehl, 38, Cedar Rapids. Iowa's state champion for "Magic: the Gathering" who loved spray painting, the Cubs and hosting LAN parties with friends.
Sister Marianne Nehus, 67, Johnston. Honored by Gov. Tom Vilsack for her service on the Disabilities Policy Council in 2006.
Chris Nelson, 58, Indianola. Active in the United Auto Workers, he fought for union members to receive a livable wage and be treated with dignity and respect.
Joe Nelson, 88, Cedar Falls. Served as the finance officer, commander, and state chaplin at Cedar Falls AMVETS Post #49.
Lola Nelson, 86, Ollie. Taught Sunday school at the Ollie United Methodist Church.
Dwight Nernes, 76, Leon. Once sang at the Grand Ole Opry.
Beth Neubaurer, 77, Ankeny. Nicknamed Gramcracker, or Cracker for short, by her older grandkids.
Brent "Ben" Newton, 50, Fort Dodge. Studied his Native American heritage.
Hong Cuc Thi Nguyen, 87. Sioux City. Helped refugees from Vietnam, Bosnia and Africa resettle in Iowa.
Dewey Nielsen, 74, Oxford. Enjoyed visiting with campers and community members as he ran Sleepy Hollow Campground.
Mark Nielsen, 69, Battle Creek. From Little League T-Ball to pro-basketball, loved watching and attending sporting events.
Ray Buster Nielsen, 93, Des Moines. Served in the Army's Occupational Forces in Japan after World War II.
Russell A. Nielsen, 96, Cedar Falls. Maintained an optometric practice for 41 years.
Diane Norelius, 85, Denison. A practical joker who always joined in on the fun with her children and grandchildren.
Eunice North, 80, Boone. Drove the Boone County Educational Library bus.
Dorothy Norton, 98, Iowa City. Worked for Great Western Railroad while her husband served in World War II.
Eugene Norton, 89, Clive. Collected cars and repaired lawn mowers.
John Novy, 88, Greenfield. An Iowa State Patrol trooper known as "Big John."
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Betty Jean O'Connor, 86, Des Moines. Started a Red Hat group and monthly card club.
Bradley Ohl, 64, Oelwein. Loved his annual trips to deer camp at the Circle B Ranch with family and friends.
Joyce Ann Ohl, 72, Lennox. Led the Sioux City Steppers Drill Team in dancing for decades.
Vincent Olson, 71, Nevada. Served his community as assistant fire chief.
Cheryl Jean Ord, 48, Glenwood. Planted banana trees in her yard each year, bringing them inside during the cold months.
James M. Orr, 53, Charles City. Resident of Comprehensive Systems.
Jim Orvis, 65, Waterloo. Worked at Cedar Falls' Ice House Museum.
Oscar P. “Swede” Ostrom Jr, 93, Des Moines. Delighted in giving tours of his Minnesota boyhood school, which subsequently became a historical museum.
Mary Anne Otte, 93, Davenport. Wooed her husband at local dances.
Kimberly Outlaw, 55, Waterloo. Worked as an export clerk at Tysons.
Zachary Scott Overy, 35, North English. Passionate problem solver at Vivint Home Security and Automation.
Nancy Owen, 89, Des Moines. Worked at General Casualty Insurance.
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Duane Palmer Sr., 92, Cedar Rapids. Repaired lawnmowers and small engines as a hobby with his best friend, Norm.
Stephen Palmer, 69, Des Moines. Served people with intellectual disabilities by his 20-year involvement with Special Olympics.
John N. Paricka, 41, Waterloo. Played football for the Cedar Valley Vikings.
Frank Parks, 91, Ottumwa. Former president of the ISU Parents Association.
Patrick C. Parks, 85, Sergeant Bluff. Flew as an Air Force fighter pilot in Vietnam.
Stanley Eugene "Stan" Patrick, 85, Bussey. Traveled to Chicago regularly to see his favorite team, the Cubs.
Lesley Paulsen, 74, Des Moines. Enjoyed a good mystery novel and a strong cup of coffee.
Jean Smith Payne, 88, Mason City. Gave a handmade quilt to every family member.
Matt Peiffer, 64, Grinnell. Loved to smoke meats for family gatherings.
Tim Perez, 52, Cedar Rapids. Received a kidney transplant in 2020.
Vicki Perez, 66, Cedar Rapids. Enjoyed going to casinos and spending time with "the girls."
Harry Perkins III, 73, Des Moines. Practiced in civil litigation and trial law for 45 years.
Norma Jean Perry, 88, Des Moines. Spent 41 years as a foster grandparent.
Harvey Louis Peters, 92, Parkersburg. Board member and volunteer at Beaver Meadows Golf and Country Club.
Randy Peters, 71, Waukee. A post master in Truo.
Richard Leroy Peters, 77, Coralville. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Eleanor Moody Pettit, 90, Cordova. Traveled the country with her friends but was never allowed to drive.
John Pettit, Des Moines. Served as chief operating officer and vice president for the Iowa Barnstormers since 2008.
Sandra Sue Phillips, 84, Cedar Rapids. Spent her childhood traveling across the United States and Canada with her father, an entertainer and acrobat.
Rick Pianca, 62, Davenport. Made detailed personalized itineraries for friends and family member's vacations.
Leonard Andy Anderson Pierce, 75, Ottumwa. A regular at Arabian horse shows.
Cleo 'Bud' Ping, 88, Sloan. Loved reading Westerns and historical novels.
Norma J. Pint, 90, Davenport. Operated a local telephone company in Hanlontown.
Warren Pohl, 68, Waterloo. Played electric guitar in a country-rock band.
Russell Lolo Porter, 47, Cedar Rapids. Loved his friends and the staff at New Horizons and REM.
Scott Powell, 56, La Porte City. Piloted helicopters in the U.S. Army and National Guard for two decades.
Barbara Prenosil, 101, Nevada. Worked for the Department of Environmental Quality in Iowa.
Gabriella Michelle Price-MacCormick, 24, Cedar Rapids. Competed in track and field, bowling and basketball skills in Iowa Special Olympics.
Virginia Prince-Renner, 91, Whiting. Sang with the Women's Club Chorus and played the organ for Christy-Smith Funeral Home.
Robert Probasco, 69, Des Moines. Served the U.S. Army in Germany from 1971 to 1974.
Susan K. Prohaska, 65, Dysart. Ran a preschool in Evansdale.
Marilyn Elizabeth Prouty, 92, Marion. The youngest supervisor ever at the Marion Telephone Co.
Evon "Gus" Puetz, 97, Le Mars. Farmed his entire life with his family: first his father, then brother-in-law, son, and grandson.
Bonnie Pugsley, 95, Des Moines. Server as an elder and deacon in the Presbyterian Church.
Roger Puls, 73, Grinnell. A competitive bowler in the Grinnell Bowling League.
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Seretha Quinn, 46, Eldridge. Had an infectious smile and was always willing to help those in need.
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Jose Dolores Guevara Ramirez, 89, Marshalltown. Made fresh lime ice cream for his Iowa grandchildren.
Edwin Roy Raymond, 54, Sioux City. Enjoyed going to the Special Olympics.
Marilyn Reams, 75, Des Moines. Never missed a softball game, swim meet, baseball game or soccer game for her grandchildren.
Michele Recanati, 47, Oelwein. Worked with her twin sister, Cynthia, at MercyOne.
Robert Ellsworth Reeder, 74, Mason City. Passed days trout fishing in the streams of northeastern Iowa with his brothers.
Gail Rees Jr., 78, Greeley. Spent almost every weekend at the Bandimere Speedway track with his family, winning many trophies along the way.
Day Reh, 85, Waterloo. Earned his U.S. citizenship in Des Moines.
Gregg E. Reisinger, 75, Eldora. Owned one of the largest horse farms in Iowa, raising more than 1,700 registered horses.
Virginia Renner, 91, Sioux City. Served as the first woman chair of the worship committee at Redeemer Lutheran.
Susan C. “Susie” Rhum, 88, Danville. Spent 30 years working at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant.
Rev. Ralph Rice, 67, Sioux City. A member of the Order of the Arrow who once earned the God and Country Award.
Kelli Jo Richards, 57, Cedar Rapids. Loved to drive around in her Camaro.
Virginia Richardson, 97, Cedar Rapids. Baptist pastor's wife and mother to eight children.
Jean Marie Rickelman, 89, Fort Madison. Proud to be both a farmer's daughter and a farmer's wife.
Leslie Rish, 80, Mason City. Served in the Army in Virginia, Washington, South Korea and Germany.
Harriett Risse, 92, Oelwein. Chosen as "Readlyn's Old Grump" in 2012.
F. Alberta Ritter, 95, Des Moines. Spent retirement traveling by motorhome to Florida, Arizona and Texas.
Ronald Roberts, 81, Chariton. A sociology professor at the University of Northern Iowa for three decades.
Pedro Cano Rodriguez, 51, Columbus Junction. Never resisted the urge to pull pranks and crack jokes.
Joan Roepke, 83, Le Mars. A huge country music fan who met Johnny Cash multiple times.
Ben Rogers, 67, Quad Cities. Boy Scouts of America leader in Iowa and Illinois.
Mary Louise "Kitty" Rolfes, 90, Johnston. Nicknamed for the precocious little girl in the Kitty Higgins comic strip.
Minerva Rosales, 62, Le Mars.
Fred Roquet, 78, Mt. Auburn. Worked for John Deere and Exide Batteries.
Aaron Rubashkin, 92, Postville. Fled a Hasidic Jewish enclave in Russia to survive the Holocaust.
Heidi Ruhrer, 63, Moville. Loved the family's summer trips to Minnesota.
Loretta Faye Wenner Rundlett, 90, Vinton. Enjoyed crafting, sewing and knitting.
Beverly Russell, 82, Newton. Always ordered chocolate Cokes at Bigelow’s restaurant.
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Darrell Salmons, 82, Cedar Falls. A proud Cedar Falls Firefighter.
Brenda Samaniego, 23, Sioux City. Special Olympics athlete for the past 11 years.
Juan Jose Jauregui Samudio, 60, Storm Lake.
Floyd Sanders, 86, Storm Lake. A master of Dad jokes.
Lyle Sannes Sr., 86, Marion. Known as the "Road Dog" for all of the miles he traveled for work, hunting and fishing.
Chris Sasina, 69, Monticello. Co-owner and production manager of Commander Buildings for 30 years.
Nancy Saunders, 64, Des Moines. Made great pies and enchiladas.
Phillip Saunders, 80, Cedar Rapids. A firefighter for three decades.
Gerald Schlies, 77, Lawton. An artist who created stained glass windows.
Anita Schindler, 58, Iowa City. Always wanted to help others, be they friend, family, stranger or animal.
Esther Schipper, 91, Parkersburg. Taught Sunday school and catechism at Bethel Reformed Church.
Donald "Spook" Schnackenberg, 80, Council Bluffs. A Navy veteran who retired as a boilermaker.
William Schroeder, 84, Johnston. Longtime chaplain for Mercy Hospital and Mercy West Lakes Hospital.
Marilyn Schornack, 89, West Des Moines. Taught Sunday school, Bible school, sang in the choir at Windsor Heights Lutheran Church.
Patsy Schotanus, 84, Grafton. Had a talent at connecting with young people, many of whom considered her family.
Robert Schuldt, 67, Climbing Hill. Habitually surrounded by pets, big and small.
Edward Schultz, 73, Muscatine. A detective and police officer for the Iowa City Police Department.
Shirley Ann Schultz, 86, Cedar Rapids. Loved her cat, Queenie.
Arthur Scott, 51, Waterloo. Rebuilt his life after serving time in prison.
Alice Yvonne Sea, 84, Sioux City. Directed a traveling Children's Theatre.
Lois Marguerite Sedgwick, 93, Dundee. Enjoyed refinishing antiques and quilting.
Jackson Selk, 74, Cedar Rapids. Appointed to the Juvenile Justice Advisory Council for the state of Iowa.
Larry Sellers, 85, Pleasant Hill. A volunteer coach, officer and mentor for Grandview Little League who served four generations of players for more than 60 years.
Glenn A. Sels, 84, Mason City. Sketched intricate pictures of war machinery while growing up during the World War II era.
Jerry Selover, 86, Des Moines. Accomplished carpenter and member of Des Moines Woodworkers and Turners Club.
Franklin Delano Seitzinger, 86, Sioux City. Known in the agriculture industry for wearing his "big deal boots."
Jack Sexton, 87, Cedar Rapids. Sang and played guitar in the Dave Dighton Band for more than 30 years.
Michael Sharer, 78, Marshalltown. Loved his Angus calves and cows and always enjoyed attending the Iowa Winter Beef Expo.
Joyce Sharp, 95, Johnston. An avid gardener, knitter and winemaker.
Retha Elizabeth Contri Sharp, 98, Johnston. Helped at poll sites during elections and loved to talk politics.
Gary Sharum, 68, Sioux City. Helped students beat their personal records as coach of the AZ Flames Track Club.
Alexa Sheeder, 32, Davenport. Met her husband, an Army soldier, putting together a care package for troops overseas.
Barbara Jean Sherman, 85, Cedar Rapids. Led three presidents through Cedar Rapids' National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library.
Gerald Shook, 76, Davenport. Challenged visitors to a game of chess, always played on the set handcrafted by his brother, Bill.
Colleen M. Shumaker, 61, Des Moines. Woke up early to celebrate St. Patrick's Day every year.
Charlene Shurtz, 68, Cedar Rapids. Enjoyed spending time with her bird, Tammy.
Jessica Siegert, 40, Urbandale. Loved spoiling her family, friends and her adored cat, Diego.
Wilfred Willie Jay Sikkema, 81, Fulton. Had a "good heart and a warm smile."
Ruthanne Silverstein, 91, Des Moines. A prolific creator of handmade clothes.
Robert William Sirovy, 62, Anamosa. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
John Skaggs, 76, Quad Cities. Attended the Secret Service training center in Maryland.
Eugene Skinner, 95, Dubuque. A former president of the Iowa Bowling Association and member of the association's Hall of Fame in multiple categories.
Gail Slack, 91, West Des Moines. Held Minnesota Vikings tickets for 40 years.
Kevin Slaybaugh, 50, Guthrie Center. A faithful member of Waukee United Methodist Church, who loved visiting with the congregation and goofing around with attending kids.
Robert Lee Slezak, 83, Des Moines. Loved folding laundry at the Rowley Masonic Home in Perry.
Larry Smalley, 87, Tripoli. Sang in the River City Barbershop Chorus in Mason City.
Bill Smith, 90, Moulton. Served in an English medical base during the Korean War.
Rochelle Smith, 80, Des Moines. Worked as a telephone operator for U.S. West/Qwest Communications.
Shirley Ann Smith, 83, Ames. Could never resist stopping at an antique shop.
Volney Smith, 92, Ames. Loved genealogy, reading and watching Jeopardy.
Victoria Vicki Ann Snarzyk, 61, Cedar Rapids. Enjoyed swimming, fishing and gardening.
Betty Laverne Sniffin, 96, Oelwein. Translated for her deaf and mute parents as a child.
Judith Solecki, 65, Cedar Rapids. Loved watching Hawkeyes basketball games.
Harrison Harry Solliday, 85, West Des Moines. Spread the Christian gospel in Iowa correctional facilities.
Luciano Soloman, 57, Des Moines. Graduated from Colegio Cotzumalguapa in Saint Lucia, where he earned a degree in accounting.
Larry Sonner, 84, Urbandale. Provided seminars and counseling for pastors and their families across Iowa.
Jay Elmer Spoonhaltz, 90, Des Moines. Served four years in the U.S. Navy.
Mary Soukup, 89, Windham. Loved when her favorite birds, Cardinals, stopped to eat from her bird feeders.
Barbara Springer, 75, Sioux City. Buried on her birthday, her six children loved the days she took them to the park for fishing and fun.
Harold Spurgeon, 100, Ottumwa. A triplet, joined the Navy Seabees and served in the Philippines during WWII.
Joan Stabenow, 81, Waterloo. Loved taking trips to Florida, Mexico and Branson, Missouri.
Melvin "Mel" Stahmer, 68, Coralville. Beloved union postman.
Larry Stalter, 73, Iowa City. Received his medical education at the University of Iowa before opening a medical museum in Cullom, Illinois, with his wife.
Glen Roger Stancliff, 79, Iowa City. Served as Andover, Illinois fire chief for more than three decades.
Donald Gene Starcevich, 83, West Des Moines. An avid boater who loved exploring the Mississippi River.
Dwight Stearns, 64, Earlham. The first full-time transport officer for Dallas County Sheriff’s Office.
Tom Stephenson, 77, Norwalk. Built race cars and personal vehicles for friends and family.
Henry "Hank" Steinwandt, 84, Mason City. Loved John Wayne Westerns.
Anne Stevens, 74, Stuart. Was told she would need a ventilator and feeding tube for the rest of her life in 2018. Was able to remove both in 2019.
Judy Stevens, 77, Cedar Rapids. Won awards as a successful real estate agent.
Gary Stevens, 82, Cedar Rapids. Loved his old Plymouth car, a 1970½ Monte Carlo.
Elmer "Skip" Stoddard, 72, Sioux City. Gave the best hugs.
Carole Stohlmann, 80, Sioux City. Honored as Professional Horsewoman of the Year by the Arabian Horsemen's Association.
Jerry Dean Stoffregen, 79, Waverly. Worked in the banking industry for over 25 years.
Vera Mae Stoltze, 89, Sioux City. Played cards with friends and a good game of Yahtzee with family.
Leon "Stoney" Stone, 83, West Des Moines. Loved to going to see the Packers play with his friend Pat.
Donna Storey, 72, Waterloo. Enjoyed baking with her sister, Judy.
Ila Mae Storm, 98, Pisgah. Well-known for her yodeling skills.
Jonathan William Strain, 59, Anamosa. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Barbara Strait, 84, Cedar Rapids. A member of Good Sam's Camping Club.
David Streets, 70, Anamosa. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
William Strothkamp, 77, Quad Cities. Started his own business because he "never could find a boss he liked."
Nina Stull, 89, Centerville. Loved showing off her great-grandchildren to other residents in her nursing center.
Nathan Stupka, 48, Elkhart. An All-State pitcher for the Bomber Baseball team.
Delores Sturgeon, 79, Sioux City. Taught first aid to many Cub Scouts and operated several first aid stations.
Dolores Suchomel, 93, Mount Vernon. Once named University of Iowa’s Mother of the Year.
Zola Marie Summerson, 93, Perry. Farmed with her husband until his death in 2005.
Richard Sundermeyer, 78, Marion. Sang with the Older Hymns at Lutheran Church of the Resurrection.
Arthur Svaldi, 82, Cedar Rapids. Served on the Good Neighbor Home Society board and the Manchester Bowling League.
Robert Svoboda, 50, Sioux City. Enjoyed working with his hands in the tile and construction industry.
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Donald "Bones" Taylor, 75, Cedar Falls. Raced in his Silver 1963 Corvette Stingray at the NEITA Raceway and in Byron, Illinois.
Judith Taylor, 76, Waterloo. Worked all around Waterloo's dining establishments: El Mecca Shrine Club, Washington Street Café, Allen Hospital Café, Corner Tap, Vernie's, Pinkies Tap as well as operating the Flame Room.
Robert Frank Taylor, 72, Coralville. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Janet L. Temple, 79, Newell. Ran a day care center and owned Temple Hardware.
Lyle Thayer, 82, Le Grand. Worked in upholstery, enjoyed hunting and fishing.
Judy Thenhaus, 81, Cedar Rapids. Spent her early life as a stay-at-home mother with her children, then became a "house mom" at St. Luke's Hospital.
Ricky Thies, 60, Marion. Made shelving, a sewing table and a nativity scene as a talented woodworker.
Margaret Thing, 84, Springville. Sang and played in the bell choir at Springville Methodist Church.
Regina Marie Thiry, 62, Waterloo. Sewed masks for friends at the University of Iowa College of Public Health.
Gary Thomas, 56, Des Moines. A natural horseman with a love for blazing his own trails.
Raymond “ Tom” Thomas, 78, Ankeny. A captain who worked in the Des Moines Fire Department for 36 years.
Sharon Thomas, 58, Davenport. Member of the Goldwing Road Riders in Davenport with her husband, Steve.
Dorothy "Dot" Thompson, 105, Seymour. Baked award-winning lemon meringue pies.
Robert Bob D. Thompson, 77, Waterville. Won awards for the quality of his dairy and hog farming.
Randy Tilley, 64, Granger. Always had a car or motorcycle project going in his driveway.
Lowell Titus, 93, Des Moines. Hitchhiked through national parks after returning from U.S. Navy service.
Lynda Tomkins, 62, Coralville. An animal lover who enjoyed cooking and gardening.
Dorothy Topping, 78, Cedar Rapids. Raised the four children of Dr. Dean and Bonnie Bemus, their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Megan Trilk, 56, Sioux City. An award-winning photographer who chronicled her children's live in pictures.
Casey Tweedy, 34, Algona. Loved riding his bike, lifting weights and playing basketball.
Roald Tweet, 87, Quad Cities. Beloved Augustana College English professor, Quad-City cultural icon and longtime radio personality.
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James Urbatsch, 80, Osage. Designed and fabricated much of his own farm equipment.
Lisa Upah, 56, Keystone. Lived just a few houses away from her daughters and grandson.
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John A. Valukskas Jr., 76, Sioux City. Appointed International Coordinator of Carnival Ministries by St. Pope John Paul II.
Phyllis Vander Sluis, 86, Primghar. Kept “Build Your Vocabulary” books next to her easy chair.
Harlan James VandeZandschulp, 68, Sioux City. Traveled to Israel, Mozambique and Nigeria
Ben Van Hove, 86, Steamboat Rock. Enjoyed flipping pancakes for his Boat Club for Sunday breakfast gatherings.
Ray Allen Vanlengen, 71, Fort Dodge. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
Ruth Ann Lass Van Meter, 90, DeWitt. Served as both choir director and organist for Grace Lutheran Church.
Raymond Van Dyk, 91, Pella. Constructed handmade wooden toy cars for indigenous children in dozens of countries.
Alice Van Hoozer, 102, Waterloo. Loved the challenge of a thousand-piece puzzle.
Steven James Van Riper, 93, Coralville. Iowa Department of Corrections Inmate.
John Van Weelden, 78, Albia. A master woodworker who crafted everything from cabinetry to custom birdhouses.
Ronald Versluis, 79, Cedar Falls. Worked at John Deere in Waterloo for 30 years.
Gale Vetter, 69, Hartley. Long-time driver on the Hartley Emergency Ambulance Rescue Team.
Robert Vidimos II, 58, Ames. Shared his love for singing, slapstick movies and competitive board games with his children.
Dale Viers, 58, Fort Madison. Iowa Department of Corrections Inmate.
Donna Vinson, 91, Oelwein. Could "cut a rug" with the best of them.
Tom Vint, 72, Marshalltown. Covered Omaha sports for the Associated Press.
Bernice Vogel, 94, Blairstown. Walked fields weighing corn and soybeans for customers as her husband's business partner at Pioneer Seed Corn.
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Don Donny Wachal, 74, Davenport. Owned the Filling Station, an iconic Davenport bar.
Susan Wagner, 54, Waverly. Avidly watched shows about current events and nature.
Michael Wahl, 69, Norwalk. A gearhead who loved to drag race and street race.
John Wait, 60, Council Bluffs. An inventor who helped create and perfect aviaton technology.
Caroline Waits, 96, Centerville. Worked to provide a loving environment for her husband and six children.
Jeanette Wakeman, 74, Ireton. Talented at floral designs and decorating.
Catherine Waldmann-Murphy, 66, Council Bluffs. Served in the Air Force for four years after high school.
LaVonne "Bonnie" Wallace, 92, Cedar Falls. Enjoyed fishing and traveling with her husband.
William "Bill" Wallace, 90, Manchester. A Shriner who drove area families to Minneapolis’ Shiners Hospital.
Leona Wallbaum, 104, Parkersburg. A faithful, active member of Bethel Lutheran Church for more than 80 years.
Marilyn Jean Wallen, 86, Sioux City. Operated the Wallen Stables and Riding School for over 55 years.
Daryl Walters, 71, Bettendorf. Went by the nickname Daryl Camaro.
JoAnne Walther, 74, Cedar Falls. Owned and operated Grandma's Treasures antique shop.
Cornie Wassink, 70, Alton. A charter member of the Northwestern Athletic Hall of Fame, established endowment scholarships as Director of Planned Giving and a part of every major capital campaign at Northwestern College.
Anne Weaver, 87, Des Moines. Literally went to Timbuktu just so she could say the name "Timbuktu."
Betty Webb, 77, Le Mars. Went all-out celebrating and decorating for the holidays.
Michael Wisehart, 66, Cedar Rapids. Worked as a California Park Rangers for many years and always supported the Hawkeyes.
June Welsch, 83, Muscatine. Could be found most days at local cafes visiting with friends.
Ruth Welscott, 73, Mason City. Traveled across the country in an RV for 19 years finding her family roots.
Rita Weiden, 98, Raymond. Most remembered as a waitress at Bishop’s Cafeteria in Waterloo.
Robert Wensel, 83, Sioux City. Served aboard the USS Jasper during the Bay of Pigs.
Elizabeth Westcott, 84, Cedar Rapids. Graduated from the John Roberts Powers Modeling School in Minneapolis.
Janet Westhoff, 85, Manchester. Crocheted and quilted blankets for many charitable causes and for all her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
Paul Werger, 88, Urbandale. Former bishop of the Iowa Synod of the Lutheran Church in America.
Larry Whaley, 64, Anamosa. Iowa Department of Corrections inmate.
James "Choo-Choo" Whetsler, 77, Rome. Beloved by many for telling stories of his long career in the railroad industry .
Carroll White, 100, Ottumwa. Among first troops in Hiroshima after its bombing.
Dennis White, 81, Mount Pleasant. Coached little league baseball and junior bowling.
Jerry Wayne Wieter, 68, Muscatine. Devoted Hawkeye fan.
Jo Ann Wilch, 89, Cedar Rapids. Loved a good book, a glass of chardonnay, her transistor radio and Sonny Rollins.
Clellan Wildes, 87, Marion. A master apple pie baker and cribbage player.
Bonnie Wilberding, 87, Mitchell County. A fierce spirit with a penchant for witty conversations.
Joseph Wilhelm, 82, Davenport. Enjoyed target shooting and deer and moose hunting.
Carol Williams, 93, Ottumwa. Part of the group who pushed to equip Ottumwa with audible outdoor warning sirens.
Florence Williams, 86, Springville. Gave back to her community by volunteering with 4-H, the Springville Public Library and Meals-On-Wheels.
Bryce Wilson, 31, Des Moines. Played football internationally in Brazil and Hungary.
Sharon Rae Wilson, 73, Merrill. Always cared for her family cats as well as strays.
Claude "Sid" Winchell Jr., 87, Atlantic. A consummate volunteer who served as mayor of Atlantic for four years.
Betty Winterfeld, 87, Hawarden. The quilts she and her friends made now warm people around the world.
Darleen Witzel, 46, Des Moines. A nurse who loved her St. Bernard, Tank, with all her heart.
Wiuca Iddi Wiuca, 36, Des Moines. Came to Iowa as a refugee in 2019, fleeing war in the Congo.
Michael "Mike" Wolfe, 66, Allerton. Played Santa during the holidays.
Max Wolfgram, 84, Manchester. Loved hunting elk in Colorado, backpacking the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and hiking the Backbone State Park in Iowa.
Terry Lou Wood, 70, Waterloo. Worked at John Deere for 30 years.
Robert Worth, 93, Des Moines. Attended a one-room school house, graduating as salutatorian of his class in 1945.
David M. Worthington, 74, Des Moines. Enjoyed skiing on water and on snow.
Deborah Wright, 50, Keokuk. A teacher who also wrote grants for Lee County to obtain K-9 officers.
John Wright, 61, Des Moines. Drove buses for Southeast Polk Schools for 13 years.
Larry Wright, 78, Northwood. Loved to fly the wild blue yonder in his Cessna 182.
Sherry Wright, 74, West Des Moines. A devout Christian known for her bright laugh.
Steven Wright, 64, Solon. Elected mayor of Solon from 1980 to 1987 and retained the lifelong nickname "Mayor Steve."
Phyllis Wrobel, 98, Muscatine. Crafted quilts and gifts for her great-grandchildren.
James Wubbens, 56, Cedar Rapids. Married his love, Shelia, Little Brown Church in Nashua.
Chuck Wyatt, 83, George. A veterinarian caring for many farm animals across Iowa.
Y
Elvin "Al" Yoder, 77, Iowa City. Always juggled several woodworking projects.
Delbert Van Young, 59, Ames. Was a ticket-taker at Hilton Coliseum.
Donald Young, 83, Viola. Always ready to explore the roads on his motorcycle.
William Roy Young, 65, Ames. Owned and managed local JARCO Stores with his father.
Z
Michael Zawitowkski, 100, Des Moines. A paratrooper during World War II.
Frank Zieser, 78, Walker. Helped his community by building furniture and donating it to the Sacred Heart Church every year for their church raffle and for use in the church.
June Zirkelbach, 96, Monticello. Played the organ at Scotch Grove Presbyterian Church.
Winton George Znerold, 97, Windsor Heights. Was offered a semi-professional baseball contract in his youth, but couldn't accept it after being drafted in World War II.
Sharon Zumbrunnen, 67, Monticello. A staple at the local library, reading and working on the computer.
AND THE MORE THAN 5,300 IOWANS who died before August 4, 2021. | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 21 | https://www.facebook.com/groups/lambertville/ | en | Facebook | https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yv/r/B8BxsscfVBr.ico | https://static.xx.fbcdn.net/rsrc.php/yv/r/B8BxsscfVBr.ico | [
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4334 | dbpedia | 1 | 38 | https://grammy.com/awards/hall-of-fame-award | en | Hall of Fame Artists | https://i8.amplience.net/i/naras/banner.default | https://i8.amplience.net/i/naras/banner.default | [
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] | null | [] | null | The GRAMMY Hall Of Fame enshrines the most significant recordings of the 20th century. Find a list of inductees at GRAMMY.com. | https://grammy.com/awards/hall-of-fame-award | 3 FEET HIGH AND RISING De La Soul Tommy Boy (1989) (Album) Inducted 2024 ABBEY ROAD The Beatles Apple (1969) (Album) Inducted 1995 ABC The Jackson 5 Motown (1970) (Single) Inducted 2017 ABRAXAS Santana Columbia (1970) (Album) Inducted 1999 AC-CENT-TCHU-ATE THE POSITIVE Johnny Mercer And The Pied Pipers Capitol (1945) (Single) Inducted 1998 ACT NATURALLY Buck Owens Capitol (1963) (Single) Inducted 2013 AFRO-CUBAN JAZZ SUITE Machito Mercury (1950) (Track) Inducted 2020 AFTER THE GOLD RUSH Neil Young Reprise (1970) (Album) Inducted 2014 AIN'T IT A SHAME Fats Domino Imperial (1955) (Single) Inducted 2002 AIN'T MISBEHAVIN' (Piano Solo) Thomas "Fats" Waller Victor (1929) (Single) Inducted 1984 AIN'T NO MOUNTAIN HIGH ENOUGH Marvin Gaye And Tammi Terrell Tamla (1967) (Single) Inducted 1999 AIN'T NO SUNSHINE Bill Withers Sussex (1971) (Single) Inducted 1999 AIN'T NOBODY HERE BUT US CHICKENS Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five Decca (1946) (Single) Inducted 2013 AJA Steely Dan ABC (1977) (Album) Inducted 2003 ALEXANDER'S RAGTIME BAND Arthur Collins & Byron Harlan Victor (1911) (Single) Inducted 2005 ALFIE Dionne Warwick Scepter (1967) (Single) Inducted 2008 ALICE'S RESTAURANT Arlo Guthrie Reprise (1967) (Single) Inducted 2002 ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER The Jimi Hendrix Experience Reprise (1968) (Single) Inducted 2001 ALL I HAVE TO DO IS DREAM The Everly Brothers Cadence (1958) (Single) Inducted 2004 ALL I WANT FOR CHRISTMAS (IS MY TWO FRONT TEETH) Spike Jones & His City Slickers RCA Victor (1948) (Single) Inducted 2007 ALL OF ME Louis Armstrong & His Orchestra Columbia (1932) (Single) Inducted 2005 ALL THINGS MUST PASS George Harrison Apple (1970) (Album) Inducted 2014 ALLONS À LAFAYETTE (LAFAYETTE) Joe Falcon Columbia (1928) (Single) Inducted 2013 ALWAYS ON MY MIND Willie Nelson Columbia (1982) (Single) Inducted 2008 AM I BLUE? Ethel Waters Columbia (1929) (Single) Inducted 2007 AMAZING GRACE The Dixie Hummingbirds Apollo (1946) (Single) Inducted 2000 AMAZING GRACE Aretha Franklin With James Cleveland & The Southern California Comm. Choir Atlantic (1972) (Album) Inducted 1999 AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL Ray Charles ABC/TRC (1972) (Track) Inducted 2005 AMERICAN BEAUTY Grateful Dead Warner Bros. (1970) (Album) Inducted 2016 AMERICAN PIE Don McLean U.A. (1971) (Single) Inducted 2002 AN AMERICAN IN PARIS — SOUNDTRACK Gene Kelly & Various Artists MGM (1951) (Album) Inducted 2006 AN EVENING WITH ANDRES SEGOVIA Andres Segovia Decca (1954) (Album) Inducted 1999 AND THE ANGELS SING Benny Goodman And His Orchestra, Martha Tilton, Vocal And Ziggy Elman, Trumpet RCA Victor (1939) (Single) Inducted 1987 ANNIE GET YOUR GUN Original Broadway Cast (Ethel Merman, Ray Middleton) Decca (1946) (Album) Inducted 1998 ANTHOLOGY OF AMERICAN FOLK MUSIC Various Artists Folkways (1952) (Album) Inducted 2012 ANY OLD TIME Artie Shaw Victor Records (1938) (Single) Inducted 2001 ANYTHING GOES Cole Porter His Master's Voice (1934) (Single) Inducted 2012 APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION Guns N' Roses Geffen (1987) (Album) Inducted 2024 APRIL IN PARIS Count Basie & His Orchestra Clef (1955) (Single) Inducted 1985 AQUARIUS/LET THE SUNSHINE IN (THE FLESH FAILURES) 5th Dimension Soul City (1969) (Single) Inducted 2004 ARE YOU EXPERIENCED? The Jimi Hendrix Experience Reprise (1967) (Album) Inducted 1999 ARE YOU LONESOME TONIGHT? Elvis Presley RCA Victor (1960) (Single) Inducted 2007 ARTISTRY IN RHYTHM Stan Kenton And His Orchestra Capitol (1945) (Single) Inducted 1985 AS TIME GOES BY Dooley Wilson Decca (1944) (Single) Inducted 2010 THE ASTAIRE STORY Fred Astaire & The Oscar Peterson Quintet Mercury (1953) (Album) Inducted 1999 ASTRAL WEEKS Van Morrison Warner Bros. (1968) (Album) Inducted 1999 AT FILLMORE EAST The Allman Brothers Band Capricorn (1971) (Album) Inducted 1999 AT LAST Etta James Argo (1961) (Single) Inducted 1999 AT SEVENTEEN Janis Ian Columbia (1975) (Single) Inducted 2008 A-TISKET, A-TASKET Chick Webb And His Orchestra With Ella Fitzgerald Decca (1938) (Single) Inducted 1986 AU CLAIR DE LA LUNE Édouard-Léon Scott De Martinville N/A (1860) Single Inducted 2021 AUTOBAHN Kraftwerk Vertigo (1974) (Album) Inducted 2015 AXIS: BOLD AS LOVE The Jimi Hendrix Experience Reprise (1968) (Album) Inducted 2006 BACK TO TOP BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS Glenn Gould Columbia (1956) (Album) Inducted 1983 BACH: GOLDBERG VARIATIONS FOR HARPSICHORD Wanda Landowska RCA Victor (1945) (Album) Inducted 1986 BACH: SONATA NO. 1 FOR UNACCOMPANIED VIOLIN, BWV 1001 Joseph Szigeti Columbia (1931) (Album) Inducted 1998 BACH: SUITES FOR UNACCOMPANIED CELLO (6) Pablo Casals RCA Victor (1936–39) (Album) Inducted 1985 BACH: THE WELL-TEMPERED CLAVIER (Complete) Wanda Landowska RCA Victor (1949-54) (Album) Inducted 1977 BACH-STOKOWSKI: TOCCATA & FUGUE IN D MINOR Leopold Stokowski cond. The Philadelphia Orchestra Victrola (1927) (Single) Inducted 1978 BACK IN BLACK AC/DC Albert/Atlantic (1980) (Album) Inducted 2013 BACK IN THE SADDLE AGAIN Gene Autry Vocalion (1939) (Single) Inducted 1997 BALLAD FOR AMERICANS Paul Robeson Victor (1940) (Album) Inducted 1980 BALLADS John Coltrane Quartet Impulse/MCA (1962) (Album) Inducted 2008 BANANA BOAT (DAY-O) Harry Belafonte RCA (1956) (Single) Inducted 2009 THE BAND The Band Capitol (1969) (Album) Inducted 1999 BAND OF GYPSYS Jimi Hendrix Capitol (1970) (Album) Inducted 2018 BAND ON THE RUN Paul McCartney & Wings Apple (1973) (Album) Inducted 2013 BARBER: VIOLIN CONCERTO Leonard Bernstein cond. New York Philharmonic with Isaac Stern Columbia (1964) (Album) Inducted 2007 THE BARBRA STREISAND ALBUM Barbra Streisand Columbia (1963) (Album) Inducted 2006 BARTÓK: CONCERTO FOR ORCHESTRA Fritz Reiner cond. Chicago Symphony Orchestra RCA Victor (1956) (Album) Inducted 1998 BARTÓK: CONTRASTS FOR VIOLIN, CLARINET & PIANO Béla Bartók, Piano; Joseph Szigeti, Violin; Benny Goodman, Clarinet Columbia (1940) (Album) Inducted 1989 BARTÓK: QUARTETS Juilliard Quartet Columbia (1950) (Album) Inducted 1987 THE BASEMENT TAPES Bob Dylan And The Band Columbia (1975) (Album) Inducted 2016 THE BATTLE OF NEW ORLEANS Johnny Horton Columbia (1959) (Single) Inducted 2002 BE MY BABY The Ronettes Philles (1963) (Single) Inducted 1999 THE BEATLES (WHITE ALBUM) The Beatles Apple (1968) (Album) Inducted 2000 BE-BOP-A-LULA Gene Vincent And His Blue Caps Capitol (1956) (Single) Inducted 1999 BEETHOVEN: CONCERTO IN D MAJOR FOR VIOLIN AND ORCHESTRA Jascha Heifetz; Arturo Toscanini cond. NBC Symphony Orchestra Victor (1940) (Album) Inducted 1996 BEETHOVEN: CONCERTOS FOR PIANO NOS. 1–5 Artur Schnabel, piano & Malcolm Sargent, cond. London Symphony (1, 5) & London Philharmonic (2, 3, 4) Victor (1955) (Album) Inducted 1989 BEETHOVEN: THE FIVE PIANO CONCERTI (COMPLETE) George Szell cond. Cleveland Orchestra; Leon Fleisher, piano Columbia (1959–61) (Album) Inducted 2008 BEETHOVEN: PIANO SONATAS (32) Artur Schnabel Beethoven Sonata Society/HMV (1932–38) (Album) Inducted 1975 BEETHOVEN: QUARTETS FOR STRINGS Budapest String Quartet Columbia (1952) (Album) Inducted 1981 BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONIES Arturo Toscanini cond. NBC Symphony Orchestra RCA Victor (1950–53) (Album) Inducted 1977 BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO. 5 Arthur Nikisch cond. Berlin Philharmonic Grammophon/Polydor (1914) (Album) Inducted 2008 BEETHOVEN: SYMPHONY NO. 7 IN A MAJ. OP. 92 Arturo Toscanini cond. New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra RCA Victor (1936) (Album) Inducted 2007 BEGGARS BANQUET The Rolling Stones London (1968) (Album) Inducted 1999 BEGIN THE BEGUINE Artie Shaw And His Orchestra Bluebird (1938) (Single) Inducted 1977 BEHIND CLOSED DOORS Charlie Rich Epic (1973) (Single) Inducted 1999 BEI MIR BIST DU SCHON The Andrews Sisters Decca (1938) (Single) Inducted 1996 BELAFONTE AT CARNEGIE HALL Harry Belafonte RCA Victor (1959) (Album) Inducted 1999 BELLINI: CASTA DIVA (FROM NORMA) Rosa Ponselle; Giulio Setti cond. The Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus Victor (1929) (Single) Inducted 2008 BELLS ARE RINGING Original Broadway Cast (Judy Holliday, Sydney Chaplin) Columbia (1958) (Album) Inducted 2000 BERG: WOZZECK Dimitri Mitropoulos cond. New York Philharmonic Orchestra, Mack Harrell, Eileen Farrell Columbia (1952) (Album) Inducted 1990 BERNSTEIN: MASS—A THEATRE PIECE FOR SINGERS, PLAYERS AND DANCERS Columbia Masterworks (1971) (Album) Inducted 2019 BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY The 4 Seasons Vee-Jay (1962) (Single) Inducted 2015 BILL Helen Morgan Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 1998 BILLIE'S BOUNCE Charlie Parker And His Re-Boppers Savoy (1945) (Single) Inducted 2002 BIRDLAND Weather Report Columbia (1977) (Single) Inducted 2010 BIRTH OF THE COOL Miles Davis Capitol (1957) (Album) Inducted 1982 BITCHES BREW Miles Davis Columbia (1969) (Album) Inducted 1999 BIZET: CARMEN Rise Stevens, Jan Peerce, Licia Albanese and Robert Merrill; Fritz Reiner, conductor; Robert Shaw, choral director; RCA Victor Orchestra; Robert Shaw Chorale RCA (1951) (Album) Inducted 2008 BLACK AND TAN FANTASY Duke Ellington & His Orchestra Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 1981 BLACK, BROWN AND BEIGE Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra RCA Victor (1944) (Single) Inducted 1990 BLACK MOUNTAIN RAG Doc Watson Vanguard (1964) (Single) Inducted 2006 BLOCH: SCHELOMO Emanuel Feuermann, Leopold Stokowski cond. Philadelphia Orchestra RCA Victor (1940) (Album) Inducted 1999 BLONDE ON BLONDE Bob Dylan Columbia (1966) (Album) Inducted 1999 BLOOD ON THE TRACKS Bob Dylan Columbia (1975) (Album) Inducted 2015 BLOOD, SWEAT & TEARS Blood, Sweat & Tears Columbia (1969) (Album) Inducted 2002 BLOWIN' IN THE WIND Bob Dylan Columbia (1963) (Single) Inducted 1994 BLOWIN' IN THE WIND Peter, Paul & Mary Warner Bros. (1963) (Single) Inducted 2003 BLUE Joni Mitchell Reprise (1971) (Album) Inducted 1999 BLUE MOON OF KENTUCKY Bill Monroe And His Blue Grass Boys Columbia (1945) (Single) Inducted 1998 BLUE SUEDE SHOES Carl Perkins Sun (1956) (Single) Inducted 1986 BLUE TRAIN John Coltrane Blue Note (1957) (Album) Inducted 1999 BLUE YODEL #9 (STANDING ON THE CORNER) Jimmie Rodgers (Featuring Louis Armstrong) Victor (1930) (Single) Inducted 2007 BLUE YODEL (T FOR TEXAS) Jimmie Rodgers Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 1985 BLUEBERRY HILL Fats Domino Imperial (1956) (Single) Inducted 1987 BLUES STAY AWAY FROM ME The Delmore Brothers King (1949) (Single) Inducted 2007 BLUES BREAKERS John Mayall With Eric Clapton London (1966) Album Inducted 2021 BO DIDDLEY Bo Diddley Checker (1955) (Single) Inducted 1998 BODY AND SOUL Coleman Hawkins Bluebird (1939) (Single) Inducted 1974 BOGALUSA BOOGIE Clifton Chenier Arhoolie (1976) (Album) Inducted 2011 BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY Queen Elektra (1976) (Single) Inducted 2004 BONAPARTE'S RETREAT W.H. Stepp Library of Congress (1937) (Single) Inducted 2013 BOOGIE CHILLUN John Lee Hooker Modern (1948) (Single) Inducted 1999 BOOGIE WOOGIE BUGLE BOY The Andrews Sisters Decca (1941) (Single) Inducted 2000 BOOM BOOM John Lee Hooker Vee-Jay (1962) (Single) Inducted 2016 BORN IN THE U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen Columbia (1984) (Album) Inducted 2012 BORN TO BE WILD Steppenwolf Dunhill (1968) (Single) Inducted 2002 BORN TO RUN Bruce Springsteen Columbia (1975) (Album) Inducted 2003 BORN UNDER A BAD SIGN Albert King Stax (1967) (Album) Inducted 1999 BOTH SIDES NOW Judy Collins Elektra (1968) (Single) Inducted 2003 BRAHMS: TRIO NO. 1 IN B MAJOR Jascha Heifetz, Emanuel Feuermann, Artur Rubinstein Victor (1942) (Album) Inducted 1999 BRAZIL (AQUARELA DO BRASIL) Jimmy Dorsey & His Orchestra Decca (1942) (Single) Inducted 2009 BREEZIN' George Benson Warner Bros. (1976) (Album) Inducted 2008 THE BRIDGE Sonny Rollins RCA Victor (1962) (Album) Inducted 2015 BRIDGE OVER TROUBLED WATER Simon & Garfunkel Columbia (1970) (Single) Inducted 1998 Broadway Cast (Original) RCA Victor (1947) (Album) Inducted 2011 BRILLIANT CORNERS Thelonious Monk Quintet Riverside (1956) (Album) Inducted 1999 BRING IT ON HOME TO ME Sam Cooke RCA Victor (1962) (Single) Inducted 2018 BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME Bob Dylan Columbia (1965) (Album) Inducted 2006 BRITTEN: WAR REQUIEM OP. 66 Benjamin Britten cond. London Symphony Chorus & Orchestra, Highgate School Choir, Melos Ensemble; Vishnevskaya, Pears, Fischer-Dieskau London (1963) (Album) Inducted 1998 BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME? Bing Crosby Brunswick (1932) (Single) Inducted 2005 BROWN EYED GIRL Van Morrison Bang (1967) (Single) Inducted 2007 BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB Buena Vista Social Club World Circuit/Nonesuch (1997) (Album) Inducted 2024 THE BUTTON-DOWN MIND OF BOB NEWHART Bob Newhart Warner Bros. (1960) (Album) Inducted 2007 BY THE TIME I GET TO PHOENIX Glen Campbell Capitol (1967) (Single) Inducted 2004 BYE BYE BLACKBIRD Gene Austin Victor (1926) (Single) Inducted 2005 BYE BYE LOVE The Everly Brothers Cadence (1957) (Single) Inducted 1998 BACK TO TOP CABARET Original Motion Picture Soundtrack ABC (1972) (Album) Inducted 2008 CALDONIA BOOGIE Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five Decca (1945) (Single) Inducted 1998 CALIFORNIA DREAMIN' The Mamas And The Papas Dunhill (1966) (Single) Inducted 2001 CALIFORNIA GIRLS The Beach Boys Capitol (1965) (Single) Inducted 2010 CALIFORNIA, HERE I COME Al Jolson With The Isham Jones Orchestra Brunswick (1924) (Single) Inducted 2005 CALL IT STORMY MONDAY T-Bone Walker Black & White (1948) (Single) Inducted 1991 CALYPSO Harry Belafonte RCA Victor (1956) (Album) Inducted 2015 CAMELOT Original Broadway Cast (Richard Burton, Julie Andrews and Robert Goulet) Columbia (1960) (Album) Inducted 2006 CAN THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN (BYE AND BYE) The Carter Family ARC (1935) (Single) Inducted 1998 CANDIDE Original Broadway Cast (Barbara Cook, Max Adrian and Robert Rounseville) Columbia (1956) (Album) Inducted 1998 CANDY Big Maybelle Savoy (1956) (Single) Inducted 1999 CAPITOL PRESENTS THE KING COLE TRIO The King Cole Trio Capitol (1944) (Album) Inducted 2020 CANCIONES DE MI PADRE Linda Ronstadt Asylum Records (1987) Album Inducted 2021 CARAVAN Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra Master (1937) (Single) Inducted 2009 CARNEGIE HALL JAZZ CONCERT Benny Goodman Columbia (1950) (Album) Inducted 1975 CAROLINA SHOUT James P. Johnson OKeh (1921) (Single) Inducted 2020 CAROUSEL Original Broadway Cast (John Raitt, Jan Clayton) Decca (1945) (Album) Inducted 1998 THE CARS The Cars Elektra (1978) Album Inducted 2021 CATCH A FIRE Bob Marley & The Wailers Island (1973) (Album) Inducted 2010 CAT'S IN THE CRADLE Harry Chapin Elektra (1974) (Single) Inducted 2011 CELEBRATION Kool & The Gang De-Lite (1980) (Single) Inducted 2016 CHAIN OF FOOLS Aretha Franklin Atlantic (1967) (Single) Inducted 2001 CHANCES ARE Johnny Mathis Columbia (1957) (Single) Inducted 1998 A CHANGE IS GONNA COME Sam Cooke RCA Victor (1965) (Single) Inducted 2000 CHANGES David Bowie RCA Victor (1972) (Single) Inducted 2017 A CHARLIE BROWN CHRISTMAS Vince Guaraldi Trio Fantasy (1965) (Album) Inducted 2007 CHARLIE PARKER WITH STRINGS Charlie Parker Mercury (1950) (Album) Inducted 1988 CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO Glenn Miller Orchestra With Tex Beneke And The Modernaires Bluebird (1941) (Single) Inducted 1996 CHEAP THRILLS Big Brother & The Holding Company Columbia (1968) (Album) Inducted 2007 CHEEK TO CHEEK Fred Astaire With Leo Reisman And His Orchestra Brunswick (1935) (Single) Inducted 2000 CHEGA DE SAUDADE João Gilberto Odeon (1958) (Single) Inducted 2000 CHEROKEE Charlie Barnet & His Orchestra Bluebird (1939) (Single) Inducted 1998 CHET BAKER SINGS Chet Baker Pacific Jazz (1956) (Album) Inducted 2001 THE CHICAGO TRANSIT AUTHORITY Chicago Columbia (1969) (Album) Inducted 2014 CHILD IS FATHER TO THE MAN Blood, Sweat & Tears Columbia (1968) (Album) Inducted 1999 CHIMES BLUES King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band Gennett (1923) (Single) Inducted 1996 CHOO CHOO CH'BOOGIE Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five Decca (1946) (Single) Inducted 2008 CHOPIN: 14 WALTZES Dinu Lipatti Columbia (1952) (Album) Inducted 1998 CHOPIN: MAZURKAS (COMPLETE) Artur Rubinstein RCA Red Seal (1967) (Album) Inducted 2003 CHOPIN: THE COMPLETE NOCTURNES Artur Rubinstein RCA Red Seal (1965) (Album) Inducted 2004 CHOPIN WALTZES Artur Rubinstein RCA Victor (1965) (Album) Inducted 2006 A CHORUS LINE Original Broadway Cast Columbia (1975) (Album) Inducted 2007 A CHRISTMAS GIFT FOR YOU FROM PHIL SPECTOR Phil Spector And Various Artists Philles (1963) (Album) Inducted 1999 THE CHRISTMAS SONG Nat "King" Cole Capitol (1946) (Single) Inducted 1974 THE CHRONIC Dr. Dre Death Row (1992) (Album) Inducted 2018 CISSY STRUT The Meters Josie (1969) (Single) Inducted 2011 THE CITY OF NEW ORLEANS Arlo Guthrie Reprise (1972) (Single) Inducted 2017 CLASS CLOWN George Carlin Little David (1972) (Album) Inducted 2010 CLEAN UP WOMAN Betty Wright Alston (1971) Single Inducted 2021 CLIFFORD BROWN & MAX ROACH Clifford Brown, Max Roach Emarcy (1954) (Album) Inducted 1999 CLOUDS Joni Mitchell Reprise (1969) (Album) Inducted 2020 COAL MINER'S DAUGHTER Loretta Lynn Decca (1970) (Single) Inducted 1998 COAT OF MANY COLORS Dolly Parton RCA Victor (1971) (Single) Inducted 2019 COCKTAILS FOR TWO Duke Ellington & His Orchestra Victor (1934) (Single) Inducted 2007 COCKTAILS FOR TWO Spike Jones And His City Slickers RCA Victor (1945) (Single) Inducted 1995 COLD SWEAT — PART 1 James Brown And The Famous Flames King (1967) (Single) Inducted 2016 COME FLY WITH ME Frank Sinatra Capitol (1958) (Album) Inducted 2004 COMPANY Original Broadway Cast Columbia (1970) (Album) Inducted 2008 CONCERT BY THE SEA Erroll Garner Trio Columbia (1956) (Album) Inducted 1999 CONVERSATIONS WITH MYSELF Bill Evans Verve (1963) (Album) Inducted 2000 COOL WATER Sons Of The Pioneers Decca (1941) (Single) Inducted 1986 COPENHAGEN Fletcher Henderson And His Orchestra Vocalion (1924) Single Inducted 2021 COPLAND: APPALACHIAN SPRING Aaron Copland cond. The Boston Symphony RCA Victor (1959) (Album) Inducted 2000 COPLAND: APPALACHIAN SPRING Leonard Bernstein cond. New York Philharmonic Columbia (1961) (Single) Inducted 2009 COPLAND: FANFARE FOR THE COMMON MAN Aaron Copland cond. London Symphony Orchestra Columbia (1968) (Single) Inducted 2009 COPLAND: SYMPHONY NO. 3 Antal Dorati cond. Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra Mercury (1951) (Album) Inducted 2007 COSMO'S FACTORY Creedence Clearwater Revival Fantasy (1970) (Album) Inducted 2014 COURT AND SPARK Joni Mitchell Asylum (1974) (Album) Inducted 2004 THE CRADLE WILL ROCK Original Broadway Cast (Marc Blitzstein, etc.) Musicraft (1938) (Album) Inducted 1998 CRAZY Patsy Cline Decca (1962) (Single) Inducted 1992 CRAZY ARMS Ray Price Columbia (1956) (Single) Inducted 1999 CRAZY BLUES Mamie Smith & Her Jazz Hounds Okeh (1920) (Single) Inducted 1994 CRAZY HE CALLS ME Billie Holiday Decca (1949) (Single) Inducted 2010 CROSBY, STILLS & NASH Crosby, Stills & Nash Atlantic (1969) (Album) Inducted 1999 CROSS ROAD BLUES Robert Johnson Vocalion (1936) (Single) Inducted 1998 CROSSCURRENTS Lennie Tristano Sextet Capitol (1949) (Album) Inducted 2013 CRY Johnnie Ray Okeh (1951) (Single) Inducted 1998 CRY ME A RIVER Julie London Liberty (1955) (Single) Inducted 2001 CRYING Roy Orbison Monument (1961) (Single) Inducted 2002 CRYING IN THE CHAPEL The Orioles Jubilee (1953) (Single) Inducted 2008 BACK TO TOP DANCE TO THE MUSIC Sly & The Family Stone Epic (1968) (Single) Inducted 1998 DANCING IN THE STREET Martha And The Vandellas Gordy (1964) (Single) Inducted 1999 DANCING QUEEN ABBA Atlantic (1976) (Single) Inducted 2015 DANG ME Roger Miller Smash (1964) (Single) Inducted 1998 THE DARK END OF THE STREET James Carr Goldwax (1967) (Single) Inducted 2016 THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON Pink Floyd Harvest (1973) (Album) Inducted 1999 DARK WAS THE NIGHT — COLD WAS THE GROUND Blind Willie Johnson Columbia/Vocalion (1927) (Single) Inducted 2011 DARKTOWN STRUTTERS' BALL Original Dixieland Jazz Band Columbia (1917) (Single) Inducted 2006 DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES Henry Mancini RCA (1963) (Single) Inducted 2003 DEAD MAN'S CURVE Jan & Dean Liberty (1964) (Single) Inducted 2008 (DEAR MR. GABLE) YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU Judy Garland Decca (1937) (Single) Inducted 1998 DEBUSSY: PRELUDES, BOOK I AND II Walter Gieseking Columbia (1953–55) (Album) Inducted 1998 DEEP IN THE HEART OF TEXAS Gene Autry Columbia (1942) (Single) Inducted 2012 DÉJÀ VU Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Atlantic (1970) (Album) Inducted 2012 DESAFINADO Stan Getz & Charlie Byrd Verve (1962) (Single) Inducted 2000 DESPERADO Eagles Asylum (1972) (Album) Inducted 2000 DEVIL GOT MY WOMAN Skip James Paramount (1931) (Single) Inducted 2020 DIMINUENDO AND CRESCENDO IN BLUE Duke Ellington & His Orchestra Columbia (1956) (Single) Inducted 1999 DINAH Ethel Waters Columbia (1925) (Single) Inducted 1998 DIPPER MOUTH BLUES King Oliver & His Jazz Band Okeh (1923) (Single) Inducted 2010 DISRAELI GEARS Cream Atco (1967) (Album) Inducted 1999 DJANGOLOGY Quintet Of The Hot Club Of France Featuring Django Reinhardt And Stephane Grappelli Decca (1935) (Single) Inducted 1999 DO NOTHIN' TILL YOU HEAR FROM ME Duke Ellington And His Orchestra featuring Al Hibbler Victor (1944) (Single) Inducted 2011 DO YOU BELIEVE IN MAGIC The Lovin' Spoonful Kama Sutra (1965) (Single) Inducted 2002 DOC WATSON Doc Watson Vanguard (1964) (Album) Inducted 2014 DON'T BE CRUEL Elvis Presley RCA Victor (1956) (Single) Inducted 2002 DON'T FENCE ME IN Bing Crosby And The Andrews Sisters Decca (1944) (Single) Inducted 1998 DON'T GET AROUND MUCH ANYMORE (NEVER NO LAMENT) Duke Ellington And His Famous Orchestra Victor (1940) (Single) Inducted 2010 DON'T GO TO STRANGERS Etta Jones Prestige (1960) (Album) Inducted 2008 DON'T LET YOUR DEAL GO DOWN BLUES Charlie Poole Columbia Records (1925) (Single) Inducted 2007 DON'T MAKE ME OVER Dionne Warwick Scepter (1962) (Single) Inducted 2000 DON'T SIT UNDER THE APPLE TREE (WITH ANYONE ELSE BUT ME) Andrews Sisters Decca (1942) (Single) Inducted 2016 DON'T STOP BELIEVIN' Journey Columbia (1981) Single Inducted 2021 THE DOORS The Doors Elektra (1967) (Album) Inducted 2002 DOWNHEARTED BLUES Bessie Smith Columbia (1923) (Single) Inducted 2006 DOWNTOWN Petula Clark Warner Bros. (1964) (Single) Inducted 2003 DREAM ON Aerosmith Columbia (1973) (Single) Inducted 2018 DUKE OF EARL Gene Chandler Vee Jay (1961) (Single) Inducted 2002 DUST BOWL BALLADS, VOLUMES 1 & 2 Woody Guthrie Victor (1940) (Album) Inducted 1998 DUST MY BROOM Elmore James Trumpet (1952) (Single) Inducted 1998 DUSTY IN MEMPHIS Dusty Springfield Atlantic (1969) (Album) Inducted 2001 DVORÁK: CONCERTO IN B MIN. FOR CELLO AND ORCHESTRA Pablo Casals, George Szell cond. Czech Philharmonic Orchestra Victor (1938) (Album) Inducted 1998 BACK TO TOP EARLY AUTUMN Woody Herman And His Orchestra Capitol (1949) (Single) Inducted 2000 EARTH ANGEL (WILL YOU BE MINE) Penguins Dootone (1954) (Single) Inducted 1998 EAST-WEST The Paul Butterfield Blues Band Elektra (1966) (Single) Inducted 1999 EAT A PEACH Allman Brothers Band Capricorn (1972) (Album) Inducted 2020 EIGHT MILES HIGH The Byrds Columbia (1966) (Single) Inducted 1999 EL DÍA QUE ME QUIERAS Carlos Gardel Paramount (1935) (Single) Inducted 2013 EL PASO Marty Robbins Columbia (1959) (Single) Inducted 1998 ELEANOR RIGBY The Beatles Capitol (1966) (Track) Inducted 2002 ELECTRIC LADYLAND Jimi Hendrix Reprise (1968) (Album) Inducted 1999 ELGAR: VIOLIN CONCERTO Yehudi Menuhin with Sir Edward Elgar cond. London Symphony Orchestra Victor (1932) (Album) Inducted 2007 ELLA AND BASIE! Ella Fitzgerald/Count Basie Verve (1963) (Album) Inducted 2010 ELLA AND LOUIS Ella Fitzgerald And Louis Armstrong Verve (1956) (Album) Inducted 2016 ELLA FITZGERALD SINGS THE COLE PORTER SONG BOOK Ella Fitzgerald Verve (1956) (Album) Inducted 2000 ELLA FITZGERALD SINGS THE GEORGE AND IRA GERSHWIN SONG BOOK Ella Fitzgerald Verve (1959) (Album) Inducted 2019 ELLA FITZGERALD SINGS THE RODGERS AND HART SONG BOOK Ella Fitzgerald Verve (1957) (Album) Inducted 1999 ELLA IN BERLIN Ella Fitzgerald Verve (1960) (Album) Inducted 1999 ELLINGTON AT NEWPORT Duke Ellington & His Orchestra Columbia (1957) (Album) Inducted 2004 ELTON JOHN Elton John Uni (1970) (Album) Inducted 2013 EMBRACEABLE YOU Billie Holiday Commodore (1944) (Single) Inducted 2005 EMPTY BED BLUES Bessie Smith Columbia (1928) (Single) Inducted 1983 EVERYBODY LOVES SOMEBODY Dean Martin Reprise (1964) (Single) Inducted 1999 EVERYBODY'S TALKIN' Harry Nilsson RCA Victor (1969) (Single) Inducted 1999 EVERYDAY I HAVE THE BLUES Count Basie Orchestra, Joe Williams, Vocal Clef (1955) (Single) Inducted 1992 EVERYDAY I HAVE THE BLUES B.B. King RPM (1955) (Single) Inducted 2004 EXILE ON MAIN ST. The Rolling Stones Rolling Stones/Atlantic (1972) (Album) Inducted 2012 EXODUS Bob Marley & the Wailers Island/Tuff Gong (1977) (Album) Inducted 2006 BACK TO TOP FAR EAST SUITE Duke Ellington & His Orchestra RCA (1967) (Album) Inducted 1999 FASCINATING RHYTHM Fred & Adele Astaire accompanied by George Gershwin English Columbia (1926) (Single) Inducted 2006 THE FAT MAN Fats Domino Imperial (1949) (Single) Inducted 2016 FAVORITE GOSPEL SONGS AND SPIRITUALS The Blackwood Brothers Quartet RCA (1951) (Album) Inducted 1999 FELIZ NAVIDAD Jose Feliciano RCA Victor (1970) (Single) Inducted 2010 FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Original Broadway Cast (Zero Mostel, Tanya Everett, Maria Karnilova, Beatrice Arthur and Bert Convy) RCA Victor (1964) (Album) Inducted 1998 FIGHT THE POWER Public Enemy Motown (1989) (Single) Inducted 2018 FINIAN'S RAINBOW Original Broadway Cast (Ella Logan, David Wayne) Columbia (1947) (Album) Inducted 1998 FIRE AND RAIN James Taylor Warner Bros. (1970) (Single) Inducted 1998 FIRST TAKE Roberta Flack Atlantic (1969) (Album) Inducted 2016 FIXIN' TO DIE Bukka White Okeh (1940) (Single) Inducted 2012 FLASH LIGHT Parliament Casablanca (1978) (Single) Inducted 2018 FLEETWOOD MAC Fleetwood Mac Reprise (1975) (Album) Inducted 2016 FLYING HOME Lionel Hampton And His Orchestra Decca (1942) (Single) Inducted 1996 FOCUS Stan Getz Verve (1961) (Album) Inducted 1999 FOGGY MOUNTAIN BANJO Lester Flatt And Earl Scruggs And The Foggy Mountain Boys Columbia (1961) (Album) Inducted 2013 FOGGY MOUNTAIN BREAKDOWN Lester Flatt And Earl Scruggs Mercury (1950) (Single) Inducted 1999 FOGGY MOUNTAIN JAMBOREE Lester Flatt And Earl Scruggs Columbia (1957) (Album) Inducted 2012 FOLSOM PRISON BLUES Johnny Cash Sun (1956) (Single) Inducted 2001 FOR DANCERS ONLY Jimmie Lunceford And His Orchestra Decca (1937) (Single) Inducted 1999 FOR ME AND MY GAL Judy Garland & Gene Kelly Decca (1942) (Single) Inducted 2010 FOR ONCE IN MY LIFE Stevie Wonder Tamla (1968) (Single) Inducted 2009 FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY The O'Jays Philadelphia International (1974) (Single) Inducted 2016 FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH Buffalo Springfield Atco (1967) (Single) Inducted 2000 FOREVER CHANGES Love Elektra (1967) (Album) Inducted 2008 FORTUNATE SON Creedence Clearwater Revival Fantasy (1969) (Single) Inducted 2014 FOUR BROTHERS Woody Herman And His Orchestra Columbia (1948) (Single) Inducted 1984 FRAMPTON COMES ALIVE! Peter Frampton A&M (1976) (Album) Inducted 2020 FRANCIS ALBERT SINATRA & ANTONIO CARLOS JOBIM Frank Sinatra & Antonio Carlos Jobim Reprise (1967) (Album) Inducted 2019 FRANK SINATRA SINGS FOR ONLY THE LONELY Frank Sinatra Capitol (1958) (Album) Inducted 1999 FRANKIE Mississippi John Hurt Okeh (1928) (Single) Inducted 2011 FREAK OUT! Mothers Of Invention Verve (1967) (Album) Inducted 1999 FREE BIRD Lynyrd Skynrd MCA (1973) (Single) Inducted 2008 FREIGHT TRAIN Elizabeth Cotten Folkways (1958) Single Inducted 2021 FRENESI Artie Shaw And His Orchestra Victor (1940) (Single) Inducted 2000 FULL MOON FEVER Tom Petty MCA (1989) (Album) Inducted 2019 FUNNY GIRL Original Broadway Cast (Barbra Streisand And Sydney Chaplin) Capitol (1964) (Album) Inducted 2004 BACK TO TOP GADE: JALOUSIE Arthur Fiedler cond. Boston Pops Orchestra RCA VICTOR (1935) (Single) Inducted 2008 THE GAMBLER Kenny Rogers United Artists (1978) Single Inducted 2021 THE GENIUS OF ART TATUM, VOLS. 1–13 Art Tatum Clef (1954–55) (Album) Inducted 1978 THE GENIUS OF MODERN MUSIC, VOLS. 1 & 2 Thelonious Monk Blue Note (1949) (Album) Inducted 2003 THE GENIUS OF RAY CHARLES Ray Charles Atlantic (1960) (Album) Inducted 1997 GENIUS + SOUL = JAZZ Ray Charles Impulse (1961) (Album) Inducted 2011 GENTLE ON MY MIND Glen Campbell Capitol (1967) (Single) Inducted 2008 GEORGIA (ON MY MIND) Hoagy Carmichael And His Orchestra Victor (1930) (Single) Inducted 2014 GEORGIA ON MY MIND Ray Charles ABC-Paramount (1960) (Single) Inducted 1993 GERSHWIN: AN AMERICAN IN PARIS George Gershwin, Celesta; Nathaniel Shilkret cond. Victor Symphony Orchestra Victor (1929) (Single) Inducted 1997 GERSHWIN: PORGY & BESS (Opera Version) Lehman Engel, cond. (Lawrence Winters, Camilla Williams) Columbia (1951) (Album) Inducted 1976 GERSHWIN: RHAPSODY IN BLUE George Gershwin, Piano With Paul Whiteman, Cond. Victor (1927) (Single) Inducted 1974 GERSHWIN: RHAPSODY IN BLUE Oscar Levant, Eugene Ormandy cond. Philadelphia Orchestra Columbia (1945) (Album) Inducted 1990 GET UP — I FEEL LIKE BEING LIKE A SEX MACHINE James Brown King (1970) (Single) Inducted 2014 GET UP, STAND UP Bob Marley & The Wailers Island (1973) (Single) Inducted 1999 (GET YOUR KICKS ON) ROUTE 66 The King Cole Trio Capitol (1946) (Single) Inducted 2002 GETZ/GILBERTO Stan Getz & João Gilberto Verve (1964) (Album) Inducted 1999 GIANT STEPS John Coltrane Atlantic (1960) (Album) Inducted 2001 GIGI — SOUNDTRACK Various Artists MGM (1958) (Album) Inducted 1998 GIMME SOME LOVIN' Spencer Davis Group United Artists (1966) (Single) Inducted 1999 THE GIRL FROM IPANEMA Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto Verve (1964) (Single) Inducted 2000 GIVE MY REGARDS TO BROADWAY Billy Murray Columbia (1905) (Single) Inducted 2008 GLORIA Them Parrot (1965) (Single) Inducted 1999 GOD BLESS AMERICA Kate Smith Victor (1939) (Single) Inducted 1982 GOD BLESS THE CHILD Billie Holiday Okeh (1941) (Single) Inducted 1976 GOLDEN JUBILEE CONCERT: RACHMANINOFF CONCERTO NO. 3 Vladimir Horowitz With Eugene Ormandy cond. New York Philharmonic Orchestra RCA Red Seal (1978) (Album) Inducted 2004 GOLDFINGER Shirley Bassey United Artists (1964) (Single) Inducted 2008 GONE WITH THE WIND — SOUNDTRACK Max Steiner, Conductor MGM (1967) (Album) Inducted 2006 GOOD ROCKIN' TONIGHT Wynonie Harris King (1948) (Single) Inducted 2009 THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY Ennio Morricone United Artists (1967) (Album) Inducted 2009 GOOD VIBRATIONS The Beach Boys Capitol (1966) (Single) Inducted 1994 GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD Elton John MCA (1973) (Album) Inducted 2003 GOODNIGHT IRENE Gordon Jenkins And His Orchestra And The Weavers Decca (1950) (Single) Inducted 2006 GOODNIGHT IRENE Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter Library Of Congress (1936) (Single) Inducted 2002 GOT MY MOJO WORKING Muddy Waters Chess (1957) (Single) Inducted 1999 GRACELAND Paul Simon Warner Bros. (1986) (Album) Inducted 2012 GRAZING IN THE GRASS Hugh Masekela UNI (1968) (Single) Inducted 2018 GREAT BALLS OF FIRE Jerry Lee Lewis Sun (1957) (Single) Inducted 1998 THE GREAT PRETENDER The Platters Mercury (1956) (Single) Inducted 2002 GREAT SPECKLED BIRD Roy Acuff & The Crazy Tennesseans Vocalion (1936) (Single) Inducted 2009 GREEN ONIONS Booker T. & The MG's Stax (1962) (Single) Inducted 1999 GREETINGS FROM ASBURY PARK, N.J. Bruce Springsteen Columbia (1973) Album Inducted 2021 GROOVIN' The Young Rascals Atlantic (1967) (Single) Inducted 1999 GUYS AND DOLLS Original Broadway Cast (Robert Alda, Vivian Blaine, Sam Levene, Isabel Bigley And Pat Rooney, Sr.) Decca (1950) (Album) Inducted 1998 GYPSY Original Broadway Cast (Ethel Merman, Jack Klugman, Sandra Church) Columbia (1959) (Album) Inducted 1998 BACK TO TOP HAIR Original Broadway Cast (Ronnie Dyson, Gerome Ragni, James Rado) RCA Victor (1968) (Album) Inducted 2006 HALLELUJAH Leonard Cohen Columbia (1984) (Single) Inducted 2019 HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN Ben Selvin & His Orchestra Columbia (1930) (Single) Inducted 2007 HAPPY TOGETHER The Turtles White Whale (1967) (Single) Inducted 2007 HAPPY TRAILS Roy Rogers & Dale Evans RCA Victor (1952) (Single) Inducted 2009 A HARD DAY'S NIGHT The Beatles United Artists (1964) (Album) Inducted 2000 THE HARDER THEY COME Jimmy Cliff With Toots & The Maytals, Desmond Dekker, The Melodians, Scotty, And The Slickers Island (1973) (Album) Inducted 2008 HARPER VALLEY P.T.A. Jeannie C. Riley Plantation (1968) (Single) Inducted 2019 HARVEST Neil Young Reprise (1972) (Album) Inducted 2015 HE STOPPED LOVING HER TODAY George Jones Epic (1980) (Single) Inducted 2007 HEAD HUNTERS Herbie Hancock Columbia (1973) (Album) Inducted 2009 HEART OF GLASS Blondie Chrysalis (1979) (Single) Inducted 2016 HEART LIKE A WHEEL Linda Ronstadt Capitol (1974) (Album) Inducted 2018 HEARTBREAK HOTEL Elvis Presley RCA Victor (1956) (Single) Inducted 1995 HEAVY WEATHER Weather Report Columbia (1977) (Album) Inducted 2011 HEEBIE JEEBIES Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five Okeh (1926) (Single) Inducted 1999 HE'LL HAVE TO GO Jim Reeves RCA (1959) (Single) Inducted 1999 HELLO DARLIN' Conway Twitty Decca (1970) (Single) Inducted 1999 HELLO, DOLLY! Louis Armstrong Kapp (1964) (Single) Inducted 2001 HELLO, DOLLY! Original Cast (Carol Channing, David Burns, Charles Nelson Reilly) RCA Victor (1964) (Album) Inducted 2002 HELLO WALLS Faron Young Capitol (1961) (Single) Inducted 2000 HELP! The Beatles Capitol (1965) (Single) Inducted 2008 HELP ME MAKE IT THROUGH THE NIGHT Sammi Smith Mega (1970) (Single) Inducted 1998 (HEP-HEP!) THE JUMPIN' JIVE Cab Calloway And His Orchestra Vocalion (1939) (Single) Inducted 2017 HERB ALPERT PRESENTS SERGIO MENDES & BRASIL '66 Sergio Mendes & Brasil '66 A&M (1966) (Album) Inducted 2012 HERE'S LITTLE RICHARD Little Richard Specialty (1957) (Album) Inducted 2013 HE'S A REBEL The Crystals Philles (1962) (Single) Inducted 2004 HE'S GOT THE WHOLE WORLD IN HIS HANDS Marian Anderson RCA Victor (1936) (Single) Inducted 2008 HEY GOOD LOOKIN' Hank Williams MGM (1951) (Single) Inducted 2001 HEY JUDE The Beatles Apple (1968) (Single) Inducted 2001 HEY THERE Rosemary Clooney Columbia (1954) (Single) Inducted 1999 HIDE AWAY Freddy King Federal (1961) (Single) Inducted 1999 HIGHWAY 61 REVISITED Bob Dylan Columbia (1965) (Album) Inducted 2002 THE HI-LO'S AND ALL THAT JAZZ The Hi-Lo's Columbia (1958) (Album) Inducted 1998 HIS EYE IS ON THE SPARROW Mahalia Jackson Columbia (1958) (Single) Inducted 2010 HIT THE ROAD JACK Ray Charles ABC-Paramount (1961) (Single) Inducted 2013 HOLIDAY FOR STRINGS David Rose And His Orchestra RCA Victor (1943) (Single) Inducted 2004 HONEYSUCKLE ROSE Thomas "Fats" Waller Victor (1934) (Single) Inducted 1999 HONKY TONK (PARTS 1 & 2) Bill Doggett King (1956) (Single) Inducted 1998 HONKY TONK WOMEN The Rolling Stones London (1969) (Single) Inducted 2014 HONKY TONKIN' Hank Williams And His Drifting Cowboys Sterling (1947) (Single) Inducted 2015 HOODOO MAN BLUES Junior Wells Delmark (1966) (Album) Inducted 2008 HOROWITZ AT CARNEGIE HALL — AN HISTORIC RETURN Vladimir Horowitz Columbia (1965) (Album) Inducted 2002 HORSES Patti Smith Arista (1975) Album Inducted 2021 HOTEL CALIFORNIA Eagles Asylum (1977) (Single) Inducted 2003 HOUND DOG Elvis Presley RCA Victor (1956) (Single) Inducted 1988 HOUND DOG Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton Peacock (1953) (Single) Inducted 2013 HOT BUTTERED SOUL Isaac Hayes Enterprise (1969) Album Inducted 2021 THE HOUSE I LIVE IN Frank Sinatra Columbia (1946) (Single) Inducted 1998 THE HOUSE OF THE RISING SUN The Animals MGM (1964) (Single) Inducted 1999 HOW CAN A POOR MAN STAND SUCH TIMES AND LIVE Blind Alfred Reed Victor (1930) (Single) Inducted 2020 HOW HIGH THE MOON Ella Fitzgerald Decca (1947) (Single) Inducted 2002 HOW HIGH THE MOON Les Paul And Mary Ford Capitol (1951) (Single) Inducted 1979 HOW LONG, HOW LONG BLUES Leroy Carr Vocalion (1928) (Single) Inducted 2012 BACK TO TOP I APOLOGIZE Billy Eckstine MGM (1949) (Single) Inducted 1999 I CAN HEAR IT NOW, VOLS. 1–3 Edward R. Murrow Columbia (1948–50) (Album) Inducted 1978 (I CAN'T GET NO) SATISFACTION The Rolling Stones London (1965) (Single) Inducted 1998 I CAN'T GET STARTED Bunny Berigan Victor (1937) (Single) Inducted 1975 I CAN'T HELP MYSELF Four Tops Motown (1965) (Single) Inducted 2018 I CAN'T MAKE YOU LOVE ME Bonnie Raitt Capitol (1991) (Single) Inducted 2017 I CAN'T STOP LOVING YOU Ray Charles ABC-Paramount (1962) (Single) Inducted 2001 I FALL TO PIECES Patsy Cline Decca (1961) (Single) Inducted 2001 I FEEL LIKE GOING HOME Muddy Waters Aristocrat (1948) (Single) Inducted 2010 I FEEL LOVE Donna Summer Casablanca (1977) (Single) Inducted 2024 I FOUGHT THE LAW Bobby Fuller Four Mustang (1965) (Single) Inducted 2015 I GET AROUND The Beach Boys Capitol (1964) (Single) Inducted 2017 I GOT YOU BABE Sonny & Cher Atco (1965) (Single) Inducted 2017 I GOT YOU (I FEEL GOOD) James Brown King (1965) (Single) Inducted 2013 I HAVE A DREAM Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 20th Century Fox (1963) (Track) Inducted 2012 I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE Marvin Gaye Tamla (1968) (Single) Inducted 1998 I HEARD IT THROUGH THE GRAPEVINE Gladys Knight & The Pips Soul/Motown (1967) (Single) Inducted 2018 I LEFT MY HEART IN SAN FRANCISCO Tony Bennett Columbia (1962) (Single) Inducted 1994 I LOVE ROCK 'N ROLL Joan Jett & The Blackhearts Boardwalk (1982) (Single) Inducted 2016 (I LOVE YOU) FOR SENTIMENTAL REASONS The King Cole Trio Capitol (1946) (Single) Inducted 2018 I LOVES YOU, PORGY Nina Simone Bethlehem (1959) (Single) Inducted 2000 I MISS YOU SO The Cats And The Fiddle Bluebird (1939) (Single) Inducted 1999 I NEVER LOVED A MAN THE WAY I LOVE YOU Aretha Franklin Atlantic (1967) (Album) Inducted 2009 I ONLY HAVE EYES FOR YOU The Flamingos End (1959) (Single) Inducted 2003 I SHOT THE SHERIFF Eric Clapton RSO (1974) (Single) Inducted 2003 I STARTED OUT AS A CHILD Bill Cosby Warner Bros. (1964) (Album) Inducted 2012 I WALK THE LINE Johnny Cash Sun (1956) (Single) Inducted 1998 I WANNA BE LOVED BY YOU Helen Kane Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 2009 I WANT TO BE A COWBOY'S SWEETHEART Patsy Montana & The Prairie Ramblers Vocalion (1935) (Single) Inducted 2007 I WANT TO HOLD YOUR HAND The Beatles Capitol (1964) (Single) Inducted 1998 I WANT YOU BACK Jackson 5 Motown (1969) (Single) Inducted 1999 I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU Whitney Houston Arista (1992) (Single) Inducted 2018 I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU Dolly Parton RCA (1974) (Single) Inducted 2007 I WILL SURVIVE Gloria Gaynor Polydor (1978) (Single) Inducted 2012 I WONDER WHY Dion And The Belmonts Laurie (1958) (Single) Inducted 1999 IF I DIDN'T CARE The Ink Spots Decca (1939) (Single) Inducted 1987 IF YOU COULD SEE ME NOW Sarah Vaughan Musicraft (1946) (Single) Inducted 1998 IF YOU'VE GOT THE MONEY, I'VE GOT THE TIME Lefty Frizzell Columbia (1950) (Single) Inducted 1999 I'LL BE THERE The Jackson 5 Motown (1970) (Single) Inducted 2011 I'LL FLY AWAY The Chuck Wagon Gang Columbia (1949) (Single) Inducted 2020 I'LL NEVER SMILE AGAIN Tommy Dorsey With Frank Sinatra & The Pied Pipers Victor (1940) (Single) Inducted 1982 I'LL TAKE YOU THERE The Staple Singers Stax (1972) (Single) Inducted 1999 I'M A KING BEE Slim Harpo Excello (1957) (Single) Inducted 2008 I'M A MAN Bo Diddley Checker (1955) (Single) Inducted 2020 I'M A MAN OF CONSTANT SORROW The Stanley Brothers & The Clinch Mountain Boys Columbia (1951) (Single) Inducted 2020 I'M GETTING SENTIMENTAL OVER YOU Tommy Dorsey And His Orchestra Victor (1936) (Single) Inducted 1998 I'M MOVIN' ON Hank Snow RCA Victor (1950) (Single) Inducted 2000 I'M SO LONESOME I COULD CRY Hank Williams MGM (1949) (Single) Inducted 1999 I'M SORRY Brenda Lee Decca (1960) (Single) Inducted 1999 I'M WALKIN' Fats Domino Imperial (1957) (Single) Inducted 2019 (I'M YOUR) HOOCHIE COOCHE MAN Muddy Waters Chess (1954) (Single) Inducted 1998 IMAGINE John Lennon Plastic Ono Band Apple (1971) (Single) Inducted 1999 IN A MIST Bix Beiderbecke Okeh (1927) (Single) Inducted 1980 IN A SILENT WAY Miles Davis Columbia (1969) (Album) Inducted 2001 THE "IN" CROWD The Ramsey Lewis Trio Argo (1965) (Single) Inducted 2009 IN MY ROOM The Beach Boys Capitol (1963) (Single) Inducted 1999 IN SAN FRANCISCO Cannonball Adderley Quintet Riverside (1959) (Album) Inducted 1999 IN THE JAILHOUSE NOW Jimmie Rodgers Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 2007 IN THE MIDNIGHT HOUR Wilson Pickett Atlantic (1965) (Single) Inducted 1999 IN THE MOOD Glenn Miller And His Orchestra Bluebird (1939) (Single) Inducted 1983 IN THE RIGHT PLACE Dr. John Atco (1973) Album Inducted 2021 IN THE STILL OF THE NIGHT The Five Satins Ember (1956) (Single) Inducted 1998 IN THE WEE SMALL HOURS Frank Sinatra Capitol (1955) (Album) Inducted 1984 THE INCREDIBLE JAZZ GUITAR OF WES MONTGOMERY Wes Montgomery Riverside (1960) (Album) Inducted 1999 INDIAN LOVE CALL Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy Victor (Red Seal) (1936) (Single) Inducted 2008 INNERVISIONS Stevie Wonder Tamla (1973) (Album) Inducted 1999 IS THAT ALL THERE IS? Peggy Lee Capitol (1969) (Single) Inducted 1999 ISRAELITES Desmond Dekker & The Aces Uni (1969) (Single) Inducted 2007 IT DON'T MEAN A THING (IF IT AIN'T GOT THAT SWING) Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra Brunswick (1932) (Single) Inducted 2008 IT HAD TO BE YOU Isham Jones & His Orchestra Brunswick (1924) (Single) Inducted 2007 IT TAKES A NATION OF MILLIONS TO HOLD US BACK Public Enemy Def Jam (1988) (Album) Inducted 2020 IT WASN'T GOD WHO MADE HONKY TONK ANGELS Kitty Wells Decca (1952) (Single) Inducted 1998 IT'S A MAN'S MAN'S MAN'S WORLD James Brown King (1966) (Single) Inducted 2010 IT'S NOT FOR ME TO SAY Johnny Mathis Columbia (1957) (Single) Inducted 2008 IT'S TOO LATE Carole King Ode (1971) (Single) Inducted 2003 I'VE BEEN LOVING YOU TOO LONG Otis Redding Volt (1965) (Single) Inducted 2011 I'VE GOT A TIGER BY THE TAIL Buck Owens Capitol (1965) (Single) Inducted 1999 I'VE GOT A WOMAN Ray Charles Atlantic (1954) (Single) Inducted 1990 I'VE GOT THE WORLD ON A STRING Frank Sinatra Capitol (1953) (Single) Inducted 2004 I'VE GOT YOU UNDER MY SKIN Frank Sinatra Capitol (1956) (Single) Inducted 1998 IVES: SYMPHONY NO. 2 Leonard Bernstein cond. New York Philharmonic Columbia (1958) (Album) Inducted 2008 BACK TO TOP JACKSON BROWNE Jackson Browne Asylum (1972) (Album) Inducted 2019 JACO PASTORIUS Jaco Pastorius Epic (1976) (Album) Inducted 2019 JAILHOUSE ROCK Elvis Presley RCA Victor (1957) (Single) Inducted 2017 JAMBALAYA (ON THE BAYOU) Hank Williams MGM (1952) (Single) Inducted 2002 THE JAMES BOND THEME The John Barry Seven And Orchestra United Artists (1962) (Single) Inducted 2008 JAZZ AT MASSEY HALL Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Charles Mingus Debut (1953) (Album) Inducted 1995 JAZZ SAMBA Stan Getz/Charlie Byrd Verve (1962) (Album) Inducted 2010 JELLY ROLL MORTON: THE SAGA OF MR. JELLY LORD (LIBRARY OF CONGRESS RECORDINGS) Jelly Roll Morton Circle Sound (1949–50) (Album) Inducted 1980 JITTERBUG WALTZ "Fats" Waller, His Rhythm And His Orchestra Bluebird/RCA (1942) (Single) Inducted 2015 JOAN BAEZ Joan Baez Vanguard (1960) (Album) Inducted 2011 JOHN COLTRANE AND JOHNNY HARTMAN John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman Impulse! (1963) (Album) Inducted 2013 JOHN PRINE John Prine Atlantic (1971) (Album) Inducted 2015 JOHNNY B. GOODE Chuck Berry Chess (1958) (Single) Inducted 1999 JOHNNY CASH AT FOLSOM PRISON Johnny Cash Columbia (1968) (Album) Inducted 2018 JOHNNY CASH AT SAN QUENTIN Johnny Cash Columbia (1969) (Album) Inducted 2004 JOLENE Dolly Parton RCA (1973) (Single) Inducted 2014 THE JOSHUA TREE U2 Island (1987) (Album) Inducted 2014 JUDY AT CARNEGIE HALL Judy Garland Capitol (1961) (Album) Inducted 1998 JUKE Little Walter Checker (1952) (Single) Inducted 2008 JUST BECAUSE Frankie Yankovic and His Yanks Columbia (1948) (Single) Inducted 1999 JUST THE WAY YOU ARE Billy Joel Columbia (1978) (Single) Inducted 2004 JUST YOU, JUST ME Lester Young Quartet Keynote (1944) (Single) Inducted 1999 BACK TO TOP KANSAS CITY Wilbert Harrison Fury (1959) (Single) Inducted 2001 KANSAS CITY STOMPS Jelly Roll Morton Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 2010 KASSIE JONES Furry Lewis Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 2012 KEEP MY SKILLET GOOD AND GREASY Uncle Dave Macon Vocalion Records (1924) (Single) Inducted 2007 KEEP ON THE SUNNY SIDE The Carter Family Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 2006 KEY TO THE HIGHWAY Big Bill Broonzy Okeh (1941) (Single) Inducted 2012 KHACHATURIAN: CONCERTO FOR PIANO & ORCHESTRA William Kapell With Serge Koussevitzky cond. Boston Symphony Orchestra RCA (1943) (Album) Inducted 1999 KILLING ME SOFTLY WITH HIS SONG Roberta Flack Atlantic (1973) (Single) Inducted 1999 KIND OF BLUE Miles Davis Columbia (1959) (Album) Inducted 1992 THE KING AND I Original Broadway Cast (Yul Brynner, Gertrude Lawrence) Decca (1951) (Album) Inducted 2000 KING OF THE ROAD Roger Miller Smash (1965) (Single) Inducted 1999 KING PORTER (STOMP) Benny Goodman and His Orchestra Victor (1935) (Single) Inducted 2008 KISS AN ANGEL GOOD MORNIN' Charley Pride RCA Victor (1971) (Single) Inducted 2024 KISS ME, KATE Original Broadway Cast (Alfred Drake, Patricia Morison) Columbia (1949) (Album) Inducted 1998 KO KO Charlie Parker's Ri Bop Boys Savoy (1945) (Single) Inducted 2019 KO-KO Duke Ellington & His Famous Orchestra Victor (1940) (Single) Inducted 2011 THE KÖLN CONCERT Keith Jarrett ECM (1975) (Album) Inducted 2011 KORNGOLD: VIOLIN CONCERTO Jascha Heifetz with Alfred Wallenstein cond. Los Angeles Philharmonic RCA Victor (1949) (Album) Inducted 2008 KRISTOFFERSON Kris Kristofferson Monument (1970) (Album) Inducted 2014 "LA BAMBA" El Jarocho Victor (1939) (Single) Inducted 2019 LA BAMBA Ritchie Valens Del-Fi (1958) (Single) Inducted 2000 LA VIE EN ROSE Edith Piaf Columbia (1950) (Single) Inducted 1998 LADY IN SATIN Billie Holiday Columbia (1958) (Album) Inducted 2000 LADY MARMALADE LaBelle Epic (1975) (Single) Inducted 2003 LADY SINGS THE BLUES Billie Holiday Clef (1956) (Album) Inducted 2017 LAST DATE Floyd Cramer RCA (1960) (Single) Inducted 2004 LAURA NYRO Laura Nyro Verve (1966) (Album) Inducted 1999 LAYLA Derek And The Dominos Atco (1971) (Single) Inducted 1998 LAYLA AND OTHER ASSORTED LOVE SONGS Derek And The Dominos Atco (1970) (Album) Inducted 2000 LAZY RIVER Louis Armstrong Okeh (1931) (Single) Inducted 2010 LE FREAK Chic Atlantic (1978) (Single) Inducted 2015 LEAN ON ME Bill Withers Sussex (1972) (Single) Inducted 2007 LED ZEPPELIN Led Zeppelin Atlantic (1969) (Album) Inducted 2004 LED ZEPPELIN IV Led Zeppelin Atlantic (1971) (Album) Inducted 1999 LEONCAVALLO: PAGLIACCI, ACT I: VESTI LA GIUBBA Enrico Caruso Victrola (1907) (Single) Inducted 1975 LESTER LEAPS IN Count Basie's Kansas City 7 Featuring Lester Young Vocalion (1939) (Single) Inducted 2005 LET IT BE The Beatles Apple (1970) (Single) Inducted 2004 LET IT BLEED The Rolling Stones London (1969) (Album) Inducted 2005 LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five Decca (1946) (Single) Inducted 2009 LET'S GET IT ON Marvin Gaye Tamla (1973) (Album) Inducted 2004 LET'S HAVE A PARTY Wanda Jackson Capitol (1960) (Single) Inducted 2024 LET'S STAY TOGETHER Al Green Hi (1971) (Single) Inducted 1999 THE LETTER The Box Tops Mala (1967) (Single) Inducted 2011 LICENSED TO ILL Beastie Boys Def Jam (1986) Album Inducted 2021 LIGHT MY FIRE The Doors Elektra (1967) (Track) Inducted 1998 LIKE A ROLLING STONE Bob Dylan Columbia (1965) (Single) Inducted 1998 LISZT: SONATA IN B MINOR Vladimir Horowitz RCA Victor (1932) (Album) Inducted 2008 THE LITTLE OLD LOG CABIN IN THE LANE Fiddlin' John Carson Okeh (1923) (Single) Inducted 1998 LIVE AT THE APOLLO James Brown King (1962) (Album) Inducted 1998 LIVE AT THE REGAL B.B. King ABC Paramount (1965) (Album) Inducted 2006 THE LOCO-MOTION Little Eva Dimension (1962) (Single) Inducted 2016 LONDON CALLING The Clash Epic (1979) (Album) Inducted 2007 THE LONELY BULL The Tijuana Brass Featuring Herb Alpert A&M (1962) (Single) Inducted 1998 LONELY TEARDROPS Jackie Wilson Brunswick (1958) (Single) Inducted 1999 LONG TALL SALLY Little Richard Specialty (1956) (Single) Inducted 1999 THE LOOK OF LOVE Dusty Springfield RCA (1967) (Single) Inducted 2008 LOSING MY RELIGION R.E.M. Warner Bros. (1991) (Single) Inducted 2017 LOST IN THE STARS Original Broadway Cast Decca (1949) (Album) Inducted 2013 LOUIE LOUIE The Kingsmen Wand (1963) (Single) Inducted 1999 LOUIS ARMSTRONG PLAYS W. C. HANDY Louis Armstrong & His All-Stars Columbia (1954) (Album) Inducted 2010 LOVE IS STRANGE Mickey And Sylvia Groove/RCA (1957) (Single) Inducted 2004 LOVE ME OR LEAVE ME Ruth Etting Columbia (1928) (Single) Inducted 2005 A LOVE SUPREME John Coltrane Impulse (1964) (Album) Inducted 1999 LOVE THEME FROM THE GODFATHER Carlo Savina Paramount (1972) (Track) Inducted 2009 LOVE TRAIN The O'Jays Philadelphia International (1973) (Single) Inducted 2006 LOVER MAN (OH, WHERE CAN YOU BE?) Billie Holiday Decca (1945) (Single) Inducted 1989 LOVESICK BLUES Emmett Miller & His Georgia Crackers Okeh (1928) (Single) Inducted 2007 LOVESICK BLUES Hank Williams With His Drifting Cowboys MGM (1949) (Single) Inducted 2011 THE LOW END THEORY A Tribe Called Quest Jive (1991) Album Inducted 2021 LOW RIDER War United Artists (1975) (Single) Inducted 2014 LUCILLE Little Richard Specialty (1957) (Single) Inducted 2002 LULLABY OF BROADWAY Dick Powell Brunswick (1935) (Single) Inducted 2005 LUSH LIFE John Coltrane Prestige (1961) (Album) Inducted 2016 LUSH LIFE John Coltrane And Johnny Hartman Impulse (1963) (Single) Inducted 2000 BACK TO TOP MACK THE KNIFE Louis Armstrong & The All-Stars Columbia (1955) (Single) Inducted 1997 MACK THE KNIFE Bobby Darin Atco (1959) (Single) Inducted 1999 MAD DOGS & ENGLISHMEN Joe Cocker A&M (1970) Album Inducted 2021 MAGGIE MAY Rod Stewart Mercury (1971) (Single) Inducted 2017 MAHLER: DAS LIED VON DER ERDE Bruno Walter cond. Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra With Kathleen Ferrier & Julius Patzak London (1952) (Album) Inducted 1981 MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO.1 IN D MAJOR "TITAN" Dimitri Mitropoulos cond. Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra Columbia (1941) (Album) Inducted 1999 MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO. 2 Otto Klemperer cond. Philharmonia Orchestra EMI-Angel (1963) (Album) Inducted 2008 MAHLER: SYMPHONY NO. 8 IN E FLAT MAJOR (THE SYMPHONY OF A THOUSAND) Georg Solti cond. Chicago Symphony; Balatsch, dir. Chorus Of The Vienna State Opera; Froschauer dir. Vienna Singverein London (1972) (Album) Inducted 1998 MAHLER: THE COMPLETE SYMPHONIES Leonard Bernstein cond. New York Philharmonic, London Symphony Columbia (1967) (Album) Inducted 2002 MAIDEN VOYAGE Herbie Hancock Blue Note (1965) (Album) Inducted 1999 MAKE THE WORLD GO AWAY Eddy Arnold RCA (1965) (Single) Inducted 1999 MAMA TRIED Merle Haggard Capitol (1968) (Single) Inducted 1999 MAN OF LA MANCHA Original Broadway Cast (Richard Kiley, Irving Jacobson, Joan Diener, Robert Rounseville, Ray Middleton) Kapp (1965) (Album) Inducted 2009 MANHATTAN TOWER Gordon Jenkins & His Orchestra Capitol (1956) (Album) Inducted 1998 MANTECA Dizzy Gillespie & His Orchestra Victor (1947) (Single) Inducted 1999 MANY RIVERS TO CROSS Jimmy Cliff A&M (1969) (Single) Inducted 2011 MARGARITAVILLE Jimmy Buffett ABC (1977) (Single) Inducted 2016 MARIE Tommy Dorsey And His Orchestra; Jack Leonard, Vocal Victor (1937) (Single) Inducted 1998 MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB Thomas Alva Edison N/A (1878) (Single) Inducted 2018 MARY POPPINS — ORIGINAL CAST SOUND TRACK Julie Andrews, Dick Van Dyke & Various Artists Buena Vista (1964) (Album) Inducted 2014 MATCH BOX BLUES Blind Lemon Jefferson Okeh (1927) (Single) Inducted 1999 MAYBELLENE Chuck Berry Chess (1955) (Single) Inducted 1988 MBUBE Solomon Linda & The Evening Birds Singer (1939) (Single) Inducted 2007 ME AND BOBBY MCGEE Janis Joplin Columbia (1971) (Single) Inducted 2002 ME AND MRS. JONES Billy Paul Philadelphia International (1972) (Single) Inducted 2018 MEET ME IN ST. LOUIS — SOUNDTRACK Judy Garland & Various Artists Decca (1944) (Album) Inducted 2005 MEET THE BEATLES! The Beatles Capitol (1964) (Album) Inducted 2001 MENDELSSOHN: CONCERTO FOR VIOLIN IN E MINOR Fritz Kreisler; Leo Blech cond. Berlin State Opera Orchestra RCA Victor (1926) (Album) Inducted 1998 MERCY MERCY ME (THE ECOLOGY) Marvin Gaye Tamla (1971) (Single) Inducted 2002 MERCY, MERCY, MERCY! LIVE AT "THE CLUB" The Cannonball Adderley Quintet Capitol (1967) Album Inducted 2021 THE MESSAGE Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five featuring Melle Mel & Duke Bootee Sugar Hill (1982) (Single) Inducted 2012 MEXICANTOS Los Panchos Coda (1945) (Album) Inducted 2012 MIDNIGHT SPECIAL Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter With The Golden Gate Quartet Victor (1940) (Album) Inducted 2002 MIDNIGHT TRAIN TO GEORGIA Gladys Knight And The Pips Buddah (1973) (Single) Inducted 1999 MILES AHEAD Miles Davis +19, Gil Evans cond. Columbia (1957) (Album) Inducted 1994 MILES SMILES Miles Davis Quintet Columbia (1967) (Album) Inducted 2016 MILESTONES Miles Davis Sextet Columbia (1958) (Album) Inducted 2004 MINGUS AH UM Charles Mingus Columbia (1959) (Album) Inducted 2013 MINGUS DYNASTY Charles Mingus Columbia (1959) (Album) Inducted 1999 MINNIE THE MOOCHER Cab Calloway & His Orchestra Brunswick (1931) (Single) Inducted 1999 THE MISEDUCATION OF LAURYN HILL Lauryn Hill Ruffhouse/Columbia (1998) (Album) Inducted 2024 MISERLOU Dick Dale And The Del-Tones Deltone (1962) (Single) Inducted 2020 MISSION—IMPOSSIBLE Lalo Schifrin Dot (1967) (Single) Inducted 2017 MISTY Erroll Garner Trio Mercury (1954) (Single) Inducted 1991 MISTY Johnny Mathis Columbia (1959) (Single) Inducted 2002 MOANIN' Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers Blue Note (1957) (Album) Inducted 2001 MOANIN' Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers Blue Note (1958) (Single) Inducted 1998 MODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY AND WESTERN MUSIC Ray Charles ABC-Paramount (1962) (Album) Inducted 1999 MONA LISA Nat "King" Cole Capitol (1950) (Single) Inducted 1992 MONDAY, MONDAY The Mamas And The Papas Dunhill (1966) (Single) Inducted 2008 MONEY HONEY Clyde McPhatter and the Drifters Atlantic (1953) (Single) Inducted 1999 MONK'S MUSIC Thelonious Monk Featuring Coleman Hawkins & John Coltrane Riverside (1957) (Album) Inducted 2001 MOOD INDIGO Duke Ellington Brunswick (1931) (Single) Inducted 1975 MOODY'S MOOD FOR LOVE James Moody Prestige (1952) (Single) Inducted 2001 MOON RIVER Henry Mancini RCA (1961) (Single) Inducted 1999 MOON RIVER Andy Williams Columbia (1962) (Track from <em>Moon River & Other Great Movie Themes</em>) Inducted 2018 MOONDANCE Van Morrison Warner Bros. (1970) (Album) Inducted 1999 MOONGLOW Benny Goodman Quartet Victor (1936) (Single) Inducted 1998 MOONLIGHT SERENADE Glenn Miller And His Orchestra Bluebird (1939) (Single) Inducted 1991 MOVE ON UP Curtis Mayfield Curtom (1972) (Single) Inducted 2019 MOVE ON UP A LITTLE HIGHER Mahalia Jackson Apollo (1948) (Single) Inducted 1998 MOZART: DIE ZAUBERFLÖTE Sir Thomas Beecham cond. Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra; Berger, Lemnitz, Roswaenge, Strienz & Others RCA Victor (1938) (Album) Inducted 1999 MR. BOJANGLES Nitty Gritty Dirt Band Liberty (1970) (Single) Inducted 2010 MR. FANTASY Traffic United (1968) (Album) Inducted 1999 MR. SANDMAN The Chordettes Cadence (1954) (Single) Inducted 2002 MR. TAMBOURINE MAN The Byrds Columbia (1965) (Single) Inducted 1998 MR. TAMBOURINE MAN Bob Dylan Columbia (1965) (Track) Inducted 2002 MRS. ROBINSON Simon & Garfunkel Columbia (1968) (Single) Inducted 1999 MULE SKINNER BLUES Bill Monroe And His Blue Grass Boys Bluebird (1940) (Single) Inducted 2009 MUSIC FROM BIG PINK The Band Capitol (1968) (Album) Inducted 1998 THE MUSIC FROM PETER GUNN Henry Mancini, Conductor RCA Victor (1959) (Album) Inducted 1998 THE MUSIC MAN Original Broadway Cast (Robert Preston, Barbara Cook) Capitol (1958) (Album) Inducted 1998 MUSIC OF ALBÉNIZ & GRANADOS Andres Segovia Decca (1944) (Album) Inducted 1998 MUSSORGSKY: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION Vladimir Horowitz RCA (1951) (Album) Inducted 1999 MUSSORGSKY: PICTURES AT AN EXHIBITION Rafael Kubelik cond. Chicago Symphony Orchestra Mercury (1951) (Album) Inducted 1998 MUSSORGSKY: SONG OF THE FLEA Feodor Chaliapin Victor (1926) (Single) Inducted 1999 MUSTANG SALLY Wilson Pickett Atlantic (1967) (Single) Inducted 2000 MY AIM IS TRUE Elvis Costello Columbia (1977) (Album) Inducted 2007 MY BLACK MAMA (PARTS 1 & 2) Son House Paramount (1930) (Single) Inducted 2013 MY BLUE HEAVEN Gene Austin Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 1978 MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE Marian Anderson Victor (1939) (Single) Inducted 2009 MY FAIR LADY Original Broadway Cast (Rex Harrison, Julie Andrews) Columbia (1956) (Album) Inducted 1977 MY FAVORITE THINGS John Coltrane Quartet Atlantic (1961) (Album) Inducted 1998 MY GENERATION The Who Decca (1965) (Single) Inducted 1999 MY GIRL The Temptations Gordy (1965) (Single) Inducted 1998 MY GUY Mary Wells Motown (1964) (Single) Inducted 1999 MY HEART BELONGS TO DADDY Mary Martin Decca (1938) (Single) Inducted 2007 MY MAMMY Al Jolson Brunswick (1927) (Single) Inducted 2011 MY MAN (FROM ZIEGFELD FOLLIES OF 1921) Fanny Brice Victor (1922) (Single) Inducted 1999 MY MAN Billie Holiday Brunswick (1937) (Single) Inducted 2018 MY WAY Frank Sinatra Reprise (1969) (Single) Inducted 2000 BACK TO TOP A NATURAL WOMAN (YOU MAKE ME FEEL LIKE) Aretha Franklin Atlantic (1967) (Single) Inducted 1999 NATURE BOY Nat "King" Cole Capitol (1948) (Single) Inducted 1999 NEAR YOU Francis Craig And His Orchestra Bullet (1947) (Single) Inducted 2013 NEGRO SINFUL SONGS Huddie "Leadbelly" Ledbetter Musicraft (1939) (Album) Inducted 1998 NEVER MIND THE BOLLOCKS, HERE'S THE SEX PISTOLS Sex Pistols Warner Bros. (1977) (Album) Inducted 2015 NEVERMIND Nirvana DGC (1991) (Album) Inducted 2018 NEW SAN ANTONIO ROSE Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys Okeh (1940) (Single) Inducted 1998 NICK OF TIME Bonnie Raitt Capitol (1989) (Album) Inducted 2015 NIGHT AND DAY Leo Reisman And His Orchestra; Vocal Refrain By Fred Astaire RCA Victor (1932) (Single) Inducted 2004 A NIGHT AT BIRDLAND Art Blakey Quintet Blue Note (1954) (Album) Inducted 2000 A NIGHT AT THE OPERA Queen Elektra (1975) (Album) Inducted 2018 A NIGHT IN TUNISIA Dizzy Gillespie & His Sextet Victor (1946) (Single) Inducted 2004 NIGHT TRAIN Jimmy Forrest United (1952) (Single) Inducted 2006 NIGHTS IN WHITE SATIN The Moody Blues Deram (1972) (Single) Inducted 1999 1999 Prince Warner Bros. (1982) (Album) Inducted 2008 NO WOMAN, NO CRY Bob Marley & The Wailers Island (1975) (Single) Inducted 2005 NOBODY Bert Williams Columbia (1906) (Single) Inducted 1981 NOBODY KNOWS THE TROUBLE I'VE SEEN Louis Armstrong Decca (1938) (Single) Inducted 2014 NOW HE SINGS, NOW HE SOBS Chick Corea Blue Note (1968) (Single) Inducted 1999 NUAGES Django Reinhardt And Stephane Grappelli With The Quintet Of The Hot Club Of France Decca (1946) (Single) Inducted 2000 BACK TO TOP ODE TO BILLIE JOE Bobbie Gentry Capitol (1967) (Single) Inducted 1999 OFF THE WALL Michael Jackson Epic (1979) (Album) Inducted 2008 OH HAPPY DAY Edwin Hawkins Singers Buddah (1969) (Single) Inducted 1999 OH MARY DON'T YOU WEEP Swan Silvertones Vee Jay (1959) (Single) Inducted 2020 OH, PRETTY WOMAN Roy Orbison Monument (1964) (Single) Inducted 1999 OHIO Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young Atlantic (1970) (Single) Inducted 2009 OKIE FROM MUSKOGEE Merle Haggard Capitol (1969) (Album) Inducted 2017 OKLAHOMA! Original Broadway Cast (Alfred Drake, Joan Roberts, Howard DaSilva) Decca (1943) (Album) Inducted 1976 OL' MAN RIVER Paul Robeson With Paul Whiteman & His Concert Orchestra Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 2006 OLIVER! Original Broadway Cast RCA Victor (1962) (Album) Inducted 2008 ON BROADWAY The Drifters Atlantic (1963) (Single) Inducted 2013 ON THE ROAD AGAIN Willie Nelson CBS (1980) (Single) Inducted 2011 ONE FOR MY BABY Frank Sinatra Capitol (1958) (Single) Inducted 2005 ONE LOVE Bob Marley & The Wailers Coxsone (1965) (Single) Inducted 2007 ONE O'CLOCK JUMP Count Basie Decca (1937) (Single) Inducted 1979 ONLY THE LONELY (KNOW HOW I FEEL) Roy Orbison Monument (1960) (Single) Inducted 1999 ONLY YOU (AND YOU ALONE) The Platters Mercury (1955) (Single) Inducted 1999 ORNITHOLOGY Charlie Parker Sextet Dial (1946) (Single) Inducted 1989 ORY'S CREOLE TROMBONE Kid Ory's Creole Orchestra (As Spike's Seven Pods of Pepper Orchestra) Nordskog (1922) (Single) Inducted 2024 OVER THE RAINBOW Judy Garland Decca (1939) (Single) Inducted 1981 OVER THERE Nora Bayes Victor (1917) (Single) Inducted 2008 OYE COMO VA Tito Puente Tico (1953) (Single) Inducted 2002 BACK TO TOP PAINT IT, BLACK The Rolling Stones London (1966) (Single) Inducted 2018 PAN AMERICAN BLUES DeFord Bailey Brunswick (1927) (Single) Inducted 2007 PANCHO AND LEFTY Willie Nelson And Merle Haggard Epic (1982) (Single) Inducted 2020 PAPA WAS A ROLLIN' STONE The Temptations Gordy (1972) (Single) Inducted 1999 PAPA'S GOT A BRAND NEW BAG (PART I) James Brown King (1965) (Single) Inducted 1999 PAPER DOLL Mills Brothers Decca (1943) (Single) Inducted 1998 PARSLEY, SAGE, ROSEMARY & THYME Simon & Garfunkel Columbia (1966) (Album) Inducted 1999 PATA PATA Miriam Makeba Reprise (1967) (Single) Inducted 2019 PEACE BE STILL Rev. James Cleveland Savoy (1962) (Album) Inducted 1999 PEARL Janis Joplin Columbia (1971) (Album) Inducted 2010 PEG O' MY HEART The Harmonicats Vitacoustic (1947) (Single) Inducted 1999 PEGGY SUE Buddy Holly Coral (1957) (Single) Inducted 1999 PENNIES FROM HEAVEN Bing Crosby Decca (1936) (Single) Inducted 2004 PENNY LANE The Beatles Capitol (1967) (Single) Inducted 2011 PEOPLE Barbra Streisand Columbia (1964) (Single) Inducted 1998 PEOPLE GET READY The Impressions ABC-Paramount (1965) (Single) Inducted 1998 PET SOUNDS The Beach Boys Capitol (1966) (Album) Inducted 1998 PETER GUNN Henry Mancini RCA (1959) (Track) Inducted 2005 PIANO MAN Billy Joel Columbia (1973) (Single) Inducted 2013 PIANO RAGS BY SCOTT JOPLIN Joshua Rifkin Nonesuch (1970) (Album) Inducted 2020 PIECE OF MY HEART Big Brother & The Holding Company (Featuring Janis Joplin) Columbia (1968) (Single) Inducted 1999 PINE TOP'S BOOGIE WOOGIE Pine Top Smith Vocalion (1928) (Single) Inducted 1983 THE PINK PANTHER Henry Mancini RCA (1964) (Album) Inducted 2001 PINOCCHIO — SOUNDTRACK Various Artists Victor (1940) (Album) Inducted 2002 PISTOL PACKIN' MAMA Al Dexter Okeh (1943) (Single) Inducted 2000 THE PLAY OF DANIEL New York Pro Musica, Noah Greenberg, Director Decca (1958) (Album) Inducted 1998 PLEASE MR. POSTMAN The Marvelettes Tamla (1961) (Single) Inducted 2011 PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE James Brown & The Famous Flames Federal (1956) (Single) Inducted 2001 PLEASE SEND ME SOMEONE TO LOVE Percy Mayfield Specialty (1950) (Single) Inducted 1999 PONY BLUES Charley Patton Paramount (1929) (Single) Inducted 1999 PORGY AND BESS Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald Verve (1958) (Album) Inducted 2001 PORGY AND BESS Miles Davis & Gil Evans Columbia (1958) (Album) Inducted 2000 PORGY AND BESS Alexander Smallens cond. (Lawrence Tibbett, Helen Jepson, The Original Orchestra And Chorus; "Under The Supervision Of The Composer") Victor (1935) (Album) Inducted 2002 PORGY & BESS, SELECTIONS FROM GEORGE GERSHWIN'S FOLK OPERA Original Broadway Cast (Todd Duncan, Anne Brown) Decca (1940–42) (Album) Inducted 1990 PORTRAIT IN JAZZ Bill Evans Trio Riverside (1960) (Album) Inducted 2007 PRECIOUS LORD, TAKE MY HAND Mahalia Jackson Columbia (1956) (Single) Inducted 2012 PRETENDERS The Pretenders Sire (1980) (Album) Inducted 2016 THE PRISONER'S SONG Vernon Dalhart Victor (1925) (Single) Inducted 1998 PROKOFIEV: PETER AND THE WOLF (OPUS 67) Serge Koussevitzky cond. Boston Symphony Orchestra; Richard Hale, narrator Victor (Red Seal) (1939) (Album) Inducted 2008 PROKOFIEV: PIANO CONCERTO NO. 3 IN C MAJOR, OP.26 Sergei Prokofiev, piano; Piero Coppola cond. The London Symphony Orchestra His Master's Voice (1932) (Album) Inducted 2009 PROUD MARY Creedence Clearwater Revival Fantasy (1969) (Single) Inducted 1998 PROUD MARY Ike & Tina Turner Liberty (1971) (Single) Inducted 2003 PUCCINI: LA BOHÈME Sir Thomas Beecham cond., Soloists: de Los Angeles, Bjöerling, Merrill, Tozzi, Amara RCA Victor (1956) (Album) Inducted 2000 PUCCINI: TOSCA Victor DeSabata cond. Orchestra & Chorus Of Teatro Alla Scala, Milan; Maria Callas, Giuseppe DiStefano, Tito Gobbi Angel (1953) (Album) Inducted 1987 PURPLE HAZE The Jimi Hendrix Experience Reprise (1967) (Single) Inducted 2000 PURPLE RAIN Prince & The Revolution Warner Bros. (1984) (Album) Inducted 2011 PUTTIN' ON THE RITZ Harry Richman With Earl Burtnett And His Los Angeles Biltmore Hotel Orchestra Brunswick (1930) (Single) Inducted 2005 BACK TO TOP Q: ARE WE NOT MEN? A: WE ARE DEVO! Devo Warner Bros. (1978) (Album) Inducted 2020 QUE SERA, SERA (WHATEVER WILL BE, WILL BE) Doris Day Columbia (1956) (Single) Inducted 2012 BACK TO TOP RACHMANINOFF: PIANO CONCERTO NO. 2 IN C MINOR Sergei Rachmaninoff (Piano), Leopold Stokowski cond. Philadelphia Orchestra RCA Victor (1929) (Album) Inducted 1976 RACHMANINOFF: RHAPSODY ON A THEME OF PAGANINI Sergei Rachmaninoff (Piano), Leopold Stokowski cond. Philadelphia Orchestra RCA Victor (1934) (Album) Inducted 1979 RAINDROPS KEEP FALLIN' ON MY HEAD B. J. Thomas Scepter (1969) (Single) Inducted 2014 RAMONES Ramones Sire (1976) (Album) Inducted 2007 RANDY NEWMAN Randy Newman Reprise (1968) (Album) Inducted 2016 RAPPER'S DELIGHT Sugarhill Gang Sugar Hill (1979) (Single) Inducted 2014 RAUNCHY Bill Justis And His Orchestra Phillips (1957) (Single) Inducted 1998 RAVEL: BOLERO Maurice Ravel cond. Lamoureux Orchestra Brunswick (1937) (Album) Inducted 1992 RAVEL: DAPHNIS ET CHLOE (COMPLETE BALLET) Charles Munch cond. Boston Symphony Orchestra RCA Victor (1955) (Album) Inducted 2008 RAVEL: PIANO CONCERTO IN G MAJOR Leonard Bernstein With The Philharmonia Orchestra Of London RCA Victor (1946) Album Inducted 2021 RAY CHARLES IN PERSON Ray Charles Atlantic (1959) (Album) Inducted 1999 REACH OUT I'LL BE THERE Four Tops Motown (1966) (Single) Inducted 1998 RED HEADED STRANGER Willie Nelson Columbia (1975) (Album) Inducted 2002 RELAXIN' WITH THE MILES DAVIS QUINTET Miles Davis Prestige (1958) (Album) Inducted 2014 RESCUE ME Fontella Bass Checker (1965) (Single) Inducted 2015 RESPECT Aretha Franklin Atlantic (1967) (Single) Inducted 1998 RESPECT YOURSELF The Staple Singers Stax (1971) (Single) Inducted 2002 THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED Gil Scott-Heron Flying Dutchman (1970) (Single) Inducted 2014 REVOLVER The Beatles Capitol (1966) (Album) Inducted 1999 RIDERS ON THE STORM The Doors Elektra (1971) (Single) Inducted 2010 RING OF FIRE Johnny Cash Columbia (1963) (Single) Inducted 1999 THE RISE AND FALL OF ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS David Bowie RCA (1972) (Album) Inducted 1999 RIVER DEEP, MOUNTAIN HIGH Ike & Tina Turner Philles (1966) (Single) Inducted 1999 ROCK-A-BYE YOUR BABY WITH A DIXIE MELODY Al Jolson Columbia (1918) (Single) Inducted 2004 ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK Bill Haley And The Comets Decca (1955) (Single) Inducted 1982 ROCK ISLAND LINE Lead Belly Asch (1942) (Single) Inducted 2016 ROCKET "88" Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats Chess (1951) (Single) Inducted 1998 ROCKIN' AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE Brenda Lee Decca (1958) (Single) Inducted 2019 ROCKIN' CHAIR Mildred Bailey Vocalion (1937) (Single) Inducted 2011 ROLL OVER BEETHOVEN Chuck Berry Chess (1956) (Single) Inducted 1990 ROLLIN' STONE Muddy Waters Chess (1950) (Single) Inducted 2000 'ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT Miles Davis Columbia (1957) (Album) Inducted 2019 'ROUND ABOUT MIDNIGHT Thelonious Monk Quintet Blue Note (1948) (Single) Inducted 1993 ROXANNE The Police A & M (1978) (Single) Inducted 2008 ROY HARRIS SYMPHONY NO. 3 Serge Koussevitzky, cond. Boston Symphony Orchestra RCA Victor (1940) (Album) Inducted 2012 RUBBER SOUL The Beatles Capitol (1965) (Album) Inducted 2000 RUDOLPH, THE RED-NOSED REINDEER Gene Autry Columbia (1949) (Single) Inducted 1985 RUMBLE Link Wray & His Ray Men Cadence (1958) (Single) Inducted 2019 RUMOURS Fleetwood Mac Warner Bros. (1977) (Album) Inducted 2003 RUNAROUND SUE Dion Laurie (1961) (Single) Inducted 2002 RUNAWAY Del Shannon Big Top (1961) (Single) Inducted 2002 BACK TO TOP SAN ANTONIO ROSE Bob Wills And His Texas Playboys Vocalion (1939) (Single) Inducted 2015 SANTANA Santana Columbia (1969) (Album) Inducted 2012 SARAH VAUGHAN Sarah Vaughan Mercury (1955) (Album) Inducted 1999 SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER — SOUNDTRACK Various Artists RSO (1977) (Album) Inducted 2004 SAVOY BLUES Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five Okeh (1927) (Single) Inducted 2018 SAXOPHONE COLOSSUS Sonny Rollins Quartet Prestige (1956) (Album) Inducted 1999 SCHOENBERG: GURRE-LIEDER Leopold Stokowski cond. Philadelphia Orchestra, Soloists, Choruses Victor (1932) (Album) Inducted 2007 SCHOENBERG: THE FOUR STRING QUARTETS Kolisch String Quartet Alco (1949) Album Inducted 2021 SCHOOL'S OUT Alice Cooper Warner Bros. (1972) (Single) Inducted 2015 SCHUBERT: AVE MARIA Marian Anderson RCA Victor (1936) (Single) Inducted 1999 SCHUMANN: CARNAVAL OP. 9 Sergei Rachmaninoff RCA Victor (1929) (Album) Inducted 2011 SECRET LOVE Doris Day Columbia (1953) (Single) Inducted 1999 SEE SEE RIDER BLUES Ma Rainey Paramount (1925) (Single) Inducted 2004 SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY Les Brown & His Orchestra; Doris Day, Vocal Columbia (1945) (Single) Inducted 1998 SEPTEMBER OF MY YEARS Frank Sinatra Reprise (1965) (Album) Inducted 1999 SEPTEMBER SONG Walter Huston Brunswick (1938) (Single) Inducted 1984 SGT. PEPPER'S LONELY HEARTS CLUB BAND The Beatles Capitol (1967) (Album) Inducted 1993 SEVEN COME ELEVEN Benny Goodman Sextet Columbia (1940) (Single) Inducted 2008 SH-BOOM The Chords Cat (1954) (Single) Inducted 2008 SHAKE, RATTLE AND ROLL Joe Turner Atlantic (1954) (Single) Inducted 1998 THE SHAPE OF JAZZ TO COME Ornette Coleman Atlantic (1959) (Album) Inducted 2015 SHE THINKS I STILL CARE George Jones United Artists (1962) (Single) Inducted 1999 SHE'S ABOUT A MOVER Sir Douglas Quintet Tribe (1965) (Single) Inducted 2016 SHE'S NOT THERE The Zombies Parrot (1964) (Single) Inducted 2016 SHINING STAR Earth, Wind & Fire Columbia (1975) (Single) Inducted 2008 SHOP AROUND The Miracles Tamla (1960) (Single) Inducted 2006 SHOSTAKOVICH: CELLO CONCERTO NO. 1 IN E FLAT, OP. 107 Eugene Ormandy cond. Philadelphia Orchestra; Mstislav Rostropovich, cellist Columbia (1960) (Album) Inducted 2008 SHOSTAKOVICH: SYMPHONY NO. 5 Leonard Bernstein cond. New York Philharmonic Columbia (1959) (Album) Inducted 2007 SHOSTAKOVICH: VIOLIN CONCERTO NO. 1 IN A MINOR, OP. 99 David Oistrakh; Dimitri Mitropoulos cond. New York Philharmonic Columbia (1956) (Album) Inducted 2003 SHOTGUN Jr. Walker And The All-Stars Soul (1965) (Single) Inducted 2002 SHOUT — PART I The Isley Brothers RCA (1959) (Single) Inducted 1999 SHOW BOAT Original Cast (Paul Robeson, Helen Morgan, James Melton) Brunswick (1932) (Album) Inducted 1991 THE SIDEWINDER Lee Morgan Blue Note (1956) (Album) Inducted 2000 SIGN "O" THE TIMES Prince Paisley Park/Warner Bros. (1987) (Album) Inducted 2017 SINCERELY The Moonglows Chess (1955) (Single) Inducted 2002 SING A SONG OF BASIE Lambert, Hendricks And Ross ABC-Paramount (1957) (Album) Inducted 1998 SING, SING, SING Benny Goodman Victor (1937) (Single) Inducted 1982 SINGIN' IN THE RAIN (FROM THE SOUNDTRACK) Gene Kelly MGM (1952) (Single) Inducted 1999 SINGIN' THE BLUES Frankie Trumbauer And His Orchestra Featuring Bix Beiderbecke On Cornet Okeh (1927) (Single) Inducted 1977 (SITTIN' ON) THE DOCK OF THE BAY Otis Redding Volt (1968) (Single) Inducted 1998 SITTIN' ON TOP OF THE WORLD The Mississippi Sheiks Okeh (1930) (Single) Inducted 2008 SIXTEEN TONS Tennessee Ernie Ford Capitol (1955) (Single) Inducted 1998 SIXTY MINUTE MAN The Dominoes Federal (1951) (Single) Inducted 2015 SKETCHES OF SPAIN Miles Davis And Gil Evans Columbia (1959) (Album) Inducted 1997 SMELLS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT Nirvana DGC (1991) (Single) Inducted 2017 SMOKE GETS IN YOUR EYES The Platters Mercury (1958) (Single) Inducted 2019 SMOKE ON THE WATER Deep Purple Warner Bros. (1973) (Single) Inducted 2017 SMOKESTACK LIGHTNING Howlin' Wolf Chess (1956) (Single) Inducted 1999 SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS — SOUNDTRACK Various Artists Victor (1938) (Album) Inducted 1998 SO Peter Gabriel Geffen (1986) Album Inducted 2021 SOCIETY'S CHILD (BABY I'VE BEEN THINKING) Janis Ian Verve (1967) (Single) Inducted 2002 SOLITUDE Billie Holiday OKeh (1941) Single Inducted 2021 SOME OF THESE DAYS Sophie Tucker Edison (1911) (Single) Inducted 1995 SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME Gertrude Lawrence Victor (1927) (Single) Inducted 2008 SOMEWHERE A VOICE IS CALLING John McCormack Victor (1915) (Single) Inducted 1999 SONG FOR MY FATHER The Horace Silver Quintet Blue Note (1965) (Album) Inducted 1999 A SONG FOR YOU Leon Russell Shelter (1970) (Single) Inducted 2018 SONGS FOR SWINGIN' LOVERS! Frank Sinatra Capitol (1956) (Album) Inducted 2000 SONGS IN THE KEY OF LIFE Stevie Wonder Tamla (1976) (Album) Inducted 2002 SONGS OF LEONARD COHEN Leonard Cohen Columbia (1967) (Album) Inducted 2015 SONNY BOY Al Jolson Brunswick (1928) (Single) Inducted 2002 SOUL MAN Sam And Dave Stax (1967) (Single) Inducted 1999 THE SOUND OF MUSIC — SOUNDTRACK Julie Andrews & Various Artists RCA (1965) (Album) Inducted 1998 THE SOUNDS OF SILENCE Simon & Garfunkel Columbia (1965) (Single) Inducted 2004 SOUTH PACIFIC Original Broadway Cast (Ezio Pinza, Mary Martin) Columbia (1949) (Album) Inducted 1987 SPACE ODDITY David Bowie Mercury (1969) (Track from <em>Space Oddity</em>) Inducted 2018 SPANISH HARLEM Ben E. King Atco (1961) (Single) Inducted 2002 ST. LOUIS BLUES Louis Armstrong Okeh (1929) (Single) Inducted 2008 ST. LOUIS BLUES W.C. Handy Columbia (1914) (Single) Inducted 2019 ST. LOUIS BLUES Bessie Smith With Louis Armstrong Columbia (1925) (Single) Inducted 1993 ST. LOUIS WOMAN Original Broadway Cast Capitol (1946) (Album) Inducted 2012 STACK O'LEE BLUES Mississippi John Hurt Okeh (1928) (Single) Inducted 2017 STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN Led Zeppelin Atlantic (1971) (Track) Inducted 2003 STAN FREBERG PRESENTS THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Stan Freberg Capitol (1961) (Album) Inducted 1999 STAND! Sly & The Family Stone Epic (1969) (Album) Inducted 2015 STAND BY ME Ben E. King Atco (1961) (Single) Inducted 1998 STAND BY YOUR MAN Tammy Wynette Epic (1968) (Single) Inducted 1999 STAR DUST Louis Armstrong Okeh (1931) (Single) Inducted 2009 STAR DUST Hoagy Carmichael And His Pals Gennett (1927) (Single) Inducted 1995 STAR DUST Artie Shaw And His Orchestra RCA Victor (1940) (Single) Inducted 1988 THE STAR-SPANGLED BANNER Jimi Hendrix Cotillion (1970) (Track) Inducted 2009 STAR WARS — ORIGINAL MOTION PICTURE SOUNDTRACK John Williams cond. London Symphony Orchestra 20th Century (1977) (Album) Inducted 2007 STARDUST Willie Nelson Columbia (1978) (Album) Inducted 2015 THE STARS AND STRIPES FOREVER Sousa's Band Columbia (1897) (Single) Inducted 1998 STATESBORO BLUES Blind Willie McTell Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 2017 STEALIN', STEALIN' Memphis Jug Band Victor (1928) (Single) Inducted 2013 STEEL GUITAR RAG Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys Featuring Leon McAuliffe Vocalion (1936) (Single) Inducted 2011 STICKY FINGERS The Rolling Stones Rolling Stones (1971) (Album) Inducted 1999 STILL CRAZY AFTER ALL THESE YEARS Paul Simon Columbia (1975) (Album) Inducted 2003 STOP! IN THE NAME OF LOVE The Supremes Motown (1965) (Single) Inducted 2001 STORMY WEATHER Lena Horne RCA Victor (1942) (Single) Inducted 2000 STORMY WEATHER (KEEPS RAININ' ALL THE TIME) Ethel Waters Brunswick (1933) (Single) Inducted 2003 STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON N.W.A Ruthless/Priority (1988) (Album) Inducted 2017 STRAIGHTEN UP AND FLY RIGHT King Cole Trio Capitol (1944) (Single) Inducted 1998 STRANGE FRUIT Billie Holiday Commodore (1939) (Single) Inducted 1978 STRANGE THINGS HAPPENING EVERY DAY Sister Rosetta Tharpe Decca (1945) (Single) Inducted 2014 THE STRANGER Billy Joel Columbia (1977) (Album) Inducted 2008 STRANGERS IN THE NIGHT Frank Sinatra Reprise (1966) (Single) Inducted 2008 STRAUSS: ALSO SPRACH ZARATHUSTRA, OP. 30 Serge Koussevitzky cond. Boston Symphony Orchestra RCA Victor (1935) (Album) Inducted 2008 STRAUSS: DER ROSENKAVALIER, OP. 59 (ABRIDGED) Robert Heger cond. The Vienna State Opera Chorus & Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra; Lotte Lehmann, Elisabeth Schumann & Richard Mayr RCA Victor (1933) (Album) Inducted 2008 STRAUSS: DER ROSENKAVALIER Herbert von Karajan cond. Philharmonia Orchestra; Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, Christa Ludwig & Teresa Stich-Randall Angel (1957) (Album) Inducted 2008 STRAVINSKY: LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS Pierre Monteux cond. Boston Symphony RCA Victor (1951) (Album) Inducted 1993 STRAVINSKY: PETROUCHKA Ernest Ansermet cond. L'Orchestre de La Suisse Romande London (1950) (Album) Inducted 1999 STRAVINSKY: PETROUCHKA: LE SACRE DU PRINTEMPS Igor Stravinsky cond. Columbia Symphony Orchestra (Plus Spoken Reminiscing Apropos Of Le Sacre) Columbia (1961) (Album) Inducted 2000 STRAWBERRY FIELDS FOREVER The Beatles Capitol (1967) (Single) Inducted 1999 SUMMER IN THE CITY The Lovin' Spoonful Kama Sutra (1966) (Single) Inducted 1999 SUMMERTIME Sidney Bechet Blue Note (1939) (Single) Inducted 2011 SUMMERTIME BLUES Eddie Cochran Liberty (1958) (Single) Inducted 1999 SUNDAY AT THE VILLAGE VANGUARD Bill Evans Trio Riverside (1961) (Album) Inducted 2011 SUPERFLY Curtis Mayfield Curtom (1972) (Album) Inducted 1998 SUPERSTITION Stevie Wonder Tamla (1972) (Single) Inducted 1998 SURREALISTIC PILLOW Jefferson Airplane RCA Victor (1967) (Album) Inducted 1999 SUSPICIOUS MINDS Elvis Presley RCA Victor (1969) (Single) Inducted 1999 SWANEE Al Jolson Columbia (1920) (Single) Inducted 1998 SWEET BABY JAMES James Taylor Warner Bros. (1970) (Album) Inducted 2002 SWEET CAROLINE (GOOD TIMES NEVER SEEMED SO GOOD) Neil Diamond Uni (1969) (Single) Inducted 2020 SWEET DREAMS (ARE MADE OF THIS) Eurythmics RCA (1983) (Single) Inducted 2020 SWEET HOME ALABAMA Lynyrd Skynyrd Sounds Of The South/MCA (1974) (Single) Inducted 2009 SWEET HOME CHICAGO Robert Johnson Vocalion (1937) (Single) Inducted 2014 SWEETHEART OF THE RODEO The Byrds Columbia (1968) (Album) Inducted 2000 SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT Fisk Jubilee Singers Victor (1909) (Single) Inducted 2015 SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT Paul Robeson Victor (1926) (Single) Inducted 2015 SWINGING ON A STAR Bing Crosby Decca (1944) (Single) Inducted 2002 SWITCHED-ON BACH Wendy Carlos Columbia (1969) (Album) Inducted 1999 SYNCHRONICITY The Police A&M (1983) (Album) Inducted 2009 BACK TO TOP TAJ MAHAL Taj Mahal Columbia (1968) (Album) Inducted 2020 TAKE FIVE Dave Brubeck Quartet Columbia (1963) (Single) Inducted 1996 TAKE ME HOME, COUNTRY ROADS John Denver RCA (1971) (Single) Inducted 1998 TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME Edward Meeker With The Edison Orchestra Edison (1908) (Single) Inducted 2019 TAKE ME TO THE RIVER Al Green Hi (1974) (Track) Inducted 2011 TAKE THE "A" TRAIN Duke Ellington & His Orchestra Victor (1941) (Single) Inducted 1976 TALKING BOOK Stevie Wonder Tamla (1972) (Album) Inducted 1999 TAPESTRY Carole King Ode (1971) (Album) Inducted 1998 A TASTE OF HONEY Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass A&M (1965) (Single) Inducted 2008 TCHAIKOVSKY: 1812 OVERTURE/CAPRICCIO ITALIEN Antal Dorati And Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra (Yale Bells, West Point Cannon) Mercury (1956) (Album) Inducted 1998 TCHAIKOVSKY: CONCERTO NO. 1 IN B FLAT MINOR, OP. 23 Van Cliburn; Kiril Kondrashin cond. RCA Symphony Orchestra RCA Red Seal (1958) (Album) Inducted 2002 TCHAIKOVSKY: PIANO CONCERTO NO. 1 (LIVE PERFORMANCE) Vladimir Horowitz, Arturo Toscanini cond. NBC Orchestra RCA Victor (1943) (Album) Inducted 1998 TEA FOR TWO Art Tatum Decca (1939) (Single) Inducted 1986 TEACH ME TONIGHT Dinah Washington Mercury (1954) (Single) Inducted 1999 THE TEARS OF A CLOWN Smokey Robinson & The Miracles Tamla (1970) (Single) Inducted 2002 TELL IT LIKE IT IS Aaron Neville Par Lo (1966) (Single) Inducted 2015 TEN Pearl Jam Epic Associated (1991) Album Inducted 2021 TEN CENTS A DANCE Ruth Etting Columbia (1930) (Single) Inducted 1999 TENDERLY Sarah Vaughan Mercury (1947) (Single) Inducted 2019 THE TENNESSEE WALTZ Patti Page Mercury (1950) (Single) Inducted 1998 TENOR MADNESS Sonny Rollins Quartet Featuring John Coltrane Prestige (1956) (Single) Inducted 2019 TEQUILA The Champs Challenge (1958) (Single) Inducted 2001 TEXAS FLOOD Stevie Ray Vaughan And Double Trouble Epic (1983) Album Inducted 2021 THAT NIGGER'S CRAZY Richard Pryor Partee/Stax (1974) (Album) Inducted 2013 THAT'LL BE THE DAY The Crickets Brunswick (1957) (Single) Inducted 1998 THAT'S MY DESIRE Frankie Laine Mercury (1947) (Single) Inducted 1998 THAT'S THE WAY OF THE WORLD Earth, Wind & Fire Columbia (1975) (Album) Inducted 2004 THELONIOUS MONK WITH JOHN COLTRANE Thelonious Monk with John Coltrane Jazzland (1961) (Album) Inducted 2007 THEME FROM A SUMMER PLACE Percy Faith And His Orchestra Columbia (1960) (Single) Inducted 2000 THEME FROM NEW YORK, NEW YORK Frank Sinatra Reprise (1980) (Single) Inducted 2013 THEME FROM SHAFT Isaac Hayes Enterprise (1971) (Single) Inducted 1999 THERE GOES MY BABY The Drifters Atlantic (1959) (Single) Inducted 1998 THERE'S A RIOT GOIN' ON Sly & The Family Stone Epic (1971) (Album) Inducted 1999 THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKIN' Nancy Sinatra Reprise (1965) (Single) Inducted 2020 THEY CAN'T TAKE THAT AWAY FROM ME Fred Astaire With Johnny Green And His Orchestra Brunswick (1937) (Single) Inducted 2005 (THEY LONG TO BE) CLOSE TO YOU Carpenters A&M (1970) (Single) Inducted 2000 THE THIRD MAN THEME Anton Karas London (1950) (Single) Inducted 2006 THIS LAND IS YOUR LAND Woody Guthrie Asch (1947) (Single) Inducted 1989 THIS TRAIN Sister Rosetta Tharpe Decca (1939) (Single) Inducted 2016 3 O'CLOCK BLUES B.B. King RPM (1952) (Single) Inducted 2014 THE THRILL IS GONE B.B. King BluesWay (1969) (Single) Inducted 1998 THRILLER Michael Jackson Epic (1982) (Album) Inducted 2008 TILL THE END OF TIME Perry Como RCA Victor (1945) (Single) Inducted 1998 TIME OUT Dave Brubeck Quartet Columbia (1959) (Album) Inducted 2009 TIME IS ON MY SIDE Irma Thomas Imperial (1964) Single Inducted 2021 THE TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGIN' Bob Dylan Columbia (1964) (Track) Inducted 2013 TINY DANCER Elton John Uni (1972) (Single) Inducted 2020 TIPITINA Professor Longhair And His Blues Scholars Atlantic (1953) (Single) Inducted 1998 THE TITANIC Ernest V. "Pop" Stoneman Okeh (1924) (Single) Inducted 2013 TO BE YOUNG, GIFTED AND BLACK Nina Simone RCA Victor (1969) (Single) Inducted 2019 TOM DOOLEY Kingston Trio Capitol (1958) (Single) Inducted 1998 TOMMY The Who Decca (1969) (Album) Inducted 1998 TOP HAT, WHITE TIE AND TAILS Fred Astaire Brunswick (1935) (Single) Inducted 2008 THE TRACKS OF MY TEARS The Miracles Tamla (1965) (Single) Inducted 2007 TRIO Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris Warner Bros (1987) Album Inducted 2021 TRUMPET BLUES AND CANTABILE Harry James And His Orchestra Columbia (1942) (Album) Inducted 1999 TRY A LITTLE TENDERNESS Otis Redding Volt (1966) (Single) Inducted 2015 TUBULAR BELLS Mike Oldfield Virgin (1973) (Album) Inducted 2018 TUMBLING TUMBLEWEEDS Sons Of The Pioneers Decca (1934) (Single) Inducted 2002 TURN ON YOUR LOVE LIGHT Bobby "Blue" Bland Duke (1961) (Single) Inducted 1999 TURN! TURN! TURN! (TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON) The Byrds Columbia (1965) (Single) Inducted 2001 TUTTI-FRUTTI Little Richard Specialty (1955) (Single) Inducted 1998 THE TWIST Chubby Checker Parkway (1960) (Single) Inducted 2000 TWIST AND SHOUT The Isley Brothers Wand (1962) (Single) Inducted 2010 2000 AND THIRTEEN Carl Reiner & Mel Brooks Warner Bros. (1973) (Album) Inducted 1999 BACK TO TOP UN POCO LOCO Bud Powell Trio Blue Note (1951) (Single) Inducted 1999 UNCHAINED MELODY The Righteous Brothers Verve (1965) (Single) Inducted 2000 UNCLOUDY DAY The Staple Singers Vee-Jay (1956) (Single) Inducted 1999 UNDER THE BOARDWALK The Drifters Atlantic (1964) (Single) Inducted 2014 UNFORGETTABLE Nat "King" Cole Capitol (1951) (Single) Inducted 2000 UNFORGETTABLE Dinah Washington Mercury (1959) (Single) Inducted 2001 UP-UP AND AWAY The 5th Dimension Soul City (1967) (Single) Inducted 2003 BACK TO TOP VAYA CON DIOS (MAY GOD BE WITH YOU) Les Paul & Mary Ford Capitol (1953) (Single) Inducted 2005 THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO The Velvet Underground & Nico Verve (1967) (Album) Inducted 2008 VERDI: CELESTE AIDA Enrico Caruso Victor (1908) (Single) Inducted 1993 VERDI: OTELLO Arturo Toscanini cond. NBC Symphony; Herva Nelli, Ramon Vinay, Giuseppe Valdengo RCA Victor (1953) (Album) Inducted 2008 THE VERY THOUGHT OF YOU Ray Noble And His Orchestra Victor (1934) (Single) Inducted 2005 VILLA-LOBOS: BACHIANAS BRASILEIRAS NO. 5 — ARIA Bidú Sayão With Heitor Villa-Lobos cond. 'Cello Ensemble Columbia (1945) (Single) Inducted 1984 VIVALDI — THE FOUR SEASONS Louis Kaufman (Violinist) Concert Hall (1949) (Album) Inducted 2002 BACK TO TOP WABASH CANNONBALL Roy Acuff & His Smokey Mountain Boys Columbia (1947) (Single) Inducted 1998 WAGNER: DER RING DES NIBELUNGEN Georg Solti cond. Vienna Philharmonic; Windgassen, Nilsson, Hotter, Flagstad & Others London (1958–67) (Album) Inducted 1998 WAGNER: TRISTAN UND ISOLDE (COMPLETE) Wilhelm Furtwängler cond. Philharmonia Orchestra, Chorus Of Royal Opera House, Covent Garden/Flagstad, Thebom, Suthaus, Fischer-Dieskau RCA Victor (1953) (Album) Inducted 1988 WAKE UP LITTLE SUSIE The Everly Brothers Cadence (1957) (Single) Inducted 2017 WALK DON'T RUN The Ventures Dolton (1960) (Single) Inducted 2006 WALK ON BY Dionne Warwick Scepter (1964) (Single) Inducted 1998 WALK ON THE WILD SIDE Lou Reed RCA Victor (1972) (Single) Inducted 2015 WALK RIGHT IN Cannon's Jug Stompers Victor (1930) (Single) Inducted 2007 WALK THIS WAY Aerosmith Columbia (1975) (Single) Inducted 2019 WALK THIS WAY Run-D.M.C. Profile (1986) (Single) Inducted 2014 WALKIN' AFTER MIDNIGHT Patsy Cline Decca (1957) (Single) Inducted 2020 WALKING THE DOG Rufus Thomas Stax (1963) (Single) Inducted 2002 WALKING THE FLOOR OVER YOU Ernest Tubb Decca (1941) (Single) Inducted 1998 WALKING TO NEW ORLEANS Fats Domino Imperial (1960) (Single) Inducted 2011 THE WALL Pink Floyd Columbia (1979) (Album) Inducted 2008 THE WALLFLOWER (AKA ROLL WITH ME HENRY) Etta James Modern Records (1955) (Single) Inducted 2008 WALT DISNEY'S FANTASIA — SOUNDTRACK Leopold Stokowski, cond. The Philadelphia Orchestra Buena Vista (1956) (Album) Inducted 2004 WALTZ FOR DEBBY Bill Evans Trio Riverside (1961) (Album) Inducted 1998 THE WANDERER Dion Laurie (1961) (Single) Inducted 2017 WANTED! THE OUTLAWS Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Jessi Colter, Tompall Glaser RCA Victor (1976) (Album) Inducted 2007 WAR Edwin Starr Gordy (1970) (Single) Inducted 1999 WASTED DAYS AND WASTED NIGHTS Freddy Fender ABC-Dot (1975) (Single) Inducted 2012 WATERMELON MAN Mongo Santamaria Battle (1963) (Single) Inducted 1998 THE WAY WE WERE Barbra Streisand Columbia (1974) (Single) Inducted 2008 THE WAY YOU LOOK TONIGHT Fred Astaire Brunswick (1936) (Single) Inducted 1998 WE ARE FAMILY Sister Sledge Cotillion/Atlantic (1979) (Single) Inducted 2008 WE GOTTA GET OUT OF THIS PLACE The Animals MGM (1965) (Single) Inducted 2011 WE SHALL OVERCOME Pete Seeger Columbia (1963) (Album) Inducted 1999 WE ARE THE WORLD USA For Africa Columbia (1985) Single Inducted 2021 WEATHER BIRD Louis Armstrong & Earl Hines Okeh (1928) (Single) Inducted 2008 THE WEAVERS AT CARNEGIE HALL The Weavers Vanguard (1957) (Album) Inducted 1998 WEILL: THE THREEPENNY OPERA Theatre De Lys Production With Lotte Lenya MGM (1954) (Album) Inducted 1994 WEST END BLUES Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five Okeh (1928) (Single) Inducted 1974 WEST SIDE STORY Original Broadway Cast (Carol Lawrence, Larry Kert) Columbia (1958) (Album) Inducted 1991 WEST SIDE STORY — SOUNDTRACK Various Artists Columbia (1961) (Album) Inducted 2004 WE'VE ONLY JUST BEGUN Carpenters A&M (1970) (Single) Inducted 1998 WHAT A DIFF'RENCE A DAY MAKES Dinah Washington Mercury (1959) (Single) Inducted 1998 WHAT A FOOL BELIEVES The Doobie Brothers Warner Bros. (1978) (Single) Inducted 2024 WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD Louis Armstrong ABC (1967) (Single) Inducted 1999 (WHAT A) WONDERFUL WORLD Sam Cooke Keen (1960) (Single) Inducted 2014 (WHAT DID I DO TO BE SO) BLACK AND BLUE Louis Armstrong And His Orchestra Okeh (1929) (Single) Inducted 2016 WHAT KIND OF FOOL AM I? Sammy Davis Jr. Reprise (1962) (Single) Inducted 2002 WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE Jackie DeShannon Imperial (1965) (Single) Inducted 2008 WHAT'D I SAY (PART I) Ray Charles Atlantic (1959) (Single) Inducted 2000 WHAT'S GOING ON Marvin Gaye Tamla (1971) (Album) Inducted 1998 WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT Tina Turner Capitol (1984) (Single) Inducted 2012 WHEEL OF FORTUNE Kay Starr Capitol (1952) (Single) Inducted 1998 WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN Percy Sledge Atlantic (1966) (Single) Inducted 1999 WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS Kansas Joe And Memphis Minnie Columbia (1929) Single Inducted 2021 WHEN THE SAINTS GO MARCHING IN Louis Armstrong And His Orchestra Decca (1939) (Single) Inducted 2017 WHEN YOU WISH UPON A STAR Cliff Edwards Victor (1940) (Track) Inducted 2002 WHERE DID OUR LOVE GO? The Supremes Motown (1964) (Single) Inducted 1999 WHERE HAVE ALL THE FLOWERS GONE Pete Seeger Columbia (1964) (Single) Inducted 2002 WHISPERING Paul Whiteman And His Orchestra Victor (1920) (Single) Inducted 1998 WHITE CHRISTMAS Bing Crosby, The Ken Darby Singers Decca (1942) (Single) Inducted 1974 WHITE RABBIT Jefferson Airplane RCA (1967) (Single) Inducted 1998 A WHITER SHADE OF PALE Procol Harum Deram (1967) (Single) Inducted 1998 WHITNEY HOUSTON Whitney Houston Arista (1985) (Album) Inducted 2013 WHO DO YOU LOVE? Bo Diddley Checker (1956) (Single) Inducted 2010 WHOLE LOT OF SHAKIN' GOING ON Jerry Lee Lewis Sun (1957) (Single) Inducted 1999 WHOLE LOTTA LOVE Led Zeppelin Atlantic (1969) (Single) Inducted 2007 WHO'S NEXT The Who Decca (1971) (Album) Inducted 2007 WHY DO FOOLS FALL IN LOVE The Teenagers Featuring Frankie Lymon Gee (1955) (Single) Inducted 2001 WICHITA LINEMAN Glen Campbell Capitol (1968) (Single) Inducted 2000 THE WILD SIDE OF LIFE Hank Thompson And His Brazos Valley Boys Capitol (1952) (Single) Inducted 1999 WILD THING The Troggs Fontana/Atco (1966) (Single) Inducted 2019 THE WILDEST Louis Prima And Keely Smith Capitol (1957) (Album) Inducted 1999 WILDWOOD FLOWER The Carter Family RCA Victor (1929) (Single) Inducted 1999 WILL THE CIRCLE BE UNBROKEN Nitty Gritty Dirt Band United Artists (1972) (Album) Inducted 1998 WILL YOU LOVE ME TOMORROW The Shirelles Scepter (1960) (Single) Inducted 1999 WIPE OUT The Surfaris Dot (1963) (Single) Inducted 2020 WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS Joe Cocker A&M (1969) (Single) Inducted 2001 THE WIZARD OF OZ — MUSICAL AND DRAMATIC SELECTIONS RECORDED DIRECTLY FROM THE SOUNDTRACK OF MGM'S TECHNICOLOR FILM Judy Garland & Various Artists MGM Records (1956) (Album) Inducted 2006 WOODCHOPPER'S BALL Woody Herman And His Orchestra Decca (1939) (Single) Inducted 2002 WOODSTOCK — MUSIC FROM THE ORIGINAL SOUNDTRACK AND MORE Various Artists Cotillion (1970) (Album) Inducted 2014 WOOLY BULLY Sam The Sham & The Pharaohs MGM (1965) (Single) Inducted 2009 WORKINGMAN'S DEAD Grateful Dead Warner Bros. (1970) (Album) Inducted 1999 WORRIED LIFE BLUES Big Maceo (Merriweather) Bluebird (1941) (Single) Inducted 2006 WRECK OF THE OLD 97 Vernon Dalhart Victor (1924) Single Inducted 2021 BACK TO TOP YAKETY YAK The Coasters Atco (1958) (Single) Inducted 1999 YANKEE DOODLE BOY Billy Murray Columbia (1905) (Single) Inducted 2006 YARDBIRD SUITE Charlie Parker Septet Dial (1946) (Single) Inducted 2014 YESTERDAY The Beatles Capitol (1965) (Single) Inducted 1997 Y.M.C.A. Village People Casablanca (1978) Single Inducted 2021 YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONE YOU LOVE Mills Brothers Decca (1944) (Single) Inducted 2017 YOU ARE MY SUNSHINE Jimmie Davis Decca Records (1940) (Single) Inducted 1999 YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL Joe Cocker A&M (1974) (Single) Inducted 2016 YOU ARE THE SUNSHINE OF MY LIFE Stevie Wonder Tamla (1973) (Single) Inducted 2002 YOU BELONG TO ME Jo Stafford Columbia (1952) (Single) Inducted 1998 YOU DON'T MISS YOUR WATER William Bell Stax (1961) (Single) Inducted 2024 YOU DON'T OWN ME Lesley Gore Mercury (1963) (Single) Inducted 2017 YOU KEEP ME HANGIN' ON The Supremes Motown (1966) (Single) Inducted 1999 YOU MADE ME LOVE YOU (I DIDN'T WANT TO DO IT) Harry James & His Orchestra Columbia (1941) (Single) Inducted 2010 YOU REALLY GOT ME The Kinks Reprise (1964) (Single) Inducted 1999 YOU SEND ME Sam Cooke Keen (1957) (Single) Inducted 1998 YOUR CHEATIN' HEART Hank Williams MGM (1953) (Single) Inducted 1983 (YOUR LOVE KEEPS LIFTING ME) HIGHER AND HIGHER Jackie Wilson Brunswick (1967) (Single) Inducted 1999 YOUR SONG Elton John Uni (1970) (Single) Inducted 1998 YOU'RE SO VAIN Carly Simon Elektra (1973) (Single) Inducted 2004 YOU'RE THE TOP Ethel Merman Brunswick (1934) (Single) Inducted 2008 YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND Carole King Ode (1971) (Track) Inducted 2002 YOU'VE GOT A FRIEND James Taylor Warner Bros. (1971) (Single) Inducted 2001 YOU'VE LOST THAT LOVIN' FEELIN' The Righteous Brothers Philles (1964) (Single) Inducted 1998 YOU'VE REALLY GOT A HOLD ON ME The Miracles Tamla (1962) (Single) Inducted 1998 BACK TO TOP ZIP-A-DEE-DOO-DAH Johnny Mercer Capitol (1946) (Single) Inducted 2010 ZODIAC SUITE Mary Lou Williams Asch (1945) (Album) Inducted 2020 | |||||
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4334 | dbpedia | 1 | 14 | https://www.ronstadt-linda.com/artdis.htm | en | Linda Ronstadt | [
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] | null | [] | null | null | Linda Ronstadt is beautiful. She is also articulate, gracious, and a singer of overwhelming power. While success has come upon her swiftly, and she is still sorting out her impressions, there's no doubt about the impression she makes on audiences. Under her dark brunette bangs flash the eyes of the gypsy girl we'd all like to run away with. But in the middle of that round moon face is a nose that crinkles when she laughs, telling you she's really somebody's kid sister from down the block.
In performance she commits herself totally, something that just cannot be felt on recordings. Each number in the set builds until, in a finale of evangelical proportions, she sings Bob Dylan's "I Shall Be Released." It ends the set because nothing could possible follow it. She calls it the first hymn that Dylan ever wrote. The description fits. And, like Linda herself, the song resonates with the joy and pain of the people we meet in life who are lucky enough to be real.
Her band is not the original Stone Poneys, but a new group of young professionals she has gathered together, and they are a joy to watch. They really get on it in working with each other. There's John Forsha, guitar; John Ware, drummer; John Keski, bass; Herb Steiner, steel guitar; Bill Martin, piano. Steiner is a Jewish pixie and Martin is the wit of the group, combining Peter Sellers zaniness with an Orson Welles touch for the dramatic.
Let's start with some of the things that influenced you and brought you, musically speaking, to the point where you are now.
Well, geographically I'm from the Southwest. . . Tuscon, Arizona to be specific. My family has a musical background... my father plays the guitar. There's a lot of country music in the clubs and on the radio there, and I got to hear a lot of Mexican music... the ranchero music, which is like Mexican bluegrass... my favorite singer is a Mexican woman named Lora Belle Turan . . . it's very exciting, romantic music.
Where did the name Stone Poneys come from?
It's from an old blues recording, called "Stone Poney Blues," by Charlie Patton.
Where else do you find your material, or what other performers do you admire?
Edith Piaf, who was a great French cabaret singer, and Billie Holiday, probably the greatest blues singer of all. I think Janis Joplin is one of the greatest blues singers around right now. Like Billie, she has great phrasing. And Bob Dylan is such a beautiful performer ... his phrasing is unbelievable... he's such a real person too... you just know from his songs that he knows what suffering means. . . "Blonde On Blonde" was about the height of his being up tight with himself, but instead of getting destroyed he turned around, did "John Wesley Harding" which is so full of spiritual things ... it's honest because he commits himself ... and for an artist of that calibre, with that much power to commit himself, well, he's committing a huge percentage of the world too, because they will follow him ... that album was such a gentle trend setter in just that way. . . "I Shall Be Released" is about my favorite song right now ... I learned it from The Band on the "Big Pink" album, which is the band Dylan has been using at his concerts ... I like Jerry Lee Lewis, too ... I'm doing one of his songs from his new country album, "Break My Mind." And Randy Newman ... his songs are so beautiful and he hurts so much ... I just want to send him a big jar of aspirin ... Johnny Cash's "Folsom Prison" album was so beautiful it made me cry ... it's so real to hear him up there singing that song to those prisoners ...
You've done quite a few of Tim Buckley's songs, too.
Tim used to live in a house that I lived in too, and we both used to move in and out ... that is, we stayed there alternately. It was the house he wrote about in "Morning Glory," which I call "The Hobo." That was the "fleeting house."
There's a lot of country influence in your repertory now.
That's partly because of my Southwestern background... but the pop music scene was freaked out for so long... and now it's like it's coming home again... country music is very real and groovy... and it's exerting so much influence on pop that even the Beatles' "Revolution" has a country sound to it... I learned a lot from Kitty Wells and other country singers... and you can't get any better than Hank Williams... he's still an important part of the country music scene, and you can hear his influence in Bob Dylan's last album. "I'll Be Your Baby Tonight" is going to be on our next album. It's my other favorite song right now.
What's your philosophy?
I believe in astrological things, and reincarnation, that people who get hung up sooner or later have to turn around and wade through all that wrong stuff they've done, if not in this life then in the next one, and after they pay their dues then they should be ok... because there's always another chance... What it's all about is trying your best... I sometimes get things like hay fever if I'm not working well, and I think stuff like that comes from just not trying your hardest, because if you're doing your thing it doesn't matter how hard you're working, you just feel good about it... That's why this is a dangerous business... you get up there and expose yourself, and if people don't like you it really hurts... when you're really hurting like that there's no cop-out... you can't put the audience down and say they don't know from art... you just have to be honest and say well, I didn't do very well that time...
Have you had much criticism now that you're working with a folk-rock band, as opposed to a pair of folk guitarists?
Well, that kind of criticism, which usually comes from smug little magazines, is pure, intellectual bull... musicians don't really worry about anything like that... the important thing in musicianship is how much you communicate... it can be either Procol Harum or Hank Williams... it doesn't matter... once you get over the sublime line... there are plenty of super-technicians around but they don't really communicate... the Beatles have a line in "Nowhere Man" which says "just like you and me" which is a real kind of honesty... and Bob Dylan's most powerful line is "let us not speak falsely now, the hour is growing late" and it's true... the only way to get straight is to tell the truth... that's the only way. | ||||||||
4334 | dbpedia | 2 | 57 | https://rocknrolldentist.wordpress.com/ | en | Rock 'n' Roll Reviews and Trivia | [
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"Rollin' Dentist"
] | 2024-07-15T12:30:49+00:00 | Where Old School Becomes Rockin' News | en | https://s1.wp.com/i/favicon.ico | Rock 'n' Roll Reviews and Trivia | https://rocknrolldentist.wordpress.com/ | This month’s topic is a continuation of last month’s with 30 more songs of mostly older three-chord rock and roll that only the most crazed music fans (like me) would ever remember. This is the kind of music I grooved to in the ’60s (and later – though my back won’t let me be as groovy today, sadly). They are songs that were either not big hits or were album tracks. These are mostly primitive caveman old school rock tunes for fans of old guy music. I frankly couldn’t stop with just 25 last month and you might want to check out that post as well sometime. I did posts on Random Rare Records January and February of 2022 if you want more rare rock. As always comments are welcome and even encouraged as long as they relate to the topic at hand.
26.John “Juke” Logan – Old Old Man
I had to create the youtube video for this which tells me that it isn’t widely known which is a pity. When I bought the rockin’ blues comp L.A. Ya Ya back in 1990, the lyrics of this song didn’t mean as much to me as now since I have become a (middle-aged?) old man. It was written by Lefty Frizzell and released on a single in Dec. 1952 a few weeks after I was born. As “I’m An Old, Old Man (Tryin’ To Live While I Can)” it hit #3 on the country charts the following year. Logan rocked it up pretty good for his version taking out all the twang. John Logan (born Sept. 11, 1946 in L.A. and passing in Aug. 30, 2013) got his nickname from the old harmonica tune “Juke” (Little Walter) that he loved to play. He was mainly a sideman and is known for playing on the themes to the sitcoms Roseanne and Home Improvements plus records by folks like Richard Marx and Adam Sandler.
27.Mike Smith – High School Confidential
Here’s one of the best voices of rock and roll doing a classic oldie. The late Mike Smith was the singer and keys-man with The Dave Clark Five, the first rock and roll band to grab me back in 1965. In 1990 he put out an outstanding U.K.-only CD on Mooncrest It’s Only Rock N Roll that rocked from beginning to end. There were three originals plus some great oldies including this Jerry Lee Lewis piano pounder. The original written by Ron Hargrave and Jerry Lee Lewis hit #21 in the U.S. back in 1958 and was titled after the movie it was featured in. Smith was such a nice man to meet (thanks for the intro Randy Jay!) and for such a quiet man he sure rocked like mad when we saw him at an oldies concert at Fiddler’s Green only a few months before his horrific accident. He lived from Dec. 6, 1943 till Feb. 28, 2008 having been paralyzed in a 2003 fall outside his home.
28.Dr. Feelgood – She’s The One
This was a 1982 U.K. non-chart single from my fave Dr. Feelgood LP Fast Women & Slow Horses. They formed in 1971 and were part of a style known as pub-rock that celebrated back to basics rock and roll. Their name was a tribute to the old song by Dr. Feelgood & The Interns (1962). In the U.K. their LPs had some success in the mid-70s when Wilko Johnson was on guitar. A bit later several singles did chart with new guitarist Gypie Mayo (both are now deceased). This song featured Johnny Guitar formerly of The Count Bishops and was produced by the late-great Vic Maile. The band still exists with all new members following the death of frontman Lee Brilleaux in 1994. The original of this song was a 1964 chart single (#33) for the Washington, D.C. band The Chartbusters.
29.Rod Stewart – Blondes Have More Fun
Even during what was a pretty dreary period in his career for a rocker like me, rockin’ Rod could still deliver the goods when he wanted to bring the heat. This was from his LP of the same name that featured a disco song I used to loathe “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy” (1978 #1) and was written by Rod and guitarist Jim Cregan. He was born in London on Jan. 10, 1945 and is still a fantastic performer as Aimee and I saw at Ball Arena on Aug. 1, 2023 (okay, even the aforementioned “…Sexy” sounded great).
30.Dash Rip Rock – Dizzy Miss Lizzy
Since I had to create this video so I could use it here I assume that not too many folks know this hot rockin’ track from the 1993 Tiger Town album. The Baton Rouge, Louisiana band is still going, led by singer/guitarist Bill Davis. Their style has been called cowpunk which is a mix of various American roots styles. “Dizzy Miss Lizzy” is known best to us Baby Boomers as from the Beatles VI LP. The original was by the composer, Larry Williams who took it #69 in 1958. Williams lived from May 10, 1935 till Jan. 7, 1980 when he was found with a gunshot in his head. While ruled a suicide, some believe he was killed due to his involvement in illegal activities.
31.Ian McLagan – La De La
McLagan was the keysman with The (Small) Faces then later played as a sideman with The Rolling Stones. He certainly didn’t have the voice of his bands former lead singers Steve Marriott or Rod Stewart, but he could still rock. In 1979 he released his first solo album (Troublemaker) which led off with this McLagan original. He was English born on May 12, 1945 and passed away in Austin, Texas Dec. 3 2014.
32.Stevie Wright – Hard Road
The former lead singer of Australian band The Easybeats put on his best Steve Marriott (Humble Pie) voice for this rocker – the first (non-chart) single from his solo album of the same name. His next single “Evie” hit #1 in Australia, but that one didn’t move your blogger like “Hard Road”. Off and on he had major substance abuse issues that certainly didn’t help his career or his health. He passed away Dec. 27, 2015 a week after his 68th birthday.
33.Mott – Good Times
After Ian Hunter and Mick Ronson left Mott The Hoople, the renamed Mott (with two new members) put out a couple of decent albums with this exciting rocker being the highlight by far. It was from their second (and last) record Shouting & Pointing (1976). The song was written by Easybeats members George Young and Harry Vanda and was a #22 hit in Australia (1968). Mott morphed in to British Lions then faded away.
34.The Skeletons – St. Louis
Another Easybeats single written by Vanda and Young, “St. Louis” charted at #21 in Australia (#100 in the U.S.) in 1969. Before morphing in to The Morells (then back) then The Park Central Squares, this Springfield, MO. band put out several albums including Waiting from 1992. They are all worth owning if obscure.
35.Brownsville – Down The Road Apiece
For a song that began as a 1940 boogie woogie tune by The Will Bradley Trio, this has become a rock and roll standard recorded by The Rolling Stones and Foghat among others. Aside from the rocked-up tempo and feel, the musicians in the lyrics of the first verse were also changed (such as the drummer ‘Eight Beat Mack’ became Charlie McCoy in the newer versions). It was written by Don Raye, a white guy who wrote (or co-wrote) some pretty nifty songs including “Beat Me Daddy, Eight To the Bar”, “The House Of Blue Lights”, “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “The Ballad Of Thunder Road”. As a non-smoker I was never a fan of Brownsville Station’s hit “Smokin’ In The Boys Room” (#3 in 1973), but when they shortened their name and released Air Special in 1978 I grabbed it up for this song plus other hot rockers. The primary singers and guitarists have passed (Cub Koda in 2000 and Bruce Nazarian in 2015), but there is still a version of the band out there with the old rhythm section Mike Lutz and ‘H Bomb’ Weck.
36.Alvin Stardust – A Wonderful Time Up There
Here is another old song (1947) that received new life when given a rock and roll makeover. The writer Lee Roy Abernathy recorded it as “Gospel Boogie” (Leroy Abernathy Homeland Harmony Quartet). Pat Boone’s early career was built upon covering black music for white teens (starting with him charting in 1955 with “Two Hearts” by Otis Williams & The Charms). He later emerges as a well-known Christian and recorded “Gospel Boogie” under the title “A Wonderful Time Up There” making it a #4 hit in 1958. Another Christian convert, Alvin Stardust (Shane Fenton – real name Bernard Jewry) hit #56 in 1981 over in England with that same track. Here in the U.S. Alvin was unknown except to Glitter-rock fans like your’s truly (“You, You, You”, “Jealous Mind”, etc.). For really hardcore Glitter fans – the first Alvin Stardust hit in the U.K. “My Coo Ca Choo” (#2 – 1973 in England) was recorded by Peter Shelley who didn’t want to tour, so Jewry took over the name and recorded all the rest of the hits. He had previously taken over another stage name in 1961 (Shane Fenton) because the original Fenton (a 17 year old kid named Johnny Theakston) died unexpectedly. Alvin/Shane/Bernard passed Oct. 23, 2014 at the age of 73. He is the middle picture in our intro.
37.Mike Berry – I’m A Rocker
Here is another British rock star that was unknown in the U.S. unless you bought import records like “Tribute To Buddy Holly” (#24 in the U.K. 1961 and produced by the legendary Joe Meek). I grabbed a U.S. comeback LP of his in 1979 on Cleveland International Records – I’m A Rocker which featured this nifty track along with “Hard Times” which is also worth checking out. The original of this was written and performed in 1975 by Chas (Hodges) & Dave (Peacock) but didn’t chart. Michael Bourne was born Sept. 24, 1942 and in addition to singing also had a career in England as an actor.
38.The Inmates – Sweet Nuthin’s
At the age of 14 1/2 Brenda Lee was already a seasoned music performer when she took Ronnie Self’s “Sweet Nothin’s” to #4 in 1959 as her first big hit. England’s Inmates recorded a new rockin’ version for their import-only album Fast Forward in 1989. I listed singer Bill Hurley as one of my favorite male singers in my July 2023 blog post. The rest of the band rocks pretty good as well as we saw back on Feb. 27, 1980 at the old Rainbow on Evans and Monaco in Denver (now a Walgreens). A good quality bootleg CD of that show exists.
39.Dave Edmunds – Standing At The Crossroads
I almost didn’t include Dave as it seems that he is in so many of my posts but there is a reason for it – dude was one heck of a great rocker in his day and remains my favorite solo artist of all-time. If there is one artist I would have loved to talk to over any others it would have been him. I could have put any number of his songs here but let’s go with a Mickey Jupp composition. It was from Dave’s 1994 album Plugged In on which he played all the instruments just like he likely did on his first hit “I Hear You Knocking” (#4 here in the U.S. back in 1970). Dave was born on April 15, 1944 in Cardiff, Wales. These next few songs on the list relate to him in some way.
40.Nick Lowe – You Got The Look I Like
Nick was Edmunds’ bass playing/songwriting partner in Rockpile for years and is another artist that I could have put any number of great rockers on this list from. This grinding monkey-beat rocker is found on his 1990 record Party Of One and was produced by Edmunds (plus he played guitar). I once got to talk to Nick after a show and he was a gracious gentleman signing a couple of CDs – thanks! My rocknroll retired dental hygienist wife and I along with one of the coolest rocknroll Dentists in Denver (Chuck Fischer) caught Nick with Los Straitjackets at the Oriental Theatre and can attest that he can still rock. He was born in Surrey, England March 24, 1949.
41.Moon Martin – Don’t You Double (Cross Me Baby)
The second track on the 1983 Dave Edmunds album was a cover of this nifty rocker written by John ‘Moon’ Martin. Moon’s take was on his 1982 Capitol records LP Mystery Ticket. While he had his own charter with “Rolene” (#30 in 1979), he is best known for writing “Bad Case of Loving You (Doctor, Doctor)” which Robert Palmer made in to a hit. He was Oklahoma born on Oct. 31, 1945 and stopped rockin’ the planet May 11, 2020. He is the far right picture in the intro.
43.Foghat – Fool’s Hall Of Fame
As I discussed in part one of this blog last month, the three members of Savoy Brown not named Kim Simmonds abandoned that blues rock band and formed Foghat in 1971. They brought in slide guitarist Rod Price and went on to much bigger success as a boogie rock band here in the U.S. with songs like “Slow Ride” and “Fool for the City”. Their first self-titled LP (1972) was produced by Dave Edmunds and was darn good from beginning to end with songs like “Maybelline” and this Lonesome Dave Peverett composition. While a version of Foghat is still going with drummer Roger Earl as the only original member, Peverett passed in 2000 and Price in 2005.
44.Shakin’ Stevens & The Sunsets – 40 Days
Here is yet another Dave Edmunds production and was found on the 1970 LP A Legend. This was still a decade before Shakin’ Stevens became a U.K. superstar with a string of great rock and roll singles. If you love hot rockin’ 50s-style music you need to own at least his greatest hits on album though pretty much his whole career is worth a listen accept maybe his newer releases. Stevens was born Michael Barratt March 4, 1948 in Cardiff, Wales (Dave Edmunds’ birthplace as well).
45.Nick Curran & The Lowlifes – Baby You Crazy
Holy cow, is this the most out of control a white man has ever sounded on record?! Curran channeled his inner Little Richard on this track from his last album Reform School Girl (2010). It was written by Curran with bassist Billy Horton. Nick had played guitar with the rockabilly artist Ronnie Dawson, The Fabulous Thunderbirds and others. He developed oral cancer and passed way too young having lived from Sept. 30, 1977 till Oct. 6, 2012.
46.Webb Wilder – Down On The Farm
Mississippi born (May 19, 1954) John Webb McMurry (Webb Wilder) has always felt like a U.S. Dave Edmunds to me combining elements of country, r&b and monkey-beat rock and roll. This track was from Webb’s third album – Doo Dad 1991 – and was originally done by the composer/pianist “Big” Al Downing with The Poe Cats in 1958. Even though I don’t think Webb was too impressed by my questions when I talked to him after a show years ago (sorry Webb), I still dig his music a lot and hope he gets back to Colorado some day. Webb is the far left picture in the intro.
47.J.D. McPherson – Scandalous
Jonathan David McPherson is an Oklahoma born (April 14, 1977) rock & roller. While I hope he made good money backing up Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, I sure pray he keeps recording on his own and finally cuts loose on an all-out rocker. Gotta love “Fire Bug” too. From his debut Signs & Signifiers album in 2010 (2012 on Rounder), this is the most recent track on this list along with one from Nick Curran.
48.McGuinness Flint – Who You Got To Love
In 1970 when I bought the debut McGuinness Flint LP for the song “When I’m Dead & Gone”, it felt like a British LP akin to the music of The Band. The songs were mainly written by Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle including this uptempo rock track which was unlike anything else on the record. Tom McGuiness had played bass and guitar with Manfred Mann (“Do Wah Diddy Diddy” #1 in 1964) while Hughie Flint had drummed for John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers. Singer/keys-man Dennis Coulson was the fifth member.
49.The Blues Band – 29 Ways
In 1979 McGuinness and Flint teamed with the original Manfred Mann lead singer and harmonica player Paul Jones to form The Blues Band. Guy Fletcher was on bass and Dave Kelly on slide guitar. This Willie Dixon cover was on their second import-only album Ready (1980). Dixon’s 1956 original was pretty primitive blues which did have a nice sax break. The Blues Band rocked it up more than Koko Taylor’s bluesy take had back in 1969.
50.John Entwistle – Do The Dangle
This track proved what I have said about my musical tastes over the years – that I don’t always pay attention to the lyrics and just like a record if it sounds good. When I bought The Who bassist John Entwistle’s 3rd solo album Rigor Mortis Sets In (1973), this old-timey rocker really grabbed me. The fact that he sings about 2 silly dances (“the wheezey” and “the strike”) and one very disturbing one (“the dangle” about hanging yourself) wasn’t important to me – all I cared about was that it rocked. In general John wrote songs about odd topics such as an arachnid (“Boris The Spider”) and a vindictive spouse (“My Wife”).
51.Sweet – Peppermint Twist
This is one of my fave rock and roll performances ever. I always have to crank up the old hi-fi when it comes on. Let’s be honest, handclaps always make a rock song better. It was on the 1974 album Sweet Fanny Adams which was criminally not released here in the U.S. (some tracks were included on Desolation Boulevard but not this cut). The song was originally done by Joey Dee & The Starliters and was a #1 in 1961. It was written by Joey Dee (Joseph Di Nicola) with Henry Glover about doing the dance ‘the twist’ at the club his band played at – The Peppermint Lounge.
52.Creedence Clearwater Revival – It Came Out Of The Sky
Back in my late ’60s Broomfield High days, it felt like John Fogerty single-handedly brought American rock and roll to the charts. This hot rocker was from the 4th CCR LP Willy & The Poor Boys (1969). John sings here about a farmer named Jody who presumably sees a UFO and how he then becomes a phenomenon. Fogerty also sang about Jody in “Hey Tonight” and “Almost Saturday Night”. I fear that John misconstrued a comment I made to him backstage at Red Rocks which I still feel badly about (you only get seconds when you meet these folks). We were told not the mention CCR as he was not in a good place with his old music and former bandmates at that time. As I really wanted him to write another song about Jody, I innocently said that I hoped he would tell us more about Jody sometime. I suspect he thought I was, in a round-about way, asking him to play his old songs. Sorry John – but I still wish you would update us on what Jody has been up to all these years!
53.Jimmy & The Mustangs – Lovin’ Machine
It was important to add this song to highlight the forgotten man who recorded it before rock and roll was the term for the music on every teenager’s radio. Omaha-born Wynonie Harris (Aug. 24, 1915 to June 14, 1969) took this song to #5 on the R&B charts early in the year of my birth (1952). In 1948 he had a #1 with a cover of Roy Brown’s “Good Rockin’ Tonight”, long before we think of rock and roll’s formation. “Lovin’ Machine” has on the label the writing credit O.O. Merritt, Dave Lambert and Lois Mann (curiously, modern listings omit Mann). Weirdly pop singer Teresa Brewer released a big band arrangement of it in 1952 which didn’t chart. Since their formation in 1979, the only constant member of Jimmy & The Mustangs has been Jimmy Haddox (aka Jimmy Silvers). Their debut album (Hey Little Girl) didn’t get much attention back in 1982 so your Dentist had to create a youtube video to go along with this entry.
54.The Beach Boys – All I Want To Do
The 15th Beach Boys album was 20/20 (Feb. 1969) and had some of their best rockers in years including “Do It Again” and “Bluebirds over the Mountain”. This might be the toughest rocker they ever did. It was written by drummer Dennis Wilson with Stephen Kalinich. Here Dennis plays the piano with Mike Kowalski pounding the skins (Mike Love growled the lead). Don’t confuse this great rocker with the song “All I Wanna Do”, a lethargic song on their next album Sunflower.
55.The Dragsters – Gidget Beach
Let’s end this list with a forgotten record that I had to create a video for in order to include. Released on Great Jones (a division of Island in 1989), Stoked was loaded with surf and car music in the vein of groups like The Rip Chords and The Beach Boys. There have been several different bands with this same name. These guys (Dan Acker-bass, Chris Johns-drums, Pete Linzell-sax + guitar and Todd Novak-guitar + vocals) were from New York. I also created a video for the song “Dragster Beach” if you find you want some more Dragsters.
For this month’s topic your blogger didn’t have some deep meaning in mind, but rather mostly older three-chord rock and roll that only the most obsessive music fans would likely remember. This is the kind of music I liked as a kid in the ’60s (and later when bands tried to copy it) that were either not big hits or were album tracks. I still slide back to it when I need a jump-start of adrenaline. Don’t expect anything more than primitive lizard-brain music but if you like rock when it still rolled then dig in. I frankly couldn’t stop with just 25 so next month’s post will add 30 more. By the way, I did two posts on Random Rare Records January and February of 2022 if you want more rare rock.
1.Cat Mother & The All Night Newsboys – Good Old Rock ‘N’ Roll
Back between my junior and senior years at Broomfield High in the summer of 1969, this was a #21 U.S. hit. They started out in New York City in 1967. After psychedelia had pushed old-school rock & roll off the charts, this was a return to basics being a medley of songs like “Sweet Little Sixteen” and “Chantilly Lace”. This was from their first album The Street Giveth… and the Street Taketh Away which was produced by Jimi Hendrix of all people – it’s not heavy, bluesy or psychedelic which would be the style you’d expect from Jimi. The young me was shocked after buying their second LP Albion Doo-wah and finding they had changed their sound to a rootsy style (sort of like The Band) eschewing good old rock and roll. In truth that album grew on me, but I still go back to this their first single as what I like the most. By the way, The Dave Clark Five did a cover version that charted at #7 in the U.K. in 1969.
2.Steppenwolf – Berry Rides Again
Here is the song that inspired this post as for some reason I found this going through my brain a few weeks back. Yes I bought the LP for the song “Born To Be Wild”, but this roots-rocker and “Sookie Sookie” were my other faves from their 1968 debut. Singer John Kay (Joachim Krauledat) wrote the song by stringing together the titles of old Chuck Berry classics like “Nadine” and “Maybelline” in to a story about old girlfriends. In 1968 this actually was pretty radical to be doing basic rock and roll as rock had gotten heavier and more complex. Michael Monarch plays some tasty Berry licks while Goldie McJohn really rocks the 88s a la Johnnie Johnson (Berry’s piano player).
3.NRBQ – Mama Get Down Those Rock & Roll Shoes
1969 was the year bands started edging towards basic rock and roll again and this Columbia LP grabbed my entertainment dollars back when I didn’t have much of them to spend. It was actually their cover of the old Eddie Cochran song “C’mon Everybody” that first enthralled the young me. They were originally a southern rock band called The New Rhythm & Blues Quartet which was shortened to NRBQ. The intro pictures show them at the far left. They’re still going today with pianist Terry Adams being the only original member left (he also wrote this rocker).
4.The Electric Flag – Wine
Let’s stay on the Columbia records label with a track from the first album by a band that was sort of a super group of ’60s blues/r&b players. Guitarist Mike Bloomfield and drummer Buddy Miles are the best known though singer Nick Gravenites, keys-man Barry Goldberg and bassist Harvey Brooks were big names too. Originally Mitch Ryder was asked to be the singer but he declined. Their debut record A Long Time Coming ended with this rockin’ reworking of the old Sticks McGee song “Drinkin’ Wine, Spo-Dee-O-Dee” (#2 r&b in 1949). When I bought this album in 1968 I was a bit disappointed as there weren’t enough tracks like this and “Killing Floor”. They are the middle band pictured in our intro.
5.Savoy Brown – Let It Rock (Rock & Roll On The Radio)
The only constant with the British blues group Savoy Brown was change with only one member lasting through all their albums – the late Kim Simmonds (guitarist). With all their line-up changes, there were two main eras us fans remember starting with their formation in 1965. The main core of that band left to form Foghat in 1970 leaving Simmonds alone to rebuild. This song was from the 1971 LP Street Corner Talking which was the first with Dave Walker on lead vocals along with three members from fellow British blues band Chicken Shack. One of those new members was keys-man Paul Raymond who had replaced Christine Perfect in Chicken Shack when she married John McVie and joined his band Fleetwood Mac. Paul composed and sang this song for Savoy Brown before eventually leaving to join UFO and their various offshoots. The lyric references Sticks McGee and his song about wine, by the way. Simmonds lived from Dec. 5 1947 till Dec. 13 2022.
6.Warren Phillips & The Rockets – Blue Jean Boogie
While Savoy Brown was recording the 1969 LP A Step Further, members Lonesome Dave Peverett, Roger Earl, Tony Stevens and Bob Hall knocked out a quick set of oldies. The record was only released overseas as The World Of Rock & Roll by Warren Philllips & The Rockets. Much later when Foghat was successful it was released in the U.S. by London Records under the title Before Foghat Days which is how I found it back in 1979. “Blue Jean Boogie” was one of the band originals on the album and is found at 4:45 in to this video as all I could find was the entire album posted.
7.Fleetwood Mac – Tallahassee Lassie
Let’s return to Fleetwood Mac with this Freddy Cannon stomper that the Peter Green-led act recorded for a March 1969 BBC radio session. I had wanted to feature the 1970 solo album Jeremy Spencer and the song “You Made A Hit” but every time a record is posted on youtube from that album, it gets deleted. This track is a pretty good 2nd choice and seems more typical of the oldies that Spencer liked than the blues Green liked – go figure as Greeny sings lead. The 3rd guitarist at this time was Danny Kirwan who played on their next album Then Play On which was way different than this rocker. The song was written by Bob Crewe, Frank Slay and Frederick Picariello (Cannon’s real name). It got to #6 in the U.S. and #17 in the U.K. back in 1959. By the way, as usual this proves my point that all rock and roll is better with handclaps. A note for all you youngsters – don’t be confused as this is an early version of the totally differerent sounding pop band of the same name from years later that dumped the blues as fronted by Buckingham and Nicks.
8.Ten Years After – Going Back To Birmingham
Another bigtime British blues band of the late ’60s and early ’70s was Ten Years After with guitar and vocals handled by the late Alvin Lee. Their eighth LP Positive Vibrations came out in 1974 and included this Little Richard cover. It was their last album of new material for fifteen years as Lee moved on to a solo career. Alvin lived from Dec. 19, 1944 till March 6, 2013 when he passed on during routine treatment to correct artial arrhythmia proving there is no such thing as simple surgery.
9.Canned Heat – Big Fat
Here’s another blues group but in this case an American one. This was an amped-up version of the 1949 Fats Domino song “The Fat Man” that frankly doesn’t get the recognition it deserves for being proto-rock and roll long before it existed (at least in name). The lyrics are a bit different (Fats for instance says he weighs 200 pounds while Bob Hite says 300) and the rolling piano and scat vocal break is replaced by Hite’s nasty blues harmonica. When your future Dentist bought the Hallelujah album by Canned Heat in the summer of 1969, it was a big let-down from Living The Blues and the hit “Going Up The Country”. The only redeeming song for me was this rocker. These guys are the far right band pictured in our intro.
10.Chicken Shack – Unlucky Boy
Barrelhouse piano man Champion Jack Dupree waxed the song “Chicken Shack” so it was only fitting that the British blues band of that name should record a song written by him (along with Big Mama Thornton). Thornton’s take on “Unlucky Girl” was far more bluesy and slowed down while Stan Webb’s outfit rocked it up after changing the gender and making it the title of their 1973 Deram label LP. By this point, Webb was the last original member with Christine Perfect (McVie) having left for Fleetwood Mac and the rest of the band for Savoy Brown. As this is being written, Webb (born Feb. 3, 1946 in London) still leads a version of the band.
11.Mungo Jerry – Baby Let’s Play House
In the U.S. this British group are known strictly for the #3 1970 single “In The Summertime”. When that song came out, I picked up their debut album on the Janus label which included this faithful cover of the old Elvis Presley rockabilly song on the Sun label (1955). His was a reworked cover of an Arthur Gunter original and was paired with “I’m Left, You’re Right, She’s Gone”. Mungo Jerry was far more successful in the U.K. than in the U.S. and was led by Ray Dorset. One of the original members was pianist Colin Earl who was the brother of the Savoy Brown/Foghat drummer Roger Earl.
12.Long John Baldry – Don’t Try To Lay No Boogie Woogie On The King Of Rock & Roll
On the strength of this rocker your Dentist layed down his hard-earned $2.99 at Budget Tapes & Records back in 1971 and bought the LP It Ain’t Easy. As it turned out that and the title track were the only songs I liked which was your fear prior to the internet which now allows you to sample music before you buy it to see if the whole record is decent. At 6’7 John was tall hence the ‘Long’. He was involved with the early British blues scene and led a band that at one time or another included Rod Stewart and Elton John so each of them produced one side of this LP, his most successful. He had a couple of big ballad hits in the U.K., but this single was his biggest in the U.S. at #73. It was an edit of the 6:46 LP version that took out the 3+ minute rap at the start about John getting arrested for busking on the streets of London. The original hit was by Minnesota band Crow in 1970 (#52) and was written by Jeff Thomas who also recorded it. Both their versions were slower and didn’t have the same drive. Several of the Rolling Stones had also been in an early band with Baldry and if you listen to the intro to their 1966 live LP Got Live If You Want It you can hear John announce them before “Under My Thumb”. He lived from Jan. 12, 1941 till passing away in Canada on July 21, 2005.
13.The Guess Who – Don’t You Want Me
The 1974 Road Food LP included the big hits “Star Baby” and “Clap For The Wolfman”. The Burton Cummings original “Don’t You Want Me” first appeared as the third song in the comedic music medley “Hi Rockers!” from the 1972 Rockin’ LP. Here it is taken from the medley as a stand-alone ’50s piano-driven throwback. By the time I bought the Road Food album, guitarists Kurt Winter and Donnie McDougall had departed to be replaced by Dom Troiano. It was this version of the band that I raced to the mall (Villa Italia or Westland I think) back in the day to meet and get autographs on my album. While I enjoyed talking to Burton, as I recall it was a real Spinal Tap moment as I think I was about the only person there to meet the band.
14.Flash Cadillac & The Continental Kids – Betty Lou
After reading a glowing review of their self-titled debut Epic LP in the short-lived Phonograph Record Magazine, I had to buy this excellent album of covers and band originals. Little did I realize that they were a Colorado band who I would become close to and write an article about many years later (see my blog from Jan. 2016 for an update of that piece). At this point in 1972 they were about to be riding high from appearing in the 1973 movie American Graffiti as Herby & The Heartbeats (and later as Fish & The Fins in a 1975 episode of Happy Days). “Betty Lou” was a Kris Moe original that they redid for their 1997 CD Rock & Roll Rules. Moe, Sam McFadin and Linn Phillips III are sadly gone now with original bassist Warren Knight occasionally still leading a new Flash Cadillac in concert.
15.Johnny Winter – Slippin’ & Slidin’
The star of this Little Richard cover from the 1969 Second Winter LP is Johnny’s brother Edgar who pounds some mean piano and adds a tasty sax break. I honestly don’t know if there was ever another double album like this that only used three sides of the vinyl while leaving one blank. That was done to make the music loud on the original record by cutting the grooves deeply in to the vinyl. It worked and this was a better record than his self-titled debut Columbia album from the same year. Johnny was a great blues guitarist from Texas (Feb. 23, 1944 till July 16, 2014) while his brother was two years younger. Being albinos made them a rarity in music. Writing credit has been listed as by Richard Penniman, Edwin Bocage, Al Collins and James Smith.
16.Delaney & Bonnie – Soul Shake
Here is an album your blogger bought back in 1970 on the strength of this one song which also charted as a single at #43 – shoulda just grabbed the 45. This was a cover of a record from 1969 by Peggy Scott and Jo Jo Benson that hit #37 on the U.S. charts. The song was written by Margaret Lewis and Myrna Smith (of The Sweet Inspirations). The Scott and Benson version rocked but used a cheesy electric sitar guitar on the breaks whereas the Delaney & Bonnie version had full instrumental backing. Most of these players ended up backing Eric Clapton, Leon Russell and Joe Cocker over time. The Bramletts were married from 1967 till 1972. Delaney passed following gall bladder surgery at age 69 two days after Christmas 2008.
17.Don Nix – Olena
Nix was a southern rocker hailing from Tennessee and this was his only chart record – #94 in 1971. I grabbed the LP back then and frankly didn’t like anything other than this piano-driven rocker. He had played sax with The Mar-Keys (“Last Night”) and then become a well-known behind the scenes guy as an arranger and producer. His biggest influence on the young me (as guitarist and singer) and my drummer buddy Mr. D was with Nix’s composition “Going Down” (Jeff Beck Group) that we often tried to play (badly) in his basement till Dan’s neighbor would call to make us turn down the volume (sorry Cheryl Watkins wherever you are).
18.Badfinger – Rock Of All Ages
This was included in the 1969 movie The Magic Christian (Peter Sellers, Ringo Starr) and so appeared on the soundtrack LP plus the 1970 Badfinger LP Magic Christian Music on Apple records. Writing credit goes to the three band members who played on it – Tom Evans, Pete Ham and Mike Gibbins (before Joey Molland joined). Production was handled by Paul McCartney who also pounded out a rockin’ piano part. Evans’ histrionic vocal is one of his best. Evans and Ham both came to sad ends (which you can look up online) but while in Badfinger they created some outstanding music.
19.John Lennon with Elephant’s Memory – New York City
Let’s stay on the Apple label for the best song from a John Lennon album best forgotten (and most of his fans have) – Some Time in New York City . In 1972 to follow up his successful Imagine album, John and Yoko with Elephants Memory (as the Plastic Ono Band) released a double LP of strident political songs that critics and fans alike hated. Buried at the end of side one, however, was this pretty darn good rock and roll song about the Lennons’ move to New York (sort of a follow-up to “The Ballad of John and Yoko”). John was a rocker after all and his capable backing band here was Elephant’s Memory who were a New York street band that had charted in 1970 with “Mongoose” (#50). Elephant’s Memory also backed up Chuck Berry on his 1973 LP Bio.
20.The Raspberries – I’m A Rocker
Sort of an American version of Badfinger, The Raspberries were more than just Eric Carmen (R.I.P.) though admittedly he did write and sing their most-remembered songs. The guys could flat out rock as can be heard on this track from their third LP – Side 3 (1973 on Capitol records). “I’m A Rocker” was released as a single but barely squeaked in to the charts at #94. It was a toss-up whether to include this song or the equally great “All Through The Night” from their last album Starting Over from 1974 (I urge you to look for that video too).
21.Bobby Fuller Drive – Nervous Breakdown
Here is the newest recording on our list but you would never know it since it sounds like a classic oldie. The song is an Eddie Cochran rocker that was found on his posthumous LP Never to Be Forgotten with writing credit going to TV actor Mario Roccuzzo. Texan Bobby Fuller released his version in 1962 on the small Eastwood label. In 2003 Fuller’s brother Randy (who had been a member of The Bobby Fuller Four) and his band Bobby Fuller Drive (two guys who had played with Bobby in the ’60s also) released the CD Breakin’ Rocks which included this more polished take on “Nervous Breakdown”. The CD title was a reference to his brother’s biggest hit “I Fought The Law”. The track-list was mostly covers of his brother’s songs and was really pretty good if little heard at the time by any but the most dedicated fans. For that reason I’ve included it here even thought its not a stomper. By the way, “Never To Be Forgotten” is also the title of a Bobby and Randy Fuller composition that is also one of the best songs on this album.
22.April Wine – Wanna Rock
This album track from Canadian band April Wine was found on their most successful LP The Nature Of The Beast (1981). It contained their biggest hit, the ballad “Just Between You and Me”. “Wanna Rock” was written by singer/guitarist Myles Goodwyn as was most of the album. While the band is still going with one original member (guitarist Brian Greenway), Goodwyn passed in 2023 at age 75.
23.Russ Ballard – She Said Yeah
Rolling Stones fans may recognize this song as the lead track from their 1965 album December’s Children (And Everybody’s). It was originally the b-side to the 1958 single “Bad Boy” by Larry Williams and was listed as written by Jackson and Christy on his record but G. Roderick, S. Christy and R. Jackson on the Stones record. Other places list Sonny Bono and Roddy Jackson. Ballard was mostly successful as a songwriter but is best known as the singer of “Hold Your Head Up” for Argent (though it was written by Rod Argent and Chris White). This was found on his Barnet Dogs LP from 1980 which contained the #58 chart single “On the Rebound”.
24.Bram Tchaikovsky – I’m A Believer
Take a Monkees hit from 1966 and make it in to a monkey-beat rocker in 1979 in the thankfully fading face of disco and you have grabbed your Dentist’s entertainment dollar. The Bee Gees had just had their last #1 with “Love You Inside Out” and America was ready to burn their leisure suits and start rocking again with groups like The Knack and The Romantics (thanks guys!). Peter Bramall had taken the nom-de-classical-music Tchaikovsky while in the U.K. band The Motors (“Airport”). When he went solo his debut was Strange Man, Changed Man which spawned the #37 hit “Girl of My Dreams”.
25.Paul Collins’ Beat – Will You Listen
The Beat was lead by Paul Collins and was one of the best bands to come out of the New Wave of rock and roll in 1979/80. While their two Columbia albums are essential purchases, they never found chart success but you still need them if you love guitar rock and roll. Their self-titled 1979 debut is power pop from beginning to end while the 1982 followup The Kids Are The Same exhibits more maturity (though this track from it still rocks like mad). Collins grew up in New York and New Jersey and still occasionally records and tours.
Last month we visited part one of songs with the days of the week in the title and you should read that as well. There are a ton of songs with days of the week in the title so feel free to let me know what I missed. This month we will hit part two but with a bit of a twist at the end – the last three bonus songs don’t mention the days of the week in the title (hey, its my blog so I make the rules). That trio do, however, revolve around the days of the week and are actually what inspired this silly venture in the first place.
1.Nilsson – (Thursday) Here’s Why I Did Not Go To Work Today
While online the song is often given as “(Thurday) Here’s Why I Did Not Go To Work Today”, my copy of the 1976 LP omits the word Thursday from the title (as does the wikipedia entry) which is why I didn’t include it in last month’s part 1 list – at least that’s my excuse. Just to stop my friend Randy Jay from whining, here ’tis (which rectifies my omission of Thursday songs). When Harry Nilsson blew his voice out while recording Pussy Cats, I stopped for a bit buying his music since his vocal tone became raspy and unpleasant to me. I admit to passing on the 1976 album Sandman for that reason so I didn’t really know this laconic co-write with session guitarist Danny Kortchmar. From what I can tell, the word Thursday was added to the title when it was included in the 1977 expansion of Nilsson’s The Point! making it a stage musical featuring Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz of The Monkees.
2.The Sandpipers – Come Saturday Morning
Man this was 180 degrees from the music I listened to back in 1970 but it was a big hit at #17 after initally stalling at #83 the year before. A&M reissued it with a new flip side after being nominated for an Academy Award for best song – it was from the movie The Sterile Cuckoo. The songwriters were Fred Karlin and Dory Previn. The Sandpipers were a soft-rock trio whose biggest hit was “Guantanamera” (#9 in 1966). Your young Dentist did not know the meaning of the term soft-rock back in my high school daze – it was ear-bleeding rock and roll for me (hence the current need for hearing aids – ah, the folly of youth).
3.Lynyrd Skynyrd – Tuesday’s Gone
This ballad was the 2nd track on the 1973 debut album by these Southern rockers – Pronounced ‘Lĕh-‘nérd ‘Skin-‘nérd. Producer Al Kooper played the mellotron string parts. Metallica recorded a nice cover of the song for their 1998 Garage Inc. record. Regarding the lyrics, singer Ronnie Van Zant was quoted as saying that his normal life was forever changed when the band signed a new record deal and this was about his realization of that (though it also speaks of losing a romance). Van Zant wrote it with guitarist Allen Collins.
4.The Easybeats – Friday On My Mind
Last month’s blog post included this song but by Gary Moore and I promised to revisit the track so here is the original version by The Easybeats. Back in the spring of 1967 this single managed a #16 U.S. chart placement belatedly after having gotten to #1 late in ’66 in Australia where they were from. Actually, however, it was recorded in London, England plus all five band members were born in Europe then immigrated to Australia with their families. This song was written by the band’s guitarists: Scottish-born George Young and Dutch-born Harry Vanda who became far more successful later producing the records of Young’s younger brothers’ band ACDC. Young and Vanda also had a short chart run as Flash And The Pan (“Hey, St. Peter”).
5.Sam Cooke – Another Saturday Night
Another song I promised to revisit was this cut as last month I posted Cat Stevens’ version. Born in Clarksdale, Mississippi January 22, 1931, as Sam Cook, he grew up mainly in Chicago. His early musical career saw him singing gospel with The Soul Stirrers before moving to secular music as a solo artist in 1957 starting with the #1 hit “You Send Me” (and with an added ‘e’ in his name). “Another Saturday Night” was a #10 chart record for Cooke in 1963 and was written by him while in Europe staying in a hotel that wouldn’t allow female visitors. Reportedly the swinging drum part was played by Hal Blaine who seemingly played on most of the great ’60s hits. Cooke’s death came Dec. 11, 1964 while staying in a motel and is shrouded in controversy. He was shot by motel manager Bertha Franklin allegedly in self-defense. That account has for years been called to question and some have even wondered if manager Allen Klein was somehow involved (this is however onlly an unproven theory).
6.John Fogerty – Almost Saturday Night
Let’s also revisit this song from last month’s blog post when I included Dave Edmunds’ version. John Fogerty wrote and performed this agreeable easy-rocker for his self-titled solo album from 1975. As a single it was only moderately successful getting to #78 – a far cry from his CCR days. The other single from the album was “Rockin’ All Over the World” (#27). When a big star goes solo you always have to wonder how much more successful their records would have been if released by their former group (in this case Creedence Clearwater Revival). While not a big success, it was covered by a number of artists besides Edmunds including Rick Nelson, The Burrito Brothers and The Searchers. Fogerty (born May 28, 1945 in Berkeley, CA) played all the instruments and handled all the vocals on the album. I love it when an artist becomes self-referential or has a recurring character in their music. This song talks about Jody going to the rodeo while in the CCR song “It Came Out Of The Sky” Jody saw a UFO and fell off the seat of his tractor and in “Hey Tonight” he went to the rodeo. Years ago when G Brown and I got to briefly meet and greet Mr. Fogerty backstage at Red Rocks, I opined that I hoped he would write more songs talking about what Jody was up to. I don’t think he understood what I was saying, but he never has revisited Jody (there is still time John! I really wanna hear about Jody.)
7.Daniel Boone – Beautiful Sunday
While this bit of 1972 pop lightness sounds pretty good now, back then your Dentist was having none of this kind of music being more in the thrall of Exile On Main Street (The Rolling Stones), Thick As A Brick (Jethro Tull) and Machine Head (Deep Purple). This 45 peaked in the U.S. at #15 on the Mercury label. Peter Green (changed later to Stirling) was born July 31, 1942 in Birmingham, England. Written by Daniel Boone and Rod McQueen, it was used as the theme-song for the Japanese show Ohayo 720 and became a belated #1 there in 1976. It went on to become the biggest selling song in Japan by an artist that was of Western origin selling over two and a half million copies.
8.Carpenters – Rainy Days & Mondays
Boy if I didn’t dig Daniel Boone while in college, I certainly didn’t get the music of The Carpenters at the time which seemed way too middle-of-the-road for this rocker. Somewhere down the line, I saw the light and today this 1971 #2 hit sounds much better to me showcasing how wonderful Karen Carpenter was as a singer. It was written by Paul Williams and Roger Nichols with the drums once again played by Hal Blaine. Karen certainly sounded far more mature and world-weary than having just turned 21. She was born March 2, 1950 in New Haven, Connecticut and passed away far too young Feb. 4, 1983 having collapsed at her parents’ home in Downey, California.
9.Joe Jackson – Sunday Papers
Back in 1979 when the debut Joe Jackson LP Look Sharp! and the single “Is She Really Going Out With Him?” was released, he seemed like another punky new waver. Over the years I have come to appreciate his eclectic talents and have gone back to this record belatedly to take in the quality of the songs. “Sunday Papers” has a reggae feel and mocks the British tabloid press. While the U.K. single didn’t chart, it has been one of his more popular album tracks over the years. David Jackson was born August 11, 1954 in England and grew up in Portsmouth later getting the nickname Joe from a U.K. TV puppet. It was his Night & Day LP in 1982 and the single “Steppin’ Out” that first attracted me to his music.
10.The New Christy Minstrels – Saturday Night
Back in 1961, Randy Sparks put together the initial version of this long-running folk troupe. As a ten-piece, they recorded their first LP of bright sing-along folk music in 1962. While many folk-singers look down on the fairly non-offensive songs as not being classic folk, they (and The Kingston Trio) certainly helped popularize that style of music to a much larger audience. Over the years they had some formidable alumni pass through including Gene Clark (The Byrds), Larry Ramos (The Association), Kenny Rogers, Kim Carnes and lead singer Barry McGuire (“Eve Of Destruction”). “Saturday Night” was the non-LP follow-up to the big hit “Green, Green” in 1963 and managed a #29 chart placement here. While the song felt instantly recognizable, it was actually a Randy Sparks composition. Born in Kansas July 29, 1933, Sparks grew up in Oakland and began performing folk music at the Purple Onion in the North Beach section of San Francisco. He passed Feb. 11, 2024.
11.The Drifters – Saturday Night At The Movies
Well let’s stay on Saturday for this entry. Back in 1964 during the British Invasion this #18 single got lost to your Dentist who was a Dave Clark 5 fan as opposed to The Drifters. Frankly it sounds far older than that year. The lead singer was Johnny Moore while the single was written by Brill Building husband and wife composers Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil. Belatedly it became a #3 hit in England in 1972. Born in Selma, Alabama, Moore died 15 days after his 64th birthday in 1998 having moved to London, England.
12.The Pogues – Tuesday Morning
Back in the day, this was the only Pogues record I bought as their earlier stuff suffered from god-awful vocals by the late Shane MacGowan who also had horrible teeth as we saw in my February 2023 blog post. When Shane thankfully left, Peter “Spider” Stacy took over singing. This fine piece of Celtic-pop from 1993 was a single drawn from the Waiting for Herb LP.
13.The Click Five – Friday Night
When the debut Click Five album Greetings from Imrie House came out in 2005, your blogger embraced their power-pop music plus their retro mop-top Beatle haircuts that recalled the New Wave/skinny-tie bands of 1979/80. Coming out of Boston, they were also popular for a time in Asia. This was an album track written by keyboard player Ben Romans and bassist Ethan Mentzer. By the beginning of 2013 they had broken up.
14.Bowling For Soup – S-S-S-Saturday
Well here is another modern band near and dear to your Dentist as they actually play real instruments and perform catchy guitar-based pop. How can I not love a song that name-checks Ringo Starr? Back in 2011 it was going to be an uphill battle to get a pop-rock record to hit the charts and this single didn’t chart but it was till cool. It was from their eighth studio album Fishin’ for Woos. Formed in Wichita Falls, Texas, you can hear the influence of bands like Green Day and The Ramones. The group’s name comes from a Steve Martin comedy bit.
15.Bay City Rollers – Saturday Night
Let’s move back 35 years from Bowling For Soup for another song about Saturday night. When this became the first #1 in the U.S. bicentennial year of 1976 your blogger didn’t care for these guys at all. Once again it took a few records before their brand of catchy pop earned my music-buying dollars. While they had been having U.K. hits since 1971, this was their first foray in to the U.S. charts (it oddly didn’t chart in England). They first recorded this Bill Martin and Phil Coulter composition in 1973 with a different vocalist before redoing it the following year with new singer Les McKeown for the Rollin’ LP. I remember first seeing this performed in September 1975 on the short-lived disaster that was Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell, not to be confused with the successful Saturday Night Live of the same time. They are the far left picture in the intro.
16.Queen – Lazing On A Sunday Afternoon
This short trifle was the second album track from the hugely popular Queen LP A Night At The Opera (1975). This campy Freddie Mercury composition and “Seaside Rendezvous” on the same album were in the old-time British Music Hall vein just as “Honey Pie” by The Beatles. Likely folks who bought the album were looking to play the hits “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “You’re My Best Friend” rather than excellent if, however, campy novelties.
17.The Peppermint Rainbow – Will You Be Staying After Sunday
Oh my, your Dentist wouldn’t have been caught dead listening to this song back in early 1969. For me it was Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Mothers Of Invention, The Who, etc. – not sunshine pop. Once again, however, this stuff now isn’t so bad and sure sounds a whole lot better to me than hip-hop (boy am I OLD!). This single only managed to hit #32 and sounds like Spanky & Our Gang. It was produced by Paul Leka who earlier had been successful co-writing and producing “Green Tambourine” for The Lemon Pipers (1967). He had even more success later in 1969 with Steam’s “Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye” – a song that seemingly will never die. The Peppermint Rainbow formed in Baltimore and split up in 1970 after two moderately successful singles.
18.Men Without Hats – On Tuesday
There is something about the music of this Canadian group that continues to appeal to me. In 2022 they made my year-end best list with their Again, Pt. 2 album just as they first did with “The Safety Dance” back in 1983. Ivan Doroschuk (Oct. 9, 1957 – Champaign, Illinois) writes and sings appealing pop music. This album track was found on the Pop Goes The World album from 1987. The gorgeous flute part was played by Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson.
19.The Cure – Friday I’m In Love
Back in 1992 this was a #18 U.S. hit (#6 in the U.K.) for Robert Smith’s goth-rock band. It was from their ninth album Wish. Smith, born in Blackpool April 21, 1959, is the only constant in the band that continues to this day. They were inducted in to the Rock Hall of Shame (oops, I mean Fame) back in 2019.
20.Blondie – Sunday Girl
Parallel Lines was Blondies’s breakthrough LP back in 1978 due to the huge #1 success of “Heart Of Glass”. In England “Sunday Girl” was the follow-up single and it got to #1 as well. As successful as it was in many parts of the world, for some reason Chrysalis didn’t release it as a 45 here where it was only found on their third studio album. It was written by guitarist Chris Stein ostensibly about lead singer Debbie Harry’s lost cat Sunday Man. This is the original version. For some reason, the version on their Greatest Hits album has a verse sung in French. They are the middle picture in the intro.
21.Elvis Costello & The Attractions – Wednesday Week
Weirdly in 1980 two totally different songs came out from U.K. bands with the title “Wednesday Week”. The Undertones took their song to #11 in the U.K. charts. A far better song was this Elvis Costello penned tune that was one of two b-sides for the single “Accidents Will Happen” in 1979. That song was from his band’s third album Armed Forces. This track wasn’t included on an LP till the compilation album Taking Liberties in 1980. It is a bit of an oddity in that it rocks like mad till a tad over half the song is over when it slows down dramatically. The lyrics seem to be about a fleeting relationship (maybe?). On August 25, 1954 Declan MacManus was born in London. His dad Ross McManus had recorded a version of the Beatles song “The Long & Winding Road” that was released in 1970 as by Day Costello. Declan took that last name and added Elvis for his stage name. By the way, there was also a female-led U.S. pop band in the late 80’s named Wednesday Week (“Why”). They are the far right picture in the intro.
22.U2 – Sunday Bloody Sunday
The live version of this song (recorded June 5, 1983) is one of the most iconic moments in the history of Colorado’s storied Red Rocks Amphitheatre near Morrison west of Denver. The studio take was originally found on War the 1983 third album by Irish band U2. With the military feel to the drumming it is about the 1972 Bloody Sunday shooting of 26 Northern Irish protestors by British troops (14 died). This was the highlight of the 1984 video U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky which almost didn’t happen due to heavy rains yet led to the moody ambience of the shoot with Bono carrying a white flag through the haze with flames illuminating the rocks. The song was written by the band: Bono (vocals), The Edge (guitar), Adam Clayton (bass) and Larry Mullen Jr. (drums).
23.Genesis – Get ‘Em Out By Friday
A protest of a different nature is this song by Genesis when they were a progressive band led by singer Peter Gabriel (and Phil Collins was just the drummer). This band composition (Gabriel, Collins, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks) was on their fourth album Foxtrot (1972). Gabriel’s lyrics are about the forcing out of low rent tenants for redevelopment in order to raise prices. His words take on a satirical bent talking about shortening people via genetic engineering to put in more bodies per area.
24.Chicago – Saturday In The Park
Pianist Robert Lamm wrote and sang this song for the album Chicago V (1972). It was a #3 hit when taken from that LP as a single. Lamm was born in Brooklyn Oct. 13, 1944 and said he wrote this song about New York’s Central Park. He plus Lee Loughnane (trumpet) and James Pankow (trombone) are the only remaining original members in Chicago at the time this is being written.
25.Johnny Cash – Sunday Mornin’ Comin’ Down
While it only got to #46 on the U.S. pop charts back in 1970, this was a #1 country hit for Johnny Cash. It was written by Kris Kristofferson and was on his own 1970 LP Kristofferson that also included his compositions “Help Me Make It Through the Night”, “For The Good Times” and “Me and Bobby McGee”. These were all big hits for others. Ray Stevens had a 1969 #81 pop hit (#55 country) with this song before Cash performed it at the Ryman while taping his TV show for ABC which ran from ’69 to ’71. After it was issued as a single, it was awarded the distinction of being Country Music Song Of The Year. Cash lived from Feb. 26, 1932 ( Kingsland, Arkansas) to Sept. 12, 2003 (Nashville, Tennessee).
Here are 3 BONUS SONGS
A.The Beatles – Lady Madonna
Yes, I understand that this doesn’t actually fit my criteria since there isn’t a day of the week in the title – that’s why this is a bonus addition. It wouldn’t be a rocknrolldentist blog without The Beatles as you maybe have seen over the years (with a few exceptions). This is what got me thinking about days of the week songs after noticing that Saturday is the only day not mentioned in the lyrics. Gotta figure a three syllable word didn’t fit the rhyme scheme Paul McCartney devised. The words have a couple of clever moments that always tickle me. “Thursday night your stockings needed mending. See how they run.” That always makes me laugh. “Tuesday afternoon is never-ending.” The Moody Blues LP Days Of Future Passed came out in November of 1967 with the song “Forever Afternoon (Tuesday)” so when the Fab Four recorded this song in February 1968 you have to assume Paul had heard it. This non-LP single was a return to rock and roll after the psychedelic records they had been releasing and was meant to tide over the public while the group was in India with the Maharishi. Oddly, this 45 only got to #4 in the U.S. chart while dreck like “Honey” by Bobby Goldsboro topped it – ugh. The piano part recalls an old Humphrey Lyttelton boogie woogie single from 1956 in the U.K. “Bad Penny Blues”. Ronnie Scott played the sax solo. The Rocknroll-daughter Hilary demanded I also mention “Eight Days A Week” – are you happy now?!
B.Dave Edmunds – Here Comes The Weekend
Oh no, I’m gonna break the rules yet again with a song that doesn’t mention a day of the week in the title. More often than not, the other artist that turns up in my blog posts is Dave Edmunds. If there is any musician I would have loved to meet it would have been Welsh born DE (April 15, 1944). Dave’s first album for Swan Song (Led Zeppelin’s label) was his third overall as a solo act – Get It (1977). This track was an original by Edmunds and Nick Lowe who played bass and sang with their band Rockpile. As a single this song apparently made #28 in the Dutch charts in 1976. The first verse mentions all five of the weekdays reserving only Friday as anything but misery.
C.Nick Lowe & His Cowboy Outfit – 7 Nights To Rock
Here is our last bonus song that strongly mentions the days of the week but doesn’t have a day in the title. The release date was late summer 1985 for The Rose Of England. This was Lowe’s fourth album after the breakup of Rockpile (his band with Dave Edmunds) plus his second and final with the Cowboy Outfit. Lowe was born March 24, 1959 in Surrey and played bass in Brinsley Schwarz prior to linking up with Edmunds and company. This was a cover of a 1956 recording by Moon Mullican which had backing from Boyd Bennett & His Rockets. Piano player Aubrey Mullican (March 29, 1909 to Jan. 1, 1967) was a country & western artist that helped birth what became rockabilly. The composers were Buck Trail, Henry Glover, and Louis Innis with Glover being one of the few black executives at that time with a record label (King Records which Mullican recorded for). Trail and Innis were white country singers.
Babylon was an ancient city that was a bit south of present day Baghdad. It is said that several thousand years BC the Babylonians decided to organize their days in to a group of seven naming them after the sun, the moon and the five planets they could see. That is from online so it must be right though I have to wonder how they knew they were planets (sadly Carl Sagan isn’t around to help me out). Apparently you move forward to the 12th century BC and the Greeks kept the days named after the sun and moon but decided the other five needed to now be given names from their gods. About the 1st century BC the Romans changed five of the days to their own godly names then the Anglo-Saxons came along about 500 years later blah blah blah. Google it if you care, but this blog for cripes sakes is about rock and roll not astronomy or nomenclature. Your Dentist (ret’d) was thinking the other day about good songs that have a day of the week in the title. A silly idea I know, but there were enough goodies that I decided to break the list up in to two 25 song blog posts so look for part 2 on the 15th of next month. If you are wondering, not one Thursday song made the list. These songs are in some semblance of order starting with:
1.Elton John – Saturday Night’s Alright (For Fighting)
Honestly this guitar-player didn’t care for the piano-centric music of Elton John till this record came out in 1973. It is one of the few songs by Elton that flat out rocks with a nasty guitar riff played by Davey Johnstone. It got to #12 on the U.S. hit parade and was the lead track from his best album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. Lyricist Bernie Taupin has said that the words recall bar-fights back in his youth. While I am still not much of a fan of his earlier music, this started me on many years of more often than not buying Elton John’s records which I have grown to love.
2.The Monkees – Pleasant Valley Sunday
From 1967 we have this #2 U.S. hit by a nifty band from my youth that has not yet been inducted in to the rock and roll hall of shame in Ohio. The song was written by the husband and wife team of Gerry Goffin and Carole King as a social commentary about suburbia. They had moved from New York City to West Orange, New Jersey and apparently found life in the suburbs lacking. Looking at the personel on the recording, Mike Nesmith plays the great guitar riff sorta reminiscent of “I Want To Tell You” by The Beatles while Peter Tork tickles the keys. They were augmented by Chip Douglas on bass and ‘Fast’ Eddie Hoh on drums (not Davy Jones and Micky Dolenz as in the video) with Bill Chadwick on acoustic guitar. This is a true group song with all four Monkees singing on the record.
3.Cat Stevens – Tuesday’s Dead
London born Cat Stevens (Steven Demetre Georgiou at birth on July 21, 1948 and now Yusuf I think) released two of the greatest LPs ever recorded in Tea For The Tillerman (1970) and Teaser & The Firecat (1971). This song which was an album track from the latter could have easily been a single (along with “Bitterblue”). Not only were the songs excellent, but the sound was crisp and pristine (production was by former Yardbirds bassist Paul Samwell-Smith). The song felt powerful even with just acoustic guitars. Showing his many talents, Mr. Stevens also did the cover illustrations to both records. The album which hit #2 on the U.S. and U.K. charts featured the singles “Morning Has Broken”, “Moonshadow” and “Peace Train”.
4.The Bobby Fuller Four – Saturday Night
In just over one and a half minutes this Bobby Fuller production packs in just about everything your Dentist loves about pop music – chiming guitars, vocal harmonies, powerful percussion and handclaps. Pop records are always better with handclaps. Texan Fuller brought the Buddy Holly sound in to the ’60s notably on “I Fought The Law” (1966 – #9). His Mustang label LP from that year I Fought The Law had some brillliant guitar pop including this Fuller composition. Who knows if he would have created more great music as he either committed suicide swallowing gas (hmmmm) or was murdered. He lived from October 22, 1942 to July 18, 1966.
5.Small Faces – Lazy Sunday
The album Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake from 1968 was a masterpiece of British psychedelic rock and roll (and it had a cool round fold-open cover too). This Steve Marriott/Ronnie Lane song from it was a #2 U.K. hit though it didn’t chart here. It has a Cockney sing-song vocal approach by Steve Marriott who is one of your Dentist’s favorite singers of all-time – especially with his next band, the hard-rocking Humble Pie (check out my June and July 2023 posts for the full list of fave male singers). The record tells the story of Marriott driving his fellow residents mad playing his music at odd hours and way too loud. While it sounds cheerful and light, apparently he was a rather annoying neighbor. Marriott accidently killed himself allegedly falling in to an alcohol/drug-fueled sleep with a lit cigarette that led to a fire. He lived from January 30, 1947 till April 20, 1991. They are the far right picture in the intro.
6.The Rubettes – Saturday Night
The only U.S. hit for British band The Rubettes was “Sugar Baby Love” (#37 in 1974), but they had nine chart records in England. That song (a #1 U.K. single) was a studio creation with Paul Da Vinci on vocals. When it became a hit, some of the musicians from that session became the real Rubettes along with new singer Alan Williams. “Saturday Night” was an album track found on their self-titled U.S. LP (Wear It’s ‘At in the U.K.). Like many of their songs, this cut (and “Sugar Baby Love”) was written by the team of Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington. They are the far left picture in the intro.
7.Gary Moore – Friday On My Mind
The Easybeats originated this song, but this is my fave version – by the late great guitarist from Thin Lizzy, Gary Moore. Robert William Gary Moore was born in Belfast on April 4, 1952. His later career was heavily in to the blues (he bought a 1959 Gibson Les Paul from bluesman Peter Green of Fleetwood Mac), but it was his hard rock stuff that got to me at first. The 1987 LP Wild Frontier is my fave by him containing “Over The Hills & Far Away” plus this hard-edged cover. He died from a heart attack while in Spain February 6, 2011. The original was written by George Young and Harry Vanda. I will save more discussion of that version since something tells me we might revisit it in the next blog post. He is the middle picture in the intro.
8.The Moody Blues – Tuesday Afternoon (Forever Afternoon)
The 1967 (1968 in the U.S.) album Days of Future Passed was a radical move for that psychedelic era – record an album with orchestrations plus underpin the sound with a new instrument called a Mellotron – a mini-orchestra in a keyboard. If you want to read about my take on my favorite musical instrument, the Mellotron, check out my June and August 2021 posts. Hitting #24 in 1968, this was the first chart hit for the reconstituted Moody Blues. They had been a blues band with the late Denny Laine in ’65 (“Go Now”) then changed their sound when he left. The Moodies became the face of a new style later called progressive rock with the additions of John Lodge (bass) and Justin Hayward (guitar). This was written and sung by Hayward (born October 14, 1946 in England) about a Tuesday sitting in an English park. Ray Thomas plays the flute solo that fades at the end of the single, but leads to the orchestrated section on the LP. The first single from the album didn’t chart at the time (“Nights In White Satin”), but finally hit #2 in 1972 here which pushed that album to belated success.
9.Cat Stevens – Another Saturday Night
Steven Georgiou would have been a few months shy of his fifteenth birthday when the original Sam Cooke 45 was a hit (#10 in 1963). Once again I won’t go in to detail about Cooke’s version as it will likely show up in part 2 of our theme. This track by Stevens was a non-LP #6 U.S. hit in 1974 and was a rarity for him being a cover song. The 45 was produced by Stevens and had a bit of a ska feel with horns and organ over island percussion.
10.The Mamas & The Papas – Monday Monday
This John Phillips composition was their only #1 hit. Following the #4 success of their first single “California Dreamin'”, this certainly helped push their 1966 debut LP If You Can Believe Your Eyes & Ears to #1 as well. The lead vocal is by Denny Doherty who was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia on November 29, 1940 and passed January 19, 2007 in Mississauga, Ontario.
11.Spanky & Our Gang – Sunday Will Never Be The Same
To some extent Spanky & Our Gang had the same sound as The Mamas & The Papas with intricate vocal harmonies over sunshiny folkish pop rock. Lead singer Elaine “Spanky” McFarlane (born June 19, 1942 in Illinois) got her nickname after George McFarland who played Spanky in the old Our Gang comedy movies (also known as The Little Rascals). This single was a #9 U.S. hit in 1967 that was written by Terry Cashman and Gene Pistilli. That duo along with Tommy West formed The Buchanan Brothers who had the hit “Medicine Man” (#22 1969). Cashman and West also produced the Jim Croce records.
12.Melanie C – Suddenly Monday
In 1999 former Spice Girl Melanie Chisolm released her debut solo LP Northern Star which proved that the lady could sing. It used several different producers which gave it a diverse sound. This album track was handled by Def Jam’s Rick Rubin and certainly sounds nothing like the hip-hop or metal he was producing. Instead it has a jaunty “Penny Lane” Beatles feel that really appealed to your Dentist. The track was written by Chisholm with Matt Rowe, Richard Stannard and Julian Gallagher. It was used in the 2000 British comedy film Maybe Baby which had a really nifty soundtrack that included Paul McCartney performing the old Buddy Holly title tune.
13.The Rolling Stones – Ruby Tuesday
You wouldn’t expect rocker Keith Richards to write ballads, yet he was responsible for many of them by The Stones including “Angie” and this song about his then girlfriend Linda Keith. Before the drugs took down Brian Jones, he was a wonderful musician that made the music of The Stones more interesting – here using recorder. It was released in early 1967 as the b-side to “Let’s Spend The Night Together” which was too controversial for most U.S. radio stations who flipped the record to make “Ruby Tuesday” a #1 hit. This has some of Charlie Watts’ best drumming I think.
14.The Monkees – Saturday’s Child
Your writer loved the first Monkees album in 1966 which had a plethora of songs that could have been singles (though only “Last Train To Clarksville” was pulled for a 45). Don Kirshner had a number of songwriters and producers submit tunes which The Monkees recorded their lead vocals on. It was written by David Gates who wouldn’t have his own success until 4 years later with Bread. The personnel on the record was listed as Micky Dolenz on lead vocal with backing by Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Wayne Erwin and Ron Hicklin. The guitarists were Wayne Erwin, Gerry McGee and Louis Shelton. Hart played the organ and Billy Lewis the drums (with Gene Estes on tambourine). Future Canned Heat member Larry Taylor handled the bass. The garage-rock guitar riff almost gave the song a Paul Revere & The Raiders sound.
15.Fleetwood Mac – Monday Morning
Here is another album track that easily could have been a single from the 1975 self-titled Fleetwood Mac LP. It was the lead-off track from that record and was written and sung by Lindsey Buckingham. It has an almost Buddy Holly feel and was originally written by Buckingham for a second Buckingham Nicks LP that didn’t happen before they joined Fleetwood Mac.
16.Dave Edmunds – Almost Saturday Night
It was hard to decide which version of this John Fogerty composition to use, but as Dave Edmunds is your Dentist’s favorite solo act I had to go with this one (but the original may appear next month – stay tuned). The Fogerty recording was on his self-titled 1975 LP and was a #78 charting single. Dave’s 45 got to #54 in 1981 as taken from his LP Twangin… which was his swan song for Swan Song. Welshman Edmunds was born April 15, 1944. Backing here is by his Rockpile mates – Nick Lowe on bass, Billy Bremner on guitar and Terry Williams on drums.
17.Jimmy Buffett – Come Monday
Your Dentist is not a Parrothead being a non-drinker of alcoholic beverages so I have never been a fan of Mr. Buffett’s music. I did however buy this 45 which is a nifty ballad with gorgeous production by former Neon Philharmonic member Don Gant. It might have been the line about wearing Hush Puppies shoes that first appealed to me having worn them on my feet for much of my life (till an old skiing accident required a switch to harder soles – sigh). This was his first U.S. chart hit getting to #30 back in 1974 when taken off the album Living & Dying in 3/4 Time. He was born on Christmas day 1946 in Mississippi and spent much of his early life in Alabama. He passed Sept. 1, 2023.
18.Fats Domino – Blue Monday
Antone ‘Fats’ Domino is never given enough credit for helping to birth what became rock and roll music having waxed “The Fat Man” at the end of 1949. Born in New Orleans February 26, 1928 he passed away in Harvey, Louisiana on October 24, 2017. The man charted 66 singles during the rock era starting in 1955 with his last being a cover of the Beatles song “Lady Madonna”. Paul McCartney has stated that he was trying to sound like Domino on the original. Writing credit here was at first just Dave Bartholomew with the original recording by Smiley Lewis in 1953. His version was a mid-tempo guitar blues with lyrics about how much fun the weekend was compared to the mess that was Monday. Fats made it a piano swinger with his name added to the writing credits on his version. Gotta say that Lewis’ guitar lead break blew away the awful sax solo on Domino’s hit version.
19.Badfinger – Sweet Tuesday Morning
Straight Up was the fourth Badfinger album and was released here just before Christmas 1971 on the Apple label which was owned by The Beatles. It is a toss-up whether this or No Dice was their best record, but if you are a fan of Beatley rock and roll you need both for sure. Badfinger’s tragic story can be found online, but suffice it to say that the stress of poor management and lack of money killed Pete Ham and Tom Evans via suicide. Badfinger are still one of my favorite bands of all-time. This song was an album track written and sung by Joey Molland who at the time of this blog is the last surviving band member. Molland was born June 21, 1947 in Liverpool. His most recent album was back in 2020 when he released Be True To Yourself.
20.The Bangles – Manic Monday
Under a pseudonym (Christopher) this #2 1986 hit was actually written by Prince and was the first Bangles single to chart here. They included it on their second album Different Light. The lead vocal was sung by guitarist Susanna Hoffs (born in L.A. January 17, 1959).
21.The Hummingbirds – Tuesday
From the 1986 U.S. power-pop of The Bangles, let’s transition to the jangle-pop of The Hummingbirds who formed that same year in Australia. The first album by The Hummingbirds loveBuzz (1989) was produced by Mitch Easter from Let’s Active who also handled the first R.E.M. records. It charted in Australia at #31 spawning the Aussie hit single “Blush”. This song was an album track written by singer Alannah Russack and to these ears was better than their hit. The rest of the album was written by the male singer of the band, the late Simon Holmes. By the way their last single (1992) was a non-LP cover of a 1965 song written by Donovan (“You Just Gotta Know My Mind”) for his then girl-friend Dana Gillespie. Her version didn’t come out till 1968 so Karen Verros recorded and released it on Dot first. All 3 versions are great and head-scratchers as to why none ever charted anywhere.
22.David Bowie – Love You Till Tuesday
Speaking of Dana Gillespie in the last entry, another song was written for her to record – “Andy Warhol” (1971). It was composed by David Bowie who also recorded the track for his Hunky Dory album. David Jones tried to have a hit record from 1964 to 1967 with various singles and an album under his own name or as David Bowie. “Space Oddity” finally broke in to the U.K. charts in 1969 and eventually people noticed his much poppier Deram label records like “The Laughing Gnome”. His final stab at a hit on Deram was this single which was a re-recording of a track from his first album (David Bowie June 1967). The initial version had the riff played on vibraphone and featured his then band. The single version had bassoon, oboe, etc. playing the riff and felt very British music-hall (think Anthony Newley). This video was filmed in ’69 (along with several other songs) to promote Bowie but wasn’t released till 1984. He lived from January 8, 1947 (London) till 10 January 10, 2016 (New York).
23.Mott The Hoople – Saturday Gigs
In 1972 David Bowie rescued Mott The Hoople from certain dissolution after their album Brain Capers (1971) had failed to chart anywhere. Bowie at first offered Ian Hunter’s band the song “Suffragette City” but they passed so he gave them the better tune “All The Young Dudes” which started their short run of hit singles. This non-LP 45 which started life as “Saturday Kids” was their last studio recording and featured new guitarist Mick Ronson from Bowie’s band. When it could only get to #41 (1974) in the U.K. charts, Ian and Mick split leaving Mott to carry on for a bit with a new singer and guitarist. This song is essentially an autobiographical tune that in retrospect neatly wrapped things up.
24.Def Leppard – High ‘N’ Dry (Saturday Night)
Def Leppard lead singer Joe Elliott is an unabashed Ian Hunter/Mott The Hoople fan even to the point of fronting Down ‘n’ Outz who cover Hunter’s music along with Mott’s other offshoots. His main band Def Leppard (Sheffield, England) came to be in the late ’70s when metal was certainly not a popular genre in the face of disco. It was their third album Pyromania (1983) that led to their breakthrough. This track was from their second LP High ‘N’ Dry – 1981 (the one with the man diving in to a pool) and was produced by Mutt Lange. The late Steve Clark (guitar) plus Rick Savage (bass) wrote the song along with Elliott.
25.The Shirelles – I Met Him On A Sunday (Ronde-Ronde)
It wasn’t till “Will You Love Me Tomorrow” became a #1 in January 1961 that The Shirelles hit the big-time. This 45 was their first charter here in the U.S. at #49 (1958). Shirley Owens, Doris Kenner, Beverly Lee and Addie (Micki) Harris wrote and sang this song at their Passaic, New Jersey High School talent show as The Poquellos. Luckily for them, one of their fellow students had a mother (Florence Greenberg) who owned a record label (Tiara). Greenberg leased the recording to Decca records. By the way, after a couple of flops, Decca dropped them allowing their hit run on Greenberg’s new label Scepter records. Harris and Coley are deceased.
There was a time when it seemed like you could count on movies supplying some of the greatest music in any given year. It doesn’t seem that way anymore (with a few notable exceptions). That was the idea behind your aging blogger putting together a list of his fave songs that share the title of the movie they appear in since we just had the Academy Awards. This year’s Oscar winning song from Barbie didn’t move me but I think modern composers aren’t trying to appeal to ancient Caucasian males anyway. Maybe down the road a sequel will follow with movie songs that are titled differently than the movie. One caveat is that the song actually had to appear in the film which unfortunately disqualifies Gene Pitney’s great epic “(The Man Who Shot) Liberty Valance” which inexplicably didn’t make the cut for that movie. That song, by the way, was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David who appear in the far right photo in our intro. There are some painful omissions which again inspires me to ask for your comments of your personal faves.
1.Theme from Murder At The Gallop – Ron Goodwin
The MGM 45 uses this title while the Capitol record calls it “Murder She Said” which is another one of these movies that I enjoyed back in the ’60s. Either way this is one of your blogger’s favorite pieces of music as it just makes me smile with its jaunty harpsichord/string olio stirring the senses. It was written and conducted by Brit Ron Goodwin for the four Miss Marple movies that starred Margaret Rutherford in the early ’60s. For my taste there was no better actress who ever played Agatha Christie’s eccentric dowager sleuth. Producer George Martin worked alongside Goodwin on a great many of his records. He scored several British films including Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines and Frenzy. His life spanned Feb. 17, 1925 to Jan. 8, 2003. He is in the middle picture in our intro.
2.Skyfall – Adele
The James Bond movies have generally had notable theme songs and for my money this is by far the best which I know rocknrollbro-inlaw Matt agrees with me on (sorry, rocknrollsister Cheryl). While being the most modern song on our list, it is still respectful of the genre it represents. It is to Adele’s credit that it isn’t trendy or out of place as it feels of a piece with Monty Norman’s “James Bond Theme” from the first Bond film Dr. No – 1961. This is from the 2012 movie of that name and received the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Brit Adele Adkins remains one of the most popular singers in the world.
3.The Big Country Main Theme – Jerome Moross
Holy cow – when those epic strings fire out the intro to this song you have to get goosebumps. Composer Jerome Moross was nominated for an Academy Award for his score to this 1958 adult-themed Western. Burl Ives won the Oscar for best supporting actor while appearing with Gregory Peck and Charlton Heston. Moross said that he was inspired to write the main theme for the movie by recalling an earlier trek he took on land near Albuquerque, New Mexico. He passed in 1983, a week before his 70th birthday. Prog-rock fans of the band Yes will recognize this as being part of a song from their second record Time & A Word (1970) as mixed with the Richie Havens song “No Opportunity Necessary, No Experience Needed”.
4.Help! – The Beatles
Well if you have read my other posts you had to figure The Beatles would appear eventually. This was from the second Beatles movie (1965) which was more slapstick than ’64’s A Hard Day’s Night (and frankly my favorite of all their films contrary to most reviewers). Mostly written by John Lennon (with some help from Paul McCartney), he claimed years later that he was crying for actual help at that time as he felt depressed. John said it was one of his most honest lyrics. By the way, this concert version shows how good they sounded live and endears John to me even more as once again he managed to forget his own lyrics which he often did.
5.The Theme from “A Summer Place” – Percy Faith & His Orchestra
This was a sweeping #1 U.S. hit early in 1960 for the conductor from Toronto, Canada. Faith’s instrumental is a classic example of a record that took a while to find its audience. Columbia released the single in September of 1959. It took till January 1960 for it to hit the charts then it began a nine week run at the top near the end of February. The most successful vocal version was by The Lettermen who in 1965 hit #16 in the U.S. with their version. Lyrics were by Mack Discant and music was by Max Steiner who is often referred to as the father of film-music scoring. He won three Academy Awards plus scored such movies as Casablanca, Gone With The Wind and King Kong.
6.Ghostbusters – Ray Parker, Jr.
This has to be one of the most recognized theme-songs of all-time. Heck, everybody knows the answer to who “you gonna call?” “Ghostbusters” of course (“I can’t hear you”). Parker had been the guiding force behind the hit group Raydio (“Jack and Jill”) till going solo in 1981. This song hit #1 in 1984 and generated controversy when Huey Lewis decided it sounded too much like his 1974 song “I Want A New Drug”. Lewis received compensation one assumes because Parker and/or his lawyers decided to end it, but to me the tune is different with only the riffs being akin. For years courts have ruled that riffs aren’t necessarily subject to copyright, so who you gonna blame? It is still a very catchy song from a fun movie no matter who wrote it.
7.The Magnificent Seven – Al Caiola & His Orchestra
Guitarist Caiola only had two chart hits: “Bonanza” from the TV show (#19 U.S. 1961) and this stirring theme at the tail end of 1960 (#35). He was mainly a studio guy and to have a rock hit was a relatively old 40 when he recorded this instrumental. He passed at age 96 in 2016 having recorded with artists as diverse as Elvis and Tony Bennett. Elmer Bernstein wrote the film score and, no, he wasn’t related to Leonard Bernstein the conductor. He scored a diverse group of movies including The Ten Commandments, True Grit and Animal House. The movie depicts seven men protecting a Mexican town and starred Yul Brenner and Steve McQueen among others. It was a Western remake of Akira Kurosawa’s classic 1954 Japanese film Seven Samurai. He is pictured far left in our intro.
8.Jailhouse Rock – Elvis Presley
Elvis movies were generally just excuses to get the kids to the theater, sell more popcorn and soda, throw in some songs and then get those kids to buy the records. A few of his movies were actually pretty good, however with this 1957 film being one of the better ones. Keeping in mind that movie reviewers in the ’50s were never going to be in sync with teenagers or in love with rock and roll music, the reviews were pretty much negative. Presley played an ex-convict which didn’t sit well with those folk to begin with as they saw him as a bad influence on their kids. The movie was a huge success at the box-office. This song was written by legendary tunesmiths Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller (“Kansas City”, “Youngblood”) who also added the songs “(You’re So Square) Baby I Don’t Care” (which Elvis is said to have played the bass on) and “Treat Me Nice” for the movie. Together or apart, Leiber and Stoller were responsible for at least 70 U.S. chart hits.
9.Having A Wild Weekend – The Dave Clark Five
With the huge success of the first Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night (1964), it was inevitable that other British Invasion groups would be cast in films as well to draw in the teen market. For a time The Dave Clark Five were seen as rivals of The Beatles and indeed they did chart 24 singles here from 1964 till 1968, but they were just a great rock and roll band and not trendsetters like the Fabs. One of the biggest problems with casting musical acts in movies is not every member was necessarily a great actor or even very interesting. That was the biggest strength of The Beatles – they were all four compelling and different individuals. The other problem with most teen movies was trying to find a plot. This movie didn’t get much of an audience as it wasn’t really a teen diversion, but more serious in tone. It marked the screen debut of British director John Boorman who went on to such successes as Deliverance and Excalibur. The soundtrack album on Epic was one of the first records in my collection as mom and dad let me get it from their Columbia Record Club order back in 1965 (thanks folks!). In the U.K. the title of the movie was Catch Us If You Can which was the hit single from the album (#4 U.S.).
10.Let It Be – The Beatles
I decided to restrict it to only two songs by one artist so Let It Be wins out over Magical Mystery Tour, A Hard Day’s Night and Yellow Submarine – but just barely. If “Help!” was mostly a John song, “Let It Be” was mostly Paul. The movie back in 1970 showed a band breaking up though they managed to pull together long enough to record the classic Abbey Road album. While this was recorded earlier than Abbey Road, it became their last album of new material in 1970 spawning this #1 single (plus “The Long & Winding Road” which also hit #1). The single version with production credited to George Martin downplayed the orchestra and used a mellow guitar lead break from George Harrison. The album version (included here) was produced by Phil Spector and for me was far superior punching things up and using a hot lead part from George. To me this is the birth of the power ballad. My late pal Chuck Davis and I used to crank this sucker up in his dorm room on Friday after class at the University Of Colorado while blasting out Chuck’s electric guitar likely to the annoyance of fellow students.
11.The Monkey’s Uncle – Annette Funicello + The Beach Boys
Here is yet another 1965 teen movie and it was a big success though the single didn’t chart. By 1965 Annette was several years removed from charting records which is a pity as this 45 is great. The song was written by Richard and Robert Sherman who had composed nifty tunes for movies such as Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book. The film starred Annette and Tommy Kirk. It was pretty silly beginning with Kirk’s character adopting a chimpanzee named Stanley.
12.Exodus – Ferrante & Teicher
This stirring song is from the 1960 Paul Newman star vehicle about the founding of the State of Israel. Otto Preminger directed and the film reportedly earned over five times its production budget. Ernest Gold won the Academy Award for Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture while Art Ferrante and Lou Teicher nabbed the hit piano duet version getting to # 2 in the U.S. in 1961. Gold scored a great many films including Judgment at Nuremberg and On The Beach. Ferrante and Teicher made a career out of songs from movies it seemed, including “Tonight” and “Midnight Cowboy”. Teicher passed in 2008 (three weeks before his 84th birthday) and Ferrante succumbed in 2009 (two weeks after his 88th birthday).
13.Xanadu – Olivia Newton-John + The Electric Light Orchestra
Jeff Lynne of The Electric Light Orchestra wrote this nifty pop confection for the horrid roller-disco film Xanadu in 1980. It got to #8 in the U.S. for the pairing of ELO backing Olivia Newton-John on lead vocal. One can only speculate how the great dancer Gene Kelly felt acting in this his last screen movie about a silly craze that didn’t have wheels – roller-disco. The much beloved ONJ sadly passed in the summer of 2022 of cancer at the age of 73.
14.The Good, The Bad & The Ugly – Hugo Montenegro His Orchestra & Chorus
Clint Eastwood came to success on the big screen with the trio of so-called Spaghetti-Westerns directed by Sergio Leone. This Christmas 1966 film was the third of those Italian Western shows (it was released a year later in the U.S.). Music was by Ennio Morricone though the hit was by Hugo Montenegro who charted at #2 in 1968. Hugo was from New York City and started as a recording artist before he moved to scoring music for films including Lady In Cement and The Wrecking Crew. He passed in February of 1981 at the age of 55. As I commented in my June 2020 Arcane Instruments Of Rock blog post, the main riff was played on an ocarina. Feel free to click on that link (and all the others) at your leisure.
15.That Thing You Do! – The Wonders
If your Dentist could talk to Tom Hanks it wouldn’t be about his wonderful film career, but rather about our apparent shared love of the music of the ’60s (gimme a shout Tom). This 1996 movie was his lovingly accurate representation of a one-hit-wonder band (hence The Wonders) from what for us Boomers was the golden age of music. The song was composed by Adam Schlesinger the bassist from The Fountains Of Wayne who passed from COVID-19 at the age of 52 in 2020. Lead vocals where by Mike Viola who has worked on other movies such as Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. As a fun homage to The Beatles, the song ends the same way that “I Saw Her Standing There” ends.
16.What’s New Pussycat – Tom Jones
Woody Allen’s debut on the big screen was this screwball comedy in 1965. He had previously been a comedic gag writer and stand-up comic. The song itself was written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David (“Walk On By”, “Magic Moments”) and was a #3 hit for Welsh singer Tom Jones – his second U.S. success. Thomas Jones Woodward was born June 7, 1940 and first hit here with “It’s Not Unusual” before settling in to a long run in Las Vegas. It starred the two Peters (Sellers and O’Toole) and reviews were mixed with the title song getting the most acclaim. Allen wasn’t happy with how it turned out and from then on directed his own films.
17.April Love – Pat Boone
The movie was a hit with the teen dating audience and depicted Boone as a parolee who had been convicted of joyriding in a stolen car. It had the usual boy meets girl on the farm plot twists. Pat successfully dished up sanitized Caucasian versions of Black rock and roll songs and was so clean it is a bit hard to see him as the law-breaker he played in the film (but that’s acting, right?). Reportedly Boone didn’t kiss the actress playing his love interest (Shirley Jones) so as not to cause discord with his wife also named Shirley. Sammy Fain composed the music while the lyrics were by Paul Francis Webster and it became a #1 U.S. hit for Boone in 1957.
18.The Pink Panther Theme – Henry Mancini & His Orchestra
The first Pink Panther movie was released in 1963 and introduced bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau played by Peter Sellers. Sellers’ character was only secondary in the first movie then became the focus of the next ten films. The animated title panther became popular enough that it spun off a kiddie cartoon as well. The theme was written by one of the most prolific and best-known composers of movie songs Henry Mancini (real name Enrico Mancini). His RCA Victor single peaked at #34 in 1964 with the sax played by Plas Johnson. Mancini is probably best known for songs like “Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet”, “Moon River” and “Love Story”. He started playing the piccolo at a young age then studied piano. Growing up near Pittsburgh, he first attended the Carnegie Institute of Technology then transferred to the Juilliard School of Music in New York City. In 1943 at the age of eighteen he enlisted in the Army and in ’45 was sent to France. When he was discharged he first joined the new version of The Glenn Miller Orchestra (Miller had died during WW II) then went to work in the movie industry. From then on he was involved with scoring countless movies and TV shows till his passing in 1994 at age 70.
19.Town Without Pity – Gene Pitney
Your Dentist loves the music of Gene Pitney, but he would like an explanation from the R&R Hall Of Fame how Gene got inducted (2002) while acts seemingly more deserving such as Neil Sedaka and Jethro Tull still wait for the call. At any rate, this was a #13 U.S. hit in 1961 from the shockingly tragic drama it accompanied. It is about a German teen who is gang-raped by U.S. servicemen and goes through a horrific trial only to drown herself at the movie’s end – yikes. Kirk Douglas and E. G. Marshall starred as the competing attorneys. The song was written by Dimitri Tiomkin with lyrics by Ned Washington – two composing heavyweights. Tiompkin lived from 1894 till 1979 and as he was Jewish, moved to Berlin then the U.S. following the Russian Revolution. He scored many films including High Noon and The Alamo. Washington passed in 1976 at the age of 76. One of the duo’s best remembered songs is the theme from the TV show Rawhide. Ned worked with others as well including Leigh Harline who wrote the song “When You Wish Upon a Star” for which they won and Oscar .
20.Mrs. Brown You’ve Got A Lovely Daughter – Herman’s Hermits
Disclaimer – your Dentist admits this to be a bit of a cheat as the hit song that lent its title to the movie came out three years before the film. Stop complaining – this in my blog after all and while the first Hermits movie Hold On! is better remembered, that song was not as good as “Mrs. Brown…”. The tune was a cover of a ’63 popular U.K ditty by Trevor Peacock and sung by Tom Courtenay in The Lads – a British TV play. Peter Noone’s band recorded the track as filler for an album only to see it become one of their biggest hits at #1 in ’65 when released in the U.S.. The other hit from the January 1968 movie was “There’s A Kind Of Hush”, their last top 10 U.S. single (1967). The plot of the movie is pretty dicey involving Peter/Herman getting a greyhound dog named Mrs. Brown plus falling for a girl named Judy Brown. No Academy Awards were awarded for the film (but the music was good). Herman’s Hermits were a charming pop band that in the wake of The Beatles 1964 invasion became far bigger stars in the U.S. than in their native England. The seemingly ageless Noone continues to put on a fun show at the time of this writing.
21.Ferry Cross The Mersey – Gerry & The Pacemakers
Hailing from Liverpool with the same manager as The Beatles (Brian Epstein) and producer (George Martin), for a short time the music of Gerry Marsden’s band was hugely popular. In the wake of the success of the first Beatles movie A Hard Day’s Night, Gerry and company were given their own movie which was titled after the River Mersey that empties into Liverpool Bay. It came out in Dec. of 1964 in the U.K. and Feb. 1965 in the U.S. though The Pacemakers were certainly not the equal of The Beatles personality-wise. The title track proved to be the last big hit for the band in the U.S. at #6. Marden wrote the song which was great as was the other hit he wrote for the movie – “It’s Gonna Be Alright” (only a #23 hit here, but your blogger’s fave track by Gerry). Marsden ferried off our planet in 2021 at the age of 78. By the way, what passed as a plot had the band playing themselves pre-hits trying to win a music competition while losing (and ultimately finding) their musical instruments. It was not Citizen Kane.
22.Ballad Of Easy Rider – The Byrds
In the summer of 1969 just before my senior year at Broomfield High, this seemed like a most excellently cool film to this teen with great period music and spiffy looking motorcycles. Well folks, in 2023 it seems stupid and mostly self-indulgent (feel free to quibble, but that’s my opinion in my 70s) but it did make a boatload of money on a ridiculously small budget. It feels like mostly an excuse for Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and Jack Nicholson to take drugs (allegedly), ride motorcycles and canoodle with hippy chicks (one of which was played by Toni Basil who in 1982 had a big hit with “Mickey”). The shocking ending where they have the run-in with the rednecks not-withstanding, it’s ha | ||||
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] | null | [] | null | en | /tbhistory.ico | null | Painting a picture of Caddo life requires us to try and freeze a moment in time as if we were there. For the scene above, the artist depicted a moment about 900 years ago at the height of one of the ancient Caddo sites archeologists know the most about. But what moment should we choose here, for a verbal sketch? Caddo life changed in countless ways throughout the Caddo Homeland over the long march of Caddo history. Therefore we need to employ anthropology's favorite descriptive device: the concept of the ethnographic present. We will try to describe what Caddo life was like about 400 years ago, at the end of the 17th century (late 1600s), based mainly on the accounts of early Spanish and French observers. We choose this particular time as the ethnographic present because this is the earliest period for which we have detailed eyewitness descriptions as well as the latest period during which Caddo society was still intact and relatively unchanged by European contact.
"Relatively unchanged by European contact?" Yes, compared to only a few years later when the invaders' epidemics, guns, and horses brought about swift and often terrible changes in Caddo life. The fact that the French saw peach orchards and watermelon patches at Caddo sites in the 1680s shows that Caddo life had already changed as a consequence of the arrival in the New World of peoples and plants from the Old World brought by Spanish colonists. It is thought that the first epidemics of Old World diseases, to which New World peoples had no immunity, spread widely and cruelly across the densely settled Eastern Woodlands before Europeans ever visited most areas. During the succeeding centuries of European colonization, wave after wave of Old World diseases swept across native North America. It has been estimated that Caddo population may have fallen by as much as 95 percentage between 1691 and 1816, a catastrophic change few human societies have survived. So we choose the late 17th century as our main window on Caddo life, mindful that the lives of generations before and after may have been quite different.
Early Spanish and French accounts mainly describe the Hasinai groups living in the southwestern part of the Caddo Homeland in what is today east Texas. Far less is known about the Cadohadacho-allied groups and even less about others elsewhere in the Caddo Homeland. If we had comparable accounts for all Caddo groups, we would probably be struck by the differences across the Caddo world as much or more than the similarities. Some of these suspected (and known) differences relate to the environmental differences across the region, while others are cultural differences reflecting each group's own history and customs and the influence of their nearest and most influential non-Caddo neighbors. For instance, Caddo groups living along Red River below the Great Raft interacted with lower Mississippi Valley peoples living a day's canoe trip downstream. In contrast, Red River Caddos living upstream from the Great Bend near the western edge of the homeland traded with Arkansas Valley peoples as well as neighboring Plains tribes (with whom they sometimes fought). With these factors in mind, we will mention geographical variations glimpsed from available documents as well as make brief references to earlier and later periods to point out a few of the more important changes through time.
Caddo Society
Like other aspects of Caddo life, Caddo society changed through time. During the historic era in particular, Caddo society was radically transformed by the chain of events initiated by the European invasion. Even before Europeans arrived, there is no reason at all to think that Caddo society was uniform across the Caddo Homeland at any point in time. Nonetheless, early Spanish visitors noticed more commonalities than differences among the Caddo groups they visited. They were struck by the highly organized and civilized society of the Caddo, especially in comparison to the smaller scale hunting and gathering groups they encountered elsewhere in Texas. Unlike some of the tribes living in fortified towns along the lower Mississippi and elsewhere in the Southeast with whom the Spanish had fought bloody battles, the Caddo lived in sprawling, unfortified communities.
Caddo society was made up of independent named groups sometimes called tribes or nations by the early Europeans. Each was comprised of a principal community or village (groups were known by the name of the principal village) and various affiliated communities. The communities were made up of villages, hamlets, and farmsteads. Nearby villages and hamlets belonged to the same community. Typically the affiliated communities shared a section of a river valley and adjacent uplands and were within a day's walk from one another. The normal settlement pattern was dispersed (spread out), but nucleated (tightly clustered) villages and hamlets also existed.
At the top of Caddo society were religious and political leaders who held inherited positions. These positions were normally held by men, but a few female leaders are known from historic accounts and in some high-status prehistoric tombs the principal individuals appear to have been women. Among the Hasinai groups, the xinesi (pronounced chenesi, meaning Mr. Moon) inherited the position of spiritual leadership (head priest) and served all of the allied communities. Each community had a caddi or principal headman (civil chief), a rank that was also inherited from father to son, as well as a group of village elders known as canahas. In consultation with the canahas, the caddi was primarily responsible for making the important political decisions for the community, sponsoring major ceremonies of a diplomatic nature, leading councils for war/raiding expeditions, and conducting the calumet (or peace pipe) ceremony with important visitors to the communities. The tammas were subordinate "enforcers" who made sure the caddi's decisions were obeyed and that people behaved properly.
The Caddo people looked to the xinesi for mediation and communication with their principal god, the Caddi Ayo, for religious leadership and decision-making influence, and in leading certain special rites, including the first-fruit or green corn rituals, harvest, and naming ceremonies. In essence, the xinesi connected Caddo life to the supernatural realm. In return, community members provided for the xinesi's needs in terms of food and shelter. At a less exalted level, each community had various lesser priests as well as connas (medicine men) who cured sickness and carried out daily rituals.
Caddo peoples traced descent through the maternal (mother's) line, as was still reflected by kinship terms recorded as late as the early 1900s. They also recognized clans, kinship groups that traced their heritage to a common ancestor through the female line. The clans were named after an animal (e.g., bison, bear, raccoon) or celestial phenomena (sun, thunder) and were ranked, some clans having a higher social status than others. Presumably the leaders were members of the highest ranked clans. Marriage typically occurred between members of different clans. Beyond these meager characterizations, the Caddo kinship system remains poorly understood in comparison to that of some tribes because many elements of it were drastically altered during the tumultuous historic period.
The Caddo society described by Henri Joutel, Fray Casañas and other early observers in the late 17th century was not all individualistic, it was communal, an integrated whole woven together and tightly bound by kinship, custom, and expectation. Each Caddo lived life according to the expectations and traditions of her/his community. The roles of men and women, girls and boys were defined by age, sex, and kin group. Group solidarity was reinforced by shared activitiesbuilding houses, planting and harvesting crops, feasts, dances, and rituals.
Caddo Economy
The first Spanish and French visitors to the Caddo Homeland encountered thriving communities whose livelihood was based on farming, hunting, gathering, and trade. Archeological evidence indicates that a mixed economy was characteristic of Caddo ancestors for at least a thousand years, probably much longer. Most accounts of Caddo life emphasize agriculture and rightly so because farming provided much of the dependable food supply upon which village life depended. The central role played by farming also helps explain why Caddo settlements characteristically were scattered and spread outthe Caddo lived among their fields and gardens.
In historic times, corn (also called maize) was the mainstay crop. The Caddo grew several varieties of corn including "little" corn that ripened in the summer and "flour" or "great" corn that ripened in the fall. Corn was dried on the cob and stored in raised granaries to keep it dry and protected from rodents. The Spanish noticed that the Caddo always saved their best corn for seed and hung the seed corn cobs high inside their houses where it would not be touched except for planting, no matter how little food was available. Corn also figured prominently in the annual ritual cycle with planting ceremonies, first-fruit or green corn ceremonies, and harvest rites. Successful fall harvests occasioned major festivals at the principal villages. These drew kinfolk and allies near and far for several-day celebration of Caddo life: feasting, tobacco-smoking, black-tea-drinking, dancing, trading, negotiating, courtship, and more.
Other important crops included beans (five or six varieties according to Fray Casañas, the Spanish priest who lived among the Hasinai in 1691), squash, pumpkins, sunflowers, and various lesser-known domesticated plants including goosefoot (Chenopodium sp.). The Caddo quickly adopted crops introduced by the Europeans, including watermelon and peaches. Tobacco was another important crop required for ritual use. Women did most of the farming and all of the food preparation, although men did some heavy work such as clearing fields and helped at critical times such as harvest. Farming was also very much a communal activity. Fields were owned by the community and families were assigned specific plots by the tammas. Planting and harvesting were community projects that moved from plot to plot beginning with that of the xinesi and moving down the social ladder until each family plot had been reached.
Wild plants, game, and fish were also vital food resources. Wild plants included nuts (hickory, walnut, acorn, and pecan), berries, plums, persimmon, grapes, and various seed plants, just to name a few. Throughout most of Caddo history, the favorite game animal hunted by Caddo men was the white-tailed deer. Deer provided most of the meat as well as hides, antlers, sinew, and bones for tools and clothing. Deer also figured prominently in Caddo dance and symbolism. Buffalo were hunted on extended trips west or northwest out onto the prairie-plains, but were not an important food source until after the late 17th century after the Caddo acquired horses. Turkeys, rabbits, and various other small animals and birds were hunted and snared. Caddo living along productive waters caught fish, turtles, and other aquatic species. Bear were hunted for food, fur, and especially for their fat, which served many useful purposes and was traded to the French.
Three factors seem to underlie the long-term success of the Caddo economy: diverse natural resources, well-developed food processing and storage technologies, and the ready adoption of new crops from their neighbors and trading partners. Caddo peoples relied on many different wild and cultivated food resources, of which only a few have been mentioned. These changed in importance from place to place and with the seasons, the vagaries of rainfall, and through time. When crops failed, the Caddo turned to wild plant foods that had been used for generations.
They had many ways of storing food to get them through the annual low point in resource availability: winter and early spring. They dried corn, beans, pumpkins, wild fruits, and deer meat. They smoked fish and other meats. They built raised and tightly sealed granaries to keep their corn supplies dry and vermin-free. Along the Red River west of the Great Bend, some Caddo groups used underground storage pits similar to those used by their Plains neighbors. From river cane and certain barks and grasses, Caddo women wove baskets and trays large and small, tight or loose; some for storage, others for winnowing and sieving. Out of clay they created all manner of ceramic cooking, storage, and serving containers. Bear fat, for instance, was rendered and stored in clay pots. Through such methods the Caddo survived thick times and thin.
Agriculture was central to Caddo life when Caddo communities were first visited by Europeans, but this was not always the case. Early Caddo ancestors were hunters, gatherers, and fishers, living off the land. By 2,000 years ago, if not well before, ancestral Caddo groups began to cultivate the starchy and oily seeded plants that had been domesticated in the Eastern Woodlands by about 2000 B.C. We aren't certain when this happened because few plant remains of any sort have been recovered from the excavated Woodland sites in the Caddo Homeland. But there is little reason to doubt that native crops, including goosefoot, marsh elder, squash, and possibly sunflower, were adopted early on by the Caddo.
At first these native seed plants would have been mere supplements to hunting and gathering, but along with gardening comes the requirement of returning to fixed places to plant, harvest, process, and store. The native seed crops were probably sown broadly in minimally cleared plots and allowed to compete with weeds. The real labor was in the harvest and processing; only the sunflower had compact durable seed heads. Goosefoot and marsh elder had small seeds and friable seed heads. All had to be carefully cleaned and separated from the stalks and chaff. These native seeds tasted bland and were probably prepared mainly in stews and gruels. Gradually, farming became more important, but was probably still secondary to hunting and gathering for centuries. Even though early farming must have provided only a small, labor-intensive part of the diet, the ability to produce this extra food and the requirement to stay nearby while it grew may have been the critical factors that led to increasingly settled village life.
Later, we aren't sure exactly when, the Caddo adopted a tropical plant that had been domesticated in Mesoamerica and already adopted by farming peoples in the American Southwest: corn. Corn first appears at Caddo sites around A.D. 800, but may not have become a mainstay of the economies of most groups until after A.D. 1100. The reason for this lag is unknown, but a similar pattern occurred elsewhere in the Southeast, including the lower Mississippi valley. By 800 years ago (A.D. 1200), the Caddo were big-time corn farmers who also grew squash/pumpkins, beans, sunflowers, and various other crops.
Corn had to be planted seed by seed in individual holes and required greater effort to clear the land, keep it weeded, and fend off animals and birds. But the payoff came at harvest time when whole stalks could be broken off and gathered quickly, each containing one or two fat seed heads (cobs). (Corn was harvested stalks and all because the stalks were useful fuel for cooking fires.) Compared to the native seed crops, corn required minimal cleaning and processing and, once dried, could be readily stored without husking or stripping.
Perhaps even more important was the fact that corn tasted sweet and flavorful, and it could be prepared in many more ways than the native crops: raw, parched, roasted, steamed, boiled, ground into flour, and more. Small wonder that corn became the economic lynchpin of Caddo life, celebrated in song and ritual, and symbolically linked to the sun, the giver of life. There was a downside; eating lots of corn caused a noticeable increase in caries (cavities).
Trade was also an important part of the Caddo economy, at least in historic times. Caddo groups traded resources found within the Caddo Homeland among each other and to outside groups. The best-known Caddo trade goods were bois d'arc wood and salt. Salt was obtained in various places in the Caddo Homeland where saltwater springs or seeps were present. Caddo salt workers concentrated the salt brine by evaporation and boiling in heavy pottery pans and then traded the dried salt to groups elsewhere. For instance, in the spring of 1700, French explorers encountered Ouachita Caddos paddling canoes laden with salt along lower Red River, on their way to trade with Taensa peoples living along the Mississippi.
Bois d'arc (Osage orange) bow wood blanks and finished bows from the Caddo Homeland were traded for hundreds of miles east and west. Bois d'arc is the best bow wood found east of the Rockies and the Cadohadacho groups may have had a monopoly on it. By late prehistoric times the natural range of bois d'arc apparently was restricted mainly to a small area along and south of Red River valley, just upstream from Texarkana.
Bois d'arc does not grow well among other trees and evolved to rely on large herbivores like horses or mammoths to spread its seeds to open areas; most other species, including humans, find the horse apple, as its fruit is known, inedible. At the end of the last Ice Age about 12,000 years ago, horses and mammoths became extinct in North America, leaving the bois d'arc without a natural means of spreading. By the time Europeans arrived, the main remnant bois d'arc population grew within the western Caddo Homeland at the edge of the Blackland Prairie. The reintroduction of horses and Anglo-American farming practices allowed the bois d'arc to spread quickly over a wide area of the south-central U.S. Farmers planted bois d'arc along fence rows, were it is still principally found today.
The role of the bow-wood trade in Caddo history has recently become the subject of debate. Arkansas archeologist Frank Schambach has put forth the intriguing argument that, prior to the historic period, the bow-wood trade was controlled by Mississippian traders (ancestral Tunica) from Spiro who established trading posts within the Caddo Homeland. The idea that foreign, non-Caddo intruders controlled enclaves within Caddo territory, such as the Sanders site on the Red River in Lamar County, has not been accepted by many Caddo scholars (nor by the Caddo Nation). For instance, the state archeologists of both Arkansas (Ann Early) and Oklahoma (Robert Brooks) have taken issue with Schambach's argument. This controversial interpretation and arguments pro and con will be the subject of a future exhibit on Texas Beyond History.
Regardless of who controlled the bow-wood trade, trade may well have played a greater role in Caddo history than has been recognized. The Caddo Homeland is, after all, located between the Southeast and the Plains as well as the Southwest, three major culture areas and ecological zones with very different natural resources. Dried buffalo meat and buffalo hides from the Plains were traded widely in early historic times, as were salt, bow wood, and artifacts made of Gulf of Mexico shells from the Southeast, as well as cotton, turquoise, and shell artifacts from the Gulf of California from the Southwest. The spectacular wealth entombed in the Craig Mound at Spiro (about A.D. 1350-1450) is almost certainly a product of an earlier east-west trade system and there are many reasons to suspect that the Caddo groups to the south were also major players, particularly in the centuries following the demise of Spiro as a major center. In the early 18th century, the French quickly enlisted the Caddo as trading partners to take advantage of their strategic position and established reputation as trustworthy middlemen.
Caddo Ritual and Religion
In the late 17th century the Hasinai were said to believe in a supreme god called the Caddi Ayo or Ayo-Caddi-Aymay, sometimes translated as "captain of the sky." The Caddi Ayo was believed to be the creator of all things and was held in great deference. The natural world of the Caddo was, however, inhabited by many other kinds of spirits including those personified by animals, places, and forces of nature. The Caddo followed many ritual practices in order to keep things right in their world. Matters religious were organized in a hierarchal fashion parallel to those that ordered society.
The xinesi or head priest lived in a special precinct within the Hainai (chief Hasinai group) community or, after the early 1700s, in a separate place between the Neche and Hainai communities. Either way, the xinesi lived in a large grass-thatched house that stood near the fire temple, the principal Hasinai temple within which burned a perpetual fire fed by four logs, each oriented on a cardinal direction. Among the xinesi's chief responsibilities was keeping the fire going. There were apparently other, lesser fire temples among the Hainai groups, watched over by lesser priests or by the caddis. Similar temples were also described among the Cadohadacho and, archeological evidences suggests this was a widespread and old Caddo practice.
The Hasinai fire temple was a very large structure that also served as a council house where important matters were decided. Nearby was one or two small houses where two divine boys (possibly twins) called the coninisí lived. These children served as intermediaries between the xinesi and the Caddi Ayo and were only visible to the xinesi, a circumstance that the Spanish priests ridiculed and cited as proof of the false nature of Caddo religion. Nonetheless, belief in the coninisi was widespread and they are may be analogous to the hero twins found in many other Native American religions.
The xinesi was aided by other priests or shamans, some of whom carried out similar duties for individual communities and some of whom had specialized assignments. While most priests were men, there were apparently some women as well. The Spanish accounts are not clear on how the Caddo priesthood was organized, in part because priests on both sides saw the others, quite correctly, as dangerous competitors who challenged their own domains.
Caddo life was seen as dependent on the proper performance of rituals small and large for continued success. There were proper and wrong ways of doing all things of substance. For instance, hunters sought a priest on the eve of a deer hunt to perform elaborate rituals involving the head and horns of a deer. If successful, the deer could not be butchered and eaten until a priest had whispered into its ear and taken the first share of meat. Similarly important rituals were associated with agriculture. Young and old women took part in a special spring ritual prior to planting to ensure good crops. There were also first fruit or green corn ceremonies and harvest ceremonies, each being the occasion for feasting as well as ritual.
The connas, the Caddo medicine men or healers, were said to use herbs and various ritual practices such as smoking, sweating, incantations, and divination to cure sickness and heal the wounded. While the Spanish were distrustful of the medicine men, they also observed successful healing and realized that some of the herbal remedies were potent. Many of the curing ceremonies involved practices the Spanish associated with the devil. The Spanish priest Espinosa as translated by Bolton describes one such event.
To cure a patient they make a large fire [under the bed] and "provide flutes and a feather fan. The instruments [palillos] are manufactured [sticks] with notches resembling a snake's rattle. This palillo [rasp] placed in a hollow bone upon a skin makes a noise nothing less than devilish. Before touching it they drink their herbs boiled and covered with much foam and begin to perform their dance without moving from one spot, accompanied by the music of Infierno, or song of the damned, for only in Inferno will the discordant gibberish which the quack sets up find its like. This ceremony lasts from midafternoon to nearly sunrise. The quack interpolates his song by applying his cruel medicaments.
It is unlikely that the medical practices of 17th century Europe would be viewed by us today as any more sound or less superstitious than that of the 17th century Caddo. The Spanish and French witnessed and sometimes harshly described a Caddo society that had a complex and quite sophisticated set of beliefs and practices about the natural and supernatural world. It is only to be expected that the two worlds were foreign to one another and that neither side really understood the other. | ||||
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] | null | [] | null | en | https://johnmceuen.net/interview-john-mceuen-a-father-of-americana-music/ | This week In the Hot Seat with Larry LeBlanc: John McEuen, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and author.
One of the most prodigally talented musicians in American history, John McEuen was a member of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band for a half-century before departing at the end of its 50th-anniversary tour in 2017, the same year he was inducted into the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame.
During his extraordinarily restless and fruitful life, multi-instrumentalist (banjo, guitar, mandolin, fiddle, dobro, piano, dulcimer) McEuen who is currently living in Franklin, Tennessee, has at last count performed over 10,000 live shows and completed over 300 television shows— with the Dirt Band, solo and with others–as well as produced a handful of formidable film documentaries.
While the Dirt Band’s catalog bursts with stellar music, their landmark 1972 album, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” was the one that cemented their reputation as performers who pushed musical boundaries.
Skillfully executed, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” contains some of the frankest, most appealing, and least guarded performances in recording history.
In reading McEuen’s lavish 225-page new book “Will The Circle Be Unbroken: The Making of a Landmark Album” is to be whisked back in time to August 1971 when a group of musicians, amid the sticky late-summer Tennessee heat, spent six days circled together in the old Woodland Studios building on a corner street in East Nashville, where they merged genres, and generations, recording bluegrass and old-timey country tracks.
McEuen’s book is chock-full of photos taken by his brother William E. “Bill” McEuen who produced the Dirt Band and the album, and the book shares behind-the-scenes stories of the sessions, capturing the players in conversation, with additional reminisces by McEuen and with members of the Dirt Band, as well as Gary Scruggs, Marty Stuart, and numerous contributors.
Those long-haired California boys paired with bluegrass and country legends of the ‘40s, ‘50s, and ‘60s, such as Mother Maybelle Carter, Roy Acuff, Earl Scruggs, his sons Randy and Gary, Doc Watson, Merle Travis, Jimmy Martin, Bashful Brother Oswald, Roy Huskey, Norman Blake, and Vassar Clements, resulted in a 38-song triple recording that constituted the first such integral collection of its kind, and is regarded as a milestone in American music.
There are young people in the music business, not to mention America at large, who have hardly heard of “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” and who cannot know what it represented to American music at the time of its release.
It not only turned heads within the music industry, particularly in staid Nashville but, along with then countrified releases by Bob Dylan, the Byrds, Ian & Sylvia, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Gram Parsons, Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Waylon Jennings, and Willie Nelson, it laid the foundation of Americana music that evolved as a recognized source of popular culture.
The future Renaissance man of American music was born in Oakland, California, and moved to Orange County outside of Los Angeles with his family during his high school years.
He began playing the banjo at age 17, after hearing live bluegrass at a club near his home.
Growing up in California in the ‘50s and ‘60s meant that great American bluegrass and blues musicians were only evidenced on records and radio, making it hard to catch a glimpse of the artists behind the sound. But McEuen had a proficiency for picking notes off records, and he quickly found success with the banjo in the Los Angeles area, winning Southern California’s annual Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival.
His performances with the Dirt Band over five decades before he stepped off the bus in 2017 — he previously took a hiatus from 1986-2001 but had been performing full-time with them since his return — are universally considered to be of the highest quality.
As Garth Brooks recalled in 2014, “I went to see Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in college at Gallagher Arena (at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, Oklahoma). A bunch of guys in the dorm pooled our monies together and threw in an extra buck a piece to pay one of the guys to sleep out for tickets. We got front row. We were having the time of our lives when during a fiddle solo, John McEuen leaped over the monitors and past the edge of the stage and landed in between John Mathiason and me. McEuen never missed a lick of that solo. THAT MOMENT is forever etched in my soul.”
With his mastery of multiple instruments, and retaining his ties with Nashville and his Los Angles friends, McEuen became a sought-after sideman as he steadily grew as an interpreter, and as a technician.
He brought depth and richness far more than a supporting player to performances by such luminaries as Steve Martin, Michael Martin Murphey, the Allman Brothers, Phish and others.
Since leaving the Dirt Band, McEuen has hardly curtailed his activities. Far from slowing down as age encroaches—he’s now 77—he seems to be to accelerating by playing with the Circle Band, his ensemble of string-players including former Dirt Band co-founder Les Thompson.
In concert McKuen proudly plays a Deering John McEuen Signature Model banjo with its unique 24 Karat gold look, trimmed in ivoroid, and coral snake decorative edge inlaid purfling, accented with premium engraving on the tone ring, armrest, and tailpiece.
To witness a John McEuen performance is to be struck by the notion that he’s one of the finest entertainers you’ve ever heard. Someone who has touched a generation of listeners and, perhaps more than anything else, as shown with the timelessness of “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” that this music still holds up in wondrous ways.
And, believe him, “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” will live forever.
Much of your life was chronicled in your 2018 book “The Life I’ve Picked.” That said, you really need to sit down with a documentary film unit and drill down on the era you have lived and worked in, as we keep losing so many unique voices of our music culture.
Well, I am in five museums. The Western Edge Exhibit: The Roots and Reverberations of Los Angeles Country-Rock at the Country Music Hall of Fame is a real good deal. It will be up for three years, and it honors the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band as part of the L.A. country-rock thing. There are a couple of 8×12 foot photos of the Dirt Band on several of the walls and an exhibit. It has other people like Herb Pedersen who was greatly influential, and there is some of the work of Chris Hillman. He is the reason I got a band. I was going to college and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” came on the radio. It was the greatest thing that I had ever heard. I pulled over and waited for it to come on again. I didn’t go to school that day. I knew that Chris Hillman had been in the San Diego-based bluegrass group, the Scottsville Squirrel Barkers (with Bernie Leadon), and he was playing bass in the Byrds. I said to myself, “If he can do it, anyone can.”
Have you really released 46 albums, including 7 solo recordings?
A couple of them might be compilations. A “best of” package or something. With the Dirt Band, it’s 35 or 36 albums, and then I’ve done 9 or 10 of my own. By my own, I mean albums that I have produced, played on, or didn’t play on, but produced. Like Steve Martin’s album (“The Crow: New Songs for the 5-String Banjo”). I produced that and played on it. We won a Grammy (in 2010 for Best Bluegrass Album).
Originally released in November 1972, as a three-LP set, and three-cassette tapes, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band was remastered and re-released in 2002 as a two-CD set. The original album was certified platinum by the RIAA in 1997, indicating shipments of 500,000 copies.
While none of the celebrated country-oriented albums by people like Bob Dylan or the Byrds made a significant dent in the country music world, the “Circle” album went to #4 on the Billboard Country Album chart.
Popularity brought honors far beyond the usual.
Rolling Stone called the “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” recording, “The most important record to come out of Nashville” and the album was named by Country Music Television (CMT) as one of the 40 most important albums in country music. The recording was inducted as a historic recording into the Library of Congress in 2004, and the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2012.
“Will The Circle Be Unbroken” still sells heavily as a catalog release.
That is so cool.
When Nitty Gritty Dirt Band co-founder Jeff Hanna was asked to write on “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” for your book “Will The Circle Be Unbroken: The Making of a Landmark Album,” he wrote that, “It seemed a daunting task.”
He’s right.
The recording represents a confluence of two eras of country music history that directly inspired the Americana roots music genre.
It isn’t just that the album is now 50 years old, and was the ultimate picking session of the Dirt Band members with their bluegrass heroes, but it’s also part of a lot of people’s DNA, a culturally conscious recording that has taken on a life of it own
The only album that affects me in the same way is “Music from Big Pink,” the 1968 debut studio album by the Band.
Yeah, it is very interesting with this book that I wrote. I had to talk to people, and get some impressions, and it‘s like “Chicken Soup for the Soul” (1993) with “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.” This album affected people more than just a record, and that is quite an honor. I am really glad that it works.
Both “Will The Circle Be Unbroken,” and “Music from Big Pink” appealed to rock audiences who came to country music via the Byrds, Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead, the Dillards, New Riders Of The Purple Sage, Marty Robbins, Linda Ronstadt, and Jerry Jeff Walker, only to discover Ray Acuff, Doc Watson, Earl Scruggs Bill Monroe, the Country Gentlemen, J. D. Crowe’s New South, Tony Rice, David Grisman, David Bromberg, John Hartford, and Ricky Skaggs who each benefited from the musical match-up and went on to tour to new audiences as traditionalism appealed to urban folk music fans in the 1960s.
While bluegrass, pushed aside by more modern country music and by rock and roll, was hard to find on commercial radio, it spread at a grassroots level.
And joining labels like 4 Star, Goldband, Rebel, Columbia, Vanguard, Folkways, Arhoolie, Okeh, Bluebird, and RCA in releasing traditional country music, and bluegrass in the ‘70s were Flying Fish Records, Rounder Records, Takoma Records, and Sugar Hill Records.
As Brett Milano wrote in Udiscovermusic (August 1, 2022) “The worlds of country and rock music were coming together by the early 70s. The Byrds had done ‘Sweetheart Of The Rodeo’; Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash had recorded together; Linda Ronstadt’s solo career was underway; the Grateful Dead had done Merle Haggard and Marty Robbins songs; and Willie Nelson was off inventing outlaw country. Yet bluegrass wasn’t really part of the equation – that was a previous generation’s sound. The young folks may have had some Doc Watson and Roy Acuff records in their collections, but few were covering those songs, and nobody was daring to invite those legends into the studio.”
“Will The Circle Be Unbroken” was originally released by United Artist Records.
Catalog number UA 9801.
That deal was made at 6920 Sunset Boulevard in 1971 in ‘the Liberty building, directly across from Hollywood High. My brother Bill and I met with Mike Stewart, the president of the label. We celebrated across the street at IHOP. I had French toast.
What budget did Mike Stewart give you?
He put up $22,000 for the album.
Were you able to do it for that budget?
We did, and one of the reasons was that two-track really worked out. If it had been 16-track, a reel of 16-track tape then was $180.00, and we would have used about 30 of them, and that would have depleted our budget. But two-track tape was only about $35.00.
Mike Stewart, while an L.A. company man, deserves credit for running the most distinguished show in town. He went on to serve as VP of United Artists Pictures for more than a decade. He supervised the film soundtracks of “A Hard Day’s Night,” “Rocky,” and various James Bond film scores. After United Artists Pictures, he joined with the West German firm Bertelsmann to form the Interworld Music Group, and was later the president of CBS Music Publishing.
He also served as a consultant to the MCA Music Division. He was a big guy in music publishing. Big, well-known guy. I called him when I was remastering “Circle” for the CD, and he said, “John, I have three albums on my wall in my office that I helped make happen. I made 500 albums happen, but I’ve got three. I’ve got John Lennon’s first album, ‘Imagine,’ and I’ve got Tina Turner’s first album, ‘Tina Turns the Country On!,’ and I’ve got the ‘Circle’ album.”
That was really a wonderful testament to the fact that he put up the money. But he had also said, “I don’t think I will sell 10 of these.” But my brother Bill and I did the pitch for the album to him, and he said, “You guys are so passionate about this, that I’ve got to listen.” We (the Dirt Band) had just had three hit singles. That gave us somewhat of an edge.
The Dirt Band was initially signed by Liberty Records which was the same label as the Chipmunks, Julie London, Eddie Cochran, Jackie DeShannon, Vikki Carr, Jan and Dean, Johnny Burnette, Gene McDaniels, Del Shannon, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, and home to producer Snuff Garrett’s easy listening album series, “The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett.”
The Chipmunks made Liberty Records. Chipmunk Alvin was named after Al Bennett who was president of the label at the time.
Did you know Lenny Warnoker when he worked at Liberty in the A&R and promotion departments, first as a gofer and then at its publishing affiliate Metric Music? Before Mo Ostin scooped him up to be a junior A&R executive for Reprise and Warner. In 1970, Lenny became head of A&R, and then president in 1982.
We ran into him when he was with Warner Bros. My brother Bill worked with Lenny and Mo Ostin. He took Steve Martin to them, and another group. The other group didn’t work out, but Steve did. Bill managed Steve and produced his first 5 movies. He first made a record deal with Liberty Records with Artie Mogull, and then a couple of weeks later, he gave the money back because he got the deal at Warner Bros.
Who holds the masters to the original “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” album?
Well, I have them in the next room. I stole the masters from the company in 1976 when they put out an album that used some of the tracks for a compilation record. Let’s say I took the masters. I didn’t give them back. When I was remastering, the lady at the company in charge of production making the records, she closed the door to her office, and said, “John, why do you have those masters?” I said, “Betsy can you give me the artwork for this album.” She replied, “Well no. We lost it.” And I said, “I think you just answered why I still have these masters. I’m not going to lose them.” She then said, “Well okay. You send me the finished CD.” Anyway, they don’t need the masters. They have it digitally now. It sounds better than the original because the processes are better.
Why didn’t you write and publish “Will The Circle Be Unbroken: The Making of a Landmark Album” 20 years ago?
It would have been 20 years early. The 50th year came. It would have been the year 30. In the year 30 (2002) I reissued the album (as a two-CD set). I had the masters in my possession, and I remastered them for the CD and put four new cuts—two talking cuts, and two music cuts—on it.
The airing of Ken Burns’ 8-part, 16-hour PBS documentary series “Country Music” in 2019 increased attention on the album. You were featured in four episodes including one titled “Will the Circle Be Unbroken (1968-1972)” which you closed.
So the Dirt Band was recognized as an important part of history.
It gave the album a shot in the arm. Ever since the Ken Burns’ show, the “Circle” album has been in the Top 20 or 30 of three different Amazon charts. That’s been for three years now. It became obvious that I was going to have to do this 50th-year book, and in the middle of doing the book, my brother died (on Sept. 24, 2020). I wish he had lived to see the finished thing. He would have loved it, I think.
The text and the photos in “Will The Circle Be Unbroken: The Making of a Landmark Album,” stir up so many memories for me. The original album plays in my head as I go through the book.
That’s good. I wanted to answer all of the questions that I could that I have been asked over the years and add in some stories that I never got time to tell, and then talk a bit of how the record was made. And I tell a bit about how the cover was made. The meticulous effort that my brother put in to making that magic cover that the record company did not want to make. “Well, I will erase the tape then.”
Other than the musical quality of the sessions, one of the major strengths of the “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” album is its sequencing. I understand that Bill worked on that in Aspen, Colorado for five months after the recording sessions.
Yes, and to start off a three-record set with a mistake took a lot of nerve. (The lead-off track) “Grand Ole Opry Song” starts off “dat dun don.” Jimmy Martin said, “Earl (Scruggs) never did do that.” Yeah, I know. It really caught people off guard.
The effect of the informality was that it is like listening to a late-night picking session among friends.
That’s one of the things that I wanted to accomplish with my brother when we put the “Circle” album together. It wasn’t called the “Will The Circle Be Unbroken” album. That came up when Bill was editing and sequencing it, and it became obvious that was going to be the title. That’s the song.
Bill took photographs during the early years of the Dirt Band and photographed their recording sessions. Putting together the “Circle” book with 145 photos by Bill, 30 photos from the early Dirt Band leading up to the “Circle” album, must have been an emotional experience for you with him passing away in 2020.
It was a difficult process. I quit working on it for a few months because….anyway. Then I went, “Well I have to finish it. The 50th year is coming up. And there’s a story behind every photograph, including the early Dirt Band photographs that he took. They are in there. They are interesting.
Nevertheless, these wonderful photographs provide vivid recollections of both the original sessions in Nashville, and of so many people who have since passed on including: Doc Watson, Mother Maybelle Carter, Vasser Clements, Roy Acuff, Merle Travis, Jimmy Martin, Roy Huskey, Bashful Brother Oswald, as well as Earl, Randy, Gary, and Louise Scruggs.
Of course, the album was so tied to Bill.
I was tied to Bill too.
I was working on the book, and he gave me the pictures, 10 years earlier. He said, “Here, these are yours.” He gave me the pictures, and I have used them in my stage show. Where I do a video projection of all of the “Circle” album pictures, and some of the early Dirt Band.
Your shows with the Circle Band that include guitarist Les Thompson, a co-founder of band, feature Bill’s photos behind you on the screen as you play in front of it.
Yes. I also have some of the early Dirt Band on 8mm film, and video.
I spend 20 minutes on the early Dirt Band story leading up to “Circle” album, and then use all of the photos that I can to tell the story of the “Circle” album. People have just been loving it. It is a special kind of show. It is usually and hour and 40 minutes long. Not all of it is with video, but a lot of it is.
What reactions have you had?
I hear from people, “It definitely took me back. I have the original album. I bought it,” they say, 50, 40, 30, 20, 10 years ago.”
Nothing beats playing a great show and talking backstage with band members saying, “Well, that was hot.”
Well, the sound is better today. The lights are better. The venues are better in general. Well, 90% of the time anyway. And it’s fun to go and play.
Mostly you have a pre-won audience after decades playing everywhere. Those coming to see you almost certainly know your history, and they know what they are going to likely get, and even what the quality will be.
And they bring the other half of the audience that I play to. Half the people that go to a concert, I believe, don’t know what the act is. They are going to see someone and were brought by the other half. “If you go and see Barry Manilow with me, I will go and see the Grateful Dead Reunion with you.” That kind of thing happens a lot. Except for major names it’s, “We haven’t heard the music.” It’s a fun, exciting challenge to go out in front of an audience, and make them laugh, make them clap, and have them stand up at the end and not leave. That’s my challenge.
When you were 19, you and your brother Bill were delivering diesel products for your father’s business in Nashville. After going to four places to drop stuff, you tried to get tickets to see Earl Scruggs perform at the Grand Ole Opry at the Ryman Auditorium, but the show was sold out.
I had always wanted to meet two artists. Mother Maybelle Carter, and Earl Scruggs. Bill and I traveled to Nashville in the hope of seeing them both perform.
On the west side of the Ryman, people would line up to peek through the windows which were open. When it was your turn, Earl Scruggs was introducing Mother Maybelle Carter. You and Bill watched her, Earl Scruggs, and Lester Flatt perform “ Wildwood Flower” which the Carter Family had first recorded in 1928.
Maybelle and Earl lived up to your expectations?
I almost passed out. They did “Wildwood Flower,” and they followed with some quick banjo instrumental, and the place just went nuts. It was a magic moment. And I just said, “Someday, I hope to meet that guy.”
It came to pass that you did indeed meet Earl Scruggs. How did that come about?
The Dirt Band was playing its first Nashville job in late Fall of 1970. And (Earl’s son) Gary Scruggs heard that we were coming to town, and he played his dad our album “Uncle Charlie & His Dog Teddy” which had an Earl Scruggs song on it, “Randy Lynn Rag,” and (the hit song) “Mr. Bojangles.” And it had Michael Nesmith’s “Some of Shelly’s Blues” (recorded by Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys in 1968) which started with a banjo.
Another song on the album was “Clinch Mountain Backstep” (penned by Ralph Stanley). I didn’t know that Doc Watson was from the Clinch Mountains. We knew very little about Doc Watson, Maybelle Carter, or the Stanley Brothers, you didn’t know who the musicians were. There weren’t credits on the albums.
When Gary played Earl, “Randy Lynn Rag,” he said, “I want to meet that boy.” And me being a banjo player, and being that boy, I was really pleased. When I asked Earl a couple of months later when he came to see us play Vanderbilt University, “Earl why did you come to see this band? I really appreciate it.” He said, “I wanted to meet the boy who plays ‘Randy Lynn Rag’ the way I intended it.” And that just blew me away.
You approached Earl about recording with the Dirt Band at the old Tulagi tavern and performing venue in Boulder, Colorado. You knew Earl was going to be playing Tulagi so you went, and I asked him if he would record with the band for what would become “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.”
And Earl said yes.
Yes, I met Earl first, and then 6 months later at Tulagi, I asked him if he would record with us. We had become phone friends.
You had a similar telephone conversation with Doc Watson from Tulagi a couple of weeks later.
I hadn’t met Doc yet. His son Merle introduced us that night, and I told him we were making an album with Earl Scruggs and wanted him to pick with us. He lit up with that comment, and I put him on the phone with my brother Bill, in L.A.
Chuck Morris, who was managing Tulagi’s then, provided a phone which in ‘those days’ was not easy, as he had to get about 75 feet of cord for a phone from his office downstairs. Bill knew a lot about ‘old music’ and got along fine with Doc. We were on the way.
Eight weeks later you started recording. Six days later everything was done.
A full 40 songs were recorded.
Recording took place at Glenn Snoddy’s Woodland Studio in East Nashville which was not on Music Row. But that didn’t matter. Country artists came to Woodland because its sound was so good. By 1971, Snoddy was using tape recorders with one, two, four, eight, and 16 tracks before he upgraded a few years later to two 24-track Studer recorders.
For the “Circle” album tape ran continuously throughout the entire week-long recording sessions, including capturing the dialogue between the players. Many of the tracks—including the lead-off—begin with the musicians discussing how to perform the song.
While there were a couple of songs that were recorded two times, most of them were first takes — “no fixes, no overdubs.”
It was a good studio. It had good equipment. The engineer Dino Lappas, which my brother brought from L.A., had worked on a lot of albums from the Jazz Crusaders to the Ventures to the Dillards, and Tut Taylor and Glen Campbell albums for World Pacific. Dino was a magic ingredient to things sounding right. Get the right mics on the right instruments. And it was a wonderful thing.
In reading your book I learned that the late Tut Taylor, a musician’s musician who played banjo, mandolin, and dobro—and who had played with the Dixie Gentlemen, and in John Hartford’s Aereo-Plain band, bowed out of the “Circle” sessions.
It didn’t work out, and we were fortunate in that because of Norman Blake, I think he filled the shoes better.
Norman also was a member of Aero-Plain with John Hartford, Tut Taylor, as well as with fiddler Vassar Clements, and guitarist Randy Scruggs, who both played on the “Circle” album.
Merle Travis, a guitar stylist of monumental influence, tricked you and Bill into believing that he was over the hill when he first played “Cannonball Rag” in rehearsals.
Oh, he was messing it up on purpose. “I want to do the ‘Cannon Ball Rag,” and he stumbled through a version of it, and we were all standing there sweating. We were at his house to rehearse for the day. Anyway, he just looked up at one point, and said, “No, I will do it like this,” and he played it perfect. Then we went in and recorded it a week later.
I interviewed Doc Watson when (his son) Merle was still alive. Of course, he was known for his fingerstyle and flatpicking skills. Doc’s earliest musical influences were country roots musicians, and groups such as the Carter Family, and Jimmie Rodgers. He told me he first played in rock and roll bands.
Well, he had to make money. He couldn’t make money playing that mountain music out there. Here’s a guy that I was told was related to Tom Dooley—aka Tom Dula (whose name in the local dialect was pronounced “Dooley”) who supposedly killed Laura Foster in 1866, in North Carolina for giving him syphilis– but he couldn’t find an audience to sing about him. But he had to find work. He wasn’t yet the Doc Watson, although he was the Doc Watson. He was just a band member, and he made it (music) to survive.
Growing up, how did you and Bill find out about these bluegrass greats? You rarely heard bluegrass on the radio other than the Grand Ole Opry radio show or on country music shows on local television in southern California such as “Town Hall Party,” “The Spade Cooley Show.” and “Cal’s Corral.”
Or did you see these bluegrass greats when they ventured out to California?
Maybelle Carter’s music was featured on the Flatt & Scruggs album “Sons of The Famous Carter Family” recorded in 1963. She played on one cut, and that made me introduce myself to her songs, and to her musicians. Then I found one of her albums from the Carter Family on Folkways or Smithsonian. Then Bill and I played clubs around Southern California well before the Dirt Band. About one-third of our music was Jimmy Martin music.
One of the all-time great bluegrass singers on the “Circle” album, Jimmy Martin was Bill Monroe’s lead singer in the Bluegrass Boys in the early 50s. He later tinkered with the traditional bluegrass sound on his solo recordings to make them sound fuller.
Oh yeah, it was “You Don’t Know My Mind and “Guitar Picking President,” All kinds of cool songs. Jimmy Martin had them all.
As the self-proclaimed “King of Bluegrass,” and the man who created hits like “Sophronie,” “Hit Parade of Love,” and “Widow Maker,” Jimmy was never invited to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry because his reputation for wildness scared off Opry executives who were afraid of what he might do or what he might say.
That reminds me that when we did “I Saw The Light” Jimmy Martin came up to me and said, “I’m going to sing this so much like Roy Acuff, you won’t be able to tell us apart.” He did it, and I can’t tell them apart. He just really sounds like him.
I first became aware of bluegrass and blues history with Jim Rooney’s remarkable 1971 book, “Bossmen: Bill Monroe and Muddy Waters.” One half of the book, front to back, was about Bill Monroe, who helped lay the foundation of country music as the universally recognized father of bluegrass; the other half, back to front, was about Muddy Waters, the greatest contemporary exponent of the influential Mississippi Delta blues style, who played a key role in the development of electric blues.
Well, Muddy Waters, and Bill Monroe. It’s real music that is made by real people, and it was just incredible. My brother was listening to blues, Memphis Slim, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Slim Harpo, and Blind Lemon Jefferson, and he also was listening to Hank Williams. He liked to sing like Hank Williams and do the blues. At the age of 16 or 17 years old, I got his guitar, and played with him for six months, learning what he showed me. That was kind of not fun. Then I saw the Dillards in an Orange County club, and the Dillards just woke me up, and I just had to get a banjo, and I started playing banjo 8 and 10 hours a day
About a quarter century after you first saw the Dillards perform, as a director, you vividly captured them with a splendid video documentary “The Dillards – A Night In the Ozarks,” released in 2006. The original Dillards — guitarist Rodney Dillard, his banjo-playing brother Doug, mandolinist Dean Webb, and bassist Mitch Jayne are seen playing originals and standards on porches and in living rooms of a Salem, Missouri farmhouse in the late ’80s.
The Dillards were so influential to a generation of young players. Among the first bluegrass groups to have electrified their instruments in the mid-1960s, they were pretty advanced progressive bluegrass for the time.
Well, I had to do that. I put it together because I wouldn’t be talking to you if it hadn’t been for Rodney, and Doug Dillard. Rodney is a lifetime friend. They believed in me. They took a chance. I was away from the Dirt Band at the time, and I called up Mike Denecke and asked him if he would do sound.
It’s interesting reading in your book that Roy Acuff wasn’t sure he wanted to play on the first “Circle” album. And there he is in the control room listening to the music. After it was done, he said, “That’s country music. Let’s go make some more.”
I met Roy and was around him for a week at the Grand Ole Opry in the late ‘70s. I often saw Roy backstage that week, and he looked like a real old man. He shuffled around. Yet, when he went onstage, he was like a spring chicken of 25. He just came alive. I’ve never seen a transformation quite like that.
Yeah, I noticed that with Roy Acuff, and with Porter Wagoner too. Same thing. One time Porter was coming off stage at the Opry, and I said, “Hey Porter how you doing?” He said, “Oh, I’m a little bit worn out. It’s been a long day. What did you want John?” I had gotten to know him. I said, “My in-laws are here, and they were hoping to get a picture with you, but I won’t bother you with it.” He was like, “Oh, where are they? Get them to come over and get a picture.” He perked up, and looked like he was just fresh out of something. “Okay good, you got it?” We got the picture, and he was like, “I gotta go change my clothes now.”
“Will The Circle Be Unbroken” was Mother Maybelle Carter’s first gold record.
Yes, I gave it to her. I took it to her house. Marty Stuart went with me. I didn’t know where she lived, and he did. “Maybelle, this record I want to give it to you because you are part of the reason that it is a gold record. Thank you for being with us.” She replied, “Well, I’ll be. I never had one of these.” If she stayed alive, she would have received a platinum record. But that was quite an honor to give that to her. And then she stood it against the wall, and she said, “Would you boys like some lemonade?”I said, “Well, Maybelle Carter if you are going to fix me lemonade, then I am going to drink it.” You know that she called us, “Them dirty boys.”
I am surprised that Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash didn’t sneak into the first “Circle” album sessions. To hear Johnny’s dedication of “Tears in the Holsten River” to his mother-in-law Maybelle Carter, and her sister Sara on the third “Circle” volume, released in 2002, is to have the Carter Family made real.
Well, they were on the road. It was in August, and we didn’t know them yet. But I’ll tell you if you want to get to know somebody, make a great album with their mother-in-law or their mother. Johnny Cash, when I met him he said, “Let me thank you boys for doing that for Maybelle. That was wonderful.”
He was all over the “Circle” album. In fact, when we did “Will The Circle Be Unbroken: Volume 3” (2002), he called the studio, and we were all there, and he said, “I would like to be part of this record. Would you be my band?” Having Johnny Cash ask would you be his band was really exciting.
Bluegrass patriarch Bill Monroe, who perfected his music in the late 1940’s and stubbornly maintained it, refused to be on the original “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.” However, he eventually told you he’d like to be invited.
Bill Monroe wasn’t on any of the “Circle” recordings. When I asked him first, he just didn’t know. Bill Monroe didn’t know any music but Bill Monroe music. He didn’t listen to the radio. He didn’t listen to what he called rock and roll. “It ain’t part of nothing.” We were on the record charts with “Mr. Bojangles” (inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2010), “Shelley’s Blues” and “House of Pooh Corner” so he knew we were on the charts with the Doors, the Beatles, and Nashville Brass, and whatever. He thought we’d put a snare drum and horns and electric guitar all over his music. And Bill came up to me at a festival a few years later, and he said, “Hey John, if you ever do another of those ‘Circle” albums give me a call.”
Vasser Clements told me so many Bill Monroe stories. Like Bill leaving players in small towns because they were late getting on the band bus.
If you ever needed a fiddle player who could do it all, you had to get Vassar. Someone who could play jazz like Stéphane Grappelli and could also play bluegrass and old-timey country music.
You played shows with Earl, Gary and Randy Scruggs, Josh Graves, and Vasser.
That was a good group, The Earl Scruggs Revue. I played with Vasser so many times. I hired him to work with me 25 times over the years after the “Circle” album, and it was wonderful. One night I asked him, “Vasser, how do you play ‘Uncle Pen?” And he played it, and I said, “That sounds like that Bill Monroe record.” And he said, “John that was me. I was 17 years old.”
I have over 25 Nitty Gritty Dirt Band albums in my collection, and I think four compilations. I still have a vinyl copy of the first self-named album released in 1967. I remember the single “Buy for Me the Rain” co-written by a pair of rising California songwriters, Steve Noonan, and Greg Copeland. There’s pair of Jackson Browne-penned songs, “Melissa” and “Holding.”
“Buy for Me the Rain” has been used forever as the main theme for the long-running agriculture and agribusiness magazine TV program “Market To Market,” produced by Iowa PBS.
Not many groups that I am 20 albums deep with.
I’m on all those so I appreciate all that. I was there for 50 years, and at the end of the 50th year tour, I stepped off the bus, and I said, “Have fun. I gotta do my own shows.” We weren’t doing enough “Circle” music. One or two songs and I wasn’t driving the train. It was a democratic group. And I just got outvoted. “Hey, why don’t we do……” and I’d mention a song, and we might work on it, and try it once. We just never did, really.
You must concede that the band shifted direction several times over the years as it changed members, and jumped labels to Warner Bros., MCA, Capitol Nashville, Warner Nashville, and DreamWorks with indie label sojourns on DualTone, and Sugarhill.
While the band continued to record old-time country music, both on their own and with Alison Krauss and others in the ‘80s, recordings like “An American Dream” with Linda Ronstadt, and “Make a Little Magic,” with Nicolette Larson, as well as their more mainstream country songs, “Long Hard Road (Sharecropper’s Dream),” “Baby’s Got a Hold on Me,” and particularily, “Fishin’ in the Dark,” went a long way in redefining the band’s identity.
That was the string of 20 country hits, and that was the first record I was not on. About a year and a half after I left, I was really glad to hear “Fishin’ in the Dark” because it was like your old alma mater had won the game. I had people asking me, “Hey, now that you aren’t in the Dirt Band, what are they going to do?” I said, “Look, the group is resilient. They will come up with something. Just hang out for a bit.” And they did come up with something again and again, and I was really proud of them.
“Fishin’ in the Dark” reached #1 on the U.S. and Canadian country charts. It was co-written by my friend Jim Photoglo. A former pop artist with two charting albums in the ‘80s, Jim has been a highly successful Nashville songwriter for decadesand was one of a member of the short-lived novelty country band Run C&W.
Jim has been playing bass with the band now (since 2016), and he and Wendy Waldman with Fishin’ in the Dark” wrote a fine song for the Dirt Band/
Your brother Bill produced Steve Martin’s novelty hit “King Tut” with backup by the Toot Uncommons. I remember it first being performed on “Saturday Night Live.”
Well, that was the Dirt Band. My brother was managing Steve at the time.
It was Bill and your fate to be far more than routinely successful.
Bill’s fast-burning energies, his versatility, and his profuse gifts for music, photography, and film coalesced to make him a high-profile figure in numerous fields, among them music production, films, and television.
Through the Aspen Film Society, the production company he co-founded with Steve Martin in 1976, Bill was a producer or executive producer for numerous films, most notably as the producer for “The Jerk” (1979), “The Man with Two Brains (1983), and “The Big Picture” (1989), and executive producer for “Pee-wee’s Big Adventure (1985).
As the younger brother, you have scored 13 film projects, including Steve Martin’s NBC television specials as well as the score for the 10-hour epic Warner Bros. television mini-series “The Wild West,” the Emmy-nominated documentary that chronicles the Old American West from 1866 to 1896.
As project producer, you were awarded the coveted Western Heritage Award that honors individuals who have made significant contributions to Western heritage through creative works.
What was in your family DNA that led to you two mastering all of this creative work?
I guess I was bored. There’s nothing in the DNA.
Your parents were probably less than enthusiastic when Bill and then you channeled your energies into music, and film.
My father told my brother when he started going up to Hollywood to learn the record business, “Why do you want to know those people?”
What did your parents do for a living?
My mother was a mother. A housewife. My father ran a diesel equipment business, a surplus business. He’d buy stuff from government auctions, Navy and Army and whatever equipment. Jimmy 6-71 engines, and 4-71 engines. 6-71 means 6 cylinders in a 71 series.
He’d buy bearings. He’d buy generators. He had a 110,000-square-foot warehouse in Long Beach, and he made a living in a business that ended up dying out. He was an interesting character.
You became part of the L.A. music scene at an interesting time as America’s music industry transitioned away from New York to the City of Angels.
The result was the music business rebounded from there with new locally based labels. including A&M, Elektra, Dunhill, Straight, joining Reprise Dot, Keen, Del-Fi, Modern/Crown, Specialty, and United Artists.
Groups like the Buffalo Springfield, the Byrds, the Rising Sons, (with Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder, and David Lindley), the Doors, Love, Steppenwolf, Three Dog Night, the Mamas & the Papas, and the Mothers of Invention. played such local clubs as The Troubadour, Whiskey A Go-Go, The Ash Grove, Pandora’s Box, Gazzarri’s, The Trip, Ciro’s, London Fog, The Balladeer, The Fifth Estate, and The Golden Bear in nearby Huntington Beach.
In your book “The Life I’ve Picked,” you wrote about your early days working at Disneyland Park in Anaheim when you were 16.
I worked in Fantasyland at Merlin’s Magic Shop about 1/10th of the three years, the rest being at Main Street Magic shop in between the Wurlitzer store and the old cinema that would show 6 silent films. Both shops were under license to a firm called Taylor & Hume.
Steve Martin also worked at Merlin’s Magic Shop in Fantasyland.
Steve did, and it was the time of our lives. What a great gig for a 16 or 17-year-old 18-year-old. It was a time when groups were being booked there. There was a hootenanny night, and there was acoustic music. There were the Mad Mountain Ramblers, and the Pine Valley Boys played in Frontierland.
Steve and I would take our breaks at the same time. I would take longer-than-I-should-have breaks to catch David Lindley playing hot banjo with his cool group, the Mad Mountain Ramblers, and later, the Dry City Scat Band. You know, David always stood on his toes for solos.
You did eventually play Disneyland with the Dirt Band.
It was years later that we got a gig at Disneyland for a night.
(In the summer of ’61, David Lindley had formed the Mad Mountain Ramblers with schoolmates from La Salle High School, a private, Roman Catholic college preparatory high school in Pasadena.)
David, (multi-instrumentalist) Chris Darrow, and (violinist) Richard Greene were all in the Mad Mountain Ramblers. Chris ended up in the Dirt Band for a few years (contributing to the studio album “Rare Junk,” and the live album “Alive!,” recorded before the band went on hiatus in late 1968), and Richard went on to be a great musician (with Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys, the Blues Project, and Sea Train.) He was always a great musician.
David was totally five-string banjo in those days.
David was an early inspiration to me. He was also in the Rising Sons, and he went off to be a founding member of the even stranger Kaleidoscope band which released four albums on Epic Records, and then he worked with Jackson Browne a few years later and did that for 20 years.
I will never forget seeing David in 1966, a year after Disneyland when he was a judge at Southern California’s Topanga Banjo Fiddle Contest and Folk Festival. That really put pressure on one of the entrants: Me. After the contest, which I won, I took a lesson from him to learn the left-hand pull-off trick for “Arkansas Traveller.” Something I would continue to play my whole life.
I saw David once for one of his many times with Jackson Browne. I am sure Jackson is among those that miss David as I do.
One of your local club hangouts came to be The Ash Grove at 8162 Melrose Avenue in the Fairfax District of Los Angeles. one of America’s greatest folk and blues clubs of the ‘60s.
Ry Cooder’s first public performance was at The Ash Grove, formally a furniture factory and showroom that opened in 1958, as a guitarist backing Jackie DeShannon in 1963; he was 16. Linda Ronstadt got her start hanging out at The Ash Grove.
I saw David Lindley in Kaleidoscope at The Ash Grove in 1967. It is where I first heard Doc Boggs and his (1964) song “Oh, Death” (previously recorded by the Pace Jubilee Singers in 1927).
Nearly 60 years ago, Dick Dale’s rushing guitar lines energized a generation of California musicians. Surfers flocked to the waves along Newport Beach, and Dick Dale and the Del-Tones packed over 3,000 people nightly into the Rendezvous Ballroom on the Balboa Peninsula.
Were you one of those who came to see Dick Dale double-pick faster and faster, like a locomotive, to re-enact the power of surfing the waves, before the Rendezvous Ballroom burnt down in 1966?
I listened to Dick Dale. I thought he was good. I went to see him one night at the Rendezvous Ballroom. I don’t remember the show. I do remember driving there with a friend who was driving. He drank practically a 12-pack of beer on the way there, and I’d throw the cans out the window.
Then there was simply no one better at sharp, fluid Telecaster licks and twin harmony than Buck Owens in tandem with singer-guitarist Don Rich.
I’m a California guy, and I dug Buck Owens. He was really singing it right. Thanks to Don Rich, he had a lot of hits. Don was the guy that sang that magic harmony with Buck Owens.
You couldn’t tell them apart.
No.
What is the bond or ingredient that has kept the Dirt Band rolling for 56 years? Most bands break apart after a few years as members go off and do other things. The Dirt Band give the impression of having a certain quality; seemingly able to pivot on a dime toward any musical direction they wish to travel.
Well, that is what constant members Jeff Hanna (singer/guitarist) and Jimmie Fadden (drummer) know what to do. They are the two that are still there from the original group.
I go out with Les Thompson, one of the original members. He’s the guy who called me in 1966 and said, “Hey, John why don’t you come and join this group that is getting together at the music store, (at McCabe’s Guitar Shop on Pico Boulevard in Santa Monica) I said, “I’ll listen.” I went and listened, played a few songs, and I said, “Okay.” I was 20 years old. Les was 16. and the other guys were 17, 18, and 19. And it worked. We worked, but we didn’t make any money for years.
In the mid-1970s Takoma Records had offices two doors east of McCabe’s and built a recording studio, with audio and video cables going from the sound booth at McCabe’s to the control room of the studio, which allowed easy recording of performances.
We used to hang out there. We used to avoid going to school. (laughs) After I got out of school, I would hitchhike there. Most of it was walking as a matter of fact. My friends became my friends that hung out there, There was a bunch of guys that hung out there, and were interested in playing instruments. They were interested in learning to develop a style and a vocabulary on the instrument of their choice.
Many male musicians join bands to attract girls.
That wasn’t my pursuit. Occasionally, it helped, sure. It wasn’t the reason. I wanted to go onstage and see if I was worth anything. See if I could do anything. See if that practicing that I had been doing for a couple of weeks, see if I could do those licks in front of people. That was the excitement to me.
It has been widely claimed that Jackson Browne had been an early member of the Dirt Band.
They had done five jobs with Jackson Browne, and now Jackson was out. He didn’t want to have them backing up his songs. He wanted to do (his songs) on his own, and they needed another player. Jackson used the band to back him up for some of his songs. He doesn’t mention that in his own bio on his own website. A couple of the Dirt Band guys have been harping on Jackson Browne for 50 years, and “Jackson was in the early Dirt Band” is one thing that irritated me. Well, you know they did five jobs, and he left. He wasn’t in the recording group. He wasn’t in any publicity pictures. Jackson is a fine guy. He sang with me a couple of times, and I appreciated it.
The first paying gig for the Dirt Band was playing The Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, California on April 4th, 1967, just after releasing their first album two months earlier.
Most importantly Bill had been brought in as the Dirt Band’s manager and was also the band’s producer until 1980.
I convinced my brother to start managing the band, and then I scheduled a rehearsal, “Hey we’ve got to rehearse,” and that was an arduous thing, but we did it. Les (Thompson) was always enthusiastic.
For the first 10 years, I was road managing also. So I didn’t have any time really. I’d be up an hour and a half before anybody, and I’d go to bed an hour later. I was driving to the gigs. “Okay everybody we are leaving at 8 in the morning.”
That was before cell phones. Road managers used to run off the airplane with a bag of quarters to the phone booth to call the hotel and car service and label.
It was exciting but it was tiring. It was exhausting. It was wonderful. It was all of those things.
Along the way the Dirt Band appeared on innumerable TV shows including “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson,” as well as shows hosted by Steve Allen, Joey Bishop, the Smothers Brothers, and Glen Campbell.
Everything there was to do, the Dirt Band did it.
They not only played with the Doors, but also did a 10-day tour opening for Bill Cosby that ended at Carnegie Hall, and opened for Little Richard in Las Vegas.
Yeah, we did a month with Little Richard at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas Three shows a night. We had what we called the (Dr.) Pepper Hour. We went on at 10, 2, and 4. The four in the morning show was tough.
So, we rehearsed a lot, and then we got the job on “Paint Your Wagon” and that was a four-month vacation up in Oregon shooting that movie.
It took the 1968 film “Paint Your Wagon” to briefly break up the Dirt Band. After three albums with no hits, the band auditioned and landed a job as musical miners in the Paramount picture, “Paint Your Wagon” filmed near Baker City, Oregon.
After four months on the “Paint Your Wagon” set, being frustrated by the long delays in the making of the film, the band decided to split up.
We’d been together a few years, and had done four albums, been in a movie, and that was a pretty good career. It was 1968. It seemed like 5 years had gone by from 1966 to then. “Buy For Me The Rain” was on the first album, and it was a minor hit, and then nothing.
With Its overblown $20 million budget, and nearly three-hour length, “Paint Your Wagon” was quite the horrible film.
Yeah. Horrible film? Some people think that “Paint Your Wagon” is the best film that they have ever seen. And some people think like you.
C’mon Clint Eastwood and Lee Marvin doing their own singing.
Yeah, it was pretty funny.
Then Jeff and I were at the Golden Bear watching Pogo (that became Poco), play and they were great. We looked at each other and said, “Let’s get the Dirt Band back together,”
Poco has been so overlooked in musical history despite the lineup of guitarists Richie Furay and Jim Messina (former members of Buffalo Springfield) multi-instrumentalist Rusty Young, bassist Randy Meisner, and drummer George Grantham.
So overlooked. Richie Furay was a great singer. Rusty Young was a great steel player, and they had Randy Meisner who ended up in the Eagles. And Jimmy Messina who went on to Loggins and Messina. They were really good. I went and got Les Thompson from next door to The Troubadour where Jimmie Fadden was working.
Jimmie was friends with Linda Ronstadt.
We all were. Linda was hanging out at The Troubadour. It was easy to be Linda’s friend. She’s a wonderful, nice person. She still is, but she can’t sing anymore and she’s living in San Francisco.
It breaks my heart that Linda can no longer sing.
Well, she accepts it. She’s done some concerts where she talks about the past, using footage of film and stuff, and it works really well.
I was at a Linda Ronstadt recording session on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley and it was about 1 A.M. and I’m sitting in the vocal booth with headphones on listening to the playbacks. Linda said, “I have to do a vocal on a song.” I said, “Okay I’ll leave.” She said, “No, give me the headphones. and stay.” So I did and she sang “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow.” And she’s singing it to me. And I’m going, “Yes I will.” And she just ripped that song apart. It’s the best version in my opinion.
Engineer Mike Denecke continued to do interesting projects with you.
Mike was an amazing friend. He was the engineer on “Mr. Bojangles” when I met him. And he recorded the Dillards. Two microphones to record that whole thing. Live music. He was funny. “Mike, how long will it take you to set up?” He’d answer, “Fifteen minutes.” I’d go up to him 18 minutes later and ask how long he’d be. He’d say, “I was ready three minutes ago.” And he was ready. Mike believed in simplicity. He did a great job.
Mike was our location engineer for the “Miner’s Night Out” video, and he recorded a live album (in 1999 as John McEuen & the L.A. String Wizard) called “Round Trip” recorded on a NAGRA-D four-channel digital audio recorder with no overdubs. It really sounds good.
Mike went on to invent the Denecke Time Code slate.
The Denecke Time Code slate assigns a unique number to each image or audio frame.
It makes film cameras run at 24 frames per second, a tape recorder that runs at 15 inches per second, and a video camera that runs at 29.9 frames per second. Timecode made it able for all of those machines to lock together, and run at the same time. You didn’t have to use three reels of film anymore. A reel of film would be for the movie sound. A reel of film for sound effects; and a reel of film or music. And they had to run in sync with each other. But Timecode eliminated that.
“Round Trip” was recorded at The Ash Grove and features your son Jonathan on guitar and vocals.
He did that after driving straight from Denver to Santa Monica, and he was on stage an hour after he arrived, and he played well. He amazed me.
For a good part of your career, you were a single parent raising 6 children, 5 of them boys.
Oh man, yeah. My daughter was first. She was the babysitter
You took the kids on the road with you?
Oh yeah, when I got divorced after 18 years, I still had to work. So weekends with dad it would be “Where are we going, dad?” I’d say, “Why don’t we go to Durango and Steamboat? And I would book jobs in ski areas where I’d get jobs with rooms and food and so much money. My kids would ski for free, and they would stay for free. They probably skied 15 ski areas. Then I’d go to other jobs. I would play Branson, Missouri, and the Minneapolis State Fair in St. Paul, and things like that.
There were a lot of fun times on the road.
But it was also a lot of work. I was driving. This wasn’t first-class. I was out of the band. I left in the 90s because I was getting divorced. I think it’s the band’s fault. The first night I separated from my wife, the mother of my 6 children, I went into a grocery store in Colorado at midnight to get something to eat. And “Mr. Bojangles” came on the radio system. So I turned around and left. I couldn’t take it. So that was an interesting head change. That was.
How many grandchildren do you have?
Eight grandchildren, and one great-grandchild. Amazing. My daughter had a daughter, and her three girls are 32, 30, and 29. And the 29-year-old had a kid.
You posted a photo on Facebook of you with your great-grandson Mel looking at your tour schedule with your caption, “See grandpa pick… see granpa fly to West Yarmouth for concert.”
He is a great kid. Loves trucks and airplanes. . . and dinosaurs.
Do you spoil all of the kids?
I do when I see them.
Larry LeBlanc is widely recognized as one of the leading music industry journalists in the world. Before joining CelebrityAccess in 2008 as senior editor, he was the Canadian bureau chief of Billboard from 1991-2007 and Canadian editor of Record World from 1970-80. He was also a co-founder of the late Canadian music trade, The Record.
He has been quoted on music industry issues in hundreds of publications including Time, Forbes, and the London Times. He is co-author of the book “Music From Far And Wide,” and a Lifetime Member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
He is the recipient of the 2013 Walt Grealis Special Achievement Award, recognizing individuals who have made an impact on the Canadian music industry. | |||||||
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4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 83 | https://whatsyourgrief.com/guilt-and-grief-2/ | en | Guilt and Grief: coping with the coulda, woulda, shouldas. | [
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] | null | Liner Notes for Cyrus Faryar's "Cyrus" | null | By Richie Unterberger
His name might not be known to the general music fan, but throughout the 1960s, Cyrus Faryar moved in the inner circle of folk and folk-rock without quite managing to break through to stardom himself. In the early 1960s, he'd been in the Whiskeyhill Singers, a folk group also including ex-Kingston Trio member Dave Guard and esteemed singer Judy Henske (who went on to a notable solo career of her own). After their sole album (also reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice Music), he joined the Modern Folk Quartet, who recorded a couple albums for Warner Brothers at the end of the folk boom (also, as it happens, reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice).
Like many other young folk groups, the MFQ went into folk-rock, but were only able to make a few singles in their new incarnation before disbanding. The MFQ's Jerry Yester went on to produce the Association with the Lovin' Spoonful, record psychedelia as part of a duo with his then-wife Judy Henske, and form the band Rosebud with Henske. Another MFQ alumni, Chip Douglas, joined the Turtles and produced the Monkees; yet another ex-MFQer, Henry Diltz, became one of rock music's most renowned photographers. Faryar, meanwhile, went on to play on sessions by the likes of Fred Neil and Linda Ronstadt & the Stone Poneys, and produce the Firesign Theatre. And, in the early 1970s, he finally got to record his own pair of singer-songwriter albums for Elektra, about a decade after his recording debut.
Why had it taken this long for Faryar to step into the solo spotlight? "I think, partly, because I didn't promote myself aggressively," Cyrus says from his Hawaii home today. "I was basically content to be a part of something. I didn't feel that real drive to be a star, just happy whatever it was that the band was able to do was so much of an expansion of one's individual abilities. It's an old chestnut, the sum is greater than the parts. And being in the MFQ satisfied a lot of that. I mean, I always had a personal enthusiasm for songs that the MFQ never do. I've always loved the blues and stuff like that. But I kind of set it off to one side. I think what happened is at some point there was an hiatus in the MFQ's career, and Jac Holzman, who had become a friend, just said, 'Hey, you wanna make an album?' And I said, 'Sure.' A few things came together. It was not much of my doing, to tell you the truth."
"I think he always felt most comfortable in a group," agrees Holzman, Elektra's founder-president. "The reason those albums happened was because of Ron Jacobs, who had a company called Watermark Productions. [He] said that they would produce the records and pull the people together with my approval, if I was interested in going forward. Ron Jacobs was a famous boss jock in L.A. at that time., [and] has since gone back to be a big DJ in Hawaii, from which he had originated. But the reason those albums happened was because Ron Jacobs and I agreed to do them."
Faryar had actually already contributed to an Elektra project, as the narrator of the 1967 astrological concept album The Zodiac: Cosmic Sounds; he would also be the voice of the Indian guru on the early-'70s Elektra comedy record A Child's Garden of Grass. "There was a studio built into my house, it was part of an outgrowth of an arrangement made with Watermark, which was Ron Jacobs and some others," he elaborates. "They met in my living room and decided they would do a joint venture. My contribution would be my home as a recording studio, 'cause I had a big old living room. The atmosphere, the idea, of having a recording studio which was sort of hidden in your living room, where it was this comfortable, non-sterile place, was very appealing to them. And the bathroom was the echo chamber. They made some other records too; they initiated the recording of [the jazz fusion group] Oregon. They began at my house; they were called Music to begin with. They would come and stay at my house and practice. Child's Garden of Grass was recorded at my house." None other than Harrison Ford did carpentry work on the studio, long before his ascent to stardom as a Hollywood film actor.
"I went back to Hawaii for a month or two to work on my own album, and wrote a few songs," resumes Cyrus. "As I left the house, there was rock'n'roll coming out of my living room, and I was pleased to get away to something peaceful. Because in a way, they kind of took over the house a little bit. And while I was in Hawaii that month, [the songs] kind of came together. They were there in bits and pieces, and became assembled into sort of a reality. There are any number of my own songs which I declined [to put on the album], which I thought, well, that's not a complete song. The ones that seemed to fit the mold stayed, and the incomplete songs just parked someplace. There's a great song called 'Papaya Smoothie'—god knows where it is now."
The album was cut in Faryar's studio with backup from friends, including drummers Mike Botts and Russ Kunkel, and bassist Brian Garafalo. Other sidemen of note in the supporting cast included Oregon's Collin Walcott, Ralph Towner, and Paul McCandless; pianist Craig Doerge, a member of Rosebud alongside Cyrus's old cohorts Judy Henske and Jerry Yester; the Dillards' Rodney Dillard, who played dobro on "Brother, Friend"; guitarist Dick Rosmini; and Alex Hassilev of the Limeliters, who was by the this time himself working as a producer in his own home studio (one of the first in Los Angeles), and who composed the electronic score for "Springtime Bouquet." Faryar himself produced the record, though as he modestly notes, "There really wasn't too much to it, because it was so much a collaborative effort. I just happened to be the singer and the guitar player, and everybody else was involved. I didn't feel like I was the captain of the ship commanding; I just wasn't the boss. Everybody who was there, [the] musicians, were really there as friends to help me realize my musical dream. So it was about as ego-less an experience as you could hope to find. It was just great, and it really fit the whole context of being in your living room."
With its gentle tone, oft-languid feel, and Faryar's vocal ease with the low notes, the record is rather in the style of '60s folk-rocker Fred Neil, with whom Cyrus had worked as a sideman on the classic Fred Neil album. There were, however, some eccentric production touches that added a layer of eerieness, such as the saw on "Companion," the glass harmonica on "Evergreen (Earth Anthem)" and "Kingdom," the stormy effects at the close of "Ratte's Dream," and the ARP synthesizer on "Springtime Bouquet." "I think it was Paul Beaver who had the ARP, it was a very primitive early oscillator device," remembers Faryar. "It was huge, this wonderful, big black thing full of wires, and you had to keep plugging and unplugging to get every change of sound. Alex [Hassilev] was there patching things, and we said, 'get a sound,' and I'd say, 'that's great!' And he'd say, 'You like that, wait a second.' And he would quickly change it to something [else]. So we wandered through that, finally captured some and settled on them, and just laid it on there, quite sort of spontaneously."
Cyrus also thinks that on 'Companion,' Collin Walcott "played an esraj, an Indian stringed instrument, which I was told was originally made with the gourd being a human skull. I thought that was pretty trippy. We used a more modern version, which was just wood, or a gourd of some kind. But it's a goofy, weird, strange stringy sound, which Collin loved to play, and we had a lot of fun with that."
Though most of the material on Cyrus was written by Cyrus, he did opt for a few songs from outside sources. "Kingdom" was penned by his wife of the time, Renais Faryar. "Evergreen (Earth Anthem)" was the work of Bill Martin, with whom Faryar had been acquainted since his '60s folk days, when Martin was working with future Association member Russ Giguere; Martin would later co-author the script for the movie Harry and the Hendersons. "I Think He's Hiding" had been on Randy Newman's first album, and was here sung with help from a three-dozen-strong chorus of friends, including David Crosby, Henry Diltz, Cass Elliott, folk legend Bob Gibson, Renais Faryar, famed producer Paul Rothchild, Bruce Johnston of the Beach Boys, and Simone & Marijke Posthuma of the Fool (who had done some design work for the Beatles' Apple company and also recorded as a band, Faryar having produced a rare Fool single on Mercury). "Everybody just belted it out in my living room," Cyrus fondly recalls. "In lieu of payment, I ordered a couple of dozen pies and ice cream."
If there's any regret Cyrus has about his maiden solo effort, it's that some of the songs were sweetened with strings (conducted and arranged by Kirby Johnson, who did similar work on albums from the time by Van Dyke Parks, Ry Cooder, Little Feat, and Carly Simon). "The first album, when I first gave it to Jac Holzman, it bothered him," he recalls. "There were some songs...when I listen to it myself, I understand why, because taken from a certain point of view, it's rather a lot about transcending mortality and going across the great divide, which was a bit disturbing. Jac insisted—and I caved in—upon having violins, some overdubs, some strings to sweeten it. So the strings and overdubs went on, and made it less disturbing. They, to my particular taste, didn't add anything. They just softened some of the edges, which the powers that be found a little too edgy. I have original mixes which are much cleaner and purer." But overall, he was happy with the experience—"playing in the studio in my own home with my friends was the best possible fun."
Also fun was the press party to launch the album's promotion. "Instead of being downtown someplace at some club, we did it at my house, which made sense, 'cause the album was recorded at my house," says Faryar. "We tented the carport and the area between the house and the top of the driveway, and then we laid any number of oriental rugs on the ground. My friend Anton ordered a couple of pounds of caviar, a stage was put up, and we had quite a blast. People sat on the pillows"—150 of them, made specially for the occasion—"ate caviar, there was a lot of laughter and merriment. And if I'm not mistaken, it spent my entire promotional budget," he laughs. "That was my abiding impression, that whatever modest sums had been set aside for any promotion were blown up in one great night. Everybody left and said 'that was really unusual and really swell,' and then it disappeared into memory. That's what I think happened."
Whether because the promotional budget had been spent or not, Cyrus was not a big seller. That did not, however, prevent Faryar and Elektra from recording a follow-up album soon afterward, Islands, also reissued on CD by Collectors' Choice Music. -- Richie Unterberger
unless otherwise specified.
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By Ed Blair
Olivia Newton-John was born in Cambridge, England, and raised in Melbourne, Australia. Linda Ronstadt was born in Tucson, Arizona. “They were polar opposites in fashion style, song content and personality,” said Sal St. George, longtime creator of productions chronicling the lives of popular stars of the past and present. “And yet,” he continued, “Olivia and Linda had very similar beginnings and successes.”
Thus the reason that St. George has paired the two iconic songstresses in a Living History Production titled Tribute: Linda Ronstadt & Olivia Newton-John, a heartwarming holiday show that will run from Nov. 19 through Jan. 10 at the Ward Melville Heritage Organization’s Educational & Cultural Center in Stony Brook Village.
“Country, pop, opera, rock, Broadway — they successfully conquered all music genres and became music legends,” he added. The celebration of the lives of the two internationally famous singers focuses on their incredible stories, and audiences will thrill once again to their classic songs.
The show’s motif will be familiar to St. George fans. “The program will follow the same format as in the past,” he explained, “except we have two of the most popular singers of the seventies as our stars. We are in the year 1978. Olivia is riding high with the success of ‘Grease.’ Linda is astounding New York audiences in ‘The Pirates of Penzance.’ Both shows will be discussed in the program, and, along with the songs of the stars, seventies’ fashions will be highlighted.”
Linda Ronstadt’s singing career was quite diversified. Beginning with her work as lead vocalist for the folk-rock group Stone Poneys in the mid-1960s (“Different Drum” scored high on the ratings charts), Ronstadt pursued country, alt-country, country rock, pop rock, Latin and classic jazz genres. Along the way, she put together the band that became the Eagles, won a dozen Grammy Awards and was christened the “Queen of Country Rock.”
By the mid-1970s, Ronstadt’s image became just as famous as her music. In 1976, she appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone and was also featured on a TIME magazine cover in 1977. She was the top-selling female vocalist of the 1970s and produced a succession of platinum albums on into the ’80s. Ronstadt’s popularity continued into the ’90s, and beyond.
In a 2011 interview with the Arizona Daily Star, Ronstadt announced her retirement and sadly, in August 2013, she revealed to AARP that she was suffering from Parkinson’s disease, saying “I can no longer sing at all.” In an April 2016 interview, Ronstadt is quoted as saying, “I can’t sing anymore. That’s that. I can still sing in my brain but I can’t sing. It’s just the way it is. If you’re going to have Parkinson’s you’d better have a sense of humor.”
Actress Emily Tafur, who portrays Ronstadt in the WMHO production, noted, “I feel challenged and appreciated and honored to be portraying one of the great music legends of our time.”
Olivia Newton-John was known in the UK and Australia for her performances on television and in clubs, but her fame grew further when she came to the United States. Her hit recording “I Honestly Love You” (1974 Record of the Year) garnered a Grammy Award, and more successful albums followed. Newton-John really rocketed to international stardom, however, for her role in the 1978 film “Grease,” in which she co-starred with John Travolta.
Although she received another Grammy in 1981 for her hit, “Let’s Get Physical,” Newton-John’s musical career waned somewhat in the 1980s. She was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1992 and underwent a partial mastectomy. She has since donated portions of the proceeds of her appearances to cancer research and has recorded songs she designed to provide hope and courage to cancer patients and their families. Continuing her advocacy, Newton-John organized a charity walk along the Great Wall of China with other cancer survivors to raise funds to build the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre in Melbourne. During the past year, the singer learned that the cancer had returned, and she is currently undergoing treatment.
Cierra Ervin, who portrays Olivia Newton-John, offered these comments: “This is a daunting and exciting experience! To portray such an identifiable entertainer has been a dream come true. We think audiences will have a wonderful holiday experience at the show.”
The Ward Melville Heritage Organization’s Educational & Cultural Center, located at 97P Main St. in Stony Brook Village will present Tribute: Linda Ronstadt and Olivia Newton-John on Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays at 11:30 a.m., and on Sundays at 12:30 p.m. on the following dates: Nov. 19, 25, 26, 29 and 30; Dec. 6, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20 and 21; and Jan. 3, 4, 6, 7 and 10.
Partially sponsored by the Roosevelt Investment Group, admission is $48 adults, $45 seniors and children under 15 and $40 groups of 20 or more. Performances are followed by a luncheon, tea and dessert. Reservations must be made in advance by calling 631-689-5888. For more information, visit www.wmho.org.
This post was updated Nov. 17 to correct pricing for seniors and children.
By Ed Blair
She was the quintessential “girl next door” — sweet, wholesome and unassuming. She was pretty and perky, had a dazzling smile and looked great in a cute summer dress. In short, she was the ideal, all-American girl every guy wanted to take home to meet his parents.
For many, Debbie Reynolds fit the classic romantic fantasy perfectly, whether she was dancing as an 18-year-old with Gene Kelly and Donald O’Connor in “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952), rollicking in “The Unsinkable Molly Brown” (1964), for which she received an Oscar nomination, or crooning her chart-topping 1957 hit “Tammy.”
Reynolds’ daughter, Carrie Fisher, earned her star as another type of princess in her iconic role in the “Star Wars” series. Their relationship, and their coinciding deaths, were headline material that generated wide media attention, and the sometimes contentious interactions between mother and daughter will be a featured in “The Debbie Reynolds Story,” a musical theater tribute being presented at The Ward Melville Heritage Organization’s Educational & Cultural Center from May 6 to June 15.
The center has hosted a number of shows orchestrated by St. George Productions, which has brought to life the biographies of stars such as Bob Hope, Patti Page, Mickey Rooney and, most recently, Mary Martin and Dinah Shore. As in the past, presentations will be followed by a luncheon catered by Fratelli’s Italian Eatery and includes tea and dessert.
In a format familiar to audiences who continue to enjoy his live musical theater tributes, director/writer/producer Sal St. George’s latest offering details the life of Debbie Reynolds and her on-again-off-again relationship with her daughter, Carrie Fisher.
Setting the show’s time line, St. George explained, “The year is 1977. Debbie has recently completed ‘Irene’ on Broadway, as well her one-woman show, and is touring with ‘Annie Get Your Gun.’” Reynolds had received a Tony nomination for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical for her role in “Irene,” and teenager Carrie Fisher had appeared on stage with her early during the musical’s run. “Carrie, now 20, is still in England promoting ‘Star Wars,’” St. George continued. “Although she is not [portrayed] in our show, Carrie’s relationship with her mother will be a major topic of discussion.”
Indeed, that relationship has been scrutinized and commented upon in the media since the deaths of the two stars became headline stories in December of 2016. Reynolds’ kaleidoscopic career and rags-to-riches road to stardom contrasted sharply with Fisher’s experiences.
Paris Pryor, the actress who portrays Reynolds in The WMHO production, paid tribute to the late star’s achievements, pointing out that, “Although her death is still fresh in our minds, I hope our presentation will be a positive reflection on her rich legacy.”
St. George noted that Lucille Ball, Jimmy Stewart and Rosemary Clooney lived in the same neighborhood as Reynolds, and his production features actress Jordyn Morgan, who portrays Clooney. “It is an honor,” said Morgan, “to be re-creating the life of such a remarkable musical artist. Our production is a salute to two of Hollywood’s greatest icons.”
The Ward Melville Heritage Organization’s Educational & Cultural Center, located at 97P Main St. in Stony Brook Village will present “The Debbie Reynolds Story” on May 6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 17, 18, 20, 21, 24 (sold out), 25 and 31; June 1, 3, 4, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14 and 15. Performances are at 11:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. on Sundays). Admission is $48 adults; seniors (60 and over) and children under 15, $45; and groups of 20 or more $40. Advance reservations are required by calling 631-689-5888.
Created by Ward Melville in 1939 as The Ward Melville Community Fund, The WMHO is a not-for-profit organization founded to maintain and enhance historical and sensitive environmental properties and to develop and foster community enrichment through cultural and educational experiences. To learn more about The WMHO, call 631-751-2244 or visit the website at www.wmho.org.
By Ed Blair
One was a Broadway star who flew as Peter Pan, vowed to “wash that man right out of my hair” in South Pacific, and frolicked with the Von Trapp children in “The Sound of Music.” The other was a sweet southern singer and popular TV hostess who urged viewers to “See the USA in your Chevrolet.”
Audiences will have the opportunity to learn about the lives of two legendary stars while enjoying musical highlights from the iconic ladies’ careers, as The Ward Melville Heritage Organization presents “Holiday Wishes from Mary Martin & Dinah Shore” at its Educational & Cultural Center in Stony Brook Village. Actors will portray the duo in a beautifully decorated seasonal setting through Jan. 11. The event, presented by St. George Living History Productions, is followed by a high-tea luncheon featuring finger sandwiches and delectable desserts.
As a girl, Mary Martin took an early interest in performing. She channeled her creative impulses by teaching dance, opening her own studio in Mineral Wells, Texas. Fate intervened, however, and when her dance studio burned down, Martin decided to leave Texas and take her shot at making it in Hollywood.
After a number of auditions proved fruitless, Martin got her break when she caught the eye of Oscar Hammerstein, who thought her voice could play on Broadway. She became an overnight sensation in her stage debut in 1938, when the 25-year-old won audiences over with her poignant rendition of “My Heart Belongs to Daddy” in Cole Porter’s “Leave It to Me!” Martin followed up with a Tony Award for her role in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “South Pacific.” The classic song from the show, “I’m Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair,” was actually written at her suggestion, and Martin dutifully washed her hair on stage every night during the run — eight times a week.
The now-famous star added Tony Awards for her performances in the title role in “Peter Pan” and as Maria in “The Sound of Music.” She also starred in “Annie Get Your Gun” and played opposite Robert Preston in “I Do! I Do!” Martin made media history, when, on March 7, 1955, NBC broadcast a live presentation of “Peter Pan.” The musical, with nearly all of the show’s original cast, was the first full-length Broadway production to air on color TV. The show attracted a then-record audience of 65 million viewers, the highest ever up to that time for a single television program. Martin won an Emmy Award for her performance. Mary Martin died in 1990 at the age of 77. There are two stars bearing her name on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
As a student at Vanderbilt University, Tennessee native Dinah Shore began her career by performing her own short program on a Nashville radio station. After graduation in 1938, she moved to New York City, where she landed a job as a singer on WNEW. Her career progressed slowly, but she scored a few hits and became more well known during the World War II years, when she traveled with the USO, performing for the troops. “I’ll Walk Alone,” “I Love You for Sentimental Reasons” and “Buttons and Bows” were all major hits that catapulted her to stardom.
Shore appeared in a few films, but she made her impact on television as TV sets became standard features in homes across the nation in the early 1950s. Her variety show made its debut in 1951. It evolved into “The Dinah Shore Chevy Show” in 1956, which became a mainstay through 1963. Shore’s warmth and engaging personality appealed to TV audiences, and she followed her earlier successes by hosting popular talk shows — “Dinah’s Place,” “Dinah!” and “Dinah and Friends.” Along the way, she accumulated 10 Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Shore also had a passion for golf. She founded the Colgate/Dinah Shore Winner’s Circle Golf Championship and sponsored the Dinah Shore Classic for a number of years, earning her an honorary membership in the Ladies Professional Golf Association Hall of Fame. Three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame honor Dinah Shore, who died in 1994 at the age of 77.
What led writer/director Sal St. George to pair Martin and Shore in his production? “Mary did a special with Noel Coward in 1955, and that inspired me to ponder what a collaboration between her and Dinah would be like,” he explained. “It is a nostalgic part of the Golden Age of television of the 1960s when ‘Specials’ or ‘Spectaculars’ were well produced and had legitimate star quality. This is also Dinah’s 100th birthday year, so we took this opportunity to celebrate her life.”
St. George added, “This is also our 15th year presenting programs for WMHO. We wanted to make this show different and more glamorous than ever before. Consequently, we thought about adding a second celebrity guest. We have never had two high profile women together on the stage. This is the perfect holiday show for the family — great tunes from the Broadway songbook, plenty of good old-fashioned comedy and dazzling costumes — plus an appearance by Peter Pan. Who can ask for more!”
The WMHO Educational & Cultural Center, 97P Main St., Stony Brook will host “Holiday Wishes from Mary Martin & Dinah Shore” through Jan. 11. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday shows are at 11:30 a.m.; Sunday shows at 12:30 p.m. The high-tea luncheon performance, catered by Crazy Beans, is sponsored in part by the Roosevelt Investment Group Inc. General admission is $50; seniors 60 and over $48; groups of 20 or more $45. Advance reservations are required by calling 631-689-5888. For more information, visit www.wmho.org.
By Ed Blair
“I was a fourteen-year-old-boy for thirty years.” So said screen superstar Mickey Rooney, and his assessment of his career was not far off. To a generation of American moviegoers, the diminutive actor was forever a youngster, first as Mickey McGuire and then as Andy Hardy — both iconic roles in Hollywood’s cast of memorable characters.
Mickey Rooney is the subject of a musical theater tribute taking place from May 4 through June 12 at the Ward Melville Heritage Organization’s Educational & Cultural Center in Stony Brook Village. The Sal St. George production is a celebration of Rooney’s movie career, during which he appeared in over 300 films, as well as his successes in vaudeville, radio, television and on Broadway. His natural gift for acting, singing, dancing, comedy and drama are highlighted in a dynamic presentation featuring delightfully nostalgic songs and rollicking comedy.
Born in Brooklyn in 1920, Joe Yule Jr. first appeared on stage with his parents in a vaudeville act at the age of 17 months. When he was 7, his mother took him to audition for the role of Mickey McGuire in a short film based on the then-popular comic strip, Toonerville Trolley. The film enjoyed wide public appeal and developed into a series. Young Joe adopted the stage name of Mickey Rooney and appeared in the role of Mickey McGuire in 78 of the mini-comedies between 1927 and 1934.
From the time he was 16 until the age of 25, Rooney again appeared in a long-running role, this time as all-American teenager Andy Hardy, a character he portrayed in 16 films from 1937 to 1946. In three films in the series, he was paired with Judy Garland, and the two appeared together in other films as well, notably the musicals “Babes in Arms” (1939), for which Rooney, still a teenager, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, “Strike Up the Band” (1940), “Babes on Broadway” (1941), and “Girl Crazy” (1943). Of his relationship with Garland, Rooney proclaimed, “We weren’t just a team; we were magic.”
Rooney also appeared with Elizabeth Taylor in the classic “National Velvet” (1944) and showcased his dramatic acting ability, playing the role of a delinquent opposite Spencer Tracy in “Boys Town” (1938). Rooney proved to be an enduring star, appearing on Broadway, on television and on the big screen, memorably in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” (1961), “Requiem for a Heavyweight” (1962), and “The Black Stallion” (1979), for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. His film credits carried well into the twenty-first century.
Rooney’s personal life was as arresting as his stage career. First married to Ava Gardner, he ended up totaling eight marriages, leading him to quip, “I’m the only man in the world with a marriage license made out ‘To Whom It May Concern.’” Mickey Rooney passed away quietly in his sleep at the age of 93 in April of 2014.
The Ward Melville Heritage Organization production follows the familiar format of other St. John presentations. Showgoers play the role of a 1960s television studio audience attending a talk show hosted by actress and long-time “I’ve Got a Secret” panelist Betsy Palmer (Madeline Shaffer), who, along with her domestic, Penny (Sarah Quinn), welcomes guest star Mickey Rooney, who talks about his life and career and also performs.
Daniel Garcia, who portrays Rooney, noted, “Mickey Rooney was the only entertainer/actor who appeared in motion pictures every decade between the 1920s into 2014. He was a masterful and much-beloved entertainer. This will be quite an acting challenge for me.”
The WMHO presents Musical Theatre Performances of “The Mickey Rooney Story” partially sponsored by The Roosevelt Investment Group, at the organization’s Educational & Cultural Center at 97P Main St. in Stony Brook Village. Shows run from May 4 through June 12 on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 11:30 a.m. and Sundays at 12:30 p.m. Admission is $50, $48 for seniors 60 and over and $45 for groups of 20 or more and includes a high tea luncheon catered by Crazy Beans Restaurant. Advance reservations are required by calling 631-689-5888. For further information, visit www.wmho.org.
By Ed Blair
On August 12, 1819, the Essex, a small but sturdy whaling ship piloted by 29-year-old Captain George Pollard, slipped her moorings and, with a following wind, sailed purposefully from the busy harbor of Nantucket, Massachusetts. Bound for Cape Horn and then on to the warm waters of the Pacific, Essex had a record of several financially successful voyages, and her crew of 20 hoped that their expected two-and-a-half-year expedition would be a profitable one. The whaling was indeed good, and, by November of 1820, Essex, now deep in the expansive South Pacific, was well on its way to completing yet another rewarding voyage. And then the unthinkable happened.
While Captain Pollard and his harpooners were on the hunt in their whaleboats, 23-year-old First Mate Owen Chase, aboard the ship, spotted in the distance a huge sperm whale — 85 feet by his reckoning — facing head-on toward the vessel. After spouting a few times, the leviathan inexplicably charged straight for Essex, smashing into her with what Chase later described as “an appalling and tremendous jar.” Not satisfied, the menacing giant, “as if distracted with rage and fury,” struck again, with devastating results. Essex went down, leaving her horror-struck crew to fend for themselves more than a thousand miles from the nearest land.
If the story strikes a familiar note, it is because the tales told by the Essex survivors were incorporated by author Herman Melville in penning his 1851 classic, “Moby-Dick.” Where Melville’s novel ended, however, the harrowing tale of Essex’s forsaken crew had only begun.
It is their incredible story, chronicled by Nathaniel Philbrick in his best seller “In the Heart of the Sea” (and also by Ron Howard in his newly released film by the same title), that The Whaling Museum & Education Center in Cold Spring Harbor is currently offering to share with visitors to the museum on Main Street in Cold Spring Harbor.
On Sunday, Dec. 27, and again on Saturday, Jan. 9, the museum will present college student actors who will perform, in full whaler garb, select scenes from the Philbrick book. Staged “in the round” inside an authentic whaleboat, the performance will offer a unique opportunity to gain insight into Long Island’s rich whaling history. The 30-foot whaleboat, built in an 1800s shipyard in Setauket, is fully equipped with its original gear according to Nomi Dayan, the museum’s executive director.
“While the Ron Howard movie may focus more on the whale’s attack, we differ in that we concentrate on how men pushed to their absolute limits were able to prevail,” she explained. Characterizing the local actors’ performance as “extremely professional,” Dayan added, “Our hope is that the interest aroused by the film stimulates an interest in an important part of Long Island’s past.”
The three-month odyssey of the crew members following the wreck of the Essex was one of torment and privation. At the mercy of the elements, they endured storms and starvation, and their desperation to survive eventually drove them to cannibalism. Eight men lived to tell the tale, Captain Pollard and First Mate Chase among them, and it was their rendering of the story that inspired Melville’s “Moby-Dick.”
The Whaling Museum & Education Center of Cold Spring Harbor is located at 279 Main Street. Both performances of the selected readings will start at 7 p.m. and will be followed by a question-and-answer session and include a wine and cheese reception as well as exhibit viewing. Seating is limited to 40 guests for each performance. Tickets, which are $20 per person and $35 per couple, can be reserved online at www.cshwhalingmuseum.org or by calling 631-367-3418.
By Ed Blair
America has always had a love affair with motorcycles. “In a car you’re always in a compartment, and, because you’re used to it, you don’t realize that through that car window everything you see is just more TV. You’re a passive observer, and it is all moving by you boringly in a frame. On a cycle, the frame is gone. You’re completely in contact with it all. You’re in the scene, not just watching it anymore, and the sense of presence is overwhelming.” So said Robert Pirsig in his book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values.” Dan Aykroyd stated the case more simply: “You do not need a therapist if you own a motorcycle.”
Marlon Brando, Steve McQueen, James Dean. Clint Eastwood, Buddy Holly, Peter Fonda. Hijinks from Evel Knieval and Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzerelli. There is no doubt that the motorcycle occupies a unique and intriguing niche in both the national culture and the counterculture, and it is the subject of an absorbing local offering.
Following on the success of last year’s summer exhibit, the Ward Melville Heritage Organization will present The Love Affair with Motorcycles Continues! opening July 11. On view are more than 30 motorcycles, as well as motorcycle memorabilia, artwork and sculptures.
Speakers will be on hand to talk about a number of motorcycle-related topics, and visitors can view an outdoor car showcase in the WMHO Center’s parking lot and also participate in a scavenger hunt. Stony Brook Village restaurants will feature exhibit-related dishes on their menus, such as the Hog Hero, the Harley Hoagie, the BMW Burger, Knucklehead Chili, and the Screamin’ Eagle.
The evolution of the motorcycle can be traced from Mike Wolf’s restored 1912 Indian TT Racer through to a 1975 Ducati 750 Sport from 20th Century Cycles of Oyster Bay. Also on display are bikes from the private collection of Joe Buzzetta, such as his 1977 Moto Guzzi Le Mans 850, and, courtesy of Peter Nettesheim, an unrestored 1928 BMW R52.
Also on view: a 1903 Indian (the only one known to exist), courtesy of Jim Giorgio; a 1955 Pan Head Billy Bike, (Gerry Duff); a 1970 Rupp Mini Bike (Joe Amendolia); a 1975 Norton Commando (Michael Racz); a 1975 FLH Harley (Douglas Johnston); a 1975 Honda Goldwing 1000 (Bill Mabanta); a 1973 Harley “Steampunk” (Copper Mike); and a replica of a motorcycle that appeared in the iconic biker movie “Easy Rider.” Besides getting up-close looks at the Harley Davidsons, Kawasakis, Suzukis, Triumphs, Hondas and other motorcycles, enthusiasts can give vent to their fascination with motorized two-wheelers by checking out the artwork of David Uhl.
Scheduled speakers and their topics are Pete Nettesheim — Restored vs. Unrestored Bikes (Sunday, July 12); John Petsche — Biodiesel Bikes (Saturday, July 18); Steve Linden — History of Motorcycle Brands and Emblems (Saturday, July 25); and Jeffrey James — Music and Motorcycles (Saturday, Aug. 8); and Movies and Motorcycles (Saturday, Aug. 22). All talks begin at 2 p.m.
The Ward Melville Heritage Organization will present America’s Love Affair with the Motorcycle Continues! July 11 through September 7 at its Educational & Cultural Center in Stony Brook Village. The exhibit, partially sponsored by Astoria Bank, is open seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for children under 12. For a full schedule of exhibit events, 631-689-5888, or visit www.stonybrookvillage.com.
By Ed Blair
“I don’t entirely approve of some of the things I have done, or am, or have been. But I’m me. God knows, I’m me.”
Iconic actress Elizabeth Taylor’s self-appraisal references a life that ranged from the sensation of stardom to the sensationalism of tabloids. She was one of the last superstars of the Hollywood studio tradition, and her life and career, both on and off screen, were a source of entertainment for decades.
Audiences can listen to the legendary actress’ tale as the Ward Melville Heritage Organization presents “The Elizabeth Taylor Story” May 9 through June 17 at its Educational & Cultural Center, 97P Main St., Stony Brook. The popular musical theater and high-tea luncheon series returns to the center with a tribute to the enduring screen idol. The 1963 setting for the St. George Productions finds singer Eydie Gorme (played by Rosie Flore) headlining a musical comedy spring spectacular, with Taylor (portrayed by Lisa Mondy) as the her guest. Along with her faithful domestic, Rosie (played by Kim Dufrenoy), Gorme will talk with her glamorous visitor and delve into the roller coaster ride that marked both a distinguished acting career and an often turbulent personal life. A light lunch of finger sandwiches will follow the show.
The cast members weighed in with their thoughts about the star of the show.
“I think people will walk away with a different perception of Elizabeth Taylor. As she tells her story, you realize that she herself never took her stardom seriously. She felt fabricated by the movie studios, which staged her look as well as with whom she was seen. She never really wanted all the hoopla and drama that went with being a celebrity,” said Dufrenoy.
Added Rosie Flore, “Celebrities and icons are people too. They live, love, laugh and hurt just the way we all do.”
Portraying the former movie idol, Monde said, “Elizabeth Taylor represented glamour. She represented style; she represented Hollywood stardom. At times her personal life overshadowed her screen accomplishments, but in the end, after eight marriages and numerous life-threatening illnesses, Elizabeth Taylor was a survivor.”
Born in London in 1932 to American parents who took their St. Louis art dealership abroad, Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor returned with them to the United States at age 7, as the family fled the impending war in Europe. The Taylors resettled in Los Angeles, where a family friend suggested that the arrestingly attractive Elizabeth be given a screen test at a movie studio. Her radiant good looks and charisma captivated the camera lens, and, by the time she was 10, the fledgling actress was appearing in films at Universal, MGM and 20th Century Fox. After playing several small parts, she rocketed to stardom, playing opposite Mickey Rooney, in the 1944 hit “National Velvet.” Now a child star with a contract with MGM, young Elizabeth scored another big success for her role in “Little Women” in 1949.
Blossoming into a voluptuous-figured, violet-eyed beauty as she entered her twenties, Taylor soon found herself playing opposite some of Hollywood’s top leading men. She received Academy Award nominations for her roles in “A Place in the Sun” (1951), “Raintree County” (1957), “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1958), “Suddenly Last Summer” (1959) and “The Taming of the Shrew” (1967). She garnered two Oscars for her role as a call girl in “BUtterfield 8” (1960) and for her definitive roll as Martha in “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” in 1966.
She also appeared famously in “Giant” with James Dean (1956) and with Richard Burton in “Cleopatra” in 1963 for which she was paid the then-stunning sum of one million dollars. Taylor became an international star and appeared solo on the cover of People Magazine 14 times.
Taylor was a significant voice in the battle against AIDS, helping to raise funds for research and playing a major role in focusing public opinion on the epidemic. For her tireless efforts, she was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal in 2001.
“It is bad enough that people are dying of AIDS,” she said, “but no one should die of ignorance.”
Performances of “The Elizabeth Taylor Story” will run from May 9 through July 17 and take place on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and select Fridays at 11:30 a.m. and on Sundays at 12:30 p.m. Advance reservations are required. Tickets are $48 general admission, $45 seniors. For more information or to make a reservation, call 631-689-5888 or visit www.wmho.org. | |||||||
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FolkLib Index - Artist Selection - S
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The page contains links to information about Folk Musicians, Bluegrass Musicians, Old-Time Musicians, Acoustic Blues Musicians, Wisconsin Musicians, Harp Players (the stringed kind) and Solo Fingerstyle Acoustic Guitarists and some Musicians in other Genres. This page has links for musicians whose last name or group name begins with the letter S.
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Birth/death dates, if known, are on the Birthdays/Bibliography page. Select the Bibliog (FolkLib Index) link.
Sa, Wanda (aka Wanda de Sah) (?) [city?]
Sabien, Randy
Sabicas - "Guitar"
Sabin, Jon (guitar, mandolin, vocals) - (former member: Chrysalis) [Ithaca, NY]
Sacamoto, Harvey "Mr. Hide" (guitar, mandolin, ukulele, vocals) - Page ( Author ? [Archive]) - (member: The Bagboys) [Boston, MA]
Sachdev [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sacher, Andy (mandolin) - (member: Banjo Dan & the Mid-Nite Plowboys) [Oberlin, OH]
Sachs, Bob (mandolin, vocals) - (member: Southern Rail) [Fairfax, VA / Charleston SC]
Sachs, Paul (?) [New York, NY]
Sacksioni, Harry - "Guitar"
Sacramento Street Acoustic Trio - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(David Carter, Tom Daniels, Mickey Zibello)
Sadie, Stanley (author, bassoon) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K. / Cossington, Somerset, U.K.]
Saerchinger, Cesar (author, musicologist, CBS news correspondent) - Obit ( NY Times: Oct. 11, 1971), Page ( OTRRpedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Aix-la-Chapelle, France / city? 1898 / Bedford Village, NY 19??-1968 / Washington, DC 1968-1971]
Hosted the 1930's/1940's radio series - "The Story Behind the Headlines"
Saffire - The Uppity Blues Women - "Blues"
Sage, Alfred [Robbinsdale, MN]
Sage, Bill (fiddle) - (member: The Del McCoury Band) [city?]
Sage, Matthew - (member: Jugglers and Thieves) [city?]
Sage, Rachael - Page ( CD Baby) [city?, NY]
Sahm, Doug (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [San Antonio, TX / Taos, NM]
Saich, John - (member: Capercaillie) [city?]
Sainte-Marie, Buffy - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Heli Tuomi) ( Vanguard Records) ( Gene Wilburn), Lyrics ( Author ?), Films ( Cardiff UK / US mirror), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
(other incorrect spellings searched for: Buffy St.-Marie)
Saint-Saens, Camille (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Paris, France]
St. Teresa of Avila (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Gotarrendura (Avila), Old Castile, Kingdom of Spain / Alba de Tormes, Salamanca, Kingdom of Spain]
(aka Saint Teresa of Avila)
Saisse, Phillippe - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Salamander Crossing - "BG/OT"
Salazar, Mark - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Salazar, Phil - "BG/OT"
Salieri, Antonio (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Venice, Italy]
Saliers, Emily (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Indigo Girls) [Atlanta, GA]
Salley, Roly (drums, bass, guitar, vocals) - Discog ( All Music Guide) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY]
Salm, Doug - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Sir Douglas Quintet) [city?]
Salmhofer, Hubert (basset horn, clarinet) - Page ( Wikipedia) - (member: Vienna Clarinet Connection) [Vienna, Austria]
Salmond, Roy (electric guitar, accordion, percussion) [city?]
Salsa Celtica - Page ( Author ?) ( Wikipedia) [Active: 1995-] [Edinburgh, Scotland]
(Ross Ainslie, Eric Alfonso, Rona Cooper, Eamonn Coyne, Javier Fioramonti, Kenny Fraser, Simon Gall, Dougie 'El Pulpo' Hudson, Steve Kettley, Ryan Quigley, Lino Rocha, Toby Shippey) - (former members: Martyn Bennett, Galo Ceron-Carrasco, Stevie Christie, Jenny Gardner, Paul Harrison, Andi Neate, Chris Stout)
Saltgrass - "BG/OT"
Salty Dogs Jazz Band, The - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 1947-] [West Lafayette, IN 1947-1960 / Chicago, IL 1960-]
(the only member who ever lived in Wisconsin was Russ Dagon)
Salvatore, Joe (acoustic guitar, vocals) [city?]
Salvia, Henry (keyboards, accordion) - (member: Houston Jones) [city?, CA]
Salyer, John Morgan [city?]
Samana - Page ( AACM Chicago) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Coco Elysses, Niki Mitchell, Regina Perkins, Aquilla Sadalla, Maia ?, Shanta ?)
Sample, Joe (piano, keyboards) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Houston, TX]
Samplers, The [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Samples, The [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sampou, Les - Page ( Joe Miele), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kerrville Folk Festival, 1994 New Folk Winner] [Osterville MA / Norwalk, CT / Boston, MA]
Samradh [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Samuel, Sheryl - (see: Don Haynie & Sheryl Samuel)
Samuels, Joe (fiddle) [city?]
Samwell-Smith, Paul - (member: The Yardbirds) [city?]
Sanborn, Jan (keyboards, composer) [city?]
Sanchez, David (soprano saxophone, also saxophone, tenor saxophone, saxophoneflute, clarinet, percussion, drums) - Page ( Eric Safyan)
(leader: David Sanchez Quartet) [Guaynabo, Puerto Rico / New York, NY]
Sanchez, Jimmy (drums) [city?]
Sanchez, Pancho - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Sanchez, Scott - "Guitar"
Sand Mountain - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sandburg, Carl - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sandell Berg, Carolina (aka Lina Sandell) (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Froderyd, Smaland, Sweden / Stockholm, Sweden]
Sanders, Markie (bass, vocals) - (former member: Good Ol' Persons 1977-1980) [Berkeley, CA]
Sanders, Nicky "Nicky Bag" (fiddle, vocals) - Page ( Author ? [Archive]) - (member: The Bagboys) [city?]
Sanders, Ric (fiddle) - (member: Fairport Convention 1985-) [London, U.K.]
Sanders, Victor - Discog Coll. ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sanderson, Erik - (member: Change of Pace) [Rossford, OH]
Sandoval, Paul - Page ( Paul Sandoval) (guitar, percussion, kazoo) - (member: Emerald City Jug Band, Teeth, Hair & Eyeballs) [Denver, CO / San Francisco, CA / Seattle, WA]
Sandpipers, The - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sands Family, The [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Tommy Sands, Ann Sands, Eugene Sands, Ben Sands, Colum Sands)
Sands, Ben - Page ( Waterbug Records) [city?]
Sands, Colum - Page ( Waterbug Records) - (member: The Sands Family) [city?]
Sands, Tommy - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Sands Family) [city?]
Sands Band, Tracy - Page ( Author ?) [Mayobridge, County Down, Ireland / ?, FL]
Saner, Lynne [city?]
Sangare, Oumou (vocals) [city?, Mali]
Sanger, Franz (fiddle, mandolin) - Page - (former member: The Swifts) [Portland, OR]
Sangiolo, Maria - Page ( (Scott Russell) ( Signature Sounds), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sanlucar, Manolo - "Guitar"
Sansone, Maggie - Page ( Maggie's Music #1 / #2), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Santo and Johnny - Page ( Author ?) ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Johnny Farina, Santo Farina)
Santoro, Vince (?) - (member: Air Parma) [city?]
Santos, Dean (vocals) - (member: Hull-House Revival) [city?, NY]
Sapieyevski, Marek (banjo) ( Deering Banjos) [city?]
Sapp, Jane (piano, vocals) - Page ( Brandeis University), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Pete Seeger, Jane Sapp & Si Kahn 1985) [Augusta, GA / Atlanta, GA]
Saporito, Jim - (member: Radiance) [city?]
Sara K. - (see: K., Sara)
Sara, Adina [city?]
Sarducci, Father Guido - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sassone, Marco (Marco M. Sassone) (painter) - Page ( Author ?) ( Blogspot) ( Wikipedia), List of Paintings by Marco Sassone ( FolkLib Index), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Florence, Italy / Laguna Beach, CA 1970- / San Francisco, CA / Toronto, Ontario, Canada]
Satan & Adam [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Satherley, Art - "Wis."
Satie, Erik (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Honfleur, France / Paris, France]
Sato, Shinobu - "Guitar"
Satori Bob & John Baumann [Active: 19??-] [city?, VT]
(Bob Gagnon, John Baumann)
Satriani, Joe - Pictures ( Deering Banjos) [city?]
Satterfield, Laura - (member: Walela) [city?]
top / bottom of page
Sauber, Tom - (member: Tom, Dick & Pete) [city?]
Sauceman, Carl - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Green County, TN]
Sauceman, John Paul "J.P." - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Saukerson, Dale W. - (member: Red Willow Band) [city?]
Saulnier, Kenneth (fiddle) - (member: 1755) [city?, New Brunswick, Canada]
Saunders, Merl & the Rainforest Band [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Savakus, Russ (bass) - Biography ( The Folk File), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Reading, PA]
Savarino, Jim - Page ( Jim Savarino), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Saville, Oskar - (member: 10,000 Maniacs) [city?]
Savoca, Karen - Page ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) [Syracuse, NY]
Savoir Faire Cajun Band [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Savory, Tanya - Page ( Ernest Ackermann) [city?]
Savoy, Ann Allen - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, Magnolia Sisters) - (see also: Marc & Ann Savoy) [city?]
Savoy, Marc - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band, Savoy-Smith Cajun Band) - (played with: Balfa Brothers) - (see also: Marc & Ann Savoy) [city?]
Savoy, Marc & Ann - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Savoy-Doucet Cajun Band - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Marc Savoy, Ann Savoy, Michael Doucet)
Savoy-Smith Cajun Band [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Marc Savoy, Ken Smith)
Savuka - Discog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Saw Doctors - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 1986-] [Ireland]
(John "Turps" Burke, Davy Carton, Pearse Doherty, John Donnelly, Leo Moran, Mary O'Connor, Padraig Stevens, Anthony Thistlewaite)
Sawtelle, Charles - "BG/OT"
Sawyer Brown - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1984-] [Nashville, TN]
Saylors, Mark (Native American courting flute) - (member: Shakra) [city?]
Scaggs, Boz - "Wis."
Scahill, Enda - (member: Brock McGuire Band) [city?]
Scallions, The - Page ( Aaron Russell) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Scalon, Pat [city?]
Scanlon, Kim (vocals) [city?, CA]
Scannura, Roger - "Guitar"
Scarlett, Mose - Page ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) [city?]
Scarlatti, Alessandro (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Palermo, Sicily, Italy]
Scartaglen - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Connie Dover, Roger Landes, Kirk Lynch, Michael Dugger, Becky Pringle)
Schaefer, Dave "Shifty" (?) - Page ( Find a Grave), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: The Leon Olsen Show 19??-1994) [New Ulm, MN]
Schafer, Dan (?) - (member: The Animal Band) [Mt. Juliet, TN]
Schatz, Mark (banjo) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Scheen, Michiel (piano) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Amsterdam, Netherlands]
Schenck, Joe (piano, tenor vocals) - (member: Van & Schenck) [city?]
Schickele, Peter (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Ames, IA]
Schiff, Noel - (see: Chicago Slim)
Schiffer, John (trumpet) [city?]
Schilling, Bill - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Schimmel, Nancy - Page ( Sister's Choice), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (Malvina Reynold's daughter) [city?]
Schindel, Greg "Train Singer" (guitar, harmonica, autoharp., vocals) - Page ( Greg Schindel), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Oakland, CA / Exeter, NH / Willits, CA]
Schlamme, Martha (piano, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Vienna, Austria / London, U.K. 194?- / city? 1948-]
Schleman, Hilton R. (author, discographer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K.]
Schmidt, Danny - Page ( Author ?) ( Red House Records), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Austin, TX / Charlottesville, VA]
Schmidt-Lobis, Deborah (?) - (member: The Mother Folkers) [Denver, CO]
Schmit, Timothy B. (bass, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Eagles 1977-1980, 1994-present) [Oakland, CA / Los Angeles, CA]
Schnaufer, David - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Walk the West, The Cactus Brothers) [Hearne, TX]
Schneider, John (guitar, vocals, actor) - Page ( Wikipedia), Lrics ( Cowboy Lyrics), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Mt. Kisco, NY]
Schneider, Maria (piano, composer, band leader) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Windom, MN]
Schneider, Raldo - Page ( CD Baby) [Cedar Falls, IA]
Schneider, Steve - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY]
Schneyer, Helen - Discog ( Jane Keefer), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Priority Ramblers) [New York, NY]
Schnier, Stan (aka "Stan Lee") (bass) - (member: The Incredible String Band 1972-1974) [city?, Scotland]
Schock, David - (member: JumpBoys) [Midland, MI]
Schock, Gina (guitar, drums, vocals) ( Wikipedia) - (member: The Go-Go's) [Los Angeles, CA]
Schoebel, Doug (vocals) [city?]
Schoebel, Elmer (piano, organ, composer, arranger) - Discog ( Discography of American Historical Recordings (DAHR)), Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (joined ASCAP 1927) [East St. Louis, IL / St. Petersburg, FL]
Schoenberg, Arnold (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Vienna, Austria]
Schoenberg, Eric - "Guitar"
Schoenberg, Loren (author, tenor saxophone, conductor, author, critic, educator, jazz historian) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Fair Lawn, NJ]
Schooner Fare - Page ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Chuck Romanoff, Steve Romanoff, Tom Rowe)
Schory, Dick - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Chicago, IL]
Schrade, Linda [city?]
Schramm, Janey (vocals) - Discog ( All Music Guide) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY]
Schramms, The [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Schreiber, Norman (author) - Page ( Norman Schreiber), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Schreiner, Janet (autoharp.) [Wynnewood, PA]
Schroeder, Tom (autoharp.) [Kansas City, MO]
Schroeder-Sheker, Therese - "Harp"
Schubert, Franz - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Himmelpfortgrund, Vienna, Austria]
Schuch, Steve - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Wellspring) [city?]
Schuck, Steve - Discog (see: Ariane Lydon) [city?]
Schumann, Clara Wieck (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Leipzig, Germany / Frankfurt, Germany]
Schumann, John [city?]
Schumann, Robert (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Zwickau, Saxony, Germany]
Schutz, Heinrich (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kostritz, Germany]
Schwab, Sigi - "Guitar"
Schwall, Jim - "Wis."
Schwandt, Wilbur Clyde - "Wis."
Schwann, William (publisher) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (founder: Schwann Catalog 1949) [city? / Cambridge, MA / Burlington, MA]
Schwarz, Tracy - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Tracy Schwarz Cajun Trio, Hawker & Schwarz) - (former member: New Lost City Ramblers) [city?]
Schweitzer, Albert (composer, organ) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kaysersberg, (Alsace-Lorraine), Germany (now Haut-Rhin, France) / Lambarene, Gabon]
Sciaky, Carla (guitar, vocals) - Articles ( FAME), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: The Mother Folkers) [Denver, CO]
Scinto, Jesse - (member: The Smoke Daddy Band) [city?]
Scobey, Bob (trumpet) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Tucumcari, NM / Stockton, CA / Chicago, IL]
Scobie, Alan (Allan) (keyboards, percussion) - (member: Skerryvore) [city?, Scotland]
Scoggins, Jerry - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?, TX]
Scotland, Craig - (member: Free Whiski) [city?]
Scott, Alan Robert (lyricist, author, actor) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Haddonfield, NJ]
Scott, Bar [city?]
Scott, Bobby #1 (piano, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Bronx, NY / New York, NY]
Scott, Bobby #2 (Robert W.) (piano, composer, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Mt. Pleasant, NY]
Scott, Bon (drums, bagpipe, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kirriemuir, Scotland / London, U.K.]
Scott, Bud (Arthur Budd) (guitar, banjo, violin, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New Orleans, LA 1890-1913 / New York, NY 1915-1926 Chicago. IL 1926-1929 / Los Angeles, CA 1929-1949]
Scott, Buddy - "Blues"
Scott, C. Calo (cello, piano, tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Camaguey, Cuba / Bronx, NY]
Scott, Cecil Xavier (tenor saxophone, clarinet) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Springfield, OH / New York, NY]
Scott, Charles Kennedy (conductor, composer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Romsey, U.K. / London, U.K.]
Scott, Clifford (saxophone, flute, clarinet) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [San Antonio, TX / Los Angeles, CA]
Scott, Dale (guitar, harmonica, vocals) - (member: Peacemeal String Band) [Traverse City, MI]
Scott, Dane - "Wis."
Scott, Darrell - "BG/OT"
Dred Scott (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Scott, E.C. - "Blues"
Scott, Edward Noble (composer, author, teacher) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [San Jose, CA]
Scott, Frank (author) - Page ( All Music Guide), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K.]
Scott, Frank R. (piano, harpsichord, composer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Fargo, ND]
Scott, Freddie (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Providence, RI]
Scott, George (bass) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY]
Scott, George "King" (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: The Hesitations) [Cleveland, Oh]
Scott, Hazel Dorothy (piano, composer, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Port of Spain, Trinidad / New York, NY]
Scott, Irene - (member: No Spring Chickens) [city?]
Scott, Jack (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Windsor, Ontario, Canada]
Scott, James (ragtime piano) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (aka The Little Professor) [city?]
Scott, Jeff - "Wis."
Scott, Jeremy - "Wis."
Scott, Jim - (member: Radiance) [city?]
Scott, "Little" Jimmy (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Cleveland, OH]
Scott, Joe #1 (?) - (member: Eidolon) [city?]
Scott, Joe #2 (trumpet, vocals, bandleader) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?, TX]
Scott, John Prindle (composer, author, teacher) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Norwich, NY]
Scott, Johnnie (piano, composer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Portland, OR / N. Hollywood, CA]
Scott, Johnny (flute, saxophone, piano, clarinet, harp) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Bristol, U.K. / London, U.K.]
Scott, Lloyd (drums) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Springfield, OH]
Scott, Josh - "Wis."
Scott, Kenneth Irving (vocals, composer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Boston, MA]
Scott, K. Lee (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Langdale, AL]
Scott, Marilyn Lang (piano, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Chicago, IL]
Scott, Maureen (hammered dulcimer, clawhammer dulcimer, tenor guitar, vocals) - (member: Peacemeal String Band) [Traverse City, MI]
Scott, Michael - "Wis."
Scott, Mike - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Waterboys) [city?]
Scott, Mike - "BG/OT"
Scott, Molly (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Wellsville, NY]
Scott, Nathan George (conductor, composer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Salinas, CA]
Scott, Noel (fiddle) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Wasola, MO]
Scott, Oscar Emanuel (composer, author) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Scott, Peter (guitar, harmonica, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Walthamstow, London, U.K. / Saskatoon, Saskatchewan Canada]
Creator & Webmaster: AllRecordLabels.com, Hytelnet
Scott, Raymond (piano, conductor, composer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Brooklyn, NY]
Scott, Rick (drums) - (former member: Alabama 1974-1979) [city?]
Scott, Ron - "BG/OT"
Scott, Ronnie (soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K.]
Scott, Roy #2 (guitar,vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Washington, PA (Country)]
Scott, Roy #1 - "Wis." Soul
Scott, Rufe (fiddle) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Galena, Stone County, MO]
Scott, Shirley (organ, piano, trumpet) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Philadelphia, PA / Teaneck, NJ]
Scott, Stephen (piano) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY]
Scott, Thomas Wright (Tom) (soprano saxophone, alto saxophone, tenor saxophone, flute, woodwinds) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Los Angeles, CA]
Scott, "Ramblin'" Tommy (guitar, vocals, comedian) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Stephens County, GA]
Scott, Tommy Lee (guitar, vocals, composer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Toccoa, GA]
Scott, Tony (clarinet, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, piano, guitar, marimba) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Morristown, NJ]
Scott, Walter (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Bob Kuban & The In Men) [St. Louis, MO]
Scott-Heron, Gil (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Chicago, IL / New York, NY]
Scott-Mitchell, Anthea (cello) [city?]
Scrap Arts Music - Page ( Author ? / Image Site Only!) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Scriabin, Alexander (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Moscow, Russia]
Scriven, Joseph Medlicott (poet, lyricist) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Banbridge, County Down, Ireland / Port Hope, Ontario, Canada]
Scrivenor, Gove (or Schrivenor) (autoharp., vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) [New Haven, CT / Nashville, TN / Orange Beach, AL]
Scroggins, Jeff - "BG/OT"
Scruggs Review, Earl - "BG/OT"
Scruggs, Earl - "BG/OT"
Scruggs, Randy - "BG/OT"
Scruggs, Steve - "BG/OT"
Scud Mountain Boys [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Scuggs, Irene - "Blues"
Scythian - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Washington, DC]
Seacat, Sumi (?) - (former member: The Mother Folkers) [Denver, CO]
Sealey, Milt (piano, vibes, bass) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Montreal, Quebec, Canada]
Seals & Crofts - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1969-1980, 1991-1992, 2004] [Los Angeles, CA]
(Dash Crofts, Jim Seals)
Seals, Dan (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: England Dan & John Ford Coley) - (brother: Jim Seals, first cousin: Troy Seals) [McCamey, TX]
Seals, Jim (guitar, fiddle, tenor saxophone, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Seals & Crofts) - (former member: The Champs) [Sidney, TX / Los Angeles, CA]
Seals, Son (guitar, drums, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Osceola, AR / Chicago, IL 1971-]
Seals, Troy (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Big Hill, KY]
Sears, Albert Omega (tenor saxophone, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Macomb, IL / New York, NY]
Seatrain - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1968-1973] [Marin County, CA / Marblehead, MA]
Sebastian, Ceci (vocals) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY]
Sebastian, John (guitar, harmonica, vocals) - Discog ( All Music Guide), Page ( Wikipedia), Pictures ( Deering Banjos), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Even Dozen Jug Band, Mugwumps, Lovin' Spoonful) [New York, NY]
Sebestyen, Marta - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Budapest, Hungary]
Sechler, Curly - Curly Seckler
Seckler, Curly - "BG/OT"
Secola, Keith and Wild Band of Indians (guitar, flute, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Author ?) [city?, MN / city?, CO / city?, AZ]
Second City (comedy troupe) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Second Coming [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Second Fiddle [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Chris Cioffi, Lisa McMillen, Deanie Richardson, Ken White)
Sedaka, Neil (piano, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Brooklyn, NY]
Seddon, Patsy - "Harp"
Sedita, Bobby (vocals) - Discog ( All Music Guide) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY]
Seeger, Alice (guitar, vocals) (aka Alice Gerrard) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Seattle, WA / Washington, DC]
1970-1982?: married to Mike Seeger
Seeger, Anthony [city?]
Seeger, Barbara [city?]
Seeger, Charles (composer, conductor, musicologist, "musician" [which instrument(s)]) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Mexico City, Mexico / Bridgewater, CT]
Seeger, Kim [city?]
Seeger, Mike - "BG/OT"
top / bottom of page
Seeger, Mike and Peggy - "BG/OT"
Seeger, Nick [city?]
Seeger, Peggy - "BG/OT"
Seeger, Peggy & Ewan MacColl - "BG/OT"
Seeger, Penny - "BG/OT"
Seeger, Pete (banjo, 6-string guitar, 12-string guitar, recorder, tin whistle, mandolin, piano, ukulele) - Page ( Jim Capaldi) ( The Ballad Tree) ( Rock and Roll Hall of Fame) ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Almanac Singers, The Song Swappers, The Weavers) [New York, NY / Beacon, NY 1949-2014]
Seeger, Pete, Jane Sapp & Si Kahn [Active: 1985] [city?]
Seeger, Ruth Crawford (piano, composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (Pete Seeger's Mother) [East Liverpool, OH / Chevy Chase, MD]
Seeger, Tao Rodriguez - (see: Tao Rodriguez-Seeger)
Seeger, Toshi (filmmaker, producer, environmental activist) (wife of Pete Seeger) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Munich, Germany / New York, NY / Beacon, NY 1949-2013]
As far as I know, she never performed, sang or played any instrument.
Seekers, The - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (see also: The New Seekers) [Active: 196?-1968] [Melbourne, Australia]
(Judith Durham, Athol Guy, Keith Potger, Bruce Woodley)
Seely, Jeannie (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Titusville, PA]
Seger, Bob (organ, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Detroit, MI]
Seibel, Paul - (see: Paul Siebel)
Seides, Jan [Austin, TX]
Seidl, Fred (vocals) - (member: Hull-House Revival) [city?, NY]
Seiter, John - (member: Rosebud) [city?]
Sekakuku, Alph (Native American courting flute) [Hopi] - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Seldom Scene - "BG/OT"
Segovia, Andres - "Guitar"
Segura, Chris (fiddle) - (member: Feufollet) [Lafayette, LA]
Selkies, The [Active: 19??-] [Ipswich, MA]
Sell, Michelle - "Harp"
Sellwood, Ron and Terry [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Seltzer, Dov (accordion, vocals, composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Oranim-Zabar Troupe) [city?, Romania / city?, Israel]
Semien, Sidney (see Rockin' Sidney)
Semisonic - Discog Coll. ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Senescu, Ben (violin) - (former member: Fine Arts Quartet 1940-1946) [Chicago, IL]
Senger, Deborah - (member: Mozaik) [city?]
Sennett, Bryan - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Serendipity Singers) [city?]
September, Douglas - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Serendipity Singers, The - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Jon Arbenz, Michael Brovsky, Patty Davis, Dianne Decker, H. Brooks Hatch, John Madden, Bryan Sennett, Thomas E. Tiemann, Lynne Weintraub, Bob Young) - (former touring member: Joe Barbara)
Serrano, Juan - "Guitar"
Seskin, Steve - songs.com page deleted by Gaylord Entertainment, [city?]
Seskin, Shamblen & Vezner [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sessions, Ronnie (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Henryetta, OK]
Sete, Bola - "Guitar"
Settle, Mike - (member: Cumberland Three, The New Christy Minstrels, Kenny Rogers & The First Edition) [city?]
Seven Nations [Active: 19??-] [city?, NY / city?, FL]
Seventh Fire - (see: 7th Fire)
Severinsen, Doc (trumpet) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Paul Bongiorno) ( Internet Movie Database (IMDB)) ( Author ?) ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Arlington, OR / New York, NY]
Severt's Juggletunes, Linda [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sexton Sextet, Charlie [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sexton, Martin - Page ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) ( Author ?) [city?]
Shaar, Dahaud (percussion) - (former member: Chrysalis) [Ithaca, NY]
Shad, Rees [city?]
Shadowfax - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1972-1995] [Chicago, IL]
(Chuck Greenberg, Phil Maggini, Doug Maluchnik, Jared Stewart, G.E. Stinson, Jamii Szmadzinski)
Shady Grove Band - "BG/OT"
Shafer, Sanger D. "Whitey" (songwriter, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Whitney, TX / Nashville, TN]
Shafferman, Jean Anne (COMPOSER) - Page ( The Lorenz Corporation) ( Alfred Music), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Easton, PA]
Shakers, United Society of [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Shakra - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Steve Powers, Mark Saylors)
Shakti - Page ( xrefer [Archive]), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(John McLaughlin, Lakshminarayana Shankar, Zakir Hussein)
Shaljean, Bonnie - Orders - "Harp"
Shamblin, Eldon (electric guitar) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Tulsa, OK]
Shane, Bob - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Kingston Trio) [city?]
Shankar, Ravi - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Varanasi, United Provinces, Indian Empire]
Shankerman, Janet (vocals) - (member: The Incredible String Band 1970) [city?, Scotland]
Shanley, Eleanor - Page ( Jaap Meeuwsen) ( Mick Barry) ( Roots Music Agency), Articles ( FolkWorld) - (member: De Dannan) [city?]
Shannon Band, Sharon [Active: 19??-] [Dublin, Ireland]
Shannon, Sharon (button accordion, fiddle) - Page (Ceolas) ( Grapevine Records), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Arcady) [Dublin, Ireland]
ShannonTide [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Shanta - (see: Shanta Nurullah)
Shantyboys, The (aka The Shanty Boys) - Discog ( discogs.com) [Active: 1958-] [New York, NY]
(Mike Cohen, Lionel Kilberg, Roger Sprung)
Shapera, Dan (bass) [Chicago, IL]
Sharar, Connie - (member: The Marys) [city?]
Sharar, Linda - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Sharpe, Cecil (folklorist, composer, organ) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K.]
Sharp, Dave - Page ( Rosemary and James Edmond) ( Steve Fulton) ( Author ?) [city?]
Sharp, Liane (french horn) [city?]
Sharp, Mike (Dobro) - (member: Michelle Nixon & Drive) [Hanover County, VA]
Sharp, Sarah (vocals) - Page ( Author ?) [Austin, TX]
Sharp, Ted (fiddle) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Shaver, Billy Joe - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Corsicana, TX]
Shaw Brothers, The - Page ( Folk Era) ( Author ?) [city?]
Shaw, Artie (clarinet, bandleader, composer ) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY / Thousand Oaks, CA]
Shaw, Christopher - "Guitar"
Shaw, Donald - (member: Capercaillie) [city?]
Shaw, Malcolm (author, discographer) - Obit ( Prescott Valley Tribune), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Billingham, U.K. / city?, CO / Prescott Valley, AZ]
former owner of Rustbooks Publishing 2003-2016
Shaw, Martin (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K. / Southwold, Sussex, U.K.]
Shaw, Rick - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Tradewinds, The Shaw Brothers, The Brandywine Singers) [West Stewartstown, NH]
Shaw, Robert (conductor) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Red Bluff, CA / New Haven, CT]
Shaw, Ron - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Tradewinds, The Shaw Brothers, Pozo Seco Singers, The Brandywine Singers) [city?]
top / bottom of page
Shea, George Beverly (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Winchester, Ontario, Canada / Montreat, NC]
Sheamuis, Matty Joe [city?]
Shear, Jules [city?]
Shearing, George (piano) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K.]
Sheatsley, Paul B. (discographer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sheer, Anita - "Guitar"
Shefchik, Rick (author, guitar) - Page ( Minnesota Post), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Duluth, MN / Stillwater, MN]
Shelasky, Sue (fiddle, vocals) - (former member: Good Ol' Persons 1975-1988) [Berkeley, CA]
Shelby, Pat - "Guitar"
Sheldon, Ernie (guitar) - (member: The Gateway Singers) [San Francisco, CA]
Sheldon, John [city?]
Shelleyan Orphan [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Caroline Crawley, Jemaur Tayle)
Shelor, Sammy - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Shelstadt, Kirby - Discog Coll. ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Shelton, Allen - "BG/OT"
Shelton, Ed - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Shelton, James Alan (guitar) - Page ( ), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys 3/1994-) [Gate City, VA / Church Hill, TN]
Shelton, Ricky Van (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Danville, VA]
Shelton, Robert (music critic, author) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Chicago, IL / Brighton, U.K.]
[biographer: Bob Dylan, Josh White]
Shenandoah - Page ( Great American Country) ( Alabama Hall of Fame), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Muscle Shoals, AL]
(Ralph Ezell, Mike McGuire, Marty Raybon, Jim Seales) - (former member: Stan Thorn 1985-1995)
Shenandoah Cut-Ups, The - "BG/OT"
Shenandoah, Joanne [city?]
Shepherd, Jean (bass, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Paul's Valley, OK]
Shepp, Archie (soprano saxophone, tenor saxophone, piano, clarinet, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Fort Lauderdale, FL / Philadelphia, PA]
Sheppard, John (?) - (former member: Acoustic Alchemy) [London, U.K.]
Sheppard, T.G. (guitar, saxophone, piano, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Humboldt, TN]
Sherburn, Chris & Dennis Bartley [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sheridan, Cosy - Page ( Harmony Ridge Music) ( Waterbug Records), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sheriden, Cosy plus John Gorka [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sheridan, John (piano, vocals) [city?]
Sheridan, Sean (bass, vocals) - (member: The Ruffians) [New York, NY]
Sherman, Allan - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sherman, John - "Guitar"
Sherrill, Billy (piano, saxophone, guitar) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Phil Campbell, AL]
Sherrill, Homer "Pappy" - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sherrock, Ray - (member: Pieces of 8) [St. Louis, MO]
Sherwood, Kerri - "Wis."
Sherwood, Sherli - Discog ( Fast Folk Magazine) [city?]
She's Busy [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Shetland's Young Heritage [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Shick, Joe (vocals) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY]
Shiflett, Karl (guitar, fiddle, vocals) - (member: Karl Shiflett and Big Country Show 1993-) [Longview, TX]
Shiflett, Kris (bass, tuba) - (member: Karl Shiflett and Big Country Show 1996) [Longview, TX]
Shiflett, Karl and Big Country Show - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1993-] [Longview, TX]
(aka, His Big Country Show, The Big Country Show)
(Karl Shiflett 1993-, Dany Bureau 2013/2011-, Brennen Ernst 2013-, Justin Harrison 2015-, Billy Hurt 2011-, Kris Shiflett 1996-) - (former members: Jessie Baker, Kirk Brandenberger, Jimmy Campbell, Billy Joe Foster, Macy Graham, Robert Herrington, Chris Hill, Jake Jenkins, C.J. Lewandowski, David Long, Lyle Meador, Preston Schmidt, Jack Seale, Chuck Westerman)
Shindell, Richard - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index), - (member: Cry Cry Cry) [city?]
Shines, Johnny - "Blues"
Ship of Fools [Active: 1988-19??] [city?]
- (former members: Maggie Boyle, John Renbourn, Tony Roberts, Steve Tilston)
Shipley, Scott (mandolin, vocals) - (former member: Tennessee Gentlemen) [Memphis, TN]
Shipley, Tom (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Brewer & Shipley) [Mineral Ridge, OH / Kansas City, MO / Rolla, MO]
Shippey, Toby (bongos, cowbell) - (member: Salsa Celtica) [Edinburgh, Scotland]
Shirim Klezmer Orchestra - Page ( Ari Davidow) [Active: 19??-] [Boston, MA]
Shirley, Dick - (member: The Travelers 3) [city?, OR]
Shirley, Don - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Shocked, Michelle - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Author ? ( Mark Brautigam) ( Ectophiles' Guide) ( Author ?), Articles ( Salon.com), List of Links ( dmoz.org), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Dallas, TX]
Shoestring Players [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sholes, Steve (?) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Washington, DC / Nashville, TN] Stephen Henry Sholes February 2-12-1911 Washington, D.C. 4-22-1968 Nashville, TN
Sholle, Jon - "BG/OT"
Shooglenifty - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [?, Scotland]
(Malcomb Crosbie, Garry Finlayson, Angus R. Grant, Conrad Ivitsky, James MacKintosh)
Shorb, Lee - Page ( IUMA) [city?]
Shore, Susan - Page ( Waterbug Records) ( Doughboy Music) - (member: Bell and Shore) [city?]
Shorock, Don (website designer, webmaster) - Obit ( Bryant Funeral Home), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Jersey City, NJ / Great Bend, KS]
Short Story [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Lisa Moscatiello, Wendy Morrison)
Short, J.D. - "Blues"
Shostak, Dean - Page ( Dean Shostak) [city?]
Shostakovich, Dmitri (composer, piano) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Saint Petersburg, Russia]
Shotwell, Cecelia (bass) - (member: On The Loose Bluegrass Band) [city?]
Shotwell, Rob (banjo, vocals) - (member: On The Loose Bluegrass Band) [city?]
Shrader, Erin - (former member: Ensemble Galilei 1996-1997) [city?]
Shuffler, George (guitar, bass) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Valdese, NC]
Shuffler, John (?) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Shuler, Cody (mandolin) - (leader: Pine Mountain Railroad) [Knoxville, TN]
Shulman, Neal - (member: Aztec Two-Step) [city?]
Shumaker, Daren (?) - (member: Long & Pardue Band) [city?, NC]
Shumanov, Velizar (accordion, Tupan (large, double-headed drum played with one thin and one thick stick), percussion) - (former member: Jutta & The Hi-Dukes) [Evanston, IL]
Shupe, Ryan and The Rubberband - Page ( Tydal Wave Records) ( IUMA) ( LDS Music World) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Shuping, Garland (mandolin, banjo) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Jimmy Martin & The Sunny Mountain Boys, Jim & Jesse, The Bluegrass Alliance, Wild Country) [Rockwell, NC / Salisbury, NC]
Sibelius, Jean (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Hameenlinna, Finland]
Siberry, Jane - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Side by Side [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sidemen, The - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Mike Bub, Jimmy Campbell, Ed Dye, Terry Eldredge, Ronnie McCoury, Larry Perkins, Gene Wooten)
Siders, Mary (?) - (member: Lost World String Band) [Lansing, MI]
Sidesaddle - "BG/OT"
Siebel, Paul (guitar, fiddle, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY / Buffalo, NY]
Siegel's Chamber Blues, Corky [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Corky Siegel, ?)
Siegel-Schwall Blues Band - "Blues"
Siegel, Avram (banjo, vocals) - (member: True Blue, Vern Williams Band) - (former member: The Kathy Kallick Band) [Berkeley, CA]
Siegel, Carol (mandolin, mountain dulcimer) - (former member: Buffalo Gals #1) [city?]
Siegel, Corky - "Blues"
Siegel, Dick - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Siegel, Harold (double bass, bass guitar, tuba) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Chicago, IL]
Siegel, Pete - (former member: Even Dozen Jug Band) [city?]
Siemsen, Terrance - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Siersema, Laura - Page ( Ernest Ackermann) ( Author ?) [city?]
Sierzega, Jim (?) - (member: Eddie Blazonczyk's Versatones 1963-) [Chicago, IL]
Sigler, Jim (?) - (member: Lost World String Band) [Lansing, MI]
Silber, Irwin (publisher, author, co-founder Sing Out!) - Page ( Wikipedia), Biography ( The Folk File), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY / Oakland, CA]
Silber, Brian [city?]
Silberhorn, Henry (concertina) - Info ( World Concertina Congress HOF 1976) [Chicago, IL]
Sileas - "Harp"
Sill, Gary [city?]
Sill, Judee (vocals) - Page ( Les Kneeling), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Oakland, CA]
Sillas, Phil (piano) [city?]
Silly Sisters - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Maddy Prior, ?)
Silly Wizard - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Johnny Cunningham, Phil Cunningham, Martin Hadden, Gordon Jones, Andy Stewart)
Silva, Sandy - (member: Open House) [city?]
Silver Lining - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Don Armstrong, Victoria Garvey, Arlen J. Johnson, Emil Potel)
Silver, Horace (piano) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Norwalk, CT / New Rochelle, NY]
Silver, Jacob (?) - (member: The Mammals) [city?, NY]
Silverbird, J. Reuben (Native American courting flute) [Dineh-Apache] - Page ( Is he a non-Indian fraud? Join the conversation.), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Silverbird, Perry (Native American courting flute) [Dineh-Apache] - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Big City Indians) [city?]
Silveria, Paul Joseph Jr. (banjo, square dance calling) [Portland, OR]
Silverman, Barbara & the Silver Rose Band- Page ( Silver Beam Music), Wis. Festivals (OTMCF), Contact bjsilverbeam@msn.com - (member: The Teflons, The Laketown Buskers) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Keith Baumann, Al Ehrich, Steve Rosen)
Silverstein, Deborah (guitar, banjo, percussion, vocals) - (former member: New Harmony Sisterhood Band 1973-1980) [city, PA / Ann Arbor, MI 1968-1970 / Boston, MA]
Silverstein, Shel (aka Uncle Shelby) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kenosha, WI / New York, NY]
"per Mitch Myers, Chicago-area journalist and Shel's nephew,(November 2003) Shel's parents had a summer home in Kenosha, and Shel would visit there often over the years."
Silvert, Anita (vocals) - Discog ( Local Folkel Records) [city?, NY]
Silvey, H.K. - "Arkansas"
Silvius, Paul (banjo, vocals) - (member: The Del McCoury Band) [city?]
Simien, Terrance & The Zydeco Experience (accordion) - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Mallet, LA]
[previously known as Terrance Simien & The Mallet Playboys]
(Jose Alvarez, Demetri Evdoxiadis, Ralph Fontenot, Sammy Neal, Danny Williams,)
Simins, Russell - (member: Jon Spencer Blues Explosion) [city?]
Simmen, Johnny (author, drums, percussion, vocals) - Page ( All Music Guide) [Zurich, Switzerland]
Simmonds, Jeremy (author) - Page ( LinkedIn), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K.]
Simmons, Bill - (member: Light Crust Doughboys) [city?]
Simmons, Vickie - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Simo, J.D. - Page ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Simon and Garfunkel - Page ( Jean-Marc Orliaguet) ( Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (see also: Art Garfunkel) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Simon, Carly - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY]
Simon, Ed (piano) [city?]
Simon, George T. (drums, author) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Jazz Journalists Assoc.: The Last Post), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY]
Simon, Paul - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Roger Lai) ( Jean-Marc Orliaguet) ( Rock and Roll Hall of Fame), Films ( Cardiff UK / US mirror), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
aka Jerry Landis, True Taylor, "Tico" of Tico and the Triumphs, Paul Kane (Tom and Jerry, Simon and Garfunkel)
Simone, Nina (piano, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Tryon, NC / Carry-le-Rouet, Bouches-du-Rhone, France]
Simonet, Loretta (celtic harp, piano, guitar, mandolin, vocals) - (member: Curtis & Loretta) [Stillwater, TX / Santa Cruz, CA / Minneapolis, MN]
Simos, Mark [Irish Fest: 2000] [city?]
Simpkins, Rickie (fiddle, bass, mandolin) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Simpkins, Ronnie (bass, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Simple Gifts - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Wikipedia) ( Linda Littleton), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1989-] [Lemont, PA]
(Rachel Hall 1994-, Karen Hirshon 1995-, Linda Littleton 1989-) - (former members: (Toby Carlson 1989-1994, Mark Fowler 1989-1991, Paul Oorts 1991-1995)
Simpson, Denis - (member: The Nylons 1979) [city?]
Simpson, Daryl [city?]
Simpson, Joel (bass, guitar, vocals) - (member: Another Pint) [Chicago, IL]
Simpson, Martin - "Guitar"
Simpson, Red (guitar, keyboards, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Higley, AZ / Bakerfield, CA]
Simpson, Rose (bass, violin, percussion, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) - (member: The Incredible String Band 1968-1971) [city?, Scotland]
Sims, Benny - "BG/OT"
Sinatra, Frank (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Hoboken, NJ / West Hollywood, CA]
Singh, Dev - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Singh, Siri Nam [city?]
Singh, Thakur Dr Raj Bhan [city?]
Singleton Street - Page ( MBOTMA [Archive]) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Siora - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sipe, Don (trumpet) [city?]
Sirens - Page ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Donna Creighton, Nora Galloway, Jo Ann Lawton)
SIROCCO with Chai Chang Ning - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sirus, Sangit (violin) - (member: Ahura) [city?, Iran]
Sissokho, Moussa (percussion, djembe, talking drum or "tama") - (member: Afro Celts) [Senegal / Paris, France]
Sitron, Howard (trumpet) - (member: Girls from Mars) [Philadelphia, PA / Chicago, IL]
Siucra - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Boulder, CO]
(Matthew Heaton, Shannon Heaton, Beth Leachman)
Sivuca (accordion) - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Six Fat Dutchmen [Active: 19??-] [Mew Ulm, MN]
(Harold Loeffelmacher, ?)
Sizemore, Charlie - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Nashville, TN]
Sizemore, Herschel (mandolin) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
top / bottom of page
Skagen, Dennis - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Skaggs, Ricky
Skara Brae - Discog ( Ceolas Quick Takes), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Mairead Ni Dhomhnaill, Michael Ni Dhomhnaill, Triona Ni Dhomhnaill, Daithi Sproule)
Skarotum [Active: 19??-] [city?, NY]
(Chris Merenda, Michael J. Merenda)
Skerryvore - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Author ?) [Active: 2004-] [Isle of Tiree, Scotland / Glasgow, Scotland]
(Jodie Bremaneson, Colin Cunningham, Alec Norman Dalglish, Craig Espie, Daniel Anthony Gillespie, Martin Gillespie, Alan Scobie, Fraser West) - (former member: Barry Caulfield)
Skinner, J. Scott - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Skinner, Jimmy - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Blue Lick, OH]
Skovenski Orchestra, Ray - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Avonmore, PA]
Sky, Bill & Laurie - "Arkansas"
Sky, Bill - "Arkansas"
Sky, Laurie - "Arkansas"
Sky, Lee Penn - (see: Lee Penchansky)
Sky, Patrick (guitar, banjo, harmonica, Uielleann pipes, mouth-bow) - Page ( Vanguard Records) ( VH1), Biography ( The Folk File), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Live Oak Gardens, GA / city?, LA / New York, NY]
Skyedance - Page ( Culburnie Records), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Alasdair Fraser, Mick Linden, Paul Machlis, Peter Maund, Chris Norman, Eric Rigler)
Skylark - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Len Graham, (Garry O Briain, Gerry O'Connor, Mairtin O'Connor)
Skylark, Shawn (piano) [city?, CA]
Skyline - "BG/OT"
Slaughter, Shannon - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Slaven, Neil (author, guitar) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Surrey, U.K.]
Sleeth, Natalie (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( The Lorenz Corporation), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Evanston, IL / Denver, CO]
Sliabh Notes [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Slick, Eric (drums) - Page ( Author ?) - (member: The Adrian Belew Power Trio) [Philadelphia, PA]
Slick, Julie (bass) - (member: The Adrian Belew Power Trio) [Philadelphia, PA]
Slide - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?, Ireland]
Slim Harpo - "Blues"
Slo-Grass - "BG/OT"
Sloan, Bobby - (member: The Kentucky Colonels) [city?]
Sloan, Lars - (member: Jiggernaut) [city?]
Slone, Bobby - (former member: The New South) [city?]
Slonimsky, Nicolas author, piano, composer, conductor) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Electra Slonimsky Yourke), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (joined ASCAP 1952) [Saint Petersburg, Russia / Los Angeles, CA]
Slotoroff, Cyd [city?]
Slovak, Margaret - Page ( Author ?) ( CD Baby) [city?, OR]
Sluys, Nancy [city?]
Sly and the Family Stone - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1967-1983] [San Francisco, CA]
( , ?)
Smaak, Bert (?) - (former member: Acoustic Alchemy) [London, U.K.]
Small Potatoes - Page ( Author ?) ( Wind River Records) ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) [Active: 1992-] [Chicago, IL]
(Jacquie Manning, Rich Prezioso)
Small, Fred - Page ( Andy Burnett's Music Database), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Small, Judy - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Small, Len (bass, vocals) - (member: Wagon) [St. Louis, MO]
Smart, Norman D. (drums, vocals) - Discog ( All Music Guide) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY]
Smelser, Neal - Obit ( FuneralNet), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smentek, Susan - Discog Coll. ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smetana, Bedrich (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Litomysl, Bohemia / Prague, Bohemia]
Smeyak, Larry - (former member: Stone Soup) [city?, IN]
Smit, Martin (guitar, piano, vocals) - (member: Killiecrankie) [city?, Ontario, Canada]
Smith Sisters, The - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Debi Smith, Megan Smith)
Smith, Alfred Morton (composer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, Andrew (?) [Kelowna, British Columbia, Canada]
Smith, Fiddlin' Arthur - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Humphrey's County, TN]
Smith, Arthur "Guitar Boogie" (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Clinton, SC]
Smith, Arthur Q. (vocals) [Grissom, GA / Harlan, KY]
Smith, Bessie - "Blues"
Smith, Betty - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, Billy [city?]
Smith, Bobby - (member: The Boys from Shiloh) [city?]
Smith, Brad - Discog Coll. ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, Brian - "Guitar"
Smith, Cal (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Gans, OK]
Smith, Carl (guitar, bass, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Maynardsville, TN]
Smith, Chris #1 (guitar) - (member: Altramar) [Bloomington, IN]
Smith, Chris #2 (author) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K. -1986, city, Scotland 1986-]
Smith, Claire "Fluff" (?) - (member: The Incredible String Band) [city?, Scotland]
Smith, Clara - "Blues"
Smith, Connie (guitar, piano, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Elkhart, IN]
Smith, Craig (banjo) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Wild Hickory Nuts) [Los Angeles, CA]
Smith, Craig A. (banjo, guitar) - (former member: Summer Wages) [Greensboro, NC]
Smith, Darden
Smith, Dallas - "BG/OT"
Smith, Deanna - "Wis."
Smith, Debi - Page ( Author ?) ( Noteworthy Productions [Archive]), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Four Bitchin' Babes, The Smith Sisters) [city?]
Smith, Derek - (see: Amazing Mr. Smith)
Smith, Dick (banjo) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Del McCoury Band) [city?]
Smith, Dick (percussion) [city?]
Smith, Doug - "Guitar"
Smith, Doug B. - "Guitar"
Smith, Drew (autoharp., vocals) - Page ( Walnut Valley Festival, Winfield, KS), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY / Ho-Ho-Kus, NJ]
Smith, Elizabeth - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, Fred #1 (bass, vocals) - (member: Acoustic Outlet) [Washington, DC]
Smith, Fred #2 (bass, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Blondie, Television 1975-) [New York, NY]
Smith, Funny Papa - "Blues"
Smith, Gregg (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Chicago, IL]
Smith, Harry E. (ethnographer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Portland, OR / New York, NY]
Smith, Hobart - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, Jabbo - "Wis."
Smith, James and Dan McGee - Page ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Smith, Jerry Read - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, JoAnn (autoharp.) - Page ( Author ?) ( YouTube Channel) ( CD Baby) [Bartlesville, OK]
Smith, Joe - "BG/OT"
Smith, John (aka Johnsmith) - "Wis."
Smith, Julia (author, piano, composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (joined ASCAP 1945) [Denton, TX / New York, NY]
Smith, Karen (strings) [city?]
Smith, Keely (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Norfolk, VA / Palm Springs, CA]
Smith, "Big" Ken - Page ( Bobby Smith) - (member: Savoy-Smith Cajun Band) - (former member: The Boys from Shiloh) [city?]
Smith, Kenny - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, Kevin (?) - (former member: Asylum Street Spankers) [Austin, TX]
Smith, Leonard - "Arkansas"
Smith, Leslie - Page ( Harmony Ridge Music) ( Waterbug Records) [city?]
Smith, Lynn "Chirps" (fiddle, mandolin) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Volo Bogtrotters) - (former member: Indian Creek Delta Boys) [Pekin, IL]
Smith, Mamie - "Blues"
Smith, Marcus - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, Megan - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Smith Sisters) [city?]
Smith, Michael P. - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Weavermania, Fourtold) [South Orange, NJ / Chicago, IL 1976-]
Smith, Michael and Barbara Barrow - Page ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Smith, Michael (discographer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?, U.K.]
Smith, Michael W. (piano, keyboards, guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) [city?] Michael Whitaker Smith 10-07-1957 Kenova, WV / Nashville, TN
Smith, Nigel Portman - (see: Nigel Portman-Smith)
Smith, O.C. - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smith, Putnam (mandolin, banjo, guitar, vocals) - Page ( Author ?) [city?, ME]
Smith, Ralph Lee (mountain dulcimer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY / Washing, DC]
Smith, Richard D. (author) - Page ( LinkedIn), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Rocky Hill, NJ]
Smith, Robin - (member: Lonesome Standard Time) [city?]
Smith, Ronald (banjo, mandolin) - (member: The Lost and Found) (former member: The Bluegrass Gospel Five, New Classic Grass 1996-1998, [city?]
Smith, Russell (guitar, vocals) - (member: Amazing Rhythm Aces) [Memphis, TN]
Smith, Sammi (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Orange, CA]
Smith, Steven Gerard - "Wis."
Smith, Snuffy (Joe) (banjo, luthier) - Obit ( Bluegrass Today) ( Find A Grave), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Zeke Saunders and the Blades of Grass, Wood & Steel) [Fayetteville, AR / Littleton, CO / Springdale, NC / King, NC 199?-]
Not James T. "Snuffy" Smith, Madison, WI
Smith, Terry - (member: The Osborne Brothers Band) [city?]
Smith, Tim (fiddle) - Page ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Havre de Grace, MD 1955-1968 / Sparta, NC 1968- / Kernersville, NC ]
Smith, Tim (author) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Washington, DC]
Smith, Trixie - "Blues"
Smith, Valerie - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Bell Buckle, TN]
Smith, Valerie and Liberty Pike - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Bell Buckle, TN]
(Valerie Smith, Becky Buller, Randall Conn, Daniel Hardin, John Miller) - (former members: Travis Alltop, Richard Bailey, Andy Leftwich, Eddie Miller, Shelia Wingate)
Smith, Warren - "Wis."
Smith, Willie "Big Eyes" (drums) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Helena, AR]
Smith, Winifred (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Paducah, KY]
Smither, Chris - "Blues"
Smits, Raphaella - "Guitar"
Smoak, Jim (banjo) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Round O, SC]
Smock, Rick (guitar, vocals) - (member: The Fret Set) [Greencastle, IN]
Smokey River Boys - Page ( Robert Metzgar) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Robert Metzgar, ?)
Smollon, Jamie [city?]
Smothers Brothers, The - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Smothers, Abe "Little Smokey" - "Blues"
Smothers, Dick - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Smothers, Otis "Big Smokey" - "Blues"
Smothers, Tom - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Snake, Stan (Native American courting flute) [Ponca] - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sneed, Doak (?) - Info [Kerrville New Folk Finalist 1977] [Austin, TX]
Sneed, Floyd - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Three Dog Night) [city?]
Sneed, Roy - (member: The Carlisles) [city?]
Sneed, Tony (bass) - (member: Two Mule Plow ) [Memphis, TN]
Snider, Bob - Page ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) [city?]
Snider, Jill - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Snider, Mike - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Snider, Todd (guitar, harmonica, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Portland, OR / Houston, TX / Portland, OR / Santa Rosa, CA / Austin, TX / Memphis, TN 1985?- / Nashville, TN]
Snoball Butler - (see: Bruce Butler)
Snow, Cecil - "Arkansas"
Snow, Hank - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Snow, John Kilby (autoharp., guitar, banjo, vocals) - Page ( Autoharp Hall of Fame 1992 Posthumous) ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Independence, Grayson County, VA / city?, NC 1908- / Nottingham, PA]
Snow, Phoebe - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY / Edison, NJ]
Snowden, Calvin (guitar) - (member: Unity) [New Orleans, LA]
Snyder, John (jazz record producer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY]
Snyder, Ted (composer, lyricist, music publisher) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Freeport, IL / Woodland Hills, CA]
Snyder, Terry (?) [city?]
Sobol, Joseph Daniel [city?]
Sobule, Jill [city?]
Sobylae, Emil (Native American courting flute) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Social Harp [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sodabread [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Lisa Moscatiello, ?)
Soggy Bottom Boys [Active: 2000] [nowhere]
(Dan Tyminski, Harley Allen, Pat Enright)
[This band does not really exist. In the Coen Brothers' 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, George Clooney, John Turturro and Tim Blake Nelson lip-synced the specifically recorded for the movie songs by Dan, Harley and Pat, who are longtime professional Bluegrass musicians. Click on each name for links to information about each real member of this 2001 Grammy award winning "Album of the Year" movie soundtrack ficticious bluegrass band.]
Sojourn - Page (band name changed to Grey Eye Glances) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sol y Sombra Spanish Dance Company [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Solas - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Seamus Egan, Winifred Horan, John Williams, John Doyle, Karan Casey)
Soli, Michael - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Solia, Janice (vocals) - Discog ( All Music Guide) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY]
Solo, Liz (vocals) [city?, Canada]
Solomon, Barry [city?]
Solomon, Micah (vocals) - Page ( Micah Solomon) [Founder/President: Oasis CD Manufacturing] [city?]
Solomon, Vernon (fiddle) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?, TX]
Somebody's Sister (Ken Selcer & Jill Stein) - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Somers, Martin (bass, guitar) - (member: The Resonators) [city?, VA]
Somervell, Arthur (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Windermere, Westmorland, U.K.]
Sommers, J. Dustin - "Blues"
Sommers, Jimmy - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Son Volt - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - Previous band name: Uncle Tupelo [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Jay Farrar, Mike Heidorn, Dave Boquist)
Sondheim, Stephen (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY]
Sones de Mexico Ensemble - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 1994-] [Chicago, IL]
(Juan Dies, Lorena Iniguez, Victor Pichardo, Zacbe Pichardo, Juan Rivera, Javier Saume-Mazzei)
Song Swappers, The [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Erik Darling, Pete Seeger ?)
Song, Jeff - "Arkansas"
SONiA of disappear fear - (see: Sonia Rutstein)
Soniadada - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sonichrome [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sonny & Cher - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1964-1977] [city?]
(Sonny Bono, Cher)
Sons of the Never Wrong - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Waterbug Records) ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1990-] [Chicago, IL]
(Sue Demel 1990-, Deborah Lader 1998-, Bruce Roper 1990-) - (former member: Nancy Walker 1990-1998)
Sons of the Mountaineers (aka Crazy Mountaineers, Mainer's Mountaineers) [Active: 1923-] [Concord, NC]
(J.E. Mainer, Wade Mainer, Snuffy Jenkins, Howard Lay, Lester Lay, John Love, George Morris, Zeke Morris, Leonard Stokes)
Sons of the Pioneers - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (originally called The Pioneer Trio) [Active: 1934-] [Los Angeles, CA]
(Roy Rogers, Hugh Farr, Karl Farr, Lloyd Perryman, Bob Nolan, Tim Spencer,
Sons of the San Joaquin [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sor, Jose Fernando Marcario - "Guitar"
Sorbye, Lief & Michael Mullen [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sorcha [Active: 19??-] [Portland, ME]
Sorrels, Anita (fiddle) (aka Anita Sorrells Wheeler Mathis, Mrs. Anita Wheeler, Mrs. Anita Mathis) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [m. 1923 J.P. Wheeler d. 1933 / m. 1937 Bob Mathis d. 1974] [inducted 1982 Atlanta Country Music Hall of Fame] [Cobb County, near Lost Mountain, GA / Atlanta, GA / Snellville, GA]
Sorrels, Rosalie (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( her home page as of 2014, R.I.P. [Archive]), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Boise, ID / Salt Lake City, UT / Boise, ID]
Sorrels, Rosalie w/Garthwaite & Hawkins [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sortor, Michael "Spider Mike Bag" (fiddle, electric guitar, vocals) - (member: The Bagboys) [Fresno, CA / Cambridge, MA]
Soul Tractor - "BG/OT"
Sourdough Slim [city?]
Sousa, John Philip (composer, band leader) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Washington, DC / Reading, PA]
South Side Swedes - Page ( Larry Zbikowski) [Active: 19??-] [Chicago, IL]
(Mary Alsopp, John Berquist, Larry Zbikowski)
South, Joe (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Atlanta, GA]
Southall, Brian #1 (guitar, drums, keyboards, vocals, producer, band manager) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Detroit, MI]
[per Wikipedia, aged 35 as of 2017]
Southall, Brian #2 (author) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
[From the Introduction to his book: "Many people of a certain age - in my case over 50..." -- as of 2000]
[Billboard 5-29-2010: "former EMI U.K. head of press Brian Southall", I think this refers to #2, because of the biography found at: - Little Brown Book Group: "Biographical Notes: Brian Southall began writing about music in the 1960s on a local newspaper before graduating to the likes of Melody Maker and Disc. From there he pursued a 30-year career in the record business with A&M, Tamla Motown, EMI (where he was Head of Press and dealt with the Beatles' solo projects) and Warner Music. His first book - the official history of Abbey Road Studios - was published in 1982 and he also wrote Northern Songs - the story of the Beatles' music publishing empire, Beatles Memorabilia: The Julian Lennon Collection; Jimi Hendrix: Made In England, The Rise and Fall of EMI Records, Sex Pistols: 90 Days at EMI and more." -- unfortunately, no info about when/where he was born or where in the world he has lived, or whether or not he is a musician in addition to being an author about musical subjects.]
Southards, Wayne - (former member: Tennessee Gentlemen) [Memphis, TN / Salem, MO]
Souther, J.D. - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Souther, Hillman, Furay Band, The - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(J.D. Souther, Chris Hillman, Richie Furay)
Souther, Richard (keyboards) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Southern Rail - "BG/OT"
Southern, Eileen - Page ( Jazz Journalists Association), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Minneapolis, MN / Port Charlotte, FL]
Southern Scratch [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Soviettes, The - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Crustacean Records) [Active: 19??-] [Minneapolis, MN]
Sovine, Red (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Charleston, WV / Nashville, TN]
Sowell, Ron (harmonica) [Charleston, WV]
Sowerby, Leo (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Grand Rapids, MI / Port Clinton, OH]
Spain Brothers, The - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Manchester, NH]
(Liam Spain, Mickey Spain)
Spann, Otis - "Blues"
Sparacino, Phil (vocals) [city?]
Sparkman, Steve (banjo) - Page ( Author ?) - (member: Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys) [Harlan, KY / Lexington, KY]
Sparks - Page ( Martin Truksa) [Active: 1970-] [Los Angeles, CA]
The band was originally called Urban Renewal Project, which changed to Halfnelson in 1969, and Sparks in 1970.
(Ronald Mael, Russell Mael)
Sparks, Amber [St. Paul, MN]
Sparks, Larry - "BG/OT"
Sparks, Randy - (member: The New Christy Minstrels) [city?]
Sparks, Scottie (guitar) - (member: The Lost and Found) [city?]
Sparks, Tim - "Guitar"
top / bottom of page
Spears, Billie Jo (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Beaumont, TX / Vidor, TX]
Spears, Willis (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Special Consensus, The - "BG/OT"
Speck, Scott (author) - Page ( Scott Speck) ( Conductor, West Michigan Symphony [Wikipedia]) ( West Michigan Symphony), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Boston, MA]
Specker, Dee (fiddle, vocals) - Page ( Chris Stuart [Archive]), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Cornerstone) [Ithaca, NY]
Speed, Sonny (vocals) [city?]
Speer, Christopher (guitars) - (member: Kintra) [Donegal, Ireland]
Spektral Quartet - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Author ?), Group Photos ( as of 05-29-2014) ( as of 05-28-2015-), Group Bios ( as of 12-31-2012 [Archive]) [Active: 2010-] [Chicago, IL]
(Doyle Armbrust 2010-, Maeve Espy Feinberg 2015-, Clara Lyon 2014-, Russell Rolen 2010-) Master's from the University of Wisconsin-Madison - (former members: Aurelien Fort Pederzoli 2010-2014, J. Austin Wulliman 2010-2015 )
Spence, Joseph - "Blues"
Spence, Joseph & The Pinder Family - "Blues"
Spencer Blues Explosion, Jon - Page ( MTV), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [all descriptions I have seen say this is a Washington, DC (or New York City?) based Rock and Roll band, and not a Blues band] [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Jon Spencer, Judah Bauer, Russell Simins)
Spencer, Donnell [city?]
Spencer, Hilary - Page ( Hilary Spencer) - (member: Artisan) [city?]
Spencer, Isaiah (drums, percussion) - (member: New Horizons Ensemble) [Chicago, IL]
Spencer, Lena - Page ( IMDb), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Milford, MA / Saratoga Springs, NY]
Owner 5/1960-1989: ( Caffe Lena / Wikipedia) - Articles ( 50th Anniversary in 2010) ( New York Times, by Ben Sisario 10-23-2013)
Spencer, Mark (guitar) - (member: Blood Oranges) [Boston, MA]
Spencer, Peter - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Spencer, Tim ()vocals - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Sons of the Pioneers 1934-1936,1942-1945) [Webb City, MO]
Sperrazza, Vinnie - Page ( Author ?) - (member: James Williams Jazz Quintet) [city?]
Spicher, Buddy (fiddle) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Del McCoury Band) [city?]
Spirit of the West - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Spiro, Michael (tambourine, percussion) [city?]
Spittal, Mark [city?]
Spivak, Charlie (trumpet, band leader) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kiev, Ukraine / New Haven, CT / Miami, FL / Greenville, SC]
Spivey, Victoria - "Blues"
Spodee-o's, The - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Portland, OR]
(Paul Bassett, Aaron Koch, Arlo Leach, Larry Oxley)
Spoelstra, Mark - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Spook Handy [Active: 19??-] [city?, NJ]
(Ariana Gillis, David Gillis)
see also the individual musician called Spook Handy
Spotted Eagle, Douglas - (see: Douglas Wallentine)
Spottswood, Richard K. (discographer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?, MD / Silver Spring, MD / Naples, FL]
Sprawl, Paul - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Spray, Delbert E. (fiddle) - Memorial ( TSBA), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kahoka, MO]
(co-founder: Tri-State Bluegrass Association)
Spray, Erma F. - Memorial ( TSBA), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kahoka, MO]
(co-founder: Tri-State Bluegrass Association)
Springer, Colleen [aka Eliza Springwater] [city?]
Springfield, Dusty (vocals) - Page ( Michael Bayly) ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K.]
Springfield, Rick (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Merrylands, New South Wales, Australia]
Springfield, Tom - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K.]
Springfields, The - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1960-1963] [London, U.K.]
(Dusty Springfield, Tom Springfield, Tim Field)
Springsteen, Bruce (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Long Branch, NJ]
Sproule, Daithi (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Skara Brae, Trian, Altan) - (former member: Boxty) [Derry, Northern Ireland / Minneapolis, MN / MA]
Sprung, Roger (banjo, piano, guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Folksay Trio, The Shantyboys) [New York, NY]
Squeeze Bayou [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Squire, Chris (bass, guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Yes) [Kingsbury, London, U.K. / Phoenix, AZ]
Squires, Craig - (member: The Black Auks) [city?, Newfoundland, Canada]
Squitero, Roger (percussion) - Discog Coll. ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sredzienski, Gary [city?]
Staber, Dick (mandolin, vocals) - (member: The Del McCoury Band) [city?]
Stackhouse, Houston - "Blues"
Stacy, Steve - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Stader, Andrea - Page ( Author ?) [Carbondale, IL]
Stadhouders, Bram (guitar) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Tilburg, Netherlands]
Stafford, Chris (accordion, fiddle, vocals) - (member: Feufollet) [Lafayette, LA]
Stafford, Jim - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Coalinga, CA / Century City, CA]
Stafford, Jo - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
(aka Darlene Edwards, of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards, m. Paul Weston)
Stafford, Kristi [city?]
Stafford, Michael (drums) - (member: Feufollet) [Lafayette, LA]
Stafford, Tim (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stahl, Jeanie - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Mason Daring & Jeanie Stahl)
Stainback, Jean (vocals) [city?]
Stainer, Sir John (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [London, U.K. / Verona, Italy]
Staines, Bill
Staley, Susan Denton - (member: Aluminum Singers) [city?, IN]
Stallings, Fran (autoharp.) [Bartlesville, OK]
Stalspets, Simon (?) - (member: Stockholm Lisboa Project) [Stockholm, Sweden]
Stamm Quartet, Marvin [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Stamm, Marvin (flugelhorn, trumpet) [city?]
Stamper, Art - Page ( CMT) ( Author ?), Interview ( Bluegrass Works), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stampfel & Weber - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Peter Stampfel, Steve Weber)
Stampfel, Peter - "Wis."
Stampfel, Peter & the Bottlecaps - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1986-2004] [city?]
(Peter Stampfel, ?)
Stampley, Joe (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Springhill, LA]
Standefer, John - "Guitar"
Standing Stones, The (CA) - "Harp"
Standing Stones, The (WI) - "Wis."
Staneslow, Sunita - "Harp"
Stanfield, Jana - Page ( songs.com) [city?]
Stanford, Sir Charles Villiers (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Dublin, Ireland]
Stang, Jean (bass guitar, clarinet, concertina) - (member: DyVersaCo Polka Variety Band) [Andover. MN]
Staninec, Annie (fiddle, vocals) - Page ( Author ?) - (member: The Kathy Kallick Band) [San Francisco, CA]
Staniec, Chris (drums) - (member: DyVersaCo Polka Variety Band) [Andover. MN]
Stanley Brothers, The - "BG/OT"
Stanley, Carter - "BG/OT"
Stanley, James Lee (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Beachwood Recordings), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Philadelphia, PA]
Stanley, Jeannie (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stanley, Nathan (mandolin, banjo, spoons) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys) [city?]
Stanley, Ralph - "BG/OT"
Stanley, Ralph II (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Author ? / Alternate), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys) [Coeburn, VA / Nora, VA / Coeburn, VA]
top / bottom of page
Staple Singers, The - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Pop Staples, ?)
Staples, Pop - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Staple Singers) [city?]
Stapp, Jack (?) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Find A Grave), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Nashville, TN / Atlanta, 1923- / New York, NY / Nashville, TN 1939-1980]
Star Spangled Washboard Band - "BG/OT"
Star, Orrin - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Starboard List, The - Page ( Adelphi Records) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Charles O'Hegarty, Peter Marston, David Jones)
Starcher, Buddy (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Ripley, WV / Harrisonburg, VA]
Stargardt, Steve - (member: JumpBoys) [Cincinnati, OH / Bellaire, MI / Charlevoix, MI]
Stark Raven [Active: 19??-] [city?]
stark raving chandler - Page ( songs.com) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Stark, Amanda - Page ( songs.com) - (see also: stark raving chandler) [city?]
Stark, R.B. - "Arkansas"
Starkey, Neil (acoustic bass) [city?]
Starland Vocal Band - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1976-1981] [Washington, DC]
(Bill Danoff, Taffy Danoff (Taffy Nivert), Jon Carroll, Margot Chapman)
Starling, John - "BG/OT"
Starr, Kay (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Dougherty, OK / Beverly Hills, CA]
Starr, Ringo - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Beatles) [Liverpool, U.K.]
Stationary Willberries, The - Page ( Alan Hess) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Pete Gardner, Alan Hess, Al Lawrence, Mike Williams)
Statler Brothers - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
previous band names: Four Star Quartet (1948-1955), Kingsmen (1955-1963), Lester "Roadhog" Moran & the Cadillac Cowboys (1973), aka The Statlers
(Philip Balsley, Jimmy Fortune, Don S. Reid, Harold Reid) - (former member: Lew DeWitt)
Statman, Andy - "BG/OT"
Stattelman, David (?) - (member: Altramar) [?, IA / Bloomington, IN]
Staudle, Tom (guitar, harmonica, ukelele, banjo, vocals) - Page ( http://www.myspace.com/tomstaudle) - (member: Cosby Gibson & Tom Staudle) [Fultonville, NY]
Stay All Night [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Stead, Arthur [city?]
Steagall, Red (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Gainesville, TX]
Stecher, Janet - (see: Belles of Hoboken & Janet Stecher) [city?]
Stecher, Jody - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stecher, Jody & Kate Brislin [city?]
Steele, Bruce - Page ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) [city?]
Steele, Carol (drums) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Steeleye Span - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Concerted Efforts), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Martin Carthy, (Tim Hart, Ashley Hutchings, Robert Johnson (2), Rick Kemp, Peter Knight, Nigel Pegrum, Maddy Prior)
Steely Dan [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Warren Bernhardt [the only member from Wisconsin I know about])
Stefanini, Rafe [city?]
Steffenson, Kristina - "Harp"
Stegall, Keith (acoustic guitar, keyboards, banjo, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Wichita Falls, TX]
Stein, Bob (accordion, piano, doumbek) - (member: A Band Named Bob) [Philadelphia, PA]
Stein, Dan (keyboards) [city?]
Steinberg, Michael (author) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Breslau, Germany (in 1928, Wroclaw, Poland now) / city?, U.K. 1939-1943 / St. Louis, MO 1943- / Boston, MA / Minneapolis, MN]
Steiner, Fred (composer, piano, cello) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (Daughter: Wendy Waldman) [New York, NY 1923-1947 / Los Angeles, CA 1947- / Mexico City, Mexico 1959-1960 / Los Angeles, CA 1960-19?? / Ajijic, Jalisco, Mexico 19??-2011]
Steinhart, David - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Stelling, Geoff - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stemple, Adam (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) - (former member: Boiled in Lead) [Minneapolis, MN]
Stenberg, Amy (acoustic bass, vocals) - (former member: The Kathy Kallick Band, Heartland) [San Francisco, CA]
Stenshoel, Dave (fiddle) - (member: Boiled in Lead) [Minneapolis, MN]
Stepansky, Joseph (violin) - (former member: Fine Arts Quartet 1946-1954) [Chicago, IL]
Stephanson, Jim (guitar, vocals) - (member: The Blue Rhythm Boys) [Washington, DC]
Stephens, John L. "Uncle Bunt" [city?]
Stephens, James (fiddle, mandolin) - (member: Finest Kind) [Ottawa, Ontario, Canada]
Stephenson Band, The Larry - "BG/OT"
Stepp, William H. [city?]
Steptoe, Jim (banjo, vocals) - Page ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Mountain Grass, Patent Pending) [Charlottesville, VA / Alexandria, VA / Martinsburg, VA]
Stern, Arthur (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Almanac Singers) [New York, NY]
Stern, Isaac - Obit ( CNN), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stevens, Beth & April - "BG/OT"
Stevens, Cat (guitar, piano, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( John Gibbons [Archive]), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Marylebone, London, U.K. / London, U.K.]
(aka Steve Adams, Yusef Islam 1978-)
Stevens, Corey - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Stevens, Dean [city?]
Stevens, Denis (author, violin, viola, musicologist, conductor) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, U.K. / London, U.K.]
Stevens, Edward Gale (composer, author, trumpet) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (joined ASCAP 1968) [Chesaning, MI / Bonita, CA]
Stevens, John (vocals) - Discog ( Local Folkel Records) [city?, NY]
Stevens, Michael - (member: Austin Lounge Lizards) [city?]
Stevens, Padraig (drums) - (member: Saw Doctors) [city?, Ireland]
Stevens, Phil - "Wis."
Stevens, Ray (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Clarkdale, GA]
Stevenson, firstname? "Pooh" (cello) [city?]
Stewart, Al - Page ( Charlie Hulme) ( Kim Dyer) [city?]
Stewart, Andy (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (member: Silly Wizard) [Glasgow, Scotland / Arbroath, Scotland]
Stewart, Andy M. (banjo, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Alyth, Perthshire, Scotland]
Stewart, Andy M. w/Gerry O'Beirne [city?, Scotland]
Stewart, Belle (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Caputh, near Blairgowrie, Scotland]
Stewart, Gary (piano, guitar, bass, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Jenkins, KY / Fort Pierce, FL]
Stewart, Jared - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Shadowfax) [Chicago, IL]
Stewart, John - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Michelle Stevens [Archive]) ( songs.com [Archive]), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Cumberland Three, The Kingston Trio) [city?]
Stewart, Lucy (vocals) [city?, Scotland]
Stewart, Mike - (member: We Five) [city?]
Stewart, Redd (banjo, piano, fiddle, guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Ashland City, TN / Louisville, KY]
Stewart, Rod - Page ( Wikipedia), Pictures ( Deering Banjos), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Highgate, London, U.K.]
Stewart, Wynn (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Morrisville, MO]
Stidham, Arbee - "Arkansas"
Stifel, Chris (guitar, vocals) - (member: Acoustic Outlet) [Washington, DC]
Stiles, Ivan (autoharp., musical saw, spoons) [Phoenixville, PA]
Still, William Grant - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Woodville, MS / Los Angeles, CA]
Stillhouse - Page ( Peatcart Studios) [Omaha, NE]
(David Dati [WI], Tom Riley [IA]) - (former member: Tim Houlihan)
Stillman, Rich (Richard) (banjo, vocals) - (member: Southern Rail 2004-) [city?]
Stills, Stephen - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Au Go Go Singers, Buffalo Springfield, Crosby, Stills & Nash, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young) [city?]
Sting - Discog Coll. ( FolkLib Index), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stinson, G.E. - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Shadowfax) [Chicago, IL]
Stirratt, John - (member: Wilco) [city?]
Stivell, Alan - "Harp"
Stix, David - (former member: Rockapella) [city?, NY]
Stober, Carol (autoharp., guitar, vocals) - Page ( CD Baby) ( Marc Gunn) [Chicago, IL 1980-1983 / Talledega, AL 1983-]
Stocai - Page ( Harbourtown Records) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Kevin Adams, Martin Hazell, Dave Jolly, Sheena Masson, Heather Vigar-Horsley, Chris Walshaw)
Stock, Bill (Dobro) [city?]
Stockham, Maria Mimick (violin) - (member: Prague '24) [Minneapolis, MN]
Stockton's Wing [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Stockholm Lisboa Project (Active: 19??-) - Page ( Author ?) [Stockholm, Sweden]
(Sergio Crisostomo, Liana Peixoto, Luis Peixoto, Simon Stalspets)
Stoger, Bob (bass, vocals) - (member: The NEW Legends of Blues All Stars) [city?]
Stokes, David - "Wis."
Stokes, Frank - "Blues"
Stokes, Leonard (?) - (member: Sons of the Mountaineers) [city?]
Stokes, Simon (vocals) - Page ( Internet Movie Database) [Reading, MA / Los Angeles, CA]
Stolie, firstname? - Page ( George Woodbury) [Chicago, IL]
Stone Poneys, The - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (see also: Linda Ronstadt & the Stone Poneys) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Stone River Boys, The - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Austin, TX]
(Mike Barfield, Scott Esbeck, Dave Gonzalez, Gary Newcomb, Mark Patterson)
Stone Soup #2 (Folk) [Active: 19??-] [city?, IN]
(Dennis Leas, Carrie Newcomer, Larry Smeyak)
Stone Soup #1 (Bluegrass) - "Wis."
Stone, Billy - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stone, Calvin [city?]
Stone, Cliffie (bass, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Stockton, CA / Saugus, CA]
Stone, Doug (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Marietta, GA / Nashville, TN]
Stone, Ken (fiddle, vocals) - (member: Peter Nye & the Chicago Bluegrass Band) [Chicago, IL]
Stonecross - Page ( Author ? [Archive]) [Active: 19??-] [Freeland, MI]
(Susan O'Rourke, Ziggie Zeitler)
Stoneking, Fred (fiddle, guitar, banjo) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Johnson County, MO / Clinton, MO / city?, CA / Laramie, WY / city?, AZ / Clinton, MO / Springfield, MO]
Stoneking, Lee Roy (fiddle, banjo) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Henry County, MO / Laramie, WY / city?, MO]
Stoneman Family, The (aka The Stonemans) - ( CD Baby), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index), List of the entire family (FolkLib Index) [Active: 1956-] [Washington, DC]
(Pop Stoneman, Dean Stoneman, Donna Stoneman, Gene Stoneman, Jim Stoneman, Roni Stoneman, Scotty Stoneman, Van Stoneman,
Stoneman, Billy (banjo) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Stoneman Family) [Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Dean (mandolin) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Stoneman Family) [Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Donna (mandolin, guitar, fiddle, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Blue Grass Champs) [Alexandria, VA / Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Eddie (guitar, fiddle, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Carroll, VA / Jonesville, VA]
Stoneman, Ernest "Pop" (guitar, autoharp., harmonica, clawhammer banjo, jaw harp) - Page ( Autoharp Hall of Fame 1994 Posthumous) Country Music Hall of Fame 2008 ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Monorat, Carroll County, VA]
Stoneman, Gene (guitar) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Stoneman Family) [Washington, DC]
Stoneman, George (banjo, guitar, vocals) [city?]
Stoneman, Grace (vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Stoneman Family) [Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Hattie Frost (banjo, fiddle, vocals) - Page ( Find A Grave), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Pipers Gap, VA / Nashville, TN]
Stoneman, Jack (guitar) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: The Stoneman Family) [Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Jim (Jimmy) (bass) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Blue Grass Champs) [Washington, DC]
Stoneman, John (autoharp., vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Jonesville, VA]
Stoneman, Patsy (Pattie, Patti) (autoharp., guitar, maracas, tambourine, jaw harp, clawhammer banjo) - Page ( Autoharp Hall of Fame 1999 Contemporary), Obit ( Find A Grave), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Galax, VA / Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Peggy (Dobro, steel guitar) - (member: Blue Grass Champs) [Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Roni (banjo, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( CD Baby), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Scotty (autoharp., fiddle, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Blue Grass Champs, The Kentucky Colonels) [Galax, VA / Washington, DC]
Stoneman, Van Haden (guitar, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Nashville, TN]
Stoneman, Willie (?) [city?]
top / bottom of page
Stoner, Bill (?) - (member: Plum Nelly) [city?]
Stoney Lonesome Bluegrass Band - "BG/OT"
Stoney Lonesome Blues Band - "Blues"
Stookey, Paul - Discog ( Jane Keefer), Page ( anonymous) , Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: Peter, Paul & Mary) [Baltimore, MD]
Storey, Christine - (member: Celtic Offspring) [city?]
Storey, Dwayne (guitar, vocals) [Bloemfontein, Free State Province, South Africa]
Story, Carl - "BG/OT"
Story, Dwain [city?]
Story, Liz (keyboards) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Story, The - Page ( David Rager), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1990-] [Amherst, MA / Boston, MA]
(Jennifer Kimball, Jonatha Brooke)
Story, Tim (keyboards) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Storyhill (was: Chris & Johnny) - Page ( Author ?) ( Scott Comstock [Archive]), Postal Mailing List: Story Hills Records, 606 13th Ave. SE, Minneapolis, MN 55414, (612) 623-4155, info (800) 633-7020 [Active: 19??-] [Minneapolis, MN]
(Chris Cunningham, Johnny Hermanson)
Stosh & His Polkatones [city?]
Stotzem, Jacques - "Guitar"
Stout, Chris (fiddle, viola) - Page ( Wikipedia) - (former member: Salsa Celtica) [Edinburgh, Scotland]
Stout, Gordon - Page ( Ithaca College) ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Ithaca, NY]
Stover, Don - "BG/OT"
Stover, Evan - (member: Fiddle Fever) [city?]
Stoyles, Art - (member: Bant) [city?, Newfoundland, Canada]
Strachwitz, Chris (author, founder Arhoolie records) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Gross Reichenau, Lower Silesia, Germany Reno, NV 1947- / Santa Barbara, CA / Edmonds, WA]
Stracke, Win - Discog ( Jane Keefer), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Strait, George (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Poteet, TX]
Straitjackets, Los [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Stramp, Barry (courting flute) - (member: Coyote Oldman) [city?]
StrangeCloud - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Jeff Anderson, Fred Wheeler) - (former members: Tom McDonal, John Rosteck)
Strange, Billy - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Strauss, Richard (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Munich, Germany]
Stravinsky, Igor (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), Russia]
Strawbs, The [city?]
Street, Mel (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Grundy, VA]
Street, Mike - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Street, Patrick [this is a band, not a person] - (see: Patrick Street)
Strehli, Angela (harmonica, bass, guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Lubbock, TX]
Streisand, Barbra - Page ( Wikipedia), Films ( Internet Movie Database IMDB, Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Brooklyn, NY]
Strength in Numbers - "BG/OT"
Stribling, Mary (?) - (member: The Mother Folkers) [Denver, CO]
Stringband - Page ( Wikipedia) [Active: 1971-] [Toronto, Ontario, Canada]
(Bob Bossin and Marie-Lynn Hammond with Nabcy Ahearn, Calvin Cairns, Terry King, Jerry Lewycky, Zeke Mazurek, Ben Mink, Dennis Nichol)
Stringbean (David Akeman) (clawhammer banjo) - Discog ( Jane Keefer), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (former member: The Blue Grass Boys 1942-1945) [Nashville, TN]
Strings & Things [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Diana Bergmann, Monty Bergmann, Tina Bergmann)
Stripling, Charlie [city?]
Strong, George Templeton (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [New York, NY / Vevey, Switzerland 1897- / Geneva, Switzerland 1918?-1948]
Strong, John (mandolin, guitar) - Page ( Author ? [Archive]) - (former member: Half Day Bluegrass Band 200?-2006) [Chicago, IL]
Strong, Martin C. (discographer, author) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( The Great Rock Bible (on-line edition)) ( Canongate Books), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Musselburgh, Scotland / Falkirk, Scotland]
Stropes, John - "Wis. Guitar"
Stroud, Ward - Page ( Ward Stroud), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stroughmatt, Dennis et L'Esprit Creole - Page ( Joann Murdock) [Active: 19??-] [Elm Albion, IL]
(Dennis Stroughmatt, Doug Hawf, Jim Willgoose) - (former members: Rob Krumm, Robert Russell, Jennifer Stroughmatt, Jon Watson)
Stroughmatt, Dennis (fiddle, vocals) - (leader: Dennis Stroughmatt et L'Esprit Creole) [city?, IL / Old Mines, MO / Elm Albion, IL]
Stroughmatt, Jennifer (guitar, rubboard, triangle, vocals) - (former member: Dennis Stroughmatt et L'Esprit Creole) [Elm Albion, IL]
Strozzi, Barbara (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Venice, Italy / Padua, Italy]
Strunz & Farah [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Stuart, Peter [city?]
Stuart, Philip (discographer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?, U.K. / Bristol, U.K. / Sidecup, U.K. 1967-]
Stuart, Uncle Am [city?]
Stuart, Chris (banjo) - Page ( Chris Stuart [Archive]), Biog ( Wayne Dickerson), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Highway 52, Chris Stuart & Backcountry) - (former member: Cornerstone) [Jacksonville, FL / Ithaca, NY / Dryden, NY]
Stuart, Marty - Page - "BG/OT"
Stuart, Mindy - (member: Rooftop Singers) [city?]
Stubbs, Eddie - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Stuckey, Nat (guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Cass County, TX / Nashville, TN]
Stuphin, Paul (?) - (member: The Galax String Band) [Galax, VA]
Sturm, Hans - "Wis. Classical"
Styka, Heather (?) [Chicago, IL]
Styne, Jule - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
subdudes, The
Suchy, Andra (?) [Minneapolis, MN]
Suchy, Chuck - Page ( Kennedy Center) ( Author ?) [city?]
Sudhalter, Carol (tenor saxophone, baritone saxophone, flute, piano) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Newton, MA]
Sugar Blue [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sugarbeat [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Matt Flinner, Tony Furtado, Sally Truitt) - (former member: Ben Demerath)
Suggs, Del - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Suhon, George - Page ( Author ?) [West ALexander, PA]
Sullivan Brothers, The [city?]
Sullivan, Arthur (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Lambeth, London, U.K.]
Sultana of String [Active: 19??-] [Toronto, ON]
Sumac, Yma - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Author ?), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Inchocan, Peru 1922-1933 / Lima, Peru 1933-1946 / New York, NY 1946-1952 / Los Angeles, CA 1952-2008]
Sumlin, Hubert - "Wis."
Summer, Donna - (see: Adrian Donna Gaines)
Summerfield, Maurice J. (author) - Page ( Wikipedia) ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Newcastle-upon-Tyne, U.K.]
Summers, John [city?]
Sumner, Gordon - (see: Sting)
Sun Ra (piano) - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Birmingham, AL]
Sundayrunners [Chicago, IL]
Sundell, Steven L. (Lynn) - "Wis."
Sundstrom, Matt - (member: Baal Tinne) [city?]
Sunnyland Slim - "Blues"
Supernaw, Doug (acoustic guitar, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Bryan, TX]
Sures, Ben - Page ( Author ?) [city?]
Surette, David - "Guitar"
Surface, Pat [city?]
Surratt, Mike & the Continentals [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Surrick, Carolyn Anderson - (member: Ensemble Galilei 19??-) - Session player on "Hazel Grove" by Sue Richards [city?]
Sutherland, Ruth - "Harp"
Sutphin, Kirk [city?]
Sutphin, Paul - (member: Camp Creek Boys) [city?]
Sutro, Dirk (author) - Page ( LinkedIn) ( Dirk Sutro), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [San Diego, CA]
Sutton, Allan (discographer) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Baltimore, MD / Highlands Ranch, CO]
publisher and owner of - Mainspring Press
Sutton, Ron (Dobro) - Discog ( All Music Guide) - (member: Mud Acres/The Woodstock Mountain Revue) [Woodstock, NY]
Svanoe, Bill - Discog ( Jane Keefer), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Rooftop Singers) [city?]
Svendsen, Johan Severin (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Christiania (now Oslo), Norway / Copenhagen, Denmark]
Swan Dive [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Swan, Billy (keyboards, guitar, drums, vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Cape Girardeau, MO]
Swan, Don (?) - (member: Unknown Hinson) [Albemarle, NC]
Swanner, Mike (?) - (former member: Tennessee Gentlemen) [Memphis, TN]
Swarbrick, Dave (fiddle, mandolin, vocals) - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Martin Carthy & Dave Swarbrick, Ian Campbell Folk Group) - (former member: Fairport Convention 1969-1979) [London, U.K.]
Swayne, Jon (bagpipes, saxophones, woodwinds) - (member: Blowzabella) [London, U.K.]
Sweeney's Men - Discog ( Ceolas Quick Takes), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Andy Irvine, Johnny Moynihan, Terry Woods)
Sweeney, Paul - (member: Austin Lounge Lizards) [city?]
Sweeney, Sam (fiddle, bagpipes, viola, cajon, vocals) - (member: Kerfuffle) [city?, U.K.]
Sweeney, Tom (bass, vocals) - (member: Kerfuffle) [city?, U.K.]
Sweet Honey in the Rock - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sweet Talk Radio [Active: 19??-] [Los Aangeles, CA]
Sweet, Matthew - Discog ( FolkLib Index), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sweethearts of the Rodeo - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 1986-1996,2010-] [Los Angeles, CA / Nashville, TN]
(Kristine Arnold, Janis Gill)
Sweetwater [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Sweetwater Reunion [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Swenson, John (author) - Page ( LinkedIn) [New York, NY]
Swick, Gwen (vocals) - Page ( Sonia Tyson) ( Georgian Bay Folk Society [Archive]) - (member: Quartette) [Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada]
Swifts, The - Page ( Claire Bard [Archive]) Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Portland, OR]
(Claire Bard, Andrew Calhoun, Franz Sanger)
Swimming, Emmet [city?]
Swinden, Scott (mandolin) - (member: Crooked Stovepipe) [city?, Newfoundland, Canada]
Swing Shift (aka The Swing Shifters) - Page ( Swing Shift [Archive]) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Swinging Bridge [Active: 19??-] [city?]
(Chris Bryson, Alan Colpitts, Bill Foster, Bobby Martin)
Swinging Steaks - Page ( Author ?) [Active: 19??-] [Boston,MA]
(Joe Donnelly, Jim Gambino, Tim Giovanniello, Paul Kochanski, Jamie Walker)
Swingle Singers - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Active: 19??-] [city?]
Switzky, Bryant [Minneapolis, MN]
Sydeman, William Jay (composer) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) (joined ASCAP 1975) [New York, NY]
Sykes, Carolyn - "Harp"
Sykes, Ernie - Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [city?]
Sykes, Robert - "BG/OT"
Sykes, Roosevelt - "Blues"
Sylvia (Sylvia Kirby) (vocals) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) [Kokomo, IN]
Szelest, Stan - (former member: The Hawks) [city?]
Szmadzinski, Jamii (electric violin) - Page ( Wikipedia), Bibliog ( FolkLib Index) - (member: Shadowfax) [Chicago, IL]
URL: http://www.folklib.net/index/indexs.shtml
Please send additions and/or corrections to Doug Henkle: henkle@pobox.com
P.O. Box 331, Ripon, WI 54971-0331
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4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 17 | https://www.imdb.com/list/ls064818015/ | en | Top 100 Greatest Music Artists of All-Time (Ranked) | [
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] | null | [] | null | This is my take on a definitive ranking of the greatest artists ever. | en | IMDb | https://www.imdb.com/list/ls064818015/ | The Beatles were an English rock band that became arguably the most successful act of the 20th century. They contributed to music, film, literature, art, and fashion, made a continuous impact on popular culture and the lifestyle of several generations. Their songs and images carrying powerful ideas of love, peace, help, and imagination evoked creativity and liberation that outperformed the rusty Soviet propaganda and contributed to breaking walls in the minds of millions, thus making impact on human history.
In July of 1957, in Liverpool, Paul McCartney met John Lennon. Both were teenagers. Paul impressed John with his mastery of acoustic guitar, and was invited to join Lennon's group, The Quarrymen. George Harrison joined them in February of 1958. In 1959 they played regular gigs at a club called The Casbah. They were joined by vocalist Stuart Sutcliffe, and by drummer Peter Best, whose mother owned The Casbah club. Early incarnations of the band included The Quarrymen, Johnny & the Moon Dogs, and The Silver Beetles. John Lennon dreamed up the band's final name, The Beatles, a mix of beat with beetle. In 1960 The Beatles toured in Hamburg, Germany. There they were joined by Ringo Starr, who previously played with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. In Hamburg, The Beatles made their first studio work as a backing band for singer Tony Sheridan's recordings for the German Polydor label, however, in the credits the band's name was changed to The Beat Brothers. From February 1961 to August 1963, The Beatles played a regular gig at the Cavern. They were paid five pounds for their first show, rising to three hundred pounds per show in 1963. In two and a half years The Beatles gave 262 shows at the Cavern in Liverpool.
Brian Epstein was invited to be the manager of the Beatles in November 1961. His diplomatic way of dealing with the Beatles and with their previous manager resulted in a December 10, 1961, meeting, where it was decided that Epstein would manage the band. A 5-year management contract was signed by four members at then-drummer Pete Best's home on January 24, 1962. Epstein did not put his signature on it, giving the musicians the freedom of choice. At that time McCartney and Harrison were under 21, so the paper wasn't technically legal. None of them realized this and it did not matter to them. What mattered was their genuine trust in Epstein. He changed their early image for the good. Brian Epstein made them wear suits and ties, classic shoes, and newer haircuts. They were advised to update their manners on stage and quit eating and drinking in public. Brian Epstein worked hard on both the Beatles' image and public relations. He improved their image enough to make them accepted by the conservative media. Most if not all of their communication off-stage was managed by Brian Epstein.
On January 1, 1962, The Beatles came to London and recorded fifteen songs at the Decca Records. They were not hired, but the material helped them later. During the year 1962, they made several trips to London and auditioned for various labels. In May of 1962 Epstein canceled the group's contract with Tony Sheridan and the German label. Brian Epstein was persistent in trying to sign a record deal for the Beatles, even after being rejected by every major record label in UK, like Columbia, Philips, Oriole, Decca, and Pye. Epstein transferred a demo tape to disc with HMV technician Jim Foy, who liked their song and referred it to Parlophone's George Martin. On June 6, 1962, at the Abbey Road studios, they passed Martin's audition with the exception of Pete Best. George Martin liked them, but recommended the change of a drummer. Being asked by John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison; Epstein fired Pete Best. After a mutual decision the band was completed with Ringo Starr, who duly became the fourth Beatle. In September of 1962 The Beatles recorded their first hit Love Me Do, which charted in UK, and reached the top of the US singles chart.
London became their new home since 1963. On February 11, 1963, The Beatles recorded the entire album 'Please, Please me' in one day, working non-stop during ten-hour studio session. In May and June, 1963, the band made a tour with Roy Orbison. In August of 1963, their single She Loves You became a super hit. Their October 1963 performance at the London Palladium made them famous in Great Britain and initiated the Beatlemania in the UK. The show at the London Palladium was broadcast live and seen by twelve million viewers. Then, in November 1962, The Beatles gave a charity concert at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London. There, performing for the rich and famous, John Lennon made his famous announcement: Would the people in the cheaper seats clap your hands? And the rest of you, if you'll just rattle your jewelry.
In early performances the Beatles included popular songs from the 40s and 50s. They played rock-n-roll and R&B-based pop songs while they gradually worked on developing a style of their own. Their mixture of rock-n-roll, skiffle, blues, country, soul, and a simplified version of 1930s jazz resulted in several multi-genre and cross-style sounding songs. They admitted their interest in the music of Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley, Little Richard and other entertainers of the 40s, 50s and early 60s. Beatles' distinctive vocals were sometimes reminiscent of the Everly Brothers' tight harmonies. By 1965 their style absorbed ethnic music influences from India and other Oriental cultures, and later expanded into psychedelic experiments and classical-sounding compositions. Their creative search covered a range of styles from jazz and rock to a cosmopolitan cross-cultural and cross-genre compositions.
Initially the Beatles were a guitars and drums band. In the course of their career every member became a multi-instrumentalist. George Harrison played the lead guitar and also introduced such exotic instruments as ukulele, Indian sitars, flutes, tabla, darbouka, and tampur drums. John Lennon played a variety of guitars, keyboards, harmonicas and horns. Paul McCartney played bass guitar, acoustic and electric guitars, piano and keyboards, as well as over 40 other musical instruments. The Beatles were the first popular band that used a classical touch of strings and keyboard instruments; their producer George Martin scored Baroque orchestrations in several songs, such as Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, In My Life, and a full orchestra in Sgt. Pepper. John Lennon and Paul McCartney played piano in many of their songs. Their jamming on a piano together led to creation of their best-selling hit I Want to Hold Your Hand in 1963.
At first the Beatles were rejected by Dick Clark after testing a recording of their song on his show. Then Brian Epstein approached Ed Sullivan, who discussed them with Walter Cronkite after seeing them on his CBS Evening News in 1963. Brian Epstein also managed to get their music played by influential radio stations in Washington and New York. The US consumer reaction was peaking, a single 'I Want to Hold Your Hand' was released in December 1963 by the Capitol Records. Their sensational tour in the USA began with three TV shows at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York, in February of 1964. After that The Beatles endured several years of extremely intensive recording, filming, and touring. They stopped public performances after 1966, but continued their recording contracts. By 1985 The Beatles had sold over one billion records. Music became their ticket to ride around the world. Beatlemania never really ended since its initiation. It still lives as a movable feast in many hearts and minds, as a sweet memory of youth, when all you need is love and a little help from a friend to be happy.
The Beatles' first two feature films, A Hard Day's Night (1964) and Help (1965), were made in collaboration with an American director, Richard Lester. Their humorous, ironic, and farcical film performances are reminiscent of the Marx Brothers' comedies. Later The Beatles moved into the area of psychedelic innovations with the animated film Yellow Submarine (1966). Their surrealistic TV movie The Magical Mystery Tour (1967) became the cause for the first major criticism of their work in the British press. Their film music was also released as studio albums. Original music by The Beatles as well as re-makes of their songs has been also used, often uncredited, in music scores of feature films and documentaries. Some of The Beatles concert and studio performances were filmed on several occasions and were later edited and released after the band's dissolution. In 1999 the remastered and remixed film The Beatles Yellow Submarine Adventure (2000) delighted a younger audience with incredible animation and songs.
All four members were charismatic and individually talented artists, they sparked each other from the beginning. Eventually they made a much better group effort under the thorough management by Brian Epstein. His coaching helped consolidate their talents and mutual stimulation into beautiful teamwork. Paul McCartney had the privilege of a better musical education, having studied classical piano and guitar in his childhood. He progressed as a lead vocalist and multi-instrumentalist, as well as a singer-songwriter. McCartney wrote more songs for the Beatles than other members of the band. His songs Yesterday, Eleanor Rigby, Blackbird, When I'm 64, Let It Be are among the Beatles' best hits. Yesterday is considered the most-covered song in history with over three thousand versions of it recorded by various artists. McCartney accepted the agreement that was offered by John Lennon in 1957, about the 50/50 authorship of every song written by either one of them. Most of The Beatles' songs are formally credited to both names, regardless of the fact that many of the songs were written individually.
On June 25, 1967, The Beatles made history becoming the first band globally transmitted on TV to an estimated 400 million people worldwide. The Beatles were a segment in the first-ever worldwide satellite hook-up and their new song "All You Need Is Love" was broadcast live during the show. Two months later The Beatles lost their creative manager Brian Epstein, whose talent for problem-solving was unmatched. "That was it, the beginning of the end", said Lennon. Evolution of each member's creativity and musicianship also led to individual career ambitions.
John Lennon was experimenting with psychedelic poetry and art. His creativity was very unique and innovative. Lennon wrote Come Together, Girl, Revolution, Strawberry Fields and many other Beatles' hits. An out-of-context reprinting of Lennon's remarks on the Beatlemania phenomenon caused problems in the media. His comparison of Beatles' popularity to that of Jesus Christ was used to attack them publicly, causing cancellations of their performances and even burning of their records. Lennon had to apologize several times in press and on TV, including at a Chicago press conference. In 1967 John Lennon met Japanese artist Yoko Ono, whom he later married. George Harrison was the lead guitar player and also took sitar lessons from Ravi Shankar. Harrison had his own inner light of creativity and spirituality, he wrote Something, Taxman, I me mine, and other hits. Ringo Starr sang 'Yellow Submarine' and a few other songs. He has made a film career and also toured with his All Stars Band and released several solo albums. His 1973 release "Ringo" was the last album to feature all four living Beatles, although not on the same song.
The Beatles created over 240 songs, they recorded many singles and albums, made films and TV shows. Thousands of memorable pictures popularized their image. In their evolution from beginners to the leaders of entertainment, they learned from many world cultures, absorbed from various styles, and created their own. Their cross-style compositions covered a range of influences from English folk ballads to Indian raga; absorbing from Johann Sebastian Bach, Ludwig van Beethoven, Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Elvis Presley, Everly Brothers, Little Richard, and others. The songwriting and performing talents of Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr, fused in the Beatles' music. Lennon and McCartney initiated changes in music publishing industry by breaking the Tin Pan Alley monopoly of songwriting. Their legacy became possible due to highly professional work by Brian Epstein and George Martin. In 1994 three surviving members reunited and produced Lennon's previously unknown song 'Free as a Bird'. It was preserved by Yoko Ono on a tape recording made by Lennon in 1977. The song was re-arranged and re-mixed with the voices of three surviving members. The Beatles Anthology TV documentary was watched by 420 million people in 1995.
The Beatles represent the collective consciousness of several generations. Millions of viewers and listeners across the universe became conditioned to the sounds and images of The Beatles. Their influence on the modern world never stopped. Numbers may only show the tip of the iceberg (record sales, shows admissions, top hits, etc.). As image-makers and role models they pushed boundaries in lifestyle and business, affecting customers behavior and consumption beyond the entertainment industry by turning all life into entertainment. A brilliant blend of music and lyrics in their songs made influence on many minds by carrying messages like: give peace a chance and people working it out. A message more powerful than political control, it broke through second and third world censorship and regulations and set many millions free.
Steve Jobs, being a big fan of Paul McCartney and The Beatles, referred to them on many occasions and also was interviewed on a showing of a Paul McCartney concert. When asked about his business model, Steve Jobs replied: My model for business is The Beatles: They were four guys that kept each other's negative tendencies in check; they balanced each other. And the total was greater than the sum of the parts. Great things in business are never done by one person, they are done by a team of people.
The Beatles made impact on human history, because their influence has been liberating for generations of nowhere men living in misery beyond the Iron Curtain. Something in their songs and images appealed to everybody who wanted to become free as a bird. Their songs carrying powerful ideas of real love, peace, help, and imagination evoked creativity that outperformed the rusty Soviet propaganda and contributed to breaking chains and walls in the minds of millions. The Beatles expressed themselves in beautiful and liberating words of love, happiness, freedom, and revolution, and carried those messages to people across the universe. Their songs and images helped many freedom-loving people to come together for revolutions in Prague and Warsaw, Beijing and Bucharest, Berlin and Moscow. The Beatles has been an inspiration for those who take the long and winding road to freedom.
Even after The Beatles had gone, the individual members continued to spread their message; from the concert for Bangladesh by George Harrison and Ringo Starr in 1971, to 2003 "Back in USSR" concert by Paul McCartney on the Red Square in Moscow, and his 2004 show near the Tsar's Winter Palace in St. Petersburg where the Communist Revolution took place, just imagine.
In 2005 the Entertainment magazine poll named The Beatles the most iconic entertainers of the 20th Century. In July of 2006, the guitar on which Paul McCartney played his first chords and impressed John Lennon, was sold at an auction for over $600,000.
In July 2012, Paul McCartney rocked the opening ceremony of the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. He delivered a live performance of The Beatles's timeless hit "Hey Jude" and engaged the crowd of people from all over the world to join his band in a sing along finale. The show was seen by a live audience of 80000 people at the Olympic Park Stadium in addition to an estimated TV audience of two billion people worldwide.
Born Stevland Hardaway Judkins in Saginaw, Michigan, United States, to Calvin Judkins and Lula Mae Hardaway. Due to being born six weeks premature, Stevie Wonder was born with a condition called retinopathy of prematurity, which made him blind. Stevie Wonder, even with this disability, made his landmark to be a pioneer and innovator in the music industry.
Stevie Wonder's mother, Lula Mae Hardaway left her husband and moved herself and her children to Detroit. Due to her leaving Lula Hardaway Judkins changed her name to Lula Hardaway and changed Stevie's surname to Stevland Morris. Stevland Morris growing up played various instruments such as the piano, harmonica, drums, and bass. Stevland Morris never played a lot of outdoor activities due to his protective mother. Stevland Morris due to his musical talent was also strongly apart of the church choir. Stevland Morris was originally discovered by Gerald White who often persuaded his brother, soul singer Ronnie White to visit the talented Stevland Morris. Ronnie White after seeing Stevland Morris brought Stevland and his mother to MoTown Records to visit Berry Gordy. Berry Gordy stated he was not impressed by Stevland's singing,or drumming,bongo skills and then he played the harmonica, which astounded Berry Gordy and Stevland Morris in 1961 at the age of eleven signed onto MoTown Records with the stage name, Little Stevie Wonder. The reason why Stevie Wonder had gotten that stage name was because many people were astounded by his ability to play numerous instruments and his ability to sing doing both at the same time, and people called Stevie "A Little Wonder".
Stevie Wonder released his first album called,The Jazz Soul Of Little Stevie at the age of twelve followed by an additional album, Tribute To Uncle Ray dedicated to Ray Charles.
In 1963, Stevie Wonder released a hit-song called, Fingertips Pt(2). The song reached number one on the Billboard Pop Charts. Stevie Wonder became the first singer to have a number one album and single simultaneously. In the song were several percussion instruments played by Stevie Wonder and this song was added to the album,Recorded Live: The Twelve Year Old Genius. Stevie Wonder was then referred to as the child prodigy. Stevie Wonder in 1964 made in film debut in the movie, Muscle Beach Party as well as the sequel Bikini Beach both directed by William Asher. In this movie Stevie Wonder shows off his musical talent singing the songs, Happy Street and Happy Feeling (Dance And Shout).
Stevie Wonder also dropped "Little" from this stage name as his voice started to change and he could no longer sing songs which Clarence Paul had written for him, as they were all written in a higher pitched note. Stevie Wonder then started focusing more on songwriting and came out with genuine hits like Uptight (Everything's Alright),With A Child's Heart, Blowing In The Wind, and a song which he wrote for Smokey Robinson and The Miracles, Tears Of A Clown. Several other songs which were smashing hits in the 60's and 70's were I Was Made To Love Her, Signed Sealed And Delivered I'm Yours, which Stevie stated was an idea he had gotten from his mother,and For Once In My Life.
In 1970 Stevie Wonder left MoTown and recorded two independent albums by himself. Berry Gordy was shocked to hear this by Stevie Wonder and Berry Gord agreed to Stevie Wonder's demand of more independence and full creative control and rights to all his songs. In 1972 Stevie Wonder returned to MoTown records and signed a thirteen million dollar contract with MoTown Records. This entitled Stevie Wonder to a higher royalty rate and more full creative control and the rights to his own songs, which few artists had gotten at that time period. This contract unleashed Wonder's songs to now talk about controversial issues such as poverty,war,drugs, and politics.Stevie is known for writing and performing political songs such as, You Haven't Done Nothing, which took a political stab at Richard Nixon. The first album he had released with his new agreement with MoTown was, Music Of My Mind in 1972. In late 1972 Stevie Wonder released an album which today is known as a historic piece in music,Talking Book. Which included the number one hit-song, Superstition. This song featured the clavinet which Stevie Wonder was credited pioneer of, he later used the electric amplified keyboard instrument in many of his other albums along with the synthesizer. The song Superstition was seen as a significant contribution to the Funk genre. Talking Book also featured, You Are The Sunshine Of My Life which also peaked at number one. Stevie Wonder also toured with The Rolling Stones in 1972 which contributed to his album's success. Stevie Wonder struck a controversial issue with the album, Innervisions in 1973 with singles such as Living For The City which talked about poverty and was credited to African Americans.The album also included singles such as Golden Lady, and All Love Is Fair.
On August,6, 1973 Stevie Wonder was in a car accident. The twenty-three year old Stevie Wonder was in the passenger seat of a 1948 Dodge Flatbed Truck,he was sleeping and had his headphones on, the driver distracted by something, and failed to notice the truck ahead of them and crashed. This sent Stevie Wonder into a coma for several days. In a biography entitled, The Miraculous Journey Of Lula Mae Hardaway she retells the story, "There was a great, grinding screech as metal hit metal and, then, impossibly, as if in some lavishly produced Hollywood action movie, one of the great logs disencumbered itself of the truck and came crashing through the windshield, spearing Stevie square in the forehead." Wonder was sent to a hospital immediately after the accident, and was placed under intensive care, with what they described a "bruise on the head" Wonder then made a successful recovery and in 1974 released Fullfillingness' First Finale and which song topped number one on the Billboard Pop Charts was the political song, You Haven't Done Nothing. By the age of twenty-five he was a multiple Grammy-Award winner, winning Grammies for albums such as Talking Book, Inner Vision, and Fullfillingness' First Finale and at the age of twenty-five with several talent musicians he was on the verge of making what came to be one of this most admirable masterpieces, an album called, Songs In The Key Of Life.
The double-album, Songs In The Key Of Life was released in 1976 and the album became the first of an American artist to debut straight at number one where it remained for fourteen consecutive weeks. The album contained two tracks which rose to number one on the Billboard Charts,I Wish and Sir Duke. The album also contained an extraordinary sentimental song about his daughter Aisha Morris called,Isn't She Lovely". It also contained the song which focused strongly on poverty called, Village Ghetto Land. Rolling Stones listed the album as the 56th Greatest Album Of All Time out of 500.
In 1979, Wonder released a soundtrack album called Journey Through The Secret Life Of Plants. It was featured in the film The Secret Life Of Plants. Wonder also wrote the song,Let's Get Serious for Jermaine Jackson who left The Jacksons and was starting his own solo career. The song was ranked by Billboard to be the number one rhythm and blues song of 1980.
In 1980, Stevie Wonder released the album called Hotter Than July. On this album was a song called Happy Birthday. That song was dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr, and Stevie Wonder was one of the pioneers to getting Martin Luther King Jr a national holiday. Stevie Wonder in 1985 received an Academy Award for his song, I Just Called To Say I Love in the film, The Woman In Red. In 1986, Stevie Wonder made a guest appearance on the hit-show The Cosby Show. It was during this episode in which people were astounded toward what the synthesizer could really do. In 1987 Stevie Wonder made a duet with Michael Jackson on his Bad album with the single, Just Good Friends. In the same year Michael Jackson did a duet on Stevie Wonder's characters album. In 1991, Stevie Wonder recorded a soundtrack album for Spike Lee in his new movie, Jungle Fever. The album was entitled, Jungle Fever and the hit-song on it was entitled Jungle Fever. Other singles that came from this album were Gotta Have You,Feeding Off The Love Of The Land,and These Three Words. Stevie Wonder continued releasing new material throughout the 90's such as Natural Wonder, and Conversation Piece. In 1996 Stevie Wonder's A Song In The Key Of Life album became a documentary subject, and several of the musicians who contributed to the success of the album had a reunion. In 1997 Stevie Wonder collaborated with Babyface on the single, How Come How Long.
In 2000 Stevie Wonder contributed to two sound track songs for Spike Lee's film Bamboozled. The two soundtrack songs were Misrepresented People and Some Years Ago. In 2006, Stevie Wonder's inspiration of his life, his mother, Lula Mae Hardaway died on May,31,2006. Stevie Wonder then in 2007 announced his tour, A Wonder's Summer Night 13 concert tour- this was his first in over ten years, and he states, he wants to take all the sadness he feels,turn it around and celebrate. Stevie Wonder in 2008 was very involved in the Presidential Campaign, and why he thinks Obama will be a great president for America. Stevie Wonder talked at several press conferences about Obama and why America should vote for him. Stevie Wonder in 2009 was named the United Nations Messenger Of Peace.On February 23,2009 Stevie Wonder received the Gershwin Prize For Pop Music awarded to Stevie Wonder by Barack Obama. On June,25,2009 one of his best friends,Michael Jackson had died. Stevie Wonder attended the memorial and performed the song, Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer at the Staple's Center. Stevie Wonder recently in 2011 can be heard playing harmonica on Drake Graham's album Take Care.
Stevie Wonder's songs have been sampled by artists such as Jon Gibson,Red Hot Chilli Peppers,Mary J Blige and several other artists were inspired by Stevie's musical talent. Stevie Wonder will forever be known as a pioneer in music a philanthropist, and a messenger of peace addressing controversies in music which very few artists did at that time. Stevie Wonder has touched the hearts of millions through his music and his philanthropic generosity.
The Rolling Stones are the legendary British rock band known for many popular hits, such as Paint it Black, Lady Jane, Ruby Tuesday, and (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction. Almost everyone who attended their shows is quick to comment on their ability to start you up and shake your hips. Their song "Satisfaction" (1965) was composed by Keith Richards in his sleep, and with the addition of provocative lyrics by Mick Jagger it became the greatest hit and their calling card on each and every show.
In 1966, after The Beatles stopped giving live performances, The Rolling Stones took over as the unofficial "biggest touring band in the world" for the next few years. During 1966-1969 they toured the world, and constantly updated their song-list with many great hits like "Lets Spend the night together" (1967), "Sympathy for the Devil" (1968) and "Honky tonk woman" (1969). The incredible international success of the Stones came with a sad side, caused by Brian's drug and alcohol abuse that impaired his speech and appearance, so the band-mates had to replace him. In July 1969, Brian Jones died of drowning in his swimming pool while having signs of drug overdose. Upon Richards's and Jagger's approval, guitarist Mick Taylor took Brian's place. Brian's death at age 27 made him one of the first members of the infamous "27 Club" of rock stars who died at that age. Although Brian's estrangement from his band-mates, and his numerous arrests were caused by his personal problems with drugs, both Richards and Jagger were blamed at the time for Brian's death. The loss of one of their founding members was a painful moment for the Stones. However, at the end of the 1960s their creativity reached the new highs. Their albums "Beggars Banquet" (1968) and "Sticky Fingers" (1971) were among the most popular albums they ever made, having such hits as "Wild Horses" and "Brown Sugar."
During the 1970s The Rolling Stones remained the biggest band in the world, albeit they were rivaled by the Led Zeppelin. The Stones made thousands of live performances and multi-million record sales with hits like "Angie" (1973), "It's Only Rock and Roll" (1974), "Hot Stuff" (1976) and "Respectable" (1978). At that time both Keith Richards and Mick Jagger had individual ambitions, and applied their untamed creativity in various projects outside the Stones. Keith released his own single. In 1974 Ron Wood had replaced Mick Taylor on guitar and Keith and Ron both played lead guitars. During the decade Keith Richards had a family crisis on his hands, and suffered through emotional pain and drug abuse, albeit it didn't stop him from being himself. In 1980 the group released "Emotional Rescue" which Keith Richards didn't care for, and the group didn't even tour to promote the album. In 1981 with the release of 'Tattoo You', the group went on a major world tour filling stadiums in the US and in Europe. In 1983 the Stones recorded the album "Undercover" at the Compass Point in Nassau and during this time Mick and Keith were having arguments over rights of the group. After having created tens of albums and over a hundred popular songs together, their legendary song-writing partnership was undergoing the most painful test: the bitter rivalry between two enormously talented and equally ambitious superstars.
Mick Jagger is the heart of "The Stones" and Keith Richards - the soul. The two had carried on their early image of unkempt youth, had survived ups and downs in their careers and personal lives, and remained the core of the band since they shared a flat with the late Brian Jones in London in 1962. Two other remaining members are drummer Charlie Watts and guitarist Ron Wood. "The Stones" were part of the "British Invasion" in international culture during the 1960s, and has been extremely popular and famous for their 60s craze, hot stuff and sex drive. Since the 1970s they remained one of the biggest entertainment acts touring the world with a retinue of jet-set hangers-on. Their inimitable shows, no matter the best, or the worst, has been played with fire and emotion, giving their audiences the kind of music they do best - it's only rock'n roll.
Mick Jagger dropped out of college and his every move on-stage and off-stage seemed to signal a challenge to "respectable" standards. He never received a formal musical education, and even could not read music. However, he worked hard and emerged as the lead singer and songwriter in partnership with Richards, following the example of John Lennon and Paul McCartney's songwriting for The Beatles. Outside of the Rolling Stones, Jagger released solo albums with his original songs, as well as his versions of such hits as 'Use Me' by songwriter Bill Withers. Jagger also starred in several films, such as Freejack - Geisel der Zukunft (1992), Bent (1997), and Ein Mann für geheime Stunden (2001). Mick Jagger fathered seven children from four women, donated to numerous school and charities, and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II at the Buckingham Palace in 2003.
Keith Richards, was a schoolmate of Mick Jagger since the primary school. In 1960 they contemplated starting up a band together. Since the formation of the Rolling Stones in 1962, Richards has been the principal songwriting partner with Jagger, and most of the songs on all Rolling Stones albums are credited to Jagger/Richards. Outside of the Rolling Stones, Richards toured with The New Barbarians, and also was the front-man of the X-pensive Winos in the 1980s. Besides his music career, Richards made a cameo appearance as the father of Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean - Am Ende der Welt (2007) filmed by his friend, director Gore Verbinski.
Other members of The Rolling Stones has been also enjoying their individual careers outside of the band. Multi-instrumentalist Ronnie Wood collaborated with such performers as Prince, Bob Dylan, David Bowie, Eric Clapton, and Aretha Franklin, among others. His collaboration with Rod Stewart resulted in a hit album. Wood is also an accomplished artist who sold about $10 million worth of his artworks. Drummer Charlie Watts, who has been ever faithful to his one and only wife, Shirley, is known for his consistency in refusing sexual favors from groupies. He is also a jazz band-leader, and commercial artist, who had solo shows and successfully auctioned his artworks.
The Rolling Stones have released 55 albums of original work and compilations, and sold over 200 million records word-wide during their career spanning over 45 years. "The Stones" played in all kinds of spaces from small clubs to big stadium arenas. In 2007 they even rocked the Tsar's Winter Palace with fifty thousand fans in St. Petersburg, Russia, where the communist revolution took place. They gave more large-scale shows internationally than any other existing band in the world, culminating in their 2005-2007 "A Bigger Band" tour with 147 concerts, the highest grossing tour of all time with $559 million earned.
Come on, Stones, give us more of your respectable shows, get us rocking, we can make it if we try.
Led Zeppelin are a popular British band best known for their iconic "Stairway to Heaven" as well as for co-creating the music genre of heavy metal. Since their nine albums were recorded between 1968 and 1979, Led Zeppelin has been one of the most popular bands of all time, having sold more than 300 million records and millions of concert tickets worldwide.
The quartet was conceived at the end of the Hippie love era, in a group marriage of blues, rock and roll, soul, rockabilly, folk ballad, jazz, classical and Eastern music, and something else scattered over some woozy sounds of their songs. It was their mutual artistic stimulation, their group interplay and imagination that incorporated mythology and mysticism, and concocted their inimitable style, and established the concept of album-oriented rock career.
Jimmy Page was already an experienced lead guitarist who worked with multi-instrumentalist John Paul Jones in 1967, and they agreed to work on the next project. In August 1968 Page invited Robert Plant and John Bonham to join his band, the New Yardbirds, for a September tour in Scandinavia. In October 1968 they took the name Led Zeppelin, which stemmed from a humorous conversation among several musicians about their chances of going down like a lead balloon. However, British bands were highly anticipated in the USA, and the Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun signed the new band without even seeing them.
Their debut album, 'Led Zeppelin', recorded and mixed in just about 36 hours in October 1968, at Olympic Studios in London, kicked open the door for all extremes and experiments. The phallic image of the blown up Hindenburg airship on the cover, designed by George Hardie, announced the hardening of rock and coming of the new super-group. While ascending to musical success as a powerhouse band, Led Zeppelin explored a variety of styles, from English folk ballads to blues and rock, and created their own inimitable style.
Prior to the release of their first album, Led Zeppelin made live appearances at the University of Surrey and in London in October 1968, then went on their first American tour in December 1968. In their first year, Led Zeppelin made four concert tours in the USA, and another four tours in the UK. Their second album was recorded entirely on the road at several American recording studios, and was an even greater success than the first one. "Whole Lotta Love", "Heartbreaker", "Living, Loving Maid", and "Ramble On" became big international hits.
Each member of the quartet contributed to their compositions, thus setting a fine example of group creativity. Their songs and albums rambled on with the highly versatile voice-guitar interplay. Plant's incredible vocal range and Page's enchanting guitar solos were as responsible for the band's singularity as its musical wanderlust. Plant's and Page's musicianship was supported by the tight playing by John Paul Jones on bass, and John Bonham on drums. The intense interaction of all four players on stage gave their live performances a visual counterpoint to well intertwined harmonic and rhythmic structures of their compositions.
Their third album, Led Zeppelin III, influenced by folk and Celtic music, offered more inventiveness with acoustic/electric sound-work, and revealed more of the band's versatility with such compositions as the "Immigrant Song" and "Since I've Been Loving You". With the release of their fourth, and most popular album, Led Zeppelin achieved a reputation of the biggest band in the world. 'Stairway to Heaven' became the most played radio hit, several other songs became rock classics, and nobody knows how many more times their lines would help other musicians (like the opening riff from "How Many More Times" was later used by Pink Floyd in their hit "Money").
Capitalizing on the success of their first four albums, the band toured extensively in the 1970s. At that time they chartered a private jet, nicknamed the Starship, that carried the band's name and later added the famous 'Swan Song' winged Apollo image on the tail. Going to California turned into a ritual of wildness and excess, most notably at the Hyatt House hotel on the Sunset strip in Los Angeles, known colloquially as the "Riot House" for a series of some most exciting off-stage events, such as riding a motorcycle inside the hotel and throwing TV set out of the window. One of their concerts under a heavy thunderstorm in Florida ended with police using tear gas, and led to a temporary pause in their concert tours.
During the 70s their career was interrupted several times by accidents, deaths and other unfortunate events. In September 198O on the eve of an American tour, John Bonham accidentally died from pulmonary edema after a day of drinking. In December 1980, Led Zeppelin disbanded, albeit the public could still feel their presence. In 1982 a collection of out-takes from various sessions from the 70s was released as their last album, Coda. During the 80s the remaining three members experienced a serious communication breakdown, until they briefly united for a short set in 1985, and once again, in 1988, with Bonham's son, Jason, for the Atlantic Records 40th Anniversary show.
In 1994 Page and Plant showed their softer side when they performed live together on 'MTV Unplugged', which was released the same year as album titled 'No quarter'. Then they made an international tour with an orchestra. In 1995 Page and Plant were joined by Jones when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, albeit the three former band-mates did not perform together. By that time Jimmy Page as well as Robert Plant had pursued individual careers touring and recording with their own bands.
Another ten years gone. Page's and Plant's call-and-response interplay took them through good times and bad times. Their sonic originality had sparked imagination and creativity in millions of open minds. Singers, songwriters, armies of music fans and a rainbow of dedicated 'led heads', as well as guitarists and guitar collectors worldwide remained united through the acquired experience and conditioning to the Led Zep sounds.
Hats off to Led Zeppelin, who opened the new extremes of musical expression, and are now back in the light confirming their presence. Their long anticipated reunion in December 2007 was a true celebration day. Their live performance was as tight as a rock band can be, and their living, loving song remains the same since we've been loving them. That's the way!
Thank you, Friends.
Widely regarded as the greatest and most influential guitarist in rock history, Jimi Hendrix was born on November 27, 1942 in Seattle, Washington, to African-American parents Lucille (Jeter) and James Allen Hendrix. His mother named him John Allen Hendrix and raised him alone while his father, Al Hendrix, was off fighting in World War II. When his mother became sick from alcoholism, Hendrix was sent to live with relatives in Berkeley, California. When his father returned from Europe in 1945 he took back Hendrix, divorced his wife, and renamed him James Marshall Hendrix.
When Jimi was 13 his father taught him to play an acoustic guitar. In 1959 Jimi dropped out of high school and enlisted in the U.S. Army, but soon became disenchanted with military service. After he broke his ankle during a training parachute jump, he was honorably discharged. He then went to work as a sideman on the rhythm-and-blues circuit, honing his craft but making little or no money. Jimi got restless being a sideman and moved to New York City hoping to get a break in the music business. Through his friend Curtis Knight, Jimi discovered the music scene in Greenwich Village, which left indelible impressions on him. It was here that he began taking drugs, among them marijuana, pep pills and cocaine.
In 1966, while Jimi was performing with his own band called James & the Blue Flames at Cafe Wha?, John Hammond Jr. approached Jimi about the Flames playing backup for him at Cafe Au Go Go. Jimi agreed and during the show's finale, Hammond let Jimi cut loose on Bo Diddley's "I'm the Man." Linda Keith, girlfriend of The Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, was one of Jimi's biggest fans and it was she who told friend Chas Chandler, a band manager, about Jimi. When Chandler heard Jimi play, he asked him to come to London to form his own band, and while there Chandler made the simple change in Jimi's name by formally dropping James and replacing it with Jimi. Having settled in England with a new band called the Jimi Hendrix Experience, which consisted of Jimi as guitarist and lead singer, bass player Noel Redding and drummer Mitch Mitchell, Jimi took the country by storm with the release of his first single "Hey, Joe."
In the summer of 1967 Jimi performed back in the USA at the Monterey Pop Festival, a mix-up backstage forced Jimi to follow The Who onstage, where after a superb performance Jimi tore up the house by trashing his guitar in a wild frenzy. Afterwards, Jimi's career skyrocketed with the release of the Experience's first two albums, "Are You Experienced?" and "Axis: Bold as Love," which catapulted him to the top of the charts. However, tensions, possibly connected with Jimi's drug use and the constant presence of hangers-on in the studio and elsewhere, began to fracture some of his relationships, including Chas Chandler, who quit as manager in February 1968.
In September 1968 the Experience released their most successful album, "Electric Ladyland." However, in early 1969 bassist Redding left the Experience and was replaced by Billy Cox, an old army buddy who Jimi had jammed with. Jimi began experimenting with different musicians. For the Woodstock music festival Jimi put together an outfit called the Gypsies, Sun and Rainbows, with Mitchell and Cox as well as a second guitarist and two percussionists. Their one and only performance in August 1969 at Woodstock took place near Bethel, New York, where Hendrix and his band were to be the closing headline act. Because of the delay getting there and the logistical problems, Jimi performed on the morning of the fourth and final day. Only 25,000 people of the original 400,000 stayed to watch Jimi and his band as the closing music number, where Jimi's searing rendering of "The Star-Spangled Banner" became the anthem for counterculture.
After Woodstock, Jimi formed a new band with Cox on bass and Buddy Miles on drums with the May 1970 release of the album "The Band of Gypsys." Jimi's last album, "Cry of Love", featured Cox on bass and former Experience drummer Mitchell on drums. However, Jimi's drug problem finally caught up with him. On the night of September 17, 1970, while living in London, Jimi took some sleeping pills, which were prescribed for his live-in girlfriend Monika Danneman. Sometime after midnight, Jimi threw up from an apparent allergic reaction to the pills and then passed out. Danneman, thinking him to be all right, went out to get cigarettes for them. When she returned, she found him lying where he collapsed, having inhaled his own vomit, and and she couldn't wake him. Danneman called an ambulance, which took him to a nearby hospital, but Jimi Hendrix was pronounced dead a short while later without regaining consciousness. He was 27 years old.
Jimi Hendrix's life was short, but his impact on the rock guitar is still being heard and set the course for a new era of rock music.
David Bowie was one of the most influential and prolific writers and performers of popular music, but he was much more than that; he was also an accomplished actor, a mime and an intellectual, as well as an art lover whose appreciation and knowledge of it had led to him amassing one of the biggest collections of 20th century art.
Born David Jones, he changed his name to Bowie in the 1960s, to avoid confusion with the then well-known Davy Jones (lead singer of The Monkees). The 1960s were not a happy period for Bowie, who remained a struggling artist, awaiting his breakthrough. He dabbled in many different styles of music (without commercial success), and other art forms such as acting, mime, painting, and play-writing. He finally achieved his commercial breakthrough in 1969 with the song "Space Oddity", which was released at the time of the moon landing. Despite the fact that the literal meaning of the lyrics relates to an astronaut who is lost in space, this song was used by the BBC in their coverage of the moon landing, and this helped it become such a success. The album, which followed "Space Oddity", and the two, which followed (one of which included the song "The Man Who Sold The World", covered by Lulu and Nirvana) failed to produce another hit single, and Bowie's career appeared to be in decline.
However, he made the first of many successful "comebacks" in 1972 with "Ziggy Stardust", a concept album about a space-age rock star. This album was followed by others in a similar vein, rock albums built around a central character and concerned with futuristic themes of Armageddon, gender dysfunction/confusion, as well as more contemporary themes such as the destructiveness of success and fame, and the dangers inherent in star worship. In the mid-1970s, Bowie was a heavy cocaine abuser and sometime heroin user.
In 1975, he changed tack. Musically, he released "Young Americans", a soul (or plastic soul as he later referred to it) album. This produced his first number one hit in the US, "Fame". He also appeared in his first major film, Der Mann, der vom Himmel fiel (1976). With a permanently-dilated pupil and skeletal frame, he certainly looked the part of an alien. The following year, he released "Station to Station," containing some of the material he had written for the soundtrack to this film (which was not used). As his drug problem heightened, his behavior became more erratic. Reports of his insanity started to appear, and he continued to waste away physically. He fled back to Europe, finally settling in Berlin, where he changed musical direction again and recorded three of the most influential albums of all time, an electronic trilogy with Brian Eno "Low, Heroes and Lodger". Towards the end of the 1970s, he finally kicked his drug habit, and recorded the album many of his fans consider his best, the Japanese-influenced "Scary Monsters". Around this time, he appeared in the title role of the Broadway drama The Elephant Man, and to considerable acclaim.
The next few years saw something of a drop-off in his musical output as his acting career flourished, culminating in his acclaimed performance in Furyo - Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983). In 1983, he released "Let's Dance," an album which proved an unexpected massive commercial success, and produced his second #1 hit single in the United States. According to producer Nile Rodgers, the album was made in just 17 days and was "the easiest album" he'd ever made in his life. The tour which followed, "Serious Moonlight", was his most successful ever. Faced with this success on a massive scale, Bowie apparently attempted to "repeat the formula" in the next two albums, with less success (and to critical scorn). Finally, in the late 1980s, he turned his back on commercial success and his solo career, forming the hard rock band, Tin Machine, who had a deliberate limited appeal. By now, his acting career was in decline. After the comparative failure of Die Reise ins Labyrinth (1986), the movie industry appears to have decided that Bowie was not a sufficient name to be a lead actor in a major movie, and since that date, most of his roles have been cameos or glorified cameos. Tin Machine toured extensively and released two albums, with little critical or commercial success.
In 1992, Bowie again changed direction and re-launched his solo career with "Black Tie White Noise", a wedding album inspired by his recent marriage to Iman. He released three albums to considerable critical acclaim and reasonable commercial success. In 1995, he renewed his working relationship with Brian Eno to record "Outside." After an initial hostile reaction from the critics, this album has now taken its place with his classic albums. In 2003, Bowie released an album entitled 'Reality.' The Reality Tour began in November 2003 and, after great commercial success, was extended into July 2004. In June 2004, Bowie suffered a heart attack and the tour did not finish its scheduled run.
After recovering, Bowie gave what turned out to be his final live performance in a three-song set with Alicia Keys at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York in November 2006. He also returned to acting. He played Tesla in Prestige - Die Meister der Magie (2006) and had a small cameo in the comedy David Bowie (2006) for fan Ricky Gervais. In 2007, he did a cartoon voice in SpongeBob Schwammkopf (1999) playing Lord Royal Highness. He had a brief cameo in the movie ''Bandslam'' released in 2009; after a ten year hiatus from recording, he released a new album called 'The Next Day', featuring a homage cover to his earlier work ''Heroes''. The music video of ''Stars are Out Tonight'' premiered on 25 February 2013. It consists of other songs like ''Where Are We Now?", "Valentine's Day", "Love is Lost", "The Next Day", etc.
In 2014, Bowie won British Male Solo Artist at the 2014 Brit Awards, 30 years since last winning it, and became the oldest ever Brit winner. Bowie wrote and recorded the opening title song to the television miniseries The Last Panthers (2015), which aired in November 2015. The theme used for The Last Panthers (2015) was also the title track for his January 2016 release, ''Blackstar" (released on 8 January 2016, Bowie's 69th birthday) was met with critical acclaim. Following Bowie's death two days later, on 10 January 2016, producer Tony Visconti revealed Bowie had planned the album to be his swan song, and a "parting gift" for his fans before his death. An EP, No Plan, was released on 8 January 2017, which would have been Bowie's 70th birthday. The day following his death, online viewing of Bowie's music skyrocketed, breaking the record for Vevo's most viewed artist in a single day.
On 15 January, "Blackstar" debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart; nineteen of his albums were in the UK Top 100 Albums Chart, and thirteen singles were in the UK Top 100 Singles Chart. The song also debuted at #1 on album charts around the world, including Australia, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the US Billboard 200. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, Bowie won all five nominated awards: Best Rock Performance; Best Alternative Music Album; Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical; Best Recording Package; and Best Rock Song. The wins marked Bowie's first ever in musical categories. David Bowie influenced the course of popular music several times and had an effect on several generations of musicians. | |||||
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She formed a folk trio with two of her siblings while still living in her hometown of Tuscon, Ariz., before moving to Los Angeles at 18 and becoming part of the folk-rock band the Stone Poneys. They were signed to Capitol in the summer of 1966 and released three albums within 15 months. They had a hit single with "Different Drum," which was written by Mike Nesmith before he joined the Monkees. In the spring of 1969, still contractually obligated to Capitol Records, Ronstadt released her first solo album, Hand Sown ... Home Grown, which didn't chart.
"I felt I was floundering as a singer, and my style hadn't jelled," she wrote in her 2014 book, Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir.
In 1969, Ronstadt opened for singer-songwriter Jerry Jeff Walker at the Bitter End in New York's Greenwich Village. He was accompanied by another guitar player, David Bromberg, who brought Ronstadt with him to the nearby Cafe Au Go Go. He told her his friend Gary White was playing and had a song that might suit Ronstadt. "I was prepared to be disappointed," she later wrote. "I thought it difficult for someone else to know what I looked for in a song."
Following the performance, Ronstadt went backstage to meet White. "He had already packed up his guitar," she explained. "So he took it back out of its case, sat down and began to sing a song called 'Long Long Time.' I told Gary I wanted to record it immediately."
Ronstadt recorded the song - and her second album, Silk Purse - in Nashville. Her producer, Elliot Mazer, brought in a group of session musicians known as Area Code 615, whose methods were somewhat unconventional. Weldon Myrick, for example, had an electronic device attached to his pedal steel guitar that generated a sound he dubbed the "Goodlettsville String Quartet." Bassist Norbert Putnam handled the arrangement of "Long Long Time." "It was an unusual sound for the time, with a touching emotional quality," Ronstadt later wrote. "I thought the musicians played it beautifully."
But she didn't think she sang it all that beautifully. "I never liked my performance on the record," she explained. "It was recorded at 10 in the morning, somewhat early for a singer, and we used the live vocal."
Listen to Linda Ronstadt's 'Long Long Time'
Ronstadt was often self-critical, a trait Bromberg noticed over the years. She once compared herself to Emmylou Harris, who she insisted was a far better performer. (Ronstadt and Harris later teamed up with Dolly Parton for a pair of Trio albums.) "I don't doubt that's what Linda thought," Bromberg told Delaware Online in 2013. "But nobody ever sang with more passion than Linda."
In a conversation with Bromberg in 2015 for Delaware Online, Ronstadt acknowledged that her relationship with her music was complicated. "I don't like to listen to my own recordings," she said. "I always hope they are better than I remember them, but they usually aren't. If I stumble onto one and have to hear it, it's usually not as good, and I remember [it] as not being good enough. It's just hard to judge your own work."
Plenty of other people in 1970 didn't think so critically of "Long Long Time," which was released as the first single from Silk Purse and reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It remained on the list for 12 weeks and also earned Ronstadt a Grammy nomination in 1971 for Best Contemporary Female Vocal Performance.
By the time the song hit its peak on the chart, Ronstadt had gotten more comfortable with the vocal, noting later that it "bought me time to learn."
Watch Linda Ronstadt Perform 'Long Long Time' in 1970
"Long Long Time" went on to be covered by a variety of artists, including Jerry Jeff Walker in 1989, and appeared in several films and TV shows. It was featured in a 1975 episode of The Rockford Files and the 2018 coming-of-age film Hot Summer Nights. In 2023, it appeared in an episode of The Last of Us, the critically acclaimed post-apocalyptic drama based on a hit video game that scored HBO some of its highest viewing numbers in a decade. The day the third episode aired, Spotify reported that "Long Long Time" saw a "4,900% increase in U.S. streams." | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 2 | 6 | https://m.facebook.com/groups/johneinarsonremembers/posts/2189968104671332/ | en | Du wurdest vorübergehend blockiert | [
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4334 | dbpedia | 1 | 59 | https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/crazy-horse | en | Crazy Horse ‑ Facts, Death, Battles | [
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"Amanda Onion",
"History.com Editors"
] | 2018-08-24T17:41:14+00:00 | Crazy Horse was a Lakota leader and warrior who clashed with the U.S. federal government. | en | HISTORY | https://www.history.com/topics/native-american-history/crazy-horse | Crazy Horse: Early Years
Crazy Horse was born in the Black Hills of South Dakota in 1841, the son of the Oglala Sioux shaman also named Crazy Horse and his wife, a member of the Brule Sioux.
Crazy Horse had lighter complexion and hair than others in his tribe, with prodigious curls. Boys were traditionally not permanently named until they had an experience that earned them a name, so Crazy Horse was called “Curly Hair” and “Light-Haired Boy” as a child.
As an adolescent, Crazy Horse earned the name “His Horse Looking,” but he was more commonly known as “Curly” until 1858 when, following a battle with Arapaho warriors he was given his father’s name, while his father took the name Worm.
Crazy Horse's Vision Quest
Crazy Horse was not a traditionalist with regard to his tribe’s customs, shrugging off many of the traditions and rituals that the Sioux practiced.
In 1854, Crazy Horse rode off into the prairies for a vision quest, purposefully ignoring the required rituals.
Fasting for two days, Crazy Horse had a vision of an unadorned horseman who directed him to present himself in the same way, with no more than one feather and never a war bonnet. He was also told to toss dust over his horse before entering battle and to place a stone behind his ear and directed to never take anything for himself.
Crazy Horse followed these instructions until his death.
General William Tecumseh Sherman
In 1866, the discovery of gold along the Bozeman Trail in Montana spurred General William Tecumseh Sherman to build a number of forts in Sioux territory.
Under the command of Captain William Fetterman, a troop clashed with Sioux and Cheyenne warriors after Crazy Horse acted as a decoy to lead the 80 white soldier to their death in an ambush. The soldiers' bodies were hacked up to send a message to Sherman.
In 1867, Crazy Horse took part in an attack on a small fort. Shortly after, Sherman toured the Native prairie lands to meet with leaders and seek peace.
By 1868, soldiers were pulled out of the disputed forts and a treaty was signed that gave the native populations ownership of the Black Hills, areas west of Missouri and land in Wyoming. No whites would be allowed to enter that territory under threat of arrest.
Crazy Horse, however, eschewed the treaty signing, preferring to conduct raids on enemy tribes.
Black Buffalo Woman
Black Buffalo Woman was Crazy Horse’s first love. They met in 1857, but she married a man named No Water while Crazy Horse was on a raid.
Crazy Horse continued to pay her attention and in 1868 eloped with her while No Water was on a hunting party.
He and Black Buffalo Woman spent one night together before No Water took back his wife, shooting Crazy Horse in the nose and breaking his jaw.
Despite fears of violence between villages, the two men came to a truce. Crazy Horse insisted that Black Buffalo Woman shouldn’t be punished for fleeing and received a horse from No Water in compensation for the injury.
Crazy Horse eventually married Black Shawl, who died of tuberculosis, and later a half-Cheyenne, half-French woman named Nellie Larrabee.
Black Buffalo Woman’s fourth child, a girl, was a light-skinned baby suspected of being the result of her night with Crazy Horse.
General George Armstrong Custer
As the railroads expanded west, tensions rose between Native Americans and soldiers.
In 1872, Crazy Horse took part in a raid with Sitting Bull against 400 soldiers, where his horse was shot out beneath him after he made a reckless dash ahead to meet the U.S. Army.
In 1873 General George Armstrong Custer crossed into Sioux territory. Somewhere along the Yellowstone River, Crazy Horse encountered Custer for the first time, coming upon a contingent of napping soldiers. The Sioux attempted to steal their horses but failed, and Crazy Horse retreated after a scuffle.
Custer’s troops made their way into the Black Hills in search of gold, violating treaties while also ushering in civilian miners who outnumbered the Native population.
Battle of Rosebud
By 1876, large numbers of tribes gathered near the Little Big Horn River in Montana to join Sitting Bull.
General George Crook, who had recently raided a village that was wrongly claimed to be Crazy Horse’s, attempted an attack, but Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull led forces to push back Crook in what is called the Battle of Rosebud.
Battle of the Little Big Horn
One week later, General Custer entered into battle at Little Big Horn after refusing the advice of his Native guides, who assured him he would lose the confrontation.
One week later, General Custer entered into battle at Little Big Horn after refusing the advice of his Native guides, who assured him he would lose the confrontation.Crazy Horse led as many as 1,000 warriors to flank Custer’s forces and help seal the general’s disastrous defeat and death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, also known as Custer’s Last Stand.
Crazy Horse Surrenders
Crazy Horse traveled to Big Butte to harass white miners in the Black Hills, while the Sioux faced continued hostilities from General Crook during a harsh winter that decimated the tribe.
Sensing the tribe’s struggle for survival, Colonel Nelson A. Miles tried to strike a deal with Crazy Horse, promising to help the Sioux and treat them fairly.
When Crazy Horse sent emissaries to discuss the deal, soldiers shot and killed several and Crazy Horse fled. Miles repeatedly attacked Crazy Horse’s encampment until winter weather prevented action.
Incapacitated by the winter, Crazy Horse negotiated with Lieutenant Philo Clark, who offered the starving Sioux their own reservation in exchange their surrender. Crazy Horse agreed.
Crazy Horse's Arrest
During negotiations, Crazy Horse found trouble with both the Army and his fellow tribesmen. Clark tried to convince him to go to Washington, but Crazy Horse refused, furthering the Army's belief that Crazy Horse was too unreliable for negotiation.
Some of the Sioux were agitating with others following a rumor that Crazy Horse had found favor with white people, who planned to install him as leader of all the Sioux.
Tensions rose as the Army sought Crazy Horse’s help in their conflict against the Nez Perce natives. During these meetings, an interpreter claimed Crazy Horse had promised he would not stop fighting until all white men were killed, though Crazy Horse had not said that.
Some Sioux warriors signed on with the Army to fight the Nez Perce warriors. Disgusted, Crazy Horse threatened to leave negotiations and was soon after arrested.
Crazy Horse Death
Returning to camp the next day, Crazy Horse requested to talk to military leaders, but was led to a cell instead.
Realizing the betrayal, Crazy Horse struggled. An old friend, Little Big Man, worked for the Army as a policeman and attempted to restrain Crazy Horse, who pulled a concealed knife on him.
Trying to prevent Crazy Horse from stabbing Little Big Man, a soldier shoved a bayonet into Crazy Horse’s abdomen, piercing his kidneys. Crazy Horse collapsed and was moved to an office, where he refused a cot. Only his father was allowed to visit.
Crazy Horse died at some point later on the night of September 6, 1877, at the age of 35, lying on the bare floor in Fort Robinson, Nebraska. His body was taken away by Sioux and buried at an unknown location near a creek called Wounded Knee.
Crazy Horse Memorial
Crazy Horse is remembered for his courage, leadership and his tenacity of spirit in the face of near-impossible odds.
His legacy is celebrated in the Crazy Horse Memorial, an uncompleted monumental sculpture located in the Black Hills, not far from Mount Rushmore. Started in 1948 by sculptor Korczak Ziółkowski (who also worked on Mount Rushmore), the Crazy Horse Memorial would be the largest sculpture in the world when completed.
Operated by the nonprofit Crazy Horse Memorial Foundation, the sculpture grounds are open to the public and reportedly receive more than one million visitors each year.
Sources | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 3 | 40 | https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/rock-and-roll | en | Rock | [
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] | null | The Handbook of Texas is your number one authoritative source for Texas history. Read this entry and thousands more like it on our site. | en | /images/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png | Texas State Historical Association | https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/rock-and-roll | Texas musicians have profoundly influenced the development and evolution of rock-and-roll and the various branches of its musical tree—rockabilly, blues rock, Tex-Mex, psychedelia, and redneck rock. Some of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's most high-profile inductees, including Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, and Janis Joplin, pioneered the direction of the musical idiom. The Hall has also honored other musicians, both native Texans and those who made a name in the Lone Star State, as early influences critical to the genre's development. These musicians include T-Bone Walker, Lead Belly, Robert Johnson, Charlie Christian, and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys.
Rock-and-roll's historic roots lie in a fusion of several musical genres that came into prominence in the early decades of the twentieth century. Texans played major roles in pioneering these varied styles, including blues, jazz, and western swing. Blues guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson from Freestone County, Texas, is credited as the first blues star. His recordings from 1926 to 1929 were the first blues records to be commercially successful and thus introduce what had been an African-American music form to a national audience.
In the 1930s, "race labels" recorded many black blues musicians in Texas. Two landmark sessions in San Antonio (1936) and Dallas (1937) captured the only recorded legacy of guitarist Robert Johnson, the itinerant Delta bluesman from Mississippi. Many music historians and guitar aficionados credit these songs, which include his legendary "Cross Road Blues," for laying the fundamental groundwork for rock-and-roll. Another historic blues great, Huddie Ledbetter ("Lead Belly"), traveled to Texas where he played his twelve-string guitar with the likes of Jefferson in Deep Ellum. Field-recording pioneers John and Alan Lomax discovered his guitar prowess while he was incarcerated in the Louisiana State Penitentiary and thus brought his blues to the world. These early players inspired later guitarists like Sam "Lightnin'" Hopkins, Freddie King, and Albert Collins and their Texas blues sound, a highly improvisational style that encouraged a variety of personal playing techniques. The early bluesmen played an important role in the evolution of rock guitar. Legendary groups and players from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Jefferson Airplane, to Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page, all credit these blues players as major musical influences. Interestingly, the song “Rock Awhile” recorded in 1949 by a little-known Houston blues and jazz man and his group—Goree Carter and his Hep Cats—has been lauded by some rock historians as a forerunning anthem to the new genre .
Texas jazz players also contributed significantly to the development of rock. In 1935 guitarist Eddie Durham of San Marcos was one of the first performers on the electric guitar, and he made the first jazz recording of the amplified instrument. Fellow jazzman Charlie Christian of Dallas further elevated the electric guitar as a lead instrument. Guitarist Aaron "T-Bone" Walker, born in Linden, forged the link to the modern electric guitar in the 1940s and established the instrument as the foremost soloing tool for rhythm-and-blues.
In Texas in the 1930s another musical sound, the interesting mix of jazz, hillbilly, boogie, blues, and country that became known as western swing, also influenced the beginnings of rock. Three bands were very representative of the catchy sound that caught on: the Light Crust Doughboys, Milton Brown and His Musical Brownies, and Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys. Both Brown and Wills had originally played in the Light Crust Doughboys before forming their own groups, and radio presented a popular medium to reach a wide listening audience.
In the late 1940s and throughout the 1950s the Big D Jamboree barn dance and radio program in Dallas cultivated local talent and recruited national acts. In additional to country performers, the show also explored new trends and presented a bluesy sound mixed with country and bluegrass (or hillbilly) music called rockabilly. Big D Jamboree and its larger Louisiana counterpart, the Louisiana Hayride, often featured one of the most visible rockabilly stars—a young Elvis Presley. Several native Texans, however, are recognized as groundbreaking rockabilly performers, including Charline Arthur, Dean Beard, and Johnny Carroll. In the mid-1950s Charline Arthur, born in Henrietta, Texas, headlined the Big D Jamboree. Her bold stage presence earned praise from Elvis, and music historians have credited her as a major precursor to rockabilly, but her aggressive manner and rowdy stage shows did not fit in with the times. Other rockabilly pioneers were Dean Beard of Coleman County and his West Texas band the Crew Cats, who recorded "Rakin' and Scrapin'" in 1956. That same year Johnny Carroll from Cleburne, a Big D Jamboree and Louisiana Hayride favorite, recorded his "Crazy, Crazy Lovin'" for Decca in Nashville. Carroll was the featured star in the cult movie Rock, Baby, Rock It! filmed with other local music talent in Dallas.
During the 1950s Houston record executive Don Robey gathered an impressive lineup of blues performers for his Duke and Peacock Records labels. One artist, Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton, recorded "Hound Dog" in 1953, and the song became a major rock-and-roll hit for Elvis in 1956.
The emergence of rockabilly as a new musical style and the steady output of blues recordings set the stage for the development of a new genre—rock-and-roll. The windblown plains of West Texas furnished a wealth of musical talent. In 1956 Happy, Texas, native Buddy Knox and his band, the Rhythm Orchids, which included Knox's classmate Jimmy Bowen, learned of Norm Petty's recording studio in Clovis, New Mexico, from another up-and-coming West Texas musician, Roy Orbison. The group recorded "Party Doll," and Knox subsequently became the first artist in rock to write and perform his own Number 1 hit with that song. Bowen's "I'm Stickin' With You," originally the flip side of "Party Doll," also got into the Top 20.
In early 1957 another West Texas rocker, Buddy Holly of Lubbock, ventured to Petty's studio. The tracks recorded by Holly and the Crickets resulted in the release of their first single, "That'll Be the Day," on May 27, 1957. The song soared to Number 3 on the pop charts, and subsequent releases "Peggy Sue," "Oh Boy!," and "Not Fade Away" also met great success. The pioneering influence of Holly, an inaugural inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1986), on the development of rock-and-roll cannot be overstated. Holly wrote much of his own material, and his band, the Crickets (who were inducted in their own right into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2012), brought to the forefront the combination of guitars, bass, and drums as a viable self-contained musical combo. These two precedents set the standard for rock groups. Young fans, John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and other future British rockers saw Holly perform in England and were inspired to emulate him. His star shone brightly for less than two years, until he lost his life in a plane crash in Iowa on February 3, 1959. The Big Bopper, J. P. Richardson of the Beaumont area, also perished. His fun-loving single "Chantilly Lace" had been a hit in 1958. Another rising Texas musician and Holly's guitarist at the time, Waylon Jennings, was not on the plane. The crash, which killed the pilot, Holly, Richardson, and teenage star Ritchie Valens, marked the end of the first chapter of rock-and-roll, an event that songwriter Don McLean later so aptly proclaimed "the day the music died," in his anthem "American Pie" in 1971.
Texas rock-and-roll progressed, however, as the 1960s dawned. Singer–songwriter Roy Orbison carried the banner of the West Texas rockers throughout the early 1960s and, in fact, was one of the few American stars to hold his own on the charts against the rising Beatles. Born in Vernon, Texas, Orbison (in the band the Teen Kings) had made his own pilgrimage to Norm Petty's Clovis studio in the 1950s. His recording of "Ooby Dooby" caught the attention of Sun Records in Memphis, and in 1956 Orbison joined the ranks of a group of emerging rockabilly stars. He gained the reputation of a successful songwriter, but when he could not attract the interest of either Elvis or the Everly Brothers to record his "Only the Lonely," Orbison recorded it himself in 1960 and introduced to the world his soaring voice and a string of aching rock ballads that became his signature style. Rock-and-roll singers from Elvis to the Beatles to Bruce Springsteen heralded the dramatic voice of Orbison. Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, Orbison, like Holly, has shown incredible staying power, as evidenced by his popular comeback in the 1980s with Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Tom Petty, and Jeff Lynne as the Traveling Wilburys and his best-selling album Mystery Girl (1989) after his death in 1988.
Mexican-American rockers entered the national rock-and-roll scene in the early 1960s. In 1960 Baldemar Huerta, better known as Freddy Fender, had a hit with "Wasted Days and Wasted Nights." In 1963 a band from San Antonio called Sunny and the Sunglows (later known as Sunny and the Sunliners) became the first all-Tejano group to play on American Bandstand. Dallas's Trini Lopez had a hit in 1963 with an upbeat version of the folk song "If I Had a Hammer." This emergence of such Mexican-American performers hinted of musical influences adopted from the rich Mexican heritage of Texas.
Also in the early 1960s Major Bill Smith of Fort Worth produced a number of artists who had national hits. Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson, known as Paul and Paula and formed in Brownwood, had a Number 1 song, "Hey Paula." Bruce Channel of Grapevine recorded "Hey! Baby." Denton's Ray Peterson scored a 1960 hit with "Tell Laura I Love Her," while Lufkin's J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers, a band formed in San Angelo, had a Number 1 smash with "Last Kiss" in 1964. Both songs were symbolic of the "teenage tragedy" subgenre of rock in the early 1960s. Another young Lubbock group, Delbert McClinton and the Ron-Dels, recorded "If You Really Want Me To I'll Go." McClinton, who had cut his musical teeth on the Jacksboro Highway blues scene of Fort Worth, had established himself as a rising rockabilly–blues player and went on to sustain a lengthy musical career encompassing various styles. McClinton played harmonica on Bruce Channel's "Hey! Baby." A longstanding legend tells that it was McClinton who, while on tour with Channel in England, advised John Lennon on his distinctive harmonica technique—information that the Beatle subsequently immortalized in the harmonica solo of "Love Me Do."
When the Beatles burst upon the American music scene in 1964, their performances had an impact on the growing stable of Texas musicians. Savvy music producer Huey Meaux of Houston decided to jump on the "British Invasion" bandwagon but with a distinctively Texas flavor. The result produced one of the enduring bands in Texas rock history—the Sir Douglas Quintet. Meaux approached San Antonio musician Doug Sahm, whose musical legacy established him as a quintessential rock-and-roller. Formed in San Antonio in 1964, the Sir Douglas Quintet consisted of frontman Sahm, Augie Meyers on organ, Frank Morin on horns, Jack Barber on bass, and John Perez on drums. Their stylish suits and Beatle haircuts, mandated by Meaux, were designed to give the band an English flavor and thereby to capitalize on the British Invasion. Meaux had to "break" the band in England before it played in the U.S., but the group scored a major international hit in 1965 with "She's About a Mover." The song's infectious hook was the thin "con queso" line of Meyers's Vox organ. Reminiscent of an accordion fill, this reflected the Tex-Mex influence on the group. The band eventually moved to the budding rock scene of San Francisco and released other notable tracks, including "Mendocino" in 1969.
Other noteworthy bands of the mid-1960s hailed from Texas and also echoed their Tex-Mex musical traditions. Domingo Samudio (Sam Samudio) of Dallas led Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, whose hit "Wooly Bully" topped the U.S. charts in 1965. Billboard, in fact, selected "Wooly Bully" as Record of the Year. They also enjoyed success with "Lil' Red Riding Hood." Question Mark and the Mysterians likewise tapped into their own queso organ hook, played by Frank Rodriguez of Crystal City, in their hit "96 Tears" in 1965.
Meaux also produced the early material of versatile vocalist Roy Head from Three Rivers, who later, as Roy Head and the Traits, scored a Number 2 pop single in 1965 with his soulful "Treat Her Right." Houston native B. J. Thomas was also in the Meaux stable before moving on to pop and country stardom with such hits as "Hooked on a Feeling" and "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head."
As Beatlemania swept the nation, Hollywood sought to capitalize on the British Invasion in the mid-1960s and introduced the Monkees. Bandmember Michael Nesmith was born in Houston and grew up in Dallas. Nesmith, considered the best musician in the quartet, also achieved other musical success. His song "Different Drum" was a hit for Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Poneys in 1967. He later went on to front his own country rock band in the 1970s and became a music video pioneer, winning the first Grammy given for a video in 1981.
West Texas gave forth another popular group, the Bobby Fuller Four from El Paso. The band had a national hit in 1966 with "I Fought the Law," a tune written by Sonny Curtis of the Crickets. Fuller's success was cut short by his suspicious "suicide" on July 18, 1966.
Psychedelic and its heavier variation, acid rock, emerged from both folk-rock and electric roots during the mid-to-late 1960s. Texas spawned its share of garage bands, known for their original compositions and free-form improvisation, and these psychedelic groups had both regional and national impact. Red Krayola emerged from Houston. The punky blues of Zakary Thaks came from Corpus Christi. Mouse and the Traps was born in Tyler. The band Bubble Puppy, which formed in San Antonio, recorded in Houston at Gold Star Studios for International Artists in 1968 and scored a national hit, "Hot Smoke & Sasafrass." International Artists also signed another band—the 13th Floor Elevators. Formed in Austin in 1965, the 13th Floor Elevators commanded a devoted local following and created a potent combination when they added vocalist Roky Erickson to the lineup. His song "You're Gonna Miss Me" became a hit; it was from their 1966 album, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators. A second LP, Easter Everywhere (1967), also had a strong showing. Musicologists have heralded Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators as pioneers of acid rock, but their overt drug use, also a trademark of the psychedelic culture, took its toll on the band and especially Erickson. Convicted twice for drug possession, Erickson opted for a sentence to the Rusk State Hospital over state prison in 1969. During his incarceration he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and treated with various drug therapies and electroshock. He was never the same after his release in 1972, and took years to return to some semblance of musical coherence. But in the 2000s, on medication for his schizophrenia, Erickson made a comeback. In 2005 he played his first full-length concert in two decades at the Austin City Limits Festival. Many performances have followed, including debuts in New York and London. He tourned Australia and New Zealand in 2012.
In 2008 the city of Austin held the first annual Austin Psych Fest to honor the city’s historical connection to psychedelic rock and promote its ongoing expression. Conceived by the Reverberation Appreciation Society, the group went on to establish other festivals (called Levitation) in Chicago, Canada, and France. By 2015 the Austin festival was held over three days in May and included a reunion performance by the 13th Floor Elevators.
Janis Joplin, another innovator and ultimately victim of the psychedelic counterculture, burst on the rock-and-roll scene in the mid-1960s. Born and raised in Port Arthur, Texas, she moved to San Francisco and joined the band Big Brother and the Holding Company. Her electrifying rendition of the song "Ball and Chain," which had also been recorded by one of Joplin's musical mentors, Big Mama Thornton, at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 immediately earned her and the band national acclaim. Rock critics praised Joplin as the greatest White blues singer, but an accidental heroine overdose ended her life on October 4, 1970. Her posthumous single "Me and Bobby McGee," penned by Texan Kris Kristofferson, reached Number 1 on the charts.
The 1960s and early 1970s saw many Texas-born musicians earning musical names for themselves outside of the state. The impressive list includes Billy Preston, who was born in Houston, Sylvester "Sly Stone" Stewart of Dallas, who performed in Sly and the Family Stone, and Houston native Johnny Nash, whose catchy "I Can See Clearly Now" reached Number 1 in 1972. Mason Williams of Abilene won a Grammy for his pop instrumental guitar hit "Classical Gas" in 1968. Houston's Kenny Rogers and his pop group First Edition had a hit with "Just Dropped In To See What Condition My Condition Was In." Dallas-born Stephen Stills found fame in the late 1960s in California as a member of Crosby Stills Nash and Young.
The 1970s ushered in the radio-popular genre of soft rock, with smoothly crafted, tight songs that inspired the term "California Sound." Notable Texans helped influence the California Sound. Seals and Crofts was one of the most popular mellow rock acts of the 1970s. Jim Seals, born in Sidney, Texas, and Dash Crofts of Cisco, played as teenagers with rockabilly star Dean Beard and the Crew Cats in the late 1950s. The two, along with Beard, moved to Los Angeles and joined the Champs, who had the instrumental hit "Tequila" in 1958. Eventually playing together as an acoustic duo, they hit it big with their song "Summer Breeze" in 1972. Seals's brother Dan, who performed with John Colley in the Dallas psychedelic group Southwest F.O.B., achieved his own fame with Colley in the duo England Dan and John Ford Coley. Dan Seals died on March 25, 2009.
The Eagles, a hugely successful group of the 1970s, owe a lot of their success to two Texans. Drummer–vocalist Don Henley was born in Gilmer and played in a hometown band called Shiloh, before the group moved to California in 1969. Henley was one of the founding members of the Eagles in 1971, and his songwriting and distinctive voice helped propel the group to fame. Henley, as a member of the Eagles, was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1998. Eagle associate J. D. Souther of Amarillo played in the Cinders, a Panhandle band of the early 1960s, before heading West. Souther wrote some of the Eagles' most memorable songs, such as "New Kid in Town" and "Best of My Love," and later recorded a hit of his own, "You're Only Lonely."
In the early 1970s the hard-edged sounds of rock and blues were still alive and well with Texas musicians. Brothers Johnny and Edgar Winter grew up in the Beaumont area and listened to the records of blues masters like Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker. Johnny attracted a massive audience with the release of Johnny Winter (1969), which showcased blues–rock guitar prowess, including a considerable penchant for slide guitar. Winter, who died in 2014, established himself among aspiring guitarists as one of the modern blues greats. Brother Edgar achieved success as a keyboardist. Edgar's part jazzy, part rhythm-and-blues tunes earned him respect as an amazing multi-instrumentalist (he also played saxophone) and vocalist.
The early 1970s saw prolific output from a band formed in Fort Worth, Bloodrock, which issued six albums from 1970 to 1973. Their second LP, Bloodrock 2, earned a Gold Record Award and included a popular single, the morbid "D.O.A." Fort Worth guitarist and vocalist John Nitzinger, though not a formal member of the group, contributed some of Bloodrock's songs.
The band ZZ Top became the Lone Star State's most successful rock act of the 1970s. This threesome emerged from the ashes of the Texas psychedelic scene. Drummer Frank Beard and bassist Dusty Hill had played in the American Blues in Dallas, and guitarist Billy Gibbons performed in the noteworthy Moving Sidewalks in Houston. Evidently he had turned heads, because Jimi Hendrix, while appearing on the Tonight Show, had praised Gibbons as the next hot young guitarist. Gibbons, Beard, and Hill came together in Houston in 1970 (after Gibbons had replaced two previous band members). They built a strong following with their touring and Southern-influenced, guitar-driven rock. Their third album, Tres Hombres (1973), went platinum on the strength of the hit "La Grange." Throughout the following decades, ZZ Top's continued popularity with releases such as their best-selling Eliminator (1983) attested to the band's popular appeal and staying power. The group was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2004.
In the early 1970s Texas gave birth to a distinctive and unusual blending of country music and urban blues and rock that resulted in a hybrid style known variously as redneck rock or progressive country. The redneck rock movement began in Austin as Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, and a group of country and rocker songwriters congregated to create a burgeoning music scene. Nelson had rejected the slick commercial environment of Nashville and returned to his native Texas. The redneck rock movement inspired enthusiasm from both native Texans and Northern transplants in search of its laid-back, open-minded attitude. Rock and country musicians Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore formed the Flatlanders in rock's root town of Lubbock before each eventually moved to the Central Texas area.
Jerry Jeff Walker, B. W. Stevenson, and Michael Martin Murphey were three singer–songwriters who symbolized the redneck rock movement and garnered acclaim with big crossover hits. Walker, a transplanted Texan, penned "Mr. Bojangles," and the tune became a major radio hit for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band in 1971. The big voice of Dallas native B. W. Stevenson belted out "My Maria," which went to Number 9 in 1973. Michael Martin Murphey's "Wild Fire" was a huge hit that went to Number 3 on the charts in 1975. The outgrowth of this flourishing Austin redneck rock scene also led to the creation of the syndicated public television program Austin City Limits, which brought numerous Texas country, blues, and rock musicians to a national audience.
The mid-to-late 1970s continued the tradition of Texan musicians gaining national and international fame. Players who had headed west in the 1960s included Steve Miller and Boz Scaggs, high school classmates in Dallas. During the 1970s each went on to success. Dallas native Marvin Lee Aday, better known as Meat Loaf, scored national hits with his musical theatrical flair, and his Bat Out of Hell (1977) became one of rock's biggest-selling albums.
The 1980s ushered in the national fame of Christopher Cross. Formed by San Antonio native Chris Geppert and consisting of some notable Austin-based musicians, Christopher Cross swept the Grammys with five awards, which included Best New Artist, Album of the Year—Christopher Cross (1980)—and three awards for the hit single "Sailing." The crisp recording and production of the songs earned Christopher Cross a place as one of pop music's biggest acts in the early 1980s. He also won an Oscar for Best Original Song, "Arthur's Theme" for the movie Arthur (1981).
The emergence of punk music and its mellower cousin new wave claimed its roots in the psychedelic bands of the 1960s, most notably Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Other musicians also adopted styles tinged with Tex-Mex nuances that harkened back to the influences of the Sir Douglas Quintet and Question Mark and the Mysterians. By the early 1980s punk bands performed throughout the state. The Judy's of Houston achieved moderate success. Dallas contributed acts like the Nervebreakers, and Austin spawned the Big Boys and the Next. Austin-based musicians such as Joe Ely toured as the opener for the Clash, and Joe "King" Carrasco's high energy, Tex-Mex–flavored "nuevo wavo" was a perennial draw on the club circuit. One of the early punk Texas bands that has shown staying power is the Butthole Surfers. Trinity University students Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary formed the group in San Antonio in the early 1980s. Their screeching sounds and societal satire have evoked shock and loathing in some, but have also inspired a devoted cult following for three decades.
Pop bands such as Timbuk 3 and Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians had their day in the sun in the mid-to-late 1980s. Timbuk 3's husband and wife duo, Pat and Barbara MacDonald, who had moved to Austin, wrote the very catchy "The Future's So Bright I Gotta Wear Shades" in 1986. The New Bohemians were an established band playing in Deep Ellum when they added art student and singer Edie Brickell in 1985. A revamped lineup signed with Geffen Records and released their debut, Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars (1989), which included the hit "What I Am." Brickell's airy vocal style and the band's hippie harkening image caught the public eye for a time. Both Timbuk 3 and Edie Brickell and New Bohemians were destined to be relegated to one-hit wonder status.
The 1980s saw the increasing recognition of the skill and versatility of a new generation of Texas guitarists. Numerous awards and polls in guitar magazines have heralded Austinite Eric Johnson as one of the technically best guitarists. He first turned heads as a member of the Austin jazz fusion group the Electromagnets, which featured founder Bill Maddox, Stephen Barber, and Kyle Brock, in the mid-1970s. Word of Johnson's virtuosity continued to build as he worked as a session player for the likes of Carole King, Cat Stevens, and Christopher Cross. His first solo album, Tones, came out in 1986, followed by Ah Via Musicom in 1990.
Van Wilks is another formidable guitar player in the Central Texas area. Listeners have often compared the blues rock master to ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, and he has toured with ZZ Top. Wilks released the album Bombay Tears in 1980 to critical acclaim. He and his band have also been the winners of many newspaper polls in recognition of their popular hard-rock style. Van Wilks and Eric Johnson teamed up in a memorable guitar duo performance of "What Child Is This" for the Texas Christmas Collection (1982).
The Vaughan brothers, Jimmie and Stevie, finally earned their long-sought national attention in the 1980s. Born in the Dallas area, the brothers had moved to Austin by the 1970s. Guitarist Jimmie Vaughan hit it big in the Austin-based blues group the Fabulous Thunderbirds, whose songs "Tuff Enuff" and "Wrap It Up" became national hits and featured videos on MTV in 1986. Jimmie's younger brother Stevie and his band, Double Trouble, stormed the blues rock scene with their release of Texas Flood (1983) and Couldn't Stand the Weather (1984). Both brothers had performed and collaborated at various times with songwriter/drummer Doyle Bramhall, who co-wrote several songs for Stevie and played drums on the Vaughan brothers’ Family Style (1990). Musicians recognized Stevie Ray Vaughan as one of the great new guitarists. Vaughan, standing on the shoulders of the old Deep Ellum blues greats, influenced countless young players, and many guitar magazines and instructional books have analyzed his use of heavy-gauge strings and tuning to achieve his distinctively fat sound. His tragic death in a helicopter crash in 1990 cut short a remarkable music career.
Two years later the rhythm section of Double Trouble, bassist Tommy Shannon and drummer Chris Layton, teamed with Charlie Sexton and Doyle Bramhall II in Austin to form the Arc Angels. Arc was taken from the initials of the Austin Rehearsal Center. What began as a musical outlet for the members soon erupted into media labels of "supergroup." Their debut album on Geffen Records and live shows quickly attracted national exposure, but the group fell apart in 1994. At South by Southwest in 2009, the Arc Angels reunited to record and perform once more. That year they opened for Eric Clapton on his European tour.
One of the biggest Texas acts of the 1990s consisted of legendary veteran rockers Doug Sahm, Augie Meyers, Freddy Fender, and conjunto accordionist Flaco Jiménez. The supergroup the Texas Tornados released its eponymous debut album with Warner Brothers in 1990. Once again the musicians relied heavily on their Texan-influenced roots, combining Tex-Mex conjunto rhythms with catchy lyric and melody hooks that had crossover appeal in the rock world. Throughout much of the 1990s the group toured nationally and internationally and was ready to embark on a new journey when Doug Sahm died on November 18, 1999. Sahm's career epitomizes Texas rock-and-roll, a meeting of cultures that borrows from the black blues greats, border-flavored Tex-Mex, and Texas cowboy and folk music, with some doo-wop thrown in. Freddy Fender, who had started his career as a young rocker in the late 1950s, died on November 17, 2007. The Texas Tornados found new life in the 2000s, however, as Sahm’s son Shawn joined forces with Meyers, Jiménez, and several original sidemen (including Louie Ortega on guitar, Speedy Sparks on bass, and Ernie Durawa on drums) to form a new incarnation of the band. They released ¡Está Bueno! in 2010. In 2015 the Tornados released a new double-CD compilation featuring songs from previous albums, some rareties, as well as six unreleased tracks in A Little Bit is Better Than Nada—Prime Cuts 1990–1996.
The significant influence shown by notable rock pioneer Roky Erickson was honored in the 1990 Warner Brothers release of Where the Pyramid Meets the Eye: A Tribute to Roky Erickson, on which various rockers recorded his songs. Another noteworthy tribute album resulted in an unlikely, but compelling combination. Twisted Willie (1996) was a compilation of Willie Nelson's songs as performed by some of the nation's top grunge bands. The alternative rock scene of Seattle in the early 1990s nodded to the legacy of the Texas Outlaw, redneck rocker Willie Nelson.
Fort Worth provided its own alternative grunge offering in the Toadies. Formed in 1989, the band gained considerable exposure with its extensive touring in the 1990s, opening for White Zombie, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bush, and other well-known acts. They broke up in 2001 but reunited for shows in 2006 and 2007 and released their album No Deliverance in 2008, Feeler in 2010, and Play. Rock. Music. in 2012. The band embarked on a new tour in 2014 to promote their album Rubberneck. The following year saw another tour and release (Heretics).
The rise of female singer–songwriters in the rock industry in the mid-1990s also featured a Texas-born artist whose unlikely commercial path led to stardom. Dallas native Lisa Loeb secured a place in music history for achieving the first-ever Number 1 hit single without having a record deal. In 1994 her song "Stay," which was featured on the soundtrack of the film Reality Bites, bulleted up the charts. Subsequently, Loeb signed with Geffen and later participated as a featured artist on the Lilith Fair tour promoting female musicians in 1997.
The Central Texas band Sixpence None the Richer entered the music scene in the 1990s. After several years of obscurity, they finally got national recognition with their hit "Kiss Me" in 1999. After the release of their second album Divine Discontent in 2002, the group disbanded in 2004 but reunited in 2007.
Throughout the 1990s and into the new millennium, heavy metal bands (and their various subgenres such as death metal or thrash metal) have flourished in the Lone Star State. Arlington's group Pantera actually formed in the early 1980s but, after building an impressive following through several album releases and tours, came into their own in the 1990s. Their formidable album Far Beyond Driven entered the U.S. and U.K. charts at number one in 1994, and releases and tours throughout the 1990s cemented the Texas group as a worldwide force. Other listeners, perhaps not familiar with thrash metal's blazing tempo and heavy atonal guitar riffs, got a taste of Pantera's style when the group wrote a brief metal theme song for the NHL team the Dallas Stars during their Stanley Cup season in 1999. The band broke up in 2003. Tragically, founding member and lead guitarist "Dimebag Darrell" (Darrell Lance Abbott) was shot and killed while playing onstage with his band Damageplan on December 8, 2004.
King's X, a band based in Houston, garnered critical acclaim for its interesting and intricate blend of vocal harmonies, progressive rock elements, and metal tendencies. Their often spiritual and introspective lyrics for their early releases led some to classify them in the genre of Christian rock, as evidenced in their successful LP Faith, Hope and Love (1990), a label that the band itself has opposed. They continued to tour and release works through 2015.
The hard-hitting rock band The Union Underground formed in San Antonio in 1996. By 1999 they signed with a subsidiary of Columbia Records, and their debut, An Education in Rebellion (2000), earned praise from critics as some of the best heavy metal of the day. Their recording and performance of "Across the Nation," the theme song for World Wrestling Entertainment's RAW show from 2002 through 2006, brought the group to an even larger worldwide audience, though they broke up not long after its release.
Another metal splash occurred for the Dallas quartet Drowning Pool in 2001. The group formed in the late 1990s and toured with alternative metal bands Sevendust and Kittie while peddling their demos. Eventually they signed to a major label, and the group's debut album, Sinner (2001), went platinum on the strength of the breakout single "Bodies." The band rode the wave of stardom as a major stage act on the Ozzfest tour, but suffered a great setback with the sudden death of singer Dave Williams in August 2002. The band continued to tour and record, however, and had issued three albums, each with different lead vocalists, through 2007. They released a live album, Loudest Common Denominator, in 2009. By 2014 Drowning Pool had released a total of five albums and also released Sinner, an expanded two-disc reissue of their debut album including bonus tracks.
In the 2000s Texas rock remained a powerful force in the music industry. The late King Curtis (born Curtis Ousley) of Fort Worth was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of rock's most talented and influential sidemen. He played tenor sax on recordings by the Coasters, Aretha Franklin, Sam and Dave, John Lennon, and countless others.
Texas musical groups and solo artists that emerged in the 2000s covered a broad spectrum of genres as well as cultural influences. Los Lonely Boys consists of brothers Henry, Jojo, and Ringo Garza of San Angelo. Their music, named "Texican Rock and Roll," draws from an amalgamation of rock-and-roll, blues, country, and conjunto. Their debut single "Heaven" in 2004 was a Top 40 hit and reached the top of the Billboard adult contemporary chart. It won a Grammy in 2005 for Best Pop Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.
Black Angels, a heavy psych group from Austin, originated in 2004 and represented a new generation of rockers influenced by early Texas psychedelic bands such as Red Krayola and the 13th Floor Elevators. The proverbial students teamed with the master, so to speak, when the Black Angels performed with Roky Erickson in 2008.
The Wichita Falls band Bowling for Soup, considered pop punk, produced a Billboard Top 40 hit with their cover of "1985" in 2004. Over the next decade they continued to record and tour. They announced a UK farewell tour for 2013, but apparently reconsidered the finality of those travels and later scheduled a return to the UK for a tour in early 2016.
The television sensation American Idol discovered a dynamic performer from Fort Worth in its first-season winner, Kelly Clarkson, in 2002. Lauded for her powerful voice, Clarkson won a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance in 2005. The singer had released five albums by 2012. Her fourth album, All I Ever Wanted, debuted at Number 1, and her single, "My Life Would Suck Without You" quickly reached Number 1 both in the United States and United Kingdom. She won a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album for Stronger (2011) and was ranked by Billboard as the fourteenth-best-selling artist of the 2000s.
The Simpson sisters, Jessica and Ashlee, both achieved considerable recognition in the pop world. Jessica Simpson of Abilene was a pop star and actress in the early 2000s, though in 2008 she delved into country music. Her younger sister Ashlee, born in Waco, won the Billboard Award for New Female Artist of the Year in 2004.
Annie Clark, a singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who grew up in Dallas, received critical acclaim after the release of her debut album Marry Me in 2007. The musician, who performs under the name St. Vincent, won the PLUG Independent Music Female Artist of the Year award in 2008 and released her second album, Actor, worldwide in 2009. Her third album, Strange Mercy, hit Number 19 on the Billboard 200 in 2011. Her fourth solo album, titled St. Vincent (2014), won a Grammy for Best Alternative Album.
The Mars Volta was formed in 2001 in El Paso by Omar Rodríguez-Lopez and Cedric Bixler-Zavala. The group's fusion of progressive rock, jazz, punk, and Salsa attracted attention in the rock world. They won an ASCAP Vanguard Award in 2004 and have toured with System of a Down and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Rolling Stone proclaimed them 2008's Best Prog-Rock Band, and that same year their fourth album The Bedlam of Goliath debuted at Number 3 on the Billboard 200. The Mars Volta won a Grammy for Best Hard Rock Performance in 2009 for their song "Wax Simulacra." They disbanded by 2013. One of the group’s original members, Isaiah “Ikey” Owens, died of a heart attack in October 2014.
Texas rock-and-roll at the dawn of the new millennium continued to bring both veteran favorites and fresh faces, all classified under the broad umbrella of rock music. Veteran musician Delbert McClinton still toured heavily. Guitarists Eric Johnson, Jimmie Vaughan, and Van Wilks, as well their inspired protégés such as brothers Charlie and Will Sexton, participated in a vibrant scene. ZZ Top still appeared before packed audiences worldwide. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame continued to recognize the important contributions of Texans to rock-and-roll through the inductions of Freddie King in 2012 and Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble in 2014. The strength of Texas rock-and-roll also lies in the many regional and road bands playing at venues across the state. With the proliferation of home recording studios and the marketing exposure enabled by social media, YouTube, digital downloads, and live streaming on the Internet, Texas rock-and-roll bands have increasing opportunities to present their music to new audiences. | ||||
4334 | dbpedia | 1 | 52 | https://dctheaterarts.org/2018/09/20/review-ann-hampton-callaway-the-linda-ronstadt-songbook-at-feinsteins-54-below/ | en | Review: ‘Ann Hampton Callaway: The Linda Ronstadt Songbook’ at Feinstein’s/54 Below | [
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] | 2018-09-20T00:00:00 | A recurrent feature at Feinstein’s/54 Below, Ann Hampton Callaway is best known to cabaret audiences for her sophisticated pop/jazz stylings and to TV viewers for the iconic theme song she […] | en | DC Theater Arts | https://dctheaterarts.org/2018/09/20/review-ann-hampton-callaway-the-linda-ronstadt-songbook-at-feinsteins-54-below/ | A recurrent feature at Feinstein’s/54 Below, Ann Hampton Callaway is best known to cabaret audiences for her sophisticated pop/jazz stylings and to TV viewers for the iconic theme song she wrote and performed for the sit-com series “The Nanny” (starring Fran Drescher). This week, the Platinum Award-winning artist returns to the cabaret stage for three nights with the world premiere of her latest celebration of popular American music, Ann Hampton Callaway: The Linda Ronstadt Songbook, and it’s a rousing addition to her repertoire.
The show traces the growth and breadth of Ronstadt’s career through a set of fifteen of her familiar songs, interspersed with background information and contextualization from her 2013 autobiography Simple Dreams: A Musical Memoir and from personal exchanges with Callaway, who also adds her own engaging comments and direct interactions with the audience in the intimate nightclub space. The selection reveals a decidedly feminist perspective on the challenges of love (changing the rules on what would have traditionally been men’s songs), but it’s a universal theme that anyone who’s ever been in love, or fallen too hard or fast for the wrong person, can relate to and appreciate, as Callaway points out to both the men and the women in attendance. Judging by the reaction, everyone agrees.
Opening with a rocking rendition of “Different Drum” – Ronstadt’s breakout hit of 1967, recorded with her band the Stone Poneys – and then shifting to the bittersweet mood of “Long, Long Time,” the damning attitude of “You’re No Good,” the emotional devastation of “Tracks of My Tears,” “Poor, Poor Pitiful Me,” and “When Will I Be Loved?,” and the haunting anguish of “Desperado” from the singer’s pop/rock years, her heartfelt “songs of longing” showcase Callaway’s powerful voice and empathetic delivery. The show also includes such unforgettable classics as “Am I Blue” (with some skillful scatting) and poignant duets with Musical Director Billy Stritch on “Don’t Know Much” and “Somewhere Out There,” from Ronstadt’s trilogy of albums with Nelson Riddle in the 1980s.
The eclectic song list not only spotlights the variety of Ronstadt’s taste in music, but also Callaway’s own impressive range of styles and signature jazz-infused vocals. What Callaway observes about Ronstadt – “there’s nothing she can’t sing” – applies equally well to her, as she pays homage to the singer and her songs, while giving them her own personal flavor. Whether you’re a fan of Ronstadt, or of pop music, rock-and-roll, American standards, or jazz classics, there’s something for everyone in Callaway’s versatile selection and appealing performance, backed by a splendid four-piece band (with Stritch on piano, Tim Horner on drums, Martin Wind on bass, and Ronstadt’s long-time musician and arranger Bob Mann on guitar).
You have two more chances to catch the debut of Ann Hampton Callaway: The Linda Ronstadt Songbook this weekend, and you can look forward to seeing the acclaimed singer again when she returns to Feinstein’s/54 Below in October, with another tribute to legendary female vocalists in Ann Hampton Callaway: Diva Power.
Running Time: Approximately 75 minutes, without intermission. | |||||
4334 | dbpedia | 0 | 49 | https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/rockin-and-rollin-at-the-palestra-541022/ | en | Rockin’ and rollin’ at the Palestra | [
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] | 2022-11-10T22:13:31+00:00 | Musical giants from Simon & Garfunkel, Ray Charles, and the Grateful Dead to Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen have played at Rochester’s iconic gymnasium. | en | News Center | https://www.rochester.edu/newscenter/rockin-and-rollin-at-the-palestra-541022/ | Musical giants from Simon & Garfunkel, Ray Charles, and the Grateful Dead to Bonnie Raitt and Bruce Springsteen have played at Rochester’s iconic gymnasium.
Since the Louis Alexander Palestra opened in 1930 on the University of Rochester’s River Campus, it has been home to more than 30 All-American student-athletes and one national champion—the 1990–91 Yellowjackets men’s basketball team.
In 2016, it was named one of the top 125 basketball arenas in the nation by the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame—an impressive accomplishment, considering there are more than 300 Division I men’s programs.
The Palestra also has hosted famous speakers such as Hillary Clinton, Colin Powell, Maya Angelou, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. George Carlin and the Smothers Brothers performed standup comedy there.
But the Palestra also has been a concert mecca, with some of the greatest names in modern music history taking its stage. Solo acts like Ray Charles, Judy Collins, and Billy Joel. Duos like Simon & Garfunkel and Hall & Oates. And groups like the Temptations, the Grateful Dead, and the Ramones.
“The Palestra was just a great concert venue,” says Jeffrey Newcorn ’73, ’77M (MD), who reviewed a few shows for the Campus Times, the College’s student newspaper, as an undergraduate. “It was big enough to hold a large show but also intimate. We loved it.”
Here’s a look at some of the famous—and those who weren’t yet famous—musical acts who have played at the Palestra.
(photos provided by University Archives, unless otherwise credited)
Kingston Trio
October 22, 1959
The Kingston Trio helped launch a folk revival in the late 1950s and scored a No. 1 hit in 1958 with “Tom Dooley.” On October 22, 1959, the trio of Dave Guard, Nick Reynolds, and Bob Shane played to a sold-out Palestra, their catchy tunes bolstered by a new, $500 sound system paid for by the Social and Traditions Committee that helped eliminate echoes and distortions throughout the building.
Ray Charles
November 8, 1963
This concert, two weeks before the assassination of President Kennedy, was the Social and Traditions Committee’s most expensive to date, costing $5,000 (about $47,000 in today’s dollars), with tickets selling for less than $3. The Palestra was packed, and the committee made a profit of $900. Nicknamed “The Genius” for combining blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, and gospel music, Charles remarked to committee cochair Hayward Paul ’64, that he enjoyed “the warm, enthusiastic, and controlled” crowd. He would return to the Palestra for another sellout show on November 3, 1966, backed by the female group the Raelets.
Simon & Garfunkel
April 5, 1968
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel performed before a packed Palestra one day after the assassination of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. They opened with “Mrs. Robinson” from the hit movie The Graduate, which had been released just three months earlier. Other hits followed—”The Sound of Silence,” “America,” “Feelin’ Groovy,” and more—and the duo performed two encores. “If it’s possible to give sitting ovations after each song, then this deed was done,” wrote Campus Times reviewer Jan Zuckerman ’71.
Judy Collins
February 29, 1968
Judy Collins’s performance at the Palestra came in the aftermath of the Tet Offensive—a major turning point in the Vietnam War in which an increasing share of the American public came to believe it had been misled about the duration and human costs of the war. The folk singer performed about 20 numbers, including an antiwar song called “La Colombe”, which Collins said was “dedicated to the boy who was to turn 18, like many other boys whose birthdays are coming up soon.” The somber opening lyrics set the tone:
Why all these bugles crying
For squads of young men drilled
To kill and to be killed
Stood waiting by this train?
Dionne Warwick
October 10, 1968
Although Warwick performed a beautiful rendition of “One Hand, One Heart” from West Side Story, which transitioned into “What The World Needs Now Is Love.” Campus Times reviewer Ray Singer found her performance “disappointing.” He wrote that Warwick “tried, but her voice strained and occasionally cracked.” Singer noted that Warwick shone, however, while singing “Always Something There to Remind Me.”
Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
November 1, 1968
The smooth quartet from Detroit wowed the crowd with hits such as “Tracks of My Tears,” “I Second That Emotion,” and “Ooo Baby Baby.” But it was their rendition of “The Look of Love”—the first time they had ever performed the Burt Bacherach number live—that drew the loudest cheers. Three photographers took countless shots of the show for possible use on the group’s next album (alas, Rochester did not make the cut).
Blood, Sweat & Tears
February 20, 1969
The blues-rock band had performed on the popular Ed Sullivan Show the week before and had recently released the album Blood, Sweat & Tears, with hits such as “You’ve Made Me So Very Happy” and “Spinning Wheel.” The recording would reach number one on the charts and be named Album of the Year at the 1970 Grammy Awards. Six months later, the band would enjoy headliner status at the legendary Woodstock music festival.
Peter, Paul and Mary
April 11, 1969
The legendary folk trio turned in a masterful performance, singing hits such as “If I Had a Hammer,” “Blowin’ in the Wind,” and “Puff the Magic Dragon.” As Daniel Smirlock ’72 wrote in the Campus Times, “They put on a show so entertaining and so vital—yet so unlike the majority of concerts today—that it suddenly became 1960 instead of 1969.”
The concert kicked off what the newspaper called a “miracle weekend” for students, with a rising comedian performing the following evening at the Auditorium Theater in downtown Rochester. The comedian was Bill Cosby.
(photo provided by Scott Brande ’72)
B.B. King
September 19, 1970
More than 3,500 people showed up—perhaps the largest gathering at the Palestra to date—on a hot Saturday evening, and the heat inside forced King to take a 10-minute break. The blues legend dedicated “Please Accept My Love” to his late friend, Jimi Hendrix, whose untimely death had taken place just the day before. Hendrix, King said, “made a lot of us very happy while he was alive.” The crowd was still stomping and shaking the floor when the house lights were turned on. “The gym floor seemed to take abuse equal to 750,000 basketball games,” the Campus Times noted.
The Grateful Dead
November 20, 1970
In what possibly is the most memorable concert in Palestra history, the Grateful Dead rocked the building with a concert that lasted until 3:30 a.m. and had fans screaming for more. After the second set, it was announced that “some friends from across town” had joined the party. Jefferson Airplane—like the Dead, a San Francisco Bay Area-based band—had been playing two miles away at the Community War Memorial. After their show ended, guitarists Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady learned the Dead were still playing and headed to the Palestra.
Freelance photographer Peter Corrigan remembers a “buzz passing through the crowd” after the Dead sang “Casey Jones.”
From left, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Jorma Kaukonen, and Bob Weir as members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane jam in the Palestra in 1970. (vintagerockandrollphotos.com / Peter Corrigan)
“Casady could be seen behind the Dead’s amplifiers, and when some in the crowd noticed him, (Dead guitarist) Phil Lesh began playing the opening bass line to ‘White Rabbit,’’’ Corrigan remembers. “Jorma came on stage with his guitar, did some tuning, and then they launched into the incredible jam. It was an unforgettable evening.”
Kaukonen and Casady jammed with the Dead for a few songs, including “It’s All Over Now” and “Reelin’ and Rockin,” before an excited crowd.
“It was incredible,” says Jeffrey Newcorn ’73, ’77M (MD), now a psychiatrist in Greenwich, Connecticut, who reviewed the concert for the Campus Times. “I was a Dead freak, and there they were, right on campus! It was phenomenal. And then to have members of the Airplane join them? The jam session was fantastic, just an amazing moment.”
So amazing, in fact, that Rolling Stone magazine ranked it the ninth greatest jam at a Grateful Dead concert.
The Dead would return 11 months later, on October 26, 1971. Fans waited three hours outside the Palestra and were treated to a two-and-a-half-hour show.
REO Speedwagon
December 1, 1972
Blues and rock band Canned Heat was the headliner, but it was a young group from Illinois added to the bill just two days earlier that stole the show. Long before it would become a staple on the Billboard charts with hits like “Can’t Fight This Feeling,” “Time For Me To Fly” and “Keep On Loving You,” REO wowed the Palestra crowd with what Campus Times reviewer Michael Dinhofer called “good old rock and roll.” Dinhofer noted that the band “did justice to every tune they played simply by being down to earth.”
Dave Mason
October 6, 1973
The former lead singer for Traffic played to a half-empty Palestra. “What a waste!” wrote Vincent Frank in the Campus Times. “You passed up a chance to see one of the most underrated rock performers play an evening of some of the greatest music you’d ever want to hear.”
Frank predicted Rochester students would regret the decision.
“Dave Mason won’t have to play to half-filled gyms very much longer,” he wrote. “Not if he keeps delivering such great performances.”
Frank was right. Now 76, Mason remains a popular act on tour and in 2004 was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
The Temptations
March 31, 1974
The Temptations came in fresh off their win as Favorite Soul/R&B Group at the American Music Awards six weeks earlier. Sponsored by the Black Students’ Union, the performance featured the Temptations accompanied by a Motown rhythm section and a nine-piece brass orchestra and included what the Campus Times called “a brief but intense set of about 15 of their greatest hits,” including “Can’t Get Next To You,” “Get Ready,” “The Way You Do The Things You Do,” and “My Girl.”
Peter Frampton, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel
February to November, 1976
There was arguably no greater year for concerts at the Palestra than 1976, when three budding superstars performed within a nine-month period.
Peter Frampton played before a capacity crowd of 3,000 on February 7, 1976—just one month after Frampton Comes Alive! was released. It would be the best-selling album of that year, with hits such as “Show Me The Way,” “Baby I Love Your Way,” and “Do You Feel Like I Do?”
Frampton strode onstage in a yellow outfit, looking “like a lean Roger Daltrey,” according to the Campus Times review, and performed for nearly three hours. “Frampton put on the most electrifying rock performance the Palestra has seen in years,” the Campus Times wrote.
Two months later, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band rocked the arena with another two-and-a-half-hour show on April 17. The bearded Springsteen, whom the student newspaper called “a 26-year-old rock and roll poet from New Jersey,” wore a blue suit and turned in an energetic performance, with songs such as “Thunder Road,” “Growin’ Up,” and “Born To Run.”
“Bruce Springsteen turned the Palestra into a sweat rock theater Saturday night,” the Campus Times wrote.
The 1976 trifecta was completed on November 7, when a rising star from the Bronx named Billy Joel played before 2,000 fans, a strong crowd but 500 shy of a sellout. The concert cost the UR Concert Committee $12,500, and $5,200 went to Joel and his band. The rest was used to cover production, advertising, and lighting. Tickets were $3.50 for students and $4.50 for the public. Joel played “Angry Young Man,” “Piano Man,” and “New York State of Mind” among other songs, and he made the crowd laugh with an impression of Jimmy Carter, who had been elected president of the United States just five days earlier.
“Last night at the Palestra, Mr. Joel played and sang with a fury and confidence few performers could match,” Brian Kelly wrote in the Campus Times. “After his fourth encore, Joel shook as many hands as he could grab and took a deep bow before leaving the court.”
Bonnie Raitt
March 2, 1977
Raitt gave Rochester something to talk about with a 15-song concert that included two encores and a preview of what would be her first hit: a cover of “Runaway,” the song made famous by Del Shannon in 1961. The song was included on Raitt’s sixth album, Sweet Forgiveness, which was released a month after her Palestra concert.
The Kinks
December 8, 1977; April 28, 1990
The English group was one of the most influential bands of the 1960s, and their song “You Really Got Me” reached number one on the charts in 1964. The band, led by brothers Ray and Dave Davies, played at the Palestra late in 1977 and again for Dandelion Weekend in 1990.
Hall and Oates
November 8, 1980
The popular duo opened their Saturday evening show with a rarity—John Oates on lead vocals—for “How Does It Feel To Be Back,” which had peaked at number 30 on the Billboard charts earlier that year. Other hits followed, including “Rich Girl,” “She’s Gone,” and “Sara Smile.” Campus Times reviewer John Swanson found the show “solidly entertaining” but noted that “many people considered the $7.50 ticket price too high.”
R.E.M.
April 13, 1983
The alternative rock band scored chart hits with “Losing My Religion,” “Everybody Hurts,” and “It’s the End of the World As We Know It.” But in 1983, they were just a three-year-old group struggling for success.
R.E.M. opened for The English Beat, which fused Latin, pop, soul, reggae and punk rock, as part of Dandelion Weekend. The Campus Times review was not kind: “Their biggest handicap seemed to be a lead singer (Michael Stipe) who was hard to understand in the first place and pseudo-esoteric lyrics such as ‘Gardening At Night’ in the second.”
10,000 Maniacs, Violent Femmes, The Fleshtones
February 16, 1985
It was a New Wave invasion as three bands entertained a crowd of nearly 1,900. The Fleshtones were the biggest “crowd pleasers” according to Campus Times reviewer Chris Bourne, who correctly predicted that the obscure opening act—10,000 Maniacs—had the brightest future. “(Lead singer) Natalie Merchant has great style on stage and is altogether pleasant to watch,” Bourne wrote. Four albums by 10,000 Maniacs would reach the top 50 in the US, and their 1989 hit “These Are Days” reached number one on the billboard charts.
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LISTEN: Talking with the Violent Femmes, WRUR
The Ramones
April 12, 1986
The New York City-based punk rock band put on a loud, spirited concert for nearly 2,000 fans. Many engaged in “slam dancing,” jumping in the air and running hard into other fans. The tone was set by opening act The Mosquitos, who emerged from “manhole covers” on the Palestra floor. “Creatures of every color, shape, and size crawled out,” according to the Campus Times. “Some had mohawks, others had chains, some had hair held up in the air through mysterious devices.”
The Bangles
March 31, 1989
The all-female band, with hits like “Manic Monday” and “Walk Like an Egyptian,” performed before a crowd that included hundreds of screaming teenagers. “Thanks for the nice spring evening, Rochester!” lead guitarist Vicki Peterson shouted out on a chilly evening. “We’re not really used to this since we’re from Southern California, but we’ll try our best to heat things up.”
The next day, April 1, “Eternal Flame” became the number one pop song in the US. Six months later, the Bangles broke up.
Goo Goo Dolls
October 7, 1995
The alternative band from Buffalo came to the Palestra one month after the release of their single “Name.” That song would reach number 1 on the Billboard charts and remains one of their biggest hits. The album A Boy Named Goo was released seven months earlier and was certified double platinum (two million copies sold) by year’s end.
Beck
March 29, 1997
Beck David Hansen—known simply as “Beck”—was the headliner for a triple act concert that began with Atari Teenage Riot, who took the stage at 8 p.m. “and did not stop swearing or screaming for a half hour,” Campus Times reviewer Otis Hart ’97 wrote.
They were followed by The Cardigans, who had appeared on Late Night with David Letterman the night before. They played their hugely popular song “Lovefood “(love me, love me, say that you’ll love me). At 10 p.m., Beck took the stage, just a month after winning a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Performance. “Beck was amazing,” says Anne-Marie Algier ’16W (EdD), associate dean of students at the College. “He walked through the crowd in a hooded sweatshirt when Atari Teenage Riot played, and no one knew he was there. When he returned backstage, he said, ‘These people deserve a great show, and I am going to give them all I’ve got!’”
Hart wrote: “Beck put on what might have been the best concert UR has ever held.” Algier agrees. “That was the best sounding show in that space,” she says. “Beck brought his own soundboard, and it was top of the line.”
Lifehouse, Michelle Branch, The Calling
September 23, 2001
A trio of rising acts played the Palestra just 12 days after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Lifehouse had a big hit with “Hanging By A Moment,” which peaked at number two on the Billboard Top 100 that June. Branch’s “Everywhere” was climbing the charts and would peak at 12 on Billboard’s Top 100 that November. The video from the song won the 2002 MTV Video Music Awards “Viewer’s Choice Award.”
Janelle Monáe
October 1, 2011
The multi-talented singer, songwriter, science fiction author, and actress came to the Palestra just a year after winning an MTV Video Music Award. She would go on to earn eight Grammy Award nominations and win the Billboard Women in Music Rising Star Award in 2015. | |||||
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] | 1975-03-27T12:00:00+00:00 | Linda Ronstadt: Heartbreak on Wheels. The singer-songwriter's life on the road, looking for love in all the wrong places | en | Rolling Stone | https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/linda-ronstadt-heartbreak-on-wheels-172427/ | Linda Ronstadt arrived in Honolulu, drowsy and a little on the dowdy side, in a red rock T-shirt, blue Lee overalls and sandals. Her hair was a postflight brunette tangle, with a string of gray here and there. On the eve of one of her favorite holidays — St. Valentine’s — she was Number One on the pop charts with her album, Heart like a Wheel, and her single, “You’re No Good.” The flip, “I Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love with You,” was in the Top Five, meantime, on the country charts. And after the show tomorrow night at the Waikiki Shell her latest tour would be over, pau, as they say here.
At the gate, before she’d even had a chance to rub her eyes, the local concert promoter, a young, earnest-looking Korean named William Kim, stepped up and greeted her: “I’m here to give you your first lei,” he cracked. A photographer maneuvered into position. Ronstadt blinked her eyes and backed off. She turned to Peter Asher, her manager. “What is this crap all about?” she asked. Finally, properly introduced, she accepted the lei and allowed herself to be pecked on the cheek — but not to be photographed. As she climbed the steps of a Wiki bus headed for Baggage Claim, she turned to Asher again. “Was that rude?” she asked.
The day before, in Hollywood, Linda was reconsidering something she had said in an interview for the book, Rock ‘n Roll Woman — that she was basically an unhappy person. That was in early 1974, shortly after the release of Don’t Cry Now, an album that had taken over a year, some $150,000 and three producers (not counting herself) to complete. Now, she had her first hit single since 1970’s moderate success, “Long Long Time.” She was about to finish a smooth and successful tour, a five-week run that showed off a more musically assured Ronstadt than ever. And in Peter Asher she seemed to have found an astute manager and a compassionate, trustworthy producer. Could she possibly still be unhappy?
Well . . . yes. “I’m more confused than ever about that,” she said. “I went through an intensely happy period for about six months, and then it changed, real fast, last summer and that’s when I got fat.” She wailed, as if betrayed: “I went, ‘Oh, no! It’s all a lie!'”
Editor’s picks
Away from the album covers, Ronstadt still has an open, Sally Fields-cute, country-cousin appearance (with a shape she describes as approximating “a fire hydrant”). At age 28, she often looks, acts and sounds like a little girl. To punctuate unpleasant thoughts or flashes of guilt or excitement, the wide eyes widen, the comic-strip perfect lips stretch out in dumbfounded anxiety, and the voice revs up, sometimes getting loud and strident. Now, she is quiet, reasoned:
“I don’t know, I may be just an unhappy person forever. I’m very dissatisfied with everything. I’m hard to please and very restless, so it’s always a battle between that and my real deep desire to have a home and roots, which is a kind of contentment which is beyond description when you find it. And I’ve only had glimpses of it.”
For her body, Ronstadt joined a health club in Los Angeles and went through a rigorous program of running seven miles a day. For her head, she has been seeing a psychiatrist for the last six months. “I think it’s helped,” she said, “but I’m getting restless about that now, too. I do everything for about six months, then I go, ‘Pfft — next!‘
“I had to start going because I couldn’t perform. I just felt very alienated. I would stand onstage and look at the audience, and they would appear dehumanized to me; they weren’t human beings and I wasn’t a human being and I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be there to hear it. I didn’t have anything to say to anybody, and I found it very difficult to concentrate. But it’s changed; I don’t feel that way anymore.” She shifted around in the sofa.
“It’s harder, though. There are more people looking at me and people come up and say, ‘Gee, you’re dada-dada-da!’ and I don’t like that. I feel dehumanized and sort of insulted. People intimidate me like mad, so I try to be as polite as I can be and stay as withdrawn as I can. But very often I come off rude.”
Onstage at the Waikiki Shell, Linda Ronstadt was reserved; she made only a brief mention of Valentine’s Day. She wore her standard tour apparel: blouse tied at the waist and blue jeans. No lei. She barely moved onstage, holding the mike stand with both hands and allowing her hips to sway on the fast numbers only as much as a tapping foot seemed to require. Still, when it got down to the singing, she checked in strong and clear. The little girl has always been a woman in song, but now the powerful voice is more controlled; Linda is able to express multiple emotions in a single phrase, snarling out one word and crying another in “I Can’t Help It if I’m Still in Love with You.” Hot-pointed anger and heartbroken concession all at once. Despite a lingering flu, her control of falsetto and of the mid-glide up from falsetto back to chest voice was remarkable.
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But some in the crowd were not there for musical appreciation. One fan tossed a heart-shaped box of chocolates to her in midsong and it startled her. “I thought it was a bomb,” she said with a decided lack of diplomacy after inspecting the contents. And, as she began a fragile number, “Keep Me from Blowing Away,” she was suddenly faced with a large blond man who’d swayed his way up to the stage apron, then somehow vaulted up onto the stage. Just as he was getting a good look at Linda — who kept singing — a security guard caught up with him and Ronstadt’s stage manager hauled the young man backwards off the stage and back onto earth. For the next minute, the dazed man was shuffled, pushed and dragged around while members of the audience yelled for the authorities to leave him alone. Ronstadt stayed at the mike, trying to concentrate on the song, eyes intently focused somewhere above the audience in the trees and the carbon blue skies. After the song, she attempted to shrug it off: “Looks like ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ here tonight,” she said. But after the show she was torn. Sure, she was frightened by the hulk. “He looked so scary. He was just there all of a sudden. He looked like a gorilla. You never know what anyone might do to you. But, boy, I felt bad for him ’cause he was obviously so loaded. And I heard his head, it went crack against that floor . . .” She shuddered and groaned. “I went, ‘Ohh, no . . .’
“But I also felt I didn’t want him up on the stage.”
It is not a happy Valentine’s Day for Linda Ronstadt. In Hollywood, she had stayed up late with Peter and Betsy Asher making a valentine for Albert Brooks who was in the studio finishing up a new album. But here in Waikiki, she watched a couple walking in front of her, holding hands, and she pined away for Brooks. “Oh, I don’t have anybody to kiss me,” she complained. At night’s end, she disappeared, alone, into a Sheraton elevator.
Linda Ronstadt was always a lover. She learned about the birds and the bees, the boys and the girls, at age seven from a cousin who was one year older. In junior high in Tucson, Arizona, she started dressing up sexy. “I was trying to be Brigitte Bardot,” she said. In rebellion against the nuns at the school — St. Peter and Paul — she went “boy crazy.” At Catalina High, she went out with older men, among them a steel guitar enthusiast with whom she left town at age 18. In Los Angeles, she sought a career in music and became the object of attention — the kind that led to too many wrong relationships, too many years of hating her own records and concerts, too many sad songs to sing and, today, to a still uncertain Linda Ronstadt.
Welcome to the top of the pops.
Our stay with Linda began in Berkeley, where she had given a concert. We would hit Davis, near Sacramento, for two shows at the University of California campus there; Bakersfield, 300 miles away, for one show and Tucson for two hometown concerts. After a few days’ rest in L.A., the tour would end in Honolulu.
Linda — and most of her band — are afraid of flying and most of the tour had been by bus. On the eastern swing, just finished, they had rented Hank Williams Jr.’s custom vehicle, called “The Cheatin’ Heart Special,” with nine bunk beds and plenty of room for playing cards. Now the group was making do with the largest mobile home they could find. There was one long seat up front, two bunks built into overhead shelves and two tables, one front, one rear, with a kitchenette between them. There would be little sleeping, but lots of blackjack, with stakes constantly reaching serious proportions (“Last game,” Linda said, “they all owed each other their houses”). Linda would join the table on another trip, but for now she was content to chat and work on a sweater for Albert in cream and jade heather colors.
Linda talked freely, with a bright, winsome manner, and began to reveal herself. Her father, Gilbert, 63, of Mexican and German descent (Ronstadt is a German name), is a musician, a guitarist and a singer who has sung informally with mariachi bands on visits to Mexico. He also crafts jewelry, and now runs Ronstadt Hardware (“Established in 1888”) in downtown Tucson. It was Pop who exposed her to music other than her early Sixties staples: folk music and rock, “especially the Beach Boys.” Her father, she said, is “into melodies, and he made me listen to Peggy Lee and Billie Holiday . . . ” Her sister kept Hank Williams records on all day long until Linda was hooked. Now, she lists Williams, along with Ray Charles, Sam Cooke, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye among her favorite male singers. She’s also listening now to Sinatra. “Those Nelson Riddle arrangements are so sensitive . . .” And George Jones and Tammy Wynette, recently split. “I saw him singing ‘Grand Tour’ on television and I sat there and cried like a housewife,” said Linda. “He’s one of my heroes.”
She talked about love. People commit suicide without it, she offered. “I was reading about a study that showed people did it because they couldn’t make an intimate connection with another human being. You need that — or else it’s religion or drugs. I could never handle religion. And drugs — there’s no way out of that.” She resorted to plenty of cocaine she said, during the Neil Young tour of early 1973 when she had to face 15,000 Neil Young freaks as an opening act, often as a last-minute booking and an unwelcome surprise for impatient Youngies. “I had to have my nose cauterized twice — I think they shot sodium nitrate up there — I’m okay now. I don’t put anything up my nose anymore, except occasionally my finger.” She looked at my notebook and winced, disgusted with herself.
On Highway 80, just south of Fairfield, the bus broke down and required a half-hour stop, but Linda wasn’t disturbed. She talked about Led Zeppelin. “Andrew Gold from the band is indoctrinating me,” she said. “Their stuff is like insect music to me. I can’t listen for a long time without getting a headache, but I’m getting to understand it.” A little later she asked a question of no one in particular: “What’s Plant look like? That’s such a great name for someone who sings like that.”
A few other men’s names popped up: Governor Jerry Brown, comedian Steve Martin, Little Feat’s Lowell George, songwriter Tom Campbell. They’ve all been boyfriends — excepting the new governor of California. “We just went out a couple of times,” she said. “There was no romance. I met him at Lucy’s in L.A. — they have the greatest enchiladas — he was secretary of state and thinking about campaigning. And then he called me later and asked for me to help in his campaign. I said, look, I don’t know anything; I’m the worst. I don’t watch TV; I just read what I want to read about. I said, please, I’m in no position, I can’t even be responsible for my own vote and I still feel that way.” Did she vote for him? “I didn’t vote last election ’cause I was at the fat farm . . . ” She is betting Andrew Gold $200 that she can best him to a 15 pound weight loss inside of two months. Gold, the eclectic member of an all-eclectic band, appears trim, but Linda knows better. “You should see him with his clothes off,” she said. “He looks like a 12-year-old around the shoulders, and about 40 years old with his belly.” Anyway, she will begin her diet in earnest today. But her first stop, on arrival at the hotel in Davis, was the coffeeshop where she watched pies revolving in a display case.
After the soundcheck, she returned to the hotel and placed a call to Brown, who invited her to breakfast and a tour of the old governor’s mansion the next morning. But the group’s schedule would not allow the visit.
The first show in Davis went well, but she called for another quick soundcheck and some unhappiness with the monitors was quickly taken care of. Backstage, Linda shared her upstairs dressing room with the band, and the music of Roger McGuinn and his band was barely audible. Nostalgia . . . and a sense of irony . . . pervaded the group. There were quick nods and tributes from the band members — several of whom are on their first tour of any substance — to the man who introduced them all to folk rock . . . who tonight was their opening act. But they didn’t dwell on rock & roll’s roller coaster. In fact, after a round of “Many Rivers to Cross,” most of the attention in the room was given to yo-yos.
Don Francisco, the drummer, had invited a buddy from his hometown, Pensacola, Florida, to the Davis shows, and the friend, a jaunty, chubby, curlyhaired 33-year-old named Paul Lybrand, happened to be the Duncan Yo-Yo champion of America. Champ, in fact, since 1972. Duncan pays him to tour the country nine months a year, doing promotional exhibitions at schools. He brought along a brown paper sack full of yo-yos. Linda had watched him spin through a series of neat tricks in front of the food table and decided to let him do a spot during her own set. Now, in the dressing room, the band and road managers and crew members were throwing the yo-yos in all directions while Linda sat and knitted.
Peter Asher laughed. “As soon as we offered him the gig, he went out to his car and got his jacket — this red blazer with the yo-yo champion emblem on it.” The laughter is just short of deprecating. But short.
At the five-minute cue to go backstage, Linda called out, “Ten more stitches,” completed them and moved easily to the mirror, where she knotted her blouse at the navel — “Not to make me look sexier,” she said. “I want to look thinner” — and put on some light makeup.
The show was, again, smooth. During the Dolly Parton number, “I Will Always Love You,” a nervous Paul Lybrand, in his championship jacket, rehearsed furiously backstage, Walking the Dog, bending down to let the yo-yo do the Creeper, snapping the string to form the Man on the Flying Trapeze. This would be a high point in 25 years of yo-yoing. Onstage, he came through with a tight, five-trick set that lasted only 50 seconds, with Gold and Francisco offering support on piano and drums. The crowd had greeted him with freak-show laughter, but wound up whooping and hollering. Lybrand did Duncan proud.
The show ended with Linda soothing the audience with the ballad, “Heart like a Wheel,” accompanied only by Gold on the piano. The crowd, up for the last two numbers — “You’re No Good” and a razzle-dazzle reading of “Heat Wave” — stayed up and paid attention.
And it’s only love and it’s only love
That can break a human being
And turn him inside out
Up near the stage, the audience looked like an assembly of kids getting a light scolding; moustache-fingering thoughtful, as if listening to a eulogy. Linda Ronstadt is no longer just a slice of country pie.
In the mobile home on the way back to the hotel, the entire band was up front, playing around with a scat sing of the instrumental parts of Led Zeppelin’s “Dancing Days.” Ed Black, a blond baby-faced guitarist, stood by the screen door and Ronstadt looked up from her knitting bag, pleased. “This is just like a family in a house,” she said.
The band is Andrew Gold on piano, guitar and vocals; Kenny Edwards, a former Stone Poney along with Linda, on bass and vocals; Dan Dugmore on pedal steel and rhythm guitars; Ed Black on pedal and lead guitar and occasional piano and Don Francisco on drums. It is a friendly, tourtightened unit, one of Linda’s best. Gold and Edwards had worked behind Wendy Waldman, a longtime friend of Linda’s from Tucson days. The two men had also formed a rock band and opened for Ronstadt at a McGovern benefit at the Daisy in Hollywood. Edwards, an affable sort, a kind of cross between Elliott Gould and Fred MacMurray, is not at all uneasy about his return to the Ronstadt fold. When he split from the Stone Poneys, it was because he wanted to rock, while the Poneys’ leader, Bob Kimmel, wrote mostly folkie, Pentangled material. Now, he is rocking. Francisco is another whose face reminds of others — in his case, Richard Greene and Roger Daltrey come to mind. Francisco is a former history and geography teacher and barker at a topless joint in San Francisco. He was hired for the band late last year, just before the tour. Dan Dugmore is also a recent addition, joining after a tour with John Stewart. Ed Black, a former guitar teacher, met Linda almost four years ago on the road, when he was with Goose Creek Symphony. A half year later, he got a call and his first assignment was to overdub one note for the Linda Ronstadt album — the last steel guitar note on “I Fall to Pieces” — originally played, live, by Sneaky Pete at the Troubadour.
Over the course of her solo career, Linda Ronstadt has been understandably wary about her backup groups. For one thing, she felt inadequate — she didn’t know how to talk in musical terms, she said and couldn’t give effective orders. For another: “Backing up a girl wasn’t cool at all. They didn’t want to do that. They wanted to be rock & rollers and have this sexual identity they get by being up onstage with their guitars.”
The extreme example occurred in 1972, when she hired Glenn Frey and Don Henley, now Eagles. “I knew Glenn was a temporary thing,” she said. “I knew he was going to be a star the minute I met him, he was such a hot shot. I loved him. When Glenn met Don, they wanted to form a band right away.”
The current backup men also have aspirations (in fact, Gold has signed an artist contract with Asylum Records), but they seem to have a sense of duty. Francisco, before his audition, got a tip that Ronstadt liked, more than anything, a good back beat with emphasis on the high hat, the snare and the bass. “And that’s exactly what I play.”
“She doesn’t like complicated licks,” said Black. Dugmore completed the thought: “It’s understandable. You’re trying to showcase the song and the singer, not the band.”
Sitting around the front of the bus while Linda played blackjack, Black, Francisco and Dugmore also seemed uniformly devoted to Linda as a person. Were they ever tempted to advance beyond a professional relationship?
Nervous laughter.
Black spoke first. “There’ve been a couple of instances of more than a musical thing,” he said, “but I don’t care to go into it.” He slowed down, and added: “You know.” Francisco confessed: “At the outset I had amorous designs — a straight-out crush. But then I got to know her as a friend . . . ” Which would not have stopped me, I was going to say, but I was interviewing them. Dugmore remained silent. “He’s married,” said Black, “so he has to watch out.” More nervous laughter.
On the road to Bakersfield, Ronstadt talked some more about drugs. She has taken just about every drug around, she said in answer to a question. But she’s given up almost every one. Grass once made her hands swell, she said. Cocaine made her “feel terrible. And I also can’t take opiates,” Nor can she drink. A steady diet of gin, she said, made her dizzy and she thought she had vertigo. Other drinks gave her skin rashes. She tried heroin “once or twice, but it’s not for me.” She can take speed and declared Methedrine her only remaining vice. “But it makes me sneeze too much. But the fat farm [actually the Ashram, in Los Angeles, affiliated with Ronstadt’s now defunct health club] taught me that running does the same thing speed does, and it doesn’t make you feel bad, so now I run whenever I can.”
Her current obsession is food. And, between mouthfuls of a burrito from a roadside burger stand, she expressed a desire to kick, for professional reasons: “I can sing better after shooting smack in both arms than after eating too much,” she said.
Linda turned to a man-on-the-street question feature from the San Francisco Chronicle. The question was, “Do you like hairy girls?” Ronstadt: “Jackson [Browne] and J.D. [Souther] aren’t hairy. I like furry men. Albert’s hairy.” She brightened. “You can cling to him and slide all around. He’s just like a human teddy bear.”
The next day, the day of the Bakersfield concert, the Los Angeles Times‘s review of Linda’s concert at the Music Center was out; it was a rave, headlined: “A Triumph for Linda Ronstadt.” The show had ended with Maria Muldaur joining in on “Heart like a Wheel.” Linda slowly read the review and looked up at Asher with only one comment: “Hmm, he didn’t say anything about Maria.”
Bakersfield was where Ronstadt lost her temper, something her friends say she has learned to keep in check in recent years. Onstage, she is easily distracted by exploding flashbulbs. At Bakersfield Civic Auditorium, the stage is only a foot or two high and the front row is only the width of an aisle away from the edge of the stage. After the opener, “Colorado,” Linda asked that all flash pictures be taken during the second song, “That’ll Be the Day.” But one man in the front row either didn’t hear or didn’t want to hear Ronstadt’s request and he kept shooting away. On the instrumental break of “Silver Threads and Golden Needles,” she gestured for him to quit — and he didn’t.
Last time she got really mad, Linda tried kicking in a door and broke her leg. Before that, she heaved a wax candle at a loudmouthed customer at the Troubadour (she was in the audience, not onstage). Here in Bakersfield, she completed “Silver Threads” and hurled her tambourine, Frisbee style, at the flasher. “That was for the asshole who keeps taking flash pictures,” she said and repeated her request.
Linda recovered and rolled through the rest of the hour-long set with ease; she received, an encore call from a mostly tepid crowd. After the concert, she packed up her knitting case quickly, joked with the band and talked with Asher and crew members about the sound system. As for the tambourine incident, she was sorry — not about having thrown the instrument, but about her poor aim. “I hit some girl in the shin,” she said, and made a face that said something between “Oops” and “Yikes.”
But the show was over, and Linda was coming home.
Linda Maria Ronstadt comes from singing stock. At age three she was listening to music on the radio and begging her mother to play the ukelele. “I remember doing it in baby talk,” she said. Linda was serenaded on birthdays with a family favorite, “Las Mananitas.” Her parents frequently hosted dinner parties and invariably her father would pick up a guitar around 10:30 and family and friends would gather around for a group sing that would last till two or three in the morning. And the kids were allowed to stay up. “We’d be lying on the floor trying to hold our eye lids up,” said Linda, “but they’d let us sing along, without trying to make us perform.” Linda learned much of her music from the records of Lola Beltran, a master of the falsetto studded, rancheros style of singing.
At Tuscon International Airport Linda was greeted by brother Pete, 33, a policeman, his wife, Jackie, and two kids, Phil and Mindy. Linda was immediately the neat aunt, modestly famous, to the extent that they hear her songs and ask for the concert on the radio. “Oh,” Linda responded. “Do you still have that Snoopy radio?”
At home, Linda was greeted by her mother at the door; they had seen each other a couple of weeks ago, when Mrs. Ronstadt, known to friends as “La,” accompanied the tour through several Eastern cities, sleeping on “The Cheatin’ Heart Special” and winking at the funny-smelling smoke. “I had so much fun I forgot I was 60,” she said. Linda’s father, a fair-sized man with expansive, Cugat facial features, embraced his daughter inside, patting her three times on the ass, and gave her a gift: a gold heart on a setting of wood. Linda, suddenly the little daughter, immediately asked for a chain to go with it. Sister Suzi, 35, a housewife, brother Mike, 21, bearded and hoping to be a singer himself, and an assortment of in-laws, nephews, nieces and friends dropped by. In a quiet moment, everyone sitting around waiting for someone to talk, Mom asked: “How does it feel to be Number One, Number One and Number One?” Linda made a dunno face. “I’m not crying,” she shrugged and sat down on the carpet to listen to Phil’s singing, on tape, of “Snoopy and the Red Baron.”
The family was in a reminiscing mood and the center of the stories, of course, was number one daughter, how she, Suzi and Pete were such a dynamite group in the folkie days, playing Tucson parties, pizza joints and, one time, a bra and girdle sale downtown. “Linda had a solo spot,” said Suzi. “She sang things like ‘The Trees They Do Grow High.’ She was so cute and little, and she wore a black dress with a string of pearls.” Bob Kimmel, the Stone Poney who played bass for the Ronstadts on occasion, remembered Linda at age 14: “She had a phenomenal voice. The quality of it, the characteristic Linda Ronstadt sound, was there.'”
On the way in from the airport, Linda had casually told Pete: “We’re not doing ‘Silver Threads’ and ‘I Can’t Help It’ too well. You wanna sing with us?” And Pete, who’d effectively killed the family act when he decided to join the force, casually replied: “Sure. In fact, we’ve worked up some la-las for ‘Keep Me from Blowing Away.'”
At the house, the three, plus Mike, worked out parts for the Hank Williams classic, while La sat at a distance, smoking and making requests for “So Fine.” At the soundcheck at the Tucson Music Center, the band seemed happy to step back and make way for the family. The harmonies, onstage that evening, were difficult to hear — the sister is a little mike shy, and all three were unaccustomed to electric backing. But what was audible was pleasant, as it was at the house. If Pete hadn’t become a cop, it could very well have been Linda and the Ronstadts.
It was late by the end of two shows, but the Ronstadts had planned a party for the band, the family and a few friends, featuring Mom’s Mexican cooking. The first little scene at the party was Peter Asher’s entrance. As soon as the timid-looking manager was pointed out to Mr. Ronstadt, Linda’s father went over, hugged him and whisked him away for a little talk. Later, everyone fed, Mr. Ronstadt accepted a guitar from Mike and began to sing a lilting Spanish song. Linda joined in on the chorus, in high harmony. On another number, with Pete taking over on guitar, Mr. Ronstadt reached out and held his younger daughter’s hand for a fleeting moment. Guests looked at each other with soft smiles. A rock & roll party, indeed . . .
Back in Los Angeles, on the eve of Hawaii, Linda recalled the family sing and, to the best of her ability, the songs. “They’re all revolutionary songs,” she said. “One was ‘El Adios del Soldado,’ a song of great heartbreak, about a soldier riding away. This guy says, ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart, I’m going off to battle, but I’ll be back tomorrow.’ And the next day, his ghost rides back.”
We were in Albert Brooks’s house, in the Hollywood Hills: nice place, white walls, lots of recording equipment. Linda moved in last Christmas but has hardly been there; her cartons are still in one room, unopened. If she and Albert stay together, they’d want another house, she said. And if they split, she’d rather not go through another packing job. Life, as always, is unsettled.
I asked about her parents’ response to her success. “They’re proud of me. I left home at 18 and they didn’t stand in my way. They thought I was too young, but they knew I wanted to sing. My father gave me $30 and he gave me this advice . . . ” Linda started to titter . . . ” which was, basically, ‘Don’t let anyone take your picture with your clothes off.’ “She laughed. “Watch out for those guys in the city.’ And he gave me a two-dollar bill with a corner torn off, which I still have.”
Linda went to Los Angeles, at the behest of Bob Kimmel, the first beatnik Linda ever ran across in Tucson. Kimmel moved to L.A. when Linda was still a senior at Catalina High. He wrote her about the L.A. music scene and invited her out. She tried a weekend during the Easter break of 1964 and sang with Kimmel at the Insomniac, a small club in Hermosa Beach (it is now a parking lot). By the time she was out of high school, Kimmel had met Ken Edwards, who hung out at the Ash Grove and picked up music from ‘the likes of Taj Mahal, Ry Cooder and saw player Larry Hagler. Later that year, Linda made the split from home and in L.A. she heard Kimmel’s plans for a group. “It was going to be five people. We had an electric autoharp and a girl singer, and we thought we were unique in the world. And it turned out the Jefferson Airplane and the Lovin’ Spoonful had beaten us.” The dream was trimmed to a trio, and one night, doing their wash and minding their business, they got discovered.
“There was a place called Olivia’s, which was an amazing soul food place down in Ocean Park [between Venice and Santa Monica]. Everybody ate there. The Doors were getting together then and they ate there. We used to do our laundry across the street, and these two guys — they were sort of would be managers — were eating lunch, and they heard us rehearsing [with Kimmel on guitar] all the way across the street, through the traffic and the dryers. They came over and — you know — ‘We’re going to make you stars.’ They took us down to see Mike Curb, who was working for Mercury, and we thought, ‘Wow, this is it!’
“But they wanted to call us the Signets; they wanted me to wear evening gowns and work in Vegas. They wanted us to make surfing music. They hired the Hondells to play on our records. We made a couple of records, ‘So Fine’ and a couple of Bobby’s tunes, and then we told them to forget it, ’cause we wanted to be called the Stone’ Poneys, and I wanted to wear this denim skirt I had.” A comic who worked at another club in Hermosa Beach stepped in and offered to get them a hoot at the Troubadour; he did, but immediately after the set he introduced her — and only her — to Herb Cohen, a folk manager and promoter. “He and Herb came and grabbed me and started to propel me out the door, and they took me to Tana’s, next door, and Kimmel wandered over eventually and I remember Herbie saying to Kimmel, ‘I don’t know whether I can get you guys a contract, but I can get your girl singer recorded,’and that was sort of the beginning. Trouble in the ranks. And I said, ‘No, no, I won’t sing without the group.'”
Without Cohen, the Poneys got a job at the Troubadour, opening for Oscar Brown Jr. “It was so demoralizing,” said Linda. “He had a band and this amazing chick he married [Jean Pace], and he got a very uptown black audience. It was such a blow to our confidence that we broke up. I moved to Venice and Kenny and I continued to play at a couple of places, but we were starving to death for two or three months. My mother sent me rent money.” When Linda heard a record by one of Herb Cohen’s acts, the Modern Folk Quartet, on the radio she thought she’d blown her chance, but called him anyway. “He tried to get me together with Frank Zappa to cut a demo. Jack Nitzsche was looking for a girl Rolling Stones kind of singer.” Ronstadt considered herself provincial at that point but she was open, she said, to “modern music.” But the matchup went nowhere, and she regrouped with the Poneys. Cohen stuck with her — and the group — and introduced them to Nick Venet, a producer who shortly after meeting the group got a job at Capitol Records.
“Capitol wanted me as a solo,” she said, “but Nick convinced them I wasn’t ready, that I would develop. It was true. I wasn’t ready, to do anything. I still wasn’t ready when I became a single.” Still, she was constantly being pushed. “I remember when we first recorded, Nick and Herbie put their arms around me, took me out in the hallway and said, ‘You realize that you’re going to be a single if you’re good.’ I still thought the situation would resolve itself, that we would develop as a group and they would see it that way.” A first album, sort of soft/folkie, We Five sounds with Linda doing lead on several cuts, flopped. The second album included a rock number pulled out by Venet called “Different Drum,” with Linda backed by four L.A. sessionplayers. Before “Drum” hit, in late 1967, Capitol sent the group out on a promotional tour. “We did things like open for Butterfield at the Cafe au Go Go — which was worse than Oscar Brown.” Linda looked sorrowful at the memory. “Here we were rejected by the hippest element in New York as lame. We broke up right after that. We couldn’t bear to look at each other.” Edwards split for India.
But the Poneys had a hit. Linda and Kimmel pulled themselves together, hired some help and toured with the Doors. “Second acts,” Linda laughed. “It’s really the pits, you know?” After the tour, Kimmel left and settled in Big Sur for a year, working as a vegetable gardener and night watchman; he now operates McCabe’s Guitar Shop in Los Angeles.
Capitol squeezed out one more album, this time with Linda and all session musicians, and called it Linda Ronstadt, Stone Poney and Friends, Vol. 3. But she was definitely on her own now — and, once again, in poverty.
“See, the Poneys were taken off the books after the second album. Since it was a hit, they made royalties off it. But I didn’t. I paid all by myself for the third album, which was expensive and it put me severely in the red by the time I started recording my first solo album. I never made any royalties until . . . well, I’ll make some at the end of this next royalty period . . . I’ll make a bunch.” Don’t Cry Now, her first album for Asylum, sold over 300,000 but royalties were swallowed up by recording costs and the advance she had received for switching over.
Her first solo album for Capitol, Home Grown, was produced by Chip Douglas and had her running through songs by Dylan, Randy Newman, John D. Loudermilk and Fred Neil. To her, it’s an easily forgotten album. So is Silk Purse, produced by Elliot Mazer in Nashville, despite the hit, “Long Long Time.”
“I hate that album,” she said. There was no hesitation in saying so. “I’m sure Elliot doesn’t think it’s very good either. I couldn’t sing then, I didn’t know what I was doing. I was working with Nashville musicians and I don’t really play country music; I play very definitely California music, and I couldn’t communicate it to them.” And the one song she liked — Gary White’s “Long Long Time” — was ignored by Capitol until L.A. radio airplay forced the label. “They released it,” said Linda, “but they told me, ‘Don’t bring us another country single.'”
Linda then met John Boylan, whose production work (especially on Rick Nelson’s record of Dylan’s “She Belongs to Me”) she liked. “I wanted someone who knew what I was trying to do and would do what I wanted. So eventually we moved in together.” Boylan became her producer and, from here on, things get a little muddy. Boylan became her former boyfriend — Linda met and moved in with J.D. Souther — and she dropped Cohen as manager. She tried for a friend, Peter Asher, but he was managing Kate Taylor and feared a conflict of interests. “Just,” said Asher, “in terms of a gig coming up that would be ideal for both, and one would have a hard decision to make.” Boylan agreed to manage her.
These shifts burdened Ronstadt through what she calls “the bleak years, when I was just grinding it out.” One of her problems, she said, was her tendency to fall into dependent, father-daughter relationships. “Herbie Cohen gave me a perspective on the music business — how it was basically all bullshit. But he was older than me — he’s 40ish now — and he intimidated me. I did everything he did and I related to him in a whiney, wimpy way. But he wasn’t a musician and couldn’t help me with the music. He had me on the road with any old kind of band, which is terrible, and if I needed a guitar player, his idea would be to call up the musician’s union.
“Boylan was more effective transmitting things, but we argued a lot; we competed enormously in the studio. I just didn’t trust him, I didn’t trust anyone then, and I was always afraid that something was going to get pulled over me. I was punch-drunk from producers. I must have been very difficult to work with.”
And Boylan was another dad-kid relationship. “I’d wake up and call him and ask, ‘Gee, what should I do today? What socks should I put on?’ It was very unhealthy, and it went on for a couple of years. And finally, in the middle of the Neil Young tour, we were just getting on each other’s nerves too much and I was turning into an idiot, and I wasn’t doing any thinking for myself, and it wasn’t right, because of course you have to make your own decisions.”
On the Young tour, in Boston, Linda ran into Kate Taylor, who told her she wasn’t working anymore and that Asher might be free. He was. Literally.
“Here I had a situation with Herbie Cohen where I was still paying commissions because I couldn’t get out of that contract — it was seven years or something horrible like that; I’m still paying him off — and Peter was really groovy. He waived commissions for a year and really worked his ass off for me.”
Linda began Don’t Cry Now with John Boylan. “I knew Peter wanted to produce it, but I was too paranoid; I was too afraid to move from another situation again. John had got me off Capitol, negotiated the deal with Asylum — I was going to make an album for Asylum, then another one for Capitol — and that’s when Peter came into the situation. I continued for a few months to try to record with John, but it was apparent our relationship had deteriorated to the point where we couldn’t work together anymore.”
She asked Asher to help on a couple of tracks (“Sail Away” and “I Believe in You”), and while they were among the best sounding, ultimately, to her, she called the sessions “disastrous” — “I had personal problems or something else was happening.” One of her better songs on the Young tour was a version of the old Betty Everett hit, “You’re No Good,” and she tried cutting it. “It was terrible,” said Asher. “I had the wrong rhythm section. They were very good, but they were playing the wrong kind of thing. We gave up.”
“Then,” Ronstadt continued, “I started rerecording everything with J.D. Souther. We were like kids in the studio, just inept, and we took a lot of time. But I learned a lot and it was worth it, almost, because it was such hard work. After that experience, I knew so much more when I went into the studio with Peter, so it was easier for me to talk to him; it wasn’t like I was a person who didn’t know how to do what she wanted to do.”
It is all finally coming together. After six years at it, she is even feeling all right about being a solo singer. “I didn’t feel at ease about it until this month,” she said. “I mean I finally feel that I’m doing okay as a singer, and that we’re doing good shows, and the band is cooking and it’s great.”
“See, my voice was always the thing I hated the most. I thought it was nasal. But I always had lousy sound systems, and I never knew I was a loud singer till this year, I never heard myself; I sang by radar. I would oversing, ruin my voice and never develop subtle nuances, or try to experiment. Being onstage was always an unpleasant experience for me.
“I always thought I was horrible. If people didn’t like me, I thought they just had good taste.” She laughed. “But I didn’t think it always had to be bad or I would’ve quit. I thought it was bad because of reasons I had to correct and I was right. What I finally did was, when I got Peter, I finished off Don’t Cry Now and two days later I had to be on the road, I had to take this band I put together real fast, with a lot of good musicians, but people who couldn’t play with each other. And Peter was looking at it, and I thought, ‘My god, he’ll think this is terrible and he’ll quit!’ That’s when I realized it was up to me; I’d have to pull it together, get up onstage and take command. And I did. I started playing guitar onstage, ’cause we needed an acoustic guitar player. I remember sitting in the dressing room rehearsing “Long Long Time” between shows, so I could go onstage and do it. And Peter was impressed that I was able to pull it off.
“The band before that was so clumsy. We’d play ballads and it sounded like elephants playing, it was so musically unrefined. And I’d feel bogus about it and couldn’t stand up onstage and say, ‘This is great music and we’re gonna lay it on you.'”
A book of the onstage wit and wisdom of Linda Ronstadt would wind up just a shade thicker than a book of Nixon’s factual statements about Watergate. We now know that the adolescent giggling is part of Linda’s character when she’s nervous or ill at ease. Also, a person is not normally stocked with a variety of giggles from which to choose for crowd-pleasing purposes. So hers is an awkward one that gets Peter Asher, for one, “empathetically squirmy.”
“Uh, it makes me uncomfortable,” he said, “because it means she’s uncomfortable. The solution is to get everything right.
“They say a pro can handle whatever happens, but the trouble with proness is: You start to get unreal and have fixed lines. To be real like Linda, you almost have to be nervous or embarrassed — or, if someone in the audience is objectionable, you have to dislike them — not necessarily throw her tambourine — but mentally, you have to.
“Joni Mitchell suffered from the same things. She’s done shows where she’s burst into tears and run off. In a sense, they’re both in the same situation, of trying to say what they think.”
But when it comes to story-telling, Joni wins, even with her giggles. Linda, without the aura and the stance of writer of the songs she sings, can come off like a babbling idiot in comparison. Recently, however, she has learned to edit herself and now her remarks about the songs she sings are illuminating and to the point.
“I knew people thought I was dumb,” she said, “and I encouraged it a lot of times, ’cause I would get onstage and be very self-conscious.” Offstage, “People would get me in situations and actually try to make me feel dumb . . . Yeah, so they’d have more control over me. Peter and Betsy, I met them in New York five years ago and they were so nice. I always do better on the East Coast, for some reason. People who I met on the East Coast thought I was neat and intelligent. People I met on the West Coast thought I was an idiot who always threw drinks around the Troubadour bar, so it was fortunate I met them on the East Coast. They moved out to Los Angeles and would invite me to parties and Peter was an intelligent person I could talk to and he would talk back to me like a person, not like somebody he wanted to ball, or somebody he thought was silly and could push around. All I needed was somebody to react to me like that.”
Peter Asher is a thin, redheaded, eyeglassed, shy sort, British and a teen idol ten years ago, the Peter of Peter and Gordon. Since then he has shied from performing — except for background bits behind the acts he has produced and managed, James Taylor and Linda Ronstadt.
Their five-year friendship, he said, has helped in the studio. “Her musical instinct and ear were exceptional and almost always right,” he said. “People in the past have tended to discount that, but I think it was because she had a hard time getting people to understand her.” Linda, he said, chose most of the songs and worked out the initial vocal arrangements on Heart like a Wheel. Instrumental arrangements were a cooperative matter among Asher, Ronstadt and Andrew Gold.
One of the few and major arguments about the album was over “You’re No Good.” Asher had resurrected the song and, with Gold, tried to come up with a guitar track. “We’d been there all night and tried a million things. Finally we built up this montage of all these guitar overdubs which we were very proud of by the end of this 12-hour thing. Linda came in the next day and didn’t like it. And for a while she actually tried having someone else [Ken Edwards] overdub something else. But in the course of listening to it several times, she completely turned around.”
Linda had heard part of Asher’s remarks, and I asked her what she didn’t like about the guitar lines.
“Oh, I thought it sounded like the Beatles,” she said. And it does. I turned back to Asher.
What about the time, in Tucson, when Linda’s father took Asher aside. What did he say?
“He said he was glad to meet me, that he was glad she was successful and thanked me. And he said he hoped she was making some money that she would keep, because she wouldn’t be doing this forever. He knows she’s never made any money in the past.”
I asked Asher for the secret of his success with Linda. “I think the thing it’s frequently attributed to is that I’m the first person who’s managed and produced her with whom, as they so delicately put it, there is a solely professional relationship. It must be a lot harder to have objective conversations about someone’s career when it’s someone you sleep with.”
Ah . . . but what about temptation? Or, as I so delicately put it, “Was Betsy ever insecure that you might fall into a relationship with Linda?”
Asher smiled. “I’ve no doubt it’s crossed her mind,” he replied. “Crossed my mind.”
I always felt I fell in love with people for neurotic reasons,” said Linda. “It’s nice to like someone who is nice to you for a change.” She likes Albert Brooks, the comedian. For once, she is not in competition with a musician/boyfriend. Based on eight months together, Ronstadt says it’s too hard to tell about him. “But he’s the nicest person I’ve known.” At a hotel in Los Angeles, after an interview, she called him to let him know she was on her way home. She baby talked to him, asking if he was smiling, even though he’d been up all night working on his album and fighting with engineers. And even though he and Linda weren’t on the best terms. “I’ll make you smile,” she cooed into the phone.
Linda doesn’t talk much about her love life, but from the songs she has chosen to sing and the stories she has told about her frustrations, I began to toy with the word “heartbreak” for her story. I told her this in Hawaii and she perked up.
“I’ve been heartbroken a lot,” she said. “That’s a key word. It’s like that John David song — ‘Faithless love, where did I go wrong/Was it telling stories in a heartbreak song . . . ‘
“When you choose to become a singer and sing about stuff like that, it means you choose a life like that. It naturally means it’ll be overbalanced in areas that don’t contribute to emotional security and continuity with anyone. It contributes to an overall person who is more paranoid and volatile; you have to stay sensitive and more vulnerable in that way and things change so fast; people like you for such strange reasons, for such untrustworthy reasons, that pretty soon you don’t know who to believe or trust.
“The weirdest things make me fall in love. Usually, it’s whatever I happen to be missing right at the moment. I can have a guy I’m in love with who has everything but one thing; then the next guy I meet has a whole lot of that one thing and I go, ‘Oh, I’m in love with him,’ but he hasn’t got any of the other things. So it’s usually very illusory.” Ronstadt emphasizes the ill.
At L.A. International, the plane to Honolulu was delayed and Linda and Peter made small talk. Bonnie Raitt needs a producer and two suggestions have come up for her comment: two producers who have worked with Linda. She dismissed both — one as too sloppy, the other as a jerk. “You should produce her,” she told Asher — “even though I might be cutting my own throat.”
They also talked about Asylum. They have begun planning an album, which the company wants ready for release in May, and if they don’t deliver, David Geffen is considering releasing a single from Don’t Cry Now. Meantime, Capitol, having already released a collection of old Stone Poneys and solo tracks under Linda’s name, is now thinking of repackaging the first and worst Poneys album under her name. Since Capitol owns the album, there is nothing to be done, but Asher hopes to stop the company from representing it as a Linda Ronstadt album. “If the Beatles had broken up and split into obscurity except Ringo,” he reasoned, “I don’t think you could put out Revolver and call it Ringo Starr.”
Trending
Speeding toward Hawaii, Peter Asher relaxed into the latest Reader’s Digest while Linda watched The Sting. Asher had already gone through Business Week, and he’d read the New Yorker at home. Seconds later, he nudged my attention and pointed to an article he’d found about a leukemia victim in Nashville. He wanted me to note the title, in romantic pink type:
“Linda’s Extraordinary Triumph and Rebirth,” it read. | |||||
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] | 2022-08-15T15:57:19+00:00 | Trailblazing Thunder Bay garden centre miles from where it started 95 years ago | en | /images/nob/favicon.ico | Northern Ontario Business | https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/generational-business/generational-business-bill-martins-nurseryland-takes-green-to-new-levels-5697860 | Bill Martin’s Nurseryland in Thunder Bay has undergone more change than most garden centres in its 95-year history. In fact, when the business started in 1927, it was perhaps in the exact opposite industry: coal.
Bill Martin Sr. was a coalman in Port Arthur (now the north part of Thunder Bay) when he decided to strike out on his own. With his horses King and Queen, a coal wagon, and a shovel, Bill Sr. founded the Martin Coal Company. He got his first loads of coal on consignment from James Murphy Coal Company, loading up on the Port Arthur docks and filling coal chutes in homes up and down the hill overlooking Lake Superior.
“They were a big coal company in town, and he gave my grandfather a whole load of coal,” said Cathy Martin, part of the third generation to own the business. “He said, ‘When you sell it, pay me’ kind of thing, so that’s how he got started.”
In the 1940s, coal gave way to oil and Bill changed the name to Bill Martin Fuels and Enterprises, swapping coal wagons for oil trucks. It was about this time that Bill’s daughter, Lena, and then Bill Jr. started working for the company, launching what would become a family legacy. It also meant the company had enough capacity to diversify. Since heating fuels naturally had its busy period in the winter, the summers were wide open. Bill Sr., a natural gardener, decided to expand into landscaping.
“The landscaping just came from his natural ability. He used to win prizes for the roses that he grew. He had a rose garden on Algoma Street,” Cathy said. Bill Martin’s landscaped many prominent buildings in Port Arthur, including St. Joseph’s Hospital. “We had property out in the country (west of Thunder Bay), so we could take the top soil from there.”
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Natural gas began to overtake oil as the main source of heat for Thunder Bay, and the home heating oil business in the city shrank and consolidated. When Bill Sr. passed away, Bill Jr. started to take more in the landscaping direction. The next generation of Martins were starting to join by this point, including Cathy and her brothers Billie, Michael, and Paul. The brothers launched a paving stone service for gardens and driveways — one of the first such services in the city. Billie also continued to build the landscaping business as well as Bill Martin’s snow removal service for local businesses and institutions in the winter.
By the early 1970s, Bill Jr. decided to sell the fuel business altogether and began to focus on gardening only. Bill Martin’s Nurseryland opened in 1975 near the corner of John Street and Court with two greenhouses to become the SoGreen retailer in the area. From the beginning, Cathy felt it was important to specialize in plants that would grow well in Thunder Bay.
“I’m always on the lookout for something new and different,” Cathy said. “We brought up the first scented petunia and scratch-and-sniff tulips.”
One year, everything changed when Cathy and Bill Jr. went to a tradeshow in St. Catharines that featured a Christmas store right in the garden centre. It was an idea they knew could take off.
“A garden centre with a Christmasland — it wasn’t heard of back then. It was new to us, and new to Thunder Bay. We thought it was a great idea,” Cathy said. It was a natural fit for the family, too. “My dad has always been a Christmas fanatic. He just loved Christmas.”
Sadly, Bill Jr. passed away in 1993, but the business continued to grow. In 2000, Bill Martin’s Nurseryland opened a gift shop. “I always wanted the gift store,” Cathy said. Once again, Bill Martin’s was ahead of the curve by emphasizing local and Canadian-made products not found elsewhere, along with quality gifts from Europe.
Today, at 12 employees, the store is full of local treasures from ceramic artists, jewellers, and even a jigsaw puzzle company that features images of local scenery. Bill Martin’s also hosts pop-up sales from local artisans, giving them a spotlight and a place to connect with customers. It’s these personal touches that make Bill Martin’s a unique destination in Thunder Bay for garden, gifts, and Christmas. |