The Ghost & Mrs. Muir, 1968-1970

I loved this show growing up, mostly because of Hope Lange, who reminded me, of course, of Petula Clark, whom I adored.  And given the fact that the show only ran for two years, 1968-1970, it must have gotten panned by the critics.  But looking back on it now, or rather watching an episode of it today, I thought that the dialogue was sharp and taut.  Extended metaphors were terrific.  Lots of literary allusions.  It was wonderful.  From a literary or aesthetic standpoint, it was quite good.  You're not going to find anything this thoughtful today. Little did I know then that the TV series was based on a 1947 movie of the same title, starring Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison, and George Sanders.  George Sanders was one of my favorite seasoned actors growing up.  

1980s Music: Anthem to a Young Man's Life

Perhaps the greatest musical period of my life was back in the early 1980s when I was working for United Parcel Service and going out to Mod Clubs and concerts with neighborhood friends.  I used to go to The Crush Bar on Cahuenga Blvd. in Hollywood and to the Sunset Club, you got it, on Sunset Blvd., a tiny place that used to play early 60's mod tunes, pieces like the Monkees', "I'm a Believer," 1966.  I did go to the Odyssey one year and had a bizarre experience.  I asked a young woman to dance, and her girlfriend came up to her, grabbed her hand, and walked off with her.  Okay, I was not in Kansas anymore.  

Lots of great music.  One song I used to hear on the radio a lot back then was XTC's "Making Plans for Nigel."

The other band that I just loved was Big Country and their hit song "In a Big Country," released in May of 1983, just one month after I started driving for UPS in Beverly Hills.  

I was telling a friend of mine how the Madness video of "One Step Beyond," released in October of 1979, is one of the most iconic of all Mod songs.  I loved "Mexican Radio."

I loved Wall of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio," released in 1982.  It would come on the radio late at night while driving into Baldwin Park from Duarte to work nightshift at UPS. 

And who could forget Oingo Boingo's "Dead Man's Party," released 1985.  John Simpson and I hosted a party at the Baldwin property, 2006 Baldwin Avenue in Arcadia. Will never forget Vons trucks rambling in the middle of the night up to the stores in Arcadia and Monrovia.  They never failed to wake me up at 3am.  Someone at the party played this song, and all in attendance were up dancing on the living room floor.  It was fun.  Loved that song and those times.  They were, to quote a friend, "Off the hook."  

And it was Roy Parker who turned me onto the English Beat and their song, "Mirror in the Bathroom," released in 1980, and other classics, like a reprisal of Smokey Robinson's "Tears of a Clown."  

And "Save It for Later," released in 1982.  I'd seen the English Beat at Perkins Palace in Pasadena and at the Palladium in Hollywood with Mike, Kevin, and Kathy.   

I saw the Ramones at Perkins Palace from the mosh pit. 

And though everyone had heard The Pretenders' "Back on the Chain Gang," 1984, a thousand times, perhaps one of their favorites is "I'll Stand By You," 1994.  

Perhaps the most memorable and loved song from that period was The Cure's "Just Like Heaven," 1987.  I know I loved it then and I love it now, perhaps even more so now.  For more, see here.

MOM, 1938

This framed picture sits atop my desk at my San Gabriel apartment.  My printer is there to the left.  But the first time that I'd ever seen this photo of Mom was at her mother's apartment on Detroit Street in Denver way back in 1969.  Grammie used to live in a basement apartment at 1620 Detroit Street.  

Will never forget our last visit to see Grammie in 1967 or 1971 on Detroit Street in Denver.  We entered the building, no security in those days, stepped down one floor to the basement, turned the corner and made our way to the boiler, the machinery matrix of pipes that wrapped around a tank yet heated the entire building quite effectively.  

Standing between her door and the boiler, Dad knocked on her door.  He knocked, she answered, and we stepped into her space, her one-room flat.  I immediately was absorbed by such a place.  Pa's apartment in Temple City was on the second floor, airy, sunny, comfortable.  Grammie's subterranean unit had windows high on the wall that looked out onto the sidewalk where you had to raise up on your tiptoes just to look out onto the street.  Treetops and the heavens were out of view.   Fascinating but also degrading and pitiful.  Reminds me of how Mom was mesmerized by the view from her front window of the sunlight shining on the San Gabriel Foothills in Duarte.  Something about Denver made her life in Duarte feel like she was living in paradise.  

I tried to make sense of her sofa, a table, and furnishings as Dad and Grammie stepped into her kitchen and out of our view.  I scanned her place.  The windows were at the top of the wall in her basement studio.  She had a kitchen, a living room, and one bedroom.  Her means were survival level.  Growing up under parents who survived the 1930's Depression and its survival mindset, the war, and the war chest that came with it meant that you were sentenced to a spartan existence.  

We were always on Depression era measurements of wealth and well-being.  Back in the 1960s, our Aunt Helen would visit occasionally but always stepped into our Duarte home with a single loaf of bread tucked in the crook of her arm.  A loaf of bread.  The gesture was symbolic of abundance, sharing, and that your host might never know hunger.  During the Depression, food often meant "May your table always be full."  And will never forget the last year that Grammie visited us in Duarte.  All the adults were out of the house except for Grammie.  It was lunch, the sunlight beautifully warming us.  Grammie reached for an item from the refrigerator that she thought would satisfy us: Farmer John's "Eastern" pork sausage.  That'd do the trick.  So she spent a few minutes turning the sausage in the skillet and served it to us.  She ordered us to "sit down," which we did.  And she served us.  The white Corelle plates held three burnt sausage links.  I studied it a second or two before realizing, "Wow, we really are poor."  Grammie may have considered meat of any kind a symbol of wealth.  One man's treasure is another man's . . . 

Returning to Grammie's man cave, I saw a few framed photos on a corner console, nothing high-Victorian or that fancy; probably closer to this William & Mary table.  

From the center of the room near her sofa, I could see the framed pictures in the distance but not the subjects.  So I stepped closer, slowly to the pics and I began to make out the eyes and the smile of some one very familiar and realized that one photo was of my mother as a young woman.  [See that photo above.]  I'd never seen pictures of my mother as a young woman, but only as mother to me and my siblings.  I could not believe how beautiful she was.  I was never more proud of her.  I loved the photo so much.

Will never forget a few details of Grammie's studio apartment.  I remember her Bakelite 500 rotary phone [still cheaper than an iPhone] on the stand next to her sofa.  I picked the phone up off the receiver and examined the 1940s phone.  I started toward the kitchen area, but then Dad and Grammie were making their way back out to the front room and so I gave up that excursion.

The framed picture below of Mom is dated 1938.  

"CELLAR-DOOR CAGNEY"

Cagney believed in hard work, later stating, "It was good for me. I feel sorry for the kid who has too cushy a time of it. Suddenly he has to come face-to-face with the realities of life without any mama or papa to do his thinking for him."

In the last week, I found myself watching a few James Cagney (1899-1986) movies, starting with White Heat (1949), the movie with the famous ending of "Look, Ma!  I'm on top o' the world!" before Cagney's character, Cody Jarrett,  is blown to smithereens.

Cagney was a favorite in our house since our parents grew up in his days.  

I learned only this morning that prizefighter great, Floyd Patterson and Russian ballet dancer, Mikhail Baryshnikov, were pallbearers at his funeral.  

Then there's the 1950 Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye, another terrific film starring Barbara Payton and Ward Bond  

His 1943 movie, Johnny Come Lately had some interesting scenes and dialogue, but the plot was predictable and lacked novelty.  

Besides Angels with Dirty Faces and White Heat, Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) is probably Cagney's most memorable film, particularly the scene where he dances down the staircase.  It's the only film for which he won an Academy Award.  

As Cagney's character, Cohan, reached the foot o the stairs and makes his way to the door, a butler, played by Clinton Rosemond, presents his coat to him before he exits.  I initially thought that the two butlers were the Nicholas Brothers, but they were too popular, too in-demand, for this film.  Writers and editors at Wikipedia must be social justice warriors, for they prefer to lament that 

Rosemond was frequently relegated to playing demeaning parts, such as a stereotypical "scared Negro." 

I don't know.  Does Rosemond look scared or unhappy or less than in this scene with a money-making star, like James Cagney?  No.  Besides, Wikipedia states that "Rosemond was frequently relegated," meaning that he had work and lots of it.  Meaning he was making money as an actor.  Most actors would love such roles.  Wikipedia's editors are pathetic SJWs.

And of course, there is this classic dance scene from the 1955, The Seven Little Foys, co-starring Bob Hope.  

Cagney's skills are chosen for a cameo in this compilation on dancing put to the music by The Killers' song, "All These Things That I've Done," (2004).

MOM LOVED CHRISTMAS

My mom absolutely loved Christmas.

She loved the decoration.  In later years, when most of us were out of the house, she would ask Joe to pick her up a Christmas tree.  She would share with me memories of her and her brother gathering up their skates and walking to a nearby frozen lake.  I can imagine Mom skating at scenes like this one, though this particular photo is from Evergreen, CO, which is up at the foot of the Rockies.

And though Mom absolutely loved Southern California's brilliant sun compared to the sun in Denver, she also loved active, outdoor scenes too. 

Mom loved to decorate her living room and dining room with Christmas ornaments. 

Kathleen Larkin mailed her a Christmas wreath, which she hung out on her front door every year. 

Mom and Dad both would hang Christmas cards on a string across the ceiling, place a few on the furniture in the living room as well as on the hutch in the dining room. 

And perhaps her most treasured display was the Nativity set. 

As for Christmas music, Mom's favorite was Bing Crosby, 

 

But she liked all of it.  What I posted about Dad preparing Thanksgiving and the Christmas song list there, she too enjoyed those.  And why not?  So much of christmas music is like a tender lullaby as my dear friend, Joanne put it listening to the Irish band, Capercaillie.  Here's that list from the post about Dad listening to the radio while prepping the turkey late into the night on Thanksgiving Eve. 

I do miss the Thanksgiving dinners that my dad used to prepare. He'd start the night before.  He'd set his radio to KFI where they'd already begun playing his Christmas favorites--Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas," 1951, "Mele Kalikimaka," 1950, Perry Como's "Jingle Bells," 1946, Burl Ives' "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," 1964, and choral pieces by Mitch Miller and His Gang.  I'll never forget his "Sing Along with Mitch" Christmas chorus album we had in the house.  I liked Mitch Miller, 1911-2010, for the invigorating energy he sang Christmas songs with the delicious irony that he was Jewish.  Funny to see how some of my musical influences stem from the '40s, '50s, and '60s. 

One of my favorite soprano singers is Renee Fleming.  I could not believe what I was hearing when I first heard her voice so many years ago, probably around 2005 or 2007.  The screensaver on my computer was a photo of her in a red Christmas dress.

When a woman's voice can make you cry, you know that she has struck a chord of beauty and love.  And few voices have that power.  Hers does.  I know for a fact that Dad would have loved to hear her voice.  Dad's favorite singer was Anne Murray, but the beauty here in Fleming's voice is inimitable.  The beauty of religion and religious stories is that they tend to be mysterious, the more improbable the more we try to make sense of them.  But they are told in an aura of mysticism, wonder, and love.  And when we hear these carols and familiar stories so many years later, we are transported back to that improbable love, where we honor the source of life and love found in the Biblical story of Christ's birth, a love in which few are capable in a world that seems to know mostly evil, envy, and violence.  And so Christmas and its celebrations are that one time during the year that Christians around the world commemorate peace which turns our hard, stupid hearts toward gratitude and love.

Last year, on Christmas Eve, I posted this video from Westminster Abbey in London.  

Along with "Silent Night" in German, or "Stille Nacht."  

And then for Christmas delicacies, her favorite without comparison was See's Candies.

THANKSGIVING WITH DAD

I do miss the Thanksgiving dinners that my dad used to prepare. He'd start the night before.  He'd set his radio to KFI where they'd already begun playing his Christmas favorites--Bing Crosby's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas," 1951, "Mele Kalikimaka," 1950, Perry Como's "Jingle Bells," 1946, Burl Ives' "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," 1964, and choral pieces by Mitch Miller and His Gang.  I'll never forget his "Sing Along with Mitch" Christmas chorus album we had in the house.  I liked Mitch Miller, 1911-2010, for the invigorating energy he sang Christmas songs with the delicious irony that he was Jewish.  Funny to see how some of my musical influences stem from the '40s, '50s, and '60s. 

But with my dad's radio, the mood was set.  The tradition would carry forward.  I'd cut up a loaf of bread into tiny cubes for the dressing, put them on a cookie sheet, and bake till crispy. Then I'd boil the gizzards, liver, and neck of the turkey in the butter, chopped onions, celery, and carrots and fry those organ meats until lightly cooked.  They would cook further inside the turkey in the oven as part of the stuffing.  

He'd place his lit Tarreyton cigarette that he smoked intermittently on the edge of Mom's pink tiled counter, and a ribbon of smoke rose to the ceiling, creating a charming effect on the scene. He'd be up through the night.  He'd repeat this scene again for Christmas when by that time we'd strung up Christmas cards across the ceiling in the living and dining rooms with additional cards arranged atop the brick mantle above the fireplace and on top of the television, and decorated a colorful and fragrant tree in the front window.  No Thanksgiving or Christmas since has come close with the exception of those delicious Christmas and Thanksgiving meals that Charlen produced.  Her nativity pieces, to this day, are the best I've ever laid eyes on.

One of the albums that Miller composed included a recording by Captain Kangaroo, aka, Bob Keeshan, and Mr. Green Jeans.  You'd have to be old enough to know who those characters were, but they do pull the song off.  Christmas songs are pretty easy to sing.  Regarding Keeshan, this was interesting,

Network television programs began shortly after the end of the war. Howdy Doody, an early show which premiered in 1947 on NBC, was one of the first. Debuting on January 3, 1948, Keeshan played Clarabell the Clown, a silent Auguste clown who communicated by honking several horns attached to a belt around his waist. One horn meant "yes"; two meant "no". Clarabell often sprayed Buffalo Bob Smith with a seltzer bottle and played practical jokes. Keeshan gave up the role in 1952, and was replaced.

I didn't know that Miller disapproved of rock'n'roll.

Miller disapproved of rock 'n' roll—one of his contemporaries described his denunciation of it as "The Gettysburg Address of Music"—and passed not only on Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly, who became stars on RCA and Coral respectively but on The Beatles, too, creating a fortune in revenue for rival Capitol.  Previously, Miller had offered Presley a contract, but balked at the amount Presley's manager, Colonel Tom Parker, was asking.

In defense of his anti-rock stance, he once told NME in January 1958: "Rock 'n' roll is musical baby food: it is the worship of mediocrity, brought about by a passion for conformity." 

Who can argue with him?  Rock'n'Roll, musically at least, is the worship of mediocrity and is like baby food for undeveloped teenagers looking for legitimacy and authority.  The biography at IMDB explains that Miller

 Mitch Miller first entered the pop music scene in 1948 at Mercury Records, where he guided such acts as Vic Damone, Frankie Laine and Patti Page to success. In 1950 he was lured by Goddard Lieberson to Columbia Records as that label's A&R director, where he made stars out of Tony Bennett, Johnnie Ray, Guy Mitchell and many others. Miller himself first shot to prominence in the late 1950s with his "Sing Along" series of albums, which ultimately led to his own series, Sing Along with Mitch (1961). His opposition to rock and roll, however, undercut Columbia's market position for several years until after he left the label in 1965. In recent years, he has occasionally served as a guest conductor for symphony orchestras across the country. 

Didn't realize that he was responsible for the making of so many stars.  Perhaps most memorable for me was Miller's "Yellow Rose of Texas" . . . .

OMARA PORTUONDO

I love the voices, the song, and the video. The music is made beautiful by the beautiful, melodic voices. When I studied Spanish I often dreamed of what living in South America or Latin America might be like.  I dreamed of restaurants, clubs, and concerts.  This video captures some of that dream.  Thanks to Robert Higgs for this.

Omara Portuondo.  Who is she?



Equally important to ask is who is Haydee Milanes? And what song is that? It's "Yolanda."  Haydee Milanes is Pablo Milanes' daughter.  See Pablo's version of "Yolanda" here with his daughter, Haydee.