Alright folks, we are winding up the dog days of summer which seem to have gone by with the same speed with which the sun delivers its light to us, which is to say way too fast. We’ll all be shoveling snow before you know it. Given the slow rate with which people who strike my fancy are passing, there will be more people shoveling than I would have thought. Not that this is bad. For one thing, you will read this much faster than you have read some of my earlier missives. More time on the beach or the golf course for you all so enjoy what summer we have left (it is officially with us until September 23) and make the most of it. On with the show.
Robbie Roberston is our marquee loss this month at 80. I will admit to not being a huge fan of the Band but hey, who hasn’t sung the harmony parts to “The Wait” really poorly? For a Canadian, he captured America in songs like “The Night they Drove Ole Dixie Down.” The son of a Canadian Cayuga and Mohawk and a Jewish gambler (he once wrote that he was an expert in persecution), Robertson was first noticed musically by Ronnie Hawkins who, I guess not sure about him, invited him to be the bass player in his band the Hawks, were Levon Helm was the drummer. They eventually added more Band members (including at various points, Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Garth Hudson) and, tiring of Ronnie Hawkin’s rockabilly style, they became Levon and the Hawks where Levon, secure in his position, took over the lead guitar reins. Roy Buchanan played with the Hawks for a while and had an impact on Robertson’s guitar playing. It is rumored that Eric Clapton wanted in but was politely rebuffed by the other members. Interestingly, the Hawks often played at Tony Mart’s at the Jersey Shore. The Hawks came to the attention of Bob Dylan who wanted to electrify his music. On July 25, 1965, Dylan appeared at the Newport Folk festival and committed folk blasphemy by playing with an electronic-backed band. He was nearly booed off the stage, but undeterred, he asked the Hawks to carry on with him and they did. Actually, Dylan first just wanted to hire Robertson to play guitar with Harvey Brooks and Al Kooper but Robertson insisted that Levon play drums. Eventually, Dylan hired all the Hawks and revolutionized his music with them. After Dylan’s motorcycle accident in 1966, he was living in the Catskills and got the members of the Band to move up as well, with three of them renting a pink house in West Saugerties they dubbed Big Pink. That house and the basement recording studio they crafted in it, became responsible for Dylan’s “Basement Tapes” and the Band’s “Music from Big Pink,” two great records in the annals of Rock.
Eventually, the end of the Band came about when Robertson decided to end it and it was agreed (so goes the legend) they would have a concert at the Winterland Ballroom on November 25, 1976. For $25.00 the concertgoers were treated to an incredible event featuring the Band, Bob Dylan, Ronnie Hawkins, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, Muddy Waters, Paul Butterfield, Joni Mitchell, Dr. John and Emmylou Harris, amongst others. And all this was in addition to a Thanksgiving Dinner. Martin Scorsese was engaged to film the event and created “The Last Waltz,” which is a tour de force in live concert footage. Robertson had his differences with the Band and especially Levon Helm who accused Robertson of forcing the breakup (Helms said Robertson forced the breakup and that there was no “agreement” to end the group) and not giving songwriting credits to members of the Band who helped write the songs. Not sure who is right here but the two did reconcile and Robertson went to see Helm when he was dying, making it too late to see him conscious, however. After the Band, Robertson went on to have a successful solo career and wrote a lot of movie scores for Scorsese.
As an aside, Robertson was listed as number 59 on Rolling Stone’s 100 top guitarists. I’ve been getting some shit about my non-mentions of guitar players (not to worry Tom, EVH is still, and will always be, a regular) like Johnny Winter. I am a big Johnny Winter fan but I would not put him in the top tier of guitar players, and by those, I mean the Jeff Beck’s, Jimi Hendrix’ Stevie Ray Vaughns’ and Duane Allman’s of the world. I really had to check the Rolling Stone list because I couldn’t see Robertson at 59. Then I saw some real atrocities. For instance, George Harrison came in at 11, one above SRV. Who paid off someone. Mark Knopfler, who I would put in the top 10, was 44 while Joey Ramone was 28. Not to boast, but I could play guitar better than Joey Ramone and I don’t play the guitar. Ritchie Blackmore was 50 (blasphemy) and Dimebag Darrell was 92, one ahead of Paul Simon. Don’t get me wrong, I view Paul Simon to be a genius songwriter and performer but when I think guitar players, he doesn’t really enter my consciousness. Johnny Winter, by the way, came in at 63. None of these people should feel as bad as John Mayer who didn’t even get a mention. Notwithstanding the fact that I made a quick appearance in Rolling Stone recently, (file this under shameless self-promotion https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/elton-john-missing-flying-burrito-brothers-nudie-suit-1234789732/) reading this list had me lose any good feelings about that rag I may have had. Okay, that’s my rant. As for Robbie, I hope he got a good reception when he pulled into Nazareth.
This month we also lost Rodriguez at 81. Who is he, you ask? You’re in the majority for asking. Sixto Diaz Rodriguez was a musician from Detroit who made music in the 70’s filled with the angst, acrimony and protest of that era. He went nowhere in this Country but unbeknownst to most of the world, Including Rodriguez himself, he caught fire in places like South Africa and Australia. He had put out an album, “Cold Fact,” and then drifted off into the sunset of wannabe rock stars where he was a laborer and sometimes office worker. In South Africa, however, he was a star. To Stephen Segerman, the owner of a record store in Cape Town, the album “Cold Fact,” whose first track was “Sugar Man,” “was the soundtrack of our lives.” According to Segerman, “in the mid-70’s if you walked into a random white liberal, middle class household that had a turntable and a pile of pop records . . . you would always see ‘Abbey Road,’ by the Beatles, you would always see ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ by Simon and Garfunkel and you would always see ‘Cold Fact’ by Rodriguez. To us it was one of the most famous records of all time.” In South Africa, what happened to Rodriguez became the thing of legend. One had it that he killed himself on stage; another that he died of a drug overdose; and so on. The truth was much less glamorous. He was working for a living in Detroit. Steve Segerman and Craig Bartholomew, a journalist, set out to find out how he really died and the documentary “Searching for Sugar Man” told the whole story. It earned the filmmaker, Malik Bendjelloul, an Oscar for his first documentary and gave Rodriguez’ musical career a new life. That said, he never became a big musical success and like John Mayer, did not make Rolling Stone’s list of top 100 guitarists. He summed his life up best to the Sunday Telegraph when he said: “my story isn’t a rags to riches story. It’s rags to rags, and I’m glad about that. Where other people lived in an artificial world, I feel I lived in a real world. And nothing beats reality.” Can’t disagree but I would have liked my reality to be as a mega-rock-star (regardless of the artificiality) or at least on the list of Rolling Stone’s top 100 guitarists ahead of Joey Ramone.
“White Bird” is a song I vaguely remembered from the 60’s, And for good reason. Never liked it frankly. It was one of those songs that you would hear Alison Steele or Roscoe play and it would get stuck in your head and you couldn’t get rid of it. Like the Kars for Kids jingle (and I hesitate to elevate Kars for Kids to the level of a jingle). Anyway, the writer of “White Bird,” David LaFlamme, died at 82. It would have gone unnoticed to me except that one of you (that would be you Don) wrote to me about it and I am such a whore for readers that I felt compelled to add him. If any of you are like me, remembering the tune will be torture. Thankfully, there was no real follow up. The song, however, should not define Mr. LaFlamme even if the royalties probably gave him a good life. He was a rather unlikely type to have written a very flower-power type of song. He was a classically trained violinist who played with the Oklahoma symphony and earlier in his life was in the army and happily carried his M-1 rifle stating that he was proudly ready to defend his country. Take that David Crosby. LaFlamme formed a band with Bobby Beausoleil who went on to commit murder as a Manson follower. He also played with Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks (who may have killed a few songs but no people as far as we know) before Forming It’s a Beautiful Day. Mr. LaFlamme released a number of albums during his lifetime but none produced as memorable tune as “White Bird.” As the song goes, “white bird must fly or she will die.” Mr. LaFlamme has stopped flying.
As I was writing about Rodriguez I learned that Bob Barker died at 99. Bet you thought he died 50 years ago. Nope. The Price Is Right star kept on going. He started in daytime television hosting Truth or Consequences and then moved to The Price is Right where he was the host for 35 years. Not a bad career full of what is essentially part-time work where you just have to keep a smile on your face and not get pissed off at the ignorance of middle America. In The Price is Right, contestants had to guess the price of ordinary household or food items. Barker admitted once that he never knew the price of anything and as a contestant would have been a miserable failure. In 1945 he married his high school sweetheart, Mary Jo Gideon who died in 1981. Ms. Gideon explained the secret to the success of their marriage: “I love Bob Barker and Bob Barker loves Bob Barker,” she quipped. The show had, in addition to Barker, sultry women, known as Barker’s Beauties, who showcased the show’s wares as well as their own. One of the Beauties, Diann Parkinson (no e), sued Barker and the production company of the show for sexual harassment claiming she had sexual relations with the host out of a fear of losing her job. Barker, who was a widower by then, claimed the sex was consensual. “She told me that I was always so strait-laced that it was time I had some hanky-panky in my life. And she provided the hanky-panky,” according to Barker. Ms. Parkinson withdrew the suit claiming lack of funds and emotional strength to continue.
Mr. Barker was a big animal rights supporter who stepped down from his hosting of the Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants because the contestants were given fur coats as prizes. He ended every Price is Right show by reminding viewers to have their pets spayed and neutered. Not sure how the pets themselves felt about that. In any event, one can only hope then when he reached the pearly gates, St. Peter asked him to “come on down.”
Look; we all know that we aren’t getting out of this thing called life alive, but most rational thinking people aren’t going to take actions to move the process along too quickly. That is unless your name is Yevgeny Prigozhin. Mr. Prigozhin proved the point that if you are going to take on Vladimir Putin, you had better actually take him out because notwithstanding any promises that are made to you, the reality is you will soon be dead in a rubble of destruction. His life was that of a war monger, but the tenor of this blog is that everyone’s life has value. I am sure his did to some people but why am I not shocked at how this wound up? Thus, the lesson here is that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck . . . .
Finally, John Warnock, who died at 82, is one of those people who you just don’t know but you use his invention almost every day. He gave us the pdf which, during covid, made it all very convenient for us to work at home and keeps millennials in their bedrooms rather than in the office where they should be. Along with Chuck Geshke, he started Adobe in 1982. Before Adobe, the quality of what came off the printer was lousy and everybody knew it. Remember those gray, block letters that printed out from your Commodore 64? Warnock developed the computer protocols that now accurately translate what you see on the document to the printed page. Eventually Adobe came out with Acrobat (not to mention Photoshop) which produced files in Portable Document Format, or pdf. Acrobat was not an instant success and Adobe thought about scrapping it. Warnock refused and stuck by the program and now pdf is the standard for printed documents. To all of you people who think that you’ll never figure out computers, take heed; Warnock flunked algebra in high school. Hearing that made me feel like I was, or could be, Steve Wozniak. He did, however, recover and get a doctorate in mathematics. So much for me being The Woz. Warnock and Geshke worked for Xerox which at the time was working on the personal computer which they had but gave it no backing which let Steve Jobs steal their idea. Warnock went to the higher-ups at Xerox with the printing solution which they also turned down causing hm and Geshke to leave and form Adobe. How Xerox must lament its past. In 2023 Adobe, named for a creek near where Warnock grew up, had a market cap of $234 billion. Warnock and Geshke were awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation by President Obama. When Microsoft and Apple decided they would team up to out-desk-top-publish Adobe, Warnock decided that he would “out-invent the bastards.” That he did. Nice work. Print it.
Okay folks. That is August. September still has a lot of summer in it so enjoy. My readership has stalled so tell your friends about a great way to waste some time. Be well.