My weekly diary of the historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical stories that I feature weekdays in "Cheers & Jeers". For example .....
SEPARATED at BIRTH - seeing a photo of the newly-deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya - sadly, all I could think of was El Exigente - the old Savarin Coffee pitchman (who, as it turns out, was portrayed by Ricardo Montalban's brother Carlos).
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's sample of the tomfoolery perceptive items I feature:
ART NOTES - a look at Newfoundland art sixty years after it became Canada's 10th province is at the The Rooms Provincial Art Gallery in St. Johns, Newfoundland through September 13.
SADNESS that the US men's national soccer team couldn't hold on in last Sunday's match against Brazil. Had they done so, it would have been their biggest win ..... well, since a game 59 years ago this past Monday (June 29th, 1950) when ....
Joe Gaetjens (pictured below) scored a goal for the US World Cup team of 1950 that defeated England 1-0 - one of the greatest upsets in the tournament's history, but which came before television and so is practically unknown in the US. Walter Bahr (who assisted on the goal) became the father of future NFL Super Bowl champion placekickers Chris Bahr (Raiders) and Matt Bahr (Steelers and Giants).
A recent film entitled The Miracle Match of the story was good, but it left out the climax that made this story transcendent.
Fourteen years later, Joe Gaetjens returned to his native Haiti and - although apolitical himself - his family had opposed dictator Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier's bid to become a President-for-Life. Joe was arrested by Duvalier's brownshirt-like secret police, Les TonTon Macoutes (which translates from Creole as "Uncle Boogeyman") and he was murdered in prison around July 10th of 1964. Mercifully, after the overthrow of Duvalier's son Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) years later, the new Haitian government issued a postage stamp in Joe Gaetjens' honor.
MONDAY's CHILD is Smokey Joe the Cat - a Bay Area pootie up for adoption.
DEBAUCHERY CENTRAL - a peer-reviewed study concludes that vibrators are "nearly as common an appliance in American households as the drip coffee maker or toaster oven".
HISTORY NOTES - this week, an amateur historian has begun a 50-state journey to memorialize sites where history happened but which have been relegated to anonymity. One example: a New York building where Chester Arthur was sworn in as president in 1881 after the assassination of President Garfield.
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - financial analyst Jim Cramer and Soviet leader Lenin.
AFTER 900 YEARS of all male employees, Giorgia Boscolo will be the first female gondolier for the city of Venice, Italy.
ART NOTES - an exhibition entitled Painting Under Attack is at the Seattle Art Museum through September 7th.
SPORTING NOTES - in a profile of tennis star Rafael Nadal - Cynthia Gorney notes a fan website "frequented mostly by enamored and effusive women" disappointed over his new, less-revealing outfits.
SPORTING NOTES - a soccer referee in Turkey was fired - for what he is certain was for being gay.
TUESDAY's CHILDREN are a group of orange tabbies in Pasadena, California who are hoping for adoption.
ENERGY NOTES - Canada is opting out of nuclear power after problems within existing plants.
LANGUAGE NOTES - while the use of the language has grown rather slowly there, China can now be said to be the world's largest English-speaking country.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - TV star Eric Dane ("Grey's Anatomy") and film star Leonardo DiCaprio.
LEGAL NOTES - the Supreme Court of Croatia unanimously declared a law banning Sunday shopping unconstitutional.
FILM NOTES - Entertainment Weekly looks at the "best comic duos" in films.
ART NOTES - a collection of royal armor and portraits from Imperial Spain is at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. through November 1st.
POLITICAL NOTES - the mayor of Almuñecar, Spain was sentenced to 28 months in prison .. for changing the locks and cutting the power to the local television station.
FILM NOTES - Der Spiegel considers "The Most Absurd Horror Movie Posters Ever".
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is Snag L. Tooth the Cat - an Oregon pootie featured in an article about cat names.
POLITICAL NOTES - Gérald Tremblay - the mayor of Montréal, Canada - is under fire as kickback allegations are made about some former aides.
ART NOTES - the works of Japanese artist Jun Kaneko are at the Arkansas Arts Center in Little Rock through August 2nd.
CRIME NOTES - in New York City, fewer homicides have occurred on days with rain (which have been plentiful in the Northeast recently).
LEGAL NOTES - there is jubilation in the gay community of India's largest city of Mumbai as an appeals court ruled the nation's colonial-era criminalization of gay sex unconstitutional.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Mojo the Cat - a North Carolina pootie up for adoption.
....... and finally, for a song of the week ..................................another landmark album from fifty years ago was Mingus Ah Um by the legendary musician Charles Mingus whose passing thirty years ago ended one of the most brilliant (and stormy) careers by an American musician in the 20th Century. In the field of jazz, there were several great bassists, several great bandleaders and several great composers - but only Charles Mingus had all three traits. He stated that his abilities on bass were the result of hard work, but that his composing "was a gift" - which he put to good use.
He was born in 1922 in a Nogales, Arizona army camp but came-of-age in the Watts section of Los Angeles. His stepmother forbade all music except church music, but he heard Duke Ellington on his father's crystal radio, and the rest is history. An excellent music student, at age 18 he wrote a score (Half-Mast Inhibition) that was semi-classical in nature and which he finally recorded in 1960.
He went on the road at age 20 and played in many big bands of the day: Louis Armstrong, Lionel Hampton and notably Duke Ellington (his original idol). Even more notably - Charles Mingus became the only bandmember ever fired personally by Duke Ellington. Mingus went on to perform in Red Norvo's trio (with guitarist Tal Farlow) where Mingus first stood out as a soloist, leading to his beginning his own bands.
But first: he played in the legendary 1953 Jazz at Massey Hall concert in Toronto, Canada that many critics consider the best post-war jazz concert ever. In no small part since it also features Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell and Max Roach as well: some of the founding fathers of modern jazz.
From 1956 through 1966, Charles Mingus released a total of thirty albums - and although his sidemen often changed, and going on to noted careers (Eric Dolphy, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Jackie McLean among them) the one constant was his drummer Dannie Richmond, who stayed with him almost continuously from 1957 on. His music ranged from good-time blues (Better Git It in your Soul) to elegies (Goodbye Pork Pie Hat being his most famous tune, and the subject of a future essay) to his Third Stream (blends of jazz and classical music) such as his magnum opus Epitaph - that was never successfully performed in his lifetime.
The album Mingus Ah Um includes some of the aforementioned tunes, as well as his ode to the segregationist governor of Arkansas, Fables of (Orville) Faubus - Charles Mingus was quite outspoken for the day in racism as well as injustice of any kind: Remember Rockefeller at Attica a more recent example. At this time, Mingus also sought to create collective workshops and artists guilds - and while many did not last, they created almost a university-like atmosphere in his bands.
That is, unless you crossed Charles Mingus. He was known to upbraid inattentive audiences, and to fire musicians on-stage who weren't up-to-snuff. In his autobiography, Miles Davis (no slouch in having a temper) was even surprised at some of the latent anger inside Mingus. Mingus once punched out trombonist Jimmy Knepper, whose playing was never quite the same after the injury. Over the years, his fiery personality mellowed but it remained part of his aura (along with his inventive music).
His career peaked in the early 1960's, despite an infamous 1962 Town Hall rehearsal session (billed as a "concert") in which "Epitaph" did not come off successfully. He recovered with his 1963 Black Saint and the Sinner Lady album, which also makes it into his top albums list. But by 1966 (unable to find a publisher for his Beneath the Underdog autobiography) he largely left the music business, tired and frustrated.
He returned in the early 1970's, revived not only by the publishing of his autobiography and the re-release of several old works: but also by a Guggenheim Fellowship for composition. More secure, he sought out younger musicians and began to produce some innovative music that once again endeared him to audiences and critics (Cumbia and Jazz Fusion adding Colombian music to his mix) - and his old mercurial temper days were behind him.
Sadly, he contracted ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) and became more of a producer than performer. Still releasing some fine recordings, he was honored by President Jimmy Carter at a 1978 White House concert, and produced Joni Mitchell's album Mingus though he did not live to see its release.
Charles Mingus died from ALS in January, 1979 at only age 56, and his ashes were spread in the Ganges River. His widow Sue oversees his estate, and the Mingus Big Band performs his works to this day.
The legacy of Mingus is extensive, and not only in the jazz community. Besides being a favorite of Joni Mitchell, a 1992 tribute album Weird Nightmare features the likes of Elvis Costello, Keith Richards/Charlie Watts, Dr. John, Henry Rollins, Robbie Robertson and Chuck D. - in addition to jazz and even bluegrass performers. Recorded a full thirteen years after his death, somehow I think Mingus would have been impressed.
Years after his death, a jumbled-up score for Epitaph was discovered, and noted Third Stream conductor Gunther Schuller (who had worked with Mingus) was hired to (first) decipher it and then bring it to life. Which he did in 1989 at Alice Tully Hall in New York (with six of the original 1962 Town Hall musicians able to help perform it). It was also performed in 2007, with a Walt Disney Concert Hall recording made.
And while much of the music of Charles Mingus is instrumental, one song in "Epitaph" was recorded by itself in 1963: "Freedom" (fair-use extract below). And at this link you can listen to it.
This mule ain’t from Moscow
This mule ain’t from the South
But this mule has something in him:
Mostly mouth-to-mouth
This mule could be called stubborn and lazy
But in a clever sort of way
this mule could be working, waiting, learning and planning
For a sacred kind of day
A day when burning sticks and crosses
is not mere child’s play
But a madman in his most incandescent bloom
Whose lover’s soul is imperfection
and its most lustrous groom
So stand fast there, young mule
Soothe in contemplation
That burning whole and aching thigh
Your stubbornness is ever living
And cool anxiety is about to die
Freedom for your daddy
Freedom for your momma
Freedom for your brothers and sisters
But no freedom for me