A Staple Singer

The Gospel according to Mavis.

June 29, 2006“

Sounds like I’m hearing myself three different ways,” complained Mavis Staples to the audience, gasping for breath before adding with a smile, “Guess I should have made it to soundcheck.” Staples ushered in Birmingham’s Juneteenth celebration at the Alys Stephens Center on Saturday, June 3 with her family’s trademark blend of the gospel and the secular. That the stout, 66-year-old Staples should gasp for breath after each song only added to the drama. Gospel testifying is her strong point, which leaves plenty of time for improvisation. She performed only a half dozen songs during the evening, but with a hot-shot trio of guitar, bass, and drums—along with sister Yvonne on backing vocals—it didn’t really matter. Mavis told the small crowd how her father, Pops Staples, gathered his four children around him one night to teach them “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Pops’ real name was Roebuck. Mavis swore that he had a brother named Sears. When she sang “Respect Yourself,” she told the audience that a record producer recently called her “old school,” to which Mavis added, “Like I don’t know that . . . I used to be a Beyonce . . . If Beyonce keeps on living, she’ll be a Mavis!” She told the band’s drummer to “bring it down, Brian,” then warned, “If he wants to get paid, he better bring it down.” During “Respect Yourself,’ Mavis threw in an Aretha Franklin reference by singing “R-E-S-P-E-C-T,” but stopped with a snicker, “I ain’t gonna mess with Aretha . . . But I’ll pick on that little ol’ Beyonce.”

In a telephone conversation two days before her performance, “Respect Yourself” came up.




Mavis Staples and the Staple Singers from the 1973 concert film Wattstax. (click for larger version)

“Mack Rice wrote that. Luther Ingram’s name is on there. Luther said, ‘Man, we black people need to start respecting ourselves.’ That was the most Luther did on the song . . . Mack said, ‘I’m gonna write a song,’ but he gave Luther Ingram half of it for that title . . . Mack did some good stuff with Wilson Pickett. He wrote ‘Mustang Sally.’”

The unforgettable line “Take the sheet off your face, it’s a brand new day” from “Respect Yourself” prompted memories of traveling in the South during segregation. Racial showdowns were a way of life. Mavis remembered a white service station owner who accused the Staples family of stealing gasoline, prompting Pops to use his fists. “Oh yeah, we had our time. Actually we went to jail in West Memphis, Arkansas,” recalled Mavis from her Chicago home. “We beat up a white man. Well, (laughs) actually Pops beat him up. [The gas station attendant] ran into his office to get a gun. We knew what he was going to get . . . Well, the guy was just nasty. And when my father went in to get the receipt, I saw him shake his finger in Pops’ face. He said something about me because I was driving. I asked him to wash the windshield, and he wanted his money. I had driven from Jackson, Mississippi, to Memphis. All these bugs were on the windshield. He went on and washed the windshield . . . I asked him for a receipt and he said, ‘If you want a receipt you come over to the office.’

A record producer recently called her “old school,” to which Mavis added, “ Like I don’t know that . . . I used to be a Beyonce . . . If Beyonce keeps on living, she’ll be a Mavis!”

“So Pops told me to pull over and he went in to get the receipt. And [the attendant] said something about me and shook his finger in Pops’s face. Next thing I know, Pops had walloped him. He beat him up real good and got in the car. And Daddy got the receipt, and actually that receipt is what saved us. Because when [the attendant] called the police, he told them that we didn’t pay for our gas and we robbed him. So the police caught up with me, had us standing out on the highway with shotguns on us and dogs barking. Oh, it was spooky. But the best part of it is I’ve never been so glad to see a police station. They took us to jail. The chief asked Pops what happened. The chief told them, ‘Get them handcuffs off them people.’ He said, ‘These young bucks always trying to keep this mess going. We’re trying to clean up down here.’ They found our money in the trunk and he asked Pops, ‘Well, this is what we’re looking for. This is the money you took from the service station.’ And Daddy said, ‘No, we sang for that money tonight.’ And he said, ‘Well, I got to hear what kind of singing you do to make this kind of money.’ And the money did look like [we] had robbed somebody because the people in Jackson, Mississippi, had it in a cigar box (laughs).”

At the Alys Stephens Center, Mavis led the band into “The Weight,” calling out: “Levon Helm . . . Robbie Robertson . . . Danko . . . and dear Garth.” She asked the small audience if they’d seen The Last Waltz. When few responded, she admonished, “I knew y’all hadn’t seen it.” The Staples had been featured in the film, as they had pioneered the introduction of gospel to rock ‘n’ roll audiences. During the interview, she remembered the varied shows they played. “Our sound was so unique that the people would call us to sing. And we were singing strictly gospel. But they called us for folk festivals, bluegrass festivals, blues festivals, and jazz festivals. . . . We toured with people like The Who, The Bee Gees, Jimi Hendrix. They really liked the Staple Singers’ sound. And a lot of those white guys have recorded some of our songs.”

One of those “white guys” who no doubt influenced the Staples more than any other was Bob Dylan. “Bobby would be on most of those folk festivals. So we would run into each other a lot, quite a bit,” said Mavis. She and Dylan shared a Grammy nomination in 2003 for their duet “Gotta Change My Way of Livin.’” Mavis said the two had known each other for a long time. “We met Dylan when he and I were teenagers. And when we met him—someone introduced us to him—and he said ‘Well, I know the Staple Singers, I’ve heard the Staple Singers since I was 12 years old.’ And Pops said, ‘Well, where you hear us at?’ He said he heard us on that station that comes out of Nashville, WLAC, I think it was. And he even quoted some lyrics from one of our songs, ‘Sit Down Servant.’ And he described Pops’ voice, he’d say, ‘Pops, you have a really smooth, silky voice, and Mavis has a gravelly, heavy voice.’ And then we heard Dylan sing that day. We were on the same concert, a folk festival. And Pops asked us, ‘Listen do you hear what that kid is saying? We can sing that, that’s a message song. That’s a positive song.’ And it was ‘Blowin’ in the Wind.’ And we recorded it.”

Mavis can still scream like a barely constrained Wilson Pickett as she remembered Pickett’s unpredictable manner: “Oh, Lord, yeah! Wilson Pickett was just as crazy as he could be. He was crazy, but he was beautiful. All the guys would respect us, they wouldn’t curse around us. Nothin’ like that. Oh yeah, Pickett had a temper. Pickett would shoot at different ones. He shot his brother in the limousine. Pickett kept saying, ‘I’m gonna shoot you, man.’ And his brother kept saying, ‘Aw man, put the gun down, put the gun down.’ And all of a sudden Pickett shot him right through the shoulder. Pickett was in the backseat and his brother was in the front seat with the limo driver . . . We were sitting in the Howard Theater watching the show, and all of a sudden you saw Eddie Levert with the O’Jays run across the stage. And the emcee was up there talking, and all of a sudden here comes Pickett behind him with a gun. People were laughing. Somebody caught Pickett and took the gun away from him. Yeah, he was crazy.” &

The Listening Booth

The Staple Singers went from post-World War II straight gospel to soulful folk music in the 1960s to “message” music in the 1970s. Blessed with a distinctive, irresistible rhythm that secular music once claimed as its own, the Staples’ unique gospel style, stamped with patriarch Pop Staples’ wicked, tremolo-marinated blues guitar, offered up black spirituals to a white audience primed for temptation.

Stax Records signed the Staples to their roster in 1968, and “message” music was born. Message music was essentially a spiritual message told in secular language. Songs such as “Long Walk to D.C.” and a cover of Sly Stone’s “Everyday People” were recorded in Memphis with Booker T. and the MGs’ guitarist Steve Cropper producing. The family ventured south to record with the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section on the hits “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There” at the insistence of Stax musical director Al Bell. Lead vocalist Mavis Staples praised the Muscle Shoals musicians in the liner notes of The Staple Singers: Stax Profiles: “The Muscle Shoals guys were a rhythm section that a singer would just die for . . . They were bad back then! [At Stax] Booker T. and the MGs would mostly put the tracks down before we’d be in the there. [At Muscle Shoals] we would all be in the studio together. We were feeding off of each other. That made a difference.”




The Staple Singers

The band’s pre-stax Gospel era (1953-1967), which still managed to feature plenty of electric guitar and hip-shaking rhythms, is best represented on Columbia’s Freedom Highway collection. Like artists such as John Lee Hooker, multiple recordings of many of the Staples’ most famous songs exist, some far better than others. Freedom Highway is the source for definitive versions of many classics such as “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” and “Wade in the Water”—in addition to lesser-known gems as “Why (Am I Treated So Bad)?” and a cover of Stephen Stills’ “For What It’s Worth.”

One Giant Leap

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By Ed Reynolds

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June 15, 2006

First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong

By James R. Hansen

Simon and Schuster, 784 pages, $30

For 35 years, astronaut Neil Armstrong shunned those seeking his thoughts about his adventures as the first man on the moon. While other astronauts wrote of their own harrowing moments in space exploration, Armstrong kept his story to himself, as if he could put the genie back into the bottle and elude history. One of only 30 astronauts chosen to fulfill President Kennedy’s pledge to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade, Armstrong saw his role as more practical than iconic. He’s been quoted as saying that he hopes to be remembered as the first engineer on the moon, not the first “spaceman.”




	(click for larger version)

Auburn University professor and former NASA historian James R. Hansen convinced Armstrong to tell his story in First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong. Hansen’s attention to technical aspects—and his knack for making them accessible even to novices—reportedly convinced Armstrong to cooperate. Despite the inclusion of launch trajectories and a jumble of acronyms, Hansen tells a compelling, and often riveting, story that reads like Jules Verne recounting the history of NASA’s lunar reach.

When JFK initiated the moon-flight project, NASA had three different methods under serious consideration. The first was called “Direct Ascent,” an improbable plan which required that a rocket called the Nova, approximately the size of the Empire State Building, be launched to the moon. The remaining rocket stage that would be in lunar orbit before touching down would be as tall as the Washington Monument. If the sheer size of the spacecraft were not cumbersome enough, another problem was how to get the crew down to the surface of the moon from such heights. Direct Ascent was quickly dismissed.

Dr. Wernher von Braun advocated a second procedure called Earth Orbit Rendezvous (EOR). Astronauts would be launched in a rocket separately from the main missile. The spaceships would dock while orbiting Earth and then proceed to the moon. Being much smaller than the Nova, the EOR rocket made return launch more feasible. EOR also included construction of a space station for future lunar missions.




Deployment of the U.S. flag by Armstrong and Aldrin was caught by a sixteen-millimeter film camera in the lunar module. (click for larger version)

To the surprise of many, NASA chose a third option: Lunar Orbit Rendezvous (LOR). Critics said it was too risky for rendezvous to occur in lunar orbit 240,000 miles away from Earth. A rescue would be impossible in the event of an accident. Hansen sums up the cold reality of such a disaster and how it affected the decision-making process: “The specter of dead astronauts sailing around the moon haunted those who were responsible for the Apollo program and made objective evaluation of its merits unusually difficult.” However, LOR required less fuel, and the necessary craft weighed half that of an EOR rocket. Besides, LOR was the only method that could meet JFK’s dream before 1970. “LOR saves two years and two billion dollars,” Armstrong wryly observed.

Armstrong’s close calls are legendary. During the Korean War, he lost eight feet from his wing when his jet clipped the ground on a mission. Armstrong climbed immediately back to 14,000 feet and bailed out. He wrestled control of Gemini VIII as the spaceship was tumbling and spinning in space. When Armstrong manually took control of the lunar module the Eagle upon descent to the moon and steered the craft to a less treacherous landing area with only seconds of fuel remaining, Buck Rogers had indeed become a reality. Armstrong’s unassuming, calm demeanor amazed his peers. Astronaut Alan Bean never forgot his first encounter with that nonchalance after one of Armstrong’s brushes with death. Armstrong was flying the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV), a high-risk, wingless contraption that used thruster rockets to propel the craft and was flown at a minimum altitude of 500 feet to ensure proper training procedures. The LLTV began to sway, slowly turning at an angle, out of control.

Hansen writes: “A ground controller radioed Neil to bail out. He activated the ejection seat with only a fractional second of margin. Neil’s parachute opened just before he hit the ground. He wasn’t hurt, but the LLTV was demolished in a fireball.”




Professor Armstrong teaching engineering at the University of Cincinnati in 1974. (click for larger version)

Armstrong immediately returned to the office that he shared with Bean after the mishap. Bean had overheard others discussing the incident, though Armstrong had failed to mention it. “I go back in the office,” Bean explains. “Neil looked up, and I said, ‘I just heard the funniest story!’ Neil said, ‘What?’ I said, ‘I heard you bailed out of the LLTV an hour ago.’ He thought a second and said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ I said, ‘What happened?’ He said, ‘I lost control and had to bail out of the darn thing.’”

Amazingly, NASA never lost an astronaut in orbit in the pre-space shuttle years. First Man recounts the tragedy of the Apollo 1 launch-pad fire, which killed astronauts Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee, and Ed White. Oddly enough, White lived next door to Armstrong and had helped Neil save his house from a blaze only a year earlier. The Apollo 1 disaster forced NASA to rethink the Apollo space capsule at the insistence of the astronaut corps. The fiery explosion that killed Grissom and the others occurred during a routine ground test in a pure oxygen environment. A spark ignited the cabin instantly. NASA learned from the setback, and from then on, all ground-testing was done in an environment that was 60 percent oxygen and 40 percent nitrogen.

A disconcerting aspect of First Man is Buzz Aldrin’s drama and bitterness in his lobbying to be the first man to step onto the moon. Armstrong reveals for the first time that he had the option of replacing Aldrin as pilot with Jim Lovell, but Armstrong felt that Lovell deserved to command his own Apollo mission (Apollo 13). He stuck with Aldrin, though a soap opera soon developed. Aldrin’s argument had been that the commander always stayed with the spacecraft while the pilot performed spacewalks. Veteran astronaut Gene Cernan recalls:

“Buzz had worked himself into a frenzy” about who would step onto the moon first. He came flapping into my office at the Manned Spacecraft Center one day like an angry stork, laden with charts and graphs and statistics, arguing what he considered to be obvious—that he, the lunar module pilot, and not Neil, should be the first down the ladder on Apollo 11 . . . How Neil put up with such nonsense for so long before ordering Buzz to stop making a fool of himself is beyond me.”

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Armstrong says he didn’t give much thought to who would be first out of the lunar module. Flight Director Chris Kraft shed some light: “Look, we just knew damn well that the first guy on the moon was going to be a Lindbergh . . . It should be Neil Armstrong . . . Neil is Neil. Calm, quiet, and absolute confidence. We all knew he was the Lindbergh type. He had no ego.” Thus, NASA changed the normal procedure that the commander always stayed with the spacecraft. “[Neil] was the commander, and perhaps it should always have been the commander’s assignment to go first onto the moon,” said Kraft.

For his part, Armstrong took everything in stride without a hint of romanticism. Searching for a quote that would reveal Armstrong’s true thoughts, historian Douglas Brinkley once asked Neil, “As the day clock was ticking for takeoff, would you every night, or most nights, just go out quietly and look at the moon? I mean, did it become something like “‘my goodness?’” To which Neil responded, “No, I never did that.” &

Weight of the Wind

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Weight of the Wind

One man’s experience floating more than half a mile above the earth in a “paper” airplane.

By Ed Reynolds

write the author

June 01, 2006

After climbing out of a dilapidated Oldsmobile ’98 Regency, sailplane pilot Tim Lockert surveys the sky for white cumulus clouds. “You know how to tell a glider pilot?” he asks. “They’re the ones with sunburned Adam’s apples.” The Regency is the official glider tow car. The car’s roof has been sawed off, the trunk lid is missing, and the words “Sylacauga Soaring Society” are painted in black on the green door. The front passenger seat has been realigned to face the rear. The battered Oldsmobile, referred to as The Rocket, is used to tow 700-pound gliders to a grass field that parallels the runway at Sylacauga Municipal Airport. The Sylacauga Soaring Society has been in existence for two years, and as many as a half-dozen members gather each weekend to be launched skyward aboard glider planes towed by cropdusters.

At 2,800 feet, the gliders are cut loose to sail like hawks in search of winds that provide enough lift to transport them as far as 60 miles east to Clanton. Sylacauga is an Indian word for “buzzards roost,” a term somewhat explained as the pilots scrutinize the sky for buzzards gliding in circles. This indicates an ideal spot for sailplanes to snag highly coveted thermal wind lifts. “Buzzards are lazy birds,” explains Lockert. “Where they glide is always a good spot.”

I swallow in fear when I first stand next to the tiny sailplane. On the ground, the silver glider leans at an angle, supported by the tip of one wing. The plane is only 10 inches off the ground. It’s a very sexy, sleek aircraft, though intimidating. The pilot’s compartment is smaller than the width of a canoe but flanked by a 55-foot wingspan. “I’m not trying to get friendly with you,” jokes Paul Golden as he connects a harness strapped across my crotch and shoulders. “How tight do you want it? We got two ways to fasten you in: open casket or closed casket.” With those words of reassurance, he lowers the plexiglass canopy.




“How tight do you want it? We got two ways to fasten you in: open casket or closed casket.” (click for larger version)

The Pawnee single-engine cropduster, to which the glider is tethered for takeoff, cranks to life while we sit silent except for vocal checks from pilot Lockert, seated behind me. “It’s nothing but a ski rope,” laughs Lockert as the yellow rope stretches taut, and we roll across the grass field at 40 mph balanced on a single 10-inch-diameter wheel under the center of the glider. Suddenly we’re airborne, and I really don’t want to be. My stomach tightens. At 100 feet, I start feeling queasy. My hands sweat profusely as I search for anything to hold onto.

There’s nothing to grip, so I venture from pressing on the inner walls of the cockpit to scribbling often unintelligible notes on a pad. One panicky note reads, “Hope I die on impact if we fall from the sky.” Carnival rides terrify me. I’m prone to panic attacks when strapped in, and the panic escalates once everything starts moving. This glider ride is a roller coaster without rails, and I want off immediately.

The sailplane, still attached to the cropduster, bobs in the wind. “You always worry about the tow rope breaking,” warns Lockert. And if it does break? “Say your prayers,” he laughs. “I don’t want to have to think at that point. Just react. If we’re at 200 feet and the rope snaps, I turn around.” Otherwise, he scouts for a place to land pretty quickly. “Straight ahead, straight ahead, straight ahead,” repeats Lockert, until he says, “Turn around.” He explains, “Even though I’ve been doing this for 25 years, whenever I launch, I verbally repeat, ‘Straight ahead.’ Then I say, ‘Turn around.’ The point is that I’m calling out to myself that in the event the tow rope breaks, I’m just going to go straight ahead and land it. And what you don’t want to do when the tow rope breaks is think. You want to react immediately. So it’s really part of the training to learn that every time you take off, call out: ‘Straight ahead, straight ahead, straight ahead.’ If the rope breaks you’ll know immediately what to do
. . . Once you get to 200 feet, you’re going to turn around, and you’ll just land right where you took off.”

At 2,800 feet, I’m a nervous wreck as I anticipate the inevitable loss of power. Suddenly, the glider jolts slightly. With a loud snapping noise, the tow rope disengages from the glider and flaps like a useless kite tail still attached to the disappearing cropduster. It’s a weird feeling. We’re on our own, yet the 900-pound aluminum plane (a single-seater plane weighs 700 pounds) with no engine immediately climbs to 3,200 feet. I am essentially floating more than half a mile above the earth in a paper airplane with a rudder. All that can be heard is the rushing of the wind around me.

When I ask Lockert to define “pitch,” he laughs and demonstrates it instead. “That’s the one that puts your heart in your throat.” The pilot applies pitch with a wicked cackle, and the plane dips and increases speed. My insides float for brief seconds somewhere above my head. “What pitch does, is it’s going to cause the nose of the airplane to point down or point up,” he says. “Because of the way the airfoil is shaped, if I point the nose of the airplane down, I’m going to go faster. If I point the nose up, I go slower.” The plane reaches speeds of 70 mph. “When you’re in control, the pitch is not as startling ‘cause you know what’s coming,” says Lockert.




Sylacauga Soaring Society president Tim Lockert straps himself into an LP-15 sailplane. (click for larger version)

He points to various ground landmarks of particular interest to a glider pilot. “When you’re down low, you don’t need to be looking for the clouds, you need to be looking at the sources for the hot air that is going to make a cloud. And typically that’s an area that is dry and dark, wherever the sun heats up the earth. Gliding is essentially solar-powered flight. The Wal-Mart parking lot is a great bet. Home Depot over there. The marble quarry is a good spot. Particularly in our area of the country you’ll find these areas of forests that have been harvested. What’s left has died, so it becomes this dark brown covering over the ground. So when the sun hits that, boy, it has great opportunity to heat the air. So cleared areas of forests are just great [for thermal lift].”

Unfortunately, excessive winds result in too much turbulence for an ideal flight afternoon, and we are aloft for only half an hour. “It’s a wrestling match out here today,” Lockert says. Turbulence prevents us from picking up good thermals. Lockert believes that under proper conditions, he could glide from Sylacauga to the Gulf Coast. The current gliding record is a flight from Chattanooga to Pennsylvania and back, continuing over the Smoky Mountains to a landing in South Carolina. The pilot used the Smoky Mountains as a thermal source, particularly in the afternoon when the sun heated the mountain range.

The small size of the plane immediately returns to mind as we approach the ground. “I’m going to put it in that grass strip down there,” says Lockert as we quickly approach earth at what seems a steep angle. I can’t stop thinking about how small the wheels are. Convinced that we’re doomed to crash nose-first into the earth, I brace myself for impact. Instead, the sailplane touches down with surprising ease at 40 mph, rolling to a stop in less than the length of a football field. I later watch Lockert take off and land the single-seat glider. Standing a couple of hundred feet away when he returns, I marvel at the graceful combination of physics and machinery. The sailplane is a mere 10 inches off the ground when its wheels touch down.

The Sylacauga Soaring Society currently offers a monthly membership for $99, including ground instruction and a half-hour flight. Call 205-807-0666 or visit www.sylacaugasoaring.com for more information.

Herman’s Hermits

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Herman’s Hermits

Singer Peter Noone speaks his mind as he brings new Hermits to City Stages.

By Ed Reynolds

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June 01, 2006

In a midday telephone conversation, Peter Noone’s dense British accent reminds one of Mick Jagger. The two artists have several things in common, admits Noone, the 58-year-old former lead singer of 1960s sensation Herman’s Hermits. Along with a striking resemblance to one another during their youthful pop star days, they also share disdain for infamous ABKCO Records president Allen Klein. Noone and Jagger each battled their former business partner in court for allegedly ripping off their respective bands.

Noone has had a storybook career. As a child, he co-starred in a British soap opera called “Coronation Street” before becoming a pop idol at age 17 when Herman’s Hermits made Carole King’s “I’m Into Something Good” a hit in 1964. Producer Mickie Most, who oversaw the careers of The Animals, Donovan, and Lulu, made Herman’s Hermits his most successful act. Over the next decade they piled up 20 hits, including a pair of chart-toppers in “I’m Henry VIII, I Am” and “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.”

After leaving the Hermits, Noone went on to Broadway and television. The band has been wrongly dismissed as a lightweight pop act among heavier British Invasion bands such as The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Yardbirds. Though they did not write much of their own material, Herman’s Hermits pioneered the pop music rage that Big Star is credited with launching in the 1970s. To these ears (as a 12-year-old) Herman’s Hermits were better than The Beatles and the Stones.




Peter Noone of Herman’s Hermits. (click for larger version)

Black & White: I was just listening to Herman’s Hermits Retrospective that ABKCO put out in 2004.

Peter Noone: Pretty good, isn’t it? People don’t realize how good we were. But what can you do?

B&W: Was it frustrating to the band?

Noone: No, not really. At the time, we didn’t realize what was going on, basically, because we were on the run all the time. In retrospect, it was a good band. People sometimes, forget that.

B&W: Whenever the history of the British Invasion is discussed, Herman’s Hermits are wrongly dismissed as lightweights.

Noone: The main problem is ABKCO doesn’t put out [proper] material. There’s like 300 songs, and every 10 years they put out another retrospective. They’ve kind of done it with everything they’ve got. I would say Sam Cooke would be one of the top five performers in American musical history but he’s neglected totally. Do you agree? What they do is, first of all they don’t pay anybody any royalties. So what they do is they just shuffle things out every 10 years. So they basically destroyed Herman’s Hermits. We just couldn’t survive, and the guys in the Hermits needed money. One of the reasons that it all fell apart is because we weren’t putting records out in America. We had big hits in England right through 1971, ’72. I think all Herman’s Hermits best records were never released in the United States. It was very strange.

B&W: Whose fault was that? Was Mickie Most to blame?

Noone: It was really Allen Klein’s fault. That’s the end of it. I was ready to leave the band anyway. I was the spoiled brat. I didn’t need people telling me what I should be doing. There were things I wanted to do. I was like an adult now, ya know?

B&W: The Stones always said that though Allen Klein ripped them off, he did turn the band into a global act. What’s your relationship with Klein? Does he pay any royalties?

Noone: That’s in litigation now. It just goes on and on and on and on. I don’t have any relationship with him. The only person who speaks to him is my lawyer. That’s got very little to do with the new operation. The new operation is just trying to make people realize how good Herman’s Hermits are. I remember coming to Birmingham to do the Shower of Stars [in the 1960s].

B&W: How long did the original Hermits stay together?

Noone: We went to 10 years in that original version. A long time, you know, for a band.

B&W: Was there any resentment from the band that studio musicians played on the records instead of the band?

Noone: At the beginning it was O.K. But it got worse and worse because I was the spoiled brat. And I forgot to tell them when there was a session. I’d make the record with Mickie, and it would be in the store, and I’d say [to the other Hermits], “Well what are you worried about? You’re going to get paid.” Because musicians don’t really do it to get paid. I hurt people’s feelings because I was just a kid. I had no experience dealing with men. I knew how to deal with teenage girls (laughs).

B&W: Did your experience as a child performer give you any insight or an advantage over others in the pop music business?

Noone: I think it just turned me into more of an independent person. I was very independent. I traveled alone, and I made my own decisions . . . We never traveled together. I would go, and they would go, and sometimes we’d all arrive at the same time. For example, when Herman’s Hermits first went on tour, for some members of the band it was the first time they’d ever been out of the United Kingdom, whereas I’d been everywhere in the world already with my family. My family was a business family and we traveled. Some of the Hermits had never been anywhere; their parents took them to the seaside. I was very well educated for my age, educated in becoming independent. And it’s vital in a rock ’n’ roll band because somebody has to be decisive. If it becomes a democracy, it lasts for about a week . . . I’ve never been a fan of that kind of democracy. Especially, if there’s five people with a vote because they’d always vote against the lead singer.

B&W: Who played the guitar solo on “Henry the VIII?” That’s one of the best guitar solos I’ve ever heard.

Noone: Derek Leckenby. It was [Keith] Hopwood on “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter.”

B&W: “Mrs. Brown” was a different style for what was on the radio then, with the banjo intro.

Noone: It was from our live show. We always did songs that none of the other bands would do. Now every band in those days played the same songs, sort of like now. So we avoided all the songs that The Beatles and the Escorts and all the local bands did. And “Mrs. Brown You’ve Got a Lovely Daughter” was very odd. It sort of went with the band. We were called Herman’s Hermits. It wasn’t a typical rock ’n’ roll band name.

B&W: Herman’s Hermits were somewhat unique in that you sang with a British accent. Was that a conscious effort?

Noone: Yes. Nobody had ever done it before. I wondered why everybody was singing in an American accent. So I went and sang with a British accent. I just thought it was kind of amusing. We had big stars in England when we grew up like Lonnie Donnigan, who we thought was an American. Even when he spoke English he had a bit of an American accent.

B&W: Did you know Graham Gouldman in Manchester? He was an incredible songwriter [Gouldman was a premier British songwriter who wrote “Listen People” for the Hermits, as well as songs for other bands. He later was the talent of the 1970s band 10 CC.]

Noone: Yeah, very well. He was like family to me. He was the greatest. What he did was brilliant stuff. He really wrote for his own band, which was the Mockingbirds. They didn’t really jump. . . We got first look at everything. We did “Bus Stop” first, and “For Your Love” and all those songs. If you listen to Herman’s Hermits’ version of “Bus Stop,” it wasn’t a great performance. So it went to the Hollies and they did a great performance of it. “For Your Love,” we did it, but The Yardbirds did it better. Ours was like an album track, and theirs was a single.

B&W: “For Your Love” was on Herman’s Hermits On Tour, the second record I ever owned. I would sit and stare at that cover. [It featured the band grinning while flying in an illustration of a hot air balloon.]

Noone: On our balloon there! [laughs] The great thing about that is that MGM was so cheap, the first album and the second album had the same picture. They put us in a balloon for the second album. Just painted a balloon on there.

B&W: The song “Museum” was certainly a departure for Herman’s Hermits, stylewise.

Noone: It was actually a Donovan record, and he didn’t like it. So it was always Mickie’s thing . . . like Donovan didn’t like “Mellow Yellow,” so I said, “I’ll do it!” and then [Donovan] decided he did like it. So Mickie tried it again with “Museum.” So I used Donovan’s track and his musicians, and my version was better than his. So mine came out. It wasn’t a hit.

B&W: Did you meet Carole King soon after recording her song “I’m Into Something Good?”

Noone: No, I met her later, actually. And I still see her. I was always a big fan of hers. I know her now. When I was about 14, I had that record she’d made, “It Might as Well Rain Until September.”

B&W: Barry Whitwam [the original Hermits drummer] has a version of Herman’s Hermits that tours.

Noone: He’s supposed to call it “Herman’s Hermits starring Barry Whitwam.” And I call mine “Herman’s Hermits starring Peter Noone.” But he always forgets to put Barry Whitwam on his. And I never forget to put Peter Noone, because I think it’s important.

B&W: Last time you were in Birmingham you played a shopping center at 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. Are you still keeping such ungodly hours?

Noone: That was a weird one. But it worked out good; we enjoyed it. It was not the real band, though, it was just me on my own . . . I had no idea, [it was in a shopping center when booked] but I have really good friends in Birmingham, so I really do enjoy going there. My friend’s a doctor—a heart surgeon—and they’re almost family. Almost my relatives. We spend every Christmas together. It’s like I got my family in Alabama!

B&W: You’re one of us.

Noone: [Sarcastically] Yeah, right. I can say [affected Southern drawl], “How y’all doin”?

B&W: Did anyone ever tell you that you resemble a handsome Mick Jagger?

Noone: Yeah, a lot of people think that. From those days, there’s this wonderful bit where they’re doing a story about The Rolling Stones and they go, “Read more about the Stones on page whatever,” and they used a picture of me and not Mick Jagger. He didn’t like it. [As he promised during the interview, Noone later sent the photo and brief news clipping. He was confused. It was actually a newspaper clipping that continued a Hermits story with Jagger’s photo mistakenly inserted in place of Noone’s.] There’s lots of stories in those Rolling Stones books how people would ask [Jagger] for my autograph. He’d sign his name and they’d say, “Oh, I thought you were Herman!”

B&W: When was the last time you saw Jagger?

Noone: Well, I see the other guys more often than him. I kinda go more in the music circles than the show business circles. So I see Charlie a lot, and I saw Bill in London. I don’t really go to those sort of fancy restaurants that Mick goes to.

B&W: How about Keith Richards falling out of a coconut tree recently?

Noone: Pretty good! He thought it was a cocaine-nut tree! &

Walking Tall

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Walking Tall

Patrolmen on horseback bring a visible presence to their beats.

By Ed Reynolds

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May 18, 2006

The scent of hay and horse manure hovers around the stables near UAB every morning. A trio of cats dart back and forth, in and out of the stalls. The horses ignore them. Pistol, a “paint-colored” stallion assigned to Birmingham Police Mounted Patrol Officer Mike Binion, leans over to steal some tiny morsels of dry cat food from a bowl, his huge mouth rendering the pieces even tinier. Officer Binion has ridden Pistol for six years. “A lot of us come in here on our off day to clean them up. Even though they are owned by the city, they’re ours,” Binion says as he brushes his horse. “I love Pistol like he was my own child. I’ve gotten so close to Pistol that if anything happened to him, I would probably leave the unit.”

The Birmingham Police Department has had a mounted patrol unit for almost 30 years. All the horses are donated. The horses at the Mounted Unit are brought to the mounted patrol at age 8 or 10, and retire in their mid-twenties. One of the first horses in the unit was Booger Red, who retired in 2002 at age 35. “He was old when he got here. He retired a fossil,” laughs Binion. A 30-day trial period for each prospective patrol horse determines if they are adaptable to the streets. About half of the animals get the job.




	Officer Kimball Karmondi and his horse, Mel. (Photo: Mark Gooch.) (click for larger version)

Much of the training involves making horses comfortable with various obstacles that are similar to those encountered on the streets. They play with six-foot diameter, multi-colored beach balls that condition the horses to accept constantly changing colors and moving objects. Horses can be “spooked” by anything: walking under a railroad trestle with a train going by overhead, gunfire, crossing bridges, the steam rising from a manhole in the street. “You have to know what a horse will do under such conditions,” says Binion of the loud noises that horses must endure without panicking. “Steam from a manhole could be Satan coming out of the ground to a horse . . . You’re training him each time you ride him. If he’s scared of a water puddle, you train him to avoid the puddle, but to still get used to the puddle.” Sergeant Glen White, another of the seven patrolmen in the Mounted Patrol, explains that horses see in two-dimensions rather than 3-D, as humans do. “They have no depth perception,” says White. “A manhole cover on the street appears as a hole from hell to be avoided.”

Binion and White have trained with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and have ridden Birmingham patrol horses in both the Clinton and Bush presidential inaugural parades. Binion’s patrol beat includes The Summit, and he doesn’t hesitate to direct traffic by taking his horse onto Highway 280. “None of those horses are scared of 280 traffic,” the officer notes with pride. “Pistol eats grass in the median while the cars go by.”

In 1998, police on horseback went onto Legion Field to break up a fight between two college bands at the city’s annual Battle of the Bands contest. Instruments were brandished as weapons but the horses took it all in stride. They’re very adaptable for crowd control, even when mace is sprayed. Oddly, horses are not affected by mace. “They can just blow it out like anything else,” laughs Binion. These carefully trained animals also have amazing discipline around children, who are prone to walk beneath the horses when members of the mounted patrol visit schools for educational purposes. “Pistol looks back at me, begging me to do something about the kids,” laughs Binion as he kisses the horse on the nose.

“Everybody has been thrown once or twice while on duty,” Binion admits. Binion was on a horse named Apache in 1998. Something scared Apache, forcing him to back up while on Second Avenue North in front of Massey’s Corral. A pickup truck struck the horse. The officer bounced off the truck’s roof and slammed head-first onto the pavement on his helmet. “A very, very horrifying experience,” remembers Binion. “Apache raised his head and looked back at me, then laid his head back down.” The horse died within minutes.

“It’s not like the limited visibility of being in a squad car. It’s a better view . . . and they can see you.” —Sergeant Glen White, Birmingham Police Mounted Patrol Officer

“High visibility” is Sgt. White’s description of patrolling on horseback. “On a street corner, we can look both ways and see for a couple blocks. It’s not like the limited visibility of being in a squad car. We can sit in a parking lot and see over all the cars. It’s a better view . . . and they can see you.” Horses are on patrol from 10:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. each day. High visibility is good public relations, too. People notice horses, says White. “You won’t see people come up to you in a police car. But they’ll come up to you on a horse.” &

Noah&’s Ark in Orbit

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Noah&’s Ark in Orbit

Chimpanzees and dogs were space travel’s first guinea pigs.

By Ed Reynolds

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May 18, 2006

More than a decade before Soviet cosmonauts and American astronauts blasted into outer space aboard rockets, a squadron of chimpanzees, rhesus monkeys, mice, mongrel dogs, and French cats were sent into space to ensure that space travel was viable for humans. Their missions tested the effects of weightlessness on organisms, especially their behavior under the stress of blastoff and zero gravity. Leave it to the French to launch a feline. In 1963, French scientists sent a female named Felix into orbit on a Veronique AGI rocket. An abandoned street cat, Felix was one of 14 felines specially trained in centrifuges and compression chambers in preparation for space flight. Ten of the original 14 cats were eliminated from consideration due to their propensity for eating too much. Mercifully, the French arranged for Felix’s capsule to parachute onto land instead of in the ocean.




	Nicknamed “Muttnick” by the U.S. Press, canine cosmonaut Laika survived 10 days in space. (click for larger version)

Animals began flying on spaceships immediately after World War II. Four monkeys, each named Albert (I, II, III, and IV, respectively), were launched aboard captured German V-2 rockets during American post-war tests. Each monkey’s parachute failed to open. Mice, on the other hand, often survived high-speed impacts on their return to Earth. In 1959, four black mice were launched on a Thor Agena A rocket that carried a spy satellite. The mice perished when the Agena upper stage fired downward instead of skyward, sending the vehicle into the Pacific Ocean. Official speculation was that the mice would have survived had their crash occurred on land. Adding to the mystery of possible spy sabotage, the dead mice were a backup crew that had been assigned to the mission after an earlier tragedy. The original rodent crew was found dead of chemical overdose after eating the krylon that had been sprayed on their cages to cover rough edges.

Space Hounds

In the early 1950s, the Russians strapped dogs, instead of monkeys, into rockets because dogs were assumed to be less fidgety in flight. Females were chosen due to the relative ease of controlling bodily waste. Soviet R-1 series rockets carried a total of nine dogs in hermetically sealed containers. Each was ejected from the spacecraft and parachuted to recovery at the end of the mission. Two dogs were onboard because more scientific evaluation allowed for more accurate test results. Dezik and Tsygan (“Gypsy”) were the first dogs launched in August 1951. Both were successfully retrieved. A month later, Dezik went back up, this time with a dog named Lisa. The pair did not survive. Smelaya (“Bold”) and Malyshka (“Little One”) were later scheduled for spaceflight, but the day before launch, Smelaya ran away. Two days later the dog wandered back to the launchpad and the test flight was successful.

Laika (“Barker”) was the first animal to orbit the earth. No plans had been made to bring Laika back alive from her ride on Sputnik 2 in 1957. She was a small, three-year-old, stray mongrel (mostly Siberian husky) rescued from the streets of Moscow. The U.S. press nicknamed her “Muttnik.” Flight controllers monitored Laika’s heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing. It was determined that she barked repeatedly and ate her food during her 10 days alive on the flight before her oxygen ran out. Sputnik 2 eventually burned up in the outer atmosphere in April 1958. A statue honoring Laika and cosmonauts killed in flight was erected in 1997 at Star City outside Moscow. The dog can be seen peeping out from behind the cosmonauts.




	(click for larger version)

A year before Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on Vostok I in 1961, the dogs Strelka (“Little Arrow”) and Belka (“Squirrel”) rode a Vostok prototype spacecraft into orbit. The dogs were the first animals to return alive after orbiting Earth. Strelka gave birth after returning to earth. One of the puppies was presented to Caroline Kennedy as a gift by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. The bodies of Strelka and Belka remain preserved at the Memorial Museum of Astronautics in Moscow. Belka is confined behind a glass case in the museum, while Strelka is part of a traveling exhibit that tours the world.

Among the last canines to ride in space were Veterok (“Breeze”) and Ugoyok (“Little Piece of Coal”) aboard Kosmos 110 in 1966. The purpose of the flight was to determine the prolonged effects of radiation during space travel. The dogs established a record for canines of 21 sustained days in space, a mark that humans finally surpassed in June 1974 with the Skylab 2 mission.

Space Apes

The United States sent monkeys into space instead of dogs to determine if the stress of space travel and weightlessness would affect basic motor skills or the ability to think clearly. In 1952, a pair of Philippine monkeys named Patricia and Mike were the first primates to survive spaceflight. Joining the monkeys were mice named Mildred and Albert. The monkeys were strapped into their seats but Mildred and Albert were allowed to float freely in zero-gravity. In 1959, Gordo, a squirrel monkey, flew 600 miles in a Jupiter rocket one year after the Soviets launched Laika. Gordo died on splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean when a flotation device failed. Nevertheless, Navy doctors determined from monitoring his respiration and heartbeat that humans could withstand a similar trip.

Sam and Miss Sam were a pair of rhesus monkeys named for the acronym for the U.S. Air Force School of Aviation Medicine. Housed in a cylindrical capsule, Sam was launched on December 4, 1959 in a Mercury spacecraft atop a Little Joe rocket. His mission was to specifically test the launch escape system. One minute into the flight at a speed of 3,685 miles-per-hour, the Mercury capsule aborted from the Little Joe launch vehicle. The spacecraft landed safely in the Atlantic Ocean, and Sam was recovered a few hours later. Miss Sam also tested the escape system a few weeks afterward. Upon being reunited, the two monkeys reportedly embraced.




	Ham was the first chimpanzee to fly in space. (click for larger version)

Riding a Mercury Redstone rocket, Ham was the first chimpanzee in space. Born in the French Camaroons, West Africa, Ham came to Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico in 1959. His flight was the precursor to Alan Shepard’s 1961 suborbital journey that made Shepard the first American in space. After leaving NASA, the chimp was placed on exhibit at the Washington Zoo in 1963 and later at the North Carolina Zoological Park where he lived alone until he died in 1980.

The best animal spaceflight story of all concerns the mission accomplished by a chimpanzee named Enos. His flight was a full dress rehearsal for the Mercury launch on February 20, 1962, which would make Lt. Colonel John Glenn the first American to orbit the Earth. Purchased from the Miami Rare Bird Farm in 1960, Enos completed more than 1,250 hours of training for his mission at the University of Kentucky and Holloman Air Force Base. His training regime was more intense than Ham’s because he would be exposed to weightlessness and high g-forces for longer periods of time. Three days before his November 1961 flight, Enos was chosen to fly on board a Mercury Atlas 5. The chimp was originally scheduled to complete three orbits but was brought back after the second because the spacecraft was not maintaining proper altitude. One of the stabilizing rockets on the Mercury capsule had malfunctioned, causing the ship to spin in circles as it orbited Earth.

Then another problem arose. Something went wrong with the wiring that controlled the shock and reward system. Enos had been trained through a reward-and-punishment, “electrical shock” system that included pulling designated levers as part of daily tasks. However, the system malfunctioned during the mission, and Enos received jolts of electricity when he should have received banana pellets. Scientists at mission control assumed that Enos would do whatever it took not to be shocked and therefore compromise the mission. Despite the 79 electrical shocks he received for doing his tasks correctly, the chimp performed his commands as he had been trained. After recovery from the Atlantic Ocean, Enos reportedly jumped for joy and ran around the deck of the aircraft carrier, gleefully shaking hands with his rescuers. &

First Lady of Stock Car Racing

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First Lady of Stock Car Racing

Sixty years ago Louise Smith discovered a new way to chase the boys.

By Ed Reynolds

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May 04, 2006On Memorial Day weekend, the greatest automobile race in the world, the Indianapolis 500, runs for the 90th time. Danica Patrick, who became the first woman to lead an Indy 500 during her inaugural Indy race in 2005, will again be the focus. Patrick finished fourth and was roundly praised for her fearless skills at “mixing it up with the boys.” But half a century ago, a racing pioneer named Louise Smith had already pushed her way into the racing man’s world by winning 38 races on small dirt tracks from Alabama to Canada.

Louise Smith died on April 15 at age 89 after a long bout with cancer. In 1999, she was the first woman inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in Talladega. Challenging men in the 1940s and ’50s was not easy for Smith. “It was hard on me,” she told the Associated Press in 1998. “Them men were not liking it to start with, and they wouldn’t give you an inch . . . If you won a race, you sometimes had to fight. I remember grabbing a tire iron one time to help Buck Baker.”

Louise was known for her Dale Earnhardt-style aggression and breathtaking crashes. One night her car became airborne coming out of the second turn during a race. It took more than half an hour to free her from the wreckage with an acetylene torch. At a Mobile speedway she crashed into driving star Fonty Flock and wound up sitting on top of her car in the middle of a lake. She had a reputation for taunting Greenville, South Carolina, police into high-speed runs staged for the thrill of the chase. She was uncatchable. She once drank a fifth of liquor before meeting with one of her early racing sponsors, backing into a telephone pole as she waved good-bye. “Louise was a pistol,” recalled racing historian Mike Bell, who knew Smith. “It was all a party in those days.”




Smith was fond of fast cars, hard liquor, and fights at the racetrack. (click for larger version)

Louise Smith and her husband, Noah, owned a junk yard in Greenville. Former dirt track racer J.B. Day was an orphan unofficially adopted by the Smiths. The couple allowed Day to sleep in a 1936 Cadillac in their salvage yard. “Yeah, I stayed there for seven or eight years,” said the 72-year-old Day in an interview a week after Smith’s death. “My mother died when I was real small. [Louise and her husband] were good to me. They were like my mother and daddy.” Day remembered Smith’s fearlessness. “She’d run with the men . . . Louise was a ball of fire in her day.”

Smith began racing in 1946 when NASCAR founder Bill France was promoting a race at Greenville-Pickens Speedway in Greenville. It was not only Louise Smith’s first time to compete, but also the first race she’d ever witnessed. “They were trying to think of what they could do to spice up the show,” explained Bell. “And somebody said, ‘Get Louise Smith to drive. She’s crazy; she’ll drive anything.’” She raced a 1939 Ford modified coupe and finished third. “In those days 300 or 400 fans was a big crowd, and Bill France thought I could put more people in the stands,” Louise Smith once recounted. “[Before the race] they told me if I saw a red flag to stop,” Smith recalled. “They didn’t say anything about a checkered flag.” All the drivers except Smith came in at the end of the race after the checkered flag had been thrown. “I’m out there just flyin’ around the track. Finally somebody remembered they told me not to stop until I saw the red flag.”

In 1947, Smith drove her husband’s brand-new Ford coupe to Daytona to watch the races held on the beach. She couldn’t resist joining the fray. NASCAR officials gave Louise the number 13. Superstitious, she attempted to swap it for another. Smith recalled the story years ago to an interviewer. “I went all down the line trying to trade that ‘13’ off,” said Smith. “[Other drivers] said, ‘Aw, Lou, just follow us through that north turn.’ So I followed them, but when I got to the north turn seven cars were piled up. I hit the back of one of them, went up in the air, cut a flip, and landed on my top. Some police officers turned the car back over, and I finished 13th.” She left the wrecked Ford at an Augusta, Georgia, repair shop on the way back home to South Carolina. “Her husband said, ‘Where’s the car, Louise?’ And she said, ‘That ol’ trap broke down in Augusta.’ Her husband showed her the newspaper. The wrecked car was on the front page.”




Smith poses inside her racecar after surviving another horrific crash. (click for larger version)

Bill France soon put Louise Smith on the modified touring circuit. She was paid up to $150 per race to pack grandstands from Alabama to Canada as a novel, but fearlessly competitive, barnstormer. Before meeting France, she had struggled financially. Smith once had to pawn her jewelry to bail out some fellow drivers who got into a fight—complete with flying chairs—at a restaurant after a race. “Money was nothing back then,” Louise Smith once reflected. “Sometimes it seemed like the more you drove, the less money you had. I remember one time Buck Baker and Lee Petty and I had to put our money together just to split a hot dog and a Coke.” She had no regrets: “Yeah, I won a lot, crashed a lot, and broke just about every bone in my body. But I gave it everything I had.” &

Mr. Las Vegas

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Mr. Las Vegas

By Ed Reynolds

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March 23, 2006K

nown as “Mr. Las Vegas” for his many years performing in Sin City casinos, Wayne Newton has logged more than 50 years as one of the world’s most popular entertainers. Newton will be at the Alys Stephens Center April 1, two days before his 64th birthday. Considering his slick persona, it’s odd that Newton entered show business as a 10-year-old in a traveling version of the Grand Ole Opry. By the mid-1960s, his soprano voice had established him as a pop star with hits like “Red Roses for a Blue Lady” and “Danke Schoen.” However, Newton’s high-pitched voice made him the butt of jokes, including a barrage from Johnny Carson. In the late 1970s, Newton had had enough and stormed into Carson’s office at NBC Studios, where he physically threatened The Tonight Show host.




	Wayne Newton (Mr. Las Vegas) entertains at the Alys Stephens Center. (click for larger version)

The Carson-Newton feud involved more than jokes, however. In 1980, Carson attempted to purchase the Aladdin Hotel in Las Vegas. The Aladdin was under investigation at the time for alleged ties to organized crime. Carson and an associate reportedly kept changing the terms of the deal, which finally fell through. Wayne Newton bought the casino several months later. The singer remains a Las Vegas mainstay, still performing five nights a week at The Flamingo, where the advertisements for Newton’s show read: “As Vegas as Vegas Gets.” Wayne Newton will be at the Alys Stephens Center April 1 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $60. Call 975-2787 for more information.

City Hall — Dawn of The Living Dead

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By Ed Reynolds

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March 23, 2006

The blight that seeps through Birmingham like the Blob looking for Steve McQueen has found an odd nesting place: the police department’s forensic lab at the city jail on Sixth Avenue South. Last April, Birmingham Police Chief Annetta Nunn announced that the forensics unit would be relocated to the fourth floor of the 1700 Building, the city’s sparkling new police headquarters on First Avenue North. However, a “$400,000 surprise,” as Mayor Bernard Kincaid refers to the cost overrun, arrived in the guise of unexpectedly high bids that have delayed completion of the final phase of the new forensics lab. Oddly, the “$400,000 surprise” came to the Mayor’s attention only three weeks ago.

For more than a year, departmental memos have documented the deplorable conditions at the current forensics building on Sixth Avenue. “There have been tons of those,” Kincaid said in reference to internal documents circulated for “alleviating this situation.” Complaints range from standing water [potential electrocution] and mold, to birds roosting on the top floors. Some employees at the forensics building are currently under instruction from the police department to wear a breathing apparatus while working there. Kincaid insisted that local forensic science has not been compromised, as the most vital work is conducted on the first floor, two floors below the worst leaks. The Mayor reassured reporters at a March 7 press conference (after the City Council had approved $482,000 to finish the new forensics lab) that the city’s current forensics situation was acceptable for another three months until equipment and personnel could be moved to the 1700 Building. “We understood that because of the leaks, and what Public Works [city department] fixed, the [forensics] building was leaking. Public Works did fix that. Again, it’s not leaking on the first floor,” said Kincaid, fumbling for an explanation and sounding determined to convince even himself that there were indeed leaks, which no doubt had been repaired. “We’re hoping that, given the dire straits in which we find ourselves, that there will be some accommodation, somewhere.” Kincaid added in seeming desperation. “We have not been able to locate a portable forensic lab that we could bring in.”

It’s amazing that the city’s forensic unit would be exposed to potential contamination for a week, much less for more than a year. Regarding the health of employees at the forensics lab, Kincaid is aware that the Fraternal Order of Police (F.O.P.) is not happy. Sgt. Allen Treadaway, president of the Birmingham F.O.P, said that the building’s conditions had been known for some time. “What we haven’t known is what came to my attention recently . . . the health issues as far as they apply to our employees working in that building,” said Treadaway. “We’ve got a female officer that has worked in that building and has had two miscarriages, one recently.”

He added that another officer has an upper-respiratory infection. “When we start distributing breathing apparatuses to employees, with the big canisters on the side, to wear when they’re in that building, that’s an indicator something is seriously wrong,” said Treadaway. “When we start having upper-respiratory examinations for all employees working in that building, that’s an indicator that something is wrong.” Treadaway wants testing done on the current building to be sure it’s safe for employees to continue working there until the new lab is complete. He complained to the City Council that the fourth floor of the 1700 Building has been available for several months with no work going on. Treadaway warned that construction delays are inevitable. “We were supposed to be in these new precincts [Southside and east Birmingham] a year ago, and there’s construction still going on,” said the police sergeant.

Kincaid was less than pleased, and somewhat tongue-tied, at the implication that hazardous working conditions had led to police officer miscarriages. “Quite frankly, to stand before the Council and to lay miscarriages on this without medical evidence is . . . what just happened and should not have.” Kincaid added, “The F.O.P. will probably bring forth several issues. We’ll probably have a flurry of those . . . We just look forward to a revved up level of activity by the F.O.P.” The Mayor was dismissive of questions about police lawsuits. &

City Hall

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By Ed Reynolds

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March 09, 2006

William Bell Is Finally Back

Councilor William Bell’s District Five election win over incumbent Elias Hendricks four months ago raised more than a few eyebrows around the city. After having been chosen interim mayor when longtime Mayor Richard Arrington stepped down in 1999 several months prior to the end of his 20-year reign (the council president is next in line for the mayor’s position if the mayor steps down), Bell lost a mayoral runoff to present mayor Bernard Kincaid. Purportedly, the plan was for Bell to run against Kincaid as a pseudo-incumbent. Bell’s loss essentially drove a stake through the heart of Arrington’s powerful political machine, the Jefferson County Citizens Coalition. Most figured Bell’s political career in Birmingham was essentially over. Everyone, that is, except William Bell.

In his years as council president in the 1990s, Bell’s theatrics ran interference for Arrington in the former mayor’s weekly showdowns with former Councilor Jimmy Blake. Among Blake’s complaints were his objections to minority preference in a city that is predominantly black. Blake never backed down from his premise that whites were the real minority. So it was with great irony that minority hiring would initiate a showdown between Bell and Councilor Roderick Royal at the February 28, 2006 Council meeting.

Bell has been surprisingly quiet during his current tenure, maintaining a low profile that fulfilled his promise of humility upon return to the Council. His suggestions at committee meetings and his grasp of how city politics function have been mildly impressive. Fortunately for those who report on City Hall, William Bell appears to have eaten his last slice of humble pie, returning to his former high-profile, ready-for-a-fight persona.

At issue was the city’s hiring of All Seasons Travel to facilitate travel arrangements for the 198 neighborhood officers attending the 2006 NUSA (Neighborhoods USA) Conference in Kansas City in May. Birmingham’s representation at NUSA has been a source of controversy in years past, primarily because the city has, by far, the largest delegation, and many local citizens regard the trip as a waste of taxpayer dollars. Other past controversies stemmed from fish fries held by delegates on the balconies of their hotel rooms, which did little to erase perceptions that the city was being represented by a bunch of country yahoos.

Bell questioned why All Seasons Travel was the only company the city sought bids from. Jim Feinstermaker, chief of the Community Development Department, which oversees the neighborhood associations, replied, “We’ve worked with All Seasons in previous years, so we just went back to them.” Bell asked that the resolution earlier approved in the meeting be brought back before the Council for reconsideration, to allow bids from minority travel agencies that might also offer cheaper rates. Councilor Roderick Royal, who acknowledged that “it’s important to find minority participation where we can find it,” said the city had worked with All Seasons for more than 15 years. “Certainly, if there was concern, we should have been addressing it a long time ago. And I hope that falls on good soil,” added Royal, in what appeared to be a slap at Bell. Royal at one time was Bell’s administrative assistant before a rumored falling out occurred between the two.

“You know what, Madam President? That little twerp over there, he needs to get a life!” Bell exploded in anger. “I mean, I’ve sat here and let him shoot at me all these years. Now what happened here 15 years ago, I asked Mayor Richard Arrington the same thing [regarding minority hiring]. I’ve been consistent. When you look at all of the minority participation bills [in the past], you’ll see one name on there. None of the [current councilors’] names were on those bills passed in the past. You’ll see one name on there: William A. Bell!” At meeting’s end, Bell apologized for not attending a recent function at Lily Grove Baptist Church. He then added, “And I may want to apologize for something else, but let me think about it a little bit longer.” With her usual dry sense of humor, Councilor Valerie Abbott deadpanned, “I want a definition of twerp . . . I truly don’t know what it is.”
Council Approves Wal-Mart Corporate Welfare

Freshman Councilors Miriam Witherspoon and Steven Hoyt have made minority contract hiring a priority regarding tax incentives and cash payouts to those who wish to do business with the city. Hoyt demanded 20 percent minority representation for sub-contractors building the new Wal-Mart in the blighted Eastwood Mall location. Despite protests from Councilor Joel Montgomery and some city residents that there is no guarantee that Wal-Mart would stay in the location, many believe Wal-Mart will be an economic boon for Councilor Carol Reynolds’ District Two. The $11 million cash deal to purchase the Eastwood Mall property for Wal-Mart was approved unanimously by the council on February 28. District One Councilor Joel Montgomery, who was absent from the meeting due to his claims that he was sick, set a City Council precedent when he phoned from his sickbed to voice opposition to the Wal-Mart deal via the council chamber’s public address system. Reynolds walked out in protest when Montgomery began speaking. Council President Carole Smitherman properly refused to allow Montgomery to vote and went so far as to tell him he didn’t sound sick.

Montgomery remains angry that Wal-Mart left his district a few years ago to build a Wal-Mart Super Center in District Two, an arrangement that has caused a rift between Councilor Reynolds and himself. Reynolds has been a cheerleader for Wal-Mart, despite complaints from many nationwide that the mega-corporation fails to pay wages high enough to provide health insurance for many employees. Reynolds, who is employed by the Birmingham Water Works and recuses herself from Water Works issues that come to a vote by the Council, has been vocal in the past about encouraging Water Works employees into a union. But despite her rallying behind Wal-Mart, she’s savvy enough to hedge her bets with the odd statement: “I’m not a huge fan [of Wal-Mart] I’m a K-Mart girl.” &