Category Archives: 20th Century Culture

All Souled Out — The famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studio closes.

2005-03-10 Music

All Souled Out

The famed Muscle Shoals Sound Studio closes.

March 10, 2005

In the late 1960s, the small northwest Alabama town of Muscle Shoals became a magnet for many top recording stars. Attracted by a phenomenally tight and versatile house band later known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, many black rhythm and blues singers, including Aretha Franklin, Wilson Pickett, Percy Sledge, and others, flocked to FAME Studios to discover that the studio’s legendary funky sound was created by a quartet of white men—Jimmy Johnson, David Hood, Barry Beckett, and Roger Hawkins. “The Muscle Shoals Sound” soon was in such demand that the four musicians decided to start their own studio a few miles down the road in Sheffield, and in 1969 opened Muscle Shoals Sound Studio in an old casket warehouse. The first sessions at the new facility were for Cher’s album 3614 Jackson Highway, so named because it was the studio’s address. R.B. Greaves’ “Take a Letter Maria” was the studio’s first hit. Leon Russell dubbed them the Muscle Shoals Swampers on the back of one of his albums, and Lynyrd Skynyrd referenced “the Swampers” in the hit “Sweet Home Alabama.”




Mick Jagger twists the knobs on the console at Muscle Shoals Sound, where the Rolling Stones recorded three songs for the Sticky Fingers, including “Brown Sugar.” (click for larger version)

The Rolling Stones recorded three songs there (“Brown Sugar,” “Wild Horses,” and “You Gotta Move”) for the album Sticky Fingers while on their 1969 tour. Bands not from the U.S. had to apply for either a touring or a recording visa to be permitted to work in the country. The Stones’ first choice had reportedly been Stax Records studio in Memphis, but since Memphis had a higher profile in the recording industry, the band opted for the relative obscurity of Muscle Shoals. Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section bass player David Hood recalls that the Stones sessions were supposed to be top secret. “We worked during the day, then at night they brought in the Stones. We were supposed to keep it a secret that they were coming because they didn’t have the proper work permits to record in the United States,” says Hood. “They flew from Miami and had chartered an old Super Constellation four-motor prop plane. It was smoking and leaking oil, so half the group wouldn’t get on the plane (in Miami). So they flew in on Southern Airways, so it was kind of hard to keep it a secret.” The recording of “Wild Horses” is documented in the film Gimme Shelter. (In one memorable scene, Keith Richards smiles through rotten teeth as he proudly flashes a Minnie Pearl Fried Chicken souvenir.) The unassuming life of a small Alabama town was a perfect respite for rock stars accustomed to being mobbed by fans. One story has it that the Stones would tell curious waitresses in Muscle Shoals’ diners that they were Martha and the Vandellas. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reportedly wrote “Wild Horses” while lounging in the grass in front of the Executive Inn in Florence (right across the river from Muscle Shoals). Hood remembers the Stones being very business-like. “When people come to a recording studio to work, they’re not doing a lot of showbiz stuff, they gotta work,” he explains. “The way [the Stones] worked up their songs, it was different from us. Whereas we were very quick and would learn a song in 30 or 40 minutes and have it recorded in an hour, they worked all night or sometimes a couple of days on one song. They pretty much knew what they wanted, but they would work a long time to get it because they weren’t polished musicians.”




	Pops and Mavis Staples confer during the recording of the Staples Singers hit “I’ll Take You There.” Pops was reportedly disappointed that he didn’t get to play guitar on the session. (click for larger version)

In 1972, Paul Simon showed up in Muscle Shoals looking for the “black musicians” who had backed up Aretha Franklin. “We worked as a rhythm section together so much that we got really tight. We were very fast,” recalls Hood. “Paul Simon rented the studio and booked us for four or five days to cut one song. And we got it on the first or second take. So that’s what led to us recording ‘Kodachrome’ and ‘Love Me Like a Rock’ and other stuff. We had all this extra time.”




	The tiny town was once a vital component of the recording industry.

Jimmy Cliff came to Muscle Shoals to record “Sitting Here in Limbo” for The Harder They Come soundtrack. “They sent him here trying to make him sound non-Jamaican,” says Hood. “This was before Bob Marley and the Jamaican thing caught hold, so they were trying to Americanize his sound.” Bob Seger cut “Old Time Rock & Roll” and “Mainstreet” at Muscle Shoals Sound. When Bob Dylan was recording there, he brought in Dire Straits guitarist Mark Knopfler to record Dylan’s gospel masterpiece Slow Train Coming. Hood said the Dylan sessions were the only ones to draw a crowd of people hanging around outside the studio. When asked if Dylan, who had just converted to Christianity at the time of Slow Train Coming, exhibited any signs of having become an evangelical Christian, Hood says, “I think more than anything else that was a way to cut a different kind of record, a different style. Jerry Wexler [Atlantic Records] is the one who brought him here. Jerry’s a very shrewd businessman, and he saw that this was a commercial thing here, Bob Dylan changing the message of his songs. He saw it as an opportunity. I’m afraid I’m taking a little of the glamour out of this stuff.”




Cher poses in front of the original studio location.

By 1978, the business had outgrown its Jackson Highway space and the studio moved into a 31,000-square-foot building. The company was sold to Malaco Records, based in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1985. Citing a lack of business, Muscle Shoals Sound Studio closed its doors in February 2005. As to the secret of the Muscle Shoals sound, Hood has a simple definition: “It was our goal not to sound like ourselves, but to sound like the band of the artist we were working with.” &

Dead Folks 2005, Music

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2005-02-24 Features

Dead Folks 2005, Music

A look back at the notable names and personalities who called it quits last year.

By David Pelfrey, Ed Reynolds, J.R. Taylor

February 24, 2005

Artie Shaw




	Artie Shaw (click for larger version)

Music fans, especially big band enthusiasts, love and respect Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. But if any were forced to take just one bandleader’s work to a desert island, or place the same CD or vinyl album in a time capsule, they might very well choose one by Artie Shaw (94). The clarinet-playing bandleader, in at least three recordings, offered definitive tracks of the swing era: the lilting “Frenesi” (a Shaw original last used to great effect in Woody Allen’s Radio Days), a flowing, magnificent arrangement of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine,” which practically blew Benny Goodman off the charts, and a stunning rendition of Hoagy Carmichael’s “Stardust,” one of the most instantly recognizable recordings in popular music. Another of Shaw’s compositions, “Nightmare,” is a sultry, gloomy three minutes that evolved into the distinctive sound of films noir, as the scores for countless detective thrillers and crime melodramas all hearken, in some way, to Shaw’s 1938 recording. Throw in the fact that Shaw was a virtuoso clarinetist with looks that made all the girls cry, and it’s understandable that in 1939 there wasn’t a bigger star in the music galaxy.

Shaw’s musical ability was not matched by an ability to win friends or influence people; he broke up bands almost as soon as they made the big time. He wasn’t an egotist, but as a pathological perfectionist he was often devoid of patience with anything or anybody. Oddly enough, that in no way prevented the exceedingly handsome musician from being a ladies’ man (Lana Turner and Ava Gardner are numbered among his many brides), nor did Shaw’s irascibility imply insensitivity. It was Shaw’s idea to work publicly with black composers and players (Billie Holiday was the band’s lead vocalist for a short while), and he was an outspoken advocate for black musicians throughout his career.

Nonetheless, he wasn’t called “the reluctant king of swing” for nothing. Shaw regarded celebrity as an impediment to creative excellence, so his public performances temporarily came to a halt just before 1940. He organized several other groups during the war years and began performing again, but he was never completely comfortable with touring. Although he was approaching new heights in the 1940s and 50s by moving away from swing and into jazz, in 1954 he simply walked away from the music scene to take up a number of other pursuits. —D.P.

Elmer Bernstein

Speaking of his collaboration with Bernstein (82), Martin Scorcese said, “It’s one thing to write music that reinforces a film, underscores it. It’s entirely another to write music that graces a film. That’s what Elmer Bernstein does, and that, for me, is his greatest gift.”

The gifted composer didn’t just create marvelous, memorable films scores; he elevated the lyric quality of incidental music in movies. Bernstein’s legacy includes more than 200 movie scores, 50 years in the film industry, and an inestimable influence on three generations of film composers. So engaging and appropriate were his best works that it is difficult to imagine certain films without their scores. The rousing theme to The Magnificent Seven (later the “Marlboro man” theme until cigarettes ads were banned from television) is a textbook example, being cowboy music par excellence; its distinct “great American West” motif derives from Aaron Copland, under whom Bernstein studied. The martial, upbeat march from The Great Escape (1963) is another instance where melody and tone perfectly suit subject and style. Yet if ever there was a movie score that defined a film’s style, it must be the pure jazz score (a first for a Hollywood film) for The Man With the Golden Arm (1955), a downbeat, gritty melodrama starring Frank Sinatra that dared to explore drug addiction. The first minutes of Bernstein’s gripping score pretty much establish that things aren’t going to go well.

Indeed, the composer had a natural ability to convey urban angst and mean-street sensibility, as the jazzy, sleazy themes for Sweet Smell of Success, Walk on the Wild Side, and Some Came Running indicate. Yet for minimal orchestration and gentle, lyric passages, Bernstein also displayed an innate skillfulness; the tender, wistful score for To Kill a Mockingbird is exhibit A in that regard. His music is also associated with Hollywood actors and icons, most obviously John Wayne, for whom Bernstein provided scores for The Sons of Katie Elder, True Grit, and several others. He worked with Martin Scorcese on seven projects, notably The Age of Innocence and The Grifters, the latter being an example of Bernstein’s interest in various offbeat and independent productions such as Rambling Rose, Far From Heaven, My Left Foot, and The Field.

Bernstein’s stunning versatility is apparent from this partial list of compositions: Hud, The World of Henry Orient, Animal House, The Gypsy Moths, An American Werewolf in London, The Carpetbaggers, The Great Santini, the ballet music for Oklahoma and Peter Pan, Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” video, “The Films of Ray and Charles Eames,” and themes for “The Rookies,” “S.W.A.T.,” and “Ellery Queen.” —David Pelfrey

Jerry Goldsmith

Last year when the record label Varese Sarabande announced the release of a series of film scores entitled “Jerry Goldsmith at 20th Century Fox,” orders started coming in the next day. The first run of the boxed set sold out nine days later. Put another way, everybody digs Jerry Goldsmith (75). His name might not ring a bell, but the motion picture scores and television themes Goldsmith arranged or composed for more than half a century certainly do. A deadly serious student of music since the age of six, Goldsmith learned classical piano and absorbed music theory before taking a film music class at the University of Southern California (under legendary composer Miklos Rosza, no less). Afterwards he landed a pretty good gig at CBS, where he scored several episodes of a show that was getting a lot of attention called “The Twilight Zone.” Dozens more television commissions came, but Goldsmith’s acquaintance with another famous film composer, Alfred Newman, led to his long career in motion pictures. He began as a contract composer for 20th Century Fox, and then basically established himself as the sound of the movies. Even a partial list of his film scores and television themes is daunting: Alien, L.A. Confidential, Planet of the Apes, Chinatown, Patton, Seconds, Logan’s Run, In Like Flint, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, The Omen, Papillon, Basic Instinct, The Boys From Brazil, Poltergeist, “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” and “The Waltons.” —D.P.

John McGeogh

Like any founding guitarist who’d been in classic—and still listenable—bands such as Siouxsie & The Banshees, Public Image, and Magazine, John McGeogh (48) had both gotten a day job (as a nurse) and was trying to record dance music by the end of the ’90s. That’s kind of a shame since McGeogh was probably one of the rare punks who really had the versatility to thrive as a session man. It’s certainly no secret that he was a huge influence on subsequent generations. At least to those funky punks who don’t try to get away with citing old blues guys as their heroes. —J.R.T.

Johnny Ramone




	Johnny Ramone’s headstone (click for larger version)

He didn’t have many songwriting credits, and that’s probably not even him playing guitar on some of your later favorite Ramones songs. Still, Johnny Ramone (55) got to retire as the wealthiest member of the band because he had 100 percent of the merchandising rights. How did that happen? It’s a long story that certain people can’t wait to tell if certain long-awaited books don’t reveal the whole story. Suffice to say that Johnny benefited from being one of rock ‘n’ roll’s proud conservatives, cashing in on the hypocritical peacenik attitude of certain other band members. The greatest testimony to Johnny, however, is that he was always well-loved in the music community, even after expressing his support for President Bush while being inducted into the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. We lost him to prostate cancer, which leaves C.J. and Marky to helm various tribute nights in the future. Jeffrey’s somewhere out there, too. —J.R.T.

Elvin Jones

The younger brother of pianist Hank and trumpeter/bandleader Thad was a drummer who changed the way we hear jazz. Jones (77) played with major figures like Sonny Rollins and J. J. Johnson in the ’50s, but it was with the iconoclastic quartet of John Coltrane (1960-66) that Jones’ fluid, polyrhythmic blankets of sound found their ideal setting. Jones’ beat was implied more than defined, and although one always knew where it was, the surrounding percussive accents and colors were endlessly fascinating, opening up the rhythmic options for the other players unlike what any drummer had done before, even since. Coltrane greatly appreciated Jones: “I especially like his ability to mix and juggle rhythms. He’s always aware of everything else that’s happening. I guess you could say he has the ability to be in three places at the same time.” Jones played on Coltrane’s classic albums My Favorite Things and A Love Supreme; he led his own bands from 1967 until his death, incubating such talent as Joe Farrell, Dave Liebman, Nicholas Payton, Joshua Redman, and Ravi Coltrane early in their careers. His unique approach, seemingly limitless ideas, and sheer power led many to regard Jones as the world’s greatest drummer, and following a much-ballyhooed “battle” with Cream’s Ginger Baker in the early ’70s, Jones became something of a celebrity, even appearing in the cult film Zachariah. It’s hard to imagine anyone ever sounding like him again. —B.G.

Rick James




	Rick James (click for larger version)

The guy would’ve made an interesting footnote just for signing to Motown with bandmate Neil Young as the Mynah Birds back in the ’60s. Of course, Rick James (54) had to take a stranger path to fortune and disgrace. He finally got to make a record for Motown in 1978 and was a popular R&B star until the release of Street Songs in 1981. “Give It To Me Baby” and “Super Freak” were huge hits that made James briefly seem like another Prince in the rock-crossover sweepstakes. He was a steady performer through 1989—following his move to the Reprise label—but it still felt like nostalgia to the masses when MC Hammer sampled James for “U Can’t Touch This.” By then, James’ drug problems had plunged him into several embarrassing legal situations. He spent the ’90s with critics hoping for a comeback, but James’ last high profile moment was as a punch line in sketches on “The Dave Chappelle Show.” He was probably pretty happy with that, but any future opportunities—say, on VH1′s “The Surreal Life”—were lost after James’ death from a heart attack. At least he got to date Linda Blair. —J.R.T.

Illinois Jacquet

Tenor sax man Illinois Jacquet (82) was one of the jazz piledrivers: he typically hit his solos full throttle, with clearly developed musical phrases based in the sophisticated vocabulary of the great Lester Young, but run through a rough-edged dialect of Jacquet’s own creation. The latter included “honking,” later to be overdone by a multitude of R&B and rock horn players, and squealing in the altissimo range (i. e., above where the tenor is normally supposed to sound), an effect that was also subsequently overdone by lesser players. He became a star at 19 when he recorded a rousing solo on Lionel Hampton’s “Flying Home” (1942), and was a featured player in the Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts in the ’40s and ’50s. He also led a septet in that era that featured the likes of Fats Navarro and J. J. Johnson. After becoming the first jazz musician to serve a long-term residency at Harvard in the early 80s, Jacquet formed a his first big band, which had a big success, recording the irresistible Jacquet’s Got It (1987, Label M). Almost everyone who plays the tenor sax owes something to this guy. —B.G.

Robert Quine

Lefty hipsters were pissed off that Ronald Reagan’s death overshadowed not only the death of Ray Charles but that Robert Quine’s death was completely squeezed out of all the NYC newspapers. To be fair, Quine (61) was an innovative guitarist and overaged punk who—while unable to make Richard Hell & The Voidoids sound interesting—went on to a stellar career enhancing (and occasionally saving) the work of artists such as Lou Reed and Marianne Faithfull. Quine was depressed over the recent death of his wife, but don’t believe anyone who called his heroin overdose a suicide. If you want to see Quine in action, track down the 1983 concert DVD A Night with Lou Reed. —J.R.T.

Barney Kessel

One of the greats of jazz guitar, Kessell (80) was one of the first generation of guitarists influenced by Charlie Christian, and as an Okie from Muskogee (literally), the sole white member of local jazz bands. It was in that setting that he met Christian, perhaps the most influential jazz guitarist of all, and his direction was set. Kessell played in big bands (Artie Shaw’s, Charlie Barnet’s, and even Chico Marx’s), when Gjon Mili made the short film Jammin’ the Blues in 1944, Kessell was again the only white face, but since an integrated ensemble was not to be shown on the screen, he remained in shadow or silhouette.

Kessel became famous after recording with Charlie Parker (1947) and touring with Oscar Peterson (1952-1953), but it’s likely that many more people heard his studio recordings with pop artists, from Julie London’s “Cry Me a River” to his work with Elvis, Rick Nelson, and the Beach Boys, to numerous movies and TV shows. Phil Spector was his student and protégé; Kessel advised the young man to get into record production and later played on almost all of Spector’s big hits (“You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling,” et al.). He introduced Brian Wilson to the theremin that was used on “Good Vibrations” and Pete Townshend wrote a song in honor of Kessel after the latter’s 1969-70 residency in London. Throughout, Kessel found time to make numerous jazz recordings, and from 1976 on toured with Herb Ellis and Charlie Byrd as The Great Guitars. —Bart Grooms

Randy VanWarmer

There was a brief window of opportunity in the late ’70s when lite-pop songwriters discovered they could put on a skinny tie and seem vaguely cool while turning out mellow sounds. Randy VanWarmer was able to break through with the modest hit “Just When I Needed You Most”—modest in its humble wimpiness, that is. The song still made it to number four on the Billboard charts. The solo career went downhill from there, but VanWarmer (48) was already establishing himself as a hit songwriter for country acts. The band Alabama scored with “I’m in a Hurry (And Don’t Know Why),” one of VanWarmer’s earliest compositions. VanWarmer would spend most of his subsequent career in Nashville—including a brief comeback as a solo artist in 1988—although he was settled in Seattle when he finally succumbed to leukemia. —J.R.T.

Jerry Scoggins

Jerry Scoggins’ (93) rendition of “The Ballad of Jed Clampett,” the theme song from “The Beverly Hillbillies,” is one of the best known musical motifs in television history. The show originally ran from 1962 to 1971, with 60 million viewers at one point. Accompanying Scoggins on the theme were bluegrass legends Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs. —E.R.

Hank Garland

As king of the Nashville studio guitarists, Hank Garland (74) was in constant demand. Switching effortlessly between jazz and country, he played with an impressive list of performers ranging from Elvis Presley to Roy Orbison to Patsy Cline to Charlie Parker. He pioneered the use of the electric guitar at the Grand Ole Opry. A 1961 car wreck left Garland in a coma for months. When he regained consciousness, he received more than 100 electroshock treatments that forced him to relearn not only how to play the guitar, but also how to walk and talk again. —E.R.

Terry Melcher

Many people wanted to kill Terry Melcher (62) for co-writing “Kokomo” with the Beach Boys, but Charles Manson had a personal grudge against Doris Day’s son. As an A&R man in the wake of his early days guiding The Byrds, Melcher passed on Manson as a recording artist. Charlie was also still pissed about the Beach Boys altering his song “Cease to Exist,” so Melcher’s association with the band didn’t help matters. Anyway, Melcher moved out of the house he was renting, Roman Polanski and Sharon Tate moved in, and the speculation continues about how things might have changed if Charlie had kept his address book up-to-date. Melcher kept working with some of the great pop acts of the era, and the ’60s lost a key figure when the California icon passed away from cancer. —J.R. Taylor

Billy May

He could have retired in 1942 as a brilliant arranger, but Billy May (87) was lured away from his staff position at Capitol Records to provide Frank Sinatra with some of his most unforgettable and brassy settings. The association began with “Come Fly With Me” in 1957 and continued to the end of the ’70s. —J.R.T.

Ernie Ball

Every would-be star who has attempted to play a screaming guitar solo is intimately familiar with Ernie Ball Slinky guitar strings and their neon-colored packages. Endorsed by the Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and a million other rock stars, Ernie Ball strings are sold in more than 5,500 music stores in the United States and 75 other countries. They were made to be stretched, but, inevitably, they do break, thereby simultaneously rendering them the most revered and cursed guitar string in the world. Ball was 74. —Ed Reynolds.

Jan Berry

As one half of the duo Jan and Dean, Jan Berry (62) and partner Dean Torrence pioneered the surf music sound with hits such as “Dead Man’s Curve,” “Surf City,” and “The Little Old Lady (From Pasadena).” Berry had been in poor health for much of his life after suffering brain damage in a car crash in 1966. —E.R.

Al Dvorin

Al Dvorin was the concert emcee who made the phrase “Elvis has left the building” a staple of pop culture. The 81-year-old Dvorin was thrown from his car following an accident on a California desert highway after delivering his famous line at the conclusion of an Elvis impersonator contest. —E.R.

Estelle Axton

Estelle Axton (85) was the “ax” in Stax Records, which she started with her brother James Stewart (he was the “St”). Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Wilson Pickett, Isaac Hayes, and the Staple Singers were just a few on the Stax roster of hitmakers. Her son Packy Axton was saxophonist for the Mar-Keys, an instrumental group on the label that often accompanied the singers. She later took over her son’s record label Fretone Records, whose only hit was in 1976 with the novelty “Disco Duck” by Rick Dees. —E.R.

Johnny Bragg

Leader of The Prisonaires, a singing group composed of black Tennessee State Penitentiary inmates that put Sun Records on the map with the hit “Just Walkin’ in the Rain,” Johnny Bragg (79) and his fellow convicts traveled under heavy guard to Memphis to record in 1953. In 1961, Elvis Presley visited Bragg (who had been convicted of rape in 1943), in prison. The Prisonaires were among the first rhythm and blues groups to have hit records in the South. —E.R.

Alvino Rey

As a bandleader who made the steel guitar popular during the swing era, Rey (95) billed himself as “King of the Guitar.” Rey had a hit in 1942 with “Deep in the Heart of Texas.” —E.R.

John Peel

To discerning music fans, John Peel (65) was best known as the legendary BBC radio DJ who promoted any number of really forgettable ’80s acts via assorted live “Peel Sessions” releases. There’s certainly no denying that Peel got really excited about way too many forgettable art/punk/new-wave/grunge acts over the years. In his defense, though, Peel would often just as easily lose interest in the struggling acts that he would grace with needed airplay. At least he was always interested in new acts, which was pretty good for a guy who’d been spinning discs since 1965. Peel could legitimately claim much credit for breaking acts ranging from David Bowie to The Smiths. —J.R.T.

Lacy Van Zant

He couldn’t match the output of Olivia Osmond, but Lacy Van Zant (89) made an impressive musical contribution through his rockin’ DNA. This ultimate band parent oversaw the Southern Rock dynasty of Ronnie, Johnny, and Donnie—which covers two Lynyrd Skynyrd vocalists (one, sadly, deceased) and a member of the underrated .38 Special. Van Zant worked hard to help out his kids in their early musical years, and his home also served as a museum. Lacy looked the role, too, with a long white beard and a penchant for overalls. If his image hasn’t been put on an album cover, it should be. —J.R.T.

Timi Yuro

She was pretty much forgotten at the time of her death, but Timi Yuro (63) cast a striking figure while ruling the early ’60s charts with gloriously overwrought tunes such as “Hurt” and “I Apologize.” Despite the exotic name, she was pure American pop. Still, it didn’t even help her career when Morrissey singled her out as his favorite vocalist in the 1984 tour program for the Smiths’ Meat is Murder tour. While the subject matter helped, Morrissey might have also been influenced by Yuro’s bizarre ability to look androgynous even when dolled up in evening gowns. —J.R.T.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux

She made some forgettable Parisian punk, but Lizzy Mercier Descloux (47) went out as a goddess to French hipsters. The very young gal was hanging out in NYC during the days of the New York Dolls, and she made it back to Paris in time to start up a pioneering punk clothing boutique. Descloux eventually went into the studio with her musician pals to record two fairly useless albums at the end of the ’70s. (This past year’s CD reissues reminded us why she was promoted mainly as a moody sex symbol.) Nobody was paying much attention to Descloux when she suddenly came up with an international chart hit in 1984. “Mais où sont passées les gazelles” was recorded with South African musicians about two years before Paul Simon got the idea, and the World Music genre was suddenly off and running. Descloux didn’t benefit much, though. Her major-label career was over by the ’90s, and she had moved on to a successful career as a painter before succumbing to cancer. —J.R.T

Alf Bicknell

From 1964 to 1966, Alfred George Bicknell (75) chauffeured The Beatles to concerts and other appearances. The inspiration for the song “Drive My Car,” Bicknell wrote the 1999 autobiography Ticket to Ride: The Ultimate Beatles Tour Diary!, in which he recalled the moment John Lennon reportedly snatched his chauffeur’s cap from his head and declared, “You don’t need that anymore, Alf. You are one of us now.” After The Beatles ceased touring, the former circus clown began driving business executives. A chainsaw accident ended his driving career in 1980, and he joined a Beatles convention circuit giving speeches and selling memorabilia. —E.R.

Skeeter Davis

One of the few women who serve as both a footnote and a legend, Skeeter Davis (72) spent her very long career skirting the pop and country markets. She started out as a rockabilly pioneer with her partner Betty Jack Davis, in 1953, before the duo ended up in an automobile accident that left her as a solo act. It took another decade before she finally became a huge solo star with “The End of the World.” Her public profile would later be that of a one-hit wonder. Within the Nashville scene, though, Davis was much admired and often sought out for duets. She aged pretty well, too, as NRBQ bassist Joey Spampinato noticed when he began courting her back in the ’80s. —J.R.T.

Arthur Kane

You can find at least two CD booklets from the ’90s that refer to the late Arthur Kane, while others believed that the New York Dolls’ bass player had simply disappeared after a jilted groupie cut off his thumbs. The only person who seemed willing to insist that Kane (55) was still alive was Keith Richards, and everybody probably thought that was just a hallucination. Anyway, Kane made a triumphant reemergence with his old band in 2004, after Morrissey invited the Dolls to perform at a UK music festival he was curating. Sadly, Kane succumbed to leukemia before the Dolls could follow up with any American dates. —J.R.T

Dead Folks 2005, Television part 2

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2005-02-24 Features

Dead Folks 2005, Television part 2

A look back at the notable names and personalities who called it quits last year.

By Danielle McClure, David Pelfrey, Ed Reynolds, J.R. Taylor

February 24, 2005Bob Keeshan




Bob Keeshan, aka Captain Kangaroo (click for larger version)

Far sillier (and better dressed) than Mr. Rogers could ever be, Bob Keeshan, otherwise known as the walrus-faced Captain Kangaroo, ruled children’s television programming on CBS from 1955 to 1984. The “Captain Kangaroo” show, which finished its run at PBS in the early ’90s, followed the Captain and his ragtag cast of puppets and characters, including Mr. Moose, Bunny Rabbit, Dancing Bear, and Mr. Green Jeans (who, despite rumors, was not the father of Frank Zappa) throughout their adventures at Treasure House. Keeshan entertained his audience with cartoons, the mysterious Magic Drawing Board, and sundry other gags. When Mr. Moose told one of his ridiculous knock-knock jokes, a shower of ping-pong balls was inevitable.

Keeshan (76), who started his career armed with a pair of horns and a bottle of seltzer water as Clarabell the Clown on “The Howdy Doody Show” in the late 1940s, couldn’t dance, sing, or even play an instrument, but he always had an eye-popping outfit and a knack for making funny faces. —D.M.

Robert Pastorelli




	Robert Pastorelli

He enjoyed a fine career as the housepainter Eldin on seven seasons of “Murphy Brown,” plus successful big-screen turns in Michael and Eraser. However, it seems Robert Pastorelli (49) was speaking a little too soon when proclaiming himself to be a former druggie in recent interviews he gave. In his defense, though, Pastorelli’s heroin overdose may not have been an accident. It turns out the cops were very eager to question the actor about the increasingly questionable “suicide” of his live-in girlfriend back in 1999. —J.R. Taylor.

Jan Miner

Madge: “You’re soaking in it.”

Customer getting manicure: “Dishwashing liquid?!”

Madge: “Relax. It’s Palmolive.”

Viewers who recall those television advertisements, which ran for a stunning 27 years, are all too familiar with stage actress Jan Miner (82). She played Madge the Manicurist, a wise broad (of a certain age) whose mission in life was to alarm customers before spreading the good news about Palmolive dish detergent, those green suds that “soften hands while you do the dishes.” —D.P.

Mary-Ellis Bunim

The next time you witness a drunken hook-up on “The Real World,” thank Mary-Ellis Bunim (57), one of the founding producers of MTV’s original reality series—or just turn off the television. Bunim, a TV “pioneer,” is responsible for changing the face of television in 1992. Bunim/Murray Productions bypassed actors and selected seven real unemployed post-graduates, er, strangers, to get real (eat, sleep, get wasted) while hanging out in a posh pad together for three months—without television—as the cameras rolled 24 hours a day to catch every droll, er, dramatic act.

MTV plans to air five more seasons of the show, carrying “Real World” through its unnecessary 20th season. If being solely remembered for producing the show that married Pedro, kicked off Puck, and let Coral rule as queen bitch wasn’t enough, Bunim/Murray Productions can also be blamed for the Fox Network’s “The Simple Life,” starring Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. That’s hot. —Danielle McClure

Ed Kemmer

Ed Kemmer (84) appeared as Commander Buzz Corry in the popular science fiction television program “Space Patrol,” broadcast live each week on the ABC network from 1950 to 1955. Kemmer switched from portraying heroes to villains when appearing on “Perry Mason,” “Gunsmoke,” and “Maverick.” He was also featured in daytime dramas “The Edge of Night” and “All My Children.” Lampert once said that of all his roles, he was most proud of “Space Patrol” because engineers told him they were inspired to careers at NASA after watching the sci-fi series as children. A German POW for a year in 1944, Kemmer staged plays in prison camp. —Ed Reynolds

Art James/Gene Wood

It’s sad when a creative voice is stilled, but we’re also losing far too many non-creative voices—specifically, those legendary figures of game shows who didn’t even get to cash in on the genre’s short-lived recent revival. Art James (74) was certainly unique in his field, having served as both an actual host (Concentration and Blank Check) and announcer for shows including The Joker’s Wild and Tic Tac Dough. Gene Wood’s (78) long association with Mark Goodson Productions allowed the legendary announcer to achieve two cultural milestones. His rave-up intro to Family Feud would later be appropriated by the World Wresting Federation, and that was his voice whispering the secret word on variations of the popular Password series. —J.R.T.

Isabel Sanford

As a not-so-young character actress, Isabel Sanford (86) built a fairly amazing filmography, including Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, The New Centurions, and Lady Sings the Blues. The real fame for the former stage actress began in 1971, though, when she made her first appearance as Archie Bunker’s neighbor on “All In The Family.” A quick recast of her husband, and the groundwork was laid for “The Jeffersons.” She invested her money much more wisely than co-star Sherman Hemsley, so it was probably just a good sense of humor that kept Sanford repeating her role long after the series had ended in 1985—including in Denny’s commercials, a “Tonight Show” cameo, and a turn in the big-screen comedy Mafia! —J.R.Taylor

Dead Folks 2005, Television part 1

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2005-02-24 Features

Dead Folks 2005, Television part 1

A look back at the notable names and personalities who called it quits last year.

By David Pelfrey, Ed Reynolds, J.R. Taylor

February 24, 2005

Tony Randall




Tony Randall (click for larger version)

Tony Randall’s best act (employing a trademark, withering gaze of surprised indignation) in his later show biz years was at feigning impatience with David Letterman, on whose program he made a record 70 appearances, often in cameos lasting only a few seconds. For most of his career Randall (84) was all over television, most effectively as himself during the halcyon era of “What’s My Line,” “The Tonight Show,” and the entire panoply of celebrity television that, in retrospect, seems like the best reality programming ever broadcast. His shining moment, of course, was the five-year run of “The Odd Couple,” in which Randall played the fastidious hypochondriac Felix Unger. The chronic allergies were Unger’s issue, but the fussiness was definitely a Randall matter, so much so that, as an entertainment persona, Randall exists in the gray area between straight and gay.

He’s been known to take a seat before Carson or Letterman and recite some very damp passage by Ernest Dowson, Oscar Wilde, or Gilbert and Sullivan, casting himself as a kind of throwback fin de siecle dandy. In the bedroom farces starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson and similar romantic comedies of the era, Randall was the stereotypical Madison Avenue executive, turned out in a trim-fit suit and skinny tie, relentlessly mixing martinis and chasing girls. It’s just that everyone watching wondered what Randall might do, precisely, if he caught one. Never a sissy floorwalker or a fey decorator (early Hollywood code for homosexual), Randall nonetheless asks Rock Hudson in Pillow Talk, “Need a light, cowboy?” and winds up in a bed with him in Lover Come Back.

Rock Hudson was the fully masculine romantic lead in those pictures, while Randall was . . . whatever he was. Of course in real life, Rock, well, let’s simply observe that human history is a cavalcade of paradox and irony. Let’s also recognize that Randall was never a mincer, nor a prancer for that matter. He was a brilliant whiner. Exactly where he might be placed on a continuum with Charles Nelson Reilly, Paul Lynde, and Rip Taylor is a topic for debate, but it can be safely stated that Tony Randall was flamboyantly theatrical, and very often damn funny. —D.P.

Jerry Orbach

Early in the morning, when our vocal cords are fully relaxed, who among us has not sung in the shower (where voices resonate most effectively) that number from The Fantasticks? We manage a deep baritone or, on a good day, a basso profundo rendition: Try to remember the kind of September . . . Not knowing the full verse, we immediately skip to . . . and fol-low.

There’s no getting around it. “Try to Remember” is Jerry Orbach’s baby, and it always will be. Orbach was a veteran of the stage, most notably for The Fantasticks (the world’s longest-running musical when it closed in 2002), Burt Bacharach’s Promises, Promises, and the original production of Chicago. He’s best known as detective Lennie Bresco on “Law & Order.” He played the same character on “Homicide: Life on the Street” and on three “Law & Order” spinoffs, which must be some kind of record. In motion pictures, Orbach offered excellent portrayals in Dirty Dancing, Prince of the City, Crimes and Misdemeanors, and Last Exit to Brooklyn. That’s also Orbach as the voice of Lumiere the candle, singing “Be Our Guest” in Beauty and the Beast. —D.P.

Jack Paar




Jack Paar (l) with John F. Kennedy (click for larger version)

After Steve Allen and before Johnny Carson there was Jack Paar (85), hosting “The Tonight Show,” that is. When Paar came on board several months after Allen’s departure, the show was in trouble and no one had any ideas about how to fix it. He chose to drop the variety format and simply have guests arrive, sit down, and chat for a while. It worked, especially since some of the guests were Judy Garland, Woody Allen, and Richard Nixon. It was high-profile conversation, even if it was decidedly not highbrow. Many viewers who saw the show during Paar’s tenure argue, often persuasively, that he was the best host the show ever had. Paar’s catch phrase “I kid you not” entered the popular lexicon fairly quickly, undergoing a slight variation in the Marine Corps, where the altered phrase was employed on a full time basis at boot camp. Paar left the show in 1962 at the top of his game. Letterman and Leno should take heed. —D.P.

Alistair Cooke




	Alistair Cooke (click for larger version)

As the first trumpet notes of Jean Mouret’s rondeau in B-flat from “Symphonies and Fanfares for the King’s Supper” catch viewers’ attention, the camera focuses on a distinguished gentleman seated in a highback chair with a book in his lap. That’s Alistair Cooke (95), the host of “Masterpiece Theater.” The music, his BBC diction, and the PBS program are inseparable in the public mind. He referred to his role on “Masterpiece Theater” as “headwaiter.” “I’m there to explain for interested customers what’s on the menu, and how the dishes were composed.”

The Cambridge educated Cooke (he became an American citizen in 1941) also produced the world’s longest running radio program (an awe-inspiring 58 years) called “Letter from America,” a 13-minute BBC piece that was nothing more nor less than Cooke offering his random thoughts on the American scene. From 1946 onward, he composed the entire program on a typewriter, exercised total editorial control, and only missed a few weeks during the program’s run. The former London correspondent for NBC worked from memory to provide listeners across the pond with his take on such disparate topics as brunch with Groucho Marx, hanging around a movie set with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, diners, taxi cabs, lunar landings, television commercials, or his presence at the assassination of Robert Kennedy (I heard somebody cry, “Kennedy, shot,” and heard a girl moan, “No, no, not again.”). Someone ought to have all those “letters” organized in a giant boxed set of CDs, as Cooke has provided what may be the most comprehensive personal history of America after the Second World War. It is easily the most erudite and charming. —D.P.

J.J. Jackson

Well, it’s not exactly like counting down Beatles or Ramones. Still, J.J. Jackson (62) set a milestone of sorts by becoming the first founding MTV VJ to pass away. He was the most beloved—or at least the most tolerated—of the original crew, thanks to his prior life as a notoriously knowledgeable DJ. That still doesn’t make up for Jackson trying to convince us that the lyrics to “All Touch” were genuine poetry. Anyway, it was a rare moment in rock when an older guy was actually welcomed as a valuable resource. His token spiritual predecessors would be Dave Kendall and Matt Pinfield. After that, MTV gave up and hired folks with less personality than one of Alan Hunter’s old shirts. —J.R.T.




	J.J. Jackson (second from left), surrounded by Alan Hunter, Martha Quinn, and John Goodman. (click for larger version)

Harry Babbitt

Harry Babbitt (90) was the voice behind the infectious laugh of Woody Woodpecker. Prior to his cartoon gig, Babbitt sang with the Kay Kyser big band on hits such as “The White Cliffs of Dover,” “Three Little Fishes,” and “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle.” He also did a Christmas novelty tune called “All I Want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth,” complete with a lisp. —Ed Reynolds

Danny Dark

According to the trade paper Radio & Records, the voice of Danny Dark (65) was heard in more award-winning commercials than any announcer in broadcast history. Known as the “voice-over king,” Dark’s unique voice was heard admonishing Charlie Tuna for not being the best-tasting tuna in the sea with his trademark “Sorry, Charlie.” He made the phrase “This Bud’s for You” common even with non-drinkers. Dark was also the voice of Superman in the “Super Friends” cartoon. —E.R.

Jerry Nachman

With his ever-present cigar, charming humor, imposing girth, and commanding grasp of current events, award-winning newsman Jerry Nachman was one of the more appealing television commentators in the business. Nachman (57), the editor in chief of the MSNBC cable network, was also a staff writer and executive producer for “Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher.” —E.R.

Jeff Smith

As the “Frugal Gourmet,” Jeff Smith (65) was at one time the host of the nation’s most-watched cooking program. But in 1997, seven men filed a lawsuit accusing Smith of sexual abuse. He left the airwaves soon thereafter. Six of the complainants said that Smith, a Methodist minister, abused them while they worked at his Chaplain’s Pantry restaurant in the 1970s. Smith denied the accusations and was never formally charged. —E.R.

Dead Folks 2005, Cinema part 2

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2005-02-24 Features

Dead Folks 2005, Cinema part 2

A look back at the notable names and personalities who called it quits last year.

By David Pelfrey, Ed Reynolds, J.R. Taylor

February 24, 2005

Peter Ustinov




Peter Ustinov (click for larger version)

The Oscar, Emmy, and Golden Globe winning Sir Peter Ustinov (82) is best known as pompous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in the film versions of Agatha Christie’s Death On the Nile and Evil Under the Sun. He’s also known for turns in upscale sword-and-sandal epics Spartacus and Quo Vadis, the latter being Ustinov’s opportunity to provide us with a definitive Nero. He excelled, in other words, at playing characters imminently full of themselves but just this side of ridiculous. Ustinov’s portly frame was a plus, yet his mellifluous voice carried most of the load; he sounded like an ideal blend of James Mason, Lawrence Olivier, and George Sanders. A master of dialects and accents, and fluent in almost a dozen languages, Ustinov was a motion picture wonder at times, never more so than in 1961 when he wrote, directed, produced, and acted in the stunning naval drama Billy Budd (one of the great underseen, under-appreciated films of modern cinema). —D.P.

Frank Thomas

From 1934 to 1978, Thomas (92) worked at the same company doing the same thing everyday. Since his office was at Walt Disney Studios, that’s not such a bad thing. Indeed, film scholars agree that his long, hard labor was a very good thing, as Thomas was a member of an elite squad of Disney animators known as “the nine old men.” He worked on such iconic animated pictures as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Pinocchio, later displaying a knack for crafting some unique characters and moments (the Queen of Hearts from Alice In Wonderland, Captain Hook from Peter Pan). That spaghetti dinner scene in Lady and the Tramp was also his idea. —D.P.

Walt Gorney

Walt Gorney achieved screen immortality in Friday the 13th as “Crazy Ralph,” the old hermit who warns those kids to stay out of the woods. “You’re all doomed!” he intones, only to be laughed at by those pot-smoking teens. Crazy Ralph was killed off in Friday the 13th Part 2, but every subsequent rural slasher film would include a similar character. Meanwhile, Gorney lived to the ripe old age of 92 because he didn’t go into the woods! —J.R.T.

Noble Willingham

Along with numerous appearances on “Rockford,” “The Waltons,” “Murder She Wrote,” “Home Improvement,” and several other series, Willingham (72) found plenty of work on the big screen (Paper Moon, Good Morning Vietnam, City Slickers, The Hudsucker Proxy) portraying sheriff’s deputies, congressmen, oil men, car salesmen, and military types. His characters often exhibited a right-wing, menacing, good-ol’ boy demeanor, but occasionally the actor could effortlessly manifest the quiet decency of an American Joe from the heartland (if such a being exists). In short, he seemed less like an actor and more like a fairly interesting “real” person who just wandered onto the set. Such is the magic of Hollywood. —D.P.

Joe Viterelli

The characters he played were always named Salvatore, Vinnie, Fat Tony, or Dominick—their last names ending with a vowel, of course. He had a face that looked like a basset hound wearing a medium pizza for a Halloween mask, thus providing, atop his rotund frame, a clueless visage that might be amusing were it not so damn intimidating. Viterelli (66) was that Hollywood casting creation known as the “mobster meatball,” and as Robert de Niro’s enforcer “Jelly” in Analyze This, he practically defined the dimwitted wiseguy. It was almost as though Joe were bringing past experience to his roles; after all, his former occupation is listed as “New York businessman,” and he died in Las Vegas of “complications after surgery.” There’s no sense in reading too much into that, though. —D.P.




	Joe Viterelli (click for larger version)

Spalding Gray

Many a person wanted to kill himself while enduring a Spalding Gray monologue—especially when somebody had the bad taste to put in one of his videos like Swimming to Cambodia or Monster in a Box before letting everybody get really stoned first. His final stage show ended with him celebrating life by jumping around to Chumbawamba, which was certainly so embarrassing that no one was surprised when Gray (62) killed himself by jumping into the East River of Manhattan. Still, Gray had a nice film career going as a George Plimpton type who gave vague class to bad indie films—and How High, too. He also had small parts in respectable films such as The Killing Fields. Let’s also not forget his early X-rated work in The Farmer’s Daughter and Little Orphan Dusty. You can also supposedly spot him in Ilsa, Harem Keeper of the Oil Sheiks. —J.R.T.

Julius Harris

Last year’s “Dead Folks” issue cited how the late dictator Idi Amin claimed that it was God’s will when Godfrey Cambridge died while playing him in the 1976 TV movie Victory at Entebbe. The joke was on Idi, though, since Cambridge was replaced by Julius Harris (71), who’d live long enough to read Amin’s obituary. Sadly, though, this amazing character actor passed away this year, leaving behind one of the best ’70s legacies of all time. Harris’ bulk provided menace and humor in classic blaxploitation films ranging from Shaft’s Big Score! to Superfly to Trouble Man—and that was only 1972. That set him up to take on James Bond in the blaxploitation-themed Live and Let Die. After that, his work in films like Friday Foster would be mixed with big-budget productions including Looking for Mr. Goodbar and the remake of King Kong. —J.R.T.

Carrie Snodgress

Carrie Snodgress became an overnight star when she appeared in the title role of 1970′s Diary of a Mad Housewife. The film bombed, despite her Oscar nomination, and her follow-up, Rabbit, Run, was another disappointing adaptation. Snodgress (57) had disappeared by 1972, and the gossip columns were asking “whatever happened to?” by 1976. The answer was that she’d run off to live with Neil Young and was raising their son Zeke, born with cerebral palsy. She returned to the screen in 1978 in Brian DePalma’s The Fury, which coincided with her having to endure coverage of record producer Jack Nitzsche’s trial for assaulting her. Fortunately, the worst details were too sordid to make the papers. After that, Snodgress worked steadily in both indie and major productions, right up to her death from heart and liver failure. —J.R.T.

Ingrid Thulin




	Ingrid Thulin (click for larger version)

Liv Ullman is better known, but Swedish actress Ingrid Thulin almost vaulted to international stardom in the wake of her films with Ingmar Bergman. Her stint with the famed director included 1957′s Wild Strawberries and 1972′s Cries and Whispers. Unfortunately, her bid to win over Hollywood stalled after Angela Lansbury had to dub her voice in the 1962 Glenn Ford film Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. This was still schlock cinema’s gain, since Thulin (77) would later contribute a stunning performance as the madame of a Nazi whorehouse in the fabulously trashy 1976 classic Salon Kitty. Thulin remained one of Europe’s most respected stage actresses after retiring from the screen in 1988. —J.R.T.

Christopher Reeve

In an ironic twist, actor Christopher Reeve (52) went from playing the definitive Superman to living as a quadriplegic after a horseback riding accident nine years ago. Though admitting that suicide was his first thought, Reeve eventually became a champion for paralysis victims, and was determined to one day walk again. He was a willing guinea pig for new medical treatments and eventually was able to partially leave the respirator he had been on after electrodes embedded in his lungs allowed the actor to breathe on his own for an hour or so each day. Reeve said those precious minutes were a highlight in his later years, as he cherished being able to turn off the machine and listen to the sound of his own breath again. Neither Reeve nor his wife lost their senses of humor, however. His wife appeared on Howard Stern’s television show to plug the Christopher Reeve Paralysis Foundation one evening, and smiled through Stern’s cruel jokes that she should have just let Reeve die. Reeve passed away following a heart attack. —Ed Reynolds

John Drew Barrymore

Drew’s no longer the only Barrymore to escape the family curse. Her father, John—son of acting legend John Barrymore—could claim to have lived for about five more decades than anyone could have ever expected. This notorious Hollywood casualty began his career as a total embarrassment to the Barrymore dynasty, giving horrific performances on stage and screen. He disappeared for a few years, changed his billing from “John Barrymore, Jr.” to John Drew Barrymore (72), and made several bad foreign productions during the ’60s. He was especially suited for historical roles, thanks to his love of long hair and hatred of shaving. There were plenty of drug busts, and the guy ended up living in the woods. Some would call him a dropout, but he was pretty much just homeless and crazy. He was an absentee father, naturally, and his daughter wisely didn’t have much to do with him. A wheelchair-bound Barrymore ended up being provided with a court guardian in 2003. He was certainly very handsome, though. —J.R.T.

Theo Van Gogh

He was a direct descendant of Vincent Van Gogh’s brother, but Theo Van Gogh (47) had made his own fame as a daring filmmaker in his native Netherlands. Sadly, a Dutch television showing of his short film Submission—about the mistreatment of women in Islamic culture—led to Van Gogh’s murder in the streets of Amsterdam. In a typically European display of bravery, the 2005 Rotterdam Film Festival planned to honor Van Gogh by showing Submission as part of a debate on free speech, but then showed submission by canceling the screening after more threats of Muslim violence. —J.R.T.

All in the family — An interview with Tom Smothers

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2005-02-24 Features

All in the family

An interview with Tom Smothers

By Ed Reynolds

write the author

February 24, 2005

In 1959 Tom and Dick Smothers began as a singing duo before evolving into one of the most enduring comedic teams of all time. “Mom always liked you best” was Tom’s most often repeated charge in the long-running, put-on feud with brother Dick. Their first national television appearance was on Jack Paar’s show in 1961. In 1967, CBS decided to give the Smothers Brothers a shot at the “kamikaze hour,” the 9 p.m. time slot opposite NBC’s “Bonanza.” Nine shows had gone down in flames attempting to break “Bonanza’s” seemingly insurmountable hold on television ratings. CBS hoped that “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” would appeal to a younger audience, but Tom and Dick assumed that they would fail as others had. According to Maureen Muldaur’s documentary Smothered: The Censorship Struggles of the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, the team had nothing to lose, but the brothers hoped to get at least half a season out of the deal and then “go fishing in Mexico” the rest of the year.

If Tom Smothers was going down, he was going down throwing his best punches. He demanded that the network give him complete creative control. The result was an hour of political satire that caught network executives and the nation off-guard. The reactionary youth movement of the 1960s had been defined by hippies, Black Panthers, and other insurgent characters, so no one expected a pair of short-haired, clean-shaven brothers to take on the Vietnam War, racial integration, and other social issues of the day. The show reached number one in the ratings as CBS observed with horror the subversive monster it had unleashed. Frank Stanton, the president of the network, often watched the program with President Lyndon Johnson at the White House, which resulted in Monday morning messages to Tom and Dick to tone down the controversy. By the second season, CBS was censoring the show and eventually canceled it halfway through the third year because a script was supposedly turned in too late to be reviewed. The brothers later won a $30-million lawsuit against CBS for breach of contract.




The Smothers Brothers: Tom and Dick. (click for larger version)

In 1988, CBS invited the brothers to do a “Comedy Hour” reunion. The network requested that the pair be as cutting edge and controversial as they had been two decades earlier, but Tom and Dick refused to comply. They decided to stick to just being funny. The Smothers Brothers will appear with the Alabama Symphony on Thursday, March 3 at the BJCC Concert Hall. Tom Smothers even promised to perform his astonishing yo-yo tricks.

No one expected a pair of short-haired, clean-shaven brothers to take on the Vietnam War, racial integration, and other social issues of the day. When “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” reached number one in the ratings as CBS observed with horror the subversive monster it had unleashed.

B&W: I’m having trouble picturing the Smothers Brothers performing with a symphony.

Tom Smothers: We do about eight or 10 symphonies a year, and we think they are the most fun of all the jobs we do. We do about 75 to 100 dates a year.

B&W: What makes the symphony dates so much fun?

Smothers: There’s something about the formality of a symphony. For a comedian, the easiest place to get a laugh without any effort is a schoolroom, courtroom, or a symphony hall (laughs). There’s something formal about it, and comedy kind of breaks that little formality. We always put monitors in back so that they [symphony members] can hear the dialogue and stuff—and I always turn around and look, and they are always laughing. They have the best time. It’s like having an audience behind us and an audience in front of us.

B&W: Are you and Dick the longest-running comedy team?

Smothers: We are the longest-lived comedy team in history. That form is very difficult to do. The kids today all do stand-up, you know . . . Being in a comedy team is like a marriage. It’s very complicated, and that’s why they don’t last very long, ’cause you get in each other’s face (laughs). Dicky and I had couples’ counseling about six years ago. Eighteen hours of these people. It cleared up a lot of stuff. [The therapist] said, “Stop treating each other like brothers and grow up, and treat each other like professionals.” Someone asked, “How do you guys get along?” Dicky said, “Well. It’s like an old marriage. A lot of fighting and no sex.”

B&W: I used to feel sorry for Dick because you were the one getting all the laughs. Did he ever want to be the funny guy?

Smothers: We’ve tried it before, but he’s very comfortable with being the straight man. In the early days, I got more attention than he did. The comic always did. It was 1978 or ’79, and we were watching Laurel and Hardy, Abbott and Costello, and Martin and Lewis, and I realized the straight man does most of the talking. Bud Abbott is doing all the talking, and that’s where the balance came in. If the audience believes the straight man, they’ll believe the comic. In the early days of vaudeville, the straight man was paid more money because it was a skilled position. It was the most difficult one, because a good straight man can bring people out of the audience and up on the stage and get laughs off of them. So Dicky and I understand that now, so there’s no problem with who recognizes his place. He’s basically keeps the tempo; he’s the rhythm section for the comedy. And he’s really good. Dicky ranks up there with Bud Abbott and Dean Martin and Dan Rowan and George Burns. He’s really that good.

B&W: Were you two ever tempted to work as a more raunchy act?

Smothers: Never. We started in the era of working clean, so it was very easy to keep it going. And now it’s darn near a point of difference—there’s not that many comedians that work clean. We get the same laughs but even better, and don’t have to use the F-word. Offstage, when I’m not working, sometimes I say, “What the f**k’s going on here? Give me the f**king hammer. Who f**ked this up?” Because that’s the way I talk when I’ve had a couple of drinks. My wife goes, “Ooohhh.” I’ve got a nine-year old and an 11-year old. Occasionally I’ll let out a word. I’ve got a swear jar. It’s got about 150 bucks in it now.

We started in 1959, we were fired in 1969, so we had 10 years of unparalleled success. Everything we did was ripe. And then in the ’70s, we could hardly get a job after that. We were untouchable.

B&W: “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” had an impressive list of writers (Mason Williams, Steve Martin, Rob Reiner, Bob Einstein, among others). I only knew Mason Williams for writing and performing the song “Classical Gas.”

Smothers: We [introduced] that song on the air. He’s also the one who wrote the Smothers Brothers theme. He was a major moral compass for me. We were roommates at the time we started the show. We were both single and we’ve got a television show, and Mason would read the script and he’d say, “That’s bullshit.” Then I’d go to the meeting and pretend it was all my idea. I’d go, “This doesn’t seem to work.” The whole thing was that we were trying to make some comedy that was at least relevant or had some factual background or something of interest or educational or something, so we tried to insert that kind of stuff into the “Comedy Hour.” Bob Einstein [comedian Albert Brooks' older brother, who is better known as comedic stuntman of sorts, Super Dave] was 21, Rob Reiner was 21. We had all these young writers. Dicky was 29, I was 30 during that time. It was a fun time; it made an impression. We started in 1959, we were fired in 1969, so we had 10 years of unparalleled success. Everything we did was ripe. And then in the ’70s, we called [those years] the dark ages (laughs). We could hardly get a job after that. We were untouchable. Very little eye contact in Hollywood. So we all moved away, and Dicky started a winery up in Sonoma, in northern California. He started racing cars and I did some theater. Then we started doing dinner theater, and then we ended up doing a Broadway show for about two years. And then we started working again in 1980 as The Smothers Brothers. It was like starting from scratch, but there was a residual respect that we got from that firing. We never wore out our welcome because we were on for so short a time. Then the winery started happening, so we’re in the food section (laughs). Then when we went to court with CBS, we were in the legal section. Then we would occasionally get another television show, so it was a pretty good career.

B&W: The show had an unusual mix of music. You’d have the Jefferson Airplane one week and Kate Smith the next.

Smothers: (Laughs) We had a rare opportunity to have one foot in the past. So we got the Jimmy Durantes and the Kate Smiths and Betty Davis. So we always had those rock groups and contemporary groups and classic old traditional stars, which was a great combination. We loved that. Music was our first thing. Dicky and I started off as musicians first, and the comedy just slowly edged its way in. And then when the Kingston Trio started working, folk music started happening. And I said, “Oh boy, this is really good stuff. Good stories.” So that’s when the comedy started happening, and Dicky started talking a little more and a little more, and pretty soon there was the comedy team.

B&W: Were you as shocked as everyone else when The Who played the “Comedy Hour” and Keith Moon got blown off his drum kit at the end of “My Generation”?

Smothers: (Laughing) It was a surprise to everybody. The union guy put the charge in, then Keith Moon went and put another charge in, and the first charge hadn’t gone off. There were three charges in that thing. So when that went off, man . . . Peter Townshend still can’t hear (laughs).

B&W: Was it prearranged when Townshend smashed your acoustic guitar?

Smothers: Yeah, I knew he was going to do that. We bought a much less expensive guitar that looked like mine. His ears were ringing, and I was looking around to see if anybody was injured. He staggered over to me because he knew he was supposed to take my guitar (laughs). And it looks so real because I was distracted, I was so concerned. When it first happened, I thought Moon’s drum had exploded, but now I look back and it didn’t. There were limiters on the microphones or else it would have blown out all the mics and everything.”

B&W: The current FCC crackdown is focused on profanity, exposed breasts, and other things of a suggestive nature more so than the political comedy that got you and Dick fired by CBS. Do you see any parallels at all?

Smothers: During the time that we were on in 1968 and ’69, there was a Senator Pastori, who was a raving, crazy man about the terrible stuff that was going on in television back then (laughs). So when we were on, we couldn’t say the words “sex education,” we couldn’t use the word “pregnant.” All the censorship was set up, basically, to protect the people from bad words and sexual innuendos. We didn’t do that. We were talking politics. So on April 4, 1969, we were fired from our show. We were fired for our viewpoints on Vietnam. People would come up to us before this last FCC and Janet Jackson stuff happened, and ask, ‘Don’t you wish you were on television, because now you can say anything you want?’ There’s that illusion that sexual content and violence and scatological talk is freedom. But there was nothing being said except sophomoric focus on the crotch. People would say, ‘We’re free, we’re free!’ and I would say, ‘No, no. Political criticism and satire since that time has been relegated to the fringes of television, which is cable, “Saturday Night Live,” at 11 o’clock where the viewing audience is way, way down and [the show] doesn’t create a big issue.’ So things have gone backwards, I think . . . The thing that offends me the most is that Howard Stern has become the poster boy for First Amendment rights. What a crock. Of all the people to pick, a guy that just talks about lesbians and tits and ass and stuff, and that’s the free speech thing? What a contradiction of values (laughs). I was at one time a poster boy for First Amendment rights. I was chosen. I didn’t volunteer.

B&W: Were you and Dick constantly getting pressure from CBS to tone down the controversy on the show?

Smothers: Oh, yeah. It was constant. I didn’t even know I was saying anything important until they said, “You better stop.” It’s amazing. It’s been over 35 years since that show was on the air. It was only on for two and a half seasons, but it made a pretty big impression. Because it’s still a point of conversation. I look back on these old shows and I kind of cringe a little bit. We did some shows in ’88 and ’89 for CBS where we introduced the Yo-Yo Man and stuff, and that was some of the best work that Dicky and I have ever done, next to our albums. The performances on the original show were not up to snuff, because I was so busy producing and worrying about other stuff. Everything except Dicky and I.

B&W: What was the final straw that made CBS cancel the show?

Smothers: David Steinberg did a sermonette . . . But it would have been something else. Nixon had just gotten elected and wasn’t going to listen to The Smothers Brothers criticize Vietnam policy (laughs). We became a threat (laughs) . . . The truth is what you persuade other people to believe. I’m so depressed. (Speaking in a weary voice). People aren’t thinking clear. But I’m kind of a liberal progressive, so I’m always on the other point of view, and I haven’t changed. I just turned 68 two days ago on Groundhog Day. There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “Old age is anyone 20 years older than you.”

B&W: I’ve seen photographs of Richard Nixon at the Grand Ole Opry playing with a yo-yo, and he looked like he was pretty good. Would the Yo-Yo Man philosophy apply to Nixon?

Smothers: (laughs) Well, yeah . . . The philosophy is basically a perserverence. And the yo-yo, if you miss it, you just get right back on and you keep practicing. Your failures are what head you toward success. Around the World [a yo-yo trick] is like you go out every day and do stuff, and sometimes we fail and we have to try it again and never quit. It’s got a nice philosophy to it. The Yo-Yo Man does not talk, and Dick is kind of the play-by-play announcer. So with the yo yo, I don’t make every trick every time the first time sometimes. Dicky will say, “Oh, the Yo-Yo Man is out of his groove. Come on, Yo-Yo Man, concentrate. Don’t give up. Tom has made a lot of mistakes; he’s learning a lot. He’s working on his doctorate (laughs).”

B&W: Did you and Dick make Nixon’s enemies list?

Smothers: No, we were his first success. It was after that he said, “Hey, let’s make a list.” The plumbers were setting us up with drug busts and all kinds of stuff. It was dirty. I didn’t know what hardball was. It was right after we were fired. We were also doing a movie; it was called Another Nice Mess. This was 1970, and it was a movie with Rich Little and a guy named Herb Bolen, and we dressed them up to look exactly like Nixon and Agnew. But they talked and acted like Laurel and Hardy, and Nixon was always looking at Agnew and going (imitates Oliver Hardy), “That’s another nice mess you’ve gotten us into.” So out of the midst of that, I had a friend who was a former Marine and later worked at the CIA who called me and said, “Tom, I met a guy down at the federal building who asked me, ‘Do you know Tommy Smothers?’” And my friend said, “Yeah.” The guy then said, “I thought I’d tell you that if he’s a friend of yours, there’s a drug bust being set up for him. Tell him to have someone with him at all times, have his car sent to the car wash everyday.” So I got the word, and I started looking up all my friends and let them know that they better clean up their act. So I’m supposed to be on a plane coming up to San Francisco where I was living with my grandfather at the time. I missed the flight. I was busy doing some editing. At about nine o’clock, he called and said, “There’s a bunch of guys here, federal and state narcotics people going through the house.” That was an exciting time of my life. I hid out for a week. I had smoked some grass, but my house was clean as a whistle because I was warned in advance.

B&W: Would you like to have another TV show to take on the conservative establishment these days?

Smothers: It’s not the conservative establishment; it’s a question of fairness and common sense. When you look at stuff and kind of criticize things that don’t make sense, it doesn’t matter what side it comes from—left or right. The problem is that we’re at the age now where we’re age-discriminated against. We’re a little too old. They have MTV for the kids. When are they going to get a network for the adults so we can have some interesting and smart stuff? Then we’d be on!

B&W: I read that you have a lot of respect for Ralph Nader. Did you take issue with him when liberals complained that he drew electoral votes away from Gore?

Smothers: No. I happen to have more than respect for him. He’s one of the rarest people in the world. He never compromised standing up for the little people. His whole thing is standing up for the consumer. Where everybody jumped on him for supposedly throwing the election to Bush, that’s all bullshit. People ask, “Why would you vote for Nader? He’s not going to win.” I say, “Well, when you vote for a Republican or a Democrat, one of them’s not going to win either.” You vote for what you believe in. You never hear him yell, you never hear him talk dirty, you never hear him get angry with people. He keeps this real calm demeanor, and he makes absolute sense. I haven’t voted for a Republican or Democrat in 18 years. Both those parties are so corrupt now. It’s a joke. I mean, they’re all bought and paid for by corporations.

B&W: What’s it going to take to break the stronghold the two parties have on American politics?

Smothers: It’s going to take a revolution (laughs). I think the biggest problem is that since the media has become so consolidated . . . I think we should make an amendment to the Constitution, the First Amendment—freedom of speech—we should add “freedom of hearing.” Some smart things are being said, but we don’t get to hear them. They don’t come out through the microphone. So this country remains ignorant. You have to really get out there and dig to find the truth. I’m still pissed off. But it’s not in our show. Our show’s pretty darned middle-of-the-road. It’s a family show, and we make a few social comments in there that aren’t pointed enough, but people get it.

B&W: Lots of people are referring to the war in Iraq as another Vietnam.

Smothers: Well, it is! It is. What was the Vietnam war about? Well, we’re going to stop the domino thing. And over in someone else’s country, fighting for the hearts and minds. And we’re going the same way. There’s no exit strategy. Rumsfeld and McNamara are the same people. And they look alike, too! It’s amazing how collective memory just went away. You saw it coming from a mile away . . . God, you know when the Dixie Chicks said that thing about Bush? They disappeared. No stations would play them. People are scared to death. You can see this totalitarian thing, militarism. If anybody questions anything, it’s treason. We’ve gotta keep our sense of humor, because last time I lost it for about two years. I was just a dreadfully dull dude (laughs). Finally, I saw Jane Fonda on television one time and she was just . . . eyes all crossed and angry. I was watching her and I said, “Oh man, I’m starting to look like that. I better stop that. Find the joke again (laughs).” &

The Gospel According to Reverend Al

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The Gospel According to Reverend Al

Satirist Al Franken sharpens his political ax.

By Ed Reynolds

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January 27, 2005

With the possible exceptions of Michael Moore and Hillary Clinton, no liberal is more despised by conservatives than Al Franken. His volatile public spat with Bill O’Reilly after Franken called him a liar for claiming that “Inside Edition,” where O’Reilly had been an anchor, had won a Peabody Award, led to a hilarious battle of insults between the two on C-SPAN in 2003. O’Reilly had actually won a Polk award but claims merely to have mixed up the names. Franken refused to let him off the hook, however. To this day, O’Reilly refuses to so much as utter Franken’s name, much less have him as a guest either on his radio or Fox television program. Franken was also sued by Fox News for using the phrase “fair and balanced” in the title of his book Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right. The suit was eventually thrown out.




Satirist Al Franken performs at the Alys Stephens Center on Saturday, February 12. (click for larger version)

Franken’s publicist suggested a five-minute interview, but Franken, who had just finished his Air America political radio program minutes earlier, said he had nothing urgent that afternoon. He graciously and enthusiastically chatted for half an hour. When he laughs, he often sounds like one of the Tappet Brothers (Tom and Ray Magliozzi), who host “Car Talk” on NPR. Franken will appear at the Alys Stephens Center’s Jemison Concert Hall on Saturday, February 12, at 8 p.m.

B&W: I read a quote from Mort Sahl where he said “Comedy has changed. It isn’t funny anymore.” Do you agree?

Franken: No (laughs). Some comedy isn’t funny. But some comedy is. That’s something that will never change (laughs).

B&W: We have to go to our computers to listen to Air America in Birmingham.

Franken: Or you can get it on Sirius or XM. But I understand; I’d love to have it down in Birmingham.

B&W: Is that an example of perhaps how culturally backwards the South is?

Franken: (Laughing) No, we’re not in places in the North (laughs). We have 45 stations; I mean, we’re adding stations all the time. We’re just adding Detroit, which is pretty far north, as our scientists tell us . . . I’d love to be in Birmingham. Birmingham is a town I’ve been talking about to people at Air America for a while. Obviously they go after the largest markets first, and so that’s the priority. But I kind of like the idea of being in Birmingham.

B&W: Anything in particular about Birmingham that attracts you?

Franken: Well, I don’t know. It seems like the most progressive town in Alabama . . .

B&W: That’s not saying a whole lot.

Franken: Well, maybe Huntsville, too. I’d rather be in Birmingham than Anniston. It’s bigger. But I’d love to be in Anniston!

B&W: I’m curious about Clear Channel’s addition of Air America in the San Diego market. When they did that, they changed the call letters of the station there to KLSD.

Franken: Yeah, and it was like “Liberal San Diego” is what they tell us. It wasn’t like (does a stoner Tommy Chong-like voice), “Hey man, we want LSD (laughs).” So I heard that, and my heart sank. I don’t why they did that. I guess it’s memorable. I think in Austin we may be on KOKE, which I’m not thrilled with either.

B&W: Tell me about the recent USO tour.

Franken: It was the second year in a row that I did a USO tour to Kuwait, Iraq, and Afghanistan. And, basically, I spent most of my time with rednecks. You know, Mark Wills, the country star, and Darryl Worley, and Bradshaw, the wrestler. And I liked them enormously. . . . All of us on that tour, we deliberately did the same tour [together] the next year.

B&W: Were the soldiers fairly receptive to your USO performances?

Franken: People ask me that all the time, and I’ve done five USO tours—and, of course, I think more and more recently I’ve been known more for my politics—never once have I had a soldier say anything other than, “Our politics are totally different, but thanks for coming over.” And that makes a lot of sense. If you’ve done these tours, you know that they so appreciate not just the entertainers but anybody coming over.

B&W: Do you still respect Colin Powell even though he supported the Iraq invasion?

Franken: Yeah, I still have respect for Colin Powell, I do. I believe that the day he testified before the U.N. was the low point of his career . . . I don’t think it’s just having been to Iraq [on a USO tour], but I did come back kind of angry, because we do have magnificent soldiers. I went to some hospitals in Iraq and talked to guys who were grievously wounded. Very, very, very young—my kid’s age. And it tears me up, because I think that we went to war under false pretenses. And then not only that, we prosecuted the war in an incredibly incompetent way that was due to hubris and, worse than that, laziness. I think that Powell does the right thing, famously quoted in the Woodward book, which is, “If you break it, you own it.” You know, the Pottery Barn rule. Which, by the way, isn’t the Pottery Barn rule. We immediately at Air America were the first ones to break this story: It’s not the Pottery Barn rule because you can accidently break something in a Pottery Barn, and you don’t pay for it. To me that meant that if you’re the president and your secretary of state says, “If you break it, you own it,” you should know that already, but your job is to understand what that means. And there was planning done by the state department called The Future of Iraq Project, and all this is very, very well detailed in James Fallows’ article “Blind Into Baghdad” in the January/February 2004 Atlantic Monthly. And there was planning done by the CIA and planning done by the Army War College, which is a 1,500-page document which has been amazingly prescient. And among the things they said were don’t allow looting, for example; get the electricity up as fast as possible; get the water up as fast as possible; don’t let the military disband; send in a couple of hundred thousand troops. All these things that we didn’t do that we should have done that we should have known about that was there. The planning that was done. When people say this war was badly planned, it wasn’t badly planned, it’s just that the planning was ignored. And it was ignored by people having ideological reasons to ignore it . . . I think that intellectual sloth is a vice, I really do. It’s a vice if you’re the president of the United States. It’s not a vice if you’re Randy Moss [Minnesota Vikings wide receiver]. I mean, Randy should study the plays, and watch the film, and know his routes. But after that he can kick back and play video games, I don’t care. But if you’re the president of the United States, intellectual sloth is a vice. And I believe that the man has a history of that. I think that he’s a smart man in many ways, but he didn’t do the job he was supposed to do. And because of that we have young men who wouldn’t have been dying.

B&W: What prompted you to focus more on politics than satire?

Franken: I did “Saturday Night Live” for 15 seasons, and during those years I wrote a lot of the political material on the show with other people, including Jim Downey, who is pretty conservative. He and I wrote a lot of stuff together. And neither of us ever felt that it was the job of the show to have a political ax to grind. First of all, we kept each other honest, in a way. And really just didn’t see it as appropriate to have, you know, like he didn’t write a piece that was real conservative and I’d write a piece that was real liberal. We didn’t feel like that was what the show was about. We felt that there were so many other creative people on the show that “Saturday Night Live” had a certain role to play. And the role was to be politically neutral and make fun of everybody, which is what we did. So when I finally left the show in 1995 I had a deal to write a political book, and I felt like that was the first time I really had the opportunity to express my own political views, and that was Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot and Other Observations. Now, before I did “Saturday Night Live,” Tom Davis and I worked as a team since, like, the ’60s when we were in high school together. We did political stuff that did express our politics, but when we went to “Saturday Night Live” we didn’t feel that was our job.

B&W: Whatever happened to Tom Davis?

Franken: Well, Tom has actually been doing our radio show quite frequently. We write these bits. He and I are huge Bob and Ray fans, so we do a lot of Bob and Ray-esque pieces.

B&W: I love that story you told David Letterman about taking your son to see Bambi.

Franken: Yeah, I had gone through this long, elaborate thing to cushion that moment [when it's learned that Bambi's mother gets killed]. And Joe [Franken's son] was five, and so that moment happens, and you know, she gets killed off-camera, off-screen. And he says, “What happened to Bambi’s mom?” And I said, “Well, Bambi’s mom has been shot by the hunters, and she’s gone, she’s dead. But don’t worry, it’s just a movie, and it’s not going to happen to your mom, and Bambi’s going to be OK because Bambi’s daddy’s going to take care of him.” And he liked the movie so much that we came back the next week. And there was a little girl in front of us, like about a five-year-old girl, who at the same point in the movie asked her mom, “Where’s Bambi’s mommy?” And Joe said to her, “She’s dead. (laughs).”

B&W: Are there any conservative pundits that you respect or like?

Franken: Yeah, I’m interested in what Bill Kristol has to say. With all these people, I obviously have differences with, but he’s very smart and has interesting things to say. And George Will—less and less—but I used to really be a big fan of his. Sorta growing out of that, for some reason (laughs). David Brooks is someone, I like his stuff every once in a while, and hate it. There are guys that I don’t ever like what they write. Andrew Ferguson I find good.

B&W: Do you give better phone sex than Bill O’Reilly?

Franken: No! He beats me . . . hands down.

B&W: If you had your wife’s approval, would you rather have phone sex with Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan, or Katherine Harris?

Franken: Wow . . . wow . . . wow (laughs). You know, that’s almost unanswerable. Hmmm . . . Ann Coulter, Peggy Noonan, or Katherine Harris. It’s a real toss-up. Any one of them would be great (laughs). An embarrassment of riches (laughs).

B&W: Have you got any good Andy Kaufman stories?

Franken: You know what? Andy was hilarious. And what he did was groundbreaking and strange and great. But he was, uhh, what you saw was what you got. He wasn’t that different off camera, at least to me. He was just sorta strange. And when I heard they were doing Man on the Moon, I went like, boy, is there something about Andy that I don’t know to make a movie about this? And I went to the movie and I said, “No there wasn’t.” I didn’t think that was Milos Forman’s best movie, and I thought that Jim Carrey did a great job in the movie, but I don’t think that was a particularly compelling movie. But Andy was brilliant. There’s a documentary on the wrestling thing. I thought that was hilarious. You know the thing about him reading The Great Gatsby [Kaufman claimed to have read the book to an audience one night]? He didn’t (laughs). Maybe he [really] did after he told me he did. Once he sat down and told me he had read The Great Gatsby to an audience and then I found out that he hadn’t from his manager. And I was going like, why did he tell me that? And usually with comedians you get some kind of balance. But with Andy, you didn’t. I never got close to Andy.

B&W: Are there any sacred cows that you refuse to touch satirically?

Franken: You know what, there are no sacred cows, it’s just how you do it. I can easily be offended by a comedian who doesn’t handle something in the right way. And then someone can do an AIDS joke that’s handled in the right way.

B&W: Any examples of comedians that have offended you?

Franken: Uummm. No, usually they are just lousy comedians who don’t understand . . . I wasn’t offended by Andrew Dice Clay. I’m not offended by Howard Stern. They do different things than I do. I got a little offended by [Don] Imus at the radio and TV correspondents dinner on the behalf of other people. And then again, it’s because I just thought he wasn’t doing it right. But there are other times that I like Imus. But sure, I get offended a lot of times by banality, and a very, very lame sitcom will offend me to my core (laughs) . . . You see, I have a theory in my comedy that Downey and I always had in the political stuff we wrote, which I think was somewhat sophisticated. We always had the sorta credo to reward people . . . to write a piece so that people who knew a lot about what we were doing would really like it—would feel especially rewarded for knowing extra stuff. But people who didn’t know that much about it wouldn’t be punished for not knowing. Whereas a lot of comedy that I see does the opposite—it punishes you for knowing things, like humans don’t behave this way. Very often the comedy that offends me is like a sitcom that has people behaving in a way that they don’t behave. Then rewarding you for being an idiot. The jokes about politics that are just so base and stupid and have nothing to do with anything. They’ll offend me. And I’ll be offended by comedy that’s overly precious. It’s like asking a musician what music does he like . . . There’s more aesthetic things that are offensive to me than probably to the normal consumer of comedy.

B&W: What can we expect from your lecture on February 12?

Franken: I don’t know. Is it a lecture (laughs)? It’ll probably be a combination of comedy, politics . . . I like to do a funny show; it’s like what I’ve been doing lately. It goes in and out of being funny and being serious . . . And then we’ll be doing that phone sex thing with Peggy Noonan, Ann Coulter, or Katherine Harris (laughs). And hopefully, hopefully, all three (laughs). &

All Aboard!

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2004-10-07 Diversions

All Aboard!

Little engines that could are rolling into the Bessemer Civic Center.

By Ed Reynolds

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October 07, 2004

For those who never grew up, the Model Train Show at the Bessemer Civic Center on October 16 and 17 offers a fantasy journey to the strange, Lilliputian land of trains. Weaving through diverse landscapes dominated by miniature downtown buildings, tiny trees, diminutive but cascading mountain ranges, and minuscule hobos hovering around fires, toy trains will whistle and chug to the amusement of both the curious and the enthusiast.

“I got my first set when I was 8 years old,” says Whit Fancher, chairman of The Wrecking Crew, a local model train club. “And like most people, you’re super-involved until you get a car. And then with girls and everything else going on, you kinda get out of the hobby, but the seed has been planted. Once it gets in your blood, it’s there.” The Wrecking Crew, a branch of the Steel City Division, which is a smaller division of the National Model Railroad Association, keeps a model train layout set up in West Lake Mall, where the trains run every Saturday. At both the Bessemer Civic Center and West Lake Mall, 10 model tracks will be available for public viewing the weekend of the show. Clinics for constructing landscapes from scratch (including how to make such native foliage as crape myrtles, oak leaf hydrangeas, and nandinas) will be conducted. “You can make your own trees for a penny, and they look better than any commercial tree you can purchase,” says Fancher.




The Model Train Show pulls into the Bessemer Civic Center on October 16 and 17.

Several sizes of model trains will be on display, including the quarter-inch-high Z scale (“$300 for a locomotive that you can’t see,” laughs Fancher), the popular HO scale [the most familiar], N scale [one inch high], and the mammoth garden railway scale [locomotives up to three feet long that are operated outside]. “Some people just like to run the stuff, some like to build, some like to collect,” explains Fancher, who regards himself as more of a collector and a builder. “I’m not that much of an operator. I can run it around the track a few times, and I start to get bored.”

Fancher admits that model trains can be amazingly elaborate. “You’ll see some hobbyists that construct a building board by board—a little building that may be six inches tall with the same number of pieces of wood as the actual-size structure. They’ll cut the wood themselves and build them from scratch. Some people do that with the cars and locomotives; spend thousands of hours on something that you can buy for $13. It’s really bizarre, people going to that extreme.”

The Model Train Show will take place from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, October 16, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sunday, October 17. For more information, call 746-0007.

A WIng and a Prayer

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A Wing and a Prayer

By Ed Reynolds

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September 09, 2004An airborne ballet of soaring tricks and flirtations with disaster will dash through the sky at the Wings and Wheels 2004 air show September 25 and 26 at the Shelby County Airport . Led by AeroShell Aerobatic Team daredevils flying North American T-6 Texans (World War II trainer aircrafts known as “pilot-makers”), the show will feature graceful loops and rolls trailed by white plumes of smoke in a display of precision flying maneuvers. Barnstorming ace Greg Koontz will lead the festivities with an inverted mid-air ribbon-cutting stunt in his Super Decathlon flyer. Koontz, who currently operates an aerobatic school in Birmingham, started performing in air shows in 1974 as a member of Colonel Moser’s Flying Circus, a comedy airplane troupe. He is credited with resuscitating the World’s Smallest Airport routine years ago when he landed a Piper Cub on a moving pickup truck. Koontz puts on a dazzling array of snaps and tumbles, vertical rolls, and outside loops. And, most thrilling of all, Koontz is fond of performing at extremely low altitudes.

The gates open at 10 a.m. each day, and admission is $10 for adults, $2 for youths, and children younger than 5 are admitted free. For more information, call 1-866-246-2376 or visit www.birminghamaeroclub.org for details.

Book Review: Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?

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Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?

The story of the Carter Family, also known as the First Family of country music.

By Ed Reynolds

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July 29, 2004

Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?
By Mark Zwonitzer with

Charles Hirshberg.
Simon and Schuster, 417 pages,

$15, softcover.

The story of the Carter Family is the story of Appalachian mountain music, the genre that would later spawn country, bluegrass, and folk music. Along with Jimmie Rodgers, the Carters were among the biggest stars of the late 1920s and ’30s. Their 78 rpm recordings of “Wildwood Flower” and “Keep on the Sunny Side” sold close to 100,000 copies at a time when the recording industry was still relatively new. Carter Family songs have been recorded by the likes of Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, and Woody Guthrie, among others. They’re also credited with the first recording of “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.”




Maybelle, Sara and A.P. Carter. (click for larger version)

For nearly half a century, the real story behind the breakup of the original Carter Family remained a mystery. Ensconced as the first family of country music, A.P. Carter, his wife Sara, and her cousin Maybelle never spoke publicly of the split. Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone?, however, reveals the family secrets in agonizing, intriguing detail worthy of a John Steinbeck novel. It’s a fascinating, eye-opening journey into the desperation that not only defined the Great Depression, but that also was the essence of Carter Family songs.

Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? is more than the Carters’ story, though. It’s also the story of the birth of the recording industry and the hoodwinking quackery of a millionaire “medical practitioner” named Dr. John Romulus Brinkley, the man who broadcast the Carter Family to much of the western hemisphere over his million-watt border radio station XERA. In fact, it’s the bizarre introduction of Brinkley’s cure for male impotence (which he regularly hawked over the airwaves) during the book’s prologue that initially prompts the reader’s jaw to drop before the Carters ever show up in their own book. The doctor was pocketing $750 to $2,000 a pop in the 1930s performing operations that involved grafting bits of goat testicles onto the gonads of gullible men who were seeking to regain their virility. One can hardly wait to find the Carters’ connection to this freak show.

Raised in Poor Valley, Virginia, at the bottom of Clinch Mountain in the foothills of the Appalachians, Alvin Pleasant “A.P.” Carter possessed a slight tremor from childhood on. The affliction (“nervous energy” the locals called it, as A.P. constantly talked to himself and could not sit still) was attributed to his mother having been struck by lightning while pregnant. His constant shaking added a distinctive vocal quiver to his bass voice that lent an ethereal, tender quality to the Carter Family sound. On the other side of Clinch Mountain, his future wife Sara lived in Rich Valley, so named for its fertile soil. Sara’s cousin Maybelle eventually married A.P.’s brother Eck, and soon Maybelle and Sara were close as sisters, spending their free hours singing and playing guitars together.




	Keep on the Sunny Side: a grinning June Carter and her first husband, singer Carl Smith, in the early 1950s. (click for larger version)

If having a woman [Sara] as lead singer made the Carters a unique act, A.P.’s role made them even odder. His bass dropped in and out of songs unpredictably, and there were some nights he didn’t bother to show up for concerts or recording sessions at all. A.P.’s number-one contribution was roaming the hills of Tennessee and Virginia in search of songs that he could adapt to the group’s sound. Though his name is listed as the writer on most of the Carter songs, he rarely wrote anything.

A.P. was unique in another way: he sometimes stayed with black families while traveling to collect blues songs and then reciprocated by allowing blacks to stay with him and Sara, much to the consternation of the locals. A.P.’s incessant travels left Sara to tend to the farm and raise the family, offering the first clue that their marriage would soon unravel. That Sara fell in love with his first cousin Coy, who moved into the Carter house to help Sara with the chores while A.P. traveled, made the divorce even more bitter.

Ralph Peer, the man who made a fortune off of musician Jimmie Rodgers and who introduced the terms “hillbilly” and “race” into the lexicon as new rural musical genres, recognized the Carter Family genius. Peer literally grew up with the recording industry. He was born in 1892, the same year that Thomas Edison introduced his Electric Motor Phonographs for $190 each. After the Carters’ audition in Bristol, Tennessee, Peer signed the trio to his Victor recording label, paying the group $50 for each song recorded. Steeped in opera and classical music, Peer despised the hillbilly and black blues from which he was making a fortune, but he made the Carter Family a household name by 1928. Soon, Maybelle’s graceful, thumping guitar style that incorporated rhythm and lead at the same time would be the most widely imitated picking technique around. Their harmonies grew incredibly tight. Because three minutes was the maximum space available on a 78 rpm record, they whittled a song down to its essence.

Maybelle and her husband Eck, however, stayed above the frayed edges that haunted A.P. and Sara’s lives. While singing songs about what the book refers to as “the fine art of hard living,” they lived like royalty, spending their money on cars, motorcycles, and other luxuries their neighbors could only dream about. Even Maybelle was a motorcycle enthusiast. The image of June and Maybelle careening around the dirt roads of Poor Valley at 100 miles per hour does not match the backwoods Grand Ole Opry image projected by the simplicity of their music or June’s dumb-girl comedy routine. Maybelle and her clan were actually quite sophisticated for a bunch of Clinch Mountain yokels. Eck, an entrepreneur at heart, introduced electricity to the valley in 1930 when he rigged a turbine wheel in a nearby creek. He was so successful that the Appalachian Power Company of Bristol bought him out when he began plugging in his neighbors. As part of the deal, Eck demanded—and received—every electrical appliance on exhibit at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Daughter Anita, the youngest of Maybelle and Eck’s three daughters, said she could not recall ever being without a dishwasher. It’s almost surreal, the way the Carters lived. Every Sunday afternoon, Eck would set up huge speakers in his yard and baffle the surrounding hillbillies by blasting Mozart and Beethoven into Poor Valley.

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By the time Dr. John Romulus Brinkley entered their lives in 1938, Maybelle and family had been living well for quite some time. At Eck’s behest, Maybelle, Sara, and A.P. moved to Del Rio, Texas, where Brinkley paid them $75 a week each, with six months paid vacation thrown in. The Carters did two shows a day for six months on XERA, an outlaw radio station with the miraculous power to “shrink a vast continent down to the size of a small village.” Brinkley had been run out of Kansas after being stripped of his medical license. Fleeing to Texas, where medical standards were less stringent, he built a couple of hospitals for his libido-rejuvenating procedures. He even had pens out back for his many goats, allowing patients the opportunity to pick out their own goat testicles. Because of 50,000-watt restrictions on U.S. radio stations, Brinkley built XERA across the border in Mexico, where his million watts not only broadcast his surgical skills, but also sent the Carters across America, into Canada, and as far south as South America.

At this point, the story is only half-told. There’s still the anecdote of a drunken Hank Williams trying to shoot June Carter. And, of course, June will eventually marry Johnny Cash, who adds another dimension to Will You Miss Me When I’m Gone? by performing such wild antics as kicking out the stage lights at the Grand Ole Opry. Night after night, the Carters went on perpetual searches of Cash’s dressing room to flush the many pills he had stashed away. Trying to find Cash’s pills was “like an Easter egg hunt,” said June’s sister Anita. A.P. does not have a happy ending, and most appropriately, neither does Dr. John Romulus Brinkley. Sara settles down in California with her true love, Coy. And as for Maybelle and her family, the best is yet to come. &