Passages

[Lemmy Caution]

Jimmy McCracklin had a good long life.
Transitioned from Blues to R&B to Soul and kept going.
I love his 1972 soul album Yesterday is Gone.
(also issued as High on The Blues, both released by Stax)
The title track is an unknown classic, but Would Man Be Satisfied is a beautiful song as well.
Actually Side A is the best side of any soul album I know.

For those who don't know Jimmy McCracklin, he's probably best known for his breakthrough hit The Walk (1957), and for co-writing Tramp with Lowell Fulson.
His first recording was 1945. Had a distinctive voice.
Since it's the season, give a listen to his fine Xmas tune, Christmas Time.

[JPJ]

Thanks Lemmy.What was the first rock'n roll song?I think McCracklin's Reelin'&rockin' from 1950 is a good contender.Chuck Berry probably heard that song more than a couple of times...

[Drucker]

Thanks Lemmy.What was the first rock'n roll song?I think McCracklin's Reelin'&rockin' from 1950 is a good contender.Chuck Berry probably heard that song more than a couple of times...

Louis Jordan's late-40s stuff, e.g. "Caledonia" I think is a strong case. "Good Rockin' Tonight" from Roy Brown is also from 1948, another strong contender.

[Lemmy Caution]

I don't think there is any such thing as the first rock and roll record. Mostly because it was an evolutionary process, but also because it has a weird racial dimension to it.

I always thought Roy Brown and Amos Milburn sounded a lot like proto-rock in the late 40's.
Brown's Good Rocking Tonight was recorded June 1947 and released in Sept '47.
(Wynonie Harris' cover was released early 1948).
Milburn's Down the Road a Piece was 1946.
I always assumed the fact that they began their recording careers post-war gave them a fresher sound, less tied to jazz and jump blues, more linked to the emerging R&B sound which morphed into rock.

This wiki article covers the evolution pretty well. I particularly like the middle section where it discusses dozens of songs from the 1920's on, starting with: "My Man Rocks Me (With One Steady Roll)" by Trixie Smith issued in 1922, the first record to refer to "rocking" and "rolling" in a secular context

[bamwc2]

Jack Klugman

[willoneill]

Jack Klugman

This seems sadly fitting to me ... this is is our first Christmas without my grandfather, who was a huge Quincy ME fan.

[Lemmy Caution]

Charles Durning

[domino harvey]

Dammit, two great comedic actors gone on the same day

[colinr0380]

Sir Richard Rodney Bennett, composer of many film scores including Stanley Donen's Indiscreet, Ken Russell's Billion Dollar Brain, a number of Peter Sellers films, a couple of Hammer films (The Witches, starring Joan Fontaine, and The Nanny, starring Bette Davis), Four Weddings and a Funeral and finally the BBC's 2000 television adaptation of Gormenghast.

Perhaps most notable were the scores for a number of films for Sidney Lumet (Murder On The Orient Express and Equus), Joseph Losey (Blind Date, Secret Ceremony and Figures In A Landscape) and John Schlesinger (Billy Liar, Far From The Madding Crowd and Yanks).

[Perkins Cobb]

Another fine character actor, Cliff Osmond.

[Drucker]

Marva Whitney

[Perkins Cobb]

Gerry Anderson.

[flyonthewall2983]

Charles Durning

From his NYT obit

"He was in the first wave of troops to land on Omaha Beach on D-Day and his unit’s lone survivor of a machine-gun ambush. In Belgium he was stabbed in hand-to-hand combat with a German soldier, whom he bludgeoned to death with a rock. Fighting in the Battle of the Bulge, he and the rest of his company were captured and forced to march through a pine forest at Malmedy, the scene of an infamous massacre in which the Germans opened fire on almost 90 prisoners. Mr. Durning was among the few to escape.

"By the war’s end he had been awarded a Silver Star for valor and three Purple Hearts, having suffered gunshot and shrapnel wounds as well....

"“I was crossing a field somewhere in Belgium,” [Durning told Parade in 1993]. “A German soldier ran toward me carrying a bayonet. He couldn’t have been more than 14 or 15. I didn’t see a soldier. I saw a boy. Even though he was coming at me, I couldn’t shoot.”

"They grappled, he recounted later — he was stabbed seven or eight times — until finally he grasped a rock and made it a weapon. After killing the youth, he said, he held him in his arms and wept."

[domino harvey]

Wow, I had no idea. Makes his Oscar-nominated turn as a Nazi in To Be or Not to Be all the more interesting though! Never forget that Durning not only managed one of the rare Oscar nominations for a comedic role, he garnered two, back to back. I'll always remember him best from growing up on Evening Shade, though

[flyonthewall2983]

He appeared as a WWII vet on NCIS who turns himself in for killing one of his friends during the war, in a rather early and poignant episode of the show. That incident above makes me want to watch it again actually.

[Drucker]

Fontella Bass, making two female soul darlings in two days. Will Mitty Collier be next?

[Lemmy Caution]

Rescue Me is a great Aretha ripoff, but Fontella Bass did a lot more. She was married to Lester Bowie and recorded a couple of albums with the Art Ensemble of Chicago.
If you are unfamiliar -- and you like jazz, funk, avant-good music -- make sure to check out Theme De Yo Yo, a crazy blistering piece.

Your head is like a yoyo,
Your neck is like the string,
Your body's like camembert
Oozing from its skin, yeah.

Your fanny's like two sperm whales
Floating down the Seine,
Your voice is like a long fuck
That's music to your brain, yeah.

Your eyes are two blind eagles
That kill what they can't see,
Your hands are like two shovels
Diggin' in me.

And your love is like an oil well,
Dig, dig, dig, dig it,
On the Champs-Élysées, yeah.

Whoa!

Fontella's mother Martha Bass was a gospel singer under the tutelage of Willie Mae Ford Smith and toured for years with the Clara Ward Singers. Doesn't get more to the heart of gospel than that. I've been hunting up her recordings the past year or two. Martha Bass did a beautiful Xmas song, Christmas Love, apropos for now. Since I've Been Born Again is a rollicking tune, with rapid handclaps. And I Do, Don't You really shows off her voice in a classic gospel setting.

Fontella and Martha Bass recorded a few gospel tunes together, including I'm So Grateful which was Martha Bass' 1960 solo breakthrough.

[bamwc2]

Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf

While not an actor, he was a near constant presence on television in the early the mid 90s.

[antnield]

Harry Carey Jr.

[knives]

I'm a little surprised he was still alive, but damn he seemed like a very nice down to earth guy. Not the sort you'd expect to be the son of a movie star.

[Lemmy Caution]

Early Mothers of Invention member Ray Collins dies

The article also had a link to a good obit on/tribute to Fontella Bass:

She chose aesthetic expansion over chart success at nearly every turn.

That independent spirit can be seen in the musicians with whom she chose to collaborate, including the Art Ensemble (the free-jazz collective that featured her then husband, the trumpeter Lester Bowie), the World Saxophone Quartet and David Murray in the 1970s and 1980s, and the Cinematic Orchestra in the 2000s.

Her early 1970s solo gem "Free" harnessed the power of the funk and soul music by Sly & the Family Stone, the Staple Singers and James Brown, and although that album wasn't a hit at the time, it's one of the overlooked pleasures of the era.

Like much of her music after the late '60s, "Free" showcased a spirit that preferred loose, spatial structures to the constraints of pop songs. In that role, in fact, Bass' voice and lyrics often were the structure, especially when anchoring instrumental chaos.

I'll have to look for Fontella's tunes with the Cinematic Orch.

[Feego]

Irving Saraf

[manicsounds]

I'll have to look for Fontella's tunes with the Cinematic Orch.

That's actually how I discovered her older music was by listening to Cinematic Orchestra. She recorded quite a few tracks with them on their second and fourth albums. The last recording that I know she did was with Cinematic Orchestra in 2010, a cover of "Talking Bout Freedom", which also Fontella Bass covered on her 1972 album as well.

[Donald Brown]

Keiji Nakazawa, creator of Barefoot Gen.

[antnield]

Patti Page.