This week, Lisa Marie Presley released a music video to go with the song “I Love You Because.” In August, Lisa Marie recorded her vocals to go with those of her father, Elvis Presley. Although the song was released in August in memory of the 35th Anniversary of Elvis’s death and played with the video at an anniversary concert in Memphis, demand for the video led to this release that features never-before-seen family photos as well as her four children. The video recently premiered on CMT and will be available on iTunes on October 25. Check it out. [Update: The video is no longer on YouTube. But I replaced it with the clip below that recorded the video during the anniversary concert. Some of the images are blurry, but you get the idea and you can hear the duet.]
A young Elvis recorded “I Love You Because” at Sun Studio in Memphis on July 4 and 5 in 1954 around the same time he recorded “That’s All Right.” It has held up pretty well, I’d say. Meanwhile, his daughter’s latest album, Storm and Grace (2012) was released in May.
What do you think of the new version of “I Love You Because”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
I have noted elsewhere that it is often difficult for artists to reflect on their own time and create great art about current events. Some musicians, including Bruce Springsteen and his recent album Wrecking Ball, have attempted to comment on the tough times facing many people around the world. On the new CD Little Victories (2012) singer-songwriter Chris Knight, though, may have created the angriest record about The Great Recession. It also may be the best.
The 52-year-old Kentuckian has been making great music for a long time following his initial post-college career as a mine reclamation inspector and as a miner’s consultant. I have loved his music since his self-titled debut in 1998, but surprisingly, major fame has alluded him. Perhaps he is too authentic so Nashville country radio does not play his music, and perhaps because he is too twangy so other listeners write him off. But you should not let your prejudices detour you from discovering his music. Not surprisingly, he is often compared to Steve Earle, another artist who bucked convention and makes intelligent and enthralling music.
John Prine, who joins Knight on the title track of the latest album, is another inspiration. Although I initially was surprised to learn that Knight started out by teaching himself John Prine songs, the connection makes sense when you hear the honest stories of down and out people in the music of both men.
Knight’s music has always featured honest stories about real life, and his latest album, Little Victories reflects much of the anger of the times, whether he is singing about tough times or broken hearts, as he does in this performance of “Missing You” with his band the Drunken Boaters at Fountain Square in Downtown Cincinnati on July 19, 2011.
Little Victories starts off with a hard sound on the first several songs, setting the stage for the anger of the times. Check out the opening song “In the Meantime.”
One of my favorite songs on the album, which is not available on YouTube, is “You Can’t Trust No One.” It is one of those songs that made me stop when it came on as I tried to figure out what it was about and what he was saying. My best guess is that it is some kind of sci-fi post-apocalyptic song, or a warning of where we may be going, or a prediction. Whereas Springsteen’s “We Take Care of Our Own” may give us some comfort in dark times, Knight’s characters recognize that sometimes platitudes fail, as he sings in the chorus to “You Can’t Trust No One.”
“People, won’t you come together, we’ve all got to live as one; I ain’t right sure what that means but I reckon it sounds like fun; Everybody pack your picnic lunch, and everybody pack your gun, ‘Cause you can’t trust no one.”
Later in the album, the music is less angry but the tough times are still there, as on “Nuthin’ on Me.” In “Out of this Hole” Knight contemplates the hole that many people around the world have fallen into.
The songs above give a little sense of the new album, but I am not sure you can get a sense of the darkness of the album from some performances before loud patrons in drinking establishments. In an interview some years ago, Knight explained, that he relates “to people in desperate situations doing what they got to do to get…doing what they do and then living with it. The living with it part is kind of what intrigues me.” If you also are intrigued by how people survive tough times, sit back with some bourbon and listen to Little Victories.
After my favorite baseball team had a heartbreaking loss, I picked up my copy of Joe Posnanski’s The Soul of Baseball: A Road Trip Through Buck O’Neil’s America (2007) for some comfort. While reading it I came across a story from Buck O’Neil about his days in the Negro League that put into perspective my puny broken baseball dreams.
Willard “Sonny” Brown
Willard “Sonny” Brown
In the book, Posnanski relates O’Neil’s story about Willard “Sonny” Brown, who O’Neil had managed on the Kansas City Monarchs in the Negro League. In 1947, the same year Jackie Robinson made it to the Major Leagues, the St. Louis Browns signed Brown and his Monarchs teammate, Hank Thompson.
The Dodgers had worked to try to prepare Robinson for the pressure of the Majors with a stint in the Minor Leagues. By contrast, the Browns immediately sent Brown and Thompson to the Majors. There, the two men became the first black teammates on a Major League team.
By the end of the 1947 season, though, the Browns sent both men back to the Negro League’s Monarchs. Thompson would eventually return to the Major Leagues and have a successful career (although a troubled life), but it was Brown’s only time in the league.
The First African-American to Hit an American League Home Run
When Buck O’Neil visited school kids across America, though, he told them about Sonny Brown. And he would tell about one particular at bat.
Late in Brown’s one season in the Majors, on August 13, the team had already given up on the player. But on that Sunday, Brown came in as a pinch hitter in the second game of a double header against the Detroit Tigers.
Brown was surprised about being called into the game. And he did not even have a bat. So, he picked up a damaged bat of the team’s best hitter, Canadian-born Jeff Heath.
At the plate, Sonny Brown connected with a pitch, driving it so it smashed off the center field fence that was 428 feet away. Brown ran around the bases at full speed, turning the hit into an inside-the-park home run. It was the first home run by a black man in the American League.
But there were no congratulations in the dugout for the historic hit. None of Brown’s teammates even looked at him. The only acknowledgement Sonny Brown saw was that the notoriously short-tempered Jeff Heath took his bat that Brown had used and looked at it. Then, in disgust, he smashed the bat against the wall.
“It Wasn’t Easy”
Buck O’Neil used to ask the school children what lesson they learned from the fact that the player had broken Willard Brown’s bat after he hit a home run. He would tell them, “The lesson, children, is that it wasn’t easy.”
In Patty Griffin’s song, “Don’t Come Easy” from Impossible Dream (2004) she sings:
I don’t know nothing except change will come; Year after year what we do is undone; Time keeps moving from a crawl to a run; I wonder if we’re gonna ever get home.
Sonny Brown did find a home. The World War II veteran continued to have a successful career in the Negro Leagues. He ended his career there a few years later with a .355 lifetime batting average, a lot of home runs, and six All Star appearances.
Brown then continued playing baseball in Texas and in Puerto Rico until he retired from the sport with his nickname “Ese Hombre” (The Man) in 1957.
Brown — who was born on June 26, 1911 in Shreveport, Louisiana — died in Houston, Texas in 1996. Ten years after his death in 2006, Major League Baseball gave him the recognition he deserved. He was inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame. Leave your two cents in the comments.
NRR Archives on YouTube started posting old rock and roll clips from Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show. Clips feature Johhny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Connie Francis, Dion and the Belmonts, Bobby Darin, Annette Funicello, The Platters, Sam Cooke, The Everly Brothers, Conway Twitty, Ronnie Hawkins, Jackie Wilson and many others. Check out the NRR Archive link to see the clips. Here is Roy Orbison singing “Uptown” (the clip also includes Anita Bryant singing “Paper Roses”).
Dick Clark’s Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show, also known as “The Dick Clark Show,” ran on ABC at 7:30-8:00 p.m. (EST) on Saturdays (of course) from February 15, 1958 through September 10, 1960. During this same period, Clark also hosted the show for which he is most remembered, American Bandstand, which ran on weekdays. Bandstand, which in contrast to the Beech-Nut Show featured dancing, was mainly broadcast from Philadelphia, requiring Clark to travel back and forth to Manhattan, from where the Beech-Nut Show was generally broadcast.
Although the Saturday show sponsored by “the brightest and the happiest gum there ever was” may be less remembered than some of Clark’s other work, the show had a lot of great classic music. Check out Johnny Cash singing “The Rebel (Johnny Yuma)” below and then check out the other clips.
What is your favorite clip in the archive? Leave your two cents in the comments.
This week on CBS Sunday Morning, Anthony Mason interviewed Pete Townshend, who opened up about his childhood, the criminal charges that almost ended his career, and his relationship with Roger Daltrey. It was a very incisive interview with the Who musician that among other things, saw Townshend contemplating how his own very troubled childhood inspired the rock opera Tommy.
Although I had already heard the story about how Townshend adopted his trademark windmill style of guitar playing from a misunderstanding about The Rolling Stones, it is such a great story that it is always worth hearing him tell it again. Check out this short but unusually insightful rock star TV interview.
What do you think of the interview? Leave your two cents in the comments.
This week, Lisa Marie Presley released a music video to go with the song “I Love You Because.” In August, Lisa Marie recorded her vocals to go with those of her father, Elvis Presley. Although the song was released in August in memory of the 35th Anniversary of Elvis’s death and played with the video at an anniversary concert in Memphis, demand for the video led to this release that features never-before-seen family photos as well as her four children. The video recently premiered on CMT and will be available on iTunes on October 25. Check it out. [Update: The video is no longer on YouTube. But I replaced it with the clip below that recorded the video during the anniversary concert. Some of the images are blurry, but you get the idea and you can hear the duet.]
(2007) for some comfort. While reading it I came across a story from Buck O’Neil about his days in the Negro League that put into perspective my puny broken baseball dreams.
(2004) she sings:
