In the old days, there was one time of year when you knew that all of the TV shows were starting their new season of shows. But in this era of random season endings and seasons divided up, we have to rely upon word of mouth. So I am here to inform Louis C.K. fans that after a nineteen-month break, season four of Louiebegins May 5 on FX. Get ready — or set your DVRs or set up your computers or cell phones or however you kids watch TV these days. The promo features Louie jumping off a bridge.
The new season features fourteen episodes, but they will run with two episodes back-to-back over seven weeks.
What is your favorite episode of Louie? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On April 15, 1947 as a soft breeze blew across Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Jackie Robinson took his position at first base to play his first official Major League Baseball game for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson was 28 years old, having served in the U.S. Army and played in the Negro American League before Dodger general manager Branch Rickey recruited Robinson in 1945 to join the Dodger organization.
On this date against the Boston Braves, Robinson broke the color barrier that had existed in baseball for more than fifty years. The last such player before Robinson was catcher Fleetwood Walker who played for the American Association’s Toledo Blue Stockings in 1884.
Robinson’s major league career that began that day would not be easy. But Robinson triumphed over the hate he encountered, both as a man and as a player, making him the greatest hero of any sport.
Baseball eventually recognized his accomplishments too. On this date in 1997, Major League Baseball retired his number 42, making it the first number retired for all teams.
Robinson’s Major League Debut
To go back and relive that sunny day at Ebbets Field on this date in 1947, listen to this 2007 NPR interview with writer Jonathan Eig, who wrote a book about Robinson’s first year called Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season. The interview discusses the historic game played this date in 1947.
Movies About Robinson
In 2013, a very good movie bearing the name of Robinson’s number 42 was released. But another earlier movie from 1950 told his story starring Jackie Robinson himself in The Jackie Robinson Story.
Below is the entire film, although the sound quality is not great. The recreation of his Major League debut begins around the 54-minute mark. The movie condenses events to give Robinson a triple on a day the first baseman went hitless. In the real game, he did score the go-ahead run after reaching on an error.
Another Rookie Debuting On This Date
Finally, here is a trivia question about that April 15, 1947 game. On that date, one other rookie besides Robinson took the field for the Dodgers that day, who was it?
As explained in the video above, the other rookie was Spider Jorgensen. Jorgenson was called up on such short notice that he did not have a glove. But his new teammate Jackie Robinson loaned Jorgensen one of his gloves.
Using that glove, third-baseman Jorgensen fielded a ball hit by Boston’s Dick Culler, throwing it to Robinson at first base to make the first out of the game. The Dodgers won by a score of 5–3.
John Steinbeck‘s novel The Grapes of Wrath was published on April 14, 1939. The book, which recounts the struggles of the tenant farmers Joad family moving from Oklahoma to California, went on to win the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize. It also helped Steinbeck win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1962. Steinbeck’s book seeped into popular culture, aided by a great John Ford movie as well as songs.
Less than a year after the novel’s publication, 20th Century Fox released John Ford’s vision of The Grapes of Wrath in January 1940. The film starred Henry Fonda, Jane Darwell, and John Carradine, and it contained some differences from the book, and in particular the ending.
While the book was written as an indictment of the greed that led to the Great Depression, the conservative Ford maintained some elements of that vision while also giving the story a somewhat more optimistic ending. The Grapes of Wrath thus became one of those instances where a novel and its movie version both attained greatness even with some significant differences.
The film would go on to inspire others. In particular, the speech by Tom Joad (Fonda) would inspire both Woody Guthrie and Bruce Springsteen to write songs. Check out our post about the story behind Guthrie’s “Tom Joad,” a song written at the request of a record company during an all-night session after Pete Seeger helped Guthrie find a typewriter.
Bruce Springsteen used his stark “The Ghost of Tom Joad” as the title track of his somber 1995 album. In 2014, though, he released a new version of the song on High Hopes that features the raging angry guitar of Tom Morello, highlighting the defiance in Tom Joad’s speech. While Springsteen’s original acoustic version captures the sadness of the novel, his rock version of the song might be more comparable to John Ford’s vision. Check out this performance featuring Springsteen, Morello, and the E Street Band from Allphones Area in Sydney, Australia from March 2013.
What is your favorite version of “The Grapes of Wrath”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester passed away on April 11, 2014 at his home in Charlottesville, Virginia. The 69-year-old artist had been suffering from esophageal cancer.
Winchester, who had moved to Canada in 1967 in protest of the Vietnam War, had some chart success with his own recordings of his folk-country-blues sound. While he may not be remembered by a large number of the population, he is well-respected and admired by a number of talented artists. And many of them covered his songs. If you are not familiar with his work, check out these videos.
Here is Winchester with a moving performance of his song “Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding” on season two (2009-2010) of Elvis Costello’s Spectacle show. In the song, the singer is an old man looking back on being a teenager in love.
So after years and after tears, And after summers past, The old folks tried to warn us, How our love would never last; And all we’d get was soaking wet, From walking in the rain, And singing sham-a-shing-a-ling again.
In the video below, that’s Neko Case, Sheryl Crow, and Ron Sexsmith on stage with Costello and Winchester. You can see near the end around the 3:12 mark where Case has tears in her eyes from Winchester’s touching song. Wow.
Here is a young Winchester in 1977, singing with Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris.
Finally, here is one of my favorite covers of a Jesse Winchester song. In this video, Buddy Miller sings Winchester’s “A Showman’s Life,” which appeared on Miller’s 2002 album Midnight and Lonesome.
Winchester’s “A Showman’s Life” has been covered in excellent versions by the likes of George Strait and Gary Allan. But check out Miller’s version.
Thanks for the music Mr. Winchester. RIP. What is your favorite Jesse Winchester song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Sheb Wooley, who is famous for writing and recording his 1958 chart-topping song “Purple People Eater” and for much more, was born April 10 in 1921. His website captures the range of Wooley’s talents by saying he has been a “cowhand, rodeo rider, country and western singer, Hollywood actor, writer, and comedian.”
Over many decades Wooley appeared in classic films like High Noon (1952) and The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). And he was on TV’s Rawhide.
Wooley in Hoosiers
I was most surprised to discover that I already knew the singer of “Purple People Eater” as an actor for his role in Hoosiers (1986), a movie I have seen many times. In Hoosiers, Wooley played Cletus, the school’s principal who hires Norman Dale, played by Gene Hackman.
Later in Hoosiers, Cletus (Wooley) helps Dale as an assistant coach before Cletus’s health prevents him from continuing. Then, Dale recruits Shooter (Dennis Hopper) to take Cletus’s place.
There was not a good scene with Wooley available on YouTube, but you can catch a little bit of him sitting on the bench in a suit with Gene Hackman (around the 30-second mark).
“Purple People Eater”
Below is Sheb Wooley in June 1958 singing about the “Purple People Eater,” who ate people but came to earth because “I wanna get a job in a rock ‘n roll band.” The song got its inspiration when Wooley heard a joke from a neighborhood kid.
The song “Purple People Eater” later inspired a 1988 movie of the same name. Of course, the film also had a role for Wooley.
Like most depictions of the song’s subject, the movie showed the monster as being purple. But the song’s lyrics reveal that purple is the color of the people that the monster likes to eat, not the color of the creature: “I said Mr. Purple People Eater, what’s your line / He said it’s eatin’ purple people and it sure is fine.” Check out Wooley singing his hit song.
Wooley also wrote the Hee Haw theme (“Hee-hee, hee-haw-haw . . “). And he often appeared on the country music-comedy show too.
For his acting roles in Westerns, check out this post on some of his classic movie lines. Below is a short bio film about Wooley and his diverse talents.
Wooley and “The Wilhelm Scream”
Finally, Wooley’s voice possibly may be heard in many more classic films, including Star Wars. This connection and “The Wilhelm Scream” takes some explaining. . . .
Wooley’s connection to more than a hundred other films goes back to the early 1950s. Wooley played Private Wilhelm in the 1953 western The Charge at Feather River. In a scene where Wilhelm is shot, he lets out a scream that has been used as stock scream footage in numerous films.
The scream has become known as “The Wilhelm Scream,” although Wikipedia notes that the scream had actually appeared in an earlier movie, Distant Drums (1951). Wooley played an uncredited role (Private Jessup) in Distant Drums, and he is listed as a voice extra for that film.
Thus, Wooley “is considered by many to be the most likely voice actor” for the scream, according to various sources, including Wooley’s website. The scream is so well-known that sometimes filmmakers add it because they think it is funny and many times it is inserted as an inside joke.
Thus, through this scream, Wooley has indirectly appeared in numerous movies. The films cross a broad spectrum, including Them! (1954), Star Wars (1977), Return of the Jedi (1983), Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Batman Returns (1992), Reservoir Dogs (1992), and Toy Story (1995). This video collage collects a number of uses of the Wilhelm Scream, beginning with Wooley’s famous scream in The Charge at Feather River and Distant Drums.
This video provides more of a history of the Wilhelm Scream, including the discovery of a recording that in 2023 finally confirmed that the source of the scream was without a doubt, Sheb Wooley.
Wooley passed away on September 16, 2003, but his humor, his movies, and his other work lives on. And his scream will probably continue to appear in more new movies to the delight of filmmakers and audience members alike.
. The interview discusses the historic game played this date in 1947.
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