Pophistory: music, movies, history, and life.
Marty Brown has released a “sneak peak” at the upcoming video for his single, “Whatever Makes You Smile.” The video from the 1990s country music star and recent America’s Got Talent comeback artist contains some footage from the video.
Update: Below is the complete video for a great Marty Brown song.
Check out our previous post on the new single here.
What do you think of the sneak peak? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
Last night on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Bruce Springsteen once again dug out one of his old outfits to sing with Fallon. This time, the two did a new version of “Born to Run,” poking fun at New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s recent Bridgegate problems regarding his administration’s involvement in closing down the George Washington Bridge to punish a New Jersey mayor. “Governor let me in, I wanna be your friend. . . .” [Update: Video no longer available for embedding.]
It had to be a tough blow for Gov. Christie, who notoriously is a huge Springsteen fan even though Springsteen generally sits on the other side of the political divide. But the song is pretty funny.
What is your favorite Springsteen-Fallon collaboration? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
Chimesfreedom recently reported on an upcoming new Johnny Cash album release called Out Among the Stars. The album features unreleased tracks from recording sessions at Columbia Records in 1981 and 1984. The video for the earlier announcement featured a snipped of one of the songs discovered by Cash’s son John Carter, “She Used to Love Me a Lot.” But now you may hear the song in its entirety.
The song is available for listening below. As Rolling Stone reports, the song sounds like vintage Johnny Cash. I like it. The album Out Among the Stars will hit the shelves and Internet on March 15, 2014.
One interesting point that the articles about the new song do not mention, is that another country icon released a version of “She Used to Love Me a Lot” in the 1980s. David Allan Coe had a hit with the song in 1985. The song — written by Dennis Morgan, Charles Quillen, and Kye Fleming — appeared on Coe’s 1984 album Darlin’, Darlin. Check out his version.
What do you think of “She Used to Love Me a Lot”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
On January 13, 1962, groundbreaking comedian Ernie Kovacs died at the age of 42 in a car crash. In the early morning hours, his Chevrolet Corvair crashed into a telephone pole in Los Angeles, California.
Some authorities surmised that he was lighting one of his trademark cigars when he lost control of his vehicle. A photographer at the scene of the crash captured the comedian’s body next to an unlit cigar.
His tombstone at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Los Angeles is inscribed, “Ernie Kovacs 1919 – 1962 — Nothing In Moderation.”
The unique style of comedy that Kovacs brought to television and several movies is often cited as inspiring a number of later classic shows. You can see Kovacs in shows ranging from Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In to Saturday Night Live to children’s shows like Sesame Street. And anytime you see the madcap antics of late night TV hosts like David Letterman or Conan O’Brien, you are seeing a little bit of the visual and surreal humor of Kovacs.
You may read more about the career of Ernie Kovacs on the Ernie Kovacs website, or you may watch an episode of The Ernie Kovacs Show from around 1962 below.
The car that Kovacs was driving, the Chevrolet Corvair, would go on to further fame when Ralph Nader crusaded to reveal safety problems with the car.
What is your favorite clip of Ernie Kovacs? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
Chuck Cunningham was Richie’s older brother on Happy Days who famously ate sandwiches, dribbled basketballs, and then disappeared, never to be heard from again. The way his character vanished and was never mentioned again by this TV family eventually led to the name Chuck Cunningham Syndrome.
What you may not remember about Chuck, though, is that he was played by two different actors. Gavan O’Herlihy initially played the character in the series, followed by Randolph Roberts. According to IMDb, O’Herlihy appeared as Chuck during the first season in seven episodes from January to March 1974. Later in the year, during the second season, Randolph Roberts appeared in two episodes as Chuck. [Update: The clip of a show with Chuck is no longer on YouTube, but if you find the series debut episode, “All the Way,” at around the 7:40 mark you may see O’Herlihy enjoying dinner with the Cunninghams. A brief part of the clip also appears in the TMZ video below.]
Reportedly, the reason the show eventually got rid of Chuck was that he was never a big character and the producers realized that Fonzie (Henry Winkler) had become the “big brother” to Richie (Ron Howard). Several websites note that Gary Marshall, the series creator, humorously stated that his response to the question about what happened to Chuck was that the character got a basketball scholarship in Outer Mongolia.
But why were there two Chucks in the series? In the following video, O’Herlihy, who had been a champion Irish tennis player, explains at around the 4:04 mark how Happy Days gave him his big break in acting. But after he realized that they expected his character to have a limited role, dropping in from college occasionally, he wanted to go on to other work. So apparently, the producers then brought in Roberts briefly before deciding to dump the character all together.
O’Herlihy went on to appear in a number of roles in films like Willow (1988), often playing a villain such as in a standout performance in Lonesome Dove (1989). By contrast, Roberts continued in some acting roles for a little more than a decade before leaving acting and, according to Wikipedia, becoming an education supervisor for ITT Technical Institute in San Diego.
On an additional note, technically, there were three Chuck Cunninghams. In the original Happy Days pilot version that appeared as a segment of Love, American Style (discussed in another post), Chuck was played by actor Ric Carrott. As in the Happy Days series, Chuck only appeared briefly in the Love, American Style episode (eating dinner). Carrott went on to appear in a number of TV shows during the 1970s as well as in small parts in a number of films before leaving acting. He may be best known for his work as Captain Chris Gentry on the Saturday morning kid’s show Space Academy.
Regarding the TV series Happy Days, it is interesting to speculate whether or not the show would have abandoned Chuck Cunningham had O’Herlihy stuck around, as it seems likely that the loss of the first actor hastened the character’s demise. One might image that if O’Herlihy had not left the character, the writers might have kept Chuck in the family, occasionally dropping by while he was at college and then off living somewhere else. Or maybe the series occasionally would have covered him playing basketball in Mongolia.
2015 Update: After this article was posted TMZ did a short segment on the Chuck Cunningham mystery where they caught Ron Howard with the question about what happened to Chuck. Check it out.
Who is your favorite TV character who suffered from Chuck Cunningham Syndrome? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(Some related Chimesfreedom posts.)
