Pophistory: music, movies, history, and life.
In honor of the NBA finals, Chimesfreedom presents a quiz about one of the greatest basketball movies of all time, Hoosiers
Your score and the answers, as well as explanations for some of the answers, appear at the end.
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This final installment of the Chimesfreedom analysis of the Lonesome Dove franchise concludes with our overall recommendations. Additionally, we rank the performances of the six actors who played the main character in the series.
In the previous posts, Chimesfreedom rated on a scale of 1-10 the various miniseries, listed here in chronological order: Dead Man’s Walk (7), Comanche Moon (5), Lonesome Dove (10), Return to Lonesome Dove (8), and Streets of Laredo (6). We also discussed the two seasons of the syndicated television series, starting with the first season, Lonesome Dove: The Series (4), and ending with Lonesome Dove: The Outlaw Years (6), a hidden gem. See the previous posts for more details (links below).
If you have already seen the original Lonesome Dove, you have a number of options. If you wish only to learn about events directly connected to the original, you might watch Comanche Moon and Return to Lonesome Dove, skipping the independent stories of Dead Man’s Walk and Streets of Laredo. You could start with Dead Man’s Walk and follow the characters chronologically. Or, if you are only interested in Larry McMurtry’s vision, you might watch all of them except Return to Lonesome Dove and the television series, which are the ones that do not follow his books.
For most people, though, you probably want to start with the superior original Lonesome Dove. If you like it, you may pursue the other series. And if you do not like Lonesome Dove, you probably will not like any of the other series and should go on to something else. Then, if you do like Lonesome Dove, what next? The next best series and the one that continues the great story the best, is Return to Lonesome Dove. So I recommend following the sequels before delving into the prequels.
After watching all of the series together, one realizes that the entire franchise is about Woodrow F. Call. In each of the five miniseries and briefly in the television series, Woodrow is played by a different actor, leading to another question: How do you rank the six different Woodrows?
Chimesfreedom ranks them: (1) Tommy Lee Jones in Lonesome Dove; (2) John Voight in Return to Lonesome Dove; (3) Johnny Lee Miller in Dead Man’s Walk;(4) James Garner in Streets of Laredo; (5) Karl Urban in Comanche Moon; and (6) Lee Majors in one episode of Lonesome Dove: The Series. In fairness to Majors, he had much less to work with than the other Woodrows.
Thus ends the Chimesfreedom series on Lonesome Dove. If you missed the previous posts on the franchise, check out Part 1 — where we considered the original Lonesome Dove and the prequels, Part 2 — where we rated the sequels, and Part 3 — where we discussed the weekly television series. If you are not sick of reading about Lonesome Dove by this point, there are a number of fan pages where you may seek out more information, including this fan page.
Which is your favorite Lonesome Dove series? Leave a comment.
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{This conversation was overheard Thursday morning at American Idol Headquarters}
Anonymous Producer 1: “What a great finale. America loves us, and Scotty McCreery and Lauren Alaina did a great job. They are both great kids. It was fun seeing them sing with their idols, like McCreery singing with Tim McGraw on ‘Live Like You Were Dying,’ although I’m not sure I understand the meaning of the song.”
Anonymous Producer 2: “Yes they are sweet kids. But they are kids.”
AP1: “That’s great. It means we are hip and current. Look at the hip goodbye song we used this year of David Cook’s ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’. That reminds me that we have to pick a song for next year soon.”
AP2: “Um, that song was a cover of of Simple Minds’ ‘Don’t You (Forget About Me)’ from The Breakfast Club in 1985.”
AP1: “Yeah, but kids love that movie. Do you have any suggestions for next year’s song?”
AP2: “There’s one superstar we have not been able to get who would bring in some older viewers: Bruce Springsteen. Earlier in the season, Twitter was buzzing when Springsteen visited the contestants, and there was speculation he might appear on the show.”
AP1: “What’s Twitter? Anyway, didn’t we have Springsteen’s band member Clarence Clemons at our final show playing saxophone while Madonna simulated sex on stage?”
AP2: “You mean Lady Gaga singing ‘Edge of Glory,’ a great song. Yeah, but I think we could get Springsteen on the show if we select one of his songs as the goodbye song we play over videos of departing contestants.”
AP1: “What song?”
AP2: “He has a great song from 1978 . . .”
AP1: “1978 is hip?”
AP2: “Well, he only recently released it, and it’s called ‘Ain’t Good Enough for You.’ It is on Springsteen’s most recent release, The Promise, a collection of outtakes from 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town. ‘Ain’t Good Enough For You’ would be an empowering exit song for the contestant voted off the show, saying, ‘Yeah no matter what I do, well you know it’s true / Ain’t good enough for you, hey!'”
AP1: “The song does not sound overwrought and sentimental enough for our kiss-off song.”
AP2: “A little humor would be a good change of pace, and we did use Daniel’s Powter’s ‘Bad Day’ in 2006, which was funny.”
AP1: “I don’t know. I think we should check with Jimmy.”
AP2: “But that’s the best part! In ‘Ain’t Good Enough For You,’ Springsteen describes our American Idol makeover of contestants and then he mentions American Idol coach Jimmy Iovine, who in 1978 was Springsteen’s recording engineer”:
I tried to change, I got a job in sales;
I bought a shirt uptown in Bloomingdales;
And babe I tried to make the latest scene,
Hitting cool just like Jimmy Iovine.
AP1: “Brilliant! This Springsteen guy is a genius if he wrote a song for American Idol in 1978. I can see him playing it on the 2012 finale show right now. Does Springsteen do simulated sex on stage?”
Bonus “Ain’t Good Enough For You” Version: Springsteen performed “Ain’t Good Enough for You” at a special New Jersey session with fans to promote the release of The Promise. He relies upon the audience to sing “Jimmy Iovine,” so you may not make out his name as well as in the 1978 version. What is great about both versions of the song, though, is that Springsteen appears to be having a blast.
What do you think? Would you like American Idol to feature Bruce Springsteen or one of his songs? Or should he avoid having any connection to the pop show? Leave a comment.
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On May 25, 1911, a mob lynched an African-American woman and her teenage son near Okemah, Oklahoma. Through a direct family connection to the lynching, the acts that day would later inspire one of Woody Guthrie’s great songs.
The lynching of the woman and her son occurred in response to the death of a well-respected white deputy sheriff, Goerge Loney. Earlier, Loney was investigating the theft of livestock when teenager Lawrence Nelson reportedly thought the officer was going for a gun and shot Loney. Loney bled to death.
A posse then went to arrest the teen and his family, which included his mother Laura Nelson and her infant son. Lawrence’s father ended up in jail too. But a mob eventually took the teenager and his mother Laura, who at one point tried to protect her son by saying she fired the fatal shot.
It is unclear what happened to the infant, but the mob ended up hanging the teen and his mother from a bridge. According to some reports, Laura Nelson was raped before she was lynched.
One of the members of the lynching crowd was a man named Charley. A year later, Charley would name his new son Woodrow after Pres. Wilson. Woodrow grew up to have quite a different view of the lynching than the participants. And Woody, as we would come to know him, developed political views that diverged from his father, Charley Guthrie.
Woody Guthrie wrote the song, “Don’t Kill My Baby and My Son” about that lynching in Okfuskee County, Oklahoma. In the chorus, Woody chose to view the song from the standpoint of the woman who was lynched rather than choosing the voice of his father in the crowd:
O, don’t kill my baby and my son,
O , don’t kill my baby and my son.
You can stretch my neck on that old river bridge,
But don’t kill my baby and my son.
Now, I’ve heard the cries of a panther,
Now, I’ve heard the coyotes yell,
But that long, lonesome cry shook the whole wide world
And it come from the cell of the jail.
Singer-songwriter Brooke Harvey, who is from Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia, recorded a beautiful rendition of Guthrie’s song:
Harvey’s version does not appear to be available outside of YouTube, and there are few people who have performed “Don’t Kill My Baby and Son.” Apparently, Guthrie himself never recorded the song.
But if you are looking for an album with the song, then Joel Rafael has a wonderful version of “Don’t Kill My Baby and Son” on his album, The Songs of Woody Guthrie Vol 1 & 2. Check it out.
Although “Don’t Kill My Baby and Son” is not one of Guthrie’s most well-known songs, it is among his most heartbreaking. Besides being a great song, it documents a horrible injustice that we should not forget.
More information about the lynching is in the biography Woody Guthrie: A Life
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May 25 is the anniversary of 1986’s Hands Across America. For those of you too young to remember, Hands Across America is something that people did before we had the Internet. Americans across the United States gathered to hold hands in an attempt to create a 4,125-mile human chain from coast-to-coast through seventeen states.
They held hands for about fifteen minutes, sang the “Hands Across America” theme song (recorded by Voices of America), “America the Beautiful,” and “We Are the World,” which had been released a year earlier in 1985. And this event occurred in the days before we had hand sanitizer.
Hands Across America,
Hands Across this land I love;
United we fall,
United we stand,
Hands Across America.
Did it succeed? Well, the chain ended up with broken places in several barren areas. But millions of people across the country, including many famous celebrities, gathered that day for the event.
President Reagan held hands in Washington, connected at least theoretically, to Texas migrant farm workers who organized a 51-mile chain in Texas. And we had celebrities. The chain included Oprah, Jerry Seinfeld, Jesse Jackson, Barbra Streisand, Rev. Billy Graham, Prince, Bill Clinton, Kenny Rogers, and Shamu the killer whale. There is even a book
The event did not reach its goal to raise $50 million for the hungry, and the promotion costs were high, but it raised around $20 million for soup kitchens and shelters, while raising awareness about the issue. And it gave us something to do.
Yes, I say “us” because I participated in the event. I was on a trip traveling through Arizona on that date with a group of friends. We had not planned to be in a particular spot, but when we saw the line forming in the desert (see photo above), we all jumped out of the vehicle and joined in the festivities.
Everyone was friendly and happy for those fifteen minutes. As silly and cheesy as it was, maybe we should do it more often.
See these people over there?
They are my sister and brother,
When they laugh I laugh,
When they cry I cry,
When they need me I’ll be right there by their side.
Photo by Chimesfreedom. Were you there for Hands Across America? Leave a comment.
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