Pophistory: music, movies, history, and life.
Steve Jobs passed away this evening. In 1976, after selling his Volkswagen Van to raise money, he began a new venture making computers in his parents’ garage with Steve Wozniak. Below is the famous commercial from the 1984 Super Bowl that introduced the Apple Macintosh personal computer.
From computers to iPods to iPhones to iPads, his work, leadership, and innovation contributed to the way we live today. Rest in peace.
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On today’s date in 1973, Billie Jean King beat Bobby Riggs in a celebrated “battle of the sexes” tennis match. Riggs, who was 55, claimed that men were superior to women and that even at his age he could beat the 29-year-old King. Although he had won a match against top-ranked Margaret Court earlier in the year, he was wrong about King, as she beat him in straight sets 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. At the time, King’s win was seen as a victory for women’s tennis, women’s sports, and women’s rights in general.
King had an outstanding tennis career, but I suspect that many like me know her primarily from her match against the showman Riggs. Both Riggs and King had a sense of humor, which made the promotions and the match fun to watch. And King’s professionalism and skill made it it easy for us to root for her as a great champion.
After King’s match with Riggs, she started a professional tennis league and became coach of the Philadelphia Freedoms team. Not long after that, her friend Elton John and his lyricist Bernie Taupin worked to write a song about King, called “Philadelphia Freedom.” Taupin realized that a song about tennis probably would not work, so the song’s lyrics have little to do with tennis: “Shine a light won’t you shine a light / Philadelphia freedom I love you, yes I do.”
After the song was released in 1975 as a single, it became a big hit. I remember hearing the song on the radio constantly. At the time, I did not know it was about King, and like most people I associated the tune with the upcoming bicentennial. During that year leading up the bicentennial, anything red, white & blue was big, along with things like Bicentennial Minutes. So it was not much of a surprise that a catchy song that sounded patriotic would be a hit. Little did many people know, though, that the song was inspired by the great American Billie Jean King.
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On September 13 in 1814, a 35-year-old American lawyer wrote down a poem aboard a ship. He had just watched Fort McHenry in Maryland being bombarded by the British all night long during the War of 1812. British troops had already attacked Washington, D.C. and were now looking to take Baltimore.
The lawyer had come to Baltimore to successfully negotiate the release of a prisoner who was his friend. Now, he became inspired when during dawn’s early light, he saw the U.S. flag still flying over Fort McHenry.
And so, immediately, the lawyer began writing a poem called “The Defense of Fort McHenry.” Francis Scott Key’s poem began invoking his sight of the flag, “Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light, / What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?.”
After the poem was published in newspapers, the words were linked to the music of an English drinking song by John Stafford Smith, “To Anacreon in Heaven.” The union of the American poem and the British music took on a life of its own as “The Star-Spangled Banner.” And eventually it was adopted as the U.S.’s official anthem in 1931.
There are many critics of the national anthem. Some critics note that the song is difficult to sing. Thus, we get various poor performances ranging from Cyndi Lauper’s minor lyrics flub at the 2011 U.S. Open to more disastrous results.
Others criticize the song because it celebrates war over the nation’s other accomplishments. Personally, I love “America the Beautiful,” which many advocate as a replacement anthem. But there is something inspirational in the old drinking song tune put to Key’s words.
As a pre-Civil War song, the reference to the “land of the free” is about a land where American slaves were excluded from that freedom. In fact, Francis Scott Key had owned slaves, worked against abolitionists in his law career, and generally held a number of racist principles.
Thus, it is fascinating that the greatest versions of the song were performed by African-American singers and a man born in Puerto Rico. These singers instilled the song with different meanings.
The most recent of these versions is the rousing and patriotic Super Bowl version by Whitney Houston at the Super Bowl in January 1991. She performed the song while the nation was involved in the Gulf War.
People immediately recognized her version was something special. I remember seeing the single CD of the beautiful performance for sale in record stores, and Houston made the national anthem a best-seller.
The fact that Houston pre-recorded the vocals and sang into a dead microphone does nothing to take away from how amazing her rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is — or how much she gave to the performance. Her voice rose over a full band.
On a day when the nation was on high alert and Americans were unsure of the future, Houston altered the 3/4 waltz of the national anthem by changing it to 4/4 time. She thus elongated the notes, steeping the song in the time signature of the blues.
Maybe the single most famous public performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” is the Jimi Hendrix guitar version from Woodstock in 1969. His instrumental version instills new meaning into the song and captures the turbulent time.
Although Hendrix had been scheduled to close the Woodstock Music and Art Fair on Sunday night, various delays resulted in him taking the stage around 8 a.m. on Monday morning, August 18, 1969. Thus, the closing act appeared before a crowd that had thinned out since the beginning of the weekend.
Hendrix first performed many of his most popular songs. Next, as the band began improvising, Hendrix told the crowd, “You can leave if you want to. We’re just jammin’, that’s all.” And then in the midst of the jam, he launched into “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Even though Hendrix had played the tune on stage in the past, this performance was one for the ages. Hendrix took a song written about two nations fighting a battle, and he turned it into an elegy to a nation battling itself.
The third example is one of my favorites, which is Marvin Gaye’s performance of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 1983 NBA All-Star game. In what could have been just another pre-game performance, Marvin Gaye surprised us all.
At the time, Gaye was fighting a serious drug addiction problem, and within a little more than a year, he would be killed by his own father. On the night of this performance, he must have wondered how the crowd would react. He was running behind schedule on his way to the game after his only rehearsal of the song had not gone well.
That night, I remember watching the All-Star game. After Gaye began, at first, I wondered what was going on. Then, like the crowd, I began to realize that something incredibly special was taking place.
Gaye, like Hendrix before him, was reclaiming the national anthem, transcending the original warrior lyrics, capturing the pain and celebrating the joy of a troubled country, and giving it a little bit of soul.
Before any of the above versions, José Feliciano, another person who would have been excluded from Francis Scott Key’s country, reinterpreted the national anthem during an afternoon game of the 1968 World Series.
Feliciano performed in Detroit before Game 5 of the series between the Tigers and St. Louis Cardinals. The Tigers and NBC received angry calls and letters following the unconventional performance.
But one may find an attempt to heal a divided nation in Feliciano’s voice. The year had already seen the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. Riots erupted in August at the Democratic National Convention. As the Viet Nam conflict continued, the nation seemed to be coming apart.
You may hear Feliciano’s amazing version below. Also, check out his discussion of the controversy caused by his October 7, 1968 performance.
In less than a month, the country elected Richard M. Nixon as president. The war continued and the nation remained divided. But Feliciano — like Gaye, Hendrix, and Houston — had reminded us that the national anthem and the nation still could be saved.
What is your favorite version of “The Star Spangled Banner”? Leave a comment.
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“He was born one day in the County of Clay
And he came from a solitary race.”
On today’s date in 1847, Jesse James was born in Clay County Missouri. Within two years, his father, the Rev. Robert James, ran off and left his family behind to go to look for gold in California, never to return. Their mother Zerelda soon remarried a stepfather who was abusive to Jesse and his brother Frank, and she would later marry another stepfather.
As a teenager in the border state of Missouri, Jesse learned to kill for the South during the Civil War, as did his brother Frank. Then the brothers went on to a life of crime. By most accounts, Jesse was not the Robin Hood hero as portrayed in the traditional “Ballad of Jesse James,” made famous by Woody Guthrie and others. But sometimes we need outlaw heroes to inspire us to fight authority. Below is a version of the song by Bruce Springsteen and the Seeger Sessions Band, starting with a long banjo introduction.
Springsteen’s version of the ballad appears on We Shall Overcome The Seeger Sessions
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On July 21, 1861, the First Battle of Bull Run — or First Battle of Manassas — was fought in Virginia. It was the first major battle of the Civil War. A little less than a thousand men were killed on the battlefield, and a few thousand were injured or missing.
The North was shocked that they effectively lost, and both sides suddenly realized that the upcoming war was going to be much longer and brutal than they had expected during their early rallies.
The war touched many families during the next four years. And the First Battle of Bull Run touched many too, including the families of Wilmer McLean and Sullivan Ballou.
Wilmer McLean was touched by this start of the war as well as the end of the war. During this first battle of the Civil War, Confederate Brigadier General P.G.T. Beauregard set up his headquarters in the farmhouse owned by the 47-year-old McLean. During the battle, McLean’s house was hit by a shell.
After the battle, McLean decided to move his family farther from the war. So, he packed up his family and moved from northern Virginia to a small town in southern Virginia. His new home was in Appomattox Court House, Virginia.
But he could not escape the war. Just as his home was at the beginning of the war, so would it be at the end of the war. On April 9, 1965, General Ulysses S. Grant and General Robert E. Lee used McLean’s home in Appomattox Court House to sign the terms of the surrender of the Civil War. Although this time McLean’s house was not hit by shells of battle, much of his house was soon ransacked by souvenir hunters.
The documentary series The Civil War
It is difficult to believe that Ballou’s letter was written by a soldier and not by a poet or a famous writer. But in reality, Major Ballou was well educated and had worked as a lawyer and as an elocution teacher. He also had served as speaker in the Rhode Island House of Representatives.
Below, is a video from Burns’s series that features Ballou’s letter. Actor Paul Roebling, who passed away in 1994, reads the letter accompanied by the music “Ashokan Farewell,” which was composed by Jay Ungar in 1982
I always get something in my eye somewhere around the time the letter gets to: “How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.”
Ken Burns has explained that it appears the Ballou letter was saved for future generations by friends of Ballous’ family. At some point, friends of the Ballou family began copying the letter by hand and passing it around in those pre-Internet days.
Sullivan Ballou’s original handwritten letter is lost to history, as the letter probably was buried with his wife. But it is fortunate that the words were not lost. His personal words help us to better understand the impact of the First Battle of Bull Run, the Civil War, and, by extension, all wars.
Bonus Version of Sullivan Ballou Letter: I imagine the organizers of this reading were very moved when they heard the letter read in the Ken Burns series and wanted to do a nice tribute. But in the future, high schools should note that the intimacy of the letter is lost with a guy yelling Ballou’s words while a college pep band plays during a half-time break at a basketball game.
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