Showing posts with label 1946. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1946. Show all posts

Thursday, April 02, 2020

The records that made me (some of 'em):
The contradiction of Mama and Daddy's 78s


The album-cover challenge continues, Part 4. The thing is, this ain't an album. It's a few 78s, ones that I've been playing since I was old enough to work a record player, which was age 4-ish.

First, behold this influential record of my youth -- Elvis Presley's "All Shook Up," on glorious shellac.

In many cases, high fidelity spun into 1950s homes, and into popular culture, at 78 rpm.

And so did the king of rock 'n' roll.

Now I have brought much of my analog musical formation into the digital present, I guess, preserved on not-so-glorious hard drives these days. (Don't worry; I still have the records.)

"All Shook Up." I couldn't tell you how many times I played this record -- this very 78 that's four years older than I am -- as a kid. The rough estimate: lots.

In 1957, "All Shook Up" was magic. As it still was when I first got a hold of it around 1964 or 1965. As it still is today.

Me (age not quite 3) and the Silvertone . . . and the records
THAT GOES as well for another of my little stash of Elvis on 78 . . . "Too Much." That's it sitting on a 1952 Webcor record changer here at Anachronism "R" Us.

And you know what? After half a century and more, the Elvis records still sound pretty much like new. Hell, I have many compact discs that sound a lot worse. I mean, some of these old 78s sound great.

RCA Victor's "'New Orthophonic' High Fidelity" was, indeed, all that. All that and a pair of blue suede shoes.

Now let's turn to a couple more 78s that more fully became touchstones when I hit my 50s -- Walter Brown's "Fine Brown Baby" / "My Baby's Boogie Woogie" and The Delmore Brothers' "Blues Stay Away From Me."

In 1946, when my parents were still newlyweds, they were buying "race" records and hillbilly blues records from their favorite Baton Rouge music emporiums.


LOW-DOWN BLUES. R&B. Along with pop, jump and country twangfests like the Delmore Brothers.

"She's got what it takes, make a preacher lay his Bible down," sangeth Mr. Brown. You should hear the flip side.

If you want to know the music of my soul, my folks' old 78s will get you close.

If you want to know what was it that made me the musical creature that I am -- if you want to hear the records I was playing when I was but a lad, just old enough to get into my folks records and operate a record changer -- here you go. This and Fats Domino . . . and Ivory Joe Hunter . . . and Fats Domino . . . and Hank Williams . . . and Louis Jordan.

This is about as personal as it gets.

This is who I am. The music of my parents' young adulthood (and my record-geek childhood) sounded like the world -- the Deep South -- I was born into damn near six decades ago.

It was eclectic, the Louisiana . . . the South of my youth. It was seemingly at odds with itself if you didn't look any further than the surface of things. It was also rich beyond measure.

Take Brown, the blues shouter who once sang with Jay McShann's orchestra. In the particular culture I entered into during the spring of 1961, black shouters like him could sit next to white twangers like Ernest Tubb in the record cabinet in the bottom of the old Silvertone console -- even if they couldn't sit next to each other at the Woolworth's lunch counter.

AND NO ONE thought twice about either peculiarity.

This explains my parents' music-buying habits of the 1940s and '50s, long before I came along and, a few years later, started raiding their music collection. It also explains the complex and contradictory inner lives of these people -- formed by the Southern society that brought us Williams, Louis Armstrong and Jim Crow -- who could in 1946 buy racy records by blues shouters, then in 1971 yell at me about my expletive-deleted "n***er music."

People who thought Dick Clark was a communist, probably because of the fatal combination of "beatnik music" and race mixing on "American Bandstand."

Those George Wallace and David Duke voters.

A couple more of the blackest white people on earth -- as Southern Caucasians surely are -- who may have found it just cause for homicide if you had told them that back in the day.

Go figure.

The South: It's a mystery, wrapped in a riddle, tucked away in an enigma and fueled by contradiction. These records give you a peek under its hood a little bit . . . its and mine.

You might not completely understand either of us, me and the South, but it will be a start.


Tuesday, February 14, 2012

These parts, back in the day

It was a different time in the great Midwest.

Farmers were farmers . . . and radio was radio. You get a picture of that from the Oct. 28, 1946 edition of Broadcasting - Telecasting magazine.

Yet. . . .

Yeah, this is the Midwest I know, all right. Things change, but this part of God's good earth doesn't change completely.

Tuesday, December 06, 2011

Zuzu explains it all


Sometimes, it's not such a wonderful life.


Sometimes, when you hit December, this time of good cheer and good will toward men, you're running low on both. You are tired. You have been beaten down by a world of bad will and bad tidings, and if success ever came calling on you, there'd probably be no room at the inn.

For trouble, there's plenty of room. Because that's how the world rolls.

You feel alone in the world, and if your mother told you she loved you, you'd feel compelled to confirm it with at least two independent sources. Preferably, there would be something on paper somewhere -- not that you would be able to find it.

Meantime, being that the world has you convinced you're a great big failure, you seek inspiration among folks our world holds up as successful. You take a hard look at who they are and how they got where you'd like to be . . . and you conclude that if these societal role models were in Texas, somebody surely would say they "just need killin'." (See "Investment bankers, Wall Street.")

Then you conclude that's just false hope talking.


SO THERE you are. Feeling alone. Stressed out. A giant, screaming failure -- one way or another. You don't love you, and you're fairly certain God is ambivalent on the subject.

Merry expletive-deleted Christmas. The only reason you didn't get pepper sprayed at Wal-Mart on Black Friday was because the last shred of dignity you have left hinges on not being the sort of person who puts himself in a position to get pepper sprayed at Wal-Mart on Black Friday. So you have that going for you, at least.

Zuzu feels your pain.

Well, at least Karolyn Grimes -- she who was so sure about what happened to angels whenever a bell rang in
It's a Wonderful Life -- feels your pain. Being a movie icon offers little protection when the world decides to crash down upon you.

But sometimes, underneath the rubble and amid the ruin, there is a wisdom that surpasses what we understood to be true. We live, we suffer and -- as "Zuzu" tells
The Washington Post from the perspective of now being 71 and having suffered . . . a lot -- the truth is where it is.

And God is where He is. Which isn't necessarily where we presume Him to be.
“My life has never been wonderful,” she offered quietly. “Maybe when I was a child, but not after age 15.”

“And maybe that’s what makes the film so important for me and a lot of other people,” she continued. “The Jimmy Stewart George is suffering terribly in the movie — you can just see it. He’s in Martini’s café and saying to himself, ‘God, I’m not a praying man, but please show me the way.’ ”

“Gosh, it makes me cry,” she said.

“It’s not a Christmas movie, not a movie about Jesus or Bethlehem or anything religious like that,” she insisted. “It’s about how we have to face life with a lot of uncertainty, and even though nobody hears it, most of us ask God to show us the way when things get really hard.

“That was part of Capra’s genius,” she said. “Everybody has some sorrow, worry, and everybody asks God for help. One way or the other, we all do, and it can be in Martini’s, not a church on Christmas.”

Francis Caraccilo, a preservationist in Seneca Falls and an organizer of the annual “It’s a Wonderful Life” celebration, believes Capra’s film addresses other important issues. “For a lot of historians and people who just watch the film closely, the movie’s relevance includes the fact that it addresses anti-immigrant sentiments and religious bigotry,” pointing to the scene where the evil banker Potter complains that George Bailey is helping “garlic eaters” buy homes.

“Italian Americans appear throughout the film,” said Caraccilo, himself an Italian American. “When Capra came through this town, it was clear that anti-immigrant and not-too-subtle hostility toward Catholics was part of the American social landscape in 1946.”

“There’s a generous heart in this movie,” he said. “Think about that for a moment in 2011.”
THINK ABOUT THAT for several moments.

Maybe life is wonderful, after all. Maybe what's not so wonderful is how much room we allow Henry F. Potter in our hearts and in our culture . . . and how little is left for George Bailey. We say we long for Bedford Falls, yet we double down on
the Pottersville that we've been sold.

You could pray about this at your church of the almighty annual appeal and happy-clappy, dinner-theater hymns to the triumphant self. On the other hand, you could get serious, pop into Martini's, order a double bourbon and go for broke.
"Dear Father in heaven, I'm not a praying man, but if you're up there and can hear me, show me the way. I'm at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God."