I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend.
ART NOTES - an exhibition entitled Van Gogh, Manet, and Matisse: The Art of the Flower will be at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond through June 21st.
HAIL and FAREWELL to the mathematician John Nash - whose life story was turned into the Oscar-winning film A Beautiful Mind, who has died (along with his wife) in a car crash at the age of 86 ..... to the prolific bassist Louis Johnson - 1/2 of the Brothers Johnson and who was an in-demand session player (on Michael Jackson's Thriller and many other albums) - who has died at the age of 60 ...... and also to two noted figures from the jazz world: saxophonist and bandleader Bob Belden - who won a 2001 Grammy for his suite based upon the 1947 murder of the California woman known as the Black Dahlia and who just recently led the first American band performance in thirty-five years in Iran - who has died at the age of 58 ........ and the former Columbia Records executive Bruce Lundvall - who parlayed his experience in 1984 into reviving the dormant jazz label Blue Note, signing jazz veterans (as well as musicians such as Norah Jones, Anita Baker and Al Green) and was a 2011 Grammy Trustees Award winner - who has died at the age of 79.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Henry the Cat - an Alaska kitteh who has "adopted" a litter of abandoned kittens (found on the side of the road) despite suffering from a neurological disorder that makes him a little unsteady when he walks.
SPORTING NOTES - two weeks hence will see the championship match of pan-European soccer, as Juventus (of Turin, Italy) will take on Barcelona, Spain in Berlin ... and this will be on free TV on Saturday, June 6th at 2:45 PM Eastern time.
WHILE YOU MIGHT IMAGINE them as a US religious minority, there is a Mennonite community in Bolivia which is quite isolated from technology.
LAST NIGHT yours truly hosted the Top Comments diary, with a look at the Week that Was in Ireland - and where the historic referendum over marriage equality was not the only wind-of-change that blew this past week:
.... as this meeting between Prince Charles and Gerry Adams symbolizes how much things are different in the Emerald Isle ever since the Good Friday agreements that former Sen. George Mitchell helped to broker.
FRIDAY's CHILD is a Florida kitteh who was discovered inside a vehicle ... not in the engine, but somehow become lodged under an SUV tail light compartment ... due to its tail sticking out.
BRAIN TEASER - try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC.
DIRECT DESCENDANTS? - TV/film star Steve Buscemi and artist Salvador Dali.
...... and finally, for a song of the week .............................. his career lasted only fifteen years (for several reasons) but parlaying those years into his recent induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame was Bill Withers - who combined his rural upbringing with a cosmopolitan adulthood to blend soul, folk and a touch of smooth jazz into a singer-songwriter mode ... and create a sound all his own, done in a fiercely independent way.
Born near the railroad tracks in the rural town of Slab Fork (in the southern part of West Virginia), he heard both country music and Gospel. His father worked in the mines, yet died when Bill was only 13. He grew-up with a stuttering problem which came with him upon enlisting in the US Navy after graduating from high school in 1956. Determined to avoid the fate of many black sailors (limited to KP duty) he studied aircraft mechanics - which was the work he did until his discharge in 1965 (and by which time he largely overcame his stuttering).
After his discharge he obtained employment at a parts factory, and his musical career began when he saw Lou Rawls perform at a club in Oakland. He got a guitar from a pawn shop and was self-taught, while he began writing songs in his spare time. He saved enough from each paycheck to eventually record a demo tape, which he shopped around to many labels, none of whom were interested. Then around 1970, he met a music executive named Clarence Avant – who had just founded an indie label called Sussex Records – and he was taken by Bill's lyrics, signing him to his new label.
And Clarence Avant placed Bill Withers in good hands for his first recording: hiring as organist and producer no less than Booker T. Jones (yes, of the MG’s fame) who brought together not only his old bassist Duck Dunn, but other noted session musicians (as well as Stephen Stills) for a recording session:
"Bill came right from the factory and showed up in his old brogans and his old clunk of a car with a notebook full of songs," says Jones. "When he saw everyone in the studio, he asked to speak to me privately and said, 'Booker, who is going to sing these songs?'
I said, 'You are, Bill.' He was expecting some other vocalist to show up."
Withers was extremely uneasy until Graham Nash walked into the studio. "He sat down in front of me and said, 'You don't know how good you are,'" Withers says. "I'll never forget it."
They recorded the songs that would appear on his 1971 debut album
Just As I Am – including the title track and his break-out hit (co–written with William Becton)
Ain’t No Sunshine – all the while working at his factory job awaiting the album’s release before he was laid-off.
After the release he received two letters: one a callback to his factory job, and the other … to appear on the Tonight Show. Choosing the latter option helped propel Ain’t No Sunshine into the Top Ten, making him an overnight sensation at age 32.
In 1972 he followed-up with his album Still Bill – which spawned to additional hit songs, including Use Me and perhaps his best-loved tune Lean on Me – which reached #1 on both the R&B and Pop charts that summer. He appeared on both Soul Train and the BBC ….. and after enduring having a manager for a time (and hating it) he resolved to manage himself from hereon.
He followed-up with a popular live album recorded at Carnegie Hall, including the anti-war tune I Can't Write Left Handed and then released +Justments – a melancholy album with one song Can We Pretend written by TV star Denise Nicholas (to whom he was married for a year) and the album reflects more of a singer-songwriter feel than soul. It also represented the end of the first phase of his career, as his label Sussex went bankrupt, with Bill both (a) erasing a Sussex tape in frustration, as well as (b) signing a deal with Columbia as a result in 1975.
Sadly, this marked the decline of his career (with frequent recriminations). Bill felt that Columbia didn’t know what to do with him (misunderstanding his music) while label officials faulted his not having a manager to iron-out typical artist-label difficulties. Either way, his next two albums Making Music as well as Naked & Warm garnered favorable reviews yet no hits nor anything enduring.
It took 1977’s Menagerie for him to regain his footing, with a more cohesive arrangement and with songs such as Let Me Be the One You Need it pointed the way towards a style later to become known as Quiet Storm in the future. Sadly again, it proved to be his last hurrah: as differences with Columbia resulted in no new recordings until 1985.
In the meantime, he wrote and sang on one more hit song in 1980: although it was on the album credited to his musical duet partner Grover Washington Jr., Just the Two of Us has all of the elements of a Bill Withers song – and what he felt was a rejoinder to Columbia.
After 1985’s Watching You, Watching Me album – pleasant though with not standout tunes – Bill Withers decided to just walk-away from the music business after fifteen years, never announcing a retirement, nor holding a farewell concert. As someone who wrote (or co-wrote) most of his better-known songs, he was able to thrive on his royalties and publishing, plus real estate investments - and his MBA professional wife helps run his office. The few times he has performed in public over the past thirty years were often backing-up his daughter Kori.
But he has not been a recluse, involved in many projects. His daughter was best friends in elementary school with Joe Walsh's stepson, so Bill and Joe are good friends. It's a sign of how unaffected Bill is to-this-day ... that he accompanied Joe to a recording session with the bluesman Keb Mo, then saw Ringo Starr and Mick Jagger in the studio and still thought, "Wait a minute: there's an Eagle, a Beatle and a Stone in this room!" Bill Withers also feels that Barack Obama was lucky to have grown up in Hawaii; believing he would have grown up more cynical in Philadelphia or Alabama.
But as noted, Bill Withers attended his induction ceremony at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, where his acceptance speech was widely thought to be the evening's most charming (a short clip can be heard here) and Stevie Wonder as well as John Legend performed his songs while Bill declined to sing, but was there on-stage ... and then did join to help sing the chorus to "Lean on Me".
Even if he never sings another note publicly, at age 76 his legacy is well set. Besides the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction, he was also voted into Songwriters Hall of Fame, was the winner of Grammy Awards for "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Just the Two of Us", he was the subject of a documentary entitled Still Bill from 2010 and has a 2005 compilation album of his best-loved tunes.
Best of all, his songs were recorded by a wide variety of performers. Michael Jackson, Liza Minnelli, Tom Jones, Sting, Crystal Gale, Diana Ross, Anne Murray, Isaac Hayes, Fiona Apple, Michael Stipe/Brian Eno, Garth Brooks, Widespread Panic, Aaron Neville, Sheryl Crow, Barbra Streisand and Carmen McRae may have different styles of music ... but all found Bill Withers's songs could fit into their repertoire. The drummer/bandleader for the Tonight Show named Questlove summed-up his career in a quite interesting way:
"He's the last African-American Everyman. Jordan's vertical jump has to be higher than everyone. Michael Jackson has to defy gravity. On the other side of the coin, we're often viewed as primitive animals. We rarely land in the middle. Bill Withers is the closest thing black people have to a Bruce Springsteen."
Of all of his songs, I still have a soft spot for one that I heard during my days away at college .... and always felt that Lovely Day is best heard on a car radio (though the sound quality on my vehicle back then was .... well ...... sub-par, let's say). But not so sub-par that I could not marvel at Bill holding the note "day" for a full eighteen seconds towards the end of the song.
And below you can listen to it.
When I wake up in the morning, love
And the sunlight hurts my eyes
And something without warning, love
Bears heavy on my mind
When the day that lies ahead of me
Seems impossible to face
When someone else instead of me
Always seems to know the way
Then I look at you
And the world's alright with me
Just one look at you
And I know it's gonna be
A lovely day