In the first week of May 2016, it was announced that singer-songwriter Ned Miller had passed away at the age of 90 in Medford, Oregon. Miller had written such songs as “Dark Moon,” “Do What You Do Well,” and “Invisible Tears.” But his best-known song was “From a Jack to a King,” which in 1963 went to number six on the Billboard pop chart (and number two on the country chart). The song also was covered by artists like Bobby Darin and Elvis Presley.
Miller’s version of “From a Jack to a King” was initially released in 1957 and it initially did not do well. But a record company rereleased it in 1962, and for some reason the song about a man’s happiness at finding the right woman caught on the second time.
But Miller — who was born in Utah as Henry Ned Miller on April 12, 1925 — never enjoyed the limelight. He did little touring to support “From a Jack to a King,” and he often suffered stage fright. He would sometimes ask friends to perform under his name, and he eventually stopped performing altogether because of his shyness. He stopped recording in 1970, relieved to be out of the music business.
Another popular song that Miller wrote was “Dark Moon,” which has been recorded by Gale Storm, Chris Isaak, and Bing Crosby. Isaac’s version of “Dark Moon” was released in 1993 as a single. The song later appeared on the album Best of Chris Isaak (2006).
Because of Miller’s preference for avoiding the spotlight, it seems fitting that his death was announced to the public nearly two months after he passed away on March 18, 2016. But we are lucky that for a period this shy man shared a little of himself with us. Leave your two cents in the comments.
Ever since I started this blog, I have been planning to write a post about one of my favorite singers, Arthur Alexander. I have been putting it off because I feared I could not do justice to his story. But since Arthur Alexander Jr.’s birthday is this week, the least I could do was to post my favorite Arthur Alexander song, “Every Day I Have to Cry.” And then maybe we will return to more of his music at another time.
Alexander — who was born on May 10, 1940 in Sheffield, Alabama –should be much more famous than he is. His songs have been covered by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, George Jones, Otis Redding, Bob Dylan, Dusty Springfield, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, and many others. The country soul singer began recording music in the early 1960s. Some of his songs became well-known, like “You Better Move On” and “Anna (Go to Him),” the latter recorded by The Beatles.
Several singers covered “Every Day I Have to Cry” before Alexander got around to recording it. Steve Alaimo first recorded it in 1962, and the Bee Gees recorded it in 1965. Ike and Tina Turner covered it in 1966. Alexander finally recorded “Every Day I Have to Cry” in 1974.
Unfortunately, Alexander’s career never took off like it should have. After his 1972 album Rainbow Road found little success, he left the music business. By the 1980s, he was working as a bus driver for the Center for Human Services in Cleveland, Ohio.
But as interest in his catalog begin to grow, he returned to his music in the early 1990s. In 1993, he released his first album in 21 years, Lonely Just Like Me. He kept his bus driving job as the album was released, but as the record began to gain attention, he prepared for a tour.
At the time of the album’s release, Alexander welcomed the renewed interest in his career “I’m finding out the seeds I planted all that time ago were good seeds. That’s really something – I was gone for such a long time.”
Alexander finally was on the verge of the success he deserved. But then, soon after the album’s release, he had a fatal heart attack and died on June 9, 1993.
Alexander’s birthday is a great day to track down and listen to more of his music, as are the other 364 days of the year. There are plenty of good seeds to find. One of my favorite albums is the special edition of his 1990s comeback album, Lonely Just Like Me, but it is hard to go wrong with any of his music. For more on Alexander’s career, check out this post by Richard Younger or this article on RCR. Or you may read his 1993 obituary in the New York Times. What is your favorite Arthur Alexander song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
On May 9, 1864, General John Sedgwick became the highest ranking United States soldier to be killed in the U.S. Civil War when a sharpshooter killed him at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House. But despite Sedgwick’s leadership and his bravery, he is most known for his last words.
“They Couldn’t Hit An Elephant”
As his own men took cover while Confederate sharpshooters from 1000 yards away fired at the Union soldiers, Sedgwick stood tall. Trying to inspire his men, he asked, “Why are you dodging like this? They couldn’t hit an elephant at this distance.” A few moments later, he was shot in the eye and killed.
Sedgwick had been involved in the Civil War from its very beginning, starting out as a colonel. He and his men saw action in places such as the Battle of Antietam, the Battle of Chancellorsville, and at the Battle of the Wilderness.
Sedgwick’s death came a little less than a year before the Confederacy surrendered at Appomattox Court House on April 9, 1965. Also, he died exactly one year before the official end of the war by proclamation on May 9, 1865.
Despite dying while questioning his soldiers, Sedgwick apparently was well-liked by his men, who called him “Uncle John.” Ulysses S. Grant and Gen. George G. Meade were greatly saddened at his death, as was his old friend on the other side of the war, Robert E. Lee.
“Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”
There are a number of songs about guns and/or being shot, either literally or figuratively. For example, there is Aerosmith’s “Janie’s Got a Gun,” Bon Jovi’s “You Give Love a Bad Name” (“shot through the heart. . .”), Eric Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff,” the Beatles’ “Happiness is a Warm Gun,” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Saturday Night Special.”
Other songs include The Clash’s “Tommy Gun,” Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Machine Gun,” Beastie Boys’s “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun,” and Cypress Hill’s “How I Could Just Kill a Man.” And there is David Lee Roth’s song that invokes the type of animal in Sedgwick’s last words, “Elephant Gun.”
One of the few songs, though, that takes the point of view of the person being shot is Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door.” Dylan wrote the song for the 1973 movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid.
In Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, director Sam Peckinpah used the song about the last words of a wounded sheriff to accompany the death of Sheriff Colin Baker (played by Slim Pickens). Dylan’s song begins around the 2-minute mark in the following clip from the film.
Unlike the sheriff in “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” General Sedgwick had little time to contemplate the end of his life after he was shot in the head. Yet, his last words have had a lasting power.
Storytellers used Sedgwick’s last words for a number of purposes. Depending on how you look at his death, his last words illustrate courage, bravura, or stupidity.
You have to give some kudos to the guy, though, and many have. There is a monument to Sedgwick at West Point. And among other tributes, there are cities named in Sedgwick’s memory in Arkansas, Colorado, and Kansas. Colorado and Kansas also named counties after Sedgwick. Streets are named after him in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.
Meanwhile, nobody remembers the name of the man who killed him. Several Confederate soldiers claimed responsibility, though many believe Benjamin Medicus Powell fired the fatal shot using a long-range Whitworth sharpshooter rifle (with telescope) from England.
What are your favorite last words? Leave your two cents in the comments. Photo via public domain.
If you watch a movie about the 1950s or early 1960s, it is likely that at some point you will hear a familiar instrumental song that you recognize but might not know its name. If you have wondered about the story behind the familiar song with the steel guitar, the name of the song is “Sleep Walk,” written and recorded by brothers Santo & Johnny Farina in 1959.
“Sleep Walk” was recorded at the end of the 1950s, so the song was probably still playing on the radio as the 1960s began. And in retrospect, it seems like it was a last gasp of capturing the perceived innocence of the 1950s before the start of the turbulent changes of the 1960s, as well as following the tradition of 1950s instrumental guitar songs. Perhaps those reasons are why “Sleep Walk” is so often used in movies to evoke the 1950s, such as when the song pops up at the end of La Bamba (1987) after Ritchie Valens’s family learns of his death in February 1959.
In this video, Santo and Johnny perform the song on the August 1, 1959 episode of the Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show. Dick Clark tells how the brothers wrote the song at 2:00 a.m. after one brother woke up the other because he had the idea for the song in his head (although another article reports merely that the brothers stayed up late to write the song). The story about the late hour explains the name of the song.
For more information about Santo & Johnny and “Sleep Walk,” Johnny Farina is interviewed by Tom Meros in this video below. Johnny gives some background on how his father encouraged the brothers to learn the steel guitar.
Although everyone knows the Santo & Johnny version, others have covered the song, including My Morning Jacket and the Brian Setzer Orchestra. Blake Mills and Carlos Santana play that version you hear in La Bamba.
In this video, Garrison Keillor introduces Chet Atkins and Leo Kottke playing a sweet version of “Sleepwalk.” Check it out.
We love the song as an instrumental piece. But that has not stopped some folks from trying to add words.
Modest Mouse turned the instrumental into “Sleeepwalkin'” on their 1999 album Building Nothing Out of Something when they added some lyrics. Check it out.
About.com explains that a jazz standard “Softly As In a Morning Sunrise” inspired “Sleep Walk.” But Farina disputes the existence of any relationship between the two tunes.
Farina explained, “It’s not even close to it, really, if you listen to the two. But it’s become part of the mystique of the song.” Listen to Michael Brecker’s take on “Softly As In a Morning Sunrise” and judge for yourself.
Farina, however, does note that “Sleep Walk” has inspired others. For example, the tune inspired John Lennon to write “Free as a Bird.”
Lennon’s song was later made into a Beatles song by the other Beatles after Lennon’s death. You can definitely hear a little “Sleep Walk” in “Free as a Bird.”
In addition to La Bamba, “Sleep Walk” has appeared in other movies like Coupe de Ville (1990), Mermaids (1990), Jack (1996), The Butcher Boy (1997), Hearts in Atlantis (2001), and Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle (2003). The tune also pops up in television shows like Mad Men, Heroes, Ken Burns’s Baseball series, and Quantum Leap.
Santo and Johnny, fortunately, are still with us. According to Wikipedia, Santo is semi-retired and Johnny still tours and records. I am not quite sure what it is about “Sleep Walk” that makes us automatically think of the certain time period of 1950s America. But Santo & Johnny certainly captured a certain time as well as a certain sleepy feeling.
What is your favorite use of “Sleep Walk”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Turner Classics Movie host Robert Osborne was born May 3, 1932 in Colfax, Washington. While most people know Osborne for his wonderful hosting duties on TCM (and before that on The Movie Channel), Osborne had a diverse career and started out as an actor before later focusing on writing and journalism.
One of his television roles was an appearance on the pilot for a TV series in 1962. There was a possibility of a regular role, but Osborne did not think that the series, The Beverly Hillbillies, would be much of a success. “The show itself seemed so loony and unimportant,” he later explained, adding, “I was sure the pilot would never sell.” Of course, the series then ran for nine seasons.
In the clip below, you may see a young Robert Osborne in that pilot episode of The Beverly Hillbillies. Check it out.
If that segment makes you want to see the entire episode, you may watch the entire pilot below. Check out “The Clampetts Strike Oil.”
Osborne explained that Lucille Ball had put him under contract at her studio. And it was she who eventually encouraged him to pursue a career in writing instead of acting. She was impressed by his vast knowledge about the history of Hollywood.
In 2015 and 2016, due to health issues, Osborne announced he would not attend the TCM Classic Film Festival. He also had to cut back on his work at TCM, and he passed way on March 6, 2017.
I do like Ben Mankiewicz, who filled in for Osborne in a number of roles, although I miss Osborne. Whenever I watch a movie on TCM, I would hope for Osborne or Mankiewicz to appear. Without them, I feel like I am not getting the whole value of the movie.
Osborne became a part of the life of anyone who watches classic movies. He became a mainstay of TCM since he introduced the first film the network aired, Gone With the Wind, on April 14, 1994.
For one, I’m glad that his career with The Beverly Hillbillies did not quite work out. He brought us a lot of joy, and he was a wonderful and intelligent companion for many nights watching great films. This post was updated March 2017. Leave your two cents in the comments.
, but it is hard to go wrong with any of his music. For more on Alexander’s career, check out this post by 
Turner Classics Movie host 