On January 8 in 1935, the king of rock and roll was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. The child was born to Gladys Love Presley and named after the middle name of his father, Vernon Elvis Presley.
Thirty-five minutes before Elvis Presley was born, an identical twin brother named Jesse Garon Presley was delivered, stillborn. The deliveries took place in a small two-room house that Vernon had built in preparation for the anticipated births.
Ten years later, Elvis gave his first public performance, standing on a chair at a fair to reach the microphone and dressed as a cowboy. He sang, “Old Shep.”
In those pre-YouTube days, he made his first recording eight years later when he was eighteen. He went to Sun Records in Memphis to pay to record a couple of songs, with the first recorded sounds of that voice singing, “My Happiness.”
There are varying stories about whether he simply wanted to record a song for his mother or whether he thought the recording might lead to his discovery. Either way, you can hear the start of something there.
The last few days a video has been going around the Internet of a homeless man named Ted Williams who has a great announcer’s voice. USA Today is now reporting that the man has been offered a job by the Cleveland Cavaliers and NFL Films. Meanwhile, the talk show hosts are trying to get him on their shows. Hopefully things will work out for Williams, who has training in announcing but got sidetracked by alcoholism and drugs.
More than six million people have viewed the video of Mr. Williams after it was posted on YouTube Monday. In case you have not seen it yet, here is the Internet video that may change a man’s life for the better. And you thought YouTube was just for funny kittens. [October 2013 Update: The original video appears to be no longer available.]
Update for Thursday, Jan. 6: Today, CNN has an interesting story about the man who made the video of Ted Williams, Doral Chenoweth III, and what made him stop to make the video. According to the story, Chenoweth is an interesting person, who actually had the video for five weeks before posting it. Also, as noted in a comment, Ted Williams has now appeared on the Today Show.
In the middle of holiday celebrations, many may have missed that Geraldine Hoff Doyle, the inspiration for the famous poster of “Rosie the Riveter,” died on December 26 in Michigan. Doyle’s memorial service will be held this weekend on January 8, 2011. [2018 Update: See update at end of article about another woman credited with inspiring the famous poster.]
When Doyle was 17, a photographer took a photo that was apparently of her working at a metal-stamping machine in Ann Arbor. Artist J. Howard Miller used the United Press photo as the basis for a famous World War II poster that praised contributions made by working women. The poster, encouraging women to enter the work force, featured a strong independent woman flexing her muscle saying “We Can Do It!” Others named the woman in the poster “Rosie the Riveter,” after a popular song about women contributing to the war effort.
Norman Rockwell also created his own painting of Rosie the Riveter used for a 1943 cover of the Saturday Evening Post. The Four Vagabonds sang the song “Rosie the Riveter.”
A little-known fact about the woman in the poster is that Doyle only worked at the plant for a couple of weeks. She quit the job after she learned that her predecessor injured her hand in the metal press machine. So, the woman who inspired the poster with the flexing muscle was not flexing her muscle in the job for long.
Still, her brief work at the plant inspired other women to do the work. She contributed to the continuing long journey toward obtaining equal rights for women as well as to helping defeat the Nazis. And that’s pretty cool. “Making history, working for victory,” just like in the song. Thanks Rosie, and thanks Geraldine. Rest in peace.
2018 Update: New research indicates that it probably was not Doyle in that original photo that inspired the Rosie the Riveter poster. A researcher concluded that the woman in the original photo was Naomi Parker Fraley. Fraley died at the age of 96 in January 2018. Either way, Fraley and Doyle both did important work for the war effort and womens’ rights.
Bonus Song Information: Although Doyle became associated with “Rosie the Riveter,” another woman, Rosalind P. Walter, inspired the song. Walter worked a night shift building fighter planes. Another woman, Rose Will Monroe, who worked as a riveter in Michigan during WWII, appeared in a promotional film during the war. Many at the time saw Monroe as the real Rosie the Riveter icon.
Bonus New Video: Pink’s new video for her song, “Raise Your Glass,” features her impression of the Geraldine Doyle poster.
Two-thousand birds and 100,000 fish died in Arkansas about 100 miles apart, and so far nobody knows the reason. The media is all over the story. Such news gives us a little fear because it seems like the beginning of a horror movie or an end-of-the world movie. Animals start dying for no reason, and then. . . .? For example, in Alfred Hitchock’s The Birds, a character in the movie refers to a real-life mystifying incident where birds in a California town started hitting buildings and dying, implying a connection to the later horror in the fictional story.
Hopefully, the scientists will figure out the causes. They at least partly solved the mystery of some of the honey bee deaths in recent years. Some scientists discovered the bees were dying from a combination of a fungus and a virus, even as the bee population continues to decline. But, if scientists do not discover the causes for the recent Arkansas fish and foul deaths, it is not such a bad thing for us to be bewildered for awhile. It sparks the imagination.
I have not watched The Birds in a long time. It was one of the first scary movies I saw as a child, so it carries disturbing baggage for me. The special effects seem unreal today, but the movie is still spooky. One of the best parts of the movie is that they never explain why the birds are attacking. Why are the birds suddenly attacking people? Does it have something to do with the lead character’s past? Alfred Hitchcock was a genius to not explain the attacks. By contrast, M. Night Shyamalan might have made The Happening a better movie had he learned that lesson. Unanswered dark questions terrify us more than the beaks and claws.
In honor of fallen feathered and gilled friends, check out the movie The Birds.
When I purchasedTell Tale Signs: the Bootleg Series Vol. 8 (2008), the Bob Dylan CD that features unreleased songs from the time period of his more recent albums, the song “Red River Shore” stood out immediately as I played the CD in my car. I kept playing the song over and over again, barely getting to anything else on the CD. It is another example of a great song that Dylan originally decided to leave off an album he was making. At least they eventually get released. The music is great, as are the beautiful lyrics of loss.
Now I’m wearing the cloak of misery And I’ve tasted jilted love And the frozen smile upon my face Fits me like a glove But I can’t escape from the memory Of the one that I’ll always adore All those nights when I lay in the arms Of the girl from the Red River shore
Some writers have wondered if the girl from the Red River shore is the same person as was featured in Dylan’s “Shelter from the Storm,” as in this piece on Gardener is Gone. Some have found religious overtones in the song, such as in Songs for the Journey, with some arguing that the song is about Dylan’s relationship with Christ.
At first, I was interested that there might be a hidden meaning in the song. Of course, Dylan is Dylan and one may never know his intent, but on further listening I think those claiming religious meaning are wrong. The song is what it appears to be: a song about loss and memory. And while the final verse does have a reference to Jesus, it’s a statement that in today’s modern world, we unfortunately cannot count on God to undo what is lost. “He knew how to bring ’em on back to life/ Well, I don’t know what kind of language he used/ Or if they do that kind of thing anymore /Sometimes I think nobody ever saw me here at all/ ‘Cept the girl from the Red River shore.”
There are few Dylan videos on the Internet, and none of this song that I can find. Although covers rarely match the original, I am intrigued by the number of people who have the guts to play a song and post it on YouTube. There are some nice covers of this song on YouTube. [2024 Update: Some of the ones mentioned below are no longer on YouTube.] There’s a good one by a German band called CCC Inc.
A video of Henry Lim looks very professional, and it has nice instrumentation. Lim is the technical services assistant for the UCLA Music Library, and he has a busy extracurricular life. He has covered other artists like Radiohead with his string quartet, and he is an artist with Legos.
There are some good versions in the “dude with a guitar” category, such as a nice one by Kevin Magoon, who also adds a little electronic drum. C22romero does a nice job on the song too, but maybe he should turn down the reverb a little. I wish Chris Pap below would focus the camera, but he does a nice quiet version of the song below.
Perhaps because of the viewpoint of the lyrics, almost all of the covers are by men. But Linda Kosut performs the song in California.
After this post was initially published, singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave covered “Red River Shore” on his album, Depending on the Distance (2012). Below is the excellent version from that album.
In another video after this post’s original publication, an artist named Kape does a nice version too. I cannot find much about him from the Internet, but he appears to be from Sweden.
Finally, my favorite cover may be this version of “Red River Shore” by lornisply with a guy playing an electric piano in his home. He has a good voice and seems to connect to the song. And there is something about the simple weariness of the performance of the melancholy song that makes it believable.
I know nobody matches the Bob Dylan version, but which cover version do you like best? Leave a comment.
On January 8 in 1935, the king of rock and roll was born in Tupelo, Mississippi. The child was born to Gladys Love Presley and named after the middle name of his father, Vernon Elvis Presley.
(2008), the Bob Dylan CD that features unreleased songs from the time period of his more recent albums, the song “Red River Shore” stood out immediately as I played the CD in my car. I kept playing the song over and over again, barely getting to anything else on the CD. It is another example of a great song that Dylan originally decided to leave off an album he was making. At least they eventually get released. The music is great, as are the beautiful lyrics of loss.
