Musician Doc Watson passed away on May 29, 2012 at the age of 89 following complications from abdominal surgery. Watson, who went blind at the age of one, influenced many musicians with his flatpicking style of playing the guitar.
In this clip from a documentary about Earl Scruggs, Watson and Scruggs play the song “John Hardy” at Watson’s home. “John Hardy” is about a real person who killed a fellow worker at a coal camp and then was hanged in January 1894.
Before Hardy’s hanging, he was remorseful and allegedly composed the ballad in his jail cell and sang it on the scaffold. Woody Guthrie used the music from “John Henry” for one of his own classic songs.
Earl Scruggs passed away earlier in 2012 in March. Unfortunately we will not hear the likes of Watson and Scruggs playing together again. At least in this world. What is your favorite Doc Watson performance? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Another giant of the disco era has passed away. Robin Gibb of the Bee Gees died today of colorectal cancer at the age of 62. Barry is the only surviving Bee Gee, as their brother Maurice died in 2003.
A standout Bee Gees track is “I Started a Joke,” which was mainly written by Robin, who also sings lead on the song. The song was released in September 1968 on the album Idea. According to Wikipedia, some think the song is about the devil, but the more common interpretation is that the song is sung by someone who did something wrong and regrets it. In the video below of a performance at Festival Hall, a young Robin sings the song. RIP.
What is your favorite Bee Gees song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
I just heard on the radio that Donna Summer passed away today at the age of 63 from cancer. Summer, who was born LaDonna Adrian Gaines, begin performing at the age of 10, although her first U.S. break came in 1975 with her song, “Love to Love You Baby.” Other songs such as “Last Dance,” “Hot Stuff,” and “Bad Girls” were some of the biggest hits during the disco era. Her 1983 song “She Works Hard For The Money” is often used as an anthem for women’s rights. Although that song was her last major hit, she released an album of original songs as recently as 2008 with Crayons. Throughout her career, Summer distinguished herself from many other artists because she was both an excellent songwriter and powerful singer.
Although disco was never my favorite genre, regular readers will know that I am not snobby about great pop songs. So, I will admit that in the early 1980s I had a cassette tape of Donna Summer’s greatest hits album that is pictured above. At college, one of my roommates with a powerful stereo liked to borrow the tape to blast “Love to Love You Baby” and its moaning sounds out his window at the other dorms.
I always recognized “Last Dance” as her best song, but the slightly lesser-known “On the Radio” also was one of her best. “On the Radio” was released as a single in 1979, and it was used in the soundtrack for the film Foxes (1980), starring Jodie Foster and Scott Baio. The song has been covered by non-disco artists such as Emmylou Harris. The sad sound of the minor chords give it an unusual twist for a disco song, and the lyrics are mysterious. The singer tells about a break-up but ends with a reconciliation while it is all twisted up with that letter that someone read on the radio.
You have to respect a singer who can sing a disco song while sitting down. Sorry to hear the bad news today on the radio, but rest in peace LaDonna. What is your favorite Donna Summer song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Chidren’s author Maurice Sendak passed away this morning at the age of 83. Sendak wrote more than a dozen books and illustrated more than one hundred, but he is most remembered for his book, Where the Wild Things Are (1963), which is published in many languages around the world.
Like many others, I discovered the book as a kid and fell in love with it instantly. I remember it as one of the first books I picked out myself when I was attracted to the fascinating illustration on the cover. I liked that the “monsters” were both scary and cuddly at the same time. I eventually figured out that there was something unusual in the 10-sentence story too. In its simplicity and sparse use of words, it raised questions for me that I could not articulate and left me with some questions I still do not know the answer to today. At the time, I remember asking my mom, “Why was his food still hot?” and receiving an unsatisfying answer. The book somehow captures a complex aspect of childhood that adults cannot quite interpret. So I won’t do that here (although Sendak once described how he had to fight with his publisher to keep the word “hot” because his publisher wanted to change it to “warm”).
Spike Jonze understood the complexity of the book when he made his 2009 film version of Where the Wild Things Are, which on Rotten Tomatoes has a 73% rating from critics and a disappointing 59% rating from audience members. Some noted that the movie was more for adults than children, and the movie did a good job of taking a book that takes a few minutes to read and turning it into a feature length film. It is not the same as the book, but for those who grew up with the book, it made a good effort at recapturing that initial bewilderment from encountering the book as a child. As Nick Deigman explains on Fan the Fire, the movie is “a beautiful and languid testament to the importance of remembering how powerful our childhoods really were.”
That complexity in the film came directly from Sendak’s work. Today, the Washington Post explains that Sendak “transformed children’s literature from a gentle playscape into a medium to address the psychological intensity of growing up.” The dark tones of reality appeared in Sendak’s children’s books because he saw that side of life as a sickly and home-bound child who had relatives die in the Holocaust. He grew up in Brooklyn where his family kept him indoors much of the time because he suffered from bouts of measles, pneumonia and scarlet fever. He became fascinated with things like the Lindbergh baby kidnapping, which he later used as an inspiration for his book Outside Over There. Sendak based the Where the Wild Things monsters on his immigrant relatives who would visit when he was a child. They spoke a different language while engaging the children affectionately in ways that were terrifying to the children.
In an interview with Bill Moyers, Maurice Sendak explained that he originally conceived of Where the Wild Things as “Where the Wild Horses Are” until he discovered he could not draw horses. When asked why he wrote children’s books, he responds, “I don’t know.” I don’t either, but I’m glad he did. I am also glad he could not draw horses. In this interview from Tell Them Anything You Want: A Portrait of Maurice Sendak, a documentary by Spike Jonze and Lance Bangs, Sendak talks about death and looks back on his work. RIP.
Dick Clark passed away from a heart attack this morning at the age of 82. As a TV host and producer, Clark is known for a number of shows such as New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and the game show The 10,000 Pyramid. But he forever will be considered one of the early great promoters of rock and roll with his show, American Bandstand. Clark originally started out as a substitute host on a local Pennsylvania show Bob Horn’s Bandstand, taking over full time in 1956 and then renaming the show American Bandstand when it moved to ABC in 1957. The show ran regularly — first every weekday and later weekly — through 1987 and then a few more years in syndication. As Clark himself described the show, “I played records, the kids danced, and America watched.”
In this interview from several years ago on Up Close with Patsy Smullin, Clark talks about his career.
I’d like to think that somewhere Clark is sitting in a crowd of teenagers holding up a record album and introducing Buddy Holly. RIP gentlemen.
Musician Doc Watson passed away on May 29, 2012 at the age of 89 following complications from abdominal surgery. Watson, who went blind at the age of one, influenced many musicians with his flatpicking style of playing the guitar.
