The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 416
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
CHRONOLOGY 48: TAPCO / ATR 6
Thurs., Sep. 5, 2013
3:02 p.m. NPR.
No reply.
Geoff showed up with some good chipotle food last night and put an end to the beer drinking. I’m now 2 for 2 - back to the Bronx job twice, beer twice.
I just read through the short Sandy Dennis memoir. It’s touching and sad but uplifting for me some since she talks about surviving alone after a man leaves her. That helps me.
Fri., Sept. 6, 2013
10:23 a.m.
No reply.
I’m back from the best run of the summer. I took it very easy yesterday, ate my usual Dim Sum 2 (Cranford) Chinese food for dinner while watching both “Indian Summer” and “Taken 2,” which I’d picked up at Target while looking for “Unfaithful,” which I wanted to see after watching Diane Lane in “Indian Summer.” They didn’t have it so I ended up also with “Pretty Woman.” There are now all of these considerations when buying a movie - who did I see it with initially, primarily. Movies aren’t as powerful as music but they still carry great emotional weight. Now that most of my life is a series of long, sad memories, I have to be careful where I probe.
Anyway I’ve got to get back to TD work. I’ve taken several days off from that now and think that I needed it. After that traumatic Aug. 29th friend invitation to Paula, I couldn’t think straight and that happens when I’m in emotional trouble. I can’t write. The months after my mother’s death and the months after L ... Z destroyed me are virtually empty of journal writing, as you can see from the table that I keep that shows numbers of words per month. But I was burning out on TD anyway after 2 solid months of doing it almost every day. I wrote more in Aug. than I have written in one month before and I might have stopped writing for a couple of days anyway. Then getting back here to Dewitt was further depressing and I couldn’t get the energy or the ambition up to get back to work. It was like I started to feel going through those old photos with Barb and Dale. One of the reasons it depressed me was the thought of who we were doing it for. I guess they were doing it for themselves but I had a hard time thinking like that. Neither of them has anyone to leave that or anything else to. I’ve got Geoff but I’m feeling so alienated from him that it’s hard to even think of doing things for his future benefit.
So I’ve got to force myself now to get back to work. I’m very much aware that my only way to survive is to keep my mind occupied and off of negative thoughts. That’s why I took a job that I don’t want to do and why I’ve got to keep going with TD, something that I not only love doing but that I think will be remembered for a long time after I’m gone. Besides these things I’ve got other things to occupy myself. I might as well make a little list by priority right here - and by priority I don’t mean what I have to do but what I want to do:
Therapy Dog Tails
Work Outs
Threads Sessions
Blues Discographies [The book I ordered before leaving for Ohio was waiting when I got back. It’s called “Moanin’ Low” and is a discography of female popular singers from 1920 - 33. I’ll get back to listening to the blues probably if I have any time.]
Blog
Scanning Photos
Journal Writing
Reading
It’s interesting to see that journal writing has slipped down so far but there has got to be something happening for me to write about. School is going to continue for a while longer but I have little motivation to to write about that. The Threads appear to have come to an end and so that is no longer available as a subject. If something happens with TD, then the journal writing will pick up and become more important again. I don’t know if I’ll actually be able to scan the photos or not but that’s something I still want to do.
1:39 p.m. You Never Can Tell.
Well, buddy, I got it done. I wrote in the ML, sequenced the “pretzel” for the first time and revised /shared “angel on the head of a pin.” I forgot to get back to the run I had this morning. It was the best of the summer - 6 miles for the first time. I was feeling the same after 5 as I felt after 2 so I kept going. It was cool and crisp and I’d had 3 days off but I did recover in Aug. from whatever was getting me down in July. I don’t know if it was Ohio air or just continuing with the regimen but I was feeling normal again by the end of the month, which explains why I was able to drink beer on 2 occasions during that last week before leaving and already twice since I’ve been back. I know it’s important to stay off the beer as much as possible this year and I intend to do that but it’s hard being here in this miserable house with these cold people.
I finished the Chuck Berry book but am still listening to him. Drinking beer night before last I was finishing my Berry collection and bought 3 more LPs. I’d had 2 of the Mercury LPs on CD and put them in. Then I bought In Memphis, Live at the Fillmore and Concerto. There is a bit more Chess material left from after the Mercury years but I’ll pass on that. I did buy the single version of “Ding-a-Ling” against my better judgement and then got it again on the album although it’s not the 12-minute version that I was expecting. On the other hand, I don’t want 12 minutes of that song. I also completed the buying with “Toy Bell” by the Bees, one of several original Dave Bartholomew versions of the song - “My Tambourine” is said to be another version but I didn’t get to it before eating and falling asleep the other night. That version is as godawful as any other. It’s hard to imagine that such a song come be composed, let alone recorded, released and successful. No doubt the audience participation does add to Berry’s version. Still, I’d say for all that Chuck was ripped off, he ripped that one off Bartholomew (or whomever Bartholomew ripped off) and it was a big money maker - the biggest of Chuck’s career. Fittingly perhaps, it was his last.
2:09 p.m. My Tambourine. G. #1.
Yes, my man, I’ll drink some beer again today and yes again, this song is “My Ding-a-Ling” and probably superior for its slightly less vulgar metaphor.
2:45 p.m. Too Much Monkey Business. G. #2.
I’ve added some covers of Chuck Berry songs and will go through the play list one more time until moved to put in something else ... which could happen at any moment, of course ....
By the way, here’s something that the Chuck Berry biography didn’t uncover. I remember that he went on and on about “Brown Eyed Handsome Man,” claiming it was about the seduction of white women by a black man. No doubt that’s what it is. Chuck certainly preferred white women. He stayed married to his original wife for his whole life but the girls he had on the side were almost all white - except for the “Indian” girl that got him sent up on Mann Act charges. Maybe that taught him not to mess with Hispanic girls. It took me a long time to learn that lesson.
But what I was going to point out was the source of the first verse:
Arrested on charges of unemployment
He was sittin’ in the witness stand.
The judge’s wife called up the district attorney
To say, “Free that brown-eyed man.”
As any blues buff knows, this comes directly out of “Love Her With a Feeling” (Tampa Red, Freddie King) or “Jelly Roll Baker” (everyone). I know Spann’s “Jelly Roll Baker” well, of course, having recorded a version of it way back in Day School days. One verse goes:
Sent up for murder in the 1st degree -
Judge’s wife call up, said, “Let that boy go free,”
‘Cause he’s a jelly roll baker ...
This, of course, is even more explicit that Berry’s bowdlerized “brown-eyed” version. No doubt, too, the stones were thinking of Berry when they recorded “Brown Sugar” and probably also Van Morrison when he changed “Brown Skin Girl” to “Brown Eyed Girl.”
3:16 p.m. Almost Grown. G. #3.
3:55 p.m. Johnnie B. Goode (Beatles). G. #4.
4:18 p.m. You Never Can Tell. G. #5.
Okay, that’s only #5 and I’ve been limiting it to one beer per half hour. But remember, good friend. I’ve had nothing to eat today other than a single Dunkin Donut doughnut and the black coffee that went along with it. Keep in mind, too, that I’ve now lined up some very emotional music for this Chuck Berry shit to morph into - music from 1970-74, years that I have put out of my mind for the most part since 1982 for what turned out to be very good reasons. I know it’s crazy to think that I might hear again from Paula and that there is no way to make up for what was lost. Yet I can’t help hoping for something even if it’s just a few years that we’ve got left to at least have someone who has some past. I have no desire at all to start over with someone that I don’t know. The only thing that makes getting old tolerable and enjoyable is doing it with someone with whom you’ve got memories to share. That’s now out of the question for L ... Z and me. That leaves Paula - hence this unrealistic and deranged pipe dream. I know how crazy it is and yet I can’t help hoping for it.
4:48 p.m. I’m Talkin’ ‘Bout You (Stones). G. #6.
I’m headed into the Bee Gees. I put in their hits because of the song “How Can You Mend a Broken Heart.” That song takes me right into the Kratzer living room, 1971 when Paula and I were first going out. It might be the most emotionally-laden song of all and so I’m trying to ease the pain by leading up to it with their earlier songs that put me in high school before I knew her.
5:15 p.m. I Can’t See Nobody. G. #7.
I just discovered that I don’t have “Slowhand.” When I heard “Lay Down Sally” on the radio during the summer of 1978, I immediately thought that that was what Clapton was supposed to be doing. When Paula and I got to Paris on our way back to Saudi Arabia, I searched out “Slowhand” and bought the cassette tape at what was then an exorbitant price. I don’t remember how much it cost but I paid whatever they were asking. So now that song and LP remind me of the summer of 1978 going back to the nightmare that was Saudi Arabia but with Paula, who made it all possible. I hope that she can think of those times that we had with some happiness. We did travel the world together for those couple of years.
5:50 p.m. Long Long Time. #8.
I’m into the lonely part of the play list.
Green Eyed Lady - I was hanging out in Rilla Marzilli’s basement when this song came on. I had just have met Paula. It might have been the summer before my freshman year at GCC, which would have been the summer after Paula’s freshman year at Wooster. Rilla had introduced us but we didn’t get to know each other until I got to GCC. But I associated this song with Paula.
Long Long Time - I missed it when it was a hit but had it in Evanston or Tinley Park on a vinyl LP. I wondered how I could have missed it because it is such a brilliant song and performance.
Fire and Rain - It was during my freshman year at GCC that I got to know Paula. This was one of a handful of songs that dominated us that year.
Lonely Days - Maybe I made a few trips to Paula’s house or maybe I just remembered this one after their next song grabbed us ….
Note: Brown Eyed Handsome Man was one of Chuck Berry’s first recordings and it was a big hit. It came out in 1956 and reached #5 on Billboard’s R&B chart. No doubt his primary audience knew exactly what he was talking about. Since Maybellene had reached #5 on the pop chart about a year earlier and Roll Over Beethoven had made #28 (pop) just a couple of months before, it’s possible that white DJs also understand what he was talking about and held back putting it into rotation, given the racial segregation that still existed in American media, the perceived threat of this new form of pop music and the idea that white kids might go for it and for the black artists creating it. Chuck may well have enjoyed that, on the one hand, but he also would have resented missing out on the money the record would have made had it gotten back onto Billboard’s pop chart - and it’s likely that the flip side, Too Much Monkey Business, which Chess evidently considered the plug side, also suffered for this lack of exposure. But there was still a lot of pop chart success ahead for Chuck Berry including the biggest joke of all, the number one Ding-a-Ling, which would have been sweet revenge. (See yesterday’s chapter.)
AUDIO INSERTED: Chuck Berry, Brown Eyed Handsome Man
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels / Promo
The verse sited above goes back at least to Tampa Red’s 1938 recording, Love Her With a Feeling. Real name: Hudson Whittaker, Tampa Red was one of the most prolific recordings artists along with Big Bill, Memphis Minnie and Lonnie Johnson of the pre-rock era when radio and media were so segregated that blues records were called “race” records and sold strictly in black neighborhoods, often mail order. The final verse, alluded to by Berry, went like this:
Now the coopers brought her in - she didn’t need no bail.
She shook it for the judge and he put the cops in jail.
It would well be that the overtly sexual nature of the scene also contributed to paranoia on the part of white radio programmers. Though sales figures for blues records of that era are hard to come by, the song certainly was popular because Tampa Red re-recorded it about 12 years later for RCA Victor in a version little changed from this Bluebird recording.
AUDIO INSERTED: Tampa Red, Love Her With a Feeling
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels
The song’s popularity endured. In 1961 Freddy King updated it on Federal with little change in Tampa Red’s lyric, Tampa and Big Bill being two of the greatest lyricists in American pop music. Chuck Berry was certainly listening to them and realized how important the lyric could be. He wrote words about high school, cars and sock hops specifically targeting the new white teenaged audience and no doubt brought unwanted attention on himself in the process. Freddy King was a straight up bluesman in the B.B. King style. He knew a great song and lyric when he heard it. All he did was change Tampa’s “shook” to “wiggle,” though often changing “her” to “me” and thus turning a plea into a command. The result was one of the great blues records of the decade. Notice, however, that on the original pressings Freddy changed the title slightly and took credit for the song himself.
AUDIO INSERTED: Freddy King, Love Her With a Feeling
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels
In Jelly Roll Baker Otis Spann used the same idea to turn the command into a boast by putting it into the first person, perhaps suggested by Freddy King’s revision:
I was sent up for murder in the first degree.
Judge’s wife called up said let please let Spann go free.
‘Cause he’s a jelly roll baker - bakes the best jelly roll in town.
Spann liked the verse so much he repeated it as the finale. And let’s not forget that Spann played on many Chuck Berry records when Johnnie Johnson was not around for one reason or another. They were all recording for Chess in Chicago. As far as I can tell this came out in 1963 on an album of blues standards possibly recorded in Europe. Spann listed Lonnie Johnson as composer but there was a constant cross-pollination both lyrically and musically. I’ve discussed Spann in earlier chapters and hope to continue to do so. He is in my mind the greatest blues pianist of all and a singer on par with Muddy, Elmore or anyone else.
AUDIO INSERTED: Otis Spann, Jelly Roll Baker
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
IMAGES INSERTED: Record Labels / Sleeves
I became an Otis Spann fan, disciple really, in the 70s while I was a student at the U. of Illinois in Chicago. By the mid-80s I was teaching in New York where everyone is an artist of one kind or another. The Day School was located in the basement of the Church of the Heavenly Rest on E. 90th St. at Fifth Ave. When I arrived in 1982, there was already a house band made up of teachers calling themselves the Brain Embargo. It was the era of the Blues Brothers and so they were eager to add a blues pianist to the mix. In fact, in retrospect I think it was the main reason I was hired to teach middle school English. I was late for the job interview but when the headmaster, the trumpeter in the band, heard that I played piano, I got the job. Teachers came and went over the next six years through both the school and the band but I was always eager to get back to Spann. We had a four track recorder and got some tracks down from time to time during those years including this one with art teacher Jim on guitar and history (I think) teacher Eric on harp. Greg was gone from the school by then and the Threads were still 15 years in the future but there is no denying the music in you.
AUDIO INSERTED: Brain Embargo, Jelly Roll Baker
Me - vocal, piano / Jim Zulakis - guitar / Eric ?? - harmonica; ca. 1987, E. 90th St. NYC
IMAGES INSERTED: Church of the Heavenly Rest, E. 90th St. NYC