I played Texocentric songs on last Sunday’s edition of Folkways for Texas Independence Day and I noticed that on the Cartwright Brothers’ 1929 “Texas Ranger” they pronounce “Rio Grande” as “RYE-oh Grand.”  I’d first noticed the Texas river pronounced that way on Stan Freberg’s 1955 “Yellow Rose of Texas,” which parodies Mitch Miller’s singalong hit version of the song and which also uses that pronunciation. (So does a version by Johnny Desmond released hot on Miller’s heels in the summer of ’55 – another big hit.) I figured Freberg’s usage was an oversight that was especially regrettable since he mimics a Texan and I’ve only ever heard it as “REE-oh Grand” here in the Lone Star State.

The Cartwright Brothers threw me, though, because they were from the town of Munday in the Texas panhandle and their record came out so much earlier than the other ones.  Additional poking around has informed me that the town of Rio Grande in Ohio happens to be pronounced “RYE-oh” and that the majority of the employees of the Denver Rio Grande Western Railroad, which ran in Utah, Colorado and New Mexico, also pronounced it that way. Maybe the railroad connection is the most relevant one here, with Munday close enough to the Intermountain area to adopt that quirk.  (Gene Autry’s 1933 version of “The Yellow Rose of Texas” has him singing “REE-oh Grand.” He’s originally from Tioga, pronounced “Tie-OH-ga” in Northeast Texas.) Keeping my ears open…

Mitch Miller – “Yellow Rose of Texas” (1955) (“Rio Grande” at 1:12)

Cartwright Brothers – “Texas Ranger” (1929) (“Rio Grande” at :43)

I was watching the 1970 Airport movie a few nights ago and it struck me again during the scenes featuring Helen Hayes: she reminds me so much of James “Danno” MacArthur. The official biographies all assert that Hayes is his adopted mother. Some suggest that her husband Charles MacArthur was the real father while some speculate on James actually being the son of MacArthur family friend Lillian Gish. I’m not agitated enough about this to conduct any serious snooping, and I understand that family secrets are family secrets. But I have to admit to being puzzled that none of the theories about his birth origins I’ve come across acknowledge MacArthur’s uncanny resemblance to his adopted mother nor any willingness to consider the possibility of her being his real mother. Does no one else see the resemblance?

“Ooh Ooh” and “Do you mind?” were catchphrases for Joe E. Ross on Car 54, Where Are You? (1961-1963), a sitcom I first saw on Nick at Nite during the mid-80s. Not only is it a real hoot, but it’s also like “character actors on parade,” with each player specializing in facial distinctions that make it hard for viewers to turn away. Fred Gwynne and Al Lewis of The Munsters are here, for example, each of whom actually look more interesting without their makeup. Joe E. Ross, who played the dimwitted but loveable officer Gunther Toody, might also have transitioned nicely to The Munsters, but he was apparently a severe headache to work with. (A recent WFMU writeup deals the man’s loveability a body blow.)

A 1963 single featuring Joe E. Ross’s catchphrases is notable in that it’s so annoying it could have been used for a riotous episode in which Toody launches an ill-advised recording career.  An album track by the suave jazz vibraphonist Milt Jackson, on the other hand (written by Manny Albam), is notable for its mysterious inclusion on Jackson’s 1964 Jazz ‘N’ Samba album a year after the show had run its course. There’s gotta be a story there…

Joe E. Ross – “Ooh Ooh” (1963) (YouTube)

Milt Jackson – “The Oo-Oo Bossa Nova” (1964)

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A while back I posted some observations on what my ears heard as the influence of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Bali Ha’i” (from the 1949 South Pacific soundtrack) on Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” and some others.  A deleted scene from The Wizard of Oz (1942), though, has me wondering if Rodgers and Hammerstein actually borrowed from Harold Arlen. The expensive, elaborate scene included an Arlen song (lyrics by E.Y. Harburg) called “The Jitterbug,” in which Dorothy and friends dance frenetically under the influence of the song title’s creatures (only the grainy version above, shot by Arlen himself, exists). Although “The Jitterbug” never made it to the final cut of the film, it did appear in a 1942 stage musical version, which is one way it might have seeped into Rodgers and Hammerstein’s consciousness.

Pete Townshend says this about the Everlys in his Who I Am:

“Best of all, I found two great albums by the Everly Brothers, one was called Rock and Soul, the other Rhythm and Blues… The Everly Brothers played a number of R&B classics, but it was their original material–or the very obscure material they introduced as covers–that I thought exceptional.  ‘Love Is Strange’ is an eerie bluegrass song that the Everlys transformed into a driving showcase for jangling electric guitars and nasal vocals…There were few artists that all four of us respected and enjoyed, and the Everly Brothers were among them.”

Townshend’s actually talking (I assume) about the Rock’n Soul and Beat & Soul albums, both great.  As for the “bluegrass” origins of Mickey and Sylvia’s “Love Is Strange” (written by Bo Diddley), I’m all ears. Anyone?

The Everly Brothers – “Love Is Strange” (1965)

Mickey and Sylvia – “Love Is Strange” (1956)

I remember feeling frustration when I saw the 2005 documentary Haack: The King of Techno (about synth pioneer Bruce Haack) because only the briefest glimpse of the legendary synth pioneer’s 1968 appearance on Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood made the final cut. The entire segment has since turned up on YouTube, and you can take it in via Dangerous Minds where you can also read more about Haack.

Time to revisit my favorite Christmas record and attend to this little matter: In 1961, the year after Hal “Holiday” Schneider tossed his still-resonating yuletide hand grenade with his group Three Aces and a Joker, a politer version appeared on the Foxie label (a New York City subsidiary of 20th Century Fox) credited to Chuck Blevins. According to Hal, “Chuck Blevins is the brother of Jim Blevins (who plays the lead guitar on the original recording by Three Aces and a Joker). Chuck recorded it in Baltimore a while after. The original recording was in Utah.”

The temptation is to stir the pot a bit, to ask why Chuck, who wasn’t a part of the original recording, chose to do this and claim songwriting credit. And who’s the J. Blevins who shares credit? Jimmy or Joe (both of whom were members of Three Aces and a Joker)? With Hal’s ownership of the song firmly established, though, I’ll let his words above be the final ones.

“Sleigh Bell Rock” (1960) – Three Aces and a Joker (YouTube)

“Sleighbell Rock” (1961) – Chuck Blevins (YouTube)

I checked out Jonathan Wilson’s new Fanfare album and liked its early ’70s California vibe. It should have had a gatefold including black and white/sepia pics of all the Laurel Canyon musicians involved for listeners to hold in their hands a la Deja Vu or If I Could Only Remember My Name. The biggest treat for me was Wilson’s cover of the San Francisco band Sopwith Camel’s “Fazon.” I knew this song from the 1973 Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon record a friend gave me in the summer of ’85 – he’d found it in a stash of LPs his long-deceased uncle had left in his family’s basement. It became my most-played nighttime record that summer and whenever I’d look up at the night sky the swirling guitar chords that open up “Fazon” would play in my head.

Later that summer I took a trip to San Francisco to visit my Grandmother who lived on Geary Street and found a copy of the Camel’s self-titled 1967 album at a used record store on Polk Street. The man at the cash register had a walrus moustache and looked at the record for a longish moment. “This was an underrated band,” he said quietly, then took out the disk so we could listen to “Cellophane Woman.” I later taught myself a ragtime guitar version of “Hello Hello” and dug up a 45 of that song for its Byrdsy non-album B-side “Treadin’.” (Sopwith Camel only released two albums – the one from ’67 on Kama Sutra and a revival album on Reprise in ’73.)

I once had a conversation with Camel drummer Norm Mayell, who told me that one of the group’s first early advocates happened to be a guy with a walrus moustache who ran a used record store on Polk Street (no joke). He also told me that the “Fazon” incarnation of the band unraveled en route to a gig they were supposed to play with BJ Thomas in my present hometown of Austin, Texas. “We were leaving Palm Beach, Florida, because a concert with Sly Stone fell through and we were scheduled to play on the Midnight Special,” he said. “So a stop in Austin would be good preparation according to our manager Bob Cavalo (Little Feat, John Sebastian, Earth Wind and Fire).”

Austin, it turns out, is where the Camel’s second incarnation ran out of gas. The roadie and a band member, who were heroin buddies, were supposedly driving the van with all of the tour equipment up from Florida while the rest of the band waited in Austin. Eventually the manager got a phone call reporting that the “van had caught fire and all the equipment had burned on the freeway,” says Norm. In truth, the heroin buddies had been pawning all the gear, some of which had turned up in Macon, Georgia, where the group had played its last gig. It was a “gut punch,” as he put it, that did the Camel in. Norm, at least, could take comfort in the success he’d been having as the drummer for – and percentage holder of – Norman Greenbaum’s monster hit “Spirit in the Sky.”

Norm currently maintains the official Sopwith Camel website, where loads of memorabilia can be taken in, along with info about the newly reformed group’s live performances around the Bay area. Best of all, you can get your own copy of the remastered Miraculous Hump Returns from the Moon album and experience its time-tested ability to get inside people’s heads.

Sopwith Camel, “Fazon” (1973) (YouTube)

Jonathan Wilson, “Fazon” (2013) (Soundcloud)

Lagoon is the Farmington, Utah, amusement park that “all the kids dig” in the Beach Boys’ “Salt Lake City.” I’ve just spent some time with Ian Rusten and Jon Stebbins’ new book The Beach Boys in Concert to get the lowdown on how many times they played there:

Sat, 9/7/63: “The audience response was so strong that the group was hastily booked for more Salt Lake shows that December…According to David Marks, Brian and Mike composed the song ‘Fun, Fun, Fun’ at the hotel room after this concert.”  The December gigs happened at the Terrace in Salt Lake City.

Fri, 6/12/64 and Sat, 6/13/64: “Over 5,500 fans attended the Saturday show underlining the Beach Boys’ strong popularity in this area.”

Wed, 7/29/64 (with Eddie Hodges, Jimmy Griffin and Lynne Easton, and the Kingsmen) [Jimmy Griffin would certainly visit Salt Lake City many more times in the seventies…will need to wait for someone to write a book called Bread in Concert for details]: “Over 3,500 teenagers attended this show, breaking Lagoon’s weekday attendance record.”

Fri, 9/11/64 and Sat 9/12/64

Sat, 5/29/65 (7:00 pm and 10:00 pm) (with Glen Campbell and Dick and Dee Dee) [This is the tour, I think, where Beach Boy Dennis tried to make the moves on Dee Dee by informing her he’d had a vasectomy. I read about that in her Vinyl Highway. Rock stars…sheesh.

Fri, 9/10/65 (9:00 pm) and Sat, 9/11/65 (7:00 pm and 9:30 pm): “The Beach Boys…were given the keys to the city by Commissioner Joe L.  Christensen.”

Fri, 9/9/66 (9:00 pm) and Sat, 9/10/65 (7:00 pm)

Sat, 6/15/68 (7:00 pm and 9:30 pm): “A month after the Maharishi fiasco, the Beach Boys headed to Salt Lake City, Utah, where they could always rely on attracting a sizable audience. There the group took part in a photo shoot for Fabulous 208 magazine. Accompanied by writer Cyril Maitland, they took a jeep ride to locations Al Jardine had previously visited and thought would look good in photos. They posed at an old amusement park and pier [Saltair], as well as on the shores of the Great Salt Lake [see below].”  Incidentally, Rusten and Stebbins, I don’t believe the Maharishi was a fiasco for Mike Love.

(KNAK DJ Bill “Daddy-O” Hesterman is the man in orange)

Sat, 9/7/68 (7:00 pm and 9:30 pm) (with the Box Tops)

Fri, 9/5/69 (9:00 pm) and Sat, 9/5/69 (9:00 pm) (with Paul Revere and the Raiders)

Sat, 9/12/70 (9:00 pm): “This was the group’s final appearance at this legendary venue.”

I’ve been watching reruns of Rod Serling’s Night Gallery on MeTV. This was an early ’70s series that ran for three seasons and had a format similar to the Twilight Zone, with Serling as the host introducing creepy tales with twist endings. Each episode featured a corresponding painting in keeping with the “gallery” theme and fright factors that were more heavy-handed than in the Twilight Zone.

I finally got to see an episode called “The Tune in Dan’s Cafe” (painting on left), which I had known spawned the Jerry Wallace 1972 country #1 hit “If You Leave Me Tonight I’ll Cry.”  The episode told the story of a jukebox that played the same record over and over again due to its being haunted by the ghost of a jilted lover. After the episode ran in January of ’72, apparently, radio stations received enough requests for the nonexistent record to prompt an official release by studio vocalist Wallace, who’d had moderate pop chart success until the mid-sixties, when he’d shifted gears to country.

I’ve never much liked this Wallace record, being the kind of overwrought schmaltz country radio had more than its share of in the early ’70s.  When I saw the episode, though, I realized that the TV version is better, having a harder country sound.  Would listener demand for the song have been so strong if the TV version had been as goopy as the official release? Well, probably. Try as I might to decipher why songs become popular, sometimes melodies just get stuck in people’s heads.

Read more at Early ’70s Radio

Jerry Wallace – “If You Leave Me Tonight I’ll Cry” (Night Gallery TV excerpt) (1972)

Jerry Wallace – “If You Leave Me Tonight I’ll Cry” (hit record excerpt) (1972)