Tagged: seniors

The easy availability of image-editing software has opened the floodgates for lots of people with good imaginations. One specialty seems to be creating imaginary hybrid animals. In the slideshow below you can see some of those strange creatures. They're all imaginary - I think - but some of them are still a little creepy. Dominik Hauser - "All The Strange, Strange Creatures" (You can also access music in left column.) Click to view slideshow.

One of the most interesting acts of the early days of country music was a pair of sisters who called themselves the Girls of the Golden West. Rising to popularity in the late 1920s and early 1930s via radio, they continued to find a lot of success on the broadcast waves and in record sales for a number of years. The duo dressed as cowgirls and specialized in Western songs and yodeling - but they were a little more sophisticated than fans thought. Mildred and Dorothy (Dolly) Good were born near St. Louis and grew up [...]

During the big band era, one of the most popular 'sweet' bands around (as opposed to cutting-edge 'hot' bands) was the outfit whose motto was: 'the music of yesterday and today, styled the Blue Barron way' . But the leader's name wasn't originally Blue Barron, and fronting a band - or performing in one, for that matter - wasn't a part of his earlier professional career. He had instead been behind the scenes, a manager of bands. Cleveland native Harry Friedland was a skilled violinist who played in a college band, but when he began [...]

Now 82 years old, actor/singer Jim Nabors was in the news earlier this year when he traveled from his home in Hawaii to Seattle (where same-sex marriage is legal) to marry his long-time partner. Although he hadn't publicly acknowledged being gay before that, it wasn't much of a surprise to most folks because he'd always been pretty open about it. In fact, people were probably more shocked by something that occurred with him more than forty years earlier when his iconic TV character Gomer Pyle started singing. Although he became famous playing a hayseed, the Alabama [...]

One of my favorite posts on the GMC is titled The Curious Case Of Moonglow , and it explores how "Moonglow" - a fine song in its own right - somehow got attached to the theme from the 1955 film Picnic , and became a best-selling record. In fact, the resulting two-song medley was so popular that it became the unofficial standard, in many cases showing up even when the song title just shows "Moonglow." But on today's Fantastic Foursome, we're getting back to basics and featuring the original "Moonglow," a song [...]

Five years ago we featured the Fontane Sisters and mentioned several of their hits, including one that wasn't their biggest but still nearly reached the top of the charts. But the trio's version of 'Seventeen" wasn't the only one to hit high on the charts, and it also wasn't the first. That distinction belongs to the guy who wrote the song - Boyd Bennett - an early rockabilly performer who had his biggest hit with it. Alabama-born but raised near Nashville, Bennett grew up surrounded by music at home, in church, and [...]

It hasn't been too long since our last Anatomy Of A Song post, but that one was kind of a special edition because it commemorated the recently deceased George Jones . This time around, we're taking a look at a classic romantic ballad, one that began life in the years following World War II but became the signature song of an R&B singer almost two decades later. The song - "Since I Fell for You" - was written by Buddy Johnson, and was first performed in 1947 with his band backing [...]

As if having a hyphenated name wasn't unusual enough, a 1950s swing band known as the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra had a couple of other odd attributes. For one thing, the group reached its peak during the twilight of the big band era. It was also unusual for having dual bandleaders, but the real oddity was how they turned the orchestra into a unique musical experiment. Brooklyn-born Eddie Sauter and New Jersey native Bill Finegan were both consummate professionals, with backgrounds that included classical musical educations and decades of service in some of the biggest of the big [...]

Several times in the past we've spotlighted guys like Buddy Knox , Sonny Curtis , and a few others who all seemed cut from the same cloth as Buddy Holly . They hailed from the same part of the country, had a similar musical style, and inevitably spent some time at the iconic studio of Norman Petty in Clovis, N.M. All of which also applies to today's subject, Terry Noland - or at least it did in the early [...]

It's been a long time since we've featured a slideshow of funny signs, so I thought maybe we could all use a laugh - or at least a smile. Frank Sinatra - "When You're Smiling" (You can also access music in left column.) Click to view slideshow.

In a recent post I mentioned that a trumpet solo in a classic movie had been dubbed by Manny Klein, a talented but relatively unknown trumpeter who deserves a little more attention. He had a fascinating and varied career, one that included not only playing conventionally, but also mastering something you seldom hear about - a piccolo trumpet, the smallest instrument in the trumpet family. Klein was a New Yorker who first began finding some career success during the early jazz age while working for bandleader [...]

Most of us probably know by now that country music superstar George Jones has died at age 81. You can find any number of long and detail-rich articles about him ( here's a good one ), but I thought we'd take a little different approach here on the GMC. In a long, long career that had countless best-sellers and award winners, Jones was probably best known - at least in the latter part of life - for a song that he didn't much like at first. It was in 1980 that [...]

A couple of years back the GMC spotlighted the Kalin Twins , an early rock and roll duo often compared to the Everly Brothers. The Kalins and the Everlys were both American duos who were also very popular in Great Britain, so we're kind of completing the circle today by featuring the Brook Brothers, a British pair with a lot of similarities. Geoff and Ricky Brook looked a lot alike and were often assumed to be twins (which they didn't discourage) but Ricky was actually three years older. The brothers were [...]

Once in a while I get in the mood for the kind of music that has echoed through the heartland for generations. I can't say that I've always been a fan of it and for that matter a lot of it was really before my time, but the sound is timeless and it has the power to evoke thoughts of a simpler era. The original Coon Creek Girls, a country string band that was very popular for a period of time beginning in the 1930s, began to come together when Kentucky native Lily May Ledford caught the attention [...]

For our first Fantastic Foursome in more than a month we're featuring a memorable song from a mostly forgettable movie, The Sandpiper , a 1965 tearjerker that starred Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor - one of eleven they made together. But even if the movie wasn't one for the ages, "The Shadow Of Your Smile" not only won an Oscar but also picked up a Grammy as Song of the Year. Written by Johnny Mandel and Paul Francis Webster, it soon became a hit record for Tony Bennett, Barbra Streisand, and several others. It also became a [...]

His name sounds at least a little familiar to those of us who have been around a while, and it's a pretty good bet that you've heard a lot of his music through the years, but Ralph Marterie is not someone who comes to mind when you think of cutting-edge orchestral jazz. Nevertheless, he sold a lot of records as a bandleader because he was always focused on something that many of his contemporaries forgot - he knew what people liked. Marterie was born in Italy and was still a boy when [...]

For a while in the early 1950s, singer/songwriter Jimmie Logsdon was on top of the world. After an early career spent trying to make his name in country music, he'd managed to become friends with Hank Williams - and even better, he was touring and appearing on stage with his hero. Unfortunately, Hank died in 1953 and Logsdon had to move on, but in subsequent years he often paid homage to his mentor with songs like "The Death Of Hank Williams" and "Hank Williams Sings The Blues No More." Growing up in [...]

When Sylvia Syms died at age 74 in 1992, it marked the loss of a talented performer who was once described by Frank Sinatra as the 'world's greatest saloon singer'. But it was also another chance for people to mix her up with the British actress with the same name, something that had been happening for years. (For the record, Sylvia Syms the actress is sill alive and is now in her late seventies.) Unlike the actress, Sylvia Syms the singer was actually born with a different name, beginning life in Brooklyn as Sylvia Blagman, and [...]

Once again a dim and distant memory has surfaced from the mysterious depths of my mind, not unlike a strange creature rising from the deepest part of the ocean. It happened when I was reading an article in the newest issue of Smithsonian magazine. It seems that someone has produced a new movie about the voyage of the Kon-Tiki, an event that was originally celebrated in film and print more than a half-century back. For those who've forgotten, Thor Heyerdahl was a Norwegian adventurer who believed that the South Pacific islands of Polynesia had originally been populated by [...]

Those of us who have been around a while probably remember "M.T.A.", a song that was turned into a hit record by the Kingston Trio in 1959. You might even remember enough about the lyrics to have an idea what the song was about, but what you might not know is that it began life a decade earlier as part of a political campaign. In the late 1940s Walter A. O'Brien, a member of the Progressive party and a candidate for mayor of Boston, was desperately trying to get attention for his election hopes but didn't have [...]