Episode 41 - And the Angels Sing

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Except for passing references to Ruth Brown, Rick Nelson and Bob Wills, there's nothing particularly TTRH-related in this episode of Dreamtime. But I suspect Our Host shares my respect for these ladies of rockabilly and r&b. So, with Season 2 just underway, hang in there with me for a bit longer, if you will, and let me tell you the stories of four forgotten angels this week. I don't think I'll disappoint you.

I've said it before: it's not easy being a professional musician. It's even tougher if you're a woman in the business. People want to pigeonhole you. You're a delicate songbird. You're a hard rockin' mama. You're a sex kitten. You're a dyke. Anita O'Day remarks in her great biography High Times, Hard Times that rumors started flying that she was a lesbian after she began wearing a variation of the Benny Goodman band's uniform - pants and jacket - because keeping the traditional evening gown clean on the road was costing her too much money.

And of course, if you're a woman you're getting hit on by fans - and, more regularly, by the boys in the band, and managers, club owners, publicists, record flacks, god knows what all. And even if you fell in love, or thought you were, you couldn't afford to get knocked up. That is, if you wanted to keep your career. Until relatively recently your choices were limited to one of two if you were a singer who got pregnant - you could have an abortion or you could have the baby. And quit the business.

There are dozens of male rockabilly and r&b performers whose time was the `50s and `60s and who have now faded away into obscurity. Who remembers the Emeralds or Wes Holly And His Rhythm Ranchers anymore except hard-core fans? But maybe because they had so far and so high to climb, the women who fell - or the ones who never quite made it to the top - have a particular attraction to me.

There are eight million stories in the Big City. Here are four of them.

[Fay Simmons - And the Angels Sing]

Fay Simmons - Who is She? Where is She?

Fay Simmons is a challenging - frustrating - subject for any dedicated researcher. The most detailed information about her on the Web begins with the lines, "Fay Simmons - Who is she? Where is she from?"

It's hard to believe that someone with that voice, sometimes reminiscent of Dinah Washington, could somehow disappear off the face of the planet. Today her best-known song is the novelty number, You Hit Me Baby Like an Atomic Bomb, that wasn't even discovered and released until the `90s. No other evidence of her existence except a pile of brightly-colored 45s from labels with names like Jordan, Rainbow, VTone, Ruthie, and the ironically named Gone. All gone now, as gone as Fay Simmons.

Her first known recordings were released in 1954, so she was probably born somewhere between 1930 (if she got a late start - late if you're a girl singer) and 1938 (if she started her professional career at the the tender age of 16). She'd be in her early to late `70s now in 2007, so she could well still be alive.

She may have been born in Philadelphia. All the evidence points to her starting out her career while a Philly-area resident. If she worked the Philadelphia club circuit, the evidence is buried in attics, back rooms and garages, and in old-timer memories. But she was recording in Philadelphia studios, and with Philly-based musicians such as Doc Starkes and His Night Riders.

Sometime around 19 and 57 Simmons may have moved to New York to try her luck. Maybe. New York City is an easy train trip from Philadelphia. Easy enough car or bus ride, even in the late `50s. But she was there in `57, recording for the New York-based Port and Gone labels. She may have still been in the city up till 1962, as she did sessions with both the Jordan and Senca labels, both based out of New York City.

The early `60s looked like they were good years for Fay Simmons. She released 10 singles in 1960, including And the Angels Sing. In March of 19 and 60 she was part of one of New York DJ Tommy Smalls' - known on the air as Dr. Jive - legendary Apollo Theater shows. Simmons shared the bill with the Emeralds, the Coasters, the Isley Brothers, Jimmy Reed, the Cruisers, and the Clickettes. The show was so successful it was held over for a second week.

Simmons also had her single, Everybody's Doin The Pony hit some local charts in 1961 on the Eastern Coast, including taking the Number #1 position slot on the "Soaring Seven Singles" for WABC in New York. She beat out Elvis, even it was just on a local radio chart for just a short time.

By late '62 it looked like Fay Simmons had headed back to her Philadelphia home base. There was one last possible New York recording session released on Bill Grauer's Pop-Side label in 1963, but her remaining recordings were all done for small Philadelphia-based labels.

The Fay Simmons story ends in 19 and 65, with the re-release of And the Angels Sing.

The rest is silence.

***


[Drugstore Rock-'n-Roll - Janis Martin]


Janis Martin - The Rise & Fall of the Female Elvis

Billed as "the female Elvis," a title that Presley himself reportedly approved, Janis Martin had a short but memorable rockabilly career during the mid-'50s. Born in 1940 in Sutherlin, Virginia, Martin began playing guitar at age four, having to hold it upright like a bass fiddle because it was too large to get her hands around.

By age 11, she was a regular on the Old Dominion Barn Dance radio show, second only to the Grand Ol' Opry in popularity among country music listeners. Still performing on the Barn Dance into her teens, Martin began to tire of country and move towards a r&b sound, sometimes confounding an audience still expecting the old, slow ballads with songs like Ruth Brown's (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean.

At the age of 15, Martin cut her first record. Two announcers at WRVA - the Virginia radio station home of the Barn Dance - asked Martin to sing a song they had written, a rockabilly ditty called Will You, Willyum, on the show. The two songwriters taped the performance and sent the demo off to New York, which resulted in a recording gig for Martin with RCA. Will You, Willyum turned into Martin's biggest hit, selling three-quarters of a million copies, and charting into the Top Forty on the 1956 Pop Singles chart.

On the B side of Will You, Willyum was a song that Janis Martin herself had written, Drugstore Rock-n-'Roll.

"I wrote that song in about 10 minutes," Martin later said in an interview. "Everything in that song is actually the scene that was happening for us as teenagers."

With a hit single, appearances on American Bandstand, The Today and Tonight Shows and voted "Most Promising Female Artist of 1956," it looked like the 16-year-old had nowhere to go but up. But Martin had secretly married her boyfriend that same year, and became pregnant at age 17 after visiting her soldier husband during a USO tour. Unable to do live performances in her obvious delicate condition, Janis Martin recorded her last songs for RCA in 1958, in her eighth month of pregnancy, and RCA dropped her like a very pregnant hot potato as soon as the last notes faded away.

The female Elvis' career was over less than two years after it had started. But Martin's story would eventually have a happier ending. In the late `80s, now in her mid-40s, with two failed marriages behind her and on her own, Janis Martin formed a new band and struck out on a European tour, where she was greeted by enthusiastic neo-rockabilly audiences. She became a regular at rockabilly conventions, still belting out the old songs, saw her complete recordings compiled and re-released by the respected Bear Family label, and married for a third time to a man who had first seen her perform as a teen at the old Barn Dance show in Virginia. This time the marriage stuck, and they remained together until her death in 2007.

"She was a cute little old gal in a ponytail just belting out that music that nobody else was doing," her husband told the papers.

Timi Yuro - "This is your last song, young lady."

[Timi Yuro - Hurt]

The phrase "blue-eyed soul" was coined for Timi Yuro, one of the least remembered r&b singers of the early `60s. Dinah Washington once said of her, "Timi's voice doesn't come from the throat, but from the heart. She doesn't just sing the song, she lives it." She was one of Elvis Presley's favorite singers, with the King reserving a ringside table for every night of Yuro's Vegas performances. Presley would later have a Top Ten Country hit with his version of Yuro's signature song, Hurt.

Born Rosemary Timotea Yuro, in 19 and 40, Yuro's family moved to Los Angeles in 1952 where she became the resident singer in the family restaurant by age 14. Her mother was less enthusiastic about the teenager's nightclub gigs, breaking up one performance by shouting, "This is your last song, young lady!"

But Yuro had just started. Frankie Laine's vocal coach was so impressed after hearing her that she offered Timi free training, and Yuro quickly caught the ear of record scouts. Signed to the Liberty label at age 19, she was saddled with recording lightweight pop hits totally unsuited to her style. A frustrated Yuro took matters into her own hands and broke into an executive meeting, threatened to tear up her contract, and broke into an A Capella version of Hurt , a 1954 hit for Roy Hamilton that Timi had wanted to record since first hearing it.

She got her wish, with Hurt going to #4 on the Billboard singles charts in 19 and 61, and a follow-up hit in 1962 produced by Phil Spector - What's a Matter Baby (Is It Hurting You)? - charting to the #12 position. But Yuro's career didn't seem to pick up much traction past that point. Possibly because many of her listeners thought she was black. Possibly because the early waves of the British Invasion were turning popular taste elsewhere. Possibly because Yuro continued to innovate and stretch her musical boundaries, releasing an album of country and blues standards in 1963 (and incidentally introducing some of Willie Nelson's first songs). Make the World Go Away was praised by the critics, and the single of the title track made the US Top 30, but Yuro would not release another album until 1968, and she quit the business altogether in 1969.

A decade later Timi Yuro prepared a comeback, but it became increasingly difficult for her to sing. Doctors eventually discovered she had throat cancer. Her last recording was 1984's Timi Yuro Sings Willie Nelson, produced by her old friend. Timi died in her sleep at her home in Las Vegas on March 30, 2004.


Lorrie Collins - Rockabilly Kid Phenom

[The Collins Kids - Rock Boppin' Baby]

Lawrencine "Lorrie" Collins and younger brother Larry were a pair of rockabilly kid phenoms in the late `50s. The crew-cut Larry was an accomplished guitar whiz by age 10, known for playing a double-neck Mosrite guitar just like his mentor, Joe Maphis, and bouncing around stage, as one YouTube commentator memorably puts it, "like Beaver Cleaver on speed."

At age 12 Lorrie was equally at home singing country-western standards or red-hot rockabilly numbers. In fact, some of Lorrie's rockabilly performances were so steamy that they sparked complaints among her audience. It also probably didn't hurt that the pre-teen resembled a cross between Ann-Margaret and Tuesday Weld.

The Collins' parents moved their family to California in 19 and 53, when Lorrie was all of 11 and her brother 9. A year earlier the popular "Town Hall Party" barn dance-style program had begun broadcasting from Compton, CA over both radio and TV. Larry and Lorrie entered a talent contest sponsored by the show one Friday night in February 19 and 54 and were immediately hired to perform for the "Town Hall Party" the next day - ultimately appearing in every episode thereafter into 1957. Thanks to the show, the duo signed a recording contract with Columbia in 19 and 55 and churned out singles into the early `60s.

Even though they never hit the charts, the Collins Kids were a popular stage act and regulars on other television variety shows, including the Arthur Godfrey, Perry Como, Dinah Shore and Steve Allen shows. They made it to the Grand Ol' Opry and toured with both Johnny Cash and Bob Wills.

Wills unfortunately threw up on Larry in the back seat of a limousine during that tour. While Cash apparently had better control, their joining his tour would eventually lead to the Collins Kids' downfall.

After Rick Nelson spotted Lorrie at the "Town Hall Party", he had her cast as his girlfriend in his parents popular sitcom, "The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet." Even as wholesome as the Nelsons were, the brothers had an eye for good-lookin' girls. Rick's brother, David, would eventually marry June Blair, a 1957 Playboy centerfold, who would also play his on-screen wife.

Rick and Lorrie were also briefly engaged in real life and the story, probably apocryphal, goes that Nelson recorded his first single, a cover of Fats Domino's I'm Walkin', in order to impress Lorrie. But Lorrie - in a move somewhat reminiscent of Janis Martin - would start a relationship with Johnny Cash's manager while on tour when she was just 17, marry him, and give birth to their first child at age 19, effectively killing the Collins Kids' career.

Larry would turn to songwriting, and have more than a little success, penning Delta Dawn which would become a #6 Country hit for 13-year-old Tanya Tucker, as well as a #1 Pop hit for Helen Reddy in 19 and 73. Again, like Janis Martin, brother and sister Collins would re-ignite their careers and reunite regularly at rockabilly revivals and conventions, where they remain a popular act to this day.


***
Sources and Further Reading/Listening:

Top photo: Detail from Johnny Mercer's grave site, Bonaventure Cemetery, Savannah, GA.

Fay Simmons: Almost all the information on Fay Simmons is taken from the "Fay Simmons Record Label Shots" page at colorradio.com. About the only new thing I was able to discover was an appearance of Simmons at the Apollo as part of a 1960 Dr. Jive show, as noted in one of Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks. If you haven't already, check out Dreamtime Episode 39 - The Lost Theme Time iPod - to hear You Hit Me Baby Like An Atomic Bomb.

If you have any information on Fay Simmons at all, please write to Dreamtime!

Janis Martin: My sources on the "female Elvis" include Janis' page at the Rockabilly Hall of Fame; her MySpace page maintained by her granddaughter; and her obituary from The Boston Globe.

Timi Yuro: We lost a wonderful voice when we lost Timi. My sources included her Wikipedia entry and various fan pages, primarily this one from Tom Simon. Various videos - usually slideshows accompanied by her music - are available around the Web.

The Collins Kids and Lorrie Collins: The always-useful Rockabilly Hall of Fame was a primary source; this article from The Washington Post is the source of the story that Bob Wills once threw up on a young Larry. Happily many of the Kids' performances at the "Town Hall Party" were preserved, and can be viewed on YouTube and other sites. Lorrie Collins, there ain't nuthin' about that woman I don't like.

***

You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour.

Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.

Some of the music on Dreamtime is provided via the Podsafe Music Network. Check it out at music.podshow.com.

Remember that the Dreamtime team loves to get email. You can write us at dreamtimepodcast@gmail.com

The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Visit the Dreamtime Store

Dr. Jive brings the Apollo to the Ed Sullivan Show

The work Dreamtime goes to for its listeners/viewers, you wouldn't believe.

From November 20, 19 and 55, New York DJ Tommy Smalls (Dr. Jive) brings about 10 minutes of one of his legendary Apollo Theater shows to the living rooms of America via the Ed Sullivan Show.

Featured in the jam-packed session are Bo Diddley, LaVern Baker, the Five Keys doing a very politically incorrect Ling Ting Tong, and Willis "Gator Tail" Jackson's Orchestra, whose closing set just about burns down Studio 50.

For Dreamtime readers too young to remember much about Ed Sullivan, he was an entertainment gossip columnist for the New York Daily News turned improbable successful television host. His stone-faced demeanor and bobbled introductions were legendary. This clip is a classic example, as Sullivan comes up with in quick succession, "roll and rhythm," "rhythm and roll," and my personal favorite "rhythm and color," before remembering that the term he wants is "rhythm and blues."

A larger - although no better in quality clip is available at YouTube here.

Welcome Back, Maestro

Some More on Emmett Miller's Any Time

Dreamtime had an email over the weekend that led me into an interesting search for the origin of Emmett Miller's signature song, Any Time.

The song was written in 19 and 21 by a Herbert "Happy" Lawson, of whom there is a little information available on the Web. Any Time has proved to be a durable legacy for Mr. Lawson, though. The song charted as a #1 Country Hit for Eddy Arnold in 19 and 48, 24 years after its creation. Arnold's version also made it to #17 on the Pop charts, and a cover version by Foy Willing and The Riders of the Purple Sage - who would later become Roy Rogers' backup band - placed as a #14 Country hit that same year.

Among many others, Any Time has also been covered by Eddie Fisher, Pat Boone, Patsy Cline, Rosemary Clooney, Duane Eddy, Connie Francis, Bill Haley, Dean Martin, The Osmond Brothers, Arlo Guthrie, and Leon Redbone.

One of the more interesting things about Miller's version of Any Time is that it includes three opening stanzas that aren't part of the printed sheet music. Lawson's "official" version, and the one used by most performers with some variations, has the lyrics...

Any time you're feeling lonely
Any time you're feeling blue
Any time you're feeling down-hearted
That will prove your love for me is true.

Any time you're thinking 'bout me
That's the time I'll be thinking of you
So, any time you say you want me back again
That's the time I'll come back home to you.

Fairly straightforward, right? It could be a spooner singing goodnight to his sweetie, or even a soldier bidding his girl goodbye. But Miller's version puts a darker spin on the song...

Now, I'm so sad and blue
'bout nobody but you
Why you don't seem the same to me.

I told you that I love you
right from the start
You told me the very same thing
and now you try to break my little heart.

If you don't want me
Why don't you come on and tell me so
I love you, and I'll say just before I go....

Now, any time that you are lonely
Any time that you are blue
Now, any time you're feeling down-hearted
That will prove to you my love is true.

Now, any time you're thinking of me
That's the time I'll think of you
Now, any time you want me back again
That's the time I'll come back to you.

... which describes a breakup much more emphatically than Lawson's version. I'm guessing that because he did Any Time as part of his minstrel act, Miller added the opening stanzas as a skit he performed with a female partner... probably something to the effect of her telling him her love had gone cold, his replying with the little three-stanza ditty about how she's made him "sad and blue," and then his going into the actual Lawson song.

But there's also a surprising variation from Lawson's in the last line of the fourth stanza, with Miller clearly singing, That will prove to you my love is true, rather than the printed lyrics, That will prove your love for me is true. Miller's singer emphasizes that his love is so true that it will overwhelm the girl's feelings, whether she's actually in love with him or not. Lawson's singer more reassuringly notes that the girl's feelings are natural because she's already in love with him.

At this point, I could pull a Nick Tosches and start bringing in everything from Bob Dylan to how the introduction of the automobile was changing American dating habits in the `20s, but I'll resist.

Fascinating guy, that Emmett Miller.

Episode 40 - A Ghost in Blackface

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This is a real ghost story, but like all real ghost stories, you don't get to see the ghost. Hey, you boy there! What did I just tell you? Please don't attempt to look at him straight on, son. The harder you try, folks, the more he fades, and he's just barely with us as it is now.

You'll have better luck looking away. Pretend you don't see him, and maybe you'll catch a sidelong glimpse from the corner of your eye. Wait quietly and you'll soon feel his presence in unexpected places. His influence, from the unexplained creak on the stair, the glass mysteriously falling from the table, music and voices coming from a empty downstairs room.

[Emmet Miller Mashup]

Is that Lovesick Blues? No, maybe it's Bob Wills. Or maybe I'm totally wrong, and it's really Jimmie Rodgers. It's so faint, so hard to hear. It's like a ghost singing.

This is a story about a ghost who made music, a ghost named Emmett Miller, a forgotten son of a embarrassing and often deliberately forgotten American art form, the blackface minstrel show.

Born in Macon, Georgia on February 2, 1900, Miller's family later said he had wanted to become a minstrel show comedian almost from the time he spoke his first word. And he achieved that goal by the time he and the new century had reached their mid-20s. While the early part of Miller's life is still a mystery between 1919 - when he left home to pursue his dream - and 1924, he had built up his career enough that an August, 1924 issue of Billboard noted that he had played a three-day engagement with the Dan Fitch Minstrels in Poughkeepsie, NY.

Becoming a successful blackface comedian in 1924 must have been a little bit like finally attaining a lifelong dream to become a horse collar maker. While there was still work for both professions if you tried hard enough to find it, your day was done before you had even gotten started.


Any Time and Lovesick Blues

Our ghost would have probably disappeared unknown, unloved, and unmourned except that Emmett Miller also made his first recordings in the late fall of the that year, 1924, for the Okeh label. The recordings included Any Time, his signature song on stage.

[Any Time (1928 version) - Emmett Miller]

By any measurement and in any time, Miller's Any Time is one strange song, beginning with what sounds like a cry of pain after a straightforward jazz introduction and then Miller's blackface partner incongruously noting, "Emmett, you're looking mighty happy today."

But Emmett doesn't sound happy at all, as he begins Any Time with a stereotypical minstrel routine, and then moves into the actual song, which in his hands - or maybe more accurately, his voice - becomes a witches brew of exaggerated blackface vocalization, jazz phrasing, and country yodeling.

Yodeling. But not the yodel-lay-hee Sound of Music Lonely Goatherd style of yodeling. Miller's yodel sounds more as if the lyrics were suddenly disappeared. As if become exhausted, the singer is now without recourse to words, and what bursts out is this awful, inarticulate cry, until Miller seemingly recovers himself and remembers that there is a next line.

Small wonder that Miller became known as the man with the "trick" or "clarinet" voice.

"Without a doubt my father learned Lovesick Blues somehow from Emmett Miller. It was either by record or he heard him perform it in person at a minstrel show." - Hank Williams Jr.

The version we heard of Any Time was cut in the fall of 1928, with Miller backed by a band dubbed the Georgia Crackers and which included both Tommy Dorsey and his brother Jimmy, as well as drummer Gene Krupa. In an earlier session, Miller and the boys also did a remake of his Lovesick Blues, which he had first recorded in 1925, and would eventually become the foundation for Hank Williams' 1949 hit.

As Hank Williams Jr. noted, maybe his father learned Lovesick Blues directly from Miller - at least one person remembers Hank praising Miller's version of the song - or maybe it was from one of the cuts Miller put on record. In either case, when Williams recorded his version, it was obviously influenced by Miller's vocal style.

[Hank Williams - Lovesick Blues]

Lovesick Blues was written by Irving Mills and Cliff Friend in 1922. Incidentally, Friend's best-known song is probably 1937's The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down, which became the signature song for the classic Looney Tunes cartoons. Lovesick Blues had been recorded by several artists before Miller picked it up, but it's his take on the song in 19 and 25 that put it on the musical map and would eventually catch Hank Williams attention.

[Emmet Miller - Lovesick Blues]

The Blue Yodels

We can't let our ghost rest in peace until we take a look at the Emmett Miller/Jimmie Rodgers connection. It's known that during 19 and 25, Rodgers "put on the cork," as the minstrel show saying had it, and was working as a blackface performer. He wasn't alone. As well as Jimmie Rodgers, Bob Wills, Roy Acuff, and Clarence Ashley all appeared in blackface during the course of their careers. But what's less certain is whether Rodgers ever ran into Emmett Miller and heard Miller's unique yodel.

Miller was in Asheville, North Carolina in the summer of 1925, and while Rodgers didn’t move to Asheville until 1927, the city was one of the premiere stops on the minstrel show circuit. So it's possible Rodgers at least passed through town while Miller was in residence and caught one of his performances. And two years later there's some circumstantial evidence that the two may have even performed together.

Ultimately, like all good ghost stories, it remains a mystery whether Emmett Miller and Jimmie Rodgers ever met, and whether Rodgers Blue Yodels evolved from Miller's yodeling style.

[Jimmie Rodgers - Blue Yodel # 9]

'You Look Familiar'

Oscar Vogel: Hello Jack. Do you know me?

Jack Fate: You look familiar.

OV: I was the star of the show here. One of the biggest stars. I was one of your father's favorite performers once. Everything was going great... just as long as you kept your mouth shut. But he was doing things that were wrong, your father. His desire for retaliation and revenge was too strong.

I was the only one in any position to say anything, everybody else was too scared. I had the show, I had a forum. So, I spoke out. It's not what goes in the mouth. It's what comes out that counts.

OV: They said it was an accident (strums banjo). Some even said it was a suicide. Some people choose to die in all kinds of ways. Some people jump out of buildings and slit their wrists on the way down. Some fall on their own swords. I opened my mouth. You remember? My name is Oscar Vogel.

JF: Oscar Vogel.

OV: (strums banjo)

JF: Well, I gotta get back to the stage.

OV: The stage? Ah yes, the stage. 'The whole world is a stage.' - Masked and Anonymous

By the end of the decade popular interest in minstrel shows had all but faded away although, like an inconvenient ghost, the cork kept re-appearing on stage and in film. Well into the next decade, Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland would appear in blackface in 1939's Babes in Arms. Bing Crosby appeared in blackface in 1942's Holiday Inn, the precursor to the better-known White Christmas, released in 1954, and which also included a minstrel show number, but which, happily, was not done in blackface. The Black and White Minstrel Show was a popular British television series with a 20-year run into the `70s that presented traditional American "Deep South" songs - usually performed in blackface.

But even though it kept rolling in the grave well into the 1950s, the minstrel show was certifiably dead by the early `30s, with the popularity of movies putting the final nails in its - and its descendant, vaudeville - coffins. Interestingly, many of the minstrel show performers just put on a new mask - one that didn't require the cork - and moved into "hillbilly" music, masquerading this time as folksy hicks, rather than as rural blacks. In time, many of the pseudo-hillbillies and cowboys like Jimmie Rodgers and Bob Wills would in turn make the move into the more sophisticated country-western genre.

But what of our ghost, Emmett Miller? As far as the record shows, Miller apparently stuck to the cork to the bitter end. During the last part of his recording career, he tried to tame down his vocal style in an attempt to imitate then popular crooners like Rudy Vallee. But it didn't take, possibly because Miller kept including dated blackface routines with his music. His final recording sessions were in 1936.

But he never stopped working until the work dried up, performing when and where he could in minstrel revivals, vaudeville, even appearing with Scatman Crothers in a 1951 movie, Yes Sir, Mr. Bones.

But that was the last gasp for the cork and for Emmet Miller. He'd return to the town where he was born and die in Macon, Georgia in 1962.

Bob Dylan's thoughts on minstrel shows and blackface are unknown. But given the fact that he named an album after a book about the history of minstrel shows, it's pretty obvious that he does have some thoughts on the subject. And then there's Masked and Anonymous, of course. In the movie, Dylan - as the character Jack Fate - receives a visitation from his predecessor, a blackface minstrel.

"Do you know me?" he asks.

"You look familiar," Dylan replies.

The minstrel man later claims his name is "Oscar Vogel." But I'm not so sure. I think he may have worked under more than one name. He was once the star of the show here.

More Reading and Listening: The Wikipedia article on Emmett Miller; The Red Hot Jazz site, which has an excellent collection of Emmett Miller songs in RealAudio format; There's also a good overview of Miller, and his importance to country music, written by an an AnnMarie Harrington in 2003 at the appropriately named "Take Country Back" site.

Much of Harrington's article appears to be sourced from the touchstone of all Emmett Miller arcana, Nick Tosches' 2001 book Where Dead Voices Gather. Alternately fascinating and maddening, the book is no easy read. Tosches' prose can become so dense as to be impenetrable and much of Where Dead Voices Gather seems to have been written as stream-of-consciousness. When Tosches runs out of things to say about Miller, which happens quite often, he falls back on interminable lists of recording dates, forgotten songs, and minstrel show bookings until something new apparently occurs to him. The digressions can range from slang terms for female genitalia to whether Dixie was Abraham Lincoln's favorite song. And we're off and running with Nick again.

Tosches also isn't particularly well-liked in the small but active Emmett Millerphile community, where he's been criticized for sloppy - or no - research. Even I caught him out in a mistake while reading Where Dead Voices Gather. Tosches claims Wanda Jackson recorded the same Right or Wrong as Miller, but just a listen to a few seconds of either piece of music shows that they're completely different songs that happen to share the same title.

Having said all that, I still commend Where Dead Voices Gather to your attention. As frustrating as the book can be, it's still on a par with Greil Marcus' The Old Weird America as a document of Americana music.

Finally, our ghost in blackface is alive and well in the digital age, 107 years after his birth.

***

You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour.

Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.

Some of the music on Dreamtime is provided via the Podsafe Music Network. Check it out at music.podshow.com. The closing segment's music was an excerpt from Ol' Time Banjo, by David Miles Huber.

Remember that the Dreamtime team loves to get email. You can write us at dreamtimepodcast@gmail.com

The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Visit the Dreamtime Store

Welcome to Season 2 of Dreamtime

With Mr. D. readying Season 2 of TTRH next week, I've decided to take Dreamtime into its second season with Episode 40, which will be posted later today... only 10 shows short and about two months over my original goal of 50 shows in one year... but not bad, I think, for an amateur effort.

I want to give my thanks to all who have supported Dreamtime in its first season; either through linking to the blog, publicizing it around the Web, or through your comments and/or emails telling me what you liked, or sometimes what I got wrong.

Also, a big thanks to those of you who have used the Dreamtime store as your launching base into Amazon. Whether you purchase something I recommended or not, when you go to Amazon from a Dreamtime link, I get a small piece of the action from purchases, at no additional cost to you. While my costs to do Dreamtime are minimal, there are some costs, mostly for podcast storage/bandwidth. It's nice to be able to offset even that small expense. So again, thank you, and a reminder to others... just like NPR or PBS, think of using Dreamtime store as your entry point into Amazon.

Off to Season 2!

Theme Time Season 2 Begins September 19th!

via USA Today

On the air: Launching with the topic "Hello," Dylan hosts the second season of XM Radio's Theme Time Radio Hour Sept. 19 (XM 40, Wednesdays, 10 a.m. ET/7 PT). Future shows will center on such motifs as "Young & Old," "California," "Dreams," "Fruit," "Something," "Nothing," "Streets," "Parties" and "Mail," with guests to include Luke Wilson, Amy Sedaris, Jack White and John Cusack. The satellite radio program draws nearly 2 million listeners weekly.

and an update just in from bobdylan.com

Theme Time Radio Hour
On Wednesday, September 19, Bob Dylan's award-winning XM music show, Theme Time Radio Hour, will kick off its much anticipated second season. Along with the show's signature eclectic mix of songs related to a specific theme and entertaining stories about the music and topics of interest, listeners will hear contributions from special guests, including Luke Wilson, Amy Sedaris, Jack White, John Cusack and Richard Lewis. The sultry voice of Ellen Barkin, will continue to herald the start of each "Theme Time" episode this season.

The first episode of season two will be devoted to the theme "Hello," with a typically wide, varied and surprising song list. Fans can expect to hear future episodes this season dedicated to themes such as "Young & Old," "California," the 2nd Annual Countdown Show, "Dreams," "Fruit," "Something," "Nothing," "Streets," "Parties," and "Mail."

New episodes of Theme Time Radio Hour, which airs Wednesdays at 10 a.m. ET on XM's Deep Tracks (XM 40), will also be available all day every Wednesday on XMX (XM 2). In May 2006, Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour debuted to critical-acclaim exclusively on XM; the show has become one of the network's most popular programs, and is heard by nearly two million listeners each week. Among the show's myriad accomplishments of the past year, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum added the show's "Baseball" episode to its archives in June 2006.

and a little bit more from the press release...

The first episode of season two will be devoted to the theme "Hello," with a song list that spans "Hello, Mello Baby" by The Mardi Gras Loungers, "Hello Trouble" by Buck Owens and "Hello in There" by John Prine, among many others. Fans can expect to hear future episodes this season dedicated to themes such as "Young & Old," "California," "Dreams," "Fruit," "Something," "Nothing," "Streets," "Parties," "Mail," and the 2nd Annual Countdown Show.

Dreamtime - the Video Promo

via dylanmessaging.com where you too can create your very own.

Three Miles South of Cash - Bob Wills and Carolina Cotton

We're in full Western Swing mode here at Dreamtime, this time around with a video of Bob Wills and The Texas Playboys from 19 and 51, featuring a semi-duet of Three Miles South of Cash between Wills and Carolina Cotton, who performs her signature yodelin' as Wills tries to keep pace.

This is from a so-called "Snader Telescription," one of television's first music videos. Snaders were 3-4 minute films shot live and produced from around 1950 until late 1953 or early `54, according to this site. The brainchild of Louis D. Snader, a Southern California real estate developer, almost all of the several hundred Snader Telescriptions were written, produced, and directed by a Duke Goldstone, who even helped design many of the sets. Goldstone could shoot as many as 12 Snaders in one day.

A bigger live draw than Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman in his heyday during in the 1940s, Wills career was winding down by 1951, as was Western Swing itself. He'd have one last Top Ten hit with Faded Love in 1950, although he'd continuing performing into the late `60s. The Yodelin' Blonde Bombshell - Carolina Cotton - was a featured songbird in the Spade Cooley, Deuce Spriggins (to whom she was briefly married), Hank Penny, and Bob Wills bands, as well as cutting her own singles.

Cotton appeared in several B Westerns as well as in some of the first "Soundies," an even earlier precursor to music videos (although the audio was taped, rather than performed live). Cotton was also one of the first female deejays, as well as a television pioneer. She turned down the role of Annie Oakley (later played by Gail Davis) to develop her own series, Queen of the Range, although the show was never aired. In the early `60s, Cotton retired from her entertainment career, earned her Masters Degree in Special Education, and taught at several schools in California. She'd occasionally still perform at Western Swing fan conferences and charity events into the late `90s, before passing away in 1997.

Cotton had a fascinating career, and you could learn more about her and her life at carolinacotton.org, a great site maintained by her family.

Hank Penny - Missouri

I need to do a Dreamtime episode on the Western Swing phenomena of the `40s and `50s, which has just a ton of great subject matter and characters to write about, including Carolina Cotton - "the Yodelin' Blonde Bombshell" - who you can see on bass in this clip, and Spade Cooley, the King of Western Swing, whose life played out like a James Ellroy noir novel.

Here we have the Deuce Spriggins Orchestra, featuring Hank Penny, doing Missouri. Spriggins - real name George Braunsdorf - and Cotton (Helen Hagstrom) were secretly married in 1945, and left Spade Cooley's band that same year, taking many of Cooley's musicians with them to form their own band. Spriggins and Cotton would be divorced the following year, with few people knowing that they had been married.

Hank Penny, whose 1950s hit Bloodshot Eyes was featured on Dreamtime 39, was born Herbert Clayton Penny on September 18, 1918, in Birmingham, AL. By the age of 15, he was performing professionally on local radio, and had formed his own band, The Radio Cowboys, before he turned 18.

By the mid-'40s, Penny was in Los Angeles, and had been recruited to front one of the pseudo-Spade Cooley bands that were operating throughout the country. Cooley's popularity was at such a height during the 1940s that the real Spade Cooley Orchestra couldn't fill all its bookings, so Cooley's manager simply formed several more Western Swing bands and sent them on the road under the Spade Cooley brand.

After later stints as band leader, deejay, and club owner, Penny joined Cooley's wildly popular television program in 1948 as a comic backwoods type known as "That Plain Ol' Country Boy." A year later, Penny cut Hillbilly Bebop, an attempt to reclaim the audience Western Swing was losing to the new bop music, and the more successful hit of 1950, Bloodshot Eyes.

Penny later would become a co-owner of the legendary Palomino Club, hosted his own television series, The Hank Penny Show, which was canceled after only a few weeks, and have a much more successful seven-year run at the Golden Nugget Casino in Las Vegas. He'd later moved to Nashville, and audition for the hosting slot of Hee Haw, a job he'd lose to Roy Clark. He passed away in 1992.*

*Note: Hank's widow, Shari, was kind enough to contact me with the correct dates of Hank's birth and death and I've edited the post to reflect those dates  Shari notes that the Hank Penny official web site will be online within the month, and we'll link to it when it goes live.  Thank you, Shari!

Episode 39 - The Lost Theme Time iPod

Direct link to mp3.

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Theme Time Music That Never Was, That Might Have Been, And Could Still Be

[Bed music - Perry Mason Theme - Mundell Lowe]

Here's the story. Sometime in 2005, somewhere in Los Angeles, Bob Dylan is in a studio. He does whatever he came there to do, and then makes like a tree... and leaves.

But he forgets his iPod.

Imagine that for a second. There it is, sitting on a sound board right in front of you. Bob Dylan's iPod. Looking just like every other of the million of iPods out there. But it belongs to...

"...the poet laureate of rock 'n' roll. The voice of the promise of the '60s counterculture. The guy who forced folk into bed with rock. Who donned makeup in the '70s and disappeared into a haze of substance abuse. Who emerged to find Jesus. Who was written off as a has-been by the end of the '80s, and who suddenly shifted gears releasing some of the strongest music of his career beginning in the late '90s. Ladies and gentlemen - Columbia recording artist Bob Dylan!"

That's his iPod. Wouldn't you be curious about what Bob Dylan listens to? What would you do? Would you turn it on? Would you skim through the playlists? Would you listen?

Maybe you'd copy the iPod's contents, especially since you have all the equipment to do it right there at hand. And later, so you'd have a clean conscience, you'd call Dylan's people to let them know that their Boss had forgotten it.

That's what somebody supposedly did sometime in early 2005 in the City of Los Angeles. Or at least that's how the story goes. Later that year a playlist appeared on the Web, purportedly listing the contents of the copied iPod... and than the story just kind of faded away into the aether, forgotten by most Dylan fans.

It's not that hard to understand. There's no music by Bob Dylan in that playlist. In fact, you've probably never heard of most of the 171 songs unless you're a hardcore fan of rockabilly, jump music, gospel, bebop, and honky tonk.

In fact, you'd probably need to have the tastes of a certain disk jockey who operates out of the Abernathy Building to know all these songs.

It'd be easy to dismiss the story as the work of an obsessive prankster fan who thought it might be entertaining to come up with a forgery of what you might expect Bob Dylan to listen to. But in 2005 - a year before the first episode of Theme Time Radio Hour ever aired - how many people would have expected Bob Dylan to be a fan of (Every Time I Hear) That Mellow Saxophone by Roy Montrell? Or of Buddy and Ella Johnson? Now, Hank Snow, The Staple Singers, even Bob Wills & His Texas Playboys, sure. But Charlie Mingus and Eat that Chicken?

Here's what I think. I think the story about the iPod is true. And I think that in early 2005, maybe as early as January 2005, XM Radio and Dylan's organization and Eddie Gorodetsky had agreed in principle - as the politicians like to say - that Dylan would be doing a radio show for XM starting in 2006.

Now they had to figure out what that radio show was going to be, and what Mr. D. was going to play. And I think that from Dylan's direction and from a list of his likes and dislikes someone put together a playlist of eight hours worth of music, ripped that music to an iPod, and sent it on down Dylan's way to churn some thought and to spark ideas for the show.

It's not exactly Theme Time Radio Hour, but you can sure hear the roots of the show, and sometimes you'll find music on the playlist that just seems just perfectly perfect Theme Time material: Kip Anderson's R&B number Knife and Fork for the Food episode for example, or maybe this cut from Dr. Humphrey Bate And His Possum Hunters...

[How Many Biscuits Can You Eat? - Dr. Humphrey Bate And His Possum Hunters]

Dr. Humphrey was really a doctor, as well as a graduate of Nashville's Vanderbilt University. His group was originally known as the Augmented Orchestra, but when the group played on the first ever Grand Ole Opry radio broadcast, promoter and host George Hay saddled them with "the Possum Hunters" moniker, figuring it'd be more of a draw with the listening audience.

There's some very strange references on that iPod playlist, too. There's three Hank Williams cuts, all supposedly from an album titled Codfish Pie. Except, as far as I can tell, there never was a Hank Williams collection with that title. The Davis Sisters Everlovin' is supposedly pulled from something called The Sacred Frowns. Except the only Sacred Frowns I could find a reference to is a group that ex-members of NRBQ formed. Weirdly, NRBQ has covered Everlovin', but why the association in the playlist on Dylan's iPod?

[The Davis Sisters - Everlovin']

Everlovin' was recorded in 19 and 55 by Skeeter Davis and Georgie Davis, who were not sisters. Skeeter was born Mary Frances Penick, and took on the more easily remembered name when she teamed up with the original Davis sister, Betty Jack.

The two would record a #1 hit - later covered by Bob Dylan - I Forgot More Than You'll Even Know in 19 and 53. But Betty Jack would die that year in a car accident that would also badly injure Skeeter. Skeeter would later team with Betty Jack's real sister, Georgie, and the two would release several records still using the The Davis Sisters name until Skeeter went solo in 1956.

Here's another cut from an album that doesn't exist as far as I can tell, Fay Simmons singing that nuclear blast from the past, 19 and 54's You Hit Me Baby Like An Atomic Bomb.

[Fay Simmons - You Hit Me Baby Like An Atomic Bomb]

Like Fay Simmons herself, Atomic Bomb is one Big Unknown. Simmons recorded it on August 23, 1954 in Philadelphia with an unknown band. The composer is unknown, and for reasons unknown the song was never picked up by a label.

Not much more is known about Fay Simmons. She appeared on at least 20 singles in a career that spanned about a decade, but she never grabbed more than East Coast airplay, and never had that breakout song. By 1965 she had disappeared from sight.

A fan of old record labels has the best information about Simmons on the Web at the Color Radio and Doo Wop site which includes two other tracks worth a listen: the closest thing Simmons ever had to a hit: And the Angels Sing, and an up-tempo version of the Doris Day classic, Secret Love.

The iPod's playlist has Atomic Bomb coming from something titled One-Offs, which may have been a private compilation put together by Eddie Gorodetsky. The song doesn't appear to have been commercially released until the `90s from the very obscure Flyright label on a CD called Talk to Me Daddy. You can also find it on that comprehensive collection of Cold War madness, Atomic Platters, which came out in '05. If Theme Time ever does a show on the Bomb, I'll guarantee you that more than one song will come from Atomic Platters.

You're listening to the Dreamtime podcast and Theme Time music that never was, might have been, and could still be.

Like Fay Simmons, The Zion Travelers never got the fame that they deserved, but they were one of the best of the gospel quartets of the `40s and `50s. This cut from the iPod playlist stopped me in my tracks when I first heard it, because it's a near-perfect reworking of The Orioles hit from 19 and 53, Crying in the Chapel, with completely different lyrics.

[A Soldier of the Cross - Zion Travelers]

Was someone on the Theme Time team playing with the idea of at least one show dedicated to wildly different versions of songs? Maybe, because as well as A Soldier of the Cross, the iPod playlist includes the original This May Be the Last Time, recorded by the Staple Singers and later a revised hit for The Rolling Stones, and Loretta Lynn doing two completely different takes on I'm a Honky Tonk Girl.

Speaking of honky-tonkin', my own honky-tonk girl, Jailbait Jones, pointed out that the iPod playlist has over a dozen honky-tonk songs, ranging from Joe Maphis and Rose Lee doing Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music) to Kitty Wells 1952 classic, It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels. Throw in some dee jay chatter, a couple of email readings, and Mr. D. reading the the following poem, and by God you have a a Theme Time episode in the bag...

It's a jazz affair, drum crashes and cornet razzes.

The trombone pony neighs and the tuba jackass snorts.

The banjo tickles and titters too awful.

The chippies talk about the funnies in the papers.

The cartoonists weep in their beer.

Ship riveters talk with their feet

To the feet of floozies under the tables.

A quartet of white hopes mourn with interspersed snickers:

"I got the blues.

I got the blues.

I got the blues."

And . . . as we said earlier:

The cartoonists weep in their beer.

- Carl Sandburg, Windy City poet

We're closing up the honky tonk with a song that would have worked on the Eyes or Drinking episodes, and may still show up on a Theme Time Radio Hour at some point.

A comedian, deejay, singer, club owner, and band leader at various points in career, here's Hank Penny with his hit from 19 and 50, Bloodshot Eyes

[Bloodshot Eyes - Hank Penny]

In the mid-50s, Hank moved his act to Las Vegas where he started a seven-year run at the Golden Nugget casino, fronting a band which at one time included Roy Clark. They'd run into each at least one more time, when Clark beat out Hank for the job hosting Hee Haw.

That's just five of the 171 songs on the iPod's playlist, from Al Urban to the Zion Travelers, from A Cottage for Sale to Your Wild Life's Going to Get You Down. Was it the lost iPod of Theme Time Radio Hour?

We may never know for sure.

You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour.

Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.

Some of the music on Dreamtime is provided via the Podsafe Music Network. Check it out at music.podshow.com.

Remember that the Dreamtime team loves to get email. You can write us at dreamtimepodcast@gmail.com

The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen - On the Road

via the Paper Cuts blog at the NY Times

TTRH and Dreamtime favorite Jack Kerouac reading a selection from On the Road, backed by Steve Allen on piano.

More Kerouac and Allen can be heard in Episode 17 - October in the Railroad Earth.

Episode 38 - A Wink or a Nod From Some Unexpected Place

Direct link to mp3.

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"... all it takes is a wink or a nod from some unexpected place to vary the tedium of a baffling existence.

That happened to me when Gorgeous George the great wrestler came to my hometown. In the mid-50s, I was performing in the lobby of the National Guard Armory, the Veterans Memorial Building, the site where all the big shows happened - the livestock shows and hockey games, circuses and boxing shows, traveling preacher revivals, country-and-western jamborees.











Once a year or so, Gorgeous George would bring his whole troupe of performers to town: Goliath, The Vampire, The Twister, The Strangler, The Bone Crusher, The Holy Terror, midget wrestlers, a couple of lady wrestlers, and a whole lot more.

I was playing on a makeshift platform in the lobby of the building with the usual wild activity of people milling about, and no one was paying much attention. Suddenly the doors burst open and in came Gorgeous George himself. He roared in like the storm, didn't go through the backstage area, he came right through the lobby of the building and he seemed like forty men. It was Gorgeous George, in all his magnificent glory with all the lightning and vitality you'd expect. He had valets and was surrounded by women carrying roses, wore a majestic fur-lined gold cape and his long blond curls were flowing. He brushed by the makeshift stage and glanced towards the sound of the music. He didn't break stride, but he looked at me, eyes flashing with moonshine. He winked and seemed to mouth the phrase 'You're making it come alive.'"

- Bob Dylan, Chronicles: Volume One

"I am the Greatest Wrestler in the World!"

During the peak of his career, Gorgeous George's fame was comparable to that of Muhammad Ali's - whose public persona had more than a little of Gorgeous George in it. During the early part of his career, when he was still known as Cassius Clay, Ali was promoting his latest fight on a Las Vegas radio show. Also appearing was Gorgeous George, who was talking up his own fight and who worked himself into a frenzy describing the hurt he planned for opponent,

"If this bum beats me, I’ll crawl down Las Vegas Boulevard on my hands and knees. But it won’t happen. I’ll tear his arm off. For I am the greatest wrestler in the world!"

Like the young Dylan, the young Ali was entranced by George's rhetoric, and became even more enthusiastic when he discovered that George regularly sold out wherever he appeared. Taking up George's invitation, Ali went to see his match and, as he later remembered, "I saw 15,000 people coming to see this man get beat, and his talking did it. I said, 'This is a g-o-o-o-d idea!'"

Gorgeous George's influence can also be seen in Little Richard, James Brown, and Liberace, as well as nearly every other sports or entertainment figure - such as Elton John - who ever adopted a flamboyant, outrageous style.

Gorgeous George was born George Wagner in Seward, Nebraska on March 15, 1915. He began his wrestling career during his teens - often competing at local carnivals, where the prize purse averaged 35 cents. By age 17, George was getting bookings through the area's top promoter. At 5'9' and 215 pounds, Wagner was not all that an imposing a figure, but he developed a reputation as a solid wrestler, and by the late `30s he had legitimately captured two regional titles.

He also met his first wife, Betty Hanson, who George subsequently married in an in-ring ceremony. That turned out to be so popular that the couple incorporated the wedding into their tour and would re-enact it in arenas throughout the U.S. Seeing how show biz elements helped draw crowds may have started George thinking about developing a more memorable shtick than simply straight wrestling. At least one report has it that he got the idea for an effeminate, dandy villain wrestler after reading an article about a now-forgotten contemporary who wrestled under the name Lord Patrick Lansdowne, and who would appear at bouts as a British Lord attended by a valet.

The Human Orchid

Also known as "The Human Orchid," George debuted his new persona in 19 and 41 in Eugene, Oregon, and was instantly slapped with the title "Gorgeous George" by a bemused ring announcer. George rapidly became the villain crowds loved to hate. One of the first wrestlers to use the type of flamboyant entrance now common in pro wrestling matches, George would arrive to the strains of Pomp and Circumstance, escorted down a personal red carpet by his ring valet “Jeffries,” who would carry a silver mirror for George to gaze upon as rose petals were strewn at his feet.

These entrances often took longer than the actual bout, as George still had to exchange taunts with the crowd, have Jeffries spray the ring and unwilling opponent with disinfectant which George claimed was "Chanel #10." The show would culminate in George's refusal to let the referee inspect him for foreign objects unless he was also doused by Jeffries while George shrieked in horror, "Keep your filthy hands off me!"

Eventually the match would begin, and George would brazenly ignore the rules while chanting his motto to the audience: "Win if you can, lose if you must, but always cheat!"

It was an outrageous, larger-than-life act, tailor-made for the new medium, television. Gorgeous George would become the biggest drawing card of the wrestling industry, as well as one of its first genuine stars. It's been claimed that Gorgeous George was responsible for selling as many TV sets as Milton Berle, Mr. Television, himself.

By the '50s, Gorgeous George was earning over $100,000 a year, making him that decade's highest paid athlete. His most famous match would take place in 1959 before 14,000 fans and millions of television viewers where he would be defeated by longtime rival "Whipper" Billy Watson and would lose his treasured platinum locks to the Whipper's razor.

Although he would wrestle for three more years, and in fact, knowing a good crowd-pleaser when he saw one, would lose his hair to an opponent's razor twice more in those three years, age and a tough lifestyle eventually caught up with the Gorgeous One. George retired in 1962, bought into a turkey ranch and opened a cocktail lounge in Van Nuys, California, "Gorgeous George's Ringside Restaurant," where he would entertain customers with card tricks. Although filmed before his retirement, you can see a different side of Gorgeous George in this clip from You Asked For It, as he demonstrates some sleight-of-hand for the audience and host Art Baker.

Our Daddy, Gorgeous George

Gorgeous George passed away on December 26, 1963 at age 48. Although he had made millions during his wrestling career and for a time was probably the most recognizable entertainer on the planet, Gorgeous George would die broke. He was buried at Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood, California, the final resting place for several other celebrities including Oliver Hardy; Curly Joe from The Three Stooges; and in a coincidental Dreamtime connection, Cliff ("Ukulele Ike") Edwards, the voice of Jiminy Cricket, who also died penniless.

Gorgeous George's grave can be found in plot 6657, near the northeast side of the fountain. A plaque reads "Love to Our Daddy Gorgeous George."

Audio excerpt from Chronicles: Volume One, read by Sean Penn.

***

You've been listening to the Dreamtime podcast – occasional commentary on Bob Dylan's Theme Time Radio Hour.

Dreamtime is researched and written by Fred Bals and is a Not Associated With production. As the name says, we're not associated with XM Radio, Bob Dylan, or much of anything else.

Some of the music on Dreamtime is provided via the Podsafe Music Network. Check it out at music.podshow.com.

Remember that the Dreamtime team loves to get email. You can write us at dreamtimepodcast@gmail.com

The Dreamtime top cats are Curly Lasagna and Shaggy Bear. Our announcers are the notorious honky-tonkin' sisters, Jailbait and Joyride.

Until next time, dream well.

Anita O'Day - Let Me Off Uptown

Ms. Anita O'Day, a three-time favorite of TTRH, she of the "Dance" (Ten Cents a Dance); "Tears" (And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine); and "New York" (Let Me Off Uptown) episodes. Here's Anita with the Gene Krupa Orchestra doing that last song. I add my recommendation to that of Our Host that you pick up her gritty, noirish biography, High Times, Hard Times.

There's also a new documentary out on Anita O'Day - The Life of a Jazz Singer - that is getting good reviews and probably well worth hunting down if you're lucky enough to live somewhere slightly less rural than New Hampshire. The last documentary that played in Dreamtime's home town was Our Friend, the Beaver at the Grange Hall.

Bryant Gumbel: "Your personal experiences include rape, abortion, jail, heroin addiction..."

Anita O'Day: "That's just the way it went down, Bryant."


Here's the trailer for Anita O'Day - The Life of a Jazz Singer