It’s the 20’s, young people are leaving the farm and going to the city to work in the factories. That New Orleans music had moved north to Chicago and then to New York. The radio was new, so was sound in the movies. We started to have shared experiences as a nation. Jazz, speak easies, women in short skirts……….. Grandma, who was busy raising her family, must have been shaking her head.
What I love about YouTube is access to original recordings. The quality isn’t great but you are there in the room for the first time.
The Charleston represented a decade and here it is played by its creator. James P Johnson.
jack, indeed, what was the world coming to in 1925? hellbound it looks like when perusing the year by onthisday:
mussolini dissolved the Italian parliament and proclaimed himself dictator
adolf resurrected the NSDAP political party in munich
stalin was up to something or the other
and medina surrenders to Saudi forces.
the strange art in the’20s of Picasso, Mondrian, Matisse, Diego Rivera… reflections of the times.
“The Great Gatsby”
Being able to hear and see so much is fruition of one of the Internet’s promises. Even back in the days of Gopher being able to find video and audio was exciting. There is so much now digitized for viewing that it is easy to overgrow a recliner watching hour after hour after hour. Hooray for the Internet!
I happened to see that SFB is freaking out and accusing Rep. Cummings of the criminal activities of his son in law. Shame is never enough. Impeachment will not be enough. Life in Colorado Florence ADX is not enough. Nothing will be enough to erase this horrible stain off these United States.
Ahhh, the wayback machine. Our first garage band, say 58 to 67. The drummer’s mother was a ragtime and church piano player. She taught us to sing 3 part harmonies. Every now and then, while we were gathered at his house, she would treat us to some fine ragtime piano playing and usually lead to “The Charleston”. She’d get so wound up she’d at some point get up from the piano and start dancing to it, just singing the melody. This was not a small woman and the whole house would shake as we would all jump around with her. It’s still a joy to remember.
Jackpot, Jack……nailed it.
20s era jazz escaped my musical upbringing. I was introduced to Jelly Roll Blues back in the 70s by a professor who I became good friends with, bonding more over music than anything related to academics. I liked it but my tastes ran more strongly toward rock then so I never much listened to that music after that. Thanks for reminding me.
Sturgeone – that sounds like a most wonderful time and memory.
Something I have to keep reminding my self is that the world I knew when I became an adult is currently the same age as that audio clip was back in 1971. I remember how strange and ancient the 20’s world was to me at the time.
Jack
I laughed all the way to the memory bank.
the twenties if nothing else had great music – sing-able, danceable, dream-able – from Gershwin to Porter to Ellington – among many many more
amazing how good the sound for a 93-year-old record
speaking of 93, my dad, who is 92, is back in assisted living facility after his pneumonia bout in hospital and rehab, doing well. and I’m finally back in DC with David, hopefully to stay a while this time. Only been here for 2 weeks in the last 7 months.
dadgummit! have tried 3 times now to copy and paste (but keep being shutdown) so I’ll just link the headline of this from the Baltimore Sun editorial board:
Better to have a few rats than to be one
luv this headline from Baltimore Sun: “Better to have a few rats than to be one”
[one more try…]
In case anyone missed it, the president of the United States had some choice words to describe Maryland’s 7th congressional district on Saturday morning. Here are the key phrases: “no human being would want to live there,” it is a “very dangerous & filthy place,” “Worst in the USA” and, our personal favorite: It is a “rat and rodent infested mess.” He wasn’t really speaking of the 7th as a whole. He failed to mention Ellicott City, for example, or Baldwin or Monkton or Prettyboy, all of which are contained in the sprawling yet oddly-shaped district that runs from western Howard County to southern Harford County. No, Donald Trump’s wrath was directed at Baltimore and specifically at Rep. Elijah Cummings, the 68-year-old son of a former South Carolina sharecropper who has represented the district in the U.S. House of Representatives since 1996.
It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the cockles of the white supremacists who love him and causes so many of the thoughtful people who don’t to scream. President Trump bad-mouthed Baltimore in order to make a point that the border camps are “clean, efficient & well run,” which, of course, they are not — unless you are fine with all the overcrowding, squalor, cages and deprivation to be found in what the Department of Homeland Security’s own inspector-general recently called “a ticking time bomb.”
In pointing to the 7th, the president wasn’t hoping his supporters would recognize landmarks like Johns Hopkins Hospital, perhaps the nation’s leading medical center. He wasn’t conjuring images of the U.S. Social Security Administration, where they write the checks that so many retired and disabled Americans depend upon. It wasn’t about the beauty of the Inner Harbor or the proud history of Fort McHenry. And it surely wasn’t about the economic standing of a district where the median income is actually above the national average. No, he was returning to an old standby of attacking an African American lawmaker from a majority black district on the most emotional and bigoted of arguments. It was only surprising that there wasn’t room for a few classic phrases like “you people” or “welfare queens” or “crime-ridden ghettos” or a suggestion that the congressman “go back” to where he came from.
[…]
Finally, while we would not sink to name-calling in the Trumpian manner — or ruefully point out that he failed to spell the congressman’s name correctly (it’s Cummings, not Cumming) — we would tell the most dishonest man to ever occupy the Oval Office, the mocker of war heroes, the gleeful grabber of women’s private parts, the serial bankrupter of businesses, the useful idiot of Vladimir Putin and the guy who insisted there are “good people” among murderous neo-Nazis that he’s still not fooling most Americans into believing he’s even slightly competent in his current post. Or that he possesses a scintilla of integrity. Better to have some vermin living in your neighborhood than to be one.
reading that last paragraph from the editorial, you understand why the useful idiot’s puppet meister doesn’t want us to see it.
anyone else have sites go down when there’s a juicy trump bash on it and you want to copy it?
Patd, so many sites put so much complicated code on their pages that simply copying and pasting can create a bloody mess. What I do is copy what I want into a plain text app like Notebook, then copy that and paste. It’s an annoying extra step but it strips out all the trouble making code.
Well, the Way Back Machine strikes again. Discussion about life decades earlier compared to today. Scene, trying to program/setup an intranet router and happen to glance up at television showing Mary Tyler Moore Show 1970/1 (available on Hulu). MTM is taking her pillow out of cabinet. Me, damn, I remember that pattern, used those sheets and pillow cases well into 2000’s. USA made back then.
Whenever I hear the Charleston, I think of that scene in It’s A Wonderful Life where Jimmy Stewart and Donna Reed are dancing on the gym floor that opens up above the pool.
Love the choice, Jack!
Good job Jack! I love the Charleston…after that the Varsity Drag
I do not understand how people can say Bernie is old news but support Biden
Hate Bernie. Love Biden. Both are too old for the job right now. Not sure about Warren. She seems really energetic, but I still feel she would be better in the Senate (Majority Leader?). We really need a younger generation, preferrably consistent moderate with progressive leanings and/or voting record.
Let’s see what the next debate brings, but right now I’m semi leaning to Harris/Klobuchar, Harris/Castro, Klobuchar/Booker or throw in a non candidate for VP such as Sherrod Brown.
Then there was the magnificent Josephine Baker. She believed so much in brotherhood the she adopted children from every nationality and called them the Rainbow Tribe. She stood up to racism long before the civil rights movement and stood up to the then mighty Walter Winchell when that was something you just didn’t do. After that she was pretty much barred from the country. She worked for the French Resistance during World War II, and she was so successful, that the gestapo had a price on her head so she had to be smuggled out of France to North Africa. Finally the French were so grateful for Josephine’s life-risking efforts during the second world war that upon her death in 1976, she received a 21 gun salute, an honor afforded to very few.
KGC
Because Bernie and his socialism is lost in the 19th century.
Biden sells the democratic line developed to combat Reagan.
Problem is both are out of date.
Jack
good one Jamie, thanks
There are so many other videos I could have included.
Add in the Lindy Hop to dances which are classics.
Craig – welcome back. Not much different than when you left. Potomac went to bath water temperatures, ninety-four F.
The Charleston started among the black youth of Charleston, S.C. Mr Johnson gave it polish and took it to a sensation-hungry country. The point is, not all of the strands of jazz begin in New Orleans, although that city gave much more in the beginning than any other.
My father was a jazz fanatic. It was apple pie, baseball and the Pledge of Allegiance in our house.
wiki:
“Ain’t Misbehavin‘” is a 1929 stride jazz/early swing song. Andy Razaf wrote the lyrics to a score by Thomas “Fats” Waller and Harry Brooks for the Broadway musical comedy play Connie’s Hot Chocolates.
It has a thirty-two-bar form (AABA) at a slow-to-moderate tempo. Waller said the song was written while “lodging” in prison (for an alimony violation), and that is why he was not “misbehaving”.
The song was first performed at the premiere of Connie’s Hot Chocolates in Harlem at Connie’s Inn as an opening song by Paul Bass and Margaret Simms, and repeated later in the musical by Russell Wooding’s Hallelujah Singers. Connie’s Hot Chocolates was transferred to the Hudson Theatre on Broadway during June 1929, where it was renamed to Hot Chocolates and where Louis Armstrong became the orchestra director. The script also required Armstrong to play “Ain’t Misbehavin‘” in a trumpet solo, and although this was initially slated only to be a reprise of the opening song, Armstrong’s performance was so well received that the trumpeter was asked to climb out of the orchestra pit and play the piece on stage.
the hill:
President Trump is reportedly expected to nominate Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Texas) to replace Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats.
Axios, citing three people familiar with the president’s deliberations, reported on the development on Sunday. The news outlet noted that Trump was especially enthusiastic by Ratcliffe’s questioning of former special counsel Robert Mueller during his congressional testimony last week.
Ratcliffe denounced some of the findings in Mueller’s report during a House Judiciary Committee hearing, saying that it wasn’t Mueller’s job to “conclusively determine Donald Trump’s innocence.”
“I agree with Chairman Nadler this morning when he said Donald Trump is not above the law,” Ratcliffe said. “But he damn sure should not be below the law which is where Volume II of this report puts him.”
Advisers to the president told Axios that Trump had already been considering Ratcliffe for the position before Mueller’s testimony. He had also reportedly been on Trump’s short list to replace former Attorney General Jeff Sessions following his dismissal last November.
CNN reported last week that Ratcliffe has been under consideration for a job within the administration. Though the report did not specify which position. Advisers stressed to Axios that Trump could still change his mind about the decision.
The White House and the office of the Director of National Intelligence did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
Speculation has persisted in recent weeks on whether Coats would leave his position atop the intelligence community. Axios first reported earlier this month that Trump told confidants he was thinking about replacing him.
It was then followed by a report from Politico that Trump had met with Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) about potential replacements for Coats.
Coats at the time dismissed the reports about his potential exit, telling The Hill that the “rumors” were “frustrating.”
Ratcliffe is a former federal prosecutor who has served in Congress since 2015. He has been repeatedly critical of how Democrats have responded to Mueller’s report on his probe into Russian interference.
Ratcliffe’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill.
Jack
In my checkered past, I went with a friend to Rudy Vallee’s home in the San Fernando Valley in the interest of encouraging him to run for mayor of Los Angeles. I was the tag along on the fringe of GOP politics at the time (another story). He was a delightful gentleman of the old school of Republican conservatism. It was a mere 40 years ago at the beginning of the change to a hoard of right wing racist, misogynistic, ignorant, hate filled Limp Ball quoting miasma it has become.
Xrep…..”among the youth of Charleston “ chances are it had something to do with Jenkins Orphanage and their music program. They supplied musicians and music to the world for a long time .
And the Broadway fanatic chimes in with Ain’t Misbehavin’ 1978 Tony Award winner.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jenkins_Orphanage
Jamie
2 things,
A serendipitous fact, today is Rudy’s birthday He was born today in 1901.
second, our mutual friend Patsi had a great story about her and Rudy Vallee. Here is her co-conspirator telling it.
Jack
Well, the Tour is over, Bernal won it (and best young rider), the podium was him, Thomas and Kruijswijk. Alaphilippe got most aggressive rider, Sagan was the points leader and Bardet was King of the Mountains. Great tour – starting to see new faces emerge. Gonna have to learn new names.
Mr Sturgeone, you are a treasure trove of information. Bless Jenkins for making it possible for so many orphans to grow and thrive, in the more or less honorable occupation of jazz. These Jenkins-trained musicians brought humane culture to so many of the rest of us throughout the eras of the kkk and nazism. What a gift.
Thanks
I don’t know if I agree with Alaphillipe as most aggressive rider. I appreciate the gesture to get him on the final podium, but there were other riders who logged more hours in breakaways. I always feel that the most aggressive rider should be the one who most animates the race through the entire 21 stages. While Alaphillipe was in yellow for 13 days, that was not as a race animator…unless you count animating the entire country of France to the hope that a French rider might win le Tour.
But that’s probably just picking nits.
Jack,
What a wonderful Patsi story. Thank you.
Watching AXS tv’s concert – All My Friends – Celebrating the The Songs and Voice of Gregg Allman. InFuckingCredible. Sam Moore’s cover of Please Call Home is gorgeous.
Travis, I agree about Alaphilippe, but it would have been a crying shame if he didn’t get some recognition for grabbing and holding the yellow jersey for so long.
Jack, thanks for giving us such a fine fun memory of our trail friend patsi who forever sparkles on.
a subtitle for that story could be “sake’ for sake’s sake”
also kept hearing in the backroad of my mind elaine stritch singing “ladies who lunch”
True about the Tour changing, but it is constantly changing. The few unique riders who the team owners fight for the names we hear. A rider, like other male sports players, start in their early twenties, peak between twenty-eight and thirty-two, and are off doing something else by time they are thirty-five. Their careers, like baseball and football and other physical sports is short. I look at the Armstrong years, the peak of the doping for many in racing, and he did 1999 to 2005. Doping or not that is tough to do.
The constant changing of personnel in the teams is part of racing. When you see a team roster it has dozens of riders at all levels. Just amazing how bicycle racing is so important outside of North America. Tour of California and the one in Colorado (used to be the Red Zinger) is about it for anything that gets news outside of the states. There are so many regions which could put a week or two of racing on the schedule, but no. NIMBY lives.
Patd
Great version of Ladies Who Lunch. There was a meme on Facebook a couple of weeks back where someone asked, “Tell us something about yourself that none of my other friends have done.”. It was fascinating. Given the talent in this room, it might be fun to try it here if only because so many of us seem to be “fame adjacent”. 🙂
Pogo – Well, Alaphillipe does have those 13 lions so there’s that. 🙂
BB – Agreed. Look at how many teams had to change sponsors over the last couple of years. And this year’s silly season when riders start moving is predicted to be one of the busiest ever, with some big names changing teams.
3 people nra-ed at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. A suspect also dead. 15 injured.
NEW THREAD