Fast-forward to 1975. There’s a difference in subject matter. Dylan is in the studio recording “Catfish,” a song he and Jacques Levy wrote about a young man at the top of his game. The young man was Jim “Catfish” Hunter and his game was baseball. He was baseball’s best pitcher and the winner of the 1974 American League Cy Young Award. Catfish Hunter had grown up in modest surroundings, but his pitching prowess kept him from worrying about the price of a phone call. He was the “million- dollar man.”

Dylan wrote of Hunter’s 100-acre spread, custom-made cigars, and alligator boots, but the “million-dollar man” was a humble sort, loyal to his family, his hometown in rural North Carolina and his teammates. It was a good life Hunter made for himself long before Dylan considered writing a song about him. As an all-star big leaguer, his comfort level was far beyond the aspirations of Dylan’s poor boy, and even average Americans. While with the Oakland Athletics, he once told a reporter he was embarrassed by the “sort of money I make as a major league pitcher working maybe 40 nights a summer.” He spoke of helping his neighbors harvest their peanut crop during the winter. Getting to sample the peanuts in the clubhouse months later was all the compensation he wanted. Yet even with his balanced perspective, Hunter believed that as a player he should get what was coming to him. He didn’t want to be taken advantage of by anyone, especially by the man who nicknamed him “Catfish,” Oakland Athletics’ owner Charlie Finley.

The Old Man Wouldn’t Pay … Charlie Finley, in many ways, was one of the most innovative and artful owners in the history of baseball. He was also tightfisted with his players. The desire to hold every dollar a little longer resulted in his failure to make a $50,000 annuity payment due Hunter on his ’74 contract. An arbiter ruled Finley guilty of breaching the contract, making Hunter a free agent. Major League team executives pursued Hunter aggressively, offering millions. The dirt farmer’s son occupied the most enviable position ever granted a professional baseball player and deservedly so. Few players were of his realm. Over the previous four seasons, Hunter had won 88 games for the Athletics, a fact not lost on Bob Dylan as he sang, “Every season twenty wins.”

Dylan referred to the Oakland Athletics as “Mr. Finley’s Farm.” The working conditions were far better than those of “Maggie’s Farm,” but there was still an imperious boss to endure. It was a dynamic team, one of the best ever, that Hunter had been part of in Oakland, but off he went to New York, “where the Yankees are.” In New York, Hunter would play for George Steinbrenner, who had just purchased the Yankees two years earlier for $10,000,000, a low-ball price reflecting the team’s fall from glory over the previous decade. Steinbrenner, who made Finley seem a minor league eccentric, was ready with the checkbook once free agency kicked in for veteran players after the ’76 season. He also spent his money freely in the political field, leading to convictions in federal court for making illegal contributions to Richard Nixon’s ’72 reelection campaign and a felony count of obstructing justice. His convictions led to a personal fine of $15,000. The company he owned was also fined $20,000. But the combined loss of $35,000 was insignificant compared to the two-year suspension keeping him from taking an active role with his New York Yankees. Steinbrenner’s period of ineligibility included the time that Catfish Hunter was fielding offers from big league clubs, yet he would get around the punishment Baseball Commissioner Bowie Kuhn had outlined:

“For as long as (Steinbrenner) remains on the Ineligible List, he shall not exercise any of the delegated power, duties or authority of the General Partner; visit or be physically present in the Yankees offices or clubhouse; confer, consult, instruct, advise or otherwise communicate either directly or indirectly, with the person or persons to who such powers, duties and authority are delegated. These prohibitions should not be interpreted as prohibiting Steinbrenner from associating with such persons on a purely social basis, during which there should be no discussions of the affairs, financial or otherwise of the New York Yankees.”

One of the “such persons” was Yankees President Gabe Paul, who quickly met with Steinbrenner to discuss Hunter’s availability. Paul believed it reasonable for Steinbrenner to confer with his staff on such an important signing. He didn’t believe it a violation of Kuhn’s edict. After all, it was Steinbrenner’s money. According to Bill Madden’s excellent biography, Steinbrenner, the suspended owner was happy to direct some of the action, “You do what you feel you have to do,” Steinbrenner told Paul, “We have to get this guy.”

When Hunter decided he would sign with the Yankees as long as they accepted his terms, Paul and Yankees limited partner Ed Greenwald discussed whether they could take the heat for such an expenditure. Madden’s book, published in 2010, lets readers experience life with George:

“You’re going to need to make a decision, Gabe,” Greenwald said, “I just don’t know.”
“Well,” said Paul, “the way I look at it, we’ll all be dead in 20 years and this is a chance to change the course of baseball in New York from a secondary position to one of dominance. It’s worth it. I say let’s do it.”

So Greenwald got Steinbrenner on the phone to explain how they did what they did because they “had to do to get this guy.” Steinbrenner apparently forgot the autonomy he granted them.
“How much?” he screamed at Greenwald. “I don’t know if the banks are going to go for this! What’s the matter with you? You’ve let them manipulate you into looking like fools.”

“But George____” Greenwald interrupted.

“Shut up,” Steinbrenner yelled. “You’re just a fucking errand boy.”

A bit later Steinbrenner cooled down and decided the Yankees could go through with the deal.

We Might Work Too Hard . . . With many of Steinbrenner’s free agent acquisitions, he didn’t get his money’s worth. That wasn’t the case with Hunter. Although it was only in the ’75 season that he matched his best efforts with Oakland, he did have a major role in returning the Yankees and New York to baseball dominance. In the five seasons Hunter played for the Yankees, they made the World Series three times, winning it twice. Yet diabetes and the strain of pitching nearly 3,600 major league innings (including post-season games) exacted a toll on Hunter. He retired after the ’79 season at the age of 33.

When George Steinbrenner passed away in July, 2010 at the age of 80, he received far greater tributes than those with long memories could have predicted. His willingness to spend big on his team and let everyone know he was Boss made a solid impression on many of the Yankees’ fans. Yet others could agree with baseball journalist Peter Golenbock when he wrote of Steinbrenner’s “shabby tyranny.”

The farcical lout that is Steinbrenner in Seinfeld was a far less mercurial and vindictive figure than he was for most of his years as the Yankees’ owner. In the situation comedy, his whims caused no harm. In real life, Steinbrenner created agony for those who riled him. And he was easily riled. But regardless of whether he’s mourned or remembered as a bombastic nuisance, Steinbrenner’s impact on baseball was huge. With his money and desire to win, Steinbrenner put many of baseball’s top names in New York uniforms. Most of them would produce, but few would be as successful and low-maintenance as Catfish Hunter.

Even Billy Martin Grins When the Fish is in the Game … So wrote Bob Dylan in the sixth and last verse of “Catfish.” The lyrics of the song are featured on bobdylan.com/songs. Dylan’s recording of “Catfish,” containing only the song’s first three verses, was made on July 28, 1975. That was seven days after Martin was fired as manager of the Texas Rangers. Less than two weeks before Martin’s dismissal, Hunter shut out the Rangers, giving the Yankees a 4-0 win. It’s hard to imagine Martin, intense competitor that he was, grinning as his team went scoreless despite his admiration for Hunter’s pitching prowess. Billy Martin hated losing. He once told The Sporting News, “The day I become a good loser, I’m quitting baseball.”

So what was causing Billy Martin to grin? Or is the reported grin a bit of poetic license on Dylan’s part? John Hinchey, author of Like A Complete Unknown, had trouble believing Dylan simply made it up about Martin. “That just goes against the verisimilitude the song establishes,” said Hinchey, “I think if it was a fantasy, he would have said so, i.e., Even Billy Martin would (have to) smile, or some such.” Hinchey surmised Dylan went to the July 8 Yankees-Rangers game or watched it on TV. Given Dylan’s reportedly bad eyesight, Hinchey suspected that when Dylan “looked across the diamond and into the Texas dugout, a grimacing Billy Martin appeared to him to be smiling. Now Dylan probably knew he was seeing things, but being a poet, he went with a delicious appearance over banal reality.”

Hinchey’s summation is logical and makes all the sense in the world, but then we find that Dylan, as with many pitchers, may have slipped us a curve —or an eephus pitch. After writing an earlier story on “Catfish,” I came upon a 2004 volume of Bob Dylan Lyrics, the edition containing the lyrics of all his released songs from 1962 through 2001. On page 354 is a blue-tinted collage of photos, the two largest being of Dylan, with verses 4,5 and 6 of “Catfish” featured on the graphic. Those are the verses not included on Dylan’s July 1975 recording of the song included on The Bootleg Series Volumes 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991 (released in late March 1991).

The first two lines of verse six on the graphic, apparently written in Dylan’s hand, are:

Even Billy Virdon grins

When the Fish is in the game

Billy Virdon? Oh — that’s Bill Virdon, the New York Yankees’ manager for all of the 1974 season and through most of the next one. The Sporting News, known as “The Baseball Bible,” named Virdon as 1974’s MLB Manager of the Year, but even with the signings of Hunter and Bobby Bonds, the Yankees played sluggishly for most of ’75. On the first of August, Steinbrenner, unhappy with the low-key Virdon, signed Billy Martin, out of work for only ten days, to replace him. Martin, coincidentally, was named American League Manager of the Year by the Associated Press in ’74 after his great turnaround job with the Rangers, the worst team in the majors over the two previous seasons. The Rangers played with less spark in ’75, which was partly why Texas fired him, but it was mainly his combative approach with the front office and ownership that got him the heave-ho, just as it was with the Minnesota Twins after the ’69 season and the Detroit Tigers in ’73.

Martin’s one-year turnaround with the Twins was incredible and his three-year run with the Tigers may have been more impressive. The guy could manage a team — in the game — like no one else in baseball, but he couldn’t manage his temper. It’s isn’t just an owner like Steinbrenner who resents pushback from the people he pays. Baseball owners and general managers are often possessed with imposing egos and unforgiving attitudes. When they’re signing the checks, eventually they find a way to handle a Billy Martin — as in firing him, which over 16 seasons, the Twins, Tigers, Rangers and the Oakland Athletics all did at one point and the Yankees did five times.

A truism in baseball is that managers are hired to be fired, then only to be hired again, and so forth. Bill Virdon was a major league manager of four teams over 13 consecutive years, winning 995 games, even managing a grin from time to time, as he should have, given that ten of his players, including Roberto Clemente, Joe Morgan, Gary Carter, Nolan Ryan, Don Sutton, and, of course, Hunter, were all elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame. Just like Dylan forecasted wrote years before Hunter’s Hall of Fame induction :

Every season twenty wins

Gonna make the Hall of Fame

Polar opposites that they were, it still makes sense that both Virdon and Martin would grin with Hunter on the mound, especially on that evening of July 8, 1975. Martin, still in a Texas uniform, could’ve imparted a wry grin over how futile it all was: his Rangers, a struggling team flailing away against the best pitcher in the big leagues. The Yankees, predicted by some of the experts to win the American League’s East that season, were only 6 games above .500 on the day Hunter hurled his 4-0 gem against Texas. Virdon needed the victory, which would compel a grin. As on that day, Hunter would give the Yankees their money’s worth all season, winning 23 games, completing 30 of the 39 games he started, hurling a total of 328 innings.

Besides Virdon’s limited capacity for grins, also intriguing about “Catfish” among those who followed Virdon’s career as a player and manager is Dylan calling him “Billy.” In the many stories I’ve read about Virdon in my stacks of baseball periodicals over the decades, he was always referred to as “Bill.” Maybe his mom and wife would call him Billy, but not the baseball press, nor his teammates. But Dylan did, at least in a verse of what may have been a first draft of his very fine composition that it seems he didn’t finish recording.

Mr. Virdon has something like a grin for the photographer in 1974.

John Hinchey and I have discussed “Catfish” quite often over the last decade or so. Both of us have busily followed Dylan since the ’60s just as we have big league baseball. Recently he noted that he and I may be the only people who really care about the song. It could be that Dylan doesn’t. Nearly 15 years passed after recording the three-verse rendition of the song before including in a compilation of previously unreleased material. He’s never performed the song in concert. So John may be right.

Still, “Catfish” is a terrific song, and so is Dylan’s recording, even if the last three verses aren’t included. When Dylan opens with “Lazy stadium night,” an aura is established, appropriate for the country blues treatment Dylan, on guitar, and his backing musicians create. Instead of a setting like Shea Stadium,* where Hunter blanked the Texas Rangers in July ’75, perhaps we can visualize a smaller and older major league ballpark like Municipal Stadium** in Kansas City, where Hunter played his first three big league seasons prior to the Athletics moving to Oakland.

Joining Dylan on “Catfish” are bass player Rob Stoner, slide guitarist Erik Frandsen, and Sugarblue on harmonica, providing the atmosphere of an America long gone, not in such a hurry and not having to deal with unwelcomed noise at every moment. Sugarblue’s harmonica playing especially rounds off the effect, providing just a taste of how he would energize the Rolling Stones’ “Miss You” three years later.

Give Bob Dylan credit. As with Catfish Hunter, he has namechecked many who have contributed to America’s greatness and singularity. The lazy stadium night with no worries and no hurry feels like a wonderful place to be. And no doubt Hunter’s greatness on the pitching mound, his standing up to his boss over a contract violation, his humble attitude and generosity to friends were great examples for this country — and remain so in a time in which distinction and humility are increasingly rare.

*The New York Yankees played all their home games in Shea Stadium (the home of the New York Mets in Queens) during the 1974 and 1975 seasons while Yankee Stadium was undergoing extensive renovations.

**From 1955 through 1967 The Kansas City Athletics played in Municipal Stadium after relocating from Philadelphia. The Athletics posted a losing record in every one of their thirteen seasons in Kansas City, finishing in last place five times. Municipal Stadium does have a colorful history though, as home of the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues from 1923 through 1955. (Throughout those years, the stadium was first known as Muehlenbach Stadium, then Ruppert Field and finally Blues Stadium before it was renamed Municipal Stadium upon the Athletics’ arrival in ‘55. After the Athletics departed for Oakland, Kansas City was awarded a new American League franchise, the Royals. Their first season was in 1969 and they played in Municipal Stadium through 1972.) A ballpark that thisgreatgame.com, a site promoted as “The Online Book Of Baseball,” reports that Municipal Stadium was an “artless but fully pragmatic ballpark with the visual flourishes provided by its many colorful performers.”

In an upcoming post, look for more on the Dylan mystery man of sorts, Bill Virdon.

After watching The Beatles’ American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show on February 7, 1964, Graham called The Beatles “a passing phase, symptoms of the uncertainty of the times and the confusion about us.” Days later, radio reporter Ed Rudy asked Lennon if he thought their new fame was a fad. Lennon was hardly offended by the question, replying, “Oh, obviously. Anything in this business is a fad.” Of course, Graham and Lennon were wrong. In fact, the staying power of the group appeared even stronger with Beatles For Sale and Beatles ‘65. After their astounding success over the previous year, The Beatles were digging deeper. In ways both subtle and dynamic, their sound grew more expansive. They were in touch with their roots while taking the genre of rock ‘n’ roll music further. As if that were easy: In July 1964, A Hard Day’s Night, an album of 14 songs, all written by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, with 7 from their film of the same title, was released in the United Kingdom, with most of the 14 songs spread across two American albums. The U.K. release is still considered among the group’s best — and far superior to any other popular music album released that year. The Beatles brought zest and maturity to music aimed at young people and they would get even better.

In Beatles For Sale to Help! Bruce Spizer and his astute contributors have assembled another informative and entertaining book in “The Beatles Album Series.” As in previous volumes, Spizer sheds light on how The Beatles’ albums were configured in the US by Capitol Records as opposed to the UK releases on EMI’s Parlophone label. Capitol executive Dave Dexter, no fan of rock music, named himself producer of The Beatles’ US albums, determining which songs would be included and in what order. Dexter also remastered The Beatles’ recordings, adding reverb to songs when it suited him. The Beatles faced no such interference with Parlophone.

As for the music, Spizer covers all the particulars thoroughly, providing meticulous details on every song on each of The Beatles’ albums featured in this volume, Beatles For Sale, Beatles ‘65, Beatles VI, plus the UK and US versions of Help! In fact, Spizer’s reporting and analysis of every Beatles song in his album series books are the best available in an impressive array of published works on The Beatles.

Preceding the December ‘64 through August ‘65 stream of Beatles albums was the single “I Feel Fine,” with “She’s A Woman” the B-side, released in both the UK and the US on November 23. To underscore The Beatles’ staying power, the single climbed to the top of the charts in eight countries. Yes, The Beatles dominated pop music in 1965, but there were other great artists, particularly in the rock genre, whose music hit the airwaves and the stores, gaining immediate popularity and still considered important 60 years later. In his chapter, “A Ticket To Ride To Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Summit,” Al Sussman declares 1965 a “landmark year” for rock ‘n’ roll. And why not? Joining The Beatles on the charts were the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, the Supremes, the Temptations, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, the Righteous Brothers, and more greats. It was a rich time; even the We Five, a band short on staying power, would hit #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 with their pensive and vibrant cover of Ian and Sylvia’s “You Were On My Mind.”

Sussman’s other chapter, “1965: Another Year of Change and Turbulence,” concerns the news heard on the radio each hour, sandwiched between all that great music. The news wasn’t so great, especially from Vietnam, a country most Americans were hardly aware of until early ‘65 when President Lyndon Johnson announced an increase in the number of US ground troops to fight in that country’s civil war. In ‘64, there were 23,300 US combat troops in Vietnam, but within a year there were 184,300 and a year later 385,300. A dozen years after the end of the Korean War, Uncle Sam “got himself in a terrible jam” and the youth of America were counted on to get him out of it. In July '65 Johnson announced monthly numbers of draftees would double from 17,000 to 35,000.

But America’s youth, suddenly in the government’s crosshairs, weren’t ready to capitulate. They took to the streets to protest America’s latest war. On November 27, 35,000 demonstrators attended the “March on Washington for Peace in Vietnam.” Learning from the ongoing civil rights demonstrations, young American activists, most of them college students, presented their case to the nation. Never in all of the United States’ numerous wars, declared and otherwise, had so many candidates for cannon fodder expressed such defiance to the governing order. Yet Middle America had difficulty fathoming the rationale behind the protests. A Newsweek cover from late 1965 carries the headline, “THE DEMONSTRATORS Who? Why? How Many?” Seriously, they had to ask why? Perhaps they didn’t want to die in a foreign war?

Looking back to 1965 when I held the wisdom of the average eleven-year-old, I recall thinking the demonstrators were on to something. Did our government find it necessary to winnow out the population of young Americans each decade while trying to recapture the glory of a just war fought and won in the 1940s? Korea for three years in the early 1950s, then Vietnam with American involvement for the better part of the next decade. Never mind the Hokey Pokey, fighting the red peril thousands of miles away was really what it was all about. Even our parents seemed aligned with the draft board. No, they’d rather not lose the boys they brought into the world for something so abstract as seeking martyrdom in Saigon, but it was preferrable to the boys dying in a car crash. I actually heard that more than once. There had to be other choices.

My sixth-grade teacher, sometimes pleasant, but most of the time a crank, anxiously awaited the return of her son in the spring of 1966, having done his duty in Vietnam. He was a nice guy and we were thankful he returned home safely, but I couldn’t see buying into the cause that kept him from loved ones for nearly a year. Not wanting to inflame my parents or the bullies in my little town, keeping my opinions to myself was a safe course. Like Paul Simon, I’d just pledge allegiance to the wall.

As the 1960s passed the halfway mark, The Beatles were not writing and recording protest songs like P. F. Sloan’s “Eve of Destruction,” Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War,” and Buffy Sainte-Marie’s “Universal Soldier.” Yet The Beatles were presenting thoughtful songs about the politics of life that were thorough and probing. Always taking things to the next level, their songs from that era such as “I’m A Loser,” “Help,” and “Nowhere Man” conveyed the importance of self-reflection, life choices, and holding fast to core values. The Beatles revealed the potential in saying yes as well as the power in saying no. For many of us, today participants in Medicare (introduced in 1965), The Beatles’ messages took hold and held firm. Others who also loved the group and still claim to, lost touch with what yes and no could mean to multiple generations. That’s obvious when such high percentages of Baby Boomers voted for a demagogue representing the antithesis of The Beatles’ spirit in the last three US presidential elections. So sad: In roughly a half-century we go from the blue suburban skies of Penny Lane to a nightmare on Elm Street (AKA 1/6/21 on Pennsylvania Avenue).

In 1965, our national news and feature magazines gave us a week to ponder what was happening. Now, with 24/7 news, we have ten minutes or so. Above graphic is from page 137 of Beatles For Sale To Help!

Also chronicled in Sussman’s chapter on 1965’s change and turbulence is the progress NASA was making, especially with its Gemini program. The achievements far from terra firma frequently lifted the spirits of Americans, at least momentarily. America’s taxpayers, supportive or not, may have pondered the value of winning the space race. Over 5 billion dollars was spent in 1965 alone, more than 4% of the year’s entire federal budget. When Sussman highlights Barry McGuire’s hit version of “Eve of Destruction” in the next chapter, the reader can make connections. Sloan’s lyrics impart the clashing emotions of awe and futility felt across the nation: “Ah, you may leave here, for four days in space/But when your return, it’s the same old place/The poundin’ of the drums, the pride and disgrace.”

But there’s refuge at the cinema. In addition to his comprehensive chapters on The Beatles, Spizer provides an impressive overview on the popular motion pictures of 1965. He opens by observing that many considered 1965 “the year of comedies, chases, intrigue and musicals,” then notes all of that was packaged quite neatly into the Beatles 1965 movie, Help! He’s right on both counts. After three years of dire news (the Cuban missile crisis, the JFK assassination, Vietnam), filmgoers, especially in America, sought escape at the silver screen. Films such as Thunderball, Cat Ballou, The Sound of Music, The Great Race, and That Darn Cat! gave audiences a reprieve from the increasing complexities of real life. Audiences lined up in big numbers to see Help! as well; the film generated over $12,000,000.00 worldwide at the box office in ‘65.

Beatles For Sale To Help! has engaging chapters by other contributors. Beatlefan publisher Bill King has two offerings. Of special interest are his recollections of The Beatles’ August 1965 concert in Atlanta during their whirlwind American tour. Bill and I are both lifelong Georgians with steel trap memories; we remember the same governors and the charged atmosphere The Beatles brought to Atlanta, which was then a much smaller town. His memories of The Beatles in one American city fit perfectly in book that celebrates their music and observes the times in which they had a major impact.

This review was originally published in Beatlefan magazine.

Having met Goodman for the first time earlier that evening, his friendliness and enthusiasm came across as if we were old friends. He correctly sensed that I too loved baseball. Between sets at the Great Southeast Music Hall in Atlanta, he's jumping around the dressing room, raving over a catch made by Dwight Evans on a towering fly by Joe Morgan, the National League’s Most Valuable Player that season. Making sure I knew exactly how Evans made that great catch, Goodman threw himself against the dressing room wall. I’ve watched the play many times in the years since; Goodman’s demonstration was spot on. Curt Gowdy would’ve been proud.

“These guys are playing money baseball, money baseball," Goodman went on, and so would that evening’s game — 12 innings, four hours and four minutes. Then remembering the fans who had come to see him sing and play guitar that evening, he dusted himself off and headed to the stage. The second set awaited. Steve Goodman, as he did so often in concert, would throw a no-hitter and hit the game-winning home run.

It was only natural that Steve Goodman would so love America's national pastime. Goodman possessed many of the fine qualities people long identified with the U.S.A., a sense of honor and a sense of humor to go with it. Yes, those were the days. And like many fans possessing a serious appreciation of Major League Baseball from the '20s through the mid '70s, Goodman took note of the dignity that many of the great players brought to the game. Like Lou Gehrig in his farewell speech, with less than two years to live. Battling ALS, a disease that would eventually adopt his name, Gehrig told a packed Yankee Stadium crowd that he considered himself “the luckiest man on the face of the earth.” Or like Ted Williams, when refusing to sit out the last day of the 1941 season, already assured of ending the year officially with a .400 average, played in both games of a doubleheader, going 6-for-8, finishing the season at .406. And in taking the game beyond the sports pages, there were two greats, Jackie Robinson and Henry Aaron, facing the crucible of race, with Robinson, breaking baseball’s color line in ‘47 and Aaron, in ‘74, breaking Babe Ruth’s all-time home run record. Not only did they live with fans openly rooting against them but also the racist hoot calls and death threats. But they hung in there. They persevered and they thrived.

In 1969, when people seriously started talking about Aaron’s chances of breaking Ruth’s home run record, the news for Steve Goodman was simply heartbreaking. Just 21, the guy with boundless energy began to feel more and more fatigued. It could’ve been something as simple as iron tired blood, but no, the diagnosis indicated Goodman had leukemia. Survival rates for leukemia at the time were very low, leaving Steve Goodman in a race against time, trying to put more life into however long he had left, all the while hoping for more time.

By the summer of ‘72, Arlo Guthrie’s version of ”City of New Orleans,” Goodman’s song about a life slowly but surely receding in America, the life of passenger train travel, was heard throughout the nation. Guthrie’s recording, the only hit single of his great career, seemed ubiquitous that summer. The appeal of “City of New Orleans” crossed generations. My grandmother, 70 at the time, and hardly one to turn on the radio for music, loved the song. I was very fond of it myself; in fact Guthrie’s Hobo’s Lullaby album, on which the song was featured, remains a favorite 53 years on. Hobo’s Lullaby also featured songs written by Bob Dylan, Jimmie Davis, Hoyt Axton, two by Arlo himself, and one by his father, the legendary Woody Guthrie. Playing along with Guthrie were such stellar musicians as Clarence White, Ry Cooder, Jim Keltner, Byron Berline, and Doug Dillard. The splendid musicality lifting the stories and observations of American life nearly three quarters through the 20th century makes the album an overlooked classic of the rock era. It compelled many of us to listen to more of Guthrie’s works and it also created interest in Steve Goodman.

Some sixteen months after the release of Hobo’s Lullaby, I hit upon an opportunity to learn more about Goodman as he was booked for a few nights at the Great Southeast Music Hall, open not even a year and already considered Atlanta's best live music venue. Its cozy and fraternal atmosphere was tailor-made for Goodman. Audiences there always responded well to a friendly and energetic singer, especially one possessing a repertoire of thoughtful songs with great stories behind them. And it was fine if he wanted to elaborate on those stories because he would.

Goodman, introduced for the early show on a Friday evening, leaped to the stage, guitar in hand. Then portly, Goodman didn’t fit the image of the slim folk singer, like a Tom Rush or Eric Anderson. Someone in the audience got a quick look at him and yelled out, “He looks like a stockbroker.” Well, okay. Steve Goodman had heard worse than that, such as “you have leukemia.” And on that evening and for hundreds of more times, he’d work hard to entertain those who could care less how he looked. Goodman knew it was inevitable he’d leave a family behind; entertaining was a way to provide in the years they’d be without him. His determination to keep playing and singing was a way of keeping adult commitments and fulfilling the dreams he had since the days of his youth.

Being the guy who wrote “City of New Orleans” was a way to get the attention of those curious enough to buy Goodman’s first two albums (on the Buddha label) or attend one of his concerts. In the Great Southeast Music Hall shows he’d say, “I’d like to do a medley of my hit” and then present it in sprightly fashion, just as he recorded it on his first album. Guthrie’s rendition, as fine in its way as Goodman’s, was more deliberate, giving the listener more time to conjure the images depicted in the song. Goodman’s lyrics put us on the train that “rolls along past houses, farms and fields” but also moves along less pastoral settings, like the “graveyards of the rusted automobiles.”

The several images Goodman presented in the song bring to mind panels from America Today, the early 1930s mural Thomas Hart Benton painted, although the train known as the City of New Orleans to which Goodman paid tribute was making its way through a different America than the one that inspired such great American painters as Benton and Edward Hopper. Still, in the early ‘70s, there was work to do — by hand with tools, ink, and paper, just as our grandparents did. Just a small percentage of the nation’s work force was working directly with computers. One could still take an hour-long drive from the city and find towns and businesses getting through the day as they did when FDR was president. And despite the aching backs and calluses, there was some romance associated with their labors. The workplace was quite accessible then. Security wasn’t a daily concern. It was likely one could walk into a corporate tower and enter the office of the company’s president and not be turned away until a secretary covered for him.

In the song, Goodman takes us to the club car where the old men enjoy their card games and drink from a shared bottle. A few cars down, sacks of mail are sorted for delivery, all made in good time. But the train is moving slow, as are the old men, studying the cards they’ve been dealt. America, as with the railroad, is leaving them behind. So they bid goodnight to the country that just keeps going faster but never has it so good again.

In Clay Eals’ delightfully exhaustive biography, Steve Goodman, Facing the Music, the thoughts, observations, and the act of bearing witness are thoroughly covered when revealing what all motivated Goodman to write “City of New Orleans.” There were at least two trips on the train itself, one with college buddies in ‘67 and then on a trip with his wife, Nancy, three years later to visit her grandmother, in which he could absorb and appreciate the charm of those “magic carpets made of steel.” According to Eals, Goodman also noted assistance from the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne:

“I don’t know. I just wrote it, and it was starting to turn into something, and I got the chorus,“ he told WXRT-FM’s John Platt in Chicago. “I mean it was just there. I was visited by the muse, I don’t feel like I did anything … It was just one of those things, (seemingly) in the dark in the middle of the night, that happened.”

What Goodman had was something he knew was special. The song went beyond its stated subject matter. In his book, Eals breaks it down:

Making “City of New Orleans” a regular part of his repertoire, Steve began telling audiences and interviewers not just how— but also why — he wrote the song. His answer drew partly from the temper of the political times, including the April 30 (1970) expansion of the Vietnam War to Cambodia, which led to the May 4 National Guard shooting of student demonstrators at Kent State University, which triggered the May 21 recording of the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young plaint “Ohio.” Though “City of New Orleans” had nothing to do with Vietnam, and Steve had none of the fame necessary to storm the national airwaves, he knew that invoking vivid images to undergird a phrase he had coined — “the disappearin’ railroad blues” — constituted his own musical call to action.

Now for those of us who enjoyed Guthrie’s hit rendition of the song, certain memories come alive. We may not have regarded the summer of ‘72 as a time that would one day evoke nostalgic feelings, but here we are. In the technicolor rewind, things look picture-perfect, with guaranteed happy endings if we could just get over the next hump. Too often, the obstacles were created by fellow Americans also opposed to the war in Vietnam. Over 18 months in ‘71 and ‘72, there were roughly 2,500 domestic bombings in the United States, perverse actions in the supposed cause of peace. Since very few injuries resulted from the bombings, those acts of terror have been largely forgotten. It isn’t always convenient to remember such horrors. That goes against what we wish to see in the technicolor rewind. Acts of violence against our brothers and sisters run counter to the hopes for love and peace expressed in songs by Lennon, Dylan, Gaye, Marley, and others. Such actions are the antithesis of something even as simple as the fellowship on an environmentally-friendly mode of travel Goodman described in “City of New Orleans.” (In a sense, many of us turned against each other and ourselves, all at the same time. It’s likely no thought was given to what we’d see emerge over a 50-year period. Yes, then we had a corrupt president, but not one who looked at the globe each day, finding a new enemy and trolling the American people over tariffs, Tylenol, and other subjects a reckless mind conjures. Man, we sure didn’t see that coming.)

Despite it being likely in ‘72 that we’d have Nixon in the White House for another four years, there was room for optimism. The draft was ending. American involvement in the Vietnam War was winding down. Most importantly, we were young — and we could change things. We wouldn’t let a great American experience like passenger rail travel go by the wayside. The old men in the club car could still enjoy their libations and card games. Goodman wrote the games were “penny a point, ain’t no one keeping score.” They were old men with all the time in the world. There was much in those times worth saving. It’s too bad our generation failed in changing things like we planned.

The sixth game of the 1975 World Series that had Steve Goodman so excited was won by the Boston Red Sox. On the next evening, in a game that could have also gone either way, the Cincinnati Reds triumphed, clinching the world championship of baseball. Boston had gone 57 years since its last World Series title and with much heartbreak along the way, nearly three more decades passed before the Boston Red Sox would be world champs. It was fitting that Goodman so appreciated the efforts of the Boston club. Boston, after all, is a train town, a hub city for Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and features its own extensive transit system. Taking the “T” to Fenway Park is affordable, convenient, and a genuinely American celebration in itself. A sense of tradition and appreciation of things that endure are pervasive in Boston. And such are the qualities Steve Goodman celebrated on “the train they call the City of New Orleans.”

Rolling Stone critics had high praise for Cocker’s first two albums. John Mendelsohn declared Cocker’s debut album, With A Little Help From My Friends, “nearly perfect.” Greil Marcus, in his review of Cocker’s self-titled follow-up, wrote that Cocker “is beginning to sound like a master.” Nartez didn’t consider Cocker’s most eagerly awaited album the work of a master. Here is how he opened his review of Mad Dogs and Englishmen:

This live two-album set is probably indispensable to die-hard Joe Cocker fans. Anyone else should proceed at his own risk.

The reason isn’t too hard to figure out. Mad Dogs and Englishmen was formed on a few day’s notice to meet contractual obligations, and sounds, well, like a group that was formed to meet contractual obligations. With the exception of Leon Russell, who excels on guitar as well as on piano, no one has any musical identity on this album.

Wait a minute: “No one has any musical identity on this album”? The reviewer couldn’t have meant the tenor sax player Bobby Keys, who just a few months earlier, blasted his way through car radios and the finest stereo gear on the Rolling Stones’ #1 single, “Brown Sugar” — and nearly a decade before, played that frisky break on Dion’s “The Wanderer.” The band Leon Russell assembled included two great rock drummers; first, Jim Gordon, who played on numerous hit recordings by the Beach Boys, the Byrds, Mason Williams, Judy Collins, and Paul Revere and the Raiders. Drumming alongside Gordon was Jim Keltner, who in the decade ahead would play on hits by John Lennon, George Harrison, Bob Dylan, Carly Simon, Randy Newman and many others. In the mid '60s, he played on “She’s Just My Style” by Gary Lewis and the Playboys, whose bass player was Carl Radle, another member of Mad Dogs and Englishmen. Now there’s a lot of musical identity at work, including keyboardist Chris Stainton, who played organ and filled in at piano when Russell played guitar. In fact, Stainton was with Cocker’s former group, the Grease Band, who Nartez mentioned favorably in his review.

Also puzzling was the reviewer’s brief mention of “Cry Me A River,” perhaps Cocker’s most ingenious cover, as “embarrassing.” Arthur Hamilton, who composed the song in the mid '50s, may not have known at first what to make of Cocker’s rendition of the song, but he would not have been embarrassed. Hamilton, who died on May 20 at the age of 98, recognized real pros at work when he heard them. Cocker and his players approached the song with sheer abandon — and precision. He turned the torch song into a classic big-band rocker that sounds close to going out of control even as each note is handled with great discipline. Mad Dogs and Englishmen could always attach their musical identity to what was perhaps Cocker’s most exhilarating performance.

But enough on the Rolling Stone review. Word on Arthur Hamilton’s passing is getting around as is the chance to learn of his very interesting life. He attended the Hollywood Professional School, where he was classmates with Julie London, who he took to the Senior Prom. In a way, his good luck with London continued years later as she introduced him to her then-husband, Jack Webb, at the time directing and starring in Pete Kelly’s Blues, a 1955 film set during the prohibition era in Kansas City. Webb needed three new songs for the film and he commissioned Hamilton to write them.

Better known to mid 20th century America as one of television’s most determined cops, Webb plays Pete Kelly, a cornet player working to keep his band together in a wide-open town where the con men prey. As one might expect from his portrayal of Joe Friday on the long-running radio and TV series, Dragnet, Webb played the title character with little passion. Even when he’s the object of his enticing girlfriend’s desires, Kelly doesn’t get excited.

Jack Webb was also known in Hollywood as a jazz aficionado with a premier sound system on which to play his 6,000 records. Johnny Carson and Jimmy Cagney were among the guests at his Encino home who popped a few and listened to jazz albums through the evenings. So, Pete Kelly’s Blues immediately served as a way for Webb to indulge his affinity for jazz and blues. More importantly, in the film’s prologue, through a scene set in 1915 New Orleans, he sheds light on jazz being a creation of America’s oppressed Black communities. Later in the film, African American composer Scott Joplin is name-checked. For the times, some two decades before Joplin’s music was a starring attraction of The Sting, Webb’s identification of a Black art form was not only commendable, it conveyed a progressive instinct. But despite his good intentions and the inclusion of the great singers Ella Fitzgerald and Peggy Lee in key scenes, Pete Kelly’s Blues is often engaging, but hardly cohesive.

Even with a cast that also included Janet Leigh, Andy Devine (in an intriguing non-comedic role), Lee Marvin, and Edmund O’Brien, the film often fails to sustain interest, making the viewer wish that Webb had worked in more screen time for Fitzgerald. Appearing as Maggie Jackson, the entertainment and manager at a “grog shop” called Fat Annie’s, Fitzgerald sings “Hard Hearted Hannah (The Vamp of Savannah),” co-written by Jack Yellen, who also co-wrote hits of the Roaring Twenties such as “Ain’t She Sweet” and Happy Days Are Here Again.” After Maggie finishes the song, she and Kelly talk business, such as it is. They ponder the extortion and murder drowning out the music people come to hear. Maggie and Kelly understand and respect each other. They would’ve talked longer, but Kelly had to go upstairs and contend with the murkiness of “protection.”

Later in the film, Kelly pays another visit to Fat Annie’s. Someone had passed along the message that Maggie wanted to see him. Pete watches Maggie as she sings the film’s title song. She gets the message across to him: There are sad things/There are bad things, the blues/When they threaten/Start betting you’ll lose.

Pete absorbs the words, thanks Maggie and then walks upstairs as she scats her way through “Ella Hums the Blues.” But there’s more unpleasantness above the stairway and concealed ladder. How incongruous: Pete heading for a violent encounter with Ella’s diddy-diddy do filling his head.

Fitzgerald was one of those rare singers whose vocals all at once soothed and energized listeners. Born less than three weeks after America entered World War l, Fitzgerald developed a voice of purity, clarity, and authority. On stage, she was a rock; she had a presence that was both genial and commanding. Webb realized it was a coup to have her in the film, saying she “was the only one that stopped the previews by getting applause.” And there certainly would’ve been more applause if the scene in which Ella sang one of the Arthur Hamilton songs had remained in the film.

That song was “Cry Me A River.” The other two Hamilton songs, “Sing Me A Rainbow” and “He Needs Me” (covered wonderfully by Nina Simone in '59) were sung by Lee. The presence of Fitzgerald and Lee gave this film about jazz artists gravitas. However, Webb, the jazz enthusiast as director, left a great song performed by the greatest singer of that era on the cutting room floor. Had Webb utilized the same no-nonsense approach to producing and directing Pete Kelly’s Blues as his police detective Joe Friday did in fighting crime on Dragnet, the film would’ve been more highly regarded by the critics, such as The New York Times’ Howard Thompson, who called it “a cheap musical counterfeit.” Still, Pete Kelly’s Blues did well at the box office, tied at #13 in “1955’s Top Film Grossers” by Variety. Its estimated take was $5,000,000.00, roughly the same as Elia Kazan’s East of Eden and the Marilyn Monroe/Tom Ewell comedy, The Seven Year Itch.

Though Fitzgerald told The Atlanta Daily World she was “bashful” as an actress, her skill at putting across a story-in-song could make her a director’s best friend. Whatever the mood called for, ambivalence, joy, heartbreak, or the desire for vengeance, Fitzgerald assumed the role and the listener found it impossible not to follow her story; Ella does so as the protagonist in “Cry Me A River.” She’s tired of hearing about the bad things she did to him, which were just like the things he did to her, so she takes a somewhat vengeful what-goes-around-comes-around attitude, as conveyed in the first verse:

Now you say you're lonely
You cried the long night through
Well, you can cry me a river, cry me a river
I cried a river over you

An embittered lover sounding off. As Solomon observed, nothing new under the sun. Still, Arthur Hamilton managed to put four certain words together for maybe the first time: Cry-Me-A-River. Hamilton said he liked the way the words came out. “Instead of saying ‘Eat your heart out’ or ‘I’ll get even with you,’ it sounded like a good, smart, retort to somebody who had hurt your feelings or broken your heart.” Quite true, but then Hamilton was afraid listeners might think he was referring to the Soviet province Crimea, not cry-me-a. That really bothered him. In the interview with Paul Leslie, Hamilton noted that his original turn-of-a-phrase left him stuck. He wrote it down on a piece of a paper, which he kept in his desk for a year. Then one day at the piano he gave it another try. In five minutes it all came together. Hamilton remembered thinking, “I’ve got a song here.” All his doubts were cast aside when “sitting down and (then) playing the melody and coming up with lyrics made it a non-issue.” He gave no more thought to Crimea.

In the song’s bridge, Hamilton provided some background for the protagonist’s despair, informing the now-ex lover why it was time to break away. Hamilton even utilized a word seldom used, especially in popular songs:

You drove me, nearly drove me out of my head
While you never shed a tear
Remember, I remember all that you said
Told me love was too plebeian
Told me you were through with me and

So Hamilton rhymed plebeian with me and. That’s called artistic license and it worked, especially in 1970 with Cocker’s raucous version. His delivery of the words in the bridge not only reflected a dubious opinion of the ex-lover, but near rage over the pain experienced. And Cocker had no trouble in barking out the word plebeian. Jack Webb couldn’t get around the word, though, and that’s why Ella Fitzgerald’s performance of “Cry Me A River” was left out of the film.

Whether Joe Friday was working the day watch in narcotics or if Webb was directing one of the musicians in Pete Kelly’s Blues, a realistic depiction was essential. Webb was known to seek verisimilitude. Generally that’s a good thing, but this time he took his philosophical approach too far. Webb knew all about the story he worked up. Black people were prominent demographically and culturally in the Kansas City of the 1920s, but the Jim Crow era would continue for another four decades. It’s likely there were some white Kansas Citians comfortable enough with Black people to discuss their children, world events, or the Volstead Act, but very few whites, even those with the best of intentions, fathomed the entirety of the Black experience. Too often they overlooked the expansive intellects, the life experiences, and command of the language their Black brothers and sisters possessed.

Such insidious perceptions may have caused Webb to believe white customers at a prohibition era roadhouse in Kansas City couldn’t accept a Black woman using the word plebeian in a song. (Or even knowing the word, for that matter.) And of course, there was his verisimilitude. So, Fitzgerald sings one less song in the film and the world doesn’t get to hear her version of “Cry Me A River” until 1961, when her Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie album is released. It was no doubt worth the wait, but the delay was unnecessary.

When one considers his excluding Fitzgerald’s “Cry Me A River” through the prism of race, initially Jack Webb doesn’t look good. After all, he was the one who made a decision based on racial perceptions. So it’s not unfair to question his thinking. Yet we know Webb to have been open-minded in regards to race. In the '40s, he produced a San Francisco radio program, One Out of Seven, that rebuked racists, including Mississippi politician Theodore Bilbo, a member of the KKK and a U.S. Senator from 1935-1947. To leave no doubt where he stood, Bilbo gathered his theories for a book, Take Your Choice: Separation or Mongrelization. Webb, while trying to get his career going, made courageous points when one’s racial prejudice was no threat to a Hollywood career, as Walter Brennan and Charles Coburn demonstrated. As for Webb and his deleting a Fitzgerald performance from Pete Kelly’s Blues, the conclusion is that he didn’t make a racist move, just a dumb one. Fitzgerald didn’t get the star turn she deserved and Webb made a lesser film.

That Webb was open-minded on race may come as a surprise to those who considered him a symbol of conservative values. We remember the way Jack Webb looked during his second run of the Dragnet series in the late '60s. His Joe Friday character despaired over the turn society had taken. Evident everywhere, it seemed, was a lack of manners, a lack of respect, and a lack of values; it was all part of the daily grind. Friday carried a badge and it was getting heavier every day. At times it seemed Friday was one part schoolmarm and one part Spiro Agnew. Remember his diatribes on marijuana? He knew better but couldn’t get out of his own way.

We can imagine Friday being appalled by the freewheeling behavior at Woodstock in August '69 while blind to what Charlie Manson was up to the same week at the Spahn Ranch, less than 30 miles from his L.A. office. At the time, such tunnel vision was common and compatible with our perception of police officers. Cops not only represented a level of authority, they often possessed an authoritarian streak. That was evident in the attitude and philosophy of William H. Parker, who served as Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department from '51 until his death in '66. Parker had little understanding or empathy for Blacks and Hispanics. Minority communities in L.A. were subjected to far rougher policing under Parker, a common occurrence overlooked by white Los Angelenos, still the dominant majority into the 60s. But Parker’s forward-thinking efforts to modernize the department and root out corruption left a favorable impression on the majority, including Webb, despite realizing that minority groups too often got a raw deal.

Obvious to anyone paying any attention, Parker and other LAPD officials helped Webb produce a hit show, providing files and backgrounds on cases that made their way into Dragnet episodes, all the way back to the show’s first iteration in the late '40s. The documentation of actual L.A. crime cases gave lift to the claim, “The story you are about to see is true.” Webb had a hit show and his verisimilitude.

As times and attitudes changed, Webb presented several late '60s episodes of Dragnet which displayed the desires of some in authority to include L.A. minority groups as partners in American life. In a Dragnet 1969 episode, Friday endeavors to recruit young men from ethnic communities to the force. There had been way too many slow-moving middle-aged white men with shiny pates running the department. As expected, the episode had its stodgy moments, but it featured an impressive list of Black guest stars. A Lieutenant who told Friday “we want more Mexican-Americans, more Orientals, and more Negroes” was played by Olympic gold medalist (1960) Rafer Johnson, who several months before the show was aired, worked on Bobby Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Johnson, along with football great Rosey Grier and writer George Plimpton, tackled assassin Sirhan Sirhan after he shot Kennedy. In the gathering of young Blacks interested in becoming a police officer was John Amos, who starred on the Norman Lear sitcom, Good Times, and later gave a stirring portrayal of Kunta Kinte in the '77 mini series, Roots. Seated on the same row of potential recruits with Amos was football great O. J. Simpson, who eventually had his own interaction with the LAPD.

By the time Roots concluded its schedule of eight consecutive nights on ABC TV, Jack Webb was finishing up the sixth and final season of Emergency! Though he did not star in the show, he was its co-creator and executive producer. Taking a starring role on Emergency! was Julie London, who divorced Webb in '54 but remained on friendly terms. They had two daughters together.

London had been a successful film actress before her 1947 marriage to Webb. In a significant role, London portrayed the teenage tease, Tibby, in The Red House, starring Edward G. Robinson, released the same year she married Webb. A key to her and Webb’s mutual attraction was their shared interest in jazz, which was also the case in her relationship with ex-Marine Bobby Troup, whom she was married to for 40 years until his passing in in 1999.

Troup. a jazz pianist and singer-songwriter, first hit it big when his composition, “Daddy,” was recorded by Sammy Kaye and His Orchestra and spent eight weeks at #1 on the Billboard charts in 1941. His next big break came five years later when his composition “(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” was recorded by the Nat King Cole Trio, and then by Bing Crosby with the Andrews Sisters. But the biggest break of his life came around the time Pete Kelly’s Blues hit the screens in '55, when he met London at one of his club gigs. No doubt they talked about jazz and working together.

They didn’t waste any time. With Troup producing the sessions, London recorded her debut album, Julie Is Her Name, which opened with “Cry Me A River.” Arthur Hamilton believed her rendition was “soft and sexy and all the good things,” yet upon first hearing it, he thought her vocal was too quiet and soft. But there was power in subtlety; with an understated accompaniment by jazz guitarist Barney Kessel and bassist Ray Leatherwood, London gave the song a sultry treatment. Her quiet, pouty voice was the siren’s call. The intended effect is evident when she does the song in a cameo appearance in The Girl Can’t Help It, a 1956 film featuring Tom Ewell, this time working with Jayne Mansfield instead of Marilyn Monroe.

Thanks to her ex-husband’s mental block, very few people had previously heard “Cry Me A River,” but jazz and pop music fans responded enthusiastically to London’s recording. It reached #9 on the Billboard Hot 100 in late'55, selling over three million copies worldwide. The album peaked at #2 on Billboard’s “Best Selling Popular Albums” charts and a year later received terrific product placement in The Girl Can’t Help It, a Top Ten film in the year of The Ten Commandments. The title song from The Girl Can’t Help It, written by (here’s that name again) Bobby Troup and sung with passion and artful humor by Little Richard.

Julie London’s and Little Richard’s vocal performances were textbook examples of the genres they covered and of the directions popular music was taking in the mid 1950s. Artists like Troup were going in multiple directions in the same space of time, covering more ground that there is between Chicago and L.A.

Although things worked out for all concerned, you can’t help but wonder what Arthur Hamilton was thinking as “Cry Me A River” began its journey. He presented the song to Webb only to have it rejected over some illogical racial concept. That had to be frustrating, but Hamilton might have felt remorse for turning down Webb’s request that he rewrite the verse without the word plebeian. An artist needs to stand his ground, but was that such a big request from the man he later credited with giving him his first break? There he was, not yet 30 and just four years earlier making deliveries for a chain of drug stores. And after all, it would be Ella Fitzgerald, on the silver screen, singing his song. Nothing plebeian about that.

Note: Pete Kelly’s Blues is streaming on the TCM Watch site through August 23, 2025.

Some of us paid a lot of attention and still remember Nixon with some (only some) approval, some fascination and a large amount of animus. So, with that in mind, it's off to the cabinets where we keep the old newspapers and reach for the August 9, 1974 editions of The Atlanta Constitution and The Atlanta Journal. It's time to relive the days in which Tricky Dick received his comeuppance.

The first thing you notice when opening up a newspaper from the '70s is that a wider wingspan is needed to open it up and review the pages than what's required by today's newspapers. In 1974, the paper was wider by at least 4 inches and deeper by at least an inch and a half. With the larger amount of space, there were more stories and the print was smaller. In those days it was thought that newspapers were for people who really wanted to read and would devote more time during the day to stay informed.

Whether Nixon would resign was a question that nagged at the nation for months. The matter of when the resignation would take place depended on when he and his administration realized they were out of time and that he could not survive an impeachment vote in the Senate. Republican Senators Barry Goldwater, Hugh Scott and John Rhodes visited Nixon on August 2 and told him the jig was up. It was time to resign. Still Nixon waited nearly a week before announcing his decision to the American people.

On the evening of August 8 Nixon spoke from the Oval Office, finally allowing the other shoe to drop. I was working at the Federal Annex in downtown Atlanta, just a few blocks from the Atlanta Newspapers building where early editions of the next morning's Constitution would sell like hotcakes once they hit the streets. At the Federal Annex, a few dozen of us packed the "swing room" to watch Nixon's address. When he said "I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow" most all of us cheered. When Nixon finished, my team headed back to the loading docks to load and unload the last of the mail trucks for the day. Then home, to sit in front of the TV and absorb the news the major networks provided. On the next day there would be ample time to see how the Atlanta papers sized up things.

Both the Constitution and afternoon Journal, had all the vital news pertaining to the presidential succession occurring some two and a half years earlier than scheduled. We also found several stories regarding Nixon's emergence on the national scene, his being on a presidential ticket five times since 1952 and the sordid activities that led to his resignation. David Nordan of The Atlanta Journal provided an illuminating piece entitled "Nixon's 'Southern Strategy' Changed Dixie Politics." Yes, ten years after the signing of the Civil Rights Bill, mainstream Southern newspapers were still comfortable referring to the Deep South states as "Dixie." Nordan, gone too soon, is still remembered as was one of Atlanta's more spot-on columnists from the '70s and '80s. He had this to say about the changes in southern politics wrought by Nixon:

"Nixon and his policies came along at what proved to be the ending of one era and the beginning of another. Whether by design, he changed the politics of the region and established for it a new role in national affairs."

On the same page were comments offered by Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter on Nixon's resignation. He expressed surprise that Nixon "admitted no guilt" over Watergate, only deciding to resign due to the "defection of his congressional support." Yes, we agreed with Carter on that. It sounded as if Nixon wanted people to think he was pushed out of office -- that he was betrayed by members of his own Republican party and not just those lying Democrats.

The Journal also reported on the activities at Manuel's Tavern, for nearly two decades a place of comfort and libations for Atlanta liberals. Tavern owner Manuel Maloof, long active in the Democratic Party, expressed mixed emotions after watching Nixon's resignation announcement on the TV with his customers:

"I'm not happy. I thought I would be. I hated the man. I'm surprised at my own reaction. I almost wanted to cry. It's like when you cut off your leg to save your life. You're alive, but you're not happy."

The crowd at Manuel's Tavern was buying Maloof's beer but not his sentiments. They cheered wildly and hoisted their beers high when Nixon said, "I will resign my office, effective tomorrow." One man stood up, declared the show over and that "the American people have their government back again."

In the Constitution, there was a brief story on Mr. and Mrs. Eugene W. Preble of Sandy Springs, the "golden ghetto" suburb where the great rock musician Al Kooper resided at the time. The Prebles had been neighbors of Gerald and Betty Ford in Alexandria, Virginia. The incoming president was described by Mrs. Preble as "the perfect neighbor." The Prebles' daughter used to babysit the four Ford children a decade or so prior. Mrs. Preble said, "I remember Jerry would always bring her home -- right to the door -- and wait till she was safely inside. He had a wonderful, outgoing personality. All the neighborhood children were welcome in his swimming pool."

Scanning Life Through The Picture Window . . . . Both the Atlanta Journal and Atlanta Constitution for decades had the largest amounts of paid movie advertising of most any newspaper in the country. In '74 there were many exceptional films to choose from, all advertised in the August 9 morning and afternoon editions. Included were The Sugarland Express, Chinatown, Blazing Saddles, The Exorcist and Claudine. At the bottom of one of the pages was an ad for the Atlanta International Film Festival, which that night presented the world premier of Harry and Tonto, with Art Carney, the film's star (Harry -- Tonto was his cat), making a special appearance. The film was one of those sleepers; Carney would win an Academy Award for Best Actor in the film.

Showing at four of the metro area's busiest theatres was Carnal Knowledge, taking a victory lap across the country after the Supreme Court had ruled some six weeks earlier that the film was not obscene. Films advertised for the Rock and Roll crowd were Son of Dracula, starring Harry Nilsson and Ringo Starr and the re-release of Born Losers, an early "Billy Jack" film. There was also a smaller ad for Truck Turner starring Isaac Hayes as a bounty hunter who makes cold meat of his captors. That sounds far more realistic than any "Billy Jack" film.

Ain't There One Damn Song That Can Make Me Break Down And Cry? . . . . There was no shortage of great music clubs in Atlanta during the summer of '74. The Great Southeast Music Hall, Richard's, Alex Cooley's Electric Ballroom, The Bistro and more. Advertising prices in the major metro dailies were prohibitive, so the clubs patronized The Great Speckled Bird and Creative Loafing. The major dailies did business with the clubs that poured the harder stuff in vast quantities as opposed to the $2.75 buckets of beer at the Music Hall. On the weekend of Nixon's resignation, Little Anthony and the Imperials played Scarlett O'Hara at Underground Atlanta. In the 2-inch ad there was also notice of an upcoming appearance by Cortez Greer, who was often proclaimed "the hardest working man in show business." We never did learn what James Brown thought of that claim but Greer had a loyal following. In the July 4, 1974 edition of Jet magazine, Clarence Brown wrote that "Greer nearly rocks the roof with his mixture of soul, rock and pop singing. And the tall, slender, handsome Greer literally jolts a crowd to its feet with the unique combination of his exhausting and exuberant steps and that mellow tenor voice." Greer was a hard working guy who passed away a little more than two years later at the age of 36. Underground Atlanta was a few blocks from where I worked; it was stupid that I missed him.

Some rock and roll got into the August 9, 1974 Constitution with news of the marriage between actress Faye Dunaway and Peter Wolf, lead vocalist of the J. Geils Band. Dunaway would later be nominated for Best Actress for her role in Chinatown, which was playing Atlanta theatres that week. Wolf was also having a big year and it wasn't only for marrying Dunaway. Less than two months later, the J. Geils Band released what turned out to be their best album, Nightmares ... and Other Tales from the Vinyl Jungle. Nightmares... received a glowing review in Rolling Stone and featured the hit single, "Must of Got Lost," which made it to number 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. In the brief below the wedding picture, Wolf is redundantly described as a songwriter-composer. How on earth did they not describe Dunaway as a thespian-actress?

I Got A Suite And You Got Defeat . . . . Having worked in advertising with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution from 1981 through 2008, ads in the older newspapers arouse my curiosity. Back in 1974 the two newspapers, although both owned by the Cox family, had two separate staffs on the news-gathering side. One paper working to scoop the other, never mind the family ties. The advertising departments at the Constitution and the Journal combined long before the merger of the news staffs. Back in the '50s, when the ad departments were separate, competition between the two was intense, nearly cut-throat. The old guys would tell me how a Constitution ad manager had better not see an ad that ran only in the Journal. No excuses were accepted.

The editions on August 9, 1974 were emblematic of how dominant print advertising still was. Even with television pursuing a larger share from local businesses, print still ruled. The papers were wide, long and thick. Small news holes though. More room was needed for more ads, which a ravenous company like ours believed had to be sold as it may be the last handful we'd ever sell. That was a long-established mentality. Many executives found themselves in gated communities due to the hard work of employees they'd browbeat on a daily basis. It was a tradition that lived on into the early 21st century at Atlanta Newspapers.

Then too you might peruse the older editions and see ads purchased by major and minor retailers alike. It's a trip down Memory Lane. There were some well-known stores, car dealers and other services that were part of the daily milieu back in the day. Do you remember Sterchi's? Woolco? Grants? J. Riggins? Whitey Whiten's Plaza Pontiac? Piedmont Airlines? There were Sears ads galore. In the Sports section there was a large page-busting ad for Peugeot dealers. That's right: Peugeot.

All The Way From Washington . . . . With a primary election coming the following Tuesday, there were scads of political ads. Guys running to be judges placed ads throughout every section of the paper. There was a governor's race on as well. The main fear in that contest was the possibility of segregationist Lester Maddox, currently the Lieutenant Governor, returning to the governor's office which he occupied from 1967 to 1971. Georgia had moved in a more progressive direction under its current governor, Jimmy Carter, and the people in Atlanta appreciated every step forward. All the while Carter was in pursuit of loftier ambitions, although keeping them mostly to himself.

Besides Lester Maddox other Democratic Party candidates for the gubernatorial nomination included former U.S. Senator David Gambrell, George Busbee, Bert Lance and Bobby Rowan. Busbee, the blandest of them all, was elected governor in November. If it meant Lester Maddox would have to go back to frying chicken full-time, Atlantans were fine with a bland governor.

There was nothing bland, however, about some of the congressional races in the Atlanta area. Larry McDonald, a distant relative of General George Patton, a surgeon and the second president of the John Birch Society, was elected in the 7th district, defeating incumbent John Davis, a 7-term congressman attacked by McDonald over his support for school integration. And making a lot of noise in the 6th district race was Republican Newt Gingrich, who lost to incumbent Democrat Jack Flynt by less than 2,800 votes. Gingrich tried passing himself off as a moderate and environmental-friendly Republican in that race and the next one in '76, when he lost to Flynt by 5,100 votes. By 1978 Flynt had enough of his overweening challenger and retired, essentially clearing Gingrich's path to Congress. The country has been stuck with him, as congressman, presidential candidate and incessant babbler ever since.

The political ad dollars rolled in for the Atlanta newspapers back in the day. It was almost as if when a candidate stopped by to purchase an ad, the ad salesperson could tell him to take a number and wait. It wouldn't take long. The newspaper would get the candidate's ad and his money in no time. Yet things would change quickly. In the '80s major metro dailies found it difficult to sell political ads. Politics had changed and the electronic media swept in to take advantage of the negative campaigns that candidates learned to embrace.

I Got A Suite And You Got Defeat . . . . Of course the big department stores ruled at Atlanta Newspapers. Rich's was the most dominant, but Davison's, owned by Macy's, ran a close second. Several days a week the department stores seemingly ate up every good slot in the prime sections. The department stores always had something going --like an autograph session with Henry Winkler and Donny Most of Happy Days at two of the Davison's stores on the day of Nixon's resignation. Struggling at the time to build viewership, Happy Days was a year away from being the “smash hit tv series” as described in the Davison’s ad below.

If your client was running a middling two column ad, you might as well expect it to be buried. Maybe on the same page with listings of the people who are about to be buried themselves. That was the situation the Shady Lady Restaurant and Lounge found itself in on August 9. Way at the bottom of the page, which was topped off with the obituaries. Their ad, which promised "Beautiful Girls To Serve You All Day and Night" landed on the same page where people were checking out the arrangements for Uncle Herbert. This couldn't have been what the Shady Lady wanted but you can bet she didn't get any sort of credit allowance from the ad department. I remember the management well. Their verbal gymnastics, sometimes mean-spirited, usually prevailed.

“I Heard The News Today, Oh Boy” . . . . A slight variation of John Lennon's iconic line is sung with joy and defiance by Bowie’s back-up vocalists. Then his voice goes full-throttle in the last 60-70 seconds of "Young Americans." He doesn't miss anything. It's serious business being a young American with all the complexities and bad choices waiting around every corner. Yet Bowie makes it all sound like great fun. "Young Americans" never loses steam. It's a great soulful rocker that proclaims, "Yeah, we have problems, we mess up but we're young and we'll come out of it ready to celebrate again." At least that's the way it feels when you hear Bowie and his group digging in. Yes, in early '75, we remembered our President Nixon and the bills we had to pay. Some are still paying on them, after a fashion. The All-American installment plan. Pick up a newspaper from 51 years ago and read all about it: the history and what history left us with. It's hard to forget our President Nixon.

Things had changed enough, as far as he was concerned, by 1964. One of the grandsons that he and my grandmother loved and indulged was quite taken with the 4 boys from Liverpool, England — those noisemakers known as the Beatles. My brother, David, liked the Beatles as well, but not to the extent I did. David hardly needed to latch on to such interests at the time. He was popular, confident and athletic, always skilled at whatever game was being played at the moment. What he lacked in natural ability, he made up for in hustle and grit. I, on the other hand, had eaten too many grits and was usually the last chosen in neighborhood pick-up games. David was always among the first picked. Sometimes out of necessity, we were a package deal. I’d go out to right field and they’d hope nothing would be hit my way.

But on many summer days while David was scooting around the bases, I was happily inside listening to Top 40 radio. And what a happy time it was for one enamored of the Beatles. In six months’ time, more than three dozen Beatles songs had been revealed. Atlanta’s pop music stations, WQXI and WPLO, seemed to be playing all of them. So no worries. In the years ahead, the fat would disappear and there’d be fewer embarrassing moments on the playing fields, but for a 10-year old in suburban Atlanta, 1964 was the year of the Beatles. Everything else could wait.

Just as they had with comic books and other things we wanted when David and I spent time with them, my grandparents would slip me some coins to buy the latest Beatles singles. On a birthday, an album might be provided. Saturday morning trips to Woolworth or W.T. Grant would result in vinyl purchases. Even more fun was a visit to the Radio Doctor, a shop in College Park, the town William Bell (“You Don’t Miss Your Water”) would eventually call home. The Radio Doctor was a real record store, especially for the South in those days. A wide selection. The array of inventory would be more impressive in other places in years to come, particularly at Peaches Records and Tapes, the upstart chain I worked with for 6 years, but walking into the Radio Doctor in the mid-60s was like eyeing the stuff around the tree on Christmas morning. And one couldn’t help but remember what was purchased on those trips – the 45s and the LPs. Out we’d walk to Pappy’s big ’54 Nash or ’60 Chrysler after picking up “I Feel Fine”/”She’s A Woman,” “Eight Days A Week”/”I Don’t Want to Spoil the Party,” or even better, in June ’65, Beatles VI. Then with the radio blaring, back to the house, with the wrapping torn, one could hear – even then – the various directions the Beatles were taking.

My grandfather, Lamar Clarence Cochran, Sr, was better known around town as Pappy. Given the choice, Pappy was a far better handle. It seemed to fit his personality. While he wasn’t one to laugh loud or long, he generally seemed pleased with life, especially when seated in his lazy chair with everyone else minding their manners. Pappy, however, didn’t enjoy sitting through the Ed Sullivan Show when the new rock groups from England were featured. My grandmother, who we called “Mama Birdell,” leaned over one Sunday night and asked, “Don’t you like the Beatles, Pappy?” “No,” he said, tersely. And that was fine. He always came through on those trips to the Radio Doctor.

When it came to songs by The Beatles, Pappy couldn’t differentiate between “I Saw Her Standing There” and “If I Fell.” The Beatles were a passing phase, a fad, he figured and eventually I would return control of the car radio to him when we’d go riding. The one song by any artist on Top 40 radio that did stick with him, though, was “The Birds and The Bees,” a big hit for Jewel Akens in the first quarter of 65. I really didn’t like it; to my 11-year-old mind, it sounded childish, so Pappy insisted on singing it. He didn’t remember all the lyrics, which was fine as a couple of lines were a gracious plenty. Here’s some of what Pappy had to work with:

Let me tell you about the birds and the bees
And the flowers and the trees
And the moon up above
And a thing called "Love"
Let me tell you about the stars in the sky
And a girl and a guy
And the way they could kiss
On a night like this

Despite the impact The Beatles and The Rolling Stones made so quickly, teen pop wasn’t going anywhere. “The Name Game,” “The Jolly Green Giant,” “I Want Candy,” and Patty Duke’s “Don’t Just Stand There” were among the hits on the Billboard Year-End Hot 100 Singles of 1965. Cute, silly, and halfway funny still sold. Thankfully, we were never in the car together when Shirley Ellis’s “The Name Game” came on (which seemed like every 15 minutes). Pappy could’ve never gotten around this:

Very good, now let's do Marsha.
Marsha, Marsha, bo barsha, banana fana fo farsha, fee fie mo marsha, Marsha.

Listening now and then, or from a distance, it would have seemed to someone born around the turn of the 20th century that nearly all pop music of the 60s was written by 12-year-olds. And legend has it that “The Birds and The Bees” was written by the 12-year-old son of Herb Newnan, the owner of Era Records, the company that released the song. On the label, a Barry Stewart was credited as the song’s composer. Playing drums on the song was the great Hal Blaine, who appeared on 35,000 recordings, some obviously just another day at the office. Joining Blaine on the record was Leon Russell on piano. Russell’s inimical fusion of rock, soul, and gospel that defined his style at the keyboards is nowhere to be heard, however. The same can be said for Russell’s “Rainbow in Your Eyes, ” a hit single with his wife Mary in 1976 and perhaps just as bad as “The Birds and The Bees.”

My grandparents were young and in love during the Roaring '20s. Birdell loved the styles and Pappy enjoyed hitting the town with her. Much of the music then was great. The sounds of George Gershwin, Louis Armstrong, Jimmie Rodgers, Hoagy Carmichael, and other greats made the wireless a noble invention. But there were some silly songs heard over and over again then as well, such as “Yes, We Have No Bananas.” Part of me believes Pappy remembered that when braving his grandson’s favorites. And I wish I had known to tell him that both John Lennon and Bob Dylan considered one of his favorites, Bing Crosby, an influence. Crosby was terrific. Give a listen to the song he recorded with guitarist Les Paul, “It’s Been A Long, Long Time.” I would’ve been indifferent to it in 1965, but now it gets played at my house along with The Beatles, Dylan, and the others Pappy tolerated.

Many of Pappy’s prime working years took place during the Great Depression. While he was lucky regarding military service (“too young for World War I and too old for World War II”), he, like many, found the going tough in the '30s and '40s. But he hung in there. For a time, he worked at the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, where guys like Al Capone were provided room and board. Later he worked in film distribution and advertising with Warner Brothers, the company with the great gangster films. Had David and I known more of his life among the criminal types, we might have better understood his affinity for the lazy chair.

Top left, my grandmother Birdell Cochran. Bottom right, my grandfather, Lamar “Pappy” Cochran. A big night out, Pappy telling his friends how he kept Al Capone in line at the Atlanta Pen.

Lamar “Pappy” Cochran takes out the trash, like Mama Birdell requested. In the driveway is his beloved Nash, which could really fly.

A decade after riding around town with Pappy, I would visit him and Mama Birdell, often after sentimental journeys to the Radio Doctor. On one trip I showed them Writings and Drawings by Bob Dylan. If anything, I was sure they’d be impressed with my interest in letters, so to speak. At the time I was writing record reviews for Atlanta’s alternative papers, including the most radical of them all, The Great Speckled Bird. My grandparents would no doubt gasp at the political discourse in the pages of the Bird, but they never commented on that. “You write beautifully,” my grandmother said. Whether it was hanging out with socialists or playing rock and roll records too loud, a grandson could get away with pretty much anything.

The son of a Hertford, North Carolina sharecropper, James Augustus Hunter knew all about farms. He also knew when he was getting a raw deal, whether working the land or working the mound. Hunter claimed Charles O. Finley, owner of The Oakland Athletics, breached the contract he signed prior to the ’74 Major League baseball season. An arbitrator agreed, clearing the way for Hunter to leave Finley’s farm for work at a more palatial estate. A few months before the ’75 season, Catfish Hunter settled for the Big Apple and the 3.3 million bucks the New York Yankees offered. In Bob Dylan’s words, Catfish “packed his bags and took his arm,” becoming, due to Finley’s high-handed blunder, baseball’s first big-time free agent. The sharecropper’s son could now buy lots of his own farm land. Catfish Hunter was, according to Dylan’s song, a “million-dollar man,” armed with an assortment of pitches and a five-year contract.

Charles O. Finley was a baseball innovator. He was the rare owner who shaped his team. He irritated people along the way, but he could spot talent, assembling one of the greatest teams in baseball history. When Catfish Hunter agreed to pitch for the Yankees, he left behind a team that had won the last three World Series. The Oakland Athletics were among the last baseball dynasties before veteran players gained leeway in determining which teams they would play for. The players would also make a lot more money. Team owners and their personnel departments would take a different approach to assembling their ballclubs. Catfish Hunter was a vital part of those great Athletics teams, and just as vital to the changes baseball experienced in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Hunter’s departure was a tough loss for Finley and team management to absorb. But Hunter’s new-found freedom had a profoundly liberating effect on players. How much more could they make if they could offer their services on the open market? You know, actually participate in American capitalism.

Hunter’s case against Finley concerned only the violation of a special covenant in the contract the two men signed. Arbitrator Peter Seitz awarded Hunter the $50,000.00 Finley had promised Hunter he would put in an annuity, plus damages and more importantly, the freedom to strike a deal with the team of his choice. Seitz’s ruling didn’t eliminate baseball’s reserve clause, which kept players bound — for their entire careers — wherever their teams determined. However, the case hastened changes the players were advocating.  Under MLB Executive Director Marvin Miller, players began taking seriously their rights as workers in a free country. Baseball players, generally a conservative group, now seemed radical to many observers. But players learned how much money their teams were making and demanded a more equitable arrangement.  Little more than a year after Hunter signed with the Yankees, the reserve clause was struck down.  More players began entertaining offers like the ones Hunter received.

In his first season with the Yankees, Hunter was as terrific as the year before, leading the American League in victories and innings pitched. Saddled with the wear and tear that comes from throwing so hard so much, Hunter’s dominance tailed off in the late ’70s and he retired from the game after the ’79 season at the age of 33.  True to his roots, he went back to North Carolina where he spent the next 10 years working his thousand-acre farm.

In 1987, Catfish Hunter was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.  Not only was he acclaimed for his 224 career victories but also for his easy-going, unassuming nature.  The mood conveyed in Bob Dylan’s “Catfish” mirrors the image baseball fans have of Hunter’s temperament and style.

Conjuring a bright and bluesy manner, Dylan sings of Hunter in command at the ballpark:

Lazy stadium night
Catfish on the mound.
“Strike three,” the umpire said
Batter have to go back and sit down.

On both the Athletics and the Yankees, Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson were teammates.  In 1977, Jackson became a “million-dollar man” with the Yankees himself, but there were a couple of seasons that Jackson had to face Hunter.  Mr. Dylan has the play-by-play:

Reggie Jackson at the plate
Seein’ nothin’ but the curve,
Swing too early or too late
Got to eat what Catfish serve.

Dylan recorded “Catfish” in 1975 but it wasn’t officially released until 16 years later when it appeared on The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3 (Rare and Unreleased) 1961–1991.  On “Catfish,” Dylan shared writing credits with Jacques Levy. A theater director, Levy wrote 10 songs with Dylan, most of them on Dylan’s album, “Desire,” released in early ’76. Levy proved a valuable collaborator. His theater background gave him a unique perspective on songwriting. In Clinton Heylin’s Dylan biography, Behind The Shades, Levy discussed working with Dylan on “Hurricane.” The first step, he said, “was putting the song in a storytelling mode.”  Levy and Dylan came up with a stunning story of Rubin “Hurricane” Carter’s life.  Some of their other collaborations were dramatic as well, drawing on the innate talents both men possessed. Levy said, “Bob loves movies, and he can write these movies that take place in eight to ten minutes, yet seem as full or fuller than regular movies.”

Catfish Hunter’s life never made the silver screen. His life story wasn’t fully revealed in Dylan’s song either, but it captured Hunter’s spirit. Levy and Dylan might have enjoyed incorporating other aspects of Hunter’s life into song.  In high school baseball, he pitched 5 no-hitters. Just prior to signing with the Kansas City Athletics in ’64 (they moved to Oakland in ’68), he endured injury while hunting as his brother’s gun went off accidentally. That left 60 buckshot pellets in his right foot and it left Charles O. Finley mighty concerned. According to Tom Clark in Champagne and Baloney: The Rise and Fall of Finley’s A’s, the owner said, “It scared the hell out of me.”

Taking advice from one of his scouts, Finley flew to North Carolina and watched Hunter, 60 pellets and all, pitch his team to the state high school championship. He had already offered Hunter $75,000 to sign and was relieved that his investment was sound after all. But taking no chances, he sent Hunter to the Mayo clinic where surgeons removed the 45 pellets they could get to. To paraphrase Clark, Hunter took the other 15 pellets with him to six World Series, pitching a perfect game along the way.

In his native Hertford, North Carolina, Hunter was known as Jimmy. “Catfish” was a moniker given him by Finley. The owner contrived a story to add color to the pitcher’s bucolic youth. Finley’s story had Hunter receiving the nickname as a child when he ran away from home but returned the same day with a string of catfish he had caught. Hunter went along with the story; in fact it would be at least a decade before Hunter really challenged Charles O. Finley. Then, as we all learned, it would be over a more important matter than a nickname.

It’s not that far from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx to Greenwich Village or the theater district in Manhattan. As always, there was much to see and do there, but Catfish Hunter’s New York experiences pretty much started and ended on the pitching mound. He was not inclined to check out the club scene where Bob Dylan made his breakthrough in the early ’60s. Nor was he apt to see Broadway plays such as Oh Calcutta, directed by Jacques Levy. His heart was in Hertford, North Carolina. For him, working in New York, as in Kansas City and Oakland before, simply led to a good life for his family. He looked forward to several decades back home after leaving the bright lights of the big leagues. It was to be an ideal retirement, one well-earned.

James Augustus “Catfish” Hunter lived only 20 years after his retirement from baseball. The stoic and hard working pitcher died at 53, succumbing  to ALS. The disease is known in North America as Lou Gehrig’s disease, named after another great New York Yankee who died from its effects in 1941. Gehrig was known as “The Iron Horse,” having played in 2,130 consecutive games over 15 years, beginning during the 1925 season. He passed away at 36, little more than two years after he played his last game. Amazingly, both Gehrig and Hunter, durable and dominant, always ready to play, fell to a disease that causes the central nervous system to break down, resulting in muscle weakness and atrophy.

Sal Bando, who emerged as an All Star third baseman for the Oakland Athletics in the same years that Hunter became one of baseball’s top pitchers, had fond memories of his old teammate. He remembered Hunter treating everyone alike, saying, “If you were an extra man, or you were a star, it didn’t matter, (he was) just a down to earth guy.” Bando also took note of what brought pleasure to Catfish, recalling,  “He was up by 4 or 5 and went fishing. He got in about noon, showered, went to the ballpark, pitched 10 innings and drove in the winning run.”

Hunter’s life was a mix of old and new. He thrived in a time of change in professional sports but still concerned himself with his crops back home. He enjoyed needling fellow Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson, particularly about Jackson’s flamboyance. He once told New York Post reporter Maury Allen that Reggie wasn’t such a bad guy. Hunter said, “He would give you the shirt off his back. But then, of course, he would call a press conference to announce it.” One can imagine Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson at Hall of Fame ceremonies in Cooperstown, New York. They might have discussed Jackson hitting a home run in the last World Series game they played in as teammates. Hunter was the winning pitcher in that game, the one that clinched the ’78 World Series for The New York Yankees. Jackson might have preferred to talk about his homer. Yet Hunter could remind Jackson of how he struck him out in Bob Dylan’s song. That may or may not have fazed Jackson.  After all, he struck out 2,597 times, the most in major league history. But he also hit 563 home runs, some putting Hunter in the lead during big games. As with much in life, baseball has great symmetry: a couple of million dollar men helping each other out.

Charles Oscar Finley longed to be adored, if not loved, though he acted despicably at times. He considered himself a self-made man and expected other men to meet his standards, even as those standards shifted wildly. In the mid-1940s, flat on his back with tuberculosis, Finley envisioned ways to make a fortune in the health insurance business. All Finley had to do was get well, then he could take on the world. He recovered well enough, making the big bucks and spending them in the public arena. Checkbook in hand, over a six-year period, Finley was set on buying a major league baseball team. After the end of the 1954 season, he came very close to purchasing the Philadelphia Athletics, for most of two decades the doormat of the American League, from Connie Mack and his family. However, Finley was outmaneuvered by Chicago businessman Arnold Johnson, who then moved the Athletics to Kansas City. Finley kept at it though, making bids to purchase the Detroit Tigers, then the Chicago White Sox, and the American League expansion team slated for Southern California, the Los Angeles Angels. Right after the “Singing Cowboy,” Gene Autry, was awarded purchasing rights to the Angels, Finley again cast his eyes on the Athletics, playing as woefully in Kansas City as they had in Philadelphia. For just under $2,000,000.00, Finley bought the Kansas City Athletics (A’s) prior to the 1961 season. Working the charm-offensive, Finley promised to “keep the A’s permanently in Kansas City and build a winning ball club.”

Over Finley’s first eight seasons as owner, the Athletics were nothing like a winning ball club. In the ’61, ’64 and ’65 seasons, for example, they lost a combined 308 games. The A’s, in their 13 years in Kansas City, never finished with a winning percentage better than .463, that being the ’66 season, when they finished 12 games under .500, yet showing some promise. It was during the ’66 season that two A’s pitchers, Jack Aker and Jim Nash graced the covers of The Sporting News — the “Baseball Bible.” But during the next season there were serious setbacks (some sad, others uproarious). Things got ugly, mostly because of Charlie Finley, but still, to those keeping up with the game in ’67, it was apparent the A’s had a solid future — although not in Kansas City, as the peripatetic Finley in ‘68 would move the A’s to Oakland, California.

Sing While You Slave. . . . Maggie, her brother, father and mother were exploitative bosses. As revealed by Bob Dylan, they doled out small change and contempt. Dylan’s ’65 recording, “Maggie’s Farm,” reflects the disdain and indifference directed at workers grinding out a living. A decade later, with “Catfish,” Dylan wrote of a more privileged and highly skilled worker, Jim “Catfish” Hunter. One of the finest pitchers in the history of major league baseball, Hunter, according to Dylan, worked on “Mr. Finley’s farm,” where “the old man wouldn’t pay.” Charles Oscar Finley, owner of the Oakland Athletics, failed to honor his contractual agreement with Hunter. That made Hunter a free agent. “He packed his arm and took his glove,” becoming a “million dollar man.” Finley’s parsimony and vanity got the best of him. He lost a workhorse of a pitcher who had won over 100 games for the Athletics in the 5 previous seasons. But as the Beatles found out, Finley wasn’t always so cheap. He saw an open date on their second American tour: September 17, 1964. Finley agreed to pay them $150,000 to play that evening at Kansas City Municipal Stadium, then the home of the A’s. The Beatles would’ve enjoyed their day off, but $150,000 was huge money then — even in the entertainment business. So just a few months before Dylan recorded “Maggie’s Farm,” The Beatles took the field in Kansas City and played at Finley’s farm.

Tickets to the concert read: CHARLES O. FINLEY IS PLEASED TO PRESENT FOR THE ENJOYMENT OF THE BEATLES FANS IN MID-AMERICA, “THE BEATLES” IN PERSON. Charles O. Finley wanted it known to Kansas Citians that he was responsible for bringing the Beatles to town. As far as he was concerned, it was time to score some PR points. He certainly hadn’t done so with the A’s in the four years since he purchased them, even as he declared, “My intentions are to keep the A’s permanently in Kansas City.” Actually, over those four years he considered moving the A’s to several cities: Louisville, Dallas, Atlanta, and Oakland. In fact, Finley, just a year earlier, guaranteed that if Atlanta built a new stadium near major highway exits south of its downtown, then a major league baseball team –presumably his A’s — would make the city its home. He was right; but it was the Milwaukee Braves, not the A’s, who in ’66 made Atlanta their new home. The Beatles, incidentally, played in Atlanta’s new stadium in August ’65, a few months after it was built, with Braves management already on site.

Charlie Finley, often referred to as Charlie O., a name he shared with his mule, was an American original. He was one of baseball’s most innovative and visionary owners but quite often an embarrassment to the game. The people of Kansas City were also embarrassed by him. Even bringing the Beatles to KC would win him no love. And Kansas Citians were especially embarrassed by his team. 1964 was the worst of the A’s thirteen seasons (’55-’67) since arriving from Philadelphia, winning only 57 games while losing 105, making the A’s only 4 games better than the New York Mets, then the laughingstock of sports.

Well I Try My Best To Be Just Like I Am . . . . In between vows of faithfulness to Kansas City, Finley often showed his contempt for the town. He told Atlanta Journal Sports Editor Furman Bisher, “This damn place don’t deserve big league baseball. It’s a hick town.” At least Finley was true to his word. For most of his years of ownership in Kansas City, the Athletics didn’t resemble a big league team. But he could always say he brought The Beatles to town.

Wishing to placate the denizens of the “hick town” and gain favor throughout the Midwest, the episodic Finley wildly overpaid the Beatles to play on what had been one of their few scheduled off days during their summer ’64 American tour. According to Larry Kane, author of When They Were Boys, The True Story Of The Beatles Rise To The Top, $50,000 to $80,000 was the usual Beatles concert fee on the ’64 tour. For $150,000 to do eleven songs, they’d pass on the day off. However, they didn’t count on a round of extended negotiations with Mr. Finley.

It occurred to Finley that since he was paying The Beatles so much money, they should play more songs. Of course, he thought of this after all the papers had been signed. That didn’t stop him from arguing the point, even if it meant dealing with a cocky and defiant John Lennon, suddenly eager to serve as the Beatles’ business manager. In the alcove of a parlor at the Muehlenbach Hotel in Kansas City, Finley pressed his case. Someone as self-important as Finley had to believe destiny was smiling upon him, as the Muehlenbach was a historic hotel, one that every President from Teddy Roosevelt to Ronald Reagan had visited. In talking with The Beatles, Finley assumed his own bully pulpit. Yet in John Lennon, Finley met his match. Larry Kane provides the play by play:

Much to the chagrin of manager Brian Epstein, John stared down the millionaire and steadfastly refused his request that the band sing a “few extra songs.” Finley quickly offered more money, and John immediately answered, “No, Chuck. Not enough (money), man. We won’t do it.” Finley upped the offer again, and a horrified Epstein, flushed with embarrassment, saw John look the storied baseball owner in the eye and say, “Chuck, no f—ing way.” At that point, Finley left the room in anger. Epstein, his honor shattered by John’s outburst, pleaded with the group to at least sing one extra song.

In Ticket To Ride, Kane’s 2003 book about the Beatles’ ’64 and ’65 American tours, Lennon is depicted as relishing the moment. He’s taking on Charlie Finley, insurance magnate and major league baseball owner. To Lennon, Finley represented the American Establishment, that club of rich guys who had made it big over the last two decades while The Beatles’ native England was still recovering from the toll of World War II. No matter how much Finley upped the fee, Lennon stood his ground: The Beatles would not play any additional songs. Yet Finley persisted. Kane writes:

But Finley wasn’t through. Just before the concert, he entered the Beatles’ dressing room to ask one more time but was told by Lennon, “Chuck, you shouldn’t have spent so much money on us.” Finley stormed out again. Acrimony was the order of the day.

Although Beatles road manager Mal Evans told Kane “not to bring my tape recorder,” he did witness and absorb the Finley-Lennon showdown. Kane told this writer Lennon was “extremely nasty,” even as Finley asked, “How about another 25K?” $25,000 more was a pittance when Lennon thought of the fun he was having, so he goaded Finley more, “No, go higher, Chuck.” Realizing he couldn’t intimidate Lennon as he would one of his players or a municipality, Finley gave up. A few minutes later, Kane walked over to Lennon and asked him why he had given Finley such a hard time. “I just didn’t particularly like him,” Lennon responded.

The fans who paid to see Finley’s team at Municipal Stadium, as well as many of his players and managers, would approve of Lennon’s sentiments. As owner of the A’s, Finley’s modus operandi was to threaten and belittle those who worked for him and show contempt for those who paid to see his team at least try to win some games. In those days, Finley was, at best, mercurial. He could reveal a generous side only to obscure it soon enough with acts of greed and stubbornness. For example: though he lost money on the Beatles concert, he gave $25,000 of the proceeds to the Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City; that wasn’t long before he stated he would meet with his board of directors about moving the Athletics out of town. His board of directors were his wife and 7 children: the oldest age 22, the youngest age 6.

Even though Lennon “didn’t particularly like” Finley, he may, if he followed Finley in the American sports pages in the years ahead, have come to grudgingly admire the guy’s accomplishments. In the early to mid-60s, Finley and his baseball people began signing some of the most talented young players in the country, Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Vida Blue, Bert Campaneris, Rollie Fingers, John “Blue Moon” Odum and Sal Bando. Shrewd trades were made for established players. Shaking the dust of Kansas City off his feet, Finley took the Athletics to Oakland in ’68, where things began to jell –so much so that the Athletics won three straight consecutive World Series (’72, ’73, ’74), a feat unmatched only once since (The New York Yankees won three straight World Series beginning in ’98). The Oakland Athletics, for at least a decade under Finley, were not only a great team, but a colorful, controversial, and always intriguing one. They were like characters from an epic novel, and, of course, Lennon appreciated a compelling story as much as anyone.

On that night in September ’64, Finley bristled, thinking John Lennon got the best of him. It may have been that Finley went to his grave in February ’96, still fuming over Lennon calling him “Chuck,” all the while goading him over the money he paid The Beatles for that one Kansas City gig. And while he wasn’t fuming, scheming, manipulating or even planning a thoughtful deed, he may have given Lennon, gone for a decade and a half by then, his due. He might also have taken the liberty of making favorable comparisons. Finley built a business and championship ball clubs. Lennon was the backbone of what he called, in a song he wrote for Ringo Starr, “the greatest show on earth.” With his artistic achievements and public persona, he built a legacy which resonates now as much as ever, even though he’s been gone 5 more years than the 40 years he lived. Finley could also ponder how Lennon, like himself, could irritate and offend the established order; but unlike Finley, people still loved John Lennon. As Larry Kane remembered, Lennon was the “most acidic, hostile, most controversial, but he was the one you liked the most.”

Kane was very fortunate to witness the Finley-Lennon showdown. It was a real life moment the political satirist Edward Sorel would’ve enjoyed conjuring for one of his illustrations in The Atlantic Monthly. Kane also got a first hand look at how the matter played out — to the delight of everyone, maybe even Finley. After Finley stormed away, Mal Evans walked up to Kane and said, “I think we’re gonna do something special for them.” The Beatles did. Their concert opener that evening was “Kansas City,” which they would record a month later for their Beatles for Sale* album. Millionaire Charlie Finley would’ve been hard pressed to come up with the money that the thrill of Paul McCartney singing, “I’m going to Kansas City…” was worth to over 20,000 in Municipal Stadium that evening.** Indeed, as Evans told Kane, it was “something special.”

* Released in the UK in December ’64, on the Beatles For Sale album, “Kansas City” appeared on Beatles VI, released in America in June ’65.

**The inclusion of “Kansas City” is documented in Larry Kane’s Ticket To Ride, and confirmed by Kane in a 2013 interview with this writer. It is documented in the Charlie Finley biography by G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius, and it’s also cited in The Beatles Bible.

Author’s Note: This piece appeared in shorter form in Beatlefan magazine. Recommended reading on the subjects covered in this story include When They Were Boys, Ticket To Ride, and Lennon Revealed, all by Larry Kane and Charlie Finley, The Outrageous Story of Baseball’s Supershowman by G. Michael Green and Roger D. Launius, Charlie O and the Angry A’s by Bill Libby, Charlie O. by Herbert Michelson and Champagne and Baloney by Tom Clark. A special thanks goes to Larry Kane for taking the time to talk with us about “the greatest show on earth.”

“The Letter,” a breakout hit for the Box Tops in summer '67, gets a serious upgrade on Cocker’s version. Joe is at his full-throated best, ecstatically moaning; his lonely days are gone and he’s goin’ home. The big band treatment, coming in fast and hard, soars and the back-up singers are mesmerizing as they chant/sing, “My baby wrote me a letter/My baby wrote me a letter/My baby wrote me a letter….” When performed live, it seemed Cocker and his troop could levitate the Fillmore East. Cocker didn’t need a ticket for an aeroplane. He could make it back to his baby on his own power.

Cocker’s rendition of “Cry Me A River” is as distant from Julie London’s '56 hit version as Key Largo, Florida is from Neah Bay, Washington. Arthur Hamilton, the song’s composer, still with us at 98, wrote the song in ’53 for a film, Pete Kelly’s Blues, directed by Jack Webb. (Yes, that Jack Webb.) Perhaps Hamilton’s friends regarded Cocker’s “Cry Me A River” as chaotic, but it was magnificently-arranged chaos, with Cocker’s big band, led by Leon Russell, playing even more intensely than they did on “The Letter.” Whereas London’s fetching vocal performance is sultry and pouty, Cocker’s is aggressive; he creates a straight-ahead rocker that leaves little doubt of the protagonist’s anger. Released as a single in September '70, Cocker’s “Cry Me A River” peaked at #11 on the Billboard Hot 100. It wasn’t the only fiery single to climb the charts at the time. “War,” by Edwin Starr peaked at #1 on September 11, 1970.

The early '70s was a time of great innovation in rock and roll, but for a brief period, Cocker stood alone. He took the songs you knew by heart: standards from rock, rhythm and blues, and pop — even going as far back as the prohibition era with “Bye Bye Blackbird” — and made them his songs. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and even Ray Henderson, still around to hear a new twist on the '20s classic he wrote with Mort Dixon, had to be impressed with Cocker’s singular interpretations of their songs. Rock critic Robert Christgau, never free with praise, wrote that Cocker was “rock’s best interpreter.” For Joe Cocker, the only direction was up. Or so it seemed.

Cocker had management issues. As with many artists, he likely had more dollars coming than he actually received. And as with many performers living on the road, he felt a sense of boredom that could only be vanquished by alcohol and drugs. Or so it’s said. In the May 25, 1972 Rolling Stone, Timothy Crouse wrote of catching up with Cocker the night before a big show at Madison Square Garden. The opening night of his tour. In New York City. Crouse observes that Cocker didn’t have his mind on the show:

Joe was drawing long deep tokes on his joint. Just one of those tokes would have sent any opera singer reeling, terrified, for the throat spray. But Joe kept on inhaling and holding his breath, and he showed no sign of remembering that his vocal chords were the band’s single most valuable asset.

After the Madison Square Garden opening, Joe would say, “I was very hoarse at the Garden. We’d been rehearsing up to the day, which I’d forgotten about.” On the eve of the opening night, he seemed to be trying very hard to forget. Cocker’s girlfriend explained it all to Crouse, “You know, on the road, you need the booze and the drugs and what-not just to cope with all the creeps that push themselves on you.”

She had a point about all the creeps. An artist is targeted by managers managing to manage — for themselves. There are leeches pitching this and that, knowing a performer can be an easy touch. So Cocker commenced to “cope.” Crouse again caught up with Joe later on the tour, this time in Boston. The New York show was a stinker, but the performances had been picking up some since the tour opener. In a hotel room before the Boston concert, Crouse witnessed Joe getting another sort of pick-me-up.

Joe puts down his joint, poured out a neat pile of coke from a plastic pill bottle on the bed table, and took a deep snort. “Oh my, it’s fine! he crowed, “Wakes you right up.”

A curious aspect of Crouse’s story, entitled What’s Going On Here, Joe Cocker? was the judgmental tone regarding drug use in — of all places — Rolling Stone. In those days, the partaking of illicit stimulants wasn’t often criticized in the magazine, which had among its subscribers a fair amount of druggies. But Crouse, author of The Boys on the Bus, sensed Cocker’s career was going down fast. His article explained why.

As a follow-up to the success of the Mad Dogs and Englishmen soundtrack, in November ’72 Cocker released a self-titled collection of live recordings and studio tracks, which mostly tasted of leftovers. There were a couple of Cocker rave-ups, however. One was his rendition of the Allman Brothers Band’s “Midnight Rider;” the other, “High Time We Went,” a hit from the year before. With an unrelenting push by pianist Chris Stainton, “High Time We Went” is a barn-burner that doesn’t let up. Cocker gave it his all in the song — hardly a serious composition, just a groove that he and Stainton put down and drove hard, like a long, intense jam. Cocker and Stainton performed as if their lives depended on it. Just as we expected of Joe Cocker in those days. But expectations can lead to disappointments.

Again Rolling Stone, this time in Ken Emerson’s review of Cocker’s ’74 album, I Can Stand A Little Rain, shed light on the singer’s impasse. Given the title of the review, Return of the Ravaged, Emerson sure didn’t sugarcoat it and he was spot-on with his perspective:

His voice is ravaged almost beyond belief — but this is what makes I Can Stand A Little Rain so moving. It is a record about pain and decline, which to make its point, cruelly exposes and exploits Cocker’s damaged condition.

One example of this is “You Are So Beautiful,” a Billy Preston song which, at its end, demands that Cocker reach two high notes he doesn’t have a prayer of hitting. He stretches, struggles, quavers and fails; his failure makes the track and the listener hurt, which is precisely the record’s intended effect.

Yes, “You Are So Beautiful” was painful for many listeners, but masochists throughout America pushed the single all the way to #5 on the Billboard Hot 100. Cocker’s pain was his gain, softening the blows from Emerson’s review, which also said that one cut, “I Get Mad,” “literally sounds as if Cocker is vomiting.” Emerson was most prescient. During the same month his Cocker review was on the newsstands, Cocker allegedly threw up during performances in Seattle and San Francisco. Those sad incidents would shape the image Cocker would deal with in the years to come, especially once John Belushi’s uncanny impressions were seen by millions. Here was a great artist hitting bottom. The acclaimed singer who once commanded the stage was considered a laughing stock. Still, Cocker’s achievements of just a few years earlier would always matter; the great recordings still resonated. No doubt, that compelled Emerson, with his tough but honest review, to strike a thoughtful tone when called for:

Even the titles of the tracks reflect Cocker’s meteoric rise and fall, “Performance,” “Guilty,” “Put Out The Light,” “Don’t Forget Me.” The lyrics are more explicit: “I fell down on my face/ I tripped and I missed my start/ I fell and I fell alone.” “How come I never do what I’m supposed to do?” “It takes a whole lot o’ medicine, darlin’/ For me to pretend I’m somebody else.” The painful pertinence of the material is remarkable because it was written by so many different people (Allen Toussaint, Jimmy Webb, Harry Nilsson and others).

Emerson’s review is accompanied by a photo of Cocker, with the caption, “Cocker is far from a lost cause — but he is not the singer he once was.” That, however, was not as bleak as how Emerson closed the review:

But the distance between his vocals and music simply dramatizes Cocker’s plight, and the suffering in his voice is so intense that no setting could enhance or dilute it.

Singing was Cocker’s job; he didn’t think himself a lost cause and wasn’t ready to throw in the towel. Like a young pitcher who lost his fastball and attempts to reinvent his style and motion, even if it meant a trip to the minors, Cocker hung in there. Those who knew there was no way Cocker could summon the power he did with Mad Dogs and Englishmen hoped he could at least come up with a “High Time We Went” on occasion. As it was, such hope was soon abandoned.

Word got out that Cocker had recorded “Catfish,” Bob Dylan’s song about New York Yankees pitching great Jim “Catfish’ Hunter.” What seemed promising enough was a letdown. The low-key recording by Dylan* captured the essence of a “lazy stadium night” and imagery of what was then America’s national pastime. But Cocker swings and misses at the fastball right in his wheelhouse. His “Catfish” has no atmosphere nor does it convey the sly humor Dylan intended. It could be that Cocker didn’t know Catfish Hunter from Peggy Fleming. The album featuring “Catfish,” Stingray, was no hit either, peaking at #70 on the US charts upon its release in spring ’76, just as Hunter was beginning what would be his last great year on the mound, displaying the endurance Joe Cocker or even Mick Jagger would envy.

But again, Cocker hung in there. His personal life improved as he continued to record albums featuring songs by the likes of Dylan, Jimmy Cliff, and Randy Newman. Parke Puterbaugh of Rolling Stone, reviewing Cocker’s ’82 album, Sheffield Steel, was encouraged that Cocker was showing some of the spirit of 10-12 years back, even if the fire didn’t run as hot. It was “rockin’ chair rocking,” said Puterbaugh. Sheffield Steel peaked at 105 on the American album charts. Cocker’s old fans gave him little thought at the time. Just a distant memory, like the brown acid and skinny-dippin’ at Woodstock.

A few months after Sheffield Steel was released and quickly forgotten, Cocker hit pay dirt for the first time in more than a decade. Yielding to the gentle persuasion of producer Stewart Levine, Cocker, along with Jennifer Warnes, recorded the soppy “Up Where We Belong,” which was featured in a soppy moment of the film, An Officer And A Gentleman. “Up Where We Belong” wasn’t anything he would have played with Leon Russell and the boys at the Fillmore, but it was a huge hit. It soared to #1 on the pop charts, winning a Grammy and an Academy Award for best song. The song was omnipresent in the early Reagan years, just like Ed Meese, Debra Winger and the TV show, Family Ties.

All one can hope was that Cocker made lots of money from the song. At one time he owed A & M Records, the label he made big money for, as much as $800,000.00. Given the ubiquity of “Up Where We Belong,” Cocker may have had a good bit left after settling his debt.

For the rest of his life, Joe Cocker, his vocal fire burning much lower, became sort of an adult-contemporary pop singer. His CDs shared space on shelves with Michael McDonald, Neil Diamond and the poster boy of fallen rockers, Rod Stewart. Aesthetically, that left lots to be desired but Cocker was just glad to be among the living. Like the steel industry in his native Sheffield, South Yorkshire, England, Cocker’s dominance was a thing of the past, but he would improvise and find new pursuits. To his credit, Cocker embraced life beyond the stage. He and his wife, Pam, married for 27 years, settled in at their Mad Dog Ranch in Crawford, Colorado. There Cocker was well known for contributions to the community through the Cocker Kids’ Foundation. The kids in Crawford and throughout the North Fork Valley in Delta County have long needed a little help from their friends. According to the 2000 census, the average household income for families in Crawford was $27,500.00 with 29.4% of the population below the poverty line.

Established in 1998 and until it closed in 2019, the Cocker Kids’ Foundation succeeded due to close involvement by its namesakes and board members. According to its website, Joe and Pam Cocker “made sure that the funds have impacted the kids who need it the most.” Since its founding, the Cocker Kids’ Foundation funded over $1,000,000.00 to programs and grants aiding area youth under 21 in achieving their goals in the fields of education, recreation, arts and athletics. The Cocker Kids’ Foundation also honored school teachers in the region.

This generosity of spirit and deed calls to mind a chance meeting with Cocker in the late ’70s. He was in Atlanta for a concert. The promo guy from Elektra-Asylum called us at the Peaches Records and Tapes on Peachtree to say he was bringing Cocker by to say hello. Along for the ride was the great saxophonist Bobby Keys, who, ironically, died just 20 days before Cocker. We were happy to meet Cocker. After all, he was a guy, who despite his problems in years gone by, accomplished greatness that most people can only dream of. That day Cocker was politely detached; he knew Keys would regale us with stories about the Rolling Stones, Buddy Holly, Waylon Jennings and many others. Talk about a thrilled group of record store guys. Here was Keys, who played arguably the greatest sax solo in all of rock on the Stones’ “Brown Sugar.” And right beside him was his friend, Joe Cocker, who infused modern music with an inspired blend of rock, soul and blues. For just a few years, less than a decade earlier, Cocker was a captivating presence. Learning more about life as the years passed, he was happy to share the attention with a friend.

Joe Cocker’s career history is an episodic rags-to-riches-to-rags story with an epilogue proving there was always an inner strength to him. The glory of his performances at Woodstock and on the Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour far behind him, he’d continue to record new albums and maintain a busy concert schedule. His life story turns out to be of a man who got back up, never to reignite that old fire, but to remain standing, his dignity intact. The way wasn’t clear and the road had a lot of bumps along the way, but finally Joe Cocker’s career trek is duly recognized. From the legendary steel city of Sheffield to the American steelmaking powerhouse of Cleveland, Ohio, Joe Cocker has made it to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame — with a little help from a friend.

Paul McCartney wrote ‘em a letter. In late February, McCartney mailed the letter to the powers-that-be in Cleveland, making his plea in three paragraphs:

Dear Rock and Rollers,

I would like to suggest Mr. Joe Cocker for entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Joe was a great man and a fine singer whose unique style made for some fantastic performances like our “With A Little Help From My Friends,” a version produced by Denny Cordell, which was very imaginative.

All the people on the panel will be aware of the great contributions he made to the history of Rock and Roll. And while he may not have lobbied to be in the Hall of Fame, I know he would be extremely happy and grateful to find himself where he deserves to be amongst such illustrious company.

With that, McCartney thanked the folks in Cleveland and wished them “all the best.” Roughly two months later, Joe Cocker was announced as a 2025 inductee for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. There are other rock and roll acts who could use a little help from McCartney as well. The list is quite long, starting with Procol Harum, John Prine, Glen Campbell, Johnny Rivers, Los Lobos, Gram Parsons, Jim Croce, Richard Thompson, The Guess Who, and Jimmy Webb, all who brought together multiple influences that expanded the approach and delivery of the genre. Their omission is particularly galling when the likes of Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne, Joan Jett & the Blackhearts, Def Leppard and others who relied on flamboyance and histrionics have plaques on the famed Cleveland walls. But this year, the induction of Joe Cocker is proof that rock and roll’s spirit, going as far back as the late 19th century to inspire the likes of Scott Joplin, Louis Armstrong, Bing Crosby, Bessie Smith, Hank Williams, Louis Jordan and many others, is still cherished. No pyrotechnics required.

Now, who did Elvis Costello have in mind in 1988 when he wrote and recorded “…This Town…”? Perhaps Donald Trump? Back when Trump was simply content to be the Blowhard of the United States of America? Hardly a pleasant gentleman, Trump was still decades from placing the nation and maybe the entire world at risk. Compared to what we see today, he was then nothing more than a passing irritation, like a flamboyant car dealer’s commercials. And perhaps that’s how Costello saw it then. In the March ’89 issue of Musician, he discusses “…This Town…” and the American money-making culture that emerged in the age of Reagan:

“It’s almost become a virtue and you’ve got your entrepreneurs who are like, ‘lovable eccentrics.’ Like Donald Trump or Cal Worthington.”

At the time, Cal Worthington was the most successful car salesman in America, with his chain of dealers grossing nearly $317 million in '88. His TV commercials, bizarre and homespun, were no doubt seen by thousands of traveling musicians like Costello, while winding down in California hotel rooms after a gig.

Costello played Atlanta numerous times in the ’80s. On one occasion, he may have learned of a garish car dealer in rural Georgia who put a $100,000.00 bounty on the head of Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi, calling his offer “100 percent American.” The story faded from newscasts quickly enough, the bounty seen as nothing but another sales gimmick, something like: We’ll give you $100,000.00 plus a customized Chevy Van with a tape deck for your trade-in and Gaddafi’s corpse!

But car dealers are always pushing gimmicks to bring customers into their showrooms. They’ll serve up hot dogs and Cokes on the weekends, pay your ad valorem taxes or even call for the assassination of a sovereign leader as long as they can sell more cars. That’s all they want; it isn’t like any of them want to be President of the United States — like Donald Trump, the inspiration for Costello’s Mr. Getgood. As Costello lays it out, Mr. Getgood wants to be rich, loved, respected — and feared. No matter how much he’s attained in riches and devotion, it means nothing unless he’s powerful and can instill fear. Costello sums it up in the chorus:

You're nobody in this town
You're nobody in this crowd
You're nobody till everybody in this town
Thinks you're poison
Got your number, knows it must be avoided
You're nobody till everybody in this town
Thinks you're a bastard

Costello, no doubt the best songwriter to emerge in popular music since Lennon and McCartney parted ways, is also sharp as a tack. Few composers can develop a multi-layered song about predatory conduct while observing the dubious character of a real estate developer. A lot of guys, like Costello’s Mr. Getgood, who claim to be the salt of the earth, are actually up to their necks in dirt. Costello knew that, proving most prescient with “…This Town… .” Donald Trump, like Mr. Getgood, really enjoys coming off like a bastard. Just ask Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Think of all the bullies you knew in school or your worst bosses. Trump is the full embodiment of all their worst qualities — and he’s proud of it. Costello has the Trump attitude down-pat.

My Aim Is True… In Annie Hall, Woody Allen as Alvy Singer laments that “Everything our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat, college…” That assessment took place in the mid ’70s, when parents, just as they’ve always done, advised their children on the larger matters of life: The importance of good manners and considering the feelings of others. Such advice can lead to peace with one’s self and — if honorable and diligent — success in life, maybe of the mercantile sort.

With Donald Trump’s dad advancing him sums as much as fourteen million dollars in 1975, the would-be billionaire was on his way to success of the mercantile sort, though his personal history is short on showing consideration to others. One can just hear parents who knew him telling their own children, “Don’t be like that Trump boy, breaking in line, always ready to throw the first punch, demanding that others do his homework and then stiffing them on the bucks he promised. Such a nasty kid.”

The nasty kid doesn’t learn from life’s lessons as he advances through life. There’s no gratitude to those whose love and respect make him the most powerful man on earth. Why would he be grateful for the good things he had coming to him anyway? After all, what’s the use of power if he can’t dominate? If he can’t inflict fear? His purpose is not to follow scripture,* as in “Come now, and let us reason together,” but to be the aggressor, no matter if he’s right or wrong. It’s the creed of Mr. Getgood.

Early in his 2016 presidential campaign, Trump told journalist Bob Woodward that “Real power is — I don’t even want to use the word — fear.” In his book, Fear, Woodward offers what may be a portion of Trump’s mission statement on life:

Trump gave some private advice to a friend who had acknowledged some bad behavior toward women. Real power is fear. It’s all about strength. Never show weakness. You’ve always got to be strong. Don’t be bullied. There is no choice.

“You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women,” he said. “If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead. That was a big mistake you made. You didn’t come out guns blazing and then challenge them. You showed weakness. You’ve got to be strong. You’ve got to be aggressive. You’ve got to push back hard. You’ve got to deny anything that’s said about you. Never admit.”

What a performance. After this tirade, did Trump tell his friend to go and sin no more? And what an attitude toward women. The takeaway on Trump’s approach to the opposite sex is that if you’re the right kind of guy, the one who’s powerful and fearsome, then you can have all the women you want, each one ready to submit — besides they’re all interchangeable. Perhaps they resemble the image some listeners conjured when hearing Costello’s “This Year’s Girl” in the late '70s.

On his second album, This Year’s Model, Costello let fly with a sense of betrayal and disgust in “This Year’s Girl,” an assertive rocker some critics called misogynistic. Admirers of Costello could arguably say he was describing a girl who left a guy feeling jilted and somewhat put off with himself. Whatever, the narrative voice in “This Year’s Girl” does not speak kindly of the subject:

See her picture in a thousand places
'Cause she's this year's girl
You think you all own little pieces
Of this year's girl
Forget your fancy manners
Forget your English grammar
'Cause you don't really give a damn about this year's girl

In his 2015 memoir, Unfaithful Music & Disappearing Ink, Costello acknowledges that “Everything in this song is about the way men see women and what they desire from them.” The song is a collection of thoughts that belligerent males have toward the women they think are there to serve them. It brings to mind the hypothetical young man targeting (pursuing is too nice a word) a woman who isn’t interested in satisfying his lust. He’s angered and rebukes her, thinking of the woman who turned him away as a slut. As Trump would advise, “You’ve got to push back hard.” In concert during the early days of his career, Costello sensed “there were people out there who perhaps really did harbor misogynistic feelings. Some of them had notebooks in their hands. Perhaps they saw me as a mouthpiece for their own uglier feelings. They just weren’t listening very hard.”

Over a ten-year period ('77-'86), Costello recorded eleven albums, that if not brilliant, were always captivating. His one substandard album from those years, Goodbye Cruel World, still commands attention due to it being such a lost opportunity — a collection of top quality songs impaired by poor production choices. It simply sounded bad.

But two years after Goodbye Cruel World, Costello came back strong with two albums, released within a seven-month time frame, King of America and Blood & Chocolate. Both are still counted among the best of his nearly three dozen albums. Having performed double-duty in '86, Costello would take more time than usual preparing his next album, Spike, released in early '89. Spike weighed in at fourteen songs, with heavy subject matter, spanning over 64 minutes. Touring much of the world over the previous decade, Costello had taken in the events and attitudes that make the world go round — or teeter. With Spike, it was clear he had been paying attention to what was happening in America, especially with a certain New York real estate developer. Make way for Mr. Getgood.

“. . . This Town. . .” is a lively piece of music, one of only three rockers on Spike. Costello, accompanied by Paul McCartney, Roger McGuinn and T Bone Burnett, takes command, delivering the album’s opening track with luster and muscle. Such a nice performance about such a nasty man. The song includes characters perhaps too extreme for Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities, published sixteen months before Costello released Spike. During the late ’80s, through literature, film, and popular music, the bad behavior of the nouveau riche, particularly in the financial capitals, was prominently displayed. Mr. Getgood was getting all he could get. Nothing exceeds like excess and Costello’s creations in “…This Town…” wallowed in it.

Entertaining the patrons of the sleazy world of new money was one Charlie Sedarka, who “was a playing the piano like he was pawing a dirty book.” That’s PG-13 stuff, but soon enough Costello provides a more graphic scene: “The girl with the eternity rock went down on her bookie to buy some stock.” Segueing from one variant of the carnal mind to another, she declares, “The corporation thief is The New Jesse James.”

The final verse of “…This Town…,” perhaps too hot and sinister for Page Six in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, reveals this private exchange:

They made love while she was changing her dress
She wiped him off, she wiped him out and then she made him confess
A little amused by the belief in her power
You must remember that it was the fetish of the hour

Now what would the producers of Access Hollywood do with all that?

Waiting For The End Of The World… The denizens of MAGA Land were hardly bothered by the Access Hollywood tape. And it isn’t likely they’d be troubled if people like the characters in “…This Town…” ended up with jobs in the White House, or maybe running the Pentagon. After all, they’re no worse than a guy who approves of Howard Stern calling his daughter “a piece of ass.” That’s right, we’re talking about the guy who was nominated for President of the United States — not once, but three times — by the godly Republican Party.

The Seinfeldian Bizarro World concept has taken hold. Mr. Getgood becomes a role model. Try imagining this only ten years ago: Believers in righteous living that includes active church membership, duty to country, and faithfulness to friends and loved ones declare war on much of the USA. Their allegiance is to a man who drags the nation through the mud in a crass and never-ending ego trip. These people, desperate for some reason, or just plain delusional, identify with the worst our country has to offer. They’re all in for Mr. Getgood and they’ll get nothing good from him.

*Isaiah 1:18 (King James version)

Postscript: There is a very entertaining video of “…This Town… “ on YouTube. Familiar faces appear.

Only thirteen, Ruth carried herself proudly; a friendly and observant girl, wise beyond her years. She was among the first Black students to attend the previously all-white junior high school located in suburban Clayton County, just south of Atlanta. Nearly all of Georgia’s public schools, even in its capital city, took as much time integrating as “all deliberate speed” allowed.

Ruth and her fellow Black students, mostly from Rosetown, a Black community in Forest Park, became fast favorites with many of us. Now, why was it that politicians and community “leaders” didn’t want Black students attending our schools? Were they afraid of what we might learn? Because of Ruth and our other new friends from Rosetown, I learned more about James Brown, a dynamic and intriguing performer whose bold and pulsating songs struck fear into the hearts of white parents in my town. There the N-word was tossed about freely, in the schools, churches, and coffee shops, whether discussing the upcoming elections or what was wrong with the Atlanta Falcons. With more young white teens in suburbia coming to admire a self-assured Black man like James Brown, the world could change. Attitudes could change. The way-it-had-always-been would be questioned.

So let there be no doubt that parents would be alarmed if their kids happened to turn the radio dial and hear James Brown utter these words:

Looky here
Some people say we got a lot of malice
Some say it's a lotta nerve
But I say we won't quit moving
Until we get what we deserve
We've been 'buked and we've been scorned
We've been treated bad, talked about
As sure as you're born
But just as sure as it take two eyes to make a pair, huh
Brother, we can't quit until we get our share

And that was just the first verse. Then keep in mind the title was repeated at least two dozen times.

But James Brown didn’t worry over some Bob Ewell-type being offended by the positive messages in his songs. After all, important people, even those wanting to be President of the United States, came to James Brown for help and advice. To paraphrase Bob Dylan, he was beyond the command of any Bob Ewell.*

Three months before the August '68 release of “Say It Loud - I’m Black and I’m Proud,” Brown spoke with President Lyndon Johnson at a White House dinner, where he also spent time cutting up and then talking seriously with Vice President Hubert Humphrey, a good friend. Johnson had decided against running for a second full term in the Oval Office, whereas Humphrey had just thrown his hat into the ring. Close friendship or not, Brown had already reached out to Robert F. Kennedy’s campaign privately to confirm he would endorse Kennedy for the presidency in the month ahead, upon returning from Vietnam, where he performed for the troops. Brown would meet up with Kennedy campaign officials to set up the announcement. Tragically, the meeting never took place as Kennedy was felled by an assassin’s bullet on June 5, just hours after winning the California Democratic Primary, which put RFK in the driver’s seat for his party’s nomination in August. The last words Kennedy uttered before the shooting were “Now it’s on to Chicago and let’s win there.” He knew there was still lots of work to do. Humphrey and Senator Eugene McCarthy served as strong competition as the convention neared, but he and his campaign were up for it. What the party and the nation were not up for however, especially two months after the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., was political violence thwarting the will of the people.

Like McCarthy, Kennedy (RFK) was strongly against America’s involvement in the Vietnam War, but he connected with voters on many more issues. His ascendency as party frontrunner was at times breathtaking. Humphrey embraced what he called the “politics of joy” whereas RFK ably communicated a renewed American vision recalling his late brother’s short-lived presidency, which also ended violently. RFK’s supporters thought he could deliver America from its spate of violence and the coarsening spirit directed at its Black citizens, so apparent in the campaign of another presidential candidate, Alabama Governor George Wallace, who was seriously courting the Bob Ewell* vote.

In 1964, during his first presidential campaign, Wallace thought there might be some Bob Ewells among the Atticus Finches in northern towns such as Oshkosh, Wisconsin. Given that his “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” assertion went over so well in the Deep South’s conservative Christian community, he sought audiences before religious groups in Wisconsin just ahead of the state’s presidential primary. In his book, George Wallace American Populist, Stephen Lesher reported that while most of the church groups wanted nothing to do with him, a ministerial association in Oshkosh invited him to discuss his views, despite his twisted takes on God, race, and brotherhood. Before numerous audiences, Wallace previously had gotten away with such drivel as this:

“I am no racist. I believe there is a God and he loves all men, and if I hate a creature God made because of their color, that is evil. But I am a segregationist because I believe that segregation of the races is best for both peoples.”

At the Oshkosh meeting, Ray Heilborn, a Methodist minister, went beyond seeking a dialogue with Wallace. He conveyed empathy with Wallace’s approach, given that he himself opposed racial integration. A spiritual leader of the predominantly white city put it to the governor this way:

“We’re a bunch of Northerners whistling ‘Dixie.’ We don’t have any Negroes here at all and we are all scared to death that we might get some and not know what to do with them.”

Several ministers, embarrassed by Heilborn’s comments, returned to the issue at hand: Wallace’s continued treatment of Alabama Blacks as second-class citizens, with no regard to their “basic human rights.” Shameless, but quick on his feet, Wallace responded, “You all might spend a little less time worrying about Negroes in Alabama and a little more worrying about the Indians in Wisconsin and the conditions they live in on reservations.” It was classic whataboutism, demonstrated some 45 years before the term was conjured. Wallace was correct in his assessment of Native Americans on Wisconsin reservations but was wrong in ignoring questions about the treatment of Blacks in Alabama. Yet, the small meeting in Oshkosh was beneficial for Wallace, with the newspapers picking up his Indian reservations comment. It brought him the support of most Native American voters in Wisconsin, where overall, he picked up a third of the votes in the Democratic Primary.

Back in Wallace’s Deep South, one of its most successful native sons, James Brown, didn’t see things as Wallace did. In fact, just weeks after the Wisconsin Primary, Brown recorded “Out of Sight,” which caught the interest of the white pop audience. It went to #24 on the Billboard Hot 100 in summer '64, a time of great expansion for the pop music scene. Beatlemania was at a peak, with other British bands besides The Beatles climbing the charts. Motown, the Black-owned label out of Detroit, captivated white audiences with such great acts as the Supremes, the Temptations, and Marvin Gaye. A world of discovery was at work. The white kids were buying R&B and Soul records, bringing Black music into their homes for the first time. Brown recognized this, just as he had seen that whites were attending his concerts up North. He wanted all the kids, Black and white, grooving together at his concerts in the South as well. Especially at Bell Auditorium in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia.

In 1961, a promoter booked Ray Charles for a concert at Bell Auditorium. The year before, he hit number one on the pop charts with the Hoagy Carmichael classic, “Georgia On My Mind.” But that didn’t mean Charles could perform before an integrated audience in Augusta. It was either play before an audience separated by race or don’t play at all. Charles took his piano and went home. But James Brown was already home. He wanted to play for the homefolks without the city imposing its will on who sits where. In The Godfather of Soul, he vented on the foolishness of it all:

I wasn’t heavy into the human rights thing yet, but I knew I didn’t want to play a segregated concert in my own hometown, especially after the crowd had integrated itself when I played Jennings Stadium, the baseball park there. When I had played it a few years before, the audience had been segregated, as usual, but during the show the white kids started coming down toward the stage. Before long there were white kids and black kids crowding around the stage, dancing and hollering and having a good time. They had integrated themselves. I didn’t want to turn right around and let 'em be resegregated. I had grown up with the signs that read “White Drinking Water” and “Colored Drinking Water,” and it always seemed to me that water didn’t have any color.

Just as sure as water had no color, the authorities in Augusta, as well as the ones in Macon, Georgia, weren’t backing down on their segregation mandates. In 1964, even as President Johnson was working Congress to pass a civil rights law that would prohibit racial segregation in public accommodations, Brown’s concerts in the two towns he loved most were still officially segregated. However, Brown came up with a creative way for Black and white attendees to enter the venue, then take their seats and find people of a different race on the same row, maybe in the next seat. De Facto Integration. By mid-summer '64, Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act into law. Segregated seating at concerts were becoming a thing of the past. Out of sight!

Brown hated racism and its partner-in-hatred, segregation. It went against his sense of dignity. It went against what he was due as an American. It hurt him in the pocketbook. He certainly hated what George Wallace stood for, yet he would have enjoyed matching wits with the morally corrupt and — at times—erudite politician.

Eventually Wallace and Brown met, not as social and political adversaries, but as friends. In his 2005 memoir, I Feel Good, noting that he and former Georgia governor Lester Maddox, a lifelong segregationist, had become friends, Brown mused on Wallace:

“… He started off full of anger and hate for the Black man. Remember the “Segregation before, segregation now, segregation forever!” speech he made? He, too, became another of my best friends. He used to call me Brother Brown, and that always put a smile on my face. One day toward the end of his life, he took me aside and said, “Brother Brown, if I had known the things I know now about Black people, I would have never said all the bad things about them that I did.”

Brown believed Wallace’s apology was sincere, and it was more casual than those he he made to Alabama Blacks whose lives he damaged in more than two decades as governor. In 1979, likely before his personal confession to Brown, he appeared — unannounced — at the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery to acknowledge his past, the wreckage he left behind, and the shame he felt. Paralyzed since a 1972 assassination attempt, Wallace spoke briefly to the congregation:

“I have learned what suffering means. In a way that was impossible (before he was shot), I think I can understand something of the pain Black people have come to endure. I know I contributed to that pain and I can only ask your forgiveness.”

That was impressive. Wallace’s apology was genuine, and even with the damage he caused (and the effects still linger), forgiveness is vital, for those confessing and those victimized by the confessor. But forgiving is not forgetting. One’s heart can influence how to feel toward a repentant sinner, but one’s mind remembers the evil the sinner has committed. Open the door to friendship but keep a close eye on the chastened friend.

However, journalist Josh Moon of Alabama Political Reporter, when considering society as a whole, didn’t promote such a benevolent attitude when Auburn University announced in 2020 it would remove Wallace’s name from a campus building.** Moon favored the removal, stating there was no redemption for George Wallace. In his column, published on June 12, 2020, he offered a quick perspective on Wallace and why he shouldn’t be honored:

Wallace wasn’t an ignorant racist. He knew better. He knew what was right. He knew what was decent. He knew that Black Alabamians were suffering and mistreated.

You see, Wallace was widely regarded, prior to his rise to the governor’s mansion, as a progressive thinker. As a judge in Alabama, he treated Black citizens with respect and dignity, going so far as to refer to Black attorneys as “Mister.”

Prior to his first run for governor in 1958, Wallace spoke out against the KKK and he received the endorsement of the NAACP.

He got crushed by John Patterson — — an outspoken and ignorant racist who happily accepted the Klan’s endorsement and promised to make sure black Alabamians never received fair treatment.

It was after that loss that Wallace famously said, “I was out-ni—-ed by John Patterson. And I’ll tell you here and now that I’ll never be out-ni—-ed again.”

And with that, George Wallace became the most racist governor in the nation for a period of time. There was no cause, no legislation, no movement that would help Black Alabamians that Wallace wouldn’t oppose.

Not because he believed in those causes or felt he was doing the right thing for the people. But because being a full-fledged racist won him votes, got him elected, and launched his campaign for the presidency.

On the day Wallace visited the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, his presidential aspirations were long gone. He appeared content to serve one more term as Alabama’s governor. (Wallace won a fourth non-consecutive four-year term in '83, winning the support of Alabama Black voters.) After that final term in office, he still had nearly a dozen years to live, albeit in great physical pain and surely, immense emotional sorrow as he looked back at years gone by — like 1964, when a different way of looking at the world and its people could have changed his life and the lives of the people in it.

Never within reach of the Democratic Party’s nomination in '64, Wallace, four years later, again ran for the presidency, this time as the candidate of the American Independent Party. Few gave Wallace any chance to win in a 3-person presidential race. Wallace also realized he couldn’t win, but thought he might win enough electoral votes in order to strike a deal with one of the two other candidates that would give the southern states more leeway on the matter of segregation. But Wallace’s support was too narrow and concentrated to enable him to make any deals. He won 46 electoral votes, gained by winning six states in the Deep South, where diehard whites held tight to their old ways and where young Black people chanted “I’m Black and I’m Proud” the loudest. Freedom, like redemption, was still a ways off.

*Bob Ewell is the vile racist character in To Kill A Mockingbird, the antithesis of Atticus Finch.

**As it turned out, Wallace’s name was not removed from the building at Auburn University, but it was removed from a building at the University of Alabama in 2021.

Also:

May 8, 1968. Lyndon Johnson is still president, but he declared nearly six weeks earlier he would not run for a second full term. Becoming President of the United States was his lifelong ambition, but four and a half years in the office had sucked the life out of him. Some of it was his own doing. By making the Vietnam War the American War and committing, within four years, 536,000 US soldiers to battle, Johnson created a great divide in the United States. The country had done well enough to avoid regional conflicts since President Eisenhower negotiated the end of the Korean War in ‘53, but here was Johnson putting the Cold War between the US and the Soviets to a low simmer. This was severe upheaval for the country that Johnson dearly wished would love him. Sons, brothers, and husbands going off to war. By year’s end, a total of 31,000 soldiers returned home in boxes. The annual US death toll in the war had gone from 216 to nearly 17,000 in just four years. This was hardly the way to earn the love of the American people.

But on that May evening, a festive atmosphere fills The White House. A state dinner is being held for Thanom Kittikachorn, the Prime Minister of Thailand, an important ally of the United States, given that Bangkok is roughly 550 miles from Saigon. Among the dinner guests were a handful of men whose names were in the papers daily for the better part of 25 years: Clark Clifford, Sam Ervin, Birch Bayh, Edward Bennett Williams, Cyrus Vance, Dean Rusk, John Anderson, Allen Drury, and Earl Wilson, men who were making the news or writing about it. A very special guest was James Brown, already a friend of Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s. Just before the dinner, President Johnson left a note on Brown’s place card, saying, “Thanks much for what you are doing for your country — LBJ.” Johnson and Brown talked a little, but official duties held precedence. He toasted the prime minister and promised “to never abandon our commitment or compromise the future of Asia at the negotiating table.” Then Johnson got on with his dinner. In his memoir, The Godfather of Soul, Brown wrote, “He was eating a lot of food. That man was hungry.”

In two days, representatives from the United States and North Vietnam would meet for the first time to plan negotiations to end the war. Formal talks would break down after three days. Nearly five more years would pass before the signing of a peace agreement. President Johnson, who escalated the war against North Vietnam, yet welcomed the negotiations, was a victim of the war himself. He much preferred to spend his administration’s energy and the nation’s money on his Great Society programs. The $77 billion spent on the war would’ve been more wisely used for environmental protection, education and health care. After he left office, Johnson told journalist Doris Kearns Goodwin of the corner he was forced into by the war. From her book, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream, we read of Johnson’s struggling over his choices:

“I knew from the start that I was bound to be crucified either way I moved. If I left the woman I really loved — the Great Society — in order to get involved with that bitch of a war on the other side of the world, then I would lose everything at home. All my programs. All my hopes to feed the hungry and shelter the homeless. All my dreams to provide education and medical care to the browns and the blacks and the lame and the poor. But if I left that war and let the Communists take over South Vietnam, then I would be seen as a coward and my nation would be seen as an appeaser and we would find it impossible to accomplish anything for anybody anywhere on the entire globe.”

Johnson realized peace in Vietnam would improve the chances for peace within the United States. Over the previous year, large demonstrations against the war had taken place in San Francisco, New York, Boston, and other cities, including Washington, D.C., where The March on the Pentagon drew over 100,000 protestors. Many of the protestors turned violent against the soldiers and officers guarding the Pentagon. The war caused a divide in the nation from which it’s never recovered.

And Johnson knew the promise of peace negotiations would benefit Humphrey, who announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination in late April. Humphrey was an ebullient politician, accentuating the positive. He invented “the politics of joy” concept.

Adding joy to Humphrey’s public persona was his friendship with James Brown. In The Godfather of Soul, Brown recalls a humorous encounter with Humphrey at the state dinner. Humphrey wanted to speak with Brown, sending a Secret Service man to Brown’s table. “The Vice President of the United States would like to see you at his table,” the messenger said. Brown recalled that sounded like an order. His reply was, “Please tell the vice president that James Brown is not his boy. I will not walk across the room to his table.” Brown said that “really shook up” the Secret Service man. But then he offered a big smile, saying he’d meet Humphrey halfway. Upon receiving the message, Humphrey caught Brown’s eye and started laughing. They met halfway. Brown made his point. He wasn’t anyone’s boy.

James Brown had struck up a friendship with Humphrey a year and a half earlier upon launching his stay-in-school campaign. Humphrey received Brown and the first copy of his single, “Don’t Be A Drop-Out” at the White House in October ’66. The campaign was indicative of Brown’s self-styled activism during a tumultuous era. He wasn’t content to simply lend his name to a cause. Brown spoke at high schools, promoting education as the way out of poverty. Scholarships were granted. He spoke with public officials, seeking their support.

Eventually, Hubert Humphrey would get James Brown’s support — and endorsement— in his campaign for President, but that was due to the death of Robert F. Kennedy, who looked to be on his way to the Democratic nomination before he was assassinated on June 5, hours after winning the California Primary. Weeks before, Brown had already decided to endorse Kennedy. Upon returning from his trip to Vietnam, where he performed for the troops, Brown and the Kennedy campaign would meet up and iron out the details. But the get-together never took place. Bullets and hatred, as with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. just two months earlier, were taking lives and damning peoples’ hopes. America was making a difficult road for itself.

Then there was the situation Boston Mayor Kevin White faced on Thursday, April 4, 1968, one he’d end up making more difficult. It’s early in the evening and he’s at a Boston movie theater, watching Gone With the Wind. A captivated audience hopes against hope that members of two slaveholding families make their way back safely to the plantation where its few remaining slaves will help them through the unpleasantness. Soon enough, slavery’s perpetrators returned to the barbeques, ballrooms, and mansions as the legacy of slavery continued to mount. In fiction and in real life. After the Civil War and more than one hundred years later, in Memphis, Tennessee. The theater manager brought Mayor White the terrible news: Dr. King had just been murdered.

As mayor, White would have to comfort his city’s Black citizens and others who understood America had perhaps lost its last chance for reconciliation. He was also tasked with keeping Boston’s streets to a minimum of violence and damage once the inevitable protests become riots. Three years earlier King said that “a riot is the language of the unheard.” And the unheard knew what they were hearing. However, at the moment, White didn’t dwell on that. In Common Ground, a political and social history of Boston in the ‘60s and ‘70s, J. Anthony Lukas wrote that White briefly wondered what he should do. He couldn’t come up with anything. Coldly, he thought the man is dead and went back to watching the movie. On the screen, Atlanta was burning. In real life, flames could engulf Boston any moment, but White sat frozen until the theater manager returned, telling him the city’s police commissioner was on the phone. Commissioner McNamara told White that Black youths were smashing windows and overturning cars in the Roxbury neighborhood. White snapped out of his torpor, walked to police headquarters and worked to get his city through the night. Frankly, he didn’t give a damn about Atlanta.

Ostensibly a liberal, Mayor White, already contemplating the big job in the White House, was aware of the dissent in the country and longed for the sounds of peace, especially in Boston. Especially at that moment. He’d need help and it would come by way of his new association with James Brown, a famous entertainer he had never heard of before, but known by some to be a most competitive or combative fellow. Things were much simpler for White a few minutes earlier when he watched Scarlett struggle on the road to Tara.

In his book, The Hardest Working Man, How James Brown Saved The Soul Of America, James Sullivan reports extensively on Friday, April 5, 1968, the day after King’s murder and the impact Brown had on that day in Boston. Sullivan sheds light on Brown’s ghetto-to-glory passage while also providing background on the racial polarization that Boston couldn’t, wouldn’t shake. It would be another tough day for America, a country in need of at least a little redemption, even if provided by a soul singer from Augusta, Georgia. Brown was scheduled to perform at the Boston Garden that night, but given the riots in several American cities upon King’s death the night before, Boston’s leadership, including Mayor White and the Garden’s management, favored postponing the concert. The idea didn’t go over well with Brown, who already felt pressed after taping a performance earlier in the day at the Apollo in New York. That was several hours before the live show scheduled for that evening at the Garden. In Common Ground, we read of Brown arriving in town that day fuming, “The concert has been killed!” With that, seven hours of negotiations between Brown and Boston, Massachusetts began.

Neither White nor his top aide, Barney Frank, knew anything about James Brown. White kept referring to him as “James Washington” while Frank confused him with Jim Brown, the NFL great-turned-actor. That was reflective of Mayor White’s overall focus on the Black community. He often said the right things and did appoint numerous Blacks to important city positions, but according to Lukas, he gave little thought to the everyday plight of Boston’s Blacks. He did not move easily among Black people. His detachment made for less currency in the city’s Black neighborhoods. That was the price for giving more thought to the city’s disaffected working class whites (and his own political future).

The mayor’s ambitions were evident soon after he was elected the previous fall. There was already talk of his running for governor in ‘70. That could smooth the path to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Yet before he could daydream of bringing home the troops and building upon LBJ’s “Great Society,” he had to deal with an agitated James Brown.

Brown had enough going already. There was the concert that evening following the performance he taped for the TV special — entitled Man to Man — a few hours earlier. It would air in the early summer. The agreement between Man to Man’s producers and Brown called for no other television on the East Coast until after it aired. Complications on top of real life problems.

In the soap-operatic part two of Gone With the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara tells Ashley Wilkes, “I’ve found out that money is the most important thing in the world. I don’t intend to ever be without it again.” One could easily perceive James Brown, like the fictional O’Hara, also born in Georgia, feeling that way too. He started on the bottom rung of life, had trouble with the law in his youth, then suffered from and dealt with the racism that was an essential element of his native American South. Two decades into his career, Brown, despite his charisma and success, was sure it could all be taken away. That said, there seemed no danger of James Brown becoming penniless in the late ‘60s. He was one of the most popular recording artists in America and upon waking on April 5, 1968, Brown was confident of selling out the 14,000-seat Boston Garden. A big payday awaited — as long as he took the stage that night and Kevin White was straight with him. That didn’t appear to be happening. Word got out that due to safety concerns, the James Brown concert was off. That decision was made without Brown’s input. His fans headed to the Garden throughout the day to get refunds for the tickets they bought in good faith. There were concerns that Brown would be culpable for supposedly abandoning his fans at an anxious time; a larger concern than one night’s proceeds.

There were acts of violence and looting in Boston on the night of the King murder, but the city did not experience the riots like those that occurred elsewhere in the nation. Still, Boston’s leaders worried over what would happen on Friday night and the rest of the weekend. Postponing a concert by one of the most popular Black performers in the country on that particular night would be an insensitive and foolhardy act — especially without talking to Brown first. So the talks, often terse, began. The seat-of-the-pants negotiations allowed the show to go on, be broadcast live and shown again throughout the night on Boston’s WGBH. Something would be worked out regarding the agreement on the East Coast TV exclusivity made with the producers of Man to Man. After all, events were emanating from the murder of the 20th century’s greatest and most inspirational person. Normal business practices could be set aside, or at least altered. But there was also the matter of James Brown getting what he expected when the concert was announced. He thought a $60,000.00 payday was still in order.

In The One, RJ Smith’s biography of Brown, we read of both sides feeling squeezed. There’d be a much smaller audience, roughly 2000, with fewer box office receipts to meet Brown’s demands. But fewer people in the Garden meant fewer people mixing with the tension on the downtown streets. Instead, they would be home watching the Brown concert on TV, once live and when shown repeatedly into the wee hours of Saturday morning. The city, supposedly finding a way to get the money, agreed to the $60,000.00. From there, White just needed to get Brown and his band on stage.

Brown gave a stellar performance, spoke to the audience about honoring the memory of Dr. King, and in a gesture of goodwill, introduced Kevin White to the audience, referring to the mayor as “a swinging cat,” one worthy of their support. There were some worrisome moments toward the end of the concert when fans climbed on the stage, wanting to shake Brown’s hand. Give Soul Brother No.1 credit, he treated everyone grabbing at him like a friend. He advised the police hovering nearby that everything was okay. All at once, Brown was cop and diplomat. Still, his nerves must have been frayed.

In The Godfather of Soul, Brown wrote of the relief felt in Boston as the city “got through the weekend almost without any trouble at all.” But the city gave Brown some trouble: Once the show was over, they reneged on the deal. In The One, RJ Smith reports that, according to Brown’s manager Charles Bobbit, the city only paid Brown $10,000.00. Exasperated, Bobbit said, “Where the rest of the money went, we’ll never know.” Smith observes that $10,000.00 wasn’t a bad price for “saving” Boston. $60,000.00 wouldn’t have been a bad deal either.

All the while, Smith laments:

It was ignoble of Brown not to do the show for free. But it’s possible to comprehend Brown’s perspective, too. Kevin White, who kept calling him Jim, pressuring him, telling Brown he owed it to Boston to stick his neck out further than White was willing to.

Brown was sticking his neck out in a time when many who did so were physically attacked, even murdered, for their efforts. He had to worry about resentful whites in a racially-polarized city and disenchanted Blacks who thought he had sold out to Kevin White — the mayor who wasn’t such “a swinging cat” after all. The vibes were awful; Boston’s most important guest and his band feared for their safety from the time they arrived until they beat it out of town.

A different perspective comes by way of Rebecca Burns’s Burial For A King. The book, published in 2011, chronicles the events, historic and personal, that friends and family members of King experienced during that sad funeral week in Atlanta, where King grew up and went on to lead the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. King was one of the world’s most famous people, but with four children and a modest home west of downtown, he and his wife Coretta were barely middle class. A small matter of business revealed by Burns is edifying. On Friday afternoon, around the same time James Brown and Kevin White were talking money in Boston, Coretta realized she and the children needed new clothes for the funeral on Tuesday. Mrs. King would also need a hat for the services. She asked her friend, the musician and civil rights worker, Xernona Clayton, to go downtown and choose the apparel. Clayton, possessing a keen sense of fashion, ordered the items, but upon her return, wondered aloud whether she’d have the money to pay for them. Two family friends, activist Stanley Levinson and entertainer Harry Belafonte, at the King home when she returned from the stores, passed along their credit cards so Clayton could pick up the clothing when ready.

It gives one pause to consider the plight of Coretta King and the children, having lost Martin and having little financial flexibility. They were like the millions of people King gave his life for, except for having a friend like Harry Belafonte in the foyer. Then we have James Brown and his financial quandary. Yes, Brown had surely incurred some expenses with the Boston show. He had a payroll to meet,* but Brown didn’t have to pass the collection plate at churches as civil rights leaders did. James Brown was an established star and in the year ahead, would release three singles sure to top the R&B charts. With Hubert Humphrey’s running mate Ed Muskie, he was featured on the cover of the February 18,1969 Look magazine. The Brown story in that issue described him as a “new and important leader” whose “constituency dwarfs Stokely Carmichael’s and the late Dr. Martin Luther King’s.” His ‘69 road show earnings generated over $3,000,000.00.* Today, that’s the equivalent of $25,000,000.00. Brown’s chart domination would continue into the ‘70s. He could have told Mayor White to keep the $10,000.00. He could have told the world the show was on him in honor of Dr. King.

Brown’s busy weekend was hardly over. On Saturday morning he responded to requests from Washington, D.C.’s Mayor Walter Washington and other officials concerned over rioting in the capitol city. It was hoped Brown could reach the people with a plea to end the violence. He received similar requests from other cities but decided to go to D.C. “because it was really the symbol of the whole country.” What he saw in the nation’s Capitol shook him:

“I couldn’t believe the destruction: buildings smoking, smashed glass all over the streets, stores with their windows busted out…..”Soul Brother” was written on many black-owned stores to protect them, but in a lot of cases, it didn’t do any good. They were looted, too. What disturbed me most was the people dying. I didn’t want to see any more people die, white or black.”

Brown went on live television from the Municipal Center. He conveyed his empathy to the angered Washingtonians, saying he felt the same way, but that nothing could be accomplished “by blowing up, burning up, stealing, and looting.” He started rapping in that James Brown style:

“Don’t terrorize. Organize. Don’t burn. Give kids a chance to learn. Go home. Look at TV. Listen to the radio. Listen to some James Brown records. The real answer to the problems in this country is education. Not burning and killing. Be ready. Be qualified. Own something. Be somebody. That’s Black Power.”

He called on people to honor Dr. King because he was their “hero.” He stated they had “an obligation to fulfill his dream of true brotherhood. You can’t do that with violence.” Brown continued his appeals later on WOL radio. Lady Bird Johnson, the First Lady, and her daughter, Luci Baines Nugent, called in to tell him thanks.

Less than a week before the King murder, Mrs. Johnson and her daughters were breathing sighs of relief as President Johnson announced he would not seek a second full term in the Oval Office. Johnson’s health had long been a concern and his diet of fatty foods and hard liquor added pounds while taking away the years he hoped to spend with his grandson. Also, instead of campaigning during most of the nearly ten months he had remaining as president, he’d dedicate more time to achieving peace in Vietnam. That’s what he told the American people in a televised speech on March 31, 1968, but the killing in Southeast Asia would continue, as it would in the US, with nearly 14,000 homicides that year, two of them forever cheating the nation of a more peaceful history.

James Brown would continue showing up in the nation’s historic moments, conferring with leaders over important matters. Brown, after all, had not lived a sheltered life, he had been out there. Politicians seldom come upon such a unique acquaintance. But the more direct and profound words of wisdom were those he shared with his fans, like on that weekend in Boston and Washington, D.C. and shortly before the ‘68 election, when declaring his people, after all the pain they had suffered, should move forward with pride.

*Brown’s payroll in 1969 was reported to be over $1,000,000.00, more than $8,000,000.00 in today’s USD.

Also:

“Mister Moonlight” is often called The Beatles’ worst recording. It doesn’t show up on any lists of fan favorites. Most critics don’t like it either. 

In less than two and a half years, beginning in June 1962, The Beatles had their most prolific period in the studio. At least 70 songs were recorded during that time. The vast majority of the songs were received enthusiastically, but not “Mister Moonlight.” It was included on the albums, Beatles For Sale (UK) and Beatles ’65 (US), both released in December ’64. Few recordings by major acts have been so roundly dismissed. In books on The Beatles, “Mr. Moonlight” has been singled out as an odd choice for the respective albums as well as proof the band was not immune to lapses in taste.

Ian McDonald in Revolution In The Head, refers to it as a “gross quasi-calypso” and he cites John Lennon’s “berserk delivery.” and Paul McCartney’s “ghastliness” on the Hammond Organ.

Mark Hertsgaard in A Day In The Life, The Music and Artistry of The Beatles wonders why the song made the cut at all when their “vastly superior” cover of Willie John’s “Leave My Kitten Alone” could have been included.

Mark Lewisohn, in The Beatles Recording Sessions, indicated The Beatles were not sure what exactly to do with “Mr. Moonlight.”

Jonathan Gould in Can’t Buy Me Love called the song “ill-fated” and Lennon’s vocals “over the top.”

In Tell Me Why, a commentary on The Beatles’ recordings, author Tim Riley is not as harsh as McDonald or Gould, acknowledging “Mister Moonlight” as “one of their most peculiarly engaging covers.” But then Riley calls it a “musical guffaw.”

Yet Beatlefan Associate Editor Kit O 'Toole isn't guffawing over "Mr. Moonlight." She takes the song quite seriously. In her book, Songs We Were Singing, O'Toole offers a spirited defense of "Mr. Moonlight." O'Toole has high praise for Lennon's vocal performance, writing that when he shouts "Mister Moonlight" at the song's beginning, “one can hear his cords shredding a la ‘Twist and Shout.'"

O'Toole advises listeners to focus on Lennon's "shiver-inducing vocals, the patented Beatles harmonies and Harrison's and Starr's gentle percussion." She does concede the recording would have sounded better if Harrison's guitar solo, as featured in their live performances of the song, had been included as opposed to McCartney's Hammond organ solo, which O'Toole calls "straight-out-of-a- roller rink." In closing, she finds "Mr. Moonlight" not guilty of being one of The Beatles' worst songs.

”Mr. Moonlight,” was favored by many British bands in the early ’60s. The Hollies also recorded it for their debut U.K. album, Stay With The Hollies, as Graham Nash hit the high notes with blazing speed. What was to explain the popularity of this previously obscure song?  It was only the flip side of a single, “Dr. Feelgood,” by the rhythm and blues band, Dr. Feelgood and The Interns.  Dr. Feelgood?  Who was that?  What did he do?

Dr. Feelgood practiced music, doing some of his best work on the 88s in the window of Muhlenbrink’s, an old Underground Atlanta nightclub. Over a ten year period, beginning in 1969, the Doctor was In — most every night, most every week. During that time, he was known again as Piano Red, as he had been for most of a career that dated back to the ’30s. Perched on his stool atop a three-foot riser in the Muhlenbrink’s window, Red played barrelhouse blues piano for more than a million people during those ten years at the club. Even as attendance at the original Underground Atlanta declined in the late ’70s, Piano Red kept drawing the people to Muhlenbrink’s. “Red was special,” the late Jack Tarver, Jr., co-owner of Muhlenbrink’s, would often say. 

Red’s special life began as William Lee Perryman on October 19, 1911 on a farm near Hampton, Georgia, where his parents worked as sharecroppers. In an interview he gave to Atlanta author Murray Silver, Perryman talked about his early life. When he was six, his parents decided to give up farming and move to Atlanta. Perryman said, “I had a brother named Rufus who was old enough to work. Him and Daddy found a job at a place called the Miracle Machine Shop. Rufus was an albino like myself, and couldn’t do nothin’ but certain types of work because he was nearsighted like me, but they had some work for him.”

Perryman’s mother, Ada, had high hopes for her children. When the Perrymans had been in Atlanta for about a year, she said, “I wish I could get a piano for all you kids. Some of y’all might learn to play like your brother Rufus.”

Rufus Perryman, also known as Speckled Red, learned to play on a church pump pedal organ. Eventually he quit his day job and began playing at house parties and fish fries. Decades later, Red said he was not sure if “they was payin’ him or not. He had a place to stay and that’s all that mattered to him. He’d be gone two, three days. Sometimes we didn’t see him for a week.”

Mrs. Perryman did not give up on hopes of getting her kids a piano. Red remembered that it cost her a dollar down and a dollar a week. He spoke of his mother’s determination, “Mama cooked and washed and ironed for people and she got that piano.” He would always remember his mother’s great gift. “It was a Gainesborough upright, probably not a new one, but it was a good ‘un. That was the greatest thing that ever happened. We had a piano in the house.”

By the time he was 12, Red was pounding the keys like a pro. Influenced first by Rufus and later by the recordings of the legendary Fats Waller, he made a name for himself, eventually working with the great blues artists Barbecue Bob, Curley Weaver and Blind Willie McTell. From the early ’30s into the early ’60s, he worked his way through the segregated South, playing in Black clubs as well as the white establishments. He also played at college parties. Red’s exuberant and raspy voice was the perfect match for what he called his “ping-ponging and banging” on the piano.  Wherever he played, he made the blues a cheerful endeavor.

But delighting the crowds wasn’t enough to pay the bills. Red also worked as an upholsterer and most notably as a disc jockey on Atlanta radio stations WGST and WAOK throughout the ’50s and ’60s. In the early ’60s Red assumed the name “Dr. Feelgood” on the radio and in live appearances. In performances, his band, The Interns, would be dressed as doctors and nurses.

It was in 1962 that Dr. Feelgood and The Interns scored a minor hit single with the song, “Dr. Feelgood.”  The flip side was “Mr. Moonlight,” written and sung by Intern Roy Lee Johnson. A native of Heard County, Georgia, Johnson went on to great acclaim as a blues singer and guitarist, but the peak moment of his career might have been a couple of weeks after Perryman fired him, apparently in the mid '60s, when he got a phone call about a big royalty check. In a 2014 edition of Living Blues magazine, Johnson told Gene Tomko of the riches that came his way after The Beatles recorded his song:

“I couldn’t believe it , man. I thought someone was trying to trick me. Fifty thousand dollars! I didn’t even know what fifty thousand dollars looked like! I went out there. I was scared to really take it! I didn’t know it could be so good. What makes it so bad about it, it kept on coming. It scared me almost crazy. That was a lot of money back then.

“I actually cried when I got that money because it sure came at a needed time. My wife was pregnant and we were living in one room and another guy was staying in another room with his wife. Something had to be done.

“A lot of people may dislike me for it but I’m glad they cut my song, man. I’m really proud of it. Sometimes I have to scratch my own self to see if I’m alive, you know? That doesn’t happen to everybody every day.”

Johnson could look back to his teen years when he’d sing “Mr. Moonlight” and his classmates would tell him, “Your little old song ain’t nothing. Nobody wants to hear that!” As it turned out, because of The Beatles, millions heard Johnson’s “little old song.” Not all that surprisingly, many people preferred the version he recorded in1962.

With Johnson’s fine vocal leading the way, “Mr. Moonlight” by Dr. Feelgood and The Interns is easily the superior rendition. Their recording offers a subtlety missing from The Beatles’ version. Listening to the original and knowing John Lennon’s love for American rhythm and blues, it’s understandable that he and the other Beatles were eager to record the song. However, Lennon’s extreme vocal treatment struck many as curious. Did he camp it up or was he in such awe of Johnson’s command of the song that in order to deliver a worthy rendition he simply overreached?

That brings us back to Kit O’Toole’s take of The Beatles’ “Mister Moonlight.” The opening of the song in which Lennon appeared to nearly rip his vocal cords by shouting/singing the two words “Mister Moonlight” can be unnerving. Perhaps Lennon’s approach is, as she noted, reminiscent of his joyful charge through “Twist and Shout,” but his demonstrative calling out to the song’s subject in the opening five seconds is fearsome. Such awe conveyed with those four syllables! That’s how Lennon came across when I first heard the song in December '64 and sixty years later the effect is still the same. All in all, O’Toole nails it when she calls Lennon’s performance throughout the song “shiver-inducing.” Lennon all at once sounds frightened, enthusiastic, and serene.

In the nearly two decades after The Beatles recorded “Mr. Moonlight,” William Lee Perryman, known again as Piano Red, continued to play in Atlanta and elsewhere, including The Montreux Jazz Festival. One Atlanta gig was a surprise, perhaps even to Red. On May 10, 1979, The New Barbarians, a band including Keith Richards and Ron Wood of The Rolling Stones, were scheduled to play The Omni. For one reason or another, the band was late, quite late, in getting there. So in the meantime, Piano Red, announced as a longtime friend of the Rolling Stones, took the stage and played to the delight of thousands. Even in a setting void of the usual intimacy, Piano Red worked his magic. He played the favorites, including “Red’s Boogie,” and “Right String But The Wrong Yo-Yo.” It was a great moment, unexpected as it was, in Atlanta’s musical history.

There were thousands at The Omni that night who saw what they had been missing all those years at Muhlenbrink’s. But opportunities to see Piano Red perform remained. For a time in the early ’80s, he appeared at the old Excelsior Mill on North Avenue, not far from Georgia Tech. He appeared on Channel 17’s Tush. William Lee Perryman kept spreading his joyful variation of the blues for as long as he could.  Sadly, he was diagnosed with cancer in 1984 and passed away on July 25, 1985.

Among those attending Piano Red’s funeral were Georgia Governor Joe Frank Harris and Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young. Surely there were great stories told about Red that day. His old boss and friend, Jack Tarver, Jr., had a lot of stories about Red and he treasured them. Tarver remembered Red as “being happy to be able to make a living doing what he loved.” He mentioned the live album Red recorded at Muhlenbrink’s. Upon taking the tapes to the studio, an engineer assembling the recordings for release asked about the bass he heard on the songs. “That wasn’t a bass, it was Red’s foot stomping along as he played,” Tarver recalled.

Tarver said they pressed 1000 copies of the album for sale. There were 25 copies per box. Tarver would give Red a box to sell, agreeing they would split the proceeds. Soon Red came back asking for another box. Tarver asked about the earnings from the first box and Red said something about his sister needing the money. Tarver went ahead and gave Red the next box. Why not? It was small compensation for the joy that Red brought to Tarver and a million others who saw him those 10 years in Muhlenbrink’s window.

Unemployment was up. Gas prices were up, causing double-digit inflation. Another problem was the shortage of gas. Lines at gas stations resembled those of the ’73-’74 oil embargo. A revolution in Iran led by radical Islamic clerics was one reason oil stopped flowing at the usual pace. When the longtime US-supported Shah of Iran was toppled, Americans felt the Iranians’ anger. The world was changing and there seemed little to make it go America’s way. To paraphrase a poignant Jagger-Richards line, faith had been broken.

Looking back at ’79 and considering what’s happened in this 21st century, the problems of 46 years ago don’t seem as daunting. But in the late seventies, Americans were starting to feel burned. The ’76 election of Jimmy Carter to the presidency promised the country, as he said in his inaugural address, “a new spirit.” Here, after all, was a president who quoted Bob Dylan in his speeches. Borrowing from Dylan’s “It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” Carter spoke of an America busy being born, not busy dying. Yet midway through his presidency, America was busy struggling.

This was disappointing — another letdown. After the turmoil of Vietnam and Watergate, Americans wanted to embrace the new spirit. The appointment of Andrew Young, a close associate of the late Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to serve as the country’s U.N. Ambassador, was an example of Carter’s promise. But such examples faded in the next two years. The new spirit was short-lived.

The Carter promise to lead a government as good and as competent and as compassionate as the American people, another uplifting thought, was soon dismissed. It seemed little more than political posturing, and was routinely mocked by those appalled by the way Carter’s administration was running the country.

James Fallows, once a speechwriter for Carter, was among those disillusioned early. In the June ’79 Atlantic, he wrote that Carter and his fellow Georgians began the administration with a “blissful ignorance” about making the government work. He claimed the administration possessed “the spirit of a bureaucracy, drained of zeal, obsessed with form.”

As Americans were reading dismal reports of the tone in Washington, D.C., the sounds coming out of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, were more spirited. Bob Dylan, along with legendary producer Jerry Wexler, was recording his next album in the famed Muscle Shoals studios. As it turned out, a new spirit had taken hold of Dylan: the spirit of the Lord. That spirit manifested itself on the album being recorded, Slow Train Coming.

Dylan’s acceptance of Jesus Christ as his personal savior was made known in Spring ’79, soon after his conversion. According to Clinton Heylin’s Behind The Shades, Dylan alluded to his faith in a pre-trial deposition to a defamation-of-character suit filed by Patty Valentine, regarding his song “Hurricane.” When asked about his wealth, Dylan replied, “You mean my treasure on earth?” He responded to a question about the identity of the song’s “fool” by describing that person as being whoever Satan gave power to….whoever was “blind to the truth and was living by his own truth.” Five days later the deposition was reported in The Washington Post. More statements of faith were on the way with the completion of Slow Train Coming. Bob Dylan would turn Christian witnessing up a notch.

Jerry Wexler felt honored when Dylan asked him to produce the album. He didn’t give thought to the material; it was Bob Dylan. Then he learned the content would be “wall-to-wall Jesus.” Wexler was stunned. He was, after all, a self-described “62-year-old card carrying Jewish atheist.” He let Dylan know he’d rather not discuss matters of faith, but he’d work hard on putting together a solid album.

Wexler, wanting to create an “aesthetic rub,” suggested they bring in Mark Knopfler of Dire Straits to play guitar on the album. Dylan approved, telling Wexler, “Yeah, Mark Knopfler, he does me better than anybody.” With just two Dire Straits albums under his belt, Knopfler already had a distinctive sound (even with the Dylan inflections), but that wasn’t what Wexler had in mind. He said, “Mark, don’t play Mark Knopfler, play Albert King.”

Knopfler took the command to heart, especially on “Slow Train.” The Albert King sound pervades as Dylan, informed by his new outlook, inveighs against the sin and corruption of this world. As with “Gotta Serve Somebody,” the album’s opening track, the song is a plain-spoken sermon with a blues-rock sensibility. There was change at work on Slow Train Coming. While Dylan had long used biblical imagery in his songs and imparted authority in his performances, this was something new. For the better part of two decades, people had been wondering who would be “the new Dylan.” Now it appeared Dylan was handling that role himself.

Jimmy Carter was having trouble with the role he had sought. His administration, beset with problems, not all of its own making, was criticized by the left and the right. Carter would run for reelection the next year and face strong opposition within his own party, likely from Senator Ted Kennedy. Both parties were crying out for “leadership.” That wasn’t Carter’s style. He preferred a softer approach. When one read his speeches, Carter seemed visionary. But most often, upon hearing them, there was little inspiration. Still, somehow, he needed to jump-start his presidency. The country seemed in a panic. He needed to sell the people on an energy plan. Even more, he needed to invoke that new spirit again. How to do so was debated loudly and with much outrage among Carter’s top advisers. Most wanted him to address the country on energy. Chief speechwriter Rick Hertzberg disagreed, according to Kevin Mattson’s revealing book, “What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?” Hertzberg had already told his colleagues, “The country does not want or need another energy speech. It wants and needs energy actions.”

Nevertheless, an energy speech was scheduled for July 5. But on July 4, Carter canceled the speech. The chaos at The White House mirrored that of the nation, roiling from the long gas lines, exorbitant prices and a violent independent truckers strike, brought on by the energy crisis.

Carter and his wife Rosalynn were at Camp David when he canceled the speech. His aides were ordered to join him in deciding what to do next. More anguished debate ensued. Mattson writes that late in the evening of July 5, Carter aide Pat Caddell “proposed an idea hatched with Rosalynn earlier that day-to hold a domestic summit at Camp David with ordinary citizens and leaders who could discuss the state of America.”

Religious leaders, academics, economists, elected officials and others such as Jesse Jackson and Bill Moyers gathered to discuss America’s — and Carter’s — plight. The president encountered some harsh criticism from his guests. From the meetings came the decision that Carter would give a speech on July 15. The subject of the speech would be America’s “crisis of confidence.” Clark Clifford, an adviser to presidents dating back to Harry Truman, told reporters the president was concerned about “malaise” in the country. While addressing the nation, Carter never used that word but 46 years later, it’s still called “the malaise speech.”

Carter’s speech took the nation by surprise. ABC’s Frank Reynolds called it “remarkable….almost a sermon.” The president pointed out truths to the American people that went beyond the usual Oval Office declarations. Carter addressed the erosion of confidence in the country’s future that “strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.” He went on to say this mood threatened to destroy “the social and the political fabric of America.”

He went deeper in his analysis, saying that “too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the lives which have no confidence or purpose.”

After noting conservation measures, he drew to a close, saying a “solution of our energy crisis can also help us conquer the crisis of the spirit in our country.” He did not call for “a new spirit,” but a rebirth of the American spirit.

Carter’s presidency was briefly transformed. Thousands of Americans telephoned The White House, 84% supporting Carter. A record amount of letters were received as well, with 85% behind the president. But the administration couldn’t stand success. Two days after the speech, Carter, in Mattson’s words, “took a good situation and messed it up.”

Following the advice of White House Chief of Staff Hamilton Jordan, Carter asked for the resignation of his entire cabinet. This was high drama simply to replace four cabinet members he planned to fire anyway, and one (Attorney General Griffin Bell) who had already decided to resign. Carter’s standing went down as quickly as it went up just two days earlier.

Thirty-six days after the “malaise” speech, Slow Train Coming was released. Although many fans were disappointed, mystified or just plain angry about Dylan’s conversion to Christianity, millions were delighted with his musical sermons. The album went platinum in the U.S. and peaked at Number 3.

Not surprisingly, critical reception was mixed. To make sure no reviewer disparaged the album in his pages, Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner decided to write the magazine’s critique of the album himself. Wenner was effusive in his praise, especially for the song, “Slow Train.”

In his review, Wenner wrote that “Slow Train” was “unequivocally in the tradition of the state -of -the- union songs that Bob Dylan has put on every record he’s ever done.” Wenner added that the song is Dylan’s “most mature and profound song about America,” and a bold statement on the American condition. He went on to judge Dylan’s patriotism as “absolutely clear: it is a statement filled with his belief in the American dream, as being infused with outrage, and with anger. I think it’s his best state-of-the-union song ever, because it’s tempered and deepened by a wiser understanding.”

Wenner claimed the image of a slow train coming was “thoroughly American.” He wrote the train is “not just a suggestion, but it’s an affirmation of America’s greatness.” He called “Slow Train” a new kind of “Blowin’ In The Wind” or “Desolation Row.”

Wenner’s enthusiasm for the album, given his claims in the review that he doesn’t attend church, synagogue or kneel at his bedside at night, is remarkable. He doesn’t share the faith, but Slow Train Coming moved him and kept his attention, even after listening to it 50 times in less than a month.

Many Christians believed the “slow train comin’ up around the bend” was Jesus, or a symbol of the end times. That’s hardly shocking. According to the Bible, Christians believed Christ’s return was imminent not long after His ascension.

Mark Knopfler’s fluid and crisp guitar lines on “Slow Train” portend something eventful ahead. His playing and Dylan’s passionate singing make for an incredible recording, one of Dylan’s best ever.

Like Dylan, Jimmy Carter had a “born again” experience, roughly a decade before he was elected president. While it is debated if Dylan still embraces the faith (the Internet is filled with claims regarding Dylan’s spirituality), Carter surely maintained his —he taught Sunday School every week at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, Georgia until 2020 due to his advancing age, health issues, and the Covid-19 pandemic.

For Dylan, Slow Train Coming was a huge success, reinvigorating his career and introducing him to a new audience. Two more Christian albums by Dylan would follow over the next two years. During that time, Carter would fail in his bid for reelection and return to private life, but serve his country in a self-styled “Post-Presidency.” Carter and Dylan, longtime friends, played key roles in the late ’70s. And in the same summer, they each delivered what were called “state of the union” addresses, pertaining to things general and personal.

Three months ago, Jimmy Carter at age 100, drew his last breath, four and a half decades after that fitful summer of ‘79. But until the end was near, by his thoughts and deeds, to paraphrase Dylan, he was still “pressing on.”

(This post is a slight revision of a story I posted two years ago. There are more new stories on Jimmy Carter in the works.)

In 1968, some considered the United States as close to civil war as it had been since Abraham Lincoln was elected president. Millions of Black Americans felt more free and were more free than they would’ve been in the 1860’s, but moving toward full equality with white people was an uphill struggle. Despite positive Supreme Court decisions, civil rights bills that become law, and presidents from Truman to Johnson initiating policies to improve the lives of Black people, it hardly felt like the good guys were controlling everything. The nature of empires got in the way and too often progress was measured by how many American soldiers could be placed on the front lines.

American involvement in the Vietnam War had been steadily escalating since '64. Fatal casualties increased from 216 in '64 to 1,928 the next year. By '68, when 16,899 Americans would die in the war, James Brown was granted his wish: He would get to visit and perform for the troops in Vietnam. Black soldiers had complained of the USO failing to send enough acts they could identify with. The USO needed to look no further; James Brown wasn’t only “Soul Brother Number One,” but one of the most influential Blacks in America. And he was concerned about what was happening to Black Americans in every corner of the country.

After participating in a government-sponsored stay-in-school campaign and advocating peace in Boston and the nation’s capitol following the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Brown proved himself the patriotic American. Yet for a time, he thought the USO and the military were convinced he was anything but. However, there he was, on the good foot for the troops, with the great entertainer Bob Hope supporting him along the way. Bob Hope. Talk about patriotism. James Brown may have worked the chitlin’ circuit, but he came off as American as apple pie.

During the Vietnam years, millions of Americans would define patriotism as being willing to die in the jungles of Southeast Asia with no regard as to whether the war was just or winnable. Those out of uniform, safely ensconced in the states, free of danger, and perhaps attending an elite college, had their patriotism questioned for simply decrying the war as wrong, never mind preferring to live as opposed to being shot down in the province of Quảng Trị. There were far better ways to prove love for your country.

Now James Brown, despite the racism he witnessed and was victim of while coming of age in the Deep South, still loved America. He saw it as the land of opportunity for even the poorest of his fellow Black Americans. He made that clear enough in one of his most topical recordings, “America Is My Home,” as he related to his own life experiences:

But name me any other country
You can start out as a shoeshine boy
And shake hands with the president

Written* and recorded in early '67, “America Is My Home,” is a breezy number with familiar horn riffs in which Brown spoke instead of sung. Years later, he wrote that “all anybody says about it is that it was the first rap record.” Brown knew better than that; a lot of people praised it while others lambasted it for Brown’s sentiments, which came off as trite and simplistic. It was Anita Bryant patriotism, not the observations of one whose hardscrabble life journeyed from prison to headliner status at Madison Square Garden.

The recording took place within weeks of an address given by Dr. King which sharply criticized American involvement in Vietnam. In The One, his fine biography of Brown, RJ Smith recalls the unhappiness in the Black community over the war:

… just as King’s critique was being widely reported, other Black voices were being raised. Stokely Carmichael and Cleveland Sellers of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee announced they would ignore their army induction orders. After the rejection of his request for conscientious objector status, boxer Muhammad Ali announced he would go to jail rather than join the army. Suddenly, African American criticism of the war was going pop.

Smith goes on to report that “Brown suggested to the press that antiwar sentiment might be simple cowardice.” I heard a variation of that a lot in my teens, when more and more local guys were being shipped to Vietnam. The Atlanta Army Depot, located in the south side suburb of Forest Park, served as a training center for thousands of soldiers who would serve in most of America’s 20th century wars. A neighbor whose husband was a sergeant at the depot, was driving a few of us kids to the depot’s swimming pool when we saw a group of soldiers stepping into a big army helicopter, with more in line, likely waiting for the next copter. My neighbor said, “Boys, some of those soldiers won’t come back.” Though a war supporter, my neighbor revealed a painful truth that explained why so many young men dreaded a letter from the Selective Service Bureau. When such truth is heard, one becomes scared, not wanting to die before his 21st birthday. That’s a basic emotion, although Brown may have thought of it as cowardice. Edwin Starr, a soul singer whose vocal power often rivaled that of James Brown’s, conveyed the fear of needless death clearly enough in his 1970 hit, “War,” when he exhorted:

War has caused unrest
Within the younger generation
Induction then destruction
Who wants to die?

Brown was hot and bothered over criticism of the war so he jumped in with explanations as to why he would go to Vietnam and entertain the troops. He felt it was his duty to support his countrymen in uniform. From RJ Smith’s book:

Our Black entertainers have been attacked in the white press, giving everybody the impression that they didn’t want to go to Vietnam because they were either afraid or didn’t like our country being at war in that country,” he told Jet in June 1968. “Well, I don’t like the war, either, but we have soul brothers over there. . . .”

“I’m as much opposed to the war in Vietnam as anyone who loves peace. But I can’t turn my back on my own Black brothers when they call upon me to entertain them. We’re going to Vietnam despite the criticisms and despite the risks. We are not afraid of right. We’re afraid of wrong.”

The empathy Brown felt toward the Black soldiers was laudable. Smith reasoned that Brown “wanted to go to Vietnam because he knew that just by being a famous Black man in a war zone, he would be shining a light on brothers who were risking their lives.” Still, there was a strong argument that Brown should’ve realized that entertaining the troops might be construed as supporting the policies that brought them to battle in the first place.

Brown’s “America Is My Home” was thought by some as a repudiation of the speech Dr. King gave against the war at New York’s Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, exactly one year prior to his death. Brown decided to hold it from release until he considered the timing right. King was a friend and Brown knew the civil rights leader was threatened at every turn. Brown thought if the record was released so soon after King’s and other Black activists’ criticism of the war, then the record would be interpreted as a denunciation of Black leadership. As it was, King was already facing heavy criticism from friends and foes alike over his Riverside speech. Even some who had marched with King were disappointed and even angry. The New York Times, usually supportive of King, inveighed against the speech in an editorial titled “Dr. King’s Error.” But a true leader must offer strong opinions on what he has intently observed. In fact, it’s a patriotic duty. Mixing history with his own vision, King’s words hit hard; they reflected reality, and the truth really did hurt.

King observed the war “was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportions relative to the rest of the population.” He was pained over young Black men who had been “crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem.” For those who were watching a real war being fought on the network news each night, he noted “the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools.” Worse, there was the irony in watching the Black and white soldiers “burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would never live on the same block in Detroit. Despondent over such a large proportion of poor young men serving as front-line soldiers, King called it “cruel manipulation.”

“America Is My Home” was finally released in summer '68, which despite Brown’s spoken intentions, was dreadful timing, coming after the assassinations of King and Senator Robert F. Kennedy, who may have been on his way to that year’s Democratic presidential nomination. He was also to be the recipient of Brown’s endorsement. Kennedy, along with Minnesota Senator Eugene McCarthy was drawing heavy support from those who painfully witnessed the Vietnam War become America’s war. Or America’s unwelcome guest. In his 1988 memoir, The Godfather of Soul, Brown revealed that his impending endorsement was made known to Kennedy. They could discuss it when Brown returned from his goodwill trip in Vietnam. Perhaps Brown and Kennedy could have discussed supporting the troops while hating the war. It’s a topic that comes up every time a commander-in-chief commits to another dubious battle.

What was happening in America in 1968 could’ve hardly made one believe it was “the best country,” as Brown said at least a couple of times in the song. Still, even with the bad timing, the nationalism and ordinary production, “America Is My Home” made it to #13 on the R&B charts and #52 on the pop charts.

James Brown always felt a strong affection for his country. He wished to give back to America, even nearly to the point of a my-country-right-or-wrong perspective, which was frequently directed at those critical of US involvement in Vietnam. So Brown visited the troops in the summer of '68, soon after the Tet Offensive. It was a brutal period for the American forces. The same went for the American psyche. Debates over the war, what it meant to be an American and just how much power the government should have in sending young men off to battle were held daily in bars, barbershops, diners, and over the kitchen table that year, all to no agreement. The war had come home and James Brown, patriot, and friend of H. Rap Brown, would embody the battles.

Not surprisingly, patriotism exacted a heavy cost, especially when the powers-that-be decided you should put your life on the line due to their political failures. Brown, who followed the news closely, realized Black draftees in Vietnam constituted a larger share of troop representation on the front lines than they did of Black population in the U.S. at the time. All the while, a federal fair housing law had just been enacted — only one week after King’s death. It’s easier to get in front in some lines than others.

Brown wanted to get along and be friends with everyone in what Dr. King called “the beloved community,” but he surely realized the uphill struggle would last for decades more. His observations and his own experiences would make that clear enough.

*Co-written by Brown and Haywood E.Moore.

Gregg Allman was running late. Very late. He had been invited to a private party by Governor Jimmy Carter. Allman was certainly a special guest, but that night the guests of honor were Bob Dylan and The Band, in Atlanta for a pair of concerts at the Omni. Sadly, Allman was so late that by the time he arrived at the Governor’s Mansion, Dylan and The Band had already left. Carter was getting ready for bed. But from Jimmy Carter’s perspective, Allman was not too late. He welcomed Allman inside, put on a shirt and poured some scotch. He needed to talk with Gregg Allman.

Perhaps Allman wondered how long Carter had been into the scotch. In Midnight Riders, The Story of the Allman Brothers Band, Scott Freeman reveals Carter took Allman by surprise. “You know, I’m going to be your next President,” Carter said to Allman, listening politely. The Governor went on to say he wanted Allman’s support. Big time. “I need a little money to do this,” he explained.

Allman likely figured Carter was on a flight of fancy. No way was a little-known Georgia governor going to be elected President of the United States in November ’76, less than three years away. Clearly, Gregg Allman was not alone in discounting Carter’s chances.

Veteran political reporter Jules Witcover, writing for Rolling Stone eleven months later, referred to candidate Carter as a long shot, “an even longer shot” than former North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford. In a field of dark horses, Carter was considered likely to bring up the rear or possibly secure a nomination as the Democratic Party’s V.P.

Still, Allman thought Carter a decent guy and that he’d do what he could do to help him. On November 25, 1975, Gregg and the rest of the Allman Brothers Band (ABB) came through, headlining a benefit concert for Carter’s campaign in Providence, Rhode Island. Jimmy Carter was much appreciative of the money it brought in, saying, “There’s no question that the Allmans’ benefit concert for me in Providence kept us in the race.”

In the wee hours of January 22, 1974, as he and Carter talked, Gregg Allman seemed on top of the world. The Allman Brothers Band’s Brothers and Sisters album, released the previous summer, had soared to the top of the charts. It won ABB new fans and thrilled their hard-core followers. A few months after Brothers and Sisters, Allman released Laid Back, his first solo album. It featured two hit singles, including a slower and piercing remake of “Midnight Rider.” Scott Freeman regarded Laid Back as “the finest record Capricorn released in the post-Duane Allman era.” From all appearances, things were going Gregg Allman’s way.

Yet while ABB played for Jimmy Carter in late ‘75, Gregg and the others were falling from their lofty perch. Their long-awaited album, Win, Lose or Draw, released in August of that year, sold over 600,000 copies and was praised by critics, especially Tony Glover in Rolling Stone, but was scorned by those who knew the band’s work best. The album had its high points, but it was clear the band had lost interest in working together.

Chuck Leavell, then ABB’s pianist, recalled, “There was a sense of some band members just being tired and wanting to do something different. There were other factors in private lives going on and it became clear that the band was going to break up.” Despite the tough times, Leavell said, “At least Lamar, Jaimoe, and I were trying to stay focused on the music. Grateful for his experiences, he says “While Win, Lose or Draw had its challenges, it still had bright spots and we still had a great tour to support it.”

Drug problems have long plagued many musicians, bringing discord to their bands. The hold that drugs had on Gregg Allman in the mid ’70’s brought on a new level of repercussions. Known to be a heavy drug user, Allman was targeted and put in a tight spot by the Feds. To avoid serious prison time, Allman testified against one of the band’s road managers, John “Scooter” Herring, in federal court. For his testimony, Allman was granted immunity. Herring was sentenced to 75 years in prison for his part in a Macon-area drug ring.

Herring had been Allman’s valet and his friend, but seemed more valuable to Gregg as the go-to source when drugs were needed. Valiantly, he and Willie Perkins, ABB’s veteran road manager, saved Allman’s life after he overdosed, pounding his chest and giving him mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Allman’s heartbeat was revived. Little more than two years later, Allman provided the testimony the Feds needed to put Herring away.

Observers in ’76 certainly didn’t expect Gregg Allman to be around much longer. His reckless lifestyle was not conducive to a long life. Then there were those angry at him for his betrayals. If his vices didn’t kill him, there were people who might. The resentment ran that deep.

At the Herring trial, an individual close to ABB's label, Capricorn Records. told journalist Robert Sam Anson of New Times magazine, “Allman is finished.” Anson asked if he meant finished with music. “No, with breathing,” the man replied.

From all accounts, the other members of the Allman Brothers Band were finished with Gregg. The group’s guitarist, Dickey Betts, summed it up for Rolling Stone, “There’s no way we can work with Gregg again. Ever. When a man who’s worked with you for two years and saved your life twice is sitting there with his life on the line, and you walk into court and tap on the mike and say, ‘Testing, one, two, three,’ which is a fact, it’s what Gregg did……”

The possibility of no more ABB albums was very sobering to Capricorn Records and its president, Phil Walden. Formerly the manager of Otis Redding, Walden built Capricorn into a major national player from a small office building at 535 Cotton Avenue in Macon, Georgia. ABB was the foundation of the label which was also turning out hit records by Wet Willie, Elvin Bishop and the Marshall Tucker Band. For a time, Walden seemed a southern-fried version of David Geffen, the rock impresario cum celebrity drawn to those seeking power. Walden, like Gregg, was impressed with Jimmy Carter and a lucrative friendship began. Walden produced the ABB’s concert for Carter, and four other shows featuring the Marshall Tucker Band and the Charlie Daniels Band, netting the Carter campaign $151,000.00.

Walden invited Carter to the annual Capricorn Picnic, held on August 19, 1976 at Lakeside, a 160 acre spread near Macon and roughly 80 miles from Carter’s hometown of Plains. The Democratic Presidential nominee was there but the vibe was casual. Very little (visible) security. Carter walked by the lake, shaking hands, talking to reporters about the campaign. His morning began with a congratulatory call to President Gerald Ford, who had secured the Republican nomination the night before and had just announced his running mate would be Senator Robert Dole of Kansas. At the time, Carter had a 10-point lead over Ford, but that was down from a lead of 23 points three weeks before. Knowing his days for picnicking were limited, Carter enjoyed the food, music, and conversation. The sun was shining and the high on that late summer day was only 86. Every day should be like that, but Jimmy Carter had to get back to work. The toughest part of his campaign was ahead.

Phil Walden had his concerns as well. The only Allman Brothers Band product in ‘76 was a two-record set from the previous year’s tour, Wipe the Windows, Check the Oil, Dollar Gas. It was not well-received. ABB fans were gravely disappointed by their previous studio release, Win, Lose or Draw and were flustered by Gregg’s drug problems and his on again-off again marriage to Cher. Gregg and his new band would release a new album the next year, as would Dickey Betts, but his would be on Arista Records. Walden was signing new talent to Capricorn, trying hard to replicate the magic of just a few years back.

Politically, Walden’s hard work paid off. He was chosen to serve on Jimmy Carter’s inaugural committee; one could call that proximity to power. That’s what he wanted, but what he needed was proximity to more hit records. The reunion of one band — his label’s foundation —could create those hit records. Capricorn and hundreds of thousands of fans could only wish.

Wish granted: The Allman Brothers Band did work together again. All the surviving members of the original group, along with two new players, guitarist Dan Toler, and bassist David Goldflies, headed for Miami’s Criteria Studios in late ’78 to record the Enlightened Rogues album. Released in early ’79, the album went platinum and received glowing praise from the critics. In Rolling Stone, John Swenson, wrote that Enlightened Rogues ranked among the band’s greatest albums, saying, “Gregg Allman may not look like Lazarus, but he sure acts like him.”

Fortune didn’t continue to smile on ABB, however. Following the Capricorn Records bankruptcy, they signed with Arista Records, a label that had built its success with artists such as Barry Manilow and Melissa Manchester. Not a good fit. So it was no surprise that the two albums the group recorded between May ’80 and March ’81 for Arista conveyed little inspiration. The Allman Brothers Band sounded like so many of the other “corporate rockers” of the time, coming off like the Doobie Brothers, or even worse, Pablo Cruise.

Thus, another break-up. In ’82, the members of the Allman Brothers Band again went their own ways, not to record together again for eight years.

Much in the record industry had changed radically since November ’69, when ABB released their first album. By the late seventies, the punk and new wave movements regarded the successful and established bands in the rock scene as “dinosaurs.” Rock and roll musicians were perceived as having strayed far from their roots to enjoy the comforts of their limos and Lear jets. The spirit of community and brotherhood in the music had faded. The Allman Brothers Band were not the only rockers to so badly lose touch, but their story makes for a great microcosm of what had gone wrong with the rock scene.

For ABB, that spirit of community was never more evident than on “Mountain Jam.” An improvisation of Donovan’s “There Is A Mountain,” the 33 minute and 38 second instrumental was one of many highlights on their brilliant ’72 album, Eat A Peach. Recorded at New York’s Fillmore East in March ’71, “Mountain Jam” still fascinates and delights its listeners, even those who have heard it a thousand times or more. It takes the original song by Donovan to bold new heights. Yes, it’s Donovan’s song but the cerebral jamming is 100% Allman Brothers Band. Who would have thought the Zen-influenced jaunty sing-along could be so transformed? What John Coltrane did for Rodgers and Hammerstein with “My Favorite Things,” The Allman Brothers Band on “Mountain Jam” did for Donovan Leitch.

Scott Freeman’s critique of “Mountain Jam” in Midnight Riders, eloquently captures the beauty of the band’s performance, describing Duane Allman “at the pinnacle of his powers.”

He begins his solo on bottleneck, one of only three times he would play slide in standard tuning on an Allman Brothers song, with notes that are gentle and caressing. Then he slides the bottle up high, and the band pushes him with a series of descending notes played in unison. Duane brings it back down and the music comes to a near halt. Duane takes off the Coricidin bottle and glides the song into “Will The Circle Be Unbroken.” The notes bend upward as though it’s music escaping from the very core of his soul, and every so often he’ll suddenly jump high on the scale. The sounds coming from his Les Paul are filled with sadness and finality, as though he knows he is playing his own eulogy.

The song drifts back into its main theme and for one final moment, the Allman Brothers Band is in its full glory. Butch hustles back to his tympani and the ending rumbles up in a wave of sound. Dickey plays screaming notes over the finale while Duane uncharacteristically lays back and is hardly noticeable, as though he is making a symbolic passing of the torch.

“Thank You,” a breathless Duane yells into the mike when the song is finished. “Berry Oakley, Dickey Betts, Butch Trucks, Jai Johnny Johnson, Gregg Allman, and I’m Duane Allman. Thank you.” It is as if he is closing the book on this magnificent group of musicians, waving to the crowd and walking off the stage. For the very last time.

The Allman Brothers Band had climbed and fallen from the proverbial mountain on numerous occasions in the span of more than four decades of making music. Their rising to the mountaintop is easily understood and well-earned when their sheer talent and dedication come together. When everything jelled, they were regarded as America’s best rock band. But the falls were hard and well documented. Sadness, tragedy, and embarrassment piled on, especially when the falls could have been prevented. Admirably, they picked themselves back up every time.

In 1989, the four surviving original members, Gregg Allman, Dickey Betts, Jai Johnny Johnson (Jaimoe) and Butch Trucks reunited once again. Betts was asked to leave the band for “personal and professional reasons” in 2000 but the Allman Brothers Band remained an active part of the music scene. Eight albums, four recorded live and four in the studio, were released between 1990 and 2004.* All have provided examples of the band’s innate brilliance, especially their final studio effort, Hittin’ the Note, released in 2003. It’s a nearly flawless album featuring brilliant guitar work by Warren Haynes, and Derek Trucks, nephew of ABB drummer Butch Trucks.

A key track on Hittin’ The Note is “High Cost of Low Living,” a song that naturally brings to mind Gregg Allman and all he’s lived through. It also recalls Scooter Herring, who in ’78 had his sentence reduced to 30 months. Before leaving for federal prison, Herring declared he had forgiven Allman and that he didn’t hate him. He understood how Gregg Allman’s judgement had been clouded for so long. There were no hard feelings.

Herring passed away, due to natural causes, in November 2007.

There is much reflection on Hittin’ The Note, which Allman considered their best album since Eat A Peach. Allman and Haynes collaborate beautifully on their composition, “Old Before My Time,” a wistful song that appraises life’s opportunities — those won and lost.

Addressing “Old Before My Time,” reviewer Thom Jurek in All Music Guide wrote that “Allman sings with the world-weariness that has truly been his lot in life.” Calling it “a country song of regret, remorse and resignation” as well as the album’s most haunting cut, Jurek concludes it “literally stops the listener in his or her tracks.”

Regret, remorse, and resignation often comes from reflection, compelling one to move on and make things better. Allman, from 1997 on, stayed clean and sober. Years later in an interview with The Tahoe Daily Tribune, he described the life of sobriety this way: “it’s like a veil has been lifted from my eyes……everything sounds better, food tastes better, life is just fantastic.”

We lost Gregg Allman in 2017. He stuck it out through serious health problems and whenever revitalized, he went back to the studio and then got back on the road that goes on forever. The driving force in his life was making music, which he knew would make his brother Duane proud.

In his memoir, My Cross to Bear, published in 2012, Allman was brutally frank about his travails and motivations. It was an exciting life, filled with accomplishments; often in the spotlight. It was also a tough life. He closed his memoir with that in mind:

I must have said this a million times, but if I died today, I have had me a blast. I really mean that — if I fell over dead right now, I have led some kind of life. I wouldn’t trade it for nobody’s, but I don’t know if I’d do it again. If somebody offered me a second round, I think I’d have to pass on it.

Gregg Allman was buried on June 3, 2017 just a few feet from Duane Allman and Berry Oakley at Rose Hill Cemetery in Macon. Jimmy Carter, not one to forget a friend, attended the funeral service with his son, Chip. Before Gregg’s coffin was carried from the chapel, his friends and family sang “Will the Circle Be Unbroken.” Allman closed his Laid Back album with that old country spiritual. Pushed on by the sprightly playing of Chuck Leavell at the piano, Gregg filled his rendition with a soulful uplift. It’s a great song to sing after climbing those mountains.

*At least 17 “retrospective” live or “from the vault” albums have been released in this century.

Atlanta — Georgia’s capital, was then striving for recognition as the world’s next great city. The people of Atlanta wanted to be thought of as removed from the unpleasantness of Southern history. They wanted to be regarded as sophisticated and progressive. Maynard Jackson had just been sworn in as the city’s first Black mayor. That was different than being elected the first Black mayor of East St. Louis, Illinois or Gary, Indiana. Atlanta was the home of Fortune 500 companies and an international airport — a city on its way up. But it was still in the Deep South. Atlanta dealt with all that its geography implied. For example, it would be another two years before the state legislature allowed restaurants and bars in Atlanta to serve adult beverages on Sundays.

(Song listing of January 21 concert, disc 13 of Bob Dylan and The Band The 1974 Live Recordings, a 27 disc set released 9/20/24)

Governor Carter had to deal with that state legislature. That working relationship, with Lester Maddox serving as the state’s lieutenant governor, was rarely smooth. Jimmy Carter also planned to run for President of the United States in 1976. Surely he didn’t want to field questions about being in the audience when Dylan sang, “Everybody must get stoned,” as the crowd cheered along. The conservatives in government and the media would never let him hear the end of it, especially since he was hosting Bob Dylan and The Band at the Governor’s Mansion after the concert.

The next night at the Omni, Dylan and The Band played “Rainy Day Women,” as they would at the following 23 shows of the ’74 tour, including the three in Los Angeles on Feb. 13 and 14. Songs from the Los Angeles shows would be recorded and featured on the live album, Before The Flood, to be released in June.

For years, crowds have reacted like gleeful children when Dylan declares, “everybody must get stoned,” just as they do when Neil Young sings, “And I felt like getting high,” in “After The Goldrush.” But as with Young’s song, there’s a lot more happening in “Rainy Day Women” than passing a joint.

The opening track of Dylan’s ’66 Blonde On Blonde album, “Rainy Day Women” sounds at once nostalgic and boldly new. There’s audacity in the lyrics and merrymaking in the music.

Dylan biographer Clinton Heylin writes in his book, Revolution In The Air, The Songs Of Bob Dylan, 1957-1973, that “it was actually not Dylan’s idea to turn the song into a revivalist sing-along.” Heylin then quotes from legendary Dylan keyboardist Al Kooper’s book, Backstage Passes, about the recording of the song.

Kooper writes,”Dylan was teachin’ us (the) song one night when (producer) Bob Johnston suggested it would sound great Salvation Army style. Dylan thought it over and said it might work. But where would we get hornplayers at this hour? ‘Not to worry,’ says Charlie McCoy and grabs the phone. It’s 4:30 a.m. when he makes the call….at 5 a.m. in walks a trombone player….He sat down and learned the song, they cut three takes and at 5:30 he was out of the door and gone.”

The song rollicks and rambles. The sound produced is like a Salvation Army band that’s had a few beers before playing by the red kettle. The music captivates, and though Dylan sings of darker circumstances than the raucous playing suggests; the convivial atmosphere in the song is front and center. In his book, No Direction Home, the late New York Times critic Robert Shelton perceived just that, as he wrote, “‘Rainy Day Women’ is an outburst of sheer joy.”

Shelton went on to note Dylan’s “drollness triggered a drug-song controversy so feverish” that Dylan had to issue a denial, “I never have and never will write a drug song.” Time, in its July 1 issue, observed, “In the shifting, multi-level jargon of teenagers, to ‘get stoned’ does not mean to get drunk but to get high on drugs.” Time went on to report that a “rainy day woman…is a marijuana cigarette.”

In his book on the poetry of Bob Dylan’s songs, Like A Complete Unknown, John Hinchey elaborates on the lyrical content. He contends “Rainy Day Women” is “one of Dylan’s most cherished simplicities.” He goes on to say that “I think it’s even simpler – and much more unsettling – than has been recognized. There is no double entendre: smoking pot is just one more way in which ‘they’ stone us, one more way in which we – who are our own worst ‘they’ – happily and haplessly stone ourselves. ‘They,’ in the last analysis, are the demons of desire.”

Hinchey believes “the song’s Everyboy figure is a defenseless innocent, but his innocence is also innocuous, a tedious banality itching for its own demise. When his persecutors find him, he is already restively ‘walkin’ on the floor’ and ‘walkin’ to the door.’ Riding in his car, playing his guitar, or trying to make a buck, he is tempting fate, looking for a way to lose his precious innocence.” He says the song is “Dylan’s own version of the myth of the fortunate fall.” The proclamation — “Everybody must get stoned” — “both announces a common fate and makes a universal promise. Everybody gets to come to the party.”

The party hosted by Gov. Jimmy Carter after the first Bob Dylan concert in Atlanta was reportedly pleasant with the usual light conversation taking place. But nearly three years later, in the pages of the November ’76 Playboy, Jimmy Carter elaborated more on what he and Dylan discussed. In a very wide-ranging interview that became a campaign crisis, Carter remembered, “The night he came, we had a chance to talk about his music and about changing times and pent-up emotions in young people. He said he didn’t have any inclination to change the world, that he wasn’t crusading and that his personal feelings were apparently compatible with the yearnings of an entire generation. We also talked about Israel, which he had a strong interest in. But that’s my only contact with Bob Dylan, that night.”

Carter was a devoted Christian and a Sunday School teacher for most of his adult life. He might have enjoyed discussing “Rainy Day Women” as Dylan, according to Clinton Heylin and others, used a scriptural reference for the song’s title. Proverbs 27:15* reads “A continual dripping on a rainy day and a contentious woman are alike.” Harper’s Bible Commentary reports that the verse addresses “nagging wives.” State legislators who found nothing to agree on with Carter, never mind Dylan, would have certainly found inspiration in that verse.

(From the Book of Proverbs, attributed to King Solomon, the second-born child of David and his wife, Bethsheba. The lineage would become even more impressive by the end of 42 generations)

In the Playboy interview, Carter noted how Georgia had lessened the penalties for the use of marijuana during his term as governor. He said he “tried to shift the emphasis of law enforcement away from victimless crimes.” That sort of approach was not widely embraced in a state in which the Southern Baptist Convention was influential. And that influence still permeates Georgia’s political landscape.

Carter was a member of a Southern Baptist church in his hometown of Plains, Georgia, but he had always been an unconventional Baptist. He enjoyed his scotch in the evenings. Perhaps one night he might have been sipping as he listened to “Rainy Day Women” by Bob Dylan and The Band on Before The Flood. It’s more of a full-tilt rocker than the one they played at the second Atlanta show. The live recording, featuring Dylan’s excited vocals, Robbie Robertson’s snappy guitar work and Carter’s scotch surely combined for a spirited evening.

*King James Version

This story is an updated version of one that appeared on my Substack page in 2023.

“It’s Alright Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)” is a landmark Dylan song, scrutinized by critics and Dylanologists. Included on the 1965 Bringing It All Back Home album, the song has been featured in Dylan concerts 772 times over the years. The song still fascinates. All at once it’s a jeremiad and an affirmation.

In his book, Behind The Shades, Heylin gets right to a key element of “It’s Alright Ma.” He says it “opened up a whole new genre of finger-pointing songs, not just for Dylan but for the entire panoply of pop.” With this song, he asserts Dylan produced a “damning roster of America’s malaise.” He goes on to observe that before “It’s Alright Ma,” a popular song was not a medium for critiquing society, only for isolating specific injustices.”

In Hard Rain, Riley says the song is “less an indictment of the system than a coil of imagery that spells out how the system hangs itself with the rope it’s so proud of.”

In summer ’64, when Dylan wrote “It’s Alright Ma,” America’s youth had just recently discovered and wildly embraced the Beatles. The country was also still hurting from the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. His successor, Lyndon Johnson, was well qualified for the office but did not have the youthful appeal that spoke to Americans “born of this century,” as JFK put it in his inaugural address. Still Johnson was expected to win election in his own right that November.

Johnson won big. He carried 45 states, losing only his opponent Barry Goldwater’s Arizona and 4 Southern states resisting the civil rights legislation Johnson advocated. The president worked to keep the war in Vietnam from becoming a big issue prior to the election. Unless people were paying close attention, Vietnam didn’t register. From ’56 through ’64, only 401 American servicemen had been killed in the war. Widespread protests against American involvement in Vietnam were still a year off. Yet there was the Tonkin Resolution in August ’64. Rumblings were felt. People were beginning to lose trust in the country’s leaders, be they in government, business, or religion.

“It’s Alright Ma” reflected the change in American sensibilities:

While Preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

Lyndon Johnson’s prosecution of the war in Vietnam diminished his domestic achievements. Richard M. Nixon would succeed Johnson in ’69 and find his presidency also impeded by the war. But he would win reelection in ’72 as Americans came to believe he was bringing “peace with honor” to Vietnam. Although there was little honor associated with Nixon, rank and file Americans were tired of the war and even more tired of the conflict it created in their country. Despite the “credibility gap” of Johnson’s years, then Kent State, and a recent break-in at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, Americans, perhaps knowing better, opted to trust in the established order again.

But that all depends on how one defines order. The Watergate break-in emanated from the corrupt apparatus in the Nixon White House. Corruption and indifference to legalities would lead to Nixon resigning in August ’74. The better part of his last year in office was spent plotting how to stay in office. The President of The United States was dealing with unwelcome exposure.

On January 21, 1974, no doubt one of the days Nixon and his enablers worked on ways to avoid impeachment, Bob Dylan and The Band played the first of two concerts in Atlanta’s Omni Coliseum. Both shows were sold out. The city’s rock community was buzzing. Since Atlanta was the ninth city in the twenty-four city tour, information on what to expect at the concert had spread.

Widely reported was how audiences erupted with cheers when Dylan sang “It’s Alright Ma,” declaring that “even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked.” The audience in Atlanta cheered loudly. If the line now served as a dig at Nixon, so be it.

Amazingly, that night, as fans expressed their disfavor with the 37th President of The United States, among them was the man who three years to that day would spend his first full day at work as the 39th President. In the sixth row of The Omni was Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter.

Having learned about Dylan through his sons, Carter became a fan and attended the concert. He also invited Dylan, The Band and several others to the Governor’s Mansion after the show for food and drink. It was an example of southern hospitality but it was more than that. Carter’s term as Governor would end the following January. He was in pursuit of a new job: President of the United States. Only trusted insiders knew of his plans. Still, people would soon learn of his hosting a rock legend at the Governor’s Mansion. Now that was interesting, newsworthy even. It wasn’t what people expected from southern politicians. But Carter aimed to be different. His late-night party certainly proved that — and it was likely the first thing many Americans learned about Jimmy Carter.

Soon Carter was on the road and talking about himself. He also mentioned Bob Dylan. In his famous Law Day speech at the University of Georgia later that year, Carter went a step further and explained himself and what influenced him.

The Governor was rolling, “I listen a lot and I read a lot. One of the sources of my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equities is from Reinhold Niebuhr. The other source of my understanding of what’s right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. Listening to his records about ‘The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll’ and ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ and ‘The Times They Are A-Changing,’ I’ve learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society.”

Jimmy Carter’s Law Day speech on May 1, 1974, amazed a lot of people, particularly those who previously paid him little attention. Journalist Hunter S. Thompson, in Rolling Stone, wrote that he asked Carter later that day for a copy of the speech, declaring it was “one of the damndest things I’ve ever heard.”

In the latter part of ’75, Bob Dylan kicked off his Rolling Thunder Revue tour. It was a rock and roll road trip that served as the polar opposite of the tightly packaged coliseum tour with The Band nearly two years before. Performing mostly in towns by the northeastern seaboard, Dylan led a caravan of musicians featuring T-Bone Burnett, Steven Soles, Scarlett Rivera, Joan Baez, Mick Ronson and Roger McGuinn. “Take Me Away,” a song on McGuinn’s ’76 album, Cardiff Rose, described the tour’s vitality and carnival atmosphere with the musicians “Flashin’ up New England skies like the fires of the revolutionary war.”

Jimmy Carter and his caravan also hit the road. The race for the Democratic Presidential nomination was on. Caucuses and primaries filled the calendar from January 19 through June 8 of ’76. According to Kandy Stroud in her book, How Jimmy Won, Carter proved an energetic and personable campaigner. Stroud wrote “He could roll up his sleeves, stalk through farmers’ markets, slog through mines or fox-trot with senior citizens with as much ease as he could mingle with the stars of Hollywood or the millionaires of Manhattan.”

Carter also continued to quote from Bob Dylan’s songs. On the night he was nominated President by the Democratic party, he referred to a line from “It’s Alright Ma.” No, he didn’t recite the aphorism about the President sometimes having to stand naked. What he did as he drew to a close was declare that “We have an America that in Bob Dylan’s phrase, is busy being born, not busy dying.”

That November Jimmy Carter was elected President of The United States. His one term in office was not easy for him or the country, though he served honorably. In his years after leaving The White House, he was involved with numerous humanitarian causes and won the Nobel Peace Prize. Whatever one thinks of his politics, he set a new standard for ex-presidents. Thinking of the history he made and been part of, it’s interesting to think back on that Atlanta night in January ’74, unbeknownst to any of us there, when his chances of becoming President improved considerably.

(This is an updated version of my article that appeared in 2023.)

Papa didn’t cuss
He didn’t raise a whole lotta fuss
But when we did wrong
Papa beat the hell out of us

Papa was calm but Papa could explode. And so it was with James Brown.

The man’s smile could light the way on a starless night. His music inspired and enthused. James Brown couldn’t make the lame walk but he could make the rhythmically-challenged learn to groove.

Yet James Brown had that downside. A Rolling Stone cover story by Michael Goldberg in April '89 revealed how Brown beat the hell out of those dear to him. Like wives. And girlfriends, including the singer Tammi Terrell, who became involved with Brown when she was 17. Bobby Bennett, a member of Brown’s back-up vocal group, the Famous Flames, told Goldberg that Brown “beat Tammi Terrell terrible … she was bleeding, shedding blood, she left him because she didn’t want her butt whipped.” Another former Flame, Bobby Byrd and his wife, Vicki Anderson, described to Goldberg how Brown in the ‘70s, abused his wife at the time, Deirdre, “something terrible.”

All the women liked his money and his fame,” says Anderson. “They liked being Mrs. James Brown. This is nothing new. The minute he buys you the first thing — next will come those beatings.”

(May 9, 1989 Rolling Stone, featuring James Brown story by Michael Goldberg. Cover illustration by Gottfried Helnwein)

Goldberg’s story appeared when Brown was behind bars in South Carolina for carrying an unlicensed pistol, assaulting a police officer, and a heaping handful of drug and driving offenses along I-20 near the South Carolina-Georgia border. Incarcerated, Brown could do little to shut down the horror stories about his character and his often violent way of doing business. Goldberg described the Brown emerging as “not so regal,” and “a man who’s been wrestled to the ground by a host of personal demons.”

In his Brown biography, The One, R. J. Smith offers some highlights from Brown’s drug-fueled marriage to his third wife, Adrienne Lois Rodriguez, both flying on PCP:

Many addicts have described how the drug makes time seem to speed up, and make hours and days seem to flutter in an instant. For James and Adrienne, at any rate, events were rocketing forward, and the drugs created a whole new kind of rhythm in their lives, oscillating between crazy rage and operatic displays of affection.

She called 911 to report domestic violence in 1984.

Three times in 1985.

Once in 1987.

At least seven times in 1988.

Adrienne filed for divorce in ‘88, but she and James reconciled. That didn’t mean things were good. On Halloween night ‘95, James beat Adrienne again. According to Women’s e news, Kay Mixon, a battered women’s advocate in South Carolina, met Adrienne in the emergency room. “She was all beat up,” said Mixon, who urged Adrienne to seek refuge at a shelter, but to no avail, accepting only Mixon’s offer of a ride home. Adrienne did file charges against her husband, but died* on January 6, 1996, making the charges null and void.

In 2004, there were charges filed against Brown for allegedly pushing Tomi Rae Brown, his fourth wife, at their Beech Island, South Carolina home. Mixon, convinced Brown was a wife batterer, understood the patterns, telling Women’s e news, “I wasn’t surprised, I knew it was coming.”

A lot of people, those with personal knowledge of the demons preying on Brown, as well as those in the business who would hear things, were just like Kay Mixon — not surprised by the revelations of his malevolent personal life. His unspeakably rotten behavior had been going on for decades. Yet the preeminent purveyor of “Showtime” knew, whether at a packed arena or having a personal conversation with an important politician, that he had to play the James Brown his adoring public had long embraced. Soul Brother Number One wouldn’t let them down. And their memories of his dynamism often overwhelm the reality of the pain he caused.

That dynamism came across at the Peaches Records and Tapes in Atlanta late in the summer of ‘76. As many other great artists had, Brown arrived at the store one afternoon to place his hands in cement, à la Grauman’s Chinese Theatre, alongside the Peachtree Road sidewalk of our store. Brown was very gracious, treating all those he met as lifelong friends. Some artists treated such appearances as something-they-had-to-do. Brown approached it as something-he-really wanted-to-do. In less than two years, the store had hosted greats such as The Allman Brothers Band, Dolly Parton, Roger Daltrey, The Isley Brothers, Boz Scaggs, and Willie Nelson for the cement events. Those of us working there could get a bit jaded about our A-list visitors, but we were usually excited to be part of the appearances, especially with someone like Brown who brought his own special brand of excitement. Lee Berman, the store director, who relocated from our store in Hollywood, was all smiles, hardly believing he was getting paid to be there. “Meeting him was one of the most fantastic things I was ever part of,” said Berman, who doesn’t have an unkind bone in his body and who I observed to always be respectful of all our employees. As with many of us back in the mid ‘70s, he would have been startled over Brown’s treatment of women.

In Large Time, his excellent book on the Southern music beat, 1976-1986, Bill King devotes a chapter to the day in 1980 that he spent with James Brown in his hometown of Augusta, Georgia. Brown was his usual ebullient self, serving up plates of fried chicken for lunch, driving King around town in his Mercedes while making several stops around town. They drove to meet an old school teacher of Brown’s, then to the billiards hall, where King was introduced to the man Brown was endorsing in the Augusta mayor’s race. On the final errand, they visited a car customizing shop where a Winnebago Brown bought was being outfitted. Then it was back to Brown’s office, where King met Al Sharpton, who until recently had been Brown’s tour manager, but several years from becoming a national political figure. A pretty full day. King was getting quite a story for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Having made a splash in the recently released film, The Blues Brothers, Brown was basking in the glow of another of his comebacks. The Godfather of Soul was not wanting for self-confidence, telling King, “I know I’m a model man,” dismissing those who questioned his motivations. He was just warming up, “Every minute of the day I’m doing something for humanity. You hear a lot of stories about me because I try to be a hard driver on the surface. But, in here,” he said, patting his chest above his heart, “ain’t nothin’ but bubblegum.”

Brown mentioning “a lot of those stories about me” may have been his way of acknowledging while also dismissing reports of his being a hard-assed and vindictive bandleader. It was 1980 after all, still at least a decade and a half before the internet was widely relied upon as a conveyor and storage unit of information. An article in a magazine with scant circulation focusing on Brown’s mistreatment of band members could get some attention at first but quickly lose steam. Brown could delude himself and others with his “model man” talk, realizing few were aware of the demons working inside him. Besides, he came off as genuine, an out-of-the-ordinary guy in all the right ways. When chatting recently with Bill King about getting that story on Brown, he told me he was “thoroughly charmed by him while being fully aware I was the recipient of a daylong PR blitz.” And some performers do their work better than others, especially when any time can be “Showtime.”

In 1996, Atlanta hosted the Summer Olympic Games. The athletes and media from around the globe were joined by some of the world’s most famous entertainers. A House of Blues (HOB) was set up in the old Baptist Tabernacle building downtown, near the newly constructed Centennial Olympic Park. For those who cared more for music than athletic competition, HOB was the happening place. In about two weeks’ time, Dr. John, Bobby Blue Bland, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Al Green would be among the top names booked. Bob Dylan would close out the series of shows on August 3 and 4. Dylan’s 8/3 set wowed the audience, especially with his blazing rendition of the Grateful Dead’s “Alabama Getaway,” one of the night’s encores.

Still, there could be no “Showtime” in Atlanta without James Brown. So on Friday night, July 26,  James Brown took the stage in the tented area at HOB. According to reports, he was uneasy about performing in the old Baptist church building. It was the sacred-versus-the profane dilemma. There’d be more reasons to feel uneasy later on.

But before he took the stage, all was right with James Brown and the Atlanta Olympics. On the site Humid City, a writer who worked for HOB remembered seeing Brown arrive for his show:

He pulled up in a Snow White stretch limo with a vanity plate that said “Godfather.” He hopped out fizzing with energy, and immediately started shaking hands and kissing girls at the security perimeter. Yes, he really seems like that all the time.

Hours later a bomb went off in Centennial Park. It was 1:19 a.m., Saturday. Terrorist Eric Rudolph had come to town.

Not everyone in the vicinity knew what happened, but the HOB crew was on top of things. The Humid City writer describes the events surrounding James Brown:

When the pipe bomb went off, my friend Vaughn and I had to tell (Brown) there would be no encore.

The Godfather was not happy:

What do you mean there will be no encore? I’m the Godfather. These people want to see the Godfather and I’m not going to disappoint them.”

They told him a bomb had just gone off at Centennial Park, hardly a block away. The Godfather of Soul had a sudden change of heart:

“Where’s my limo? Where my women at? Let’s get out of here.”

James Brown was a tough guy but he was no fool. Besides, he had more than ten years left in him. There were a lot more shows to give. People wanted to see the Godfather and he didn’t want to disappoint them. That confidence and dedication are admirable, but his “Where my women at?” comes off most badly when we keep his personal history in mind. Those women - “my women” - in his show that night in Downtown Atlanta: Were they pushed, kicked, and slugged all for the privilege of getting to perform with the hardest working man in show business?

*Ms. Brown died due to complications from cosmetic surgery.

Interested in reading more about Bill King’s afternoon with James Brown? King’s book, Large Time is now available. Directions are as follows:

You can get a copy for $39.99 postpaid in the U.S. or $69.99 postpaid outside the U.S. Add $10 to the cost if you’d like a numbered, signed copy! Send a check, money order or credit card information to: The Goody Press Books, 3009 Delcourt Drive, Decatur, GA 30033. You also can pay via PayPal to goodypress@gmail.com, or via credit card at 404-713-6432. Address all inquiries to goodypress@gmail.com. For an order form or to read more about the book, go to https://beatlefan.com/book-store.

The Braves had finished last in the National League West the three previous seasons and would do so again in ’78, but that didn’t stop Phil Niekro. He did whatever it took to help the team win a game. On that hot Sunday afternoon, the Braves held a 4-1 lead going into the sixth inning.  Their starting pitcher, Preston Hanna, looked good through five innings but couldn’t go the distance. The Braves needed to win; if they did so, it’d be a winning series against the San Diego Padres, a team with four future Hall of Famers: Dave Winfield, Ozzie Smith, Gaylord Perry and Rollie Fingers. And among the less than 9,000 people (including fans, players, vendors – everybody) in Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium, there was no one who wanted to win more than Phil Niekro. He’d handle it,  even if it meant hurling that knuckleball after only three days’ rest and just two days before he’d play in the All Star Game some 1,900 miles away. 

At the moment, the hundred feet or so from the bullpen to the pitching mound was of more importance to Niekro than the distance between Atlanta and San Diego. He walked to the mound with grim determination and from there made quick work of the Padres, giving up only one hit and one walk in three innings while striking out five. Gene Garber took over for Niekro in the ninth, making it three up and three down. The Braves closed out the second half with a victory, one that Phil Niekro willed upon his team. Atlanta Braves owner Ted Turner could’ve used more players who’d work as hard as Niekro. In three of the first four years after Turner bought the Braves, Niekro led the National League in games started and innings pitched. He was the hardest working man in baseball, similar to another Turner business associate, James Brown, known as “the hardest working man in show business.”

In 1976, Turner’s first season as owner of a major league baseball team, his UHF station, WTCG, signed Brown to produce, direct and perform on the dance show, Future Shock. Filmed at Turner’s studio in Midtown Atlanta, Future Shock was ground-breaking television. Brown biographer R J Smith, in his book, The One, called it ”the best dance show on TV, ever… a short-lived, riotous, no-retake spectacle.” For those who followed media, sports and entertainment in Atlanta during the mid-70s, it was clear innovators were drawn to Turner. And likewise. With a business approach combining baby steps, audacity, vision and a ready checkbook, Turner himself wasn’t only responsible for so much of the city’s entertainment, he was Atlanta’s most entertaining figure. Turner was audacious enough to promise Atlanta a World Series within five years of purchasing the Braves. He was daring enough to launch CNN in 1980. Turner had ideas and was determined to see them realized. A plaque on his desk read, “Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way.” Caring not a whit for traditional ways of doing things, he once asked Hubie Brown, coach of the Atlanta Hawks, Turner’s pro basketball team then on the rise, to manage the Atlanta Braves as well. Hubie explained why that wouldn’t work.

As Turner would painfully learn over the years, the game of baseball requires much patience. It certainly did for Phil Niekro, who didn’t make it to the major leagues for good until 1967, two months past his 28th birthday. That’s an age when most players are either well-established or ready to throw in the towel. In 1967, James Brown was 34, then considered the September of a player’s years. However, Brown, already considered one of the greatest R&B artists ever, with more musical accomplishments ahead of him, could look back and remember when his athletic skills were more developed than his musical chops. What might have been had to have crossed his mind.

In his 1986 memoir, James Brown, The Godfather of Soul, Brown wrote that in his teens he “was getting into music more and more” but still did not possess “a burning desire to be a professional musician.”

People who knew me thought I was going to play baseball because I was much better at baseball than I was at singing. I was a left-handed pitcher with a good fastball, a sharp curve and a wicked floater — what they call a knuckleball today. Ty Cobb had lived in Augusta and I knew all about him. The Detroit Tigers held their spring training there and the city also had a Tigers farm club in the Sally League. We’d climb the trees across from the ballpark and watch the games from there.

If Brown had pursued a career as a professional baseball player, it’s possible he would’ve made the big leagues by 1956, the year he turned 23. Baseball’s color line was broken nine years earlier by Jackie Robinson, which led to more Black players, especially those from the South, such as Larry Doby, Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron, to take their places among the game’s elite. James Brown, though, would face other barriers besides race. He would have been among the rare pitchers of his height (5′ 5″), Then there was the matter of his “wicked floater,” the knuckleball.

There were few pitchers who threw the knuckleball, mostly because it was just as hard for catchers to handle as it was for even the best players to hit. Phil Niekro knew all about that. The paucity of catchers who could catch the knuckleball, with its fluttering trajectory, was one of the reasons Niekro toiled in the minor leagues for most of eight seasons. However, the Atlanta Braves suffered from a paucity of starting pitchers as well. That led to Niekro being made a starter and to the acquisition of Bob Uecker, who could catch the knuckler – after a fashion. Uecker once said the best way to catch the knuckleball was to “wait until it stops rolling and then pick it up.”

At least Uecker was able to pick up Niekro’s pitches after chasing them down. He certainly displayed more prowess than the Philadelphia Phillies did June 13, 1967 at Connie Mack Stadium. On that night, making the second start of his major league career, Niekro pitched a complete game shutout against the Phillies, giving up only 2 hits, one to Gene Oliver, the player the Braves traded for Uecker. On that night Niekro’s journey to the Baseball Hall of Fame began in earnest. By the end of the 1983 season, Niekro would win 262 more games for the Braves before tallying 50 more wins with other teams over the next 4 years, finishing with a total of 318 victories, 16th on the all time list. Given that throwing the knuckleball didn’t exact such a strain on the arm as did other pitches, Niekro pitched in the majors past the age of 48, appearing in his last game — with the Braves — in Atlanta on September 27, 1987.

Exactly one week before Niekro took the mound that last time, James Brown made his way to the field of Atlanta-Fulton County Stadium to sing during halftime at an Atlanta Falcons game. Historically one of the worst teams in NFL history, the Falcons needed whatever dynamism Brown could offer. His performance of “Atlanta Will Be Rockin’” earned a standing ovation, one of the very few at a Falcons game that season, understandable given that the team went 3-12, the league’s worst record. One of those rare victories occurred on the day of Brown’s appearance.

The royalties for Brown’s recording of “Atlanta Will Be Rockin’,” released the day of his performance, were donated to the Leukemia Foundation. Brown also, according to Stanley Booth in his book, Rhythm Oil, picked up the expenses for his halftime show after learning the Falcons, operating in miserly fashion as in most years, would not. The Atlanta Falcons, in a period stretching over six decades, proved lousy at public relations. In comparison, James Brown, when flashing his “Soul Brother Number One” persona, was a public relations wizard, especially when connected with the South’s true religion, football. In the mid-seventies, he recorded a tribute to the University of Georgia Bulldogs, “Dooley’s Junkyard Dogs,” which he performed in at least two halftime shows, one with Prince Charles in attendance.

Naturally, Brown wasn’t interested in impressing the Windsors as much as he was in promoting the University of Georgia, especially its football team. The Bulldogs and James Brown: that was a partnership he was eager to promote. Bill King, then the music reporter for The Atlanta Constitution, remembers an assignment in which he was to spend a day with Brown. It was around the time his Bulldogs tribute was serving as a new UGA theme song. King very much enjoyed being in Brown’s company. “His daddy served us fried chicken for lunch in his office,” King says, “then JB spent the afternoon ferrying me around town in his van so the mayor and his old teacher and others could sing his praises. Then he took me back to his office and introduced me to a young protege who at the time was largely unknown – Al Sharpton.”

King recalls that “Brown seemed very anxious to impress upon me how well the establishment (business, political, etc.) thought of him. We also talked a lot about UGA, as this was the period when he was tight with them, having recorded “Dooley’s Junkyard Dogs.” Brown’s tribute was convincing enough, after all, he had also been a fine football player in his youth. With moves like his, it’s easy to imagine him running to daylight and doing a celebratory dance in the end zone.

In his memoir, though, Brown said that as a teen, what he really wanted to do was box. Naturally, he showed promise in the ring as well. Brown’s idol was Beau Jack, the lightweight champion of the world. Like Brown, Jack (whose real name was Sidney Walker), was from Augusta. They had other things in common too, like shining shoes in their youthful years on the Augusta streets and possessing the performer’s desire to please the people. “I’m getting money for this,” Jack said, “I have to give them my best.” Brown gave it his best too, bobbing, weaving, and most importantly, hanging in there courageously against his opponents.

As Brown’s career in music became more successful, it appeared he learned much from the most famous boxer of them all, Muhammad Ali, especially in the field of self-promotion. Ali said he was “The Greatest,” whereas Brown bestowed himself with numerous titles such as “Soul Brother Number One,” “the Godfather of Soul” and the “Minister of the New New Super Heavy Funk.” Brown, like Ali, showed up with improbable figures in the world of politics quite often — politicians one wouldn’t expect to ever see in the same room together, such as Al Sharpton and Strom Thurmond. Covering all the bases, Brown valued his friends and, of course, what they could do for him. In The One, R J Smith sheds light on Brown’s 1991 release from prison and the whirlwind that followed:

Upon his release Brown held a press conference and then headed to Washington to thank a few people who had helped him. He visited the Congressional Black Caucus, whose members had signed a petition calling for his freedom. Then he told Sharpton, “I gotta visit Senator Thurmond.”

“Why you gotta do that?” the reverend asked.

“Can’t do all black. He’s a friend of mine.”

Alan Leeds, a road manager for Brown, is quoted in The One, analyzing the tactics:

“James had been beaten by these crackers: he had made money with these crackers,” said Leeds. “And he had enough confidence in himself to pick out the good ones from the bad ones and play them like a violin. He knew he was a commodity to these guys.”

The “good ones” had to be the powerful most impressed by Brown’s winning smile and PR skills. U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who ran for President on the “Dixiecrat” ticket in 1948, really was a friend of Brown’s, amazing as that seems. Thurmond’s political career took off with that ’48 campaign, prompted by President Truman’s decision to desegregate the U.S. Army. Once in the Senate, job one for Thurmond was to fight all legislation that would give Black Americans equality before the law. He filibustered against the 1957 Civil Rights Act, speaking for a total of 24 hours and 18 minutes. As laws were passed in the ’60s to grant Black Americans rights that most whites took for granted, Thurmond left the Democratic Party for the Republicans, just beginning their long and continuous drift from the principles of Lincoln. Thurmond’s move to the Republican Party, signaled a shift in the nation’s body politic. With Barry Goldwater the Republican’s ’64 presidential nominee, the spirit of Thurmond’s ’48 message was conveyed again.

Those of us in secondary schools in the South can remember what classmates claimed, no doubt repeating what their parents had said about Goldwater getting rid of the n ——-s. Or at least he would keep them down and out. In ’48 Thurmond said that “on the question of social intermingling of the races, our people draw the line… all the laws of Washington and all the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, into our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.” That had not stopped Thurmond as a 22-year old from finding recreation and amusement by intermingling with the 16 year-old daughter of a Black woman who had worked for Thurmond’s parents. Strom Thurmond lived another 77 years after his daughter, Carrie “Tunch” Butler, was born, but even as he lived to be 100, he never publicly acknowledged the results of his intermingling.

Perhaps it was Brown’s episodic brushes with the law and the IRS (in the late ’90s the agency declared he owed them $9 million) that compelled him to play some of the “crackers” like a violin. Being friendly with conservative Republicans from the land of football and the Baptist Church couldn’t hurt when rages fueled by women (at least a couple of them wives) and PCP could send him back to prison. As it turned out, in May 2003, Brown was granted a pardon by the South Carolina Department of Probation, Parole and Pardon Services for crimes that kept him in a state prison for two years and two months. Brown had endangered lives in that 1988 car chase; he seemed out of control. But he was still “Soul Brother Number One,” a spellbinding figure before any audience. Even old Dixiecrat-Baptists unmoved by “Say It Loud-I’m Black and I’m Proud” understood that.