Chamblee54

Something was needed to listen to, while downloading pictures from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. (where today’s images come from) This is how things work. The tv set has not been turned on since the super bowl. Entertainment is what you make it.
The ear candy for that afternoon was a broadcast with John Hartford. That’s him in the embedded video. He is singing about vinyl records, and one of the problems they face. Vinyl is supposedly making a comeback. It was always high maintenance. This is not the case with John Hartford, who was a treasure of American music. In 1967, Glen Campbell had a summer replacement series in the Smothers Brothers time spot. During the intro, Mr. Campbell would be in the audience, singing “Gentle on my mind”. John Hartford would stand up, and start playing his banjo. Mr. Hartford wrote the song.
The show Mr. Hartford was on is Wired For Books. The appearance was promoting a book, Steamboat in a Cornfield. A boat got caught in a flood, and wound up in a cornfield. It became a tourist attraction. In addition to picking and grinning, Mr. Hartford liked to pilot river boats. Yes, there is a reason for the past tense. John Hartford went to that bluegrass festival in the sky on June 4, 2001.
PG saw John Hartford one night. It was a saturday night without much happening, and PG walked over to the Great Southeast Music Hall. It was after the formal show was over. John Hartford was playing with Lester Flatt and Benny Martin. Six weeks later, Lester Flatt died.

Q: What does “Jimmy crack corn” mean, and why does he not care?—Matt, Columbus, Ohio
PG was trolling “stupidquestion.net” when there was a convergence of stupidity. (The site does not exist in 2012.) All his life he had heard “Blue Tail Fly”, and been embarrassed. And there, in (pardon the expression) black and white, was someone who wondered the same thing.
It seems as though “Blue Tail Fly” started out as a minstrel song. For those who don’t know, minstrel shows were white people putting on black makeup, and imitating African Americans. Minstrelsy is not well thought of these days.
The story of BTF involves a slave named Jim. A fly bit the pony the old massa was riding, the pony was offended, and threw the old massa off. He was hurt landing, and died. Jim still has to crack corn, but he doesn’t care anymore, because old massa has gone away.
Dave Barry took a poll once to find out the stupidest song of all time. The overwhelming winner/loser was “MacArthur Park”. The combination of over the top show stopping, while singing about a cake left out in the rain, makes this ditty a duh classic.
In the spirit of corny convergence, the video is a karaoke version featuring Donna Summer . Miss Summer is a talented singer, who happened to connect with Giorgio Moroder. There are lots of singers who would have hit the big time if they had fronted those records, but Donna Summer hit the jackpot.
For a proper post, there needs to be a third stupid song. This is not about stupid bands, singing about being D U M B. Even though they totally don’t belong, there is a video of the Ramones included. PG saw the Ramones at the Agora Ballroom in 1983. This was after their prime, and before a homeless man caught the Ballroom on fire.
We still need a third stupid song, and PG wants to get this posted with as little research as possible. Just like some writer was once given twenty minutes to write a song, and he decided to do the worst song he could think of. The result was “Wild Thing”. PG used to have a 45 of someone who sounded like Bobby Kennedy singing “Wild Thing”.
This is a repost. Pictures are from “The Special Collections and Archives,Georgia State University Library”. This was downtown Atlanta in 1941.

In march of 1969, Judy married her fifth husband, Mickey Devinko, better known as Mickey Deans, a gay night-club promoter. Judy had an unfortunate habit of marrying gay men. They lived together in a tiny mews house in Chelsea, London. The evening of Saturday June 21 1969, Judy and Mickey were watching a documentary, The Royal Family, on television, when they had an argument. Judy ran out the door screaming into the street, waking the neighbors.
Several versions of what happened next exist, but the fact remains that a phone call for Judy woke him at 10:40 the next morning, and she was not sleeping in the bed. He searched for her, only to find the bathroom door locked. After no response, he climbed outside to the bathroom window and entered to find Judy, sitting on the toilet. Rigor Mortis had set in. Judy Garland was dead at the age of 47.
The press was already aware of the news before the body could be removed. In an effort to prevent pictures being taken of the corpse, she was apparently draped over someone’s arm like a folded coat, covered with a blanket, and removed from the house with the photographers left none the wiser.
The day Judy died there was a tornado in Kansas…. in Saline County,KS, a rather large F3 tornado (injuring 60, but causing no deaths) did hit at 10:40 pm on June 21st, that would be 4:40 am, June 22nd, London time, the morning she died. I know the time of death has never been firmly established, but since Rigor Mortis had already set in, I think this tornado may very much be in the ballpark in terms of coinciding with time of death…. Other news articles suggest the tornado struck Salina “late at night” which could certainly also mean after midnight on June 22, or roughly 6:00 am London time.
The Toledo Blade for June 24th, also in an article located right next to a picture of Garland, in a write-up on the Salina tornado noted that “Late Saturday [June 21] and early Sunday [June 22, another batch of tornadoes struck in central Kansas.” So it seems the legend seems confirmed.
The text for this story comes from Findadeath. You can spend hours at this site. Pictures are from The Library of Congress. This is a repost.

The current episode of WTF podcast features Marshall Crenshaw, who is a Jimi Hendrix fan. He discusses reports that Mr. Hendrix was murdered by Michael Jeffrey, his manager.
“The rock legend Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, who stood to collect millions of dollars on the star’s life insurance policy, a former roadie has claimed in a new book. James “Tappy” Wright says that Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffrey, drunkenly confessed to killing him by stuffing pills into his mouth and washing them down with several bottles of red wine because he feared Hendrix intended to dump him for a new manager, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday. In his book, Rock Roadie, Mr Wright says Jeffrey told him in 1971 that Hendrix had been “worth more to him dead than alive” as he had taken out a life insurance policy on the musician worth $2m (about £1.2m at the time), with himself as the beneficiary. Two years later, Jeffrey was killed in a plane crash.
These rumors have been around for years. Whenever someone famous dies under mysterious circumstances, people wonder why. If you google the phrase “was Jimi Hendrix…” the suggested searches are left handed, a hippie, black, and murdered.
Mr. Wright’s story is denied by Bob Levine, the United States manager of Mr. Hendrix. He says Mr. Wright waited until 2009 to tell this tale, and he did it to increase book sales. Mr. Levine is legally blind after suffering a stroke. There seems to be a bit of conflict between Bob Levine and Tappy Wright.
“The Orlando-based Wright says the ex-manager (Levine) “wanted me to baby-sit him” because Levine’s alienated his family and staff. “Levine used to say, ‘If you don’t come through, I’m going to slag your book,'” claims Wright, who adds that he has a “signed and notarized” statement from Levine saying that “it’s about time somebody wrote the truth about Jimi’s death. He also did a video interview.” Levine denies Wright’s claims. Levine says he is legally blind from his stroke but has “people taking care of me.” Levine adds that he didn’t discuss Hendrix’s death in the video and has no recollection of signing the notarized statement. Asked why he chose to speak out about the book now, Levine says: “Tappy dared me. He said, ‘There’s no one left to challenge me.'” Adds Wright, “I’m just correcting the story.”
There is a story from an physician who was at the hospital when Jimi Hendrix was brought in.
“John Bannister the on-call registrar at the now closed St Mary Abbots Hospital in Kensington, said in an interview that the patient seemed to have “drowned” in a large amount of red wine.” The last paragraph of the Telegraph story is an amusing post script. “Bannister now lives in Sydney and worked as a doctor until 1992 when he was deregistered for fraudulent conduct.”
Everyone in this story is either dead or sketchy. Michael Jeffrey seems to have been a nasty piece of work. He was a former intelligence agent for Britain’s MI6 agency. There are reports of stolen money, numbered bank accounts, and gangster business tactics. Reportedly, Mr. Hendrix was busy getting new management. The last paragraph of the blog critics story is perhaps the most intriguing.
“Michael Jeffery reportedly perished in a plane crash over France in 1973. But his remains were never found. Eric Burdon, Noel Redding, and others believe he may have checked luggage but slipped away during the boarding process. Jeffery was due in London court the very next day to defend himself in several huge lawsuits relating to his embezzlement, money laundering, and fraud.”