I’m in a hotel room by myself reading this. Or I should say re-reading this. I read it back when it first came out, when “Who killed Laura Palmer?” felt even bigger than “Who shot J.R.?” Although “Who shot J.R.?” was epic. I didn’t even watch Dallas because I was a child and even I knew about “Who shot J.R.?” Of course we know who killed Laura Palmer although … well, it’s complicated. It’s a harrowing book. Difficult to read. Whatever you imagined was in the secret diary … you’re right, but it’s much worse. I am not sure why I am putting myself through this again. In a lonely hotel room by myself.
86 years ago today, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt publicly resigned from the Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) after the organization barred famous contralto Marian Anderson from singing at Constitution Hall. Howard University had invited Anderson to sing in Washington but the DAR owned the hall. They said No.
Here’s a draft of the strongly worded letter she sent to the President of the DAR, Mrs. Henry M. Robert, Jr.
Roosevelt also wrote about it in her weekly column, saying, “To remain as a member implies approval of that action, and therefore I am resigning.”
To those who can’t seem to grasp that widely-discussed news events existed before the age of social media, this was a well-publicized uproar that brought national headlines.
The federal government – at the urging of the First Lady – invited Marian Anderson to come to Washington a couple months later – on Easter Sunday – and give a concert on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. 75,000 people showed up.
Anderson wrote later that looking out at that massive crowd was terrifying: “I could not run away from this situation. If I had anything to offer, I would have to do so now.” One of the songs she sang was “My Country Tis Of Thee.” Amazingly, we have video of this.
Please note that she changed the lyrics from “Of thee I sing” to “Of thee WE sing.”
A couple months after THAT, the NAACP chose Anderson for their annual Springarn Medal “for her special achievement in music.” Eleanor Roosevelt attended and presented Anderson with the award. This is truly a First Lady using her platform to “Be Best.”
Eventually, years later, Anderson DID sing at the venue that had barred her entry, and in 2014 a tribute concert for Anderson was held at Constitution Hall. Toscanini said that a voice like Anderson’s comes along once in a generation.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
You never hear a bad thing about him. There’s the famous moment at Elvis’ 1968 press conference in Las Vegas, where Fats Domino is standing off to the side, and Elvis puts his arm around him and says to the press, “This here is the real King of rock ‘n’ roll.” Domino was a front-runner, he wasn’t exactly a pioneer, or not how I think of pioneers. Someone like Blind Lemon Jefferson was a pioneer. Rosetta Tharpe was a pioneer. If you listen to Domino’s stuff … it puts the lie to the whole “the first rock ‘n roll record was ____” and it’s always something from 1951-1953. It’s like a totally manufactured demarcation line, and it cuts people out of the picture. Fats Domino was doing rock ‘n roll in the 1940s. Sam Phillips‘ place in history is secure, but stop it. Domino was the first to sell a million records and he did it in 1949.
Antoine Dominique Domino Jr. hailed from New Orleans from a French Creole family. Louisiana Creole was his first language. He grew up in poverty but his world was steeped in music. He always loved it. He seemed to be built different. He had happiness built into him. He started playing piano very young and was already playing out in clubs as a teenager. Humble beginnings. This roly-poly boy would go on to be one of the most successful recording artists of the 50s, recording songs which went on to sell millions and millions of copies (and still counting).
Cosimo Matassa ran a little studio behind his parents’ appliance store, and he worked as engineer on the very rudimentary equipment he gathered together (he came from a mechanical background, see “appliance store”) and band leader Dave Bartholomew recorded a lot of these New Orleans artists, capturing the local sound – the mix of cultures/styles unique to the area. Bartholomew put together an unofficial house band.
Fats Domino, Cosimo Matassa, and Dave Bartholomew
Domino was drawing in crowds to his shows, so Cosimo and Bartholomew had him in to record him. It was Bartholomew who put together the song that would become Domino’s signature song, “The Fat Man”, a sort of response to the very popular “Thin Man” radio series. It’s 1949-50. “Fat Man” is an incredibly important record.
“Fat Man” was his first monster hit, and it was a monster hit the likes of which the world had never really seen up until that point, or at least with the new technology of recording/radio/distribution. All of these were relatively recent developments in music. It sold millions. Domino got rich. He could have gotten rich just off that. But he kept going. He was second only to Elvis in sales in the ’50s. Think about that. He recorded hit after hit, dominating the 1950s – when it was a very HARD decade to dominate in, due to the Elvis factor.
I mean, “Blueberry Hill”.
Elvis covered this one, and not nearly as well – and he would probably have said the same thing as well. He name-checked Fats Domino from the beginning. I think he even called him out on the Louisiana Hayride show, his earliest captured live recordings.
Domino eventually was surpassed in sales by the Beatles, but there’s no disgrace in THAT. They surpassed everyone. Domino’s estate STILL makes money.
He also, thankfully, lived long enough to benefit from nostalgia, and generational waves of interest in him, plus being used in soundtracks, which brought him more money, more attention. He showed up on television, his live concerts were recorded, and you can spend hours on YouTube enjoying him live.
And stuff like this!
Domino was a remarkably stable man. He was married for 61 years. He lived in the same house he bought with his first million. (Sadly, he lost it in Katrina.) He is a national treasure. Or, at least, we should be very proud that even with all our ugliness, and the terrible legacy of racism, we still can produce someone like Fats Domino. It is a testament to us, sure, but more than anything it’s a testament to what he brought to the table, and his insistence that he deserved to be heard, and that he had joy he wanted – needed – COULD – spread to the rest of us. For generations to come.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
Here he is on Tex Ritter’s Ranch Party, 1956 or so. Great guitar solo, too. He’s not just strumming that guitar. The guitar CHUGS along, with an irresistible beat. It’s almost percussion. This is what Keith Richards calls in his autobiography “the rhythm of the tracks,” and it’s present in every great recording of the era. To poor boys, trains were symbolic. They could get you OUT of where you were at. Somewhere ELSE. Freedom.
Tennessee Ernie Ford and Johnny Cash together. “Sing it pretty, Ern.” This particular kind of ease and grace and humor no longer exists (at least not in performance-style), it’s a lost energy, specific to another time and place, and it is all the more precious for that.
Here he is, in 1956, at a Sun Records Show, singing “I Walk the Line.”
In 1968, he gave his famed concert at Folsom Prison (one of the best concert recordings of all time). It shivers with a sense of danger, a sense of the tension in that room, in those men. The ROARS that greet him aren’t the polite roars of an appreciative audience. It’s something else.
Here he is, with wife, the legendary June Carter, singing “If I Were a Carpenter” in 1978.
I can’t get enough of this performance. I wrote an entire post about it. The “Class of 55” – Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, and Jerry Lee Lewis – pay tribute to Elvis Presley in 1977, after Elvis died. They sing “This Train” and it’s just too much. The belt buckles ALONE.
And now, fast-forward, to Cash’s absolutely devastating 2002 “cover” of Nine Inch Nails’ song “Hurt”. Trent Reznor wrote the song about his drug addiction, and was reportedly blown away by Cash’s rendition. It can’t even be called a “cover.” It’s almost like … Trent wrote this FOR Cash to do (subconsciously). Gird your loins. This is overwhelmingly emotional.
.
He was authentic.
Always.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
American director Norman Taurog was born in 1899, literally during the first gasps of cinema. What an improbable journey. He was born into a world before cinema had even cohered into an artform … and he ended his career helming 9 “Elvis Movies”, all of which were hits. Taurog’s final film was Live a Little, Love a Little, a completely forgotten “Elvis film” and a wonderful film – I keep pounding the drum for its rediscovery. I wrote about Live a Little first for Jeremy Richey’s wonderful blog Moon in the Gutter (which I reprinted here), and then for in my piece for Film Comment about Elvis as an actor. I also discussed it – among other things – during my talk on Elvis’ movie career in Memphis.
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
Member when Russia was our enemy? I miss those days. It is truly wild to watch a certain political party – which had as its identity for 75 years opposition to Russia’s tyranny – flip-flop so totally. Opposition to the Evil Empire was something they were (rightfully) proud of, they planted their flag on it. The cognitive dissonance has to be insane. Or it should be. I don’t envy them trying to justify it.
The “miracle on ice” story means a lot to me, not just as a political fight of course (although that too), but as a cool exciting sports story, as gripping as any cliffhanger. And all of the personalities involved!
FIRST UP: For my column at Film Comment, I wrote about Miracle, the 2004 film about the “miracle on ice” – which turns 41 years old today. It went up a year ago, for the 40th anniversary. Many many thanks to Film Comment for accepting what is, perhaps, aside from the piece on Elvis’ acting career, the most Sheila-esque pitch on the planet.
Al Michaels:
It was a sliver of the Cold War played out on a sheet of ice. Here you have a bunch of fresh-faced college kids taking on the big bad Soviet bear, in the United States, in the Olympics. The confluence of events was so extraordinary it can never happen again. It was the greatest sports moment of the 20th century.
John Powers, Boston Globe:
The Americans were always amateurs, college kids, some of them, or recent graduates, who still played the game but certainly not at the Russian level. There was no way they could be competitive. And the feeling going into 1980 was they really haven’t got much of a chance, even though it’s here at Lake Placid.
Jim Lampley, ABC sports:
This was a case where for a few hours at least a magical coach got a magical group of kids to believe that they could do something that they really couldn’t do.
Connoisseurs who like their martinis very dry suggest simply allowing a ray of sunlight to shine through a bottle of Noilly Prat before it hits the bottle of gin. They claim that the making of a dry martini should resemble the Immaculate Conception, in which the generative power of the Holy Spirit is said to have pierced the Virgin’s hymen like a ray of sunshine through a window – leaving it unbroken. Another crucial recommendation is that the ice be so cold and hard that it won’t melt, since nothing’s worse than a watery martini. Let me give you my personal recipe, the fruit of long experimentation and guaranteed to produce perfect results. The day before your guests arrive, put all the ingredients – glasses, gin and shaker – in the refrigerator. Use a thermometer to make sure the ice is about twenty degrees below zero (centigrade). Don’t take anything out until your friends arrive; then pour a few drops of Noilly Prat and half a demitasse spoon of Angostura bitters over the ice. Shake it, then pour it out, keeping only the ice, which retains a faint taste of both. Then pour straight gin over the ice, shake it again, and serve. After the dry martini comes one of my own modest inventions, the Buñueloni, best drunk before dinner. It’s really a takeoff on the famous Negroni, but instead of mixing Campari, gin, and sweet Cinzano, I substitute Carpano for the Campari. Here again, the gin – in sufficient quantity to ensure its dominance over the other two ingredients – has excellent effects on the imagination. I’ve no idea how or why; I only know that it works.
Exchange from Whit Stillman’s great film Metropolitan:
CHARLIE: Do you know the French film, “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie”? When I first heard the title, I thought, “Finally, someone’s going to tell the truth about the bourgeoisie.” What a disappointment! It would be hard to imagine a less fair or accurate portrait.
SALLY: Of course, Buñuel’s a surrealist—despising the bourgeoisie’s part of their credo.
NICK: Where do they get off?
CHARLIE: The truth is, the bourgeoisie does have a lot of charm.
NICK: Of course it does. The surrealists were just a lot of social climbers.
From Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris:
GIL: Oh! Mr. Buñuel! I had a nice idea for a movie for you.
BUÑUEL: Yes?
GIL: A group of people attend a very formal dinner party and at the end of dinner when they try to leave the room, they can’t.
BUÑUEL: Why not?
GIL: They just can’t seem to exit the door.
BUÑUEL: But why?
GIL: When they’re forced to stay together the veneer of civilization quickly fades away and what you’re left with is who they really are. Animals.
BUÑUEL: I don’t get it. Why don’t they just walk out of the room?
GIL: All I’m saying is, just think about it. Maybe when you’re shaving one day, it’ll tickle your fancy.
BUÑUEL: But I don’t understand. What’s holding them in the room?
David Foster Wallace is hard to talk about. It’s painful. I say this as someone who did not know him, or have him in my life even in a peripheral way. I know a couple people who knew him/worked with him, in varying degrees of intimacy, and the anguish they feel is beyond words, so to talk about my pain as a reader/fan compared to the people who knew him makes me feel a little weird. But as a reader it’s hard not to get the feeling that something irreplaceable has been lost. He spawned many imitators. His writing was extremely commanding. He made huge demands on the reader. You must submit to his footnotes. They aren’t an interruption. They are the whole shebang. Stop trying to “get back” to the “main throughline”. There is no such thing.
I did not read Infinite Jest when it came out. I bought it but there it sat on my bookshelves, all 1200 pages of it, unread for years. Who the hell has the time for that? I didn’t even know what it was about, beyond something having to do with twelve-step recovery. Soooo THAT sounds like a barrel of laughs. I read his essays when I’d come across them, and then bought the collections.
But finally I read Infinite Jest. And, as so often happens, I discovered for myself what all the fuss was about. Poor Jonathan Franzen. Being Jonathan Franzen must be like Bing Crosby’s possibly apocryphal comment: “Frank Sinatra has a voice that comes along once in a generation, but why oh why did it have to come in mine?”
I want to point you to a really important piece by Christian Lorentzen, where he discusses DFW’s commencement speech that “went viral”, with all its pat little sayings of inspiration, and how this has made him a little bit more palatable to the mainstream. The commencement speech, though, is almost a false flag. It’s ANTI what DFW was normally about. Lorentzen’s piece is about who owns an artist’s legacy after they’re gone? The Rewriting of David Foster Wallace.
I consider DFW’s piece on David Lynch’s Lost Highway to be one of the best pieces of film criticism in the whole genre. It opened up possibilities for others: OH! We don’t have to do it like everybody else does it! We can write like THIS? Of course, we CAN’T “write like this” but his example still inspires.
Writing about books isn’t so much my thing anymore, but I had so much fun writing about Infinite Jest, and how Infinite Jest illuminated something for me about Marlon Brando – and I have spent decades pondering Marlon Brando – but Infinite Jest gave me an A-ha moment. A sort of, “My GOD, yes, that’s IT EXACTLY.”
Thank you so much for stopping by. If you like what I do, and if you feel inclined to support my work, here’s a link to my Venmo account. And I’ve launched a Substack, Sheila Variations 2.0, if you’d like to subscribe.
Edna St. Vincent Millay was born on this day in 1892 in Rockland, Maine.
“Boys don’t like me anyway because I won’t let them kiss me. It’s just like this: let boys kiss you and they’ll like you but you won’t … But I’d be almost willing to be engaged if I thought it would keep me from being lonesome … if I was engaged I would be going to the play tonight instead of sitting humped up on the steps in a drizzle that keeps my pencil point sticky. I’d be going out paddling tomorrow instead of practicing the Beethoven Funeral March Sonata. And I’d like to have something to do besides write in an old book. I’d like to have something happen to give me a jolt, something that would rattle my teeth and shake my hairpins out.” — Edna St. Vincent Millay, journal entry, 1911
Edna St. Vincent Millay was one of those rare poets who was a celebrity in her own era. A Pulitzer-Prize winner (the third woman to win in the poetry category) there was something about her – and her persona – that drew a massive audience. Hundreds of people lined up outside auditoriums to hear her read. This went beyond the novelty of her sex. She had worked as an actress, and she used this training in her consciously theatrical poetry readings. She created a persona, a Poet Persona. She was not in tune with her own time, and she had nothing to do with the Modernist onslaught on “old forms”. The Modernists were busy ripping themselves away from the 19th century; it was a seismic shift. Meanwhile Millay wrote sonnets, the oldest of forms. It’s hard to believe she was a contemporary of Eliot, William Carlos Williams, et al. You would believe she was a contemporary of Charlotte Bronte. Sonnets are deceptively simple and formally rigorous. You have to be in control of yourself to create the desired effect.
Millay was one of the most popular writers of her day. She is now treated mostly as a footnote, particularly in the big anthologies of 20th century poetry. Her star shrank to a more manageable size, especially when compared to her contemporaries, the blazing fireballs of Eliot, Stein, Williams, etc. Strange how that happens.
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