Do we have favorite post-1940's cartoons that precede Futurama and the first SNL bits by Robert Smigel's TV Funhouse but follow Super Chicken, Tom Slick and George Of The Jungle? Yes. Several were produced by Marv "Bambi Meets Godzilla" Newland and International Rocketship Limited.
Especially love SING BEAST SING, which features excellent work by several all-time favorite animators and a tres cool soundtrack by Chess Records stalwart Willie Mabon. Is the character of Vern a young Tex Avery?
The music is just one of the amazing singles Willie waxed for Chess way back when.
How can one follow a fabulous cartoon like that? By going to Chicago, not for Second City troupe improv comedy, modern jazz (especially The Art Ensemble), Cubs baseball or Da Bears but for some serious blues, courtesy of the great Willie Mabon and Hubert Sumlin.
Willie and Odie Payne toured Europe and rocked the house wherever they played back in the 1970's.
Today we pay tribute to one of the most important figures in 20th century pop culture: vocalist, songwriter, producer, civil rights activist and recording/music publishing entrepreneur Sam Cooke (January 22, 1931- December 11, 1964).
Second only to Elvis Presley as a maker of hit records at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, Sam Cooke was poised at the time of his death to be one of the kings of show business.
How big was the Cooke phenomenon in the late 1950's and early 1960's?
He appeared multiple times on THE TONIGHT SHOW (in this instance on February 7, 1964).
Here's Sam with fellow titan of early rock, pop and soul Jackie Wilson.
Cooke was also a passionate advocate on the front lines in the civil rights movement.
This is reflected powerfully in Cooke's best known and most covered song, A Change Is Gonna Come.
Sam Cooke began his career as the star of the top gospel ensemble The Soul Stirrers and would be among the few to successfully transition from gospel to r&b and pop.
The following interview with Dick Clark indicates the direction Sam Cooke was going in at the time of his death, as head of a record company that produced hits with a roster of artists as Berry Gordy had begun doing at Motown/Tamla Records.
Sam had been running his own L.A. label (SAR Records), as Curtis Mayfield would do a few years later, as part of a team that ran Curtom Records, but did not live to see his ambitious expansion plans come to fruition. One wonders if organized crime and sleazy music industry individuals joined forces to make sure Sam did not succeed A.K.A. rub him out.
There are a several documentaries, all worth watching and more than a bit sad, on the life, times and tragic demise of Sam Cooke.
The sordid circumstances of the still unsolved murder of Sam Cooke at the seedy Hacienda Motel couldn't be more fishy if they were a massive catch (no doubt including flounder) left out in the sun to stink. Why there was NO investigation, we can only imagine.
In closing, will spotlight the Sam Cooke recordings. A favorite record of the r&b aficionados at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog is Cooke's classic Live At The Harlem Square Club.
While Cooke's music tended to be more in a pop vein than soul, the incendiary sounds of Live At The Harlem Square Club rock the house with blazing r&b and look forward to Otis Redding's devastating set from the 1967 Monterey Pop festival.
Is there anything we in this compound fractured, politically polarized, permanently, irrevocably SNAFU-ed kinda world anyone can agree on? Yes - James Brown A.K.A. "Soul Brother Number One," "The Godfather Of Soul," "The Hardest Working Man In Show Business," "Mr. Dynamite", belongs on the short list of greatest, most influential performers, recording artists and bandleaders of the 20th century.
And here are just a few slices of video from his long career to illustrate:
As Count Basie, Duke Ellington and John Coltrane did, Mr. Brown employed monster musicians - only the best and baddest jazz guys would do - to play and write charts for the JBS: trombonist/arranger Fred Wesley, saxophonists Pee Wee Ellis, Maceo Parker and St. Clair Pinckney: power-packed percussionists Jabo Starks, Clyde Stubblefield and Melvin Parker; the electric bass/electric guitar 1-2 punch of Bootsy and Catfish Collins (A.K.A. the original Funk Bros.) - to name just a few.
Invariably, friends, music fans and pop culture buffs who read this will remind me that James, as Miles Davis, Pablo Picasso and Charlie Chaplin did, had some serious personal problems over the decades, and that his leadership style was more in the Bobby Knight/Woody Hayes taskmaster model than the ultra-cool Phil Jackson approach. However, whatever we armchair quarterback-bandleaders say now, the music stands - holy shit, does it stand!
Had enough? I haven't - here's some more!
This blog extends a propulsive, polyrhythmic, cosmic and utterly funk-drenched tip of the Jimmie Hatlo top hat to Mr. Ike Dyson for posting so many amazing Godfather Of Soul performances on his James Brown/JBS/Famous Flames YouTube channel.
