Facebook has a bouncer now

I was bounced at the door of Facebook. All my credentials were in order but I didn't pass the intelligence test, which consists of a wizard giving two choices: "Recommended settings" and "Old settings." Accepting the recommended settings involves accepting "everyone" into my FB life, and I'm not sure I ever intended that. Accepting the "old settings" calls for a response equal in semantic complexity, and I can't remember my old settings anyway. It's like asking me to accept the results of a high school algebra test, 40 years later, without knowing what grade I got at the time, or whether the grade still stands, or whether algebra itself has changed.
I'm making too much of this, I know. But if you were bounced at the door from a nightclub and all your friends got in, you'd brood a little too.
Every now and then I will sign in and see if anything changes. I know, it's just a pass/fail test with no consequences and up til now I've failed. This has been building up... as you owners of Facebook are aware, I've lurked on my friends' pages and posted disagreeable comments a number of times. For all I know I've been unfriended a time or two but life is like that as well.
I remember waiting to get my teeth cleaned about 15 years ago when the receptionist presented me with a form. I said I would take it home and read it but she said I'd have to re-schedule if I couldn't sign it right then. It was a required form and it had to do with..... I believe "privacy" is the term that was used. Right about that time, the term "privacy" was getting its new definition, which I take to mean "universal disclosure."
Anyway, I'll keep trying to get into Facebook and maybe eventually they'll lower the bar to include people who can't remember their old settings or people who don't know what "everyone" means. If you're an "old" FB friend and you're reading this, you now know why the proprietor of moneyblows books and music hasn't been there lately.

Original Master Recordings by Mobile Fidelity

 The 1979 card insert in Mobile Fidelity audiophile albums included the essay "An Audiophile's Dream Come True." Disregarding that this is one of the most abused claims in our fair language, the mfsl folks discuss why this is particularly true for their products.
They trace their lineage in severe and conscientious quality control, limited supply (200,000 or fewer per release), and half-speed mastering using the original stereo master tape.
As they say, "the disc cutter turntable is driven at 16 2/3 rpm, and the master tape is played at exactly one-half the actual recorded speed. When the completed disc is played back at real time (normal 33 1/3 rpm), the program is heard as though nothing unusual had occurred, except that the musical accuracy, clarity and imaging is truly startling!" What follows is detail on headroom and compression/limiting, as well as other refinements to the mastering process.
Equally important, according to mfsl, are the plating of the master, the mother and the stampers. That's why they sent off to JVC to meet their specifications for masterings and test pressings.
Finally, mfsl used "Super Vinyl," for which they make equally "startling" claims. Best of all-- and what makes an mfsl recording worth every penny, is the manifesto of their work:
"As is evidenced, our standards for making records are quite different from those used in the commercial record industry. We are not concerned with mass-media performances or use of our records. We are only concerned with producing an exact sonic replica of the original master tape on vinyl and with how that record will perform in your listening room. The first part requires painstaking attention to minute details to make the master lacquer right; the second part is verified on our own reference equipment which is representative of the finest audio gear available in the world today."
We're thrilled to introduce some of these previously-owned rarities into our store. Just check New Arrival LP Albums.

Tens of thousands of vinyl records

I saw an old fashioned record feeding frenzy this past weekend, in the Tanglewood neighborhood of Fort Worth, Texas. The estate of a jazz and classical record collector was opened to all comers. Dealers or scouts from around the country must have heard about it, they were swarming all over the records. Still, thousands must have been left. I stopped by on Tuesday and the proprietors of the estate sale told me the remaining records were all donated to the Friends of the Library in a Metroplex town about 20 miles over yonder. Many fine trad, big band, and combo jazz reissues, record club issues, even Woody Herman Mars 45 rpms. Someone swept up all the 78 rpms while I was there, presumably for one "haul-away" price. I picked up a keepsake which has the name and address sticker of one Martin Williams, a Freddie Keppard single which must have once resided in that eminent scholar's collection.

Here's is a rating and review received recently by moneyblows books & music, it's interesting enough to share:

Overall Rating: Excellent

Excellent transaction experience

I have to say (as most reviewers probably do) that the vendor's name threw me when I first saw it. However, I came around quickly when I opened the narrow, sqare package that describes an LP mailer and experienced the contents. "Eydie Swings the Blues" (1957, ABC-Paramount) is a 52-year old LP, and the sound is just gorgeous. Even more impressive is the condition of the album jacket. Amazing that it all kept so well. Everything described in the Gemm entry for this album is true, and delivery was prompt to boot. I hope to do more business with Moneyblows Records in the future.

Take a moment to check out the handmade totes.

Three passings from the world of music: Chris Connor, Ellie Greenwich, Marie Knight

Music passes in three departures this week. Ellie Greenwich of the Barry & Greenwich songwriting team, was in her late sixties. Among the hits she is known for writing are Chapel of Love and Be My Baby. She was a "Brill Building" writer, known for writing hits that would first appear on records rather in live performance. They were part of a manufacturing chain that would extend wherever there was a radio or record player. Considering it was the 1960s, many of the ears connected to those appliances belonged to teens. People still buy records from that era, and moneyblows books & music still sells them!

Jazz singer Chris Connor passed away at the age of 81. "I Miss You So" from 1956 was one of her biggest hits. Her career began singing with the bands of Claude Thornhill and Stan Kenton. She was considered in the same jazz "school" as Anita O'Day, June Christy, Chet Baker and Julie London. From the time she left the Atlantic label in 1963, her career was eclipsed by rock 'n roll. She sang with romance, feeling, and cool, using little vibrato. The album shown above, He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not, is from her Atlantic era.

Finally, Marie Knight was 89 when she passed this week. A gospel superstar since the 1940s, she worked in the rhythm & blues idiom in the 1950s, dabbled in soul in the 1960s, and returned to gospel recording in the 1970s. We have an extremely rare copy of her 1965 release, You Lie So Well / A Little Too Lonely, which has become a Northern Soul classic. It's on the Musicor label and even has similar arrangements to another artist on that label, Gene Pitney.

Soulsville on the cover of Arts & Leisure

Should there be any doubt that history is written by the survivors, the cover story of the New York Times Arts & Leisure section affirms it today. Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding-- gone. Al Bell, still around. The cover story of the Times is on the occasion of Al Bell, former head of Stax Records, returning to Memphis as chairman of the Memphis Music Foundation, to redeem his own legacy as an executive who took Stax to both great heights and great depths.

In a book called Boogaloo, by Arthur Kempton, the author distinguishes Stax before and after Bell. "Where Jim Stewart [label founder] had seen himself as an exporter of regional crafts, Al Bell envisioned himself at the heart of a complex modern enterprise that manufactured and sold black American popular culture all over the world."

In a Hit Parader story in October 1967, Steve Cropper, a linchpin of the early Stax sound, details the painstaking process of recording which confirms the "regional crafts" phrase.

In our store, we have one of the first releases from the company that became Stax Records, a white label promo by Charles Heinz. The label was then called Satellite, and chances are you've never heard of Charles Heinz.

In its early days Stax was much better at producing than promoting, and the reason we know its artists and sound today is because people such as Jerry Wexler and Al Bell got involved. The price one pays to taste such precious fruits from a far distance, as consumers of radio and records, is that we see and read stories such as the one the Times published today.

The demise of the Stax empire was due to some bad business deals which the Times calls "complicated." It then goes on to portray Mr. Bell as essentially a bystander and a victim in the machinations.

This is what I mean by "history written by the survivors."

Many people more knowledgeable than I am can take issue with the details of this newspaper story, if they wish to. It seems apparent that Bell pushed out the white guys who created the brand, and re-branded the company with one new album, Isaac Hayes' Hot Buttered Soul. After all, the company founders had lost all their backlist masters in a contract with Jerry Wexler, so the status quo that Bell inherited had no "sweat equity." Now the label was to be marketed the same way that the former "Newport Jazz Festival" became the "Kool Jazz Festival"-- as a necessary vice for the late 1960's, early 1970's emerging urban black consumer.

From then on, the Stax Records story becomes a tale of high finance too sordid to repeat here. As the Times points out, Al Bell was acquitted by a jury. But it would be nice for the newspaper to make less of a whitewash when they are attempting to chronicle a history they don't hesitate to call "complicated."

November 8, 1968 One issue of LIFE Magazine, two different covers. Spinning the election?

As a daily reader of the New York Times, I’ve watched the home delivery issue get thinner and thinner, while at the same time the paper’s news stories play up conflict throughout the world. It is as if the imploding world of the mainstream media needs the planet itself to reflect its disarray. One could cynically argue that if the advertisers would come back to the print media and huckster their goods again, the world might suddenly seem a quieter place.

But desperation makes strange bedfellows. And so the front page of the New York Times Wednesday August 12, 2009, fans the flames by showing a thug waving a piece of paper, Joe McCarthy like, at Senator Arlen Spector of Pennsylvania.

At moneyblows books and music, we are constantly reminded of nothing new under the sun. By re-arranging the detritus of the 20th century—books, vinyl records, magazines, and other things—we daily affirm that tired maxim of “history repeats itself.”

From the 1930s onward, LIFE Magazine was a flagship of the Time-Life media empire, a weekly magazine with dramatic photographs that drove home many world events in dramatic pictorials. They really excelled during wars, especially with photographers such as Larry Burrows who risked life and limb--- and died in 1971 covering the war in Laos for the magazine.

But, by 1971, LIFE Magazine was a dead man walking. The phrase wasn’t used, but “pull the plug on grandma” was the thinking of its owners, and morale within the magazine’s ivory towers had never been lower.

During the election campaign of 1968— which stands as a major news year in American history— Republicans were doing the same thing they are doing now, attempting to disrupt the efforts of their opposing party. They were not going to let LBJ’s administration end the Vietnam War, and must have been worried (as they are now about Obama’s health care plan) that circumstances might favor the incumbents. They had one strong weapon: the Republican nominee for President, who would use the turmoil to turn the election in his favor.

In its issue of October 11, 1968, the failing LIFE magazine cast its lot with the man who would later disgrace the Office of the Presidency. The writer Brock Brower wrote an article headlined “A Vision of Victory at Last within Reach.” It was a happy talk with Nixon announcing his victory in advance, with nary a hint of how he was playing his “future president” card with foreign governments.

As Anna Chennault, Henry Kissinger, and John Mitchell worked behind the scenes to complicate LBJ’s efforts, the Paris peace talks were orchestrated to fail, and South Vietnamese president Thieu pulled out of the bombing halt talks. LBJ, reeling from accusations that he was trying to halt the bombing to win the election for Vice President Hubert Humphrey, realized he could not end the war while he was President. His successor Nixon publicly took the high ground while he set up the Democrats for failure.

All this is ancient history by now, until we discovered the two issues of LIFE Magazine that preceded and succeeded the election of Nixon. In the victory issue of November 15th, LIFE reported that on October 30th, the Thieu government of South Vietnam had balked at the peace talks, even though it had approved them the day before. An article called “The Bomb Halt Decision” ends with a surreal photo of three television screen close-ups on LBJ announcing the bombing halt. If a picture is worth a thousand words, these are several thousand words on the President’s Halloween speech announcing a halt to the bombing in North Vietnam. Reading the “fine print” of the article though, the reader realizes that the picture is showing an advance videotape of a speech that was never delivered. The bombing was halted, but without the cooperation of Thieu, who had been negotiating secretly with the incoming Nixon administration. American citizens would never hear the President’s announcement speech. If this is any indication how the desperate media makes its own news, we roll back one week to the issue of November 8.

We have two different LIFE Magazines with that cover date. Orangutan. And Tron.

The issues may be substantially the same, but the covers and contents pages are different in the two issues here at Moneyblows Books & Music. A 12 page photo essay by one of Life’s star photojournalists, Larry Burrows, featured a 12-year old Vietnamese “girl named Tron” who lost the lower half of her right leg to American helicopter fire. Showing the limitations of weekly journalism, the lede (or lead paragraph) of Vol. 65, No. 19 was slightly different in each issue.

In one, it read, “The U.S. and North Vietnam last week came to an agreement. Not much later, Americans went to the polls to choose a President.”

In the other issue, it said, “The U.S. agreed last week to halt all bombing of North Vietnam. Not much later, Americans went to the polls to choose a President.”

Although this article was written in the past tense, the magazine of course was prepared and distributed before the election. If you have a passing interest in deadline journalism, you know that shelf life of an article is important, so much so that a lead paragraph is designed not to be outdated if possible. And this is a tall order in weekly journalism.

Don’t know if there was a “stop the presses” or if there may be other versions of this article out there, but we have these two. Both are dated November 8, 1968.

It’s probably fair to assume that the more detailed lede came later, e.g. “The U.S. agreed last week to halt all bombing of North Vietnam.” It also hints at the fact that South Vietnam was not part of this agreement. But due to classification of documents, it would be years before Americans would discover the sickening reality that the President they’d just elected, and thought would take office in January, had already taken over foreign policy, by negotiating with South Vietnam as a candidate and promising them favors when he was in the White House.

Now we turn to the table of contents blurbs of the two issues. In the one we are calling “earlier”, the Tron story is blurbed, “The Hope of Peace: As statesmen bargain, a girl named Tron in a Vietnamese village called Andien tries to readjust to the loss of her leg.”

In the issue with the more detailed story lede, the blurb reads: “The Edge of Peace: As the U.S. and North Vietnam reach agreement, a girl named Tron….”

From the “hope of peace” to the “edge of peace”, hours or days between them, a lot was going on behind the scenes. And yet, no peace was in sight as American casualties in southeast Asia would continue to mount.

It was not enough for the desperate editors of LIFE Magazine to influence their story spin while failing to cover what was truly going on behind the scenes. They also changed the covers of the two magazine issues with the same cover date. In what we think is the earlier printing, the magazine cover shows a zoo orangutan inert and morose, with the headline: “New knowledge about wildlife reveals that Zoos Drive Animals Psycho.” It was typical of LIFE Magazine to feature articles about nature, social mores, and entertainment, in addition to politics. Knowing far in advance that this was the issue coming out before the election, I suspect this cover was prepared in advance as the “neutral” cover while the Time-Life editors and owners tried to come up with something more immortal than an inert and morose orangutan.

In fact, their second cover also featured a zoo animal—the human kind. On its own, it’s a wrenching story and one of many incredible spreads by the late photojournalist Larry Burrows. The headline read “As the bombing stops—This Girl Tron. Nguyen Thi Tron, 12, caught in the war, watches her new wooden leg being made.”

From orangutan to Tron is a speechless journey that reinforces the sad cynicism and desperate plight of a dying magazine, to wrench emotion from a still photograph as the competition, television, stole all its advertisers. Yes, it was a picture magazine, not designed for nuance. The Time-Life organization would show how it could play both sides of the fence, announcing the bombing halt while giving Nixon a poster girl for continuing the war. Typically perhaps of the profession, they cheapened themselves by using sentimentality in the service of warmongering.

America in 1968. Two covers of the same magazine. A war we eventually lost big time. Woodstock still to come.

Cronkite shills for Columbia Records

Walter Cronkite was known as a news reader and reporter, rather than commentator. We also have a record of him flacking for Columbia Records in 1958. It's on an album produced by the Columbia Records Public Relations Department, called "Hear It Now On LP: The Story of the First LP Decade on Columbia Records."

Having invented the Long Playing record, Columbia celebrated its 10th anniversary with this mighty 33 1/3 rpm disc, by making this narrative anthology hosted by another inventor, the "inventor" of the news anchor, Walter Cronkite. The 12-in. record album contains popular and classical excerpts from 1948's Oscar Levant performance of Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue (Ormandy and Philadelphia Orchestra), all the way to 1957's Firebird Suite (Stravinsky) conducted by Leonard Bernstein with the New York Philharmonic.

This record was likely given out in limited quantities and never issued to the general public. It also includes the popular side of Columbia, from the earliest original cast albums of "Kiss Me, Kate" and "South Pacific" down to 1957 and the then-current stable of artists such as Johnny Mathis, Ray Conniff, Les Elgart and Erroll Garner. Cronkite's classic reading of the continuity script has the familiar ring of history in the making.

With New Haven officialdom in the news recently-- because of a U.S. Supreme Court decision-- it seems apt to revisit another notorious instance of uniformed New Haven getting in the news, on December 12, 1967.



According to an article in the April 12, 1968 edition of Life Magazine,a singer/poet was in the dressing room before his concert, and he and a girl decided to adjourn elsewhere. As the singer/poet told his audience later during the concert, "And we wanted some privacy / And so we went into this shower-room / We weren't doing anything, you know, / just standing there and talking. / And then this little man came in there, / This little man, in a little blue suit / And a little blue cap, /And he said, 'Whatcha doin' there?' / 'Nothin'./ But he didn't go 'way, / He stood there / And then he reached 'round behind him / And he brought out this little black can of somethin' / Looked like shaving cream, / And then he / Sprayed it in my eyes. / I was blinded for about 30 minutes..."

After that, spoken over a drumbeat (like another Morrison sometimes did), the singer resumed his song, the famous blues tune "Back Door Man." But in the concert hall, the lights came on. Bandmate Ray Manzarek whispered to Morrison to ask the audience if it wanted them to keep playing. He did, and the response left no doubt. Quoting one of his famous songs, "When the Music's Over," the singer said "Turn out the lights!"

Suddenly, Lt. James P. Kelly, head of the New Haven Police Department's Youth Division, came on stage and arrested the singer. The singer pointed his microphone at the officer and said, "Say your thing, man."

The microphone was snatched from his hand, and more policemen rushed the stage. A well known New York Times photographer, Tim Page, was pushed into the street while taking pictures of some arrests, and he was then arrested himself, along with Yvonne Chabrier, a Life Magazine reporter, and Michael Zwerin, jazz critic for the Village Voice. In addition, according to the article, "an unknown number of teen-agers were hauled off."

Jim Morrison New Haven arrest

If you'd like more information on the band that caused this ruckus, search "The Doors" here or here. To see some pictures and the arrest documents, click on the link above: "Jim Morrison New Haven arrest."

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Hear Hear! Wear Wear!

These shirts are all 100 percent cotton and feature bands such as the Beatles, Willie Nelson, Nirvana, Johnny Cash, Bob Marley, Family Guy, Peanuts, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd.
They're high quality rock'n roll t-shirts, by companies such as Apple Corps, Zion Rootswear, Fruit of the Loom, Alstyne, Anvil Knitwear, Hanes Heavyweight and more.

For Bike Weekers stuck at the red light, Look in the Window! These great shirts are on display at Harlan Wolfe's Record Shop, 6 Main St., Conway Village, NH, 03818. That's right on the corner of Washington and Main, which is also the intersection of Rte. 16 and 153 enroute to the White Mountains.

Customers at Harlan Wolfe Music in Conway Village are getting first crack at these limited availability shirts this weekend, in dual celebration of Vinyl Saturday and Bike Week in New Hampshire.moneyblows books & music.



Heard a great quote from a twenty-something yesterday: "If you're gonna mess up your credit, might as well do it while you're young, 'cause there's time to fix it."

Some things never change, such as J.D. Salinger's protective efforts over a half century to keep Holden Caulfield, protagonist of Catcher In The Rye, from being copied. This time, and I'm putting my own spin on this, his lawyers say his copyright includes the right to cryogenically preserve Caulfield the way he originally was at the end of the novel. The only thing different then was, Caulfield wasn't famous yet when Salinger was just finishing his novel. But if Salinger says he's the same as he ever was, doesn't he have that right? Why should anybody piggyback on J.D. Salinger? It's just not nice. And, does anyone remember "The Wind Done Gone," the sequel to "Gone With The Wind."?

R.I.P. Sam Butera

In the late 1990s I realized a dream of many years, to see Sam Butera. The event could not have been better: he was the "headliner" at St. Anthony's Feast in Boston's Northend.

To me, Sam Butera is among the greatest of all saxophonists. His mastery of the instrument predated and foreshadowed rock 'n roll, and though he was not a jazz player by reputation, his improvisational skills put him up there with Sonny Rollins. Seeing him jump, jive and wail with mad ferocity, at an Italian street festival in the twilight of his career, put me beyond words.

He is reported to have passed away in Las Vegas at age 81, on Wednesday, June 3, 2009.

Sam Butera is best known for his work with Louis Prima, and he is the first saxophonist to have attained fame as a sidekick. Let's not underestimate this achievement. Louis Prima and Keely Smith, who paved the way for Sonny & Cher, both had a high level of musicianship which is underrated today. Prima was as good as Louis Armstrong but used his skills differently, and unlike Armstrong, had no problem sharing the spotlight. Prima and Smith's dynamic 1950s and 1960s stage show would have been quite different without Sam Butera, who did the arrangements, wrote some songs, and stepped in to sing from time to time. But most often, he played voluminous honking tenor sax solos. He did so with absolute virtuosity, recalling the technique of Earl Bostic and Al Gallodoro, the soul of King Curtis, the lyricism of Vido Musso, and the raw professionalism of Joe Houston and Illinois Jacquet. He could command a stage all by himself, having grown up in an era of tenor sax stars. The banter between him and Louis Prima foreshadowed that in the E Street Band between Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons.

He joined Louis Prima in 1954 to play at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas, and when Prima fell into a coma in 1975, he fronted his own band. Valiantly, he adapted his style to the pop music of the 1960s and 1970s, and though the instrumental backgrounds of the 1970s recordings are outdated now, Sam Butera's playing was always for the ages.

Most people don't know the influence of Sam Butera. If you remember David Lee Roth doing the medley of "Just a Gigolo" and "I Ain't Got Nobody" in the 1980s, you are hearing an arrangement originated by Sam Butera. Butera's signature arrangement was held in such respect in his adopted hometown of Las Vegas, that no other band would play it there. Yet it was copied by countless artists, including Delbert McClinton in his early garage band The Straightjackets. His arrangement of "Jump, Jive and Wail" was revived by the Stray Cats and the Cherry Poppin' Daddies and inspired those bands to create a swing dance revival in the 1980s.

It is impossible to listen to Sam Butera play a ballad without thinking of the great Italian American heritage (shared by Prima), a heritage which is often overshadowed in discussions of New Orleans jazz. New Orleans was their hometown, and the invention of jazz in New Orleans is as much a product of Italian American bandsmen, as it is an African-American tradition. Butera once told the story of his mother, an Italian immigrant who got off the boat in Argentina and then promptly walked back up the gangplank and back on the boat.

"Wrong America," she said.

Digging Up Dirt

The Ford plant at Willow Run, now the GM transmission plant being closed as part of the reorganization of General Motors, was initially built to assemble B24 bombers for World War II. The federal government bought out farms all around the area to make room for the Ford plant.

Thousands of people came looking for jobs, seriously taxing the resources of Ypsilanti. They pitched tents, slept in their cars, built wood and tin shacks, and a few even found rooms and apartments in Ypsilanti itself. The peak of employment for Willow Run was June 1943, with 42,000 plus workers.

Here are a couple of cool tales from the time:

#1
In the front of the Spencer Schoolyard stands a marker which represents the graves of all those buried in the Willow Run cemetery until October 1941. The graves were dug up and replaced with one marker.

In the words of a school board member at the time (name of Simmonds): “I knew they were doing all the construction over at the Bomber Plant, and that meant moving around a lot of dirt. It occurred to me,” said Mr. Simmonds with a telling smile, “that if I could just get to see Mr. Henry Ford himself, maybe he would let us have some of that dirt they were digging at the plant.”

The school board had obtained permission to remove the old weatherbeaten grave markers and now all they had was a pile of dirt. Mr. Simmonds persisted until he met Henry Ford, and told him about the “dirt we needed to level off that old cemetery for our schoolyard.” Ford instructed Harry Bennett, his concierge for all things unpleasant, to take care of this. “Sure enough," as Mr.Simmonds told Marion F. Wilson for a 1956 book, "the next day several loads of dirt were hauled over and dumped on the old cemetery.” They wouldn’t level it though, not without personal instructions from Harry Bennett. Worried about zombies?

#2
In the center ring of the world's largest industrial operation of the time,were ten "little people." From their previous jobs in the entertainment world, they worked through the roar of rivets and hammering of giant machine presses. They were the midgets of Willow Run. Highly specialized and highly respected by the other employees, the midgets would wedge their way into a B-24 wing tip to buck rivets and insulate fuel cells. Or they might inspect a space so tight that no other inspector could get in there. It took a midget to crawl into a wing or fuel tank to do this dangerous work.

Ford had a rule that everyone must punch their own time card, so at the beginning and end of their shift you could see the midgets being lifted by their larger buddies to punch in and out.

What about the ghosts of Willow Run, and where did the midgets go to work next? Now we know the real cover-up behind the so-called "bankruptcy" of General Motors.

This copy of Life Magazine contains a story about the first closing of Willow Run at the end of World War II, before it became a GM transmission plant.


Our bookstore has plenty of General Motors lore Browse from this page :

Comeback: The Fall & Rise of the American Automobile Industry (ISBN: 0671792148 / 0-671-79214-8)
Simon & Schuster, NYC, 1994. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Printing. Illustrated by B/W photographs.



American Heritage -- August 1973
NYC: American Heritage Publishing Co. 1973, 1973. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Very Good. Vol, XXIV, No. 5. Cover browned. Articles on: Harriet Beecher Stowe; William Durant, the founder of General Motors; Leslie Wilcox's paintings of ships; Bernard DeVoto; Sod Houses; The burning of Chambersburg, PA; "In This Proud Land"-- book selection; Men of the Revolution-- Cornwallis; P.T. Barnum's elephant Jumbo; Battles of the Revolution-- Trenton.



Collision Course: Inside the Battle for General Motors (ISBN: 9781559723138)
Maynard, Micheline
New York City: Birch Lane Press, 1995, 1995. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition.



Paradise Lost: The decline of the auto-industrial age (ISBN: 9780394460321)
Rothschild, Emma
NYC: Random House, 1973, 1973. Hard Cover. Very Good/Very Good-. DJ shelf worn with 2 small tears. An exposition of the U.S. auto industry in the early 70's-problems with customers, workers, shareholders, and competition. The author concentrates on General Motors.



Business and Economic History: Second Series, Volume 18, 1989
Hausman, William J., editor
Williamsburg: Business History Conference, 1989, 1989. Trade Paperback. Book Condition: Very Good. Dissertations and papers from the 35th annual meeting of the Business History Conference. Topics include: Testing the F-4 Phantom II; The Origins of the Brazilian Automative Industry; Eli Lilly and Company, 1876-1948; Rowntree and Market Strategy, 1897-1939; Lessons from the Struggle between Ford and General Motors durings the 1920s and 1930s; Marketing at Burlington Industries, 1923-1962; The Inward Thrust of Institutional Advertising: General Electric and General Motors in the 1920s; Clock, Watch and Typewriter Manufacturing in the 19th Century; Marketing the Women's Journals, 1973-1900; Belgian Domestic Steel Cartels and the Re-Rollers, 1880-1920; The Gilbreths and the Manufacture and Marketing of Motion Study, 1908-1924. 248 pp. Slight edgewear.



The Company and The Union
Serrin, William
NYC: Knopf, 1973, 1973. Hard Cover. Very Good-/Good+. First Edition. ISBN:0394461916. 308+ pgs. Cover faded, prev. owner's stamped name on title page, dj slightly soiled and worn on edges. The inside story of the 1972 strike by the UAW at General Motors and how the UAW has accommodated the large car companies.



The Man who Discovered Quality: How W. Edwards Deming Brought the Quality Revolution to America--The stories of Ford, Xerox, & General Motors (ISBN: 9780812917741)
Gabor, Andrea
Times Books, NYC, 1990. Hard Cover. Book Condition: Very Good. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. First Edition. An account of Deming's principles and visions concerning quality control by following the 14 points. 326 pp, indexed. Small scuffed/worn area on side of page ends.



Life Magazine June 17, 1957 -- Cover: Mayflower II
Time, Inc., Chicago, 1957. Magazine. Book Condition: Very Good-. Includes: Photos of Greenwich, Conn. teens playing 'Living Droodles'; Mayflower II recreates historic voyage; Whooping cranes hatch at Audubon Park Zoo; New pill for diabetics could replace insulin shot; Michael Redgrave in Heublein ad; Dacron fashions - photographed on Dupont properrties; The reigning Royalty of Europe, Part 1 -- In a democratic era, they survive by serving it -- Britain, Holland, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Greece; Supreme Court finds du Pont's link to General Motors illegal; GI William Girard to be tried by Japanese court for shooting; Father-son actors Ed Wynn and Keenan Wynn; Edward Nixon marries Gay Lynn Woods. Edgewear, covers are worn, back cover has corner torn off at lower spine.

Homage to William H. Youngren, January 1989 New Yorker, p. 105

This past year we marked the two-hundredth anniversary of the death of Dewey Bright, the most prolific, probably the most gifted, and in his own time the most famous of Shiny Bright's sons. The occasion has been observed in a number of ways. A new thematic catalog of Bright's works, compiled by Thaxter Broyan, will be published this spring by Yela University Press, superseding Alfred Whatthen's 3004 catalogue. (Though Watthen's catalogue is long outdated, its computer source code is still used to identify the file extensions of Bright's mp3s (which, although they sound like mp3s of Bright's period, are available only in privately distributed (though free) source code using Watthen's extensions.)

Moth & Flame publishers has brought out a collection of essays by various hands, Bright according to the not so Bright, as recently as last fall. Equally important are the many new recordings that have appeared on surgical chip, especially an excellent 10k gigabyte series sold as a temporary implant. There is a great need for first-rate performances of Bright's large and varied oeuvre. His reputation has had its ups and downs, there has never been a complete clone or vocdot edition of his music (though Broyan has been working on one), and his historical position and significance have always been something of a mystery.

Born at Hartford in 1951, Bright (as I shall call him here) was trained in music by the radio and began to compose at an early age. But he also had a far more extensive formal education than most 20th century musicians; after playing sax for tips in blues clubs he entered a graduate program in clarinet performance, receiving a master's degree and an invitation to go back from whence he came. An excellent sight reader but lacking social skills, he became interested in the clarinet as a solo instrument, in order to keep away the nosy and curious. In the early 21st century he published the two volumes of his Ya nevah heard this (Don't let your ears mess up the rest of your body), one of the most important and informative 21st century musical treatises. When Bright went dark, in 2051, an LE edition of the surgical transplant of the two volumes reached the best seller list in a quick spurt and then fell into history. Occasional vocdot issues of scattered songs seem to bubble up about as regularly as Bright tributes held sporadically at several small colleges.

For the most part, however, in the decades following 2051, his reputation swiftly declined. The Permantics' discovery, about 2079, of the music of Shiny Bright, and with it the majesty and intellectual density of thought sampling, suddenly made almost all the music between his time and theirs seem superficial. Even Bob Dylan and Eminem lost stature, and came to be valued mainly for having prepared the way for Marsalis and the birth of historiographism. When, in the first decades of last century, Dewey Bright at last regained some stature of his own, it was, in turn, as the composer who had prepared the way for them as such rather than the other way around.

What does all this wealth of music add up to? Where,finally, in our view of 21st century music does Dewey Bright belong? No clear, comprehensive answer is as yet possible. The absence of a complete edition of his works, and of first-rate live and recorded performances, has long constituted an insuperable obstacle to any such general evaluation. What the world needs now is an actual compact disc which was not posthumous when it was made, and it is possible that one has been found. More on this to come.

Our experience in selling books in an online community, began with Record Manager and Dick Weatherford's Interloc bulletin board, matching dealer wants with offers. Shortly thereafter, browser based bookselling and record selling became a pioneering effort with Moneyblows Books & Music. For record marketing, we turned to gemm and have listed with them for over a decade.
GEMM is a great marketplace, overstocked with some things, understocked with others. If you're looking for records, don't overlook GEMM.

The vinyl mystery of bossa nova history

Speaking with a customer the other day, I was reminded of a mystery in the history of bossa nova vinyl. What's the earliest edition of Joao Gilberto's Chega de Saudade? What's the deciding factor? Is it the color of the label, the color of the printing on the back side of the sleeve? Is it whether the sleeve is soft, encased in plastic, or cardboard like the typical album sleeves in America?

Some labels may be blue, some may be bright green and white, others greenish gray. There may be as many as 4 jacket variants and 3 label variants.

The customer told us of a huge record store in Rio de Janeiro, called Modern Sound, with a basement full of LPs and a clerk named Elvis. Though the customer speaks fluent Portuguese, he has a difficult time solving this mystery of bossa nova history. Communications with Modern Sound is only by telephone; they do not allow email contact with employees. We welcome comments by those with knowledge of this subject!

Much of the media coverage I have seen equates the health of the banks with the health of our economy. There seems to be little disagreement on this point. Hence, a wonderful time for a poem such as this one:

With Usura

With usura hath no man a house of good stone

each block cut smooth and well fitting

that design might cover their face,

with usura

hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall

harpes et luthes

or where virgin receiveth message

and halo projects from incision

with usura

seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines

no picture is made to endure nor to live with

but it is made to sell and sell quickly

with usura, sin against nature

is thy bread ever more of stale rags

is thy bread dry as paper,

with no mountain wheat, no strong flour

with usura the line grows thick

with usura is no clear demarcation

and no man can find site for his dwelling.

Stone cutter is kept from his stone

weaver is kept from his loom

WITH USURA

wool comes not to market

sheep bringeth no gain with usura

Usura is a murrain, usura

blunteth the needle in the maid's hand

and stoppeth the spinner's cunning. Pietro Lombardo

came not by usura

Duccio came not by usura

nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin' not by usura

nor was 'La Calunnia" painted.

Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio, Praedis,

Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.

Not by usura St. Trophime

Not by usura Saint Hilaire,

Usura rusteth the chisel

It rusteth the craft and the craftsman

It gnaweth the thread in the loom

None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;

Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered

Emerald findeth no Memling

Usura slayeth the child in the womb

It stayeth the young man's courting

It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth

between the young bride and her bridegroom

CONTRA NATURAM

They have brought whores for Eleusis

Corpses are set to banquet

at behest of usura.

I found this poem to be descriptive of what banks do. Though it is a poem, and may be taken by some in the context of the author's politics, it warns of things that seem to have happened!

Eddie Daniels on clarinet

Reading back to an interview given by Eddie Daniels, to the LeBlanc Bell, in the summer of 1993, I share some of his comments quoted by Tom Ridenour:

"I wanted to play my own music, music from my heart--and the voice that came from my heart was the clarinet. It has such subtlety and warmth, a natural sound. I'ts the instrument that I most connect with, the instrument that makes me feel alive...it truly excites me when young people hear this "primitive" acoustic instrument and prefer it to electronic ones. People are confronted with technology all the time, but the clarinet is such an earthy thing-- a piece of tree with holes in it!"

"All my training was classical, no jazz at all. This may not be true for all people, but for me, jazz is not something that can be learned in a classroom; you learn it by listening and doing it."

"Music saved my life by giving me a goal to work toward. Constantly having the beauty of music in front of me inspired me. Things weren't always great at home, and my escape was to practice. If not for music, I might have been an outcast--who knows?--in jail. Music gives you an inroad to yourself."

If you have never been to jazz.com you are in for a treat. Just as Barney Google could never have known his last name would become the "smith" or "jones" of the internet, who could guess a site named "jazz.com" could ever live up to its name? Thanks to its estimable editor Ted Gioia, it surely does. Check it out.

On this day when the world of celebrity merges with the world of government, we visit the life of another unlikely personage who brought happiness-- however fleeting-- to many.

Leo Ezekiel Mannes was born Oct. 10, 1911, in San Francisco, on a hill. The latter detail would follow him through his career and the city of birth would mean nothing at all.

His father was an accomplished violinist. The family moved to Los Angeles, where as a young man he performed in a tent show. During the 1920's he began hanging around the radio station KPMC, where he did some children's shows and performed with a jazz trio.

The radio station wanted to lasso the rural folks who, fleeing the Dust Bowl, had landed in California. So it was that one day, the station manager, Glen Rice, excitedly broke into regular programming to tell a most unusual story. He said that as he was riding in the hills in Malibu, he had lost his way and by chance, stumbled upon a small village of hill folk who had been out of touch with civilization for 100 years. They lived in log cabins, had a blacksmith shop, and lived as people did in the 18th century.

Day by day, the radio station disclosed more pertinent facts, such as the tidbit that the hill people were directly descended from Daniel Boone. On April 6, 1930, some of the "hill people" showed up at the radio station studio on mules. Their leader was Zeke Craddock.

Zeke Craddock was Leo Ezekiel Mannes, and the whole thing was a stunt out of his busy imagination as a radio promotion man. It was so successful that crowds of radio listeners were soon camping outside the radio station in the hopes of following the "hillbillies" home to their secluded hideaway. Zeke Craddock and his actors outwitted the fans by disguising themselves in coats and ties and they stole away undetected. The ersatz bumpkins were periodically trotted out to large crowds at Grauman's Chinese Theater and other radio promotion events.

"Zeke" changed his pseudonym from " Craddock" to "Manners" and his gang of miscreants broke up into three different musical groups. Zeke Manners and one of his pals, Elton Britt, said to have been the world's highest yodeler, set off for New York City in a Model A. Upon arriving they sang at radio stations, theaters and saloons and street corners.

Not every listener was enthralled. Mr. Manners once rather ruefully recalled being given $2 to stop singing in a hotel bar.

Not long after, the group got a spot on "The Rudy Vallee Radio Show" and soon were appearing on Fred Allen's show. For awhile, Mr. Manners was one of the Three Links of Sausage, with their sponsor being Armour & Company, the meatpacker.

When the sponsorship expired, the group tried being the Murray Hill Billies in reference to that Manhattan neighborhood. The name flopped. Their success came as Zeke Manners and His Gang. In 1935 they went to London and performed for the royal family.

In 1943, Mr. Manners joined the Army, serving with the Army Air Forces' motion picture unit. He appeared in "Winged Victory," Moss Hart's musical celebrating the Air Forces.

After the war, Zeke Manners shuttled between the East and West coasts. From 1950 to 1952, he was the host of one of television's earlies talk shows, on Channel 7, WJZ, which is now WABC. The show was a two-hour free-for-all. Eddie Cantor would pop in; Virginia Graham got her start as a television host by serving as Zeke's sidekick.

Back in Los Angeles, he became the nation's first cross-country radio disc jockey on the ABC network, according to a Newsweek magazine of the time. He managed this (echoes of Tom Joyner's early career) by exploiting the time differences. He would creep out of bed at 3:30 a.m. At 4:30 a.m. he would do a 45-minute show for East Coast audiences. An hour later, he would do another show for audiences in the Rocky Mountain time zone, etc., until the cycle finally ended at 7:45 a.m. Pacific Time.

In his "hill billy" persona, he banged out tunes on the accordion, piano and organ, often backed up by ABC's janitors clanking pails. His character was something between a cowpoke just off the Chisholm Trail and Li'l Abner, albeit one who happened to live in a Manhattan penthouse with a valet.

Times changed and so did Zeke. In the mid-1950s he worked as a rock 'n roll disc jockey. In the 1960s he appeared in Las Vegas with a bluegrass group. He can be spotted in a 1985 movie, directed by his nephew Albert Brooks. The movie was "Lost in America" and he was one of a couple living in a trailer park.

All his life, he wrote songs. He wrote "The Pennsylvania Polka" with Lester Lee, which was introduced by the Andrews Sisters in 1942, and was included eight times over in the 1993 movie "Groundhog Day."

His song "Fat Man Blues," a collaboration with William G. Cahan, a surgeon, included the line, "All this eatin' is defeatin' your chance / Of ever getting any good romance."

The Byrds recorded a song he wrote about the initial moon landing, "Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins."

Another of his original band names, from the 1920s, was the "Beverly Hill Billies." He was the only surviving member of that group when the television show of the same name appeared in the 1960s.

By that time, he had long been known as the "Jewish Hillbilly." So, when he sued the television show for stealing his name, he had no trouble proving it was his. After all, he was Jewish. And, if you recall, he had been born on a hill.

He was made musical director of the television show. When the show ended, he developed a nightclub act for himself and the show's star, Buddy Ebsen, which appeared in Las Vegas and elsewhere.

His deathbed request, dutifully fulfilled by his family, was to be buried "as a hillbilly." He was dressed for the hereafter in a baseball "gimme" cap celebrating the Spice Girls, red suspenders, and purple shades from the 99-cent store. A cigar was placed in his pocket.

So, though you may never have heard of Zeke Manners, take heart.