Joel Dorn, the "Masked Announcer," just passed away at the age of 65. His passing is mourned because of his enormous influence on keeping jazz, blues, r&b, and its variants, such as Western Swing, in front of the public long after big music corporations moved on to more lucrative pastures. He was involved with many hit records but I write here to tell only of my one "fly on the wall" experience in the control room with this genius of American music.
The Rhode Island band Roomful of Blues, with Duke Robillard in the lead guitar chair, had turned on legendary songwriter Jerome "Doc" Pomus to Jimmie Vaughan and the Thunderbirds, and thus Pomus was collaborating with Dorn on an interesting and as-yet (as far as I know) unreleased session at Regent Sound Studios in Manhattan.
In the recording studio was the Roomful horn section, collaborating with Vaughan's band in an album that hoped to recreate a classic Texas blues sound augmented by roadhouse horns in the precision style of Roomful. It was late summer 1977 as I recall.
Pomus and Dorn were at the controls, and the bands were in awe, looking for direction. Dorn's patented studio style was to let the musicians do their thing, and these club hardened players did just that.
I had recently met Doc Pomus and his invitation for me to come to the session blew me away. None of these guys had any record company support and everything was coming out of their pockets. Pomus had royalties from his hit songs, and as he described it, "Joel makes a lot of money with Leon Redbone," one of the artists in his production portfolio.
The sessions went fine and were notable mainly for being so untainted with commercial considerations. Time and again, figures such as Joel Dorn and Doc Pomus made music for love and not money. At the same time they refreshed America's musical legacy by making new music with old ideas.
Dorn produced albums as diverse as Bette Midler's The Divine Miss M and Leon Redbone's Double Time. Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Asleep At The Wheel, Roberta Flack, and the Neville Brothers all benefited from his touch. All of them "reinvented the wheel" rather than striving for a pinpoint blast at nanoculture. Bette Midler and Leon Redbone are still out there doing it. R.I.P. Joel Dorn.
Another passing of note: Laura Archera Huxley, age 96. Known as mostly as the widow of Aldous Huxley, I highly recommend her book You Are Not The Target if you can find a copy.

Browsing in the Harlan Wolfe's Music record store in Conway, New Hampshire, I heard a comment from a shopper who walked in and confronted all the 1960's, 1970's, and 1980's vinyl records and said, "Too much past all at once."
It was a feeling I often have when looking through vinyl record accumulations to buy. It clouds the mind, this rush of visual and audio references from long ago.
And it was a feeling that came up while listening to a record that arrived in a recently acquired collection. The record label says, "Office of Civil Defense, 'Stars for Defense,' with Vaughn Monroe, Jay Jackson and Ray Bloch and his Orchestra, Program No. 332, Do not play before Feb. 10, 1963."
Since it is well after that date, I did not think I would be prosecuted for playing this record. Typically, a product like this would be supplied to radio station turntables for the weekly 15-minute program in which listeners could learn what a good job the Office of Civil Defense was doing. Much of their task was to make Americans comfortable with buying canned and dry goods, and rotating them in and out of their fallout shelters.
Never heard of a fallout shelter?
That was the homeland security bonanza of the 1950s and 1960s, which we would construct in our suburban cellars and schools, and where we were all supposed to go in the event of an "irrational attack" or "enemy miscalculation." Those are the phrases used on the recording.
There is no mention on the vinyl of who the supposed enemy might be, but the context of the Cold War made it perfectly clear.
And what constituted an "irrational attack," or "enemy miscalculation," was not left to chance. The words "Hiroshima" or "Nagasaki" are not mentioned. But, the general idea of buying canned goods, radiometers, and geiger counters, was to survive in your own, or the community's, fallout shelter, while the holocaust of a nuclear blast played itself out on the erstwhile homeland.
The kernel of our patriotic duty in a time of nuclear tragedy, circa Feb. 10, 1963, was apparently to die slowly, underground, surrounded by empty cans and water jugs.
This is where our well-meaning (I guess) government was leading us on the preparation front.
In this unsteady light-- as I mentioned above, "too much past all at once" can cloud your thinking-- I will quote the lyrics of the song Vaughn Monroe proceeds to warble on this record, in the holiday spirit of the month that begins tomorrow:

"Oh the weather outside is frightful, but the fire is so delightful,
and since we've no place to go, let it snow, let it snow.
Oh it doesn't show signs of stopping, and I've got some corn for popping,
and the lights are turned way down low, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.
When we finally kiss goodnight, how I hate going out in the storm,
But if you really hold me tight, all the way home I'll be warm.
The fire is slowly dying, and my dear, we're still goodbying,
But as long as you love me so, let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

Surely no irony was intended. I was also struck by the seeming influence of Vaughn Monroe on
Leon Redbone.