The Week That Was, August 16, 2015

Before we get started, how about a cartoon? From 1932, Betty Boop in “Minnie the Moocher,” featuring Cab Calloway and his Orchestra…

I love those Max Fleischer cartoons.

Anyway, had a busy week this week, so let’s get started…

I had an appointment with the dentist on Monday, so I shared an image quote that morning, a quote from Shakespeare, “This above all, to thine own self be true,” because I wasn’t sure how things would go that afternoon. Well, as you remember from my second Monday post, things did not go all that well, and an appointment to have two crowns seated took almost three hours and they still aren’t in. My dentist is responsible for my one-liner on Wednesday.

Two for Tuesday featured the songwriting team of Jerry Lieber and Mike Stoller, who wrote hits for both pop and R&B artists. Their song “Hound Dog” is the subject of Saturday’s Battle of the Bands, a sing-off between Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, who had a #1 on the R&B chart with it in 1953, and Elvis Presley, who had a #1 on the Pop chart in 1956. So far, I think it’s a tie, but you have until Thursday night to choose your favorite.

Thursday was a busy day. My Thursday Ten was the Top 10 from WCFL radio in Chicago on the day my family moved from our apartment in Chicago to our house in Northfield, June 26, 1971. To show there was a big difference between the charts of WLS and WCFL, the two Top 40 stations in Chicago at the time, I shared the position of the songs on the WLS chart as well. Halfmoon Mollie reminded me that Carole King actually had two songs in the Top 10 that week, her own “It’s Too Late” from her mega-blockbuster Tapestry album (#1) and James Taylor’s “You’ve Got A Friend” (#10) from his Mudslide Slim album. As I recall, Carole’s version of “Friend” is also on her album, and she played piano and sang on Taylor’s version.

Thursday was also Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop, where I was prompted to write about a memorable first day of school. I wrote about the first day of Freshman Orientation at Northwestern in September 1974 and making a fool of myself. Got some nice comments, which you can read after the post.

Monday or Tuesday of last week, I featured a video of Glen Campbell on The Tonight Show in the 1980’s, when a dark-haired Jay Leno was substituting for Johnny Carson. Glen did a remarkable version of Frank Ifield’s hit song, “I Remember You,” ironic because Glen is in the late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. Several days later, I noticed the video had been removed, so I removed the post as well. My guess is it might have been removed by the copyright police at YouTube, but no matter.

I was stuck fo a topic for The Friday Five, and found a prompt that suggested I talk about what I wanted to be when I grew up. I had a feeling I came off as bitter in that post, and used Stream of Consciousness Saturday to explain that no, I wasn’t bitter, just having a case of “If I had known then what I know now,” and explained that was generally a useless emotion, because I had to go through the exercise of learning things the hard way to know now what I learned then. Or, to pararphrase Vern Law, life gives you the examination before it teaches the lesson.

And there’s what you missed this week if you weren’t around. This coming week, the regular features and probably me philosophizing and sharing deep thoughts. Straight ahead!