Yesterday’s Music Today
It was twenty degrees and overcast at 7.00 a.m., however, this seemed cool when compared to yesterday’s heat. I paid sixty-nine cents for a pair of rubber thongs.
Tiki asked me to assist her to get a plastic bag, filled with rubbish, into a slightly larger bag. In reference to the latter bag, she instructed me to: “Hold on tightly while I stuff this in.”
“That’s normally my job!” I quipped.
At noon, Channel Nine screens a film from 1969, “Seven In Darkness”. It centres upon the crash of a DC3 airliner, which contains seven people who are blind. Milton Berle and Dina Merrill are inclusions in its cast. Another programme in the series, “Medical Center”, which stars Chad Everett, is shown between two and three o’clock. Today’s edition deals with a girl of just eighteen years, who learns that she has to have a mastectomy, and a doctor of seventy-three whom, in spite of having become the recipient of a new heart, refuses to retire from active surgery.
As Barry Sapherson, Barry Ryan was born in Leeds, England, in October of 1948. His career as a singer began in partnership with his twin brother, Paul, at the age of sixteen.
In 1965, the pair was signed to record on Decca Records as the duo, Paul & Barry Ryan. Paul learned that he could not cope with the stress associated with this and, consequently, it was decided that he would write compositions for Barry to record. One such composition was the brilliantly arranged “Eloise”, released in 1968.
“Eloise”, deservedly, sold more than a million copies. However, subsequent singles could not replicate anything like its success. That is, until “Love Is Love”, released in 1969, became warmly accepted in certain European nations. This meant that it , too, sold similarly to “Eloise”.
http://youtu.be/5BVDCjCKtuY
Due to his popularity in Europe, Barry decided to record songs in German. He ceased to record in the early 1970s but made a comeback in the late 1990s, when compact discs were released of he and his brother’s original recordings.
Whether “Eloise” appeals to one or not, I believe it is yet a further example of just how the standard of popular music has sunk, to find itself wallowing in the mire of mediocrity that it is in today. I was sitting in my new dentist’s waiting room just the other day having to endure what was being fed to me by the radio station that was playing. In the end I felt compelled to exclaim to the similarly aged gentleman seated opposite, “I don’t believe the dentistry that we are about to receive could be as excruciating as listening to this!” He laughed and concurred.
From 9.00 a.m., I listened to Steve Raymond’s show on the radio station, 2UE.
This morning is still and humid. We paid two dollars and forty cents for a pound of king prawns. A fresh lettuce cost us thirty-nine cents.
We were still in bed at 8.00 a.m., when Tiki’s parents — they asked me to call them “Mum” and “Dad”, once we were married — arrived unexpectedly. We leaped out of bed and met them at the front door. “Mum” appeared as though she didn’t know where to look and it wasn’t until I looked down, that I realised why. There, protruding from the fly of my pyjamas, was a tissue.
It was sprinkling a little at Caringbah, at 7.15 a.m., but it did not come to anything. This evening, at half past seven, “This Is Your Life”, looks at that of Ken Rosewall, a champion at tennis. An edition of the so-called comedy series, “The Practice”, with Danny Thomas cast in the principal role, followed from eight o’clock.
We stayed up for a further two and a half hours from half past eight to watch Channel Nine and the drawn-out motion picture, “Airport”, from 1970, which lists Dean Martin, Van Heflin, Burt Lancaster and Jacqueline Bisset among its stars.
Sydney has experienced heavy rain for much of the day. On television, at 4.30 p.m., there is a programme from the series, “To Rome With Love”, which stars John “Bachelor Father” Forsythe, and has as a guest star, Diane “Surfside 6” McBain. John Forsythe also provides the voice of ‘Charlie’ in the series, “Charlie’s Angels”.
Rod Stewart is being interviewed by presenter, Mike Willesee, on “Willesee”; whilst over on Channel Nine’s “A Current Affair” sprinter, Paul Narracott, is being hailed as a champion of the future.
“Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”, which stars Ellen Burstyn and Kris Kristofferson, and “Dog Day Afternoon”, starring Al Pacino, are screening at the Caringbah Drive-in.
Alvis Edgar Owens Jr., in conjunction with his band The Buckaroos, from the late 1950s until the late 1960s took country music to a wider audience. This was, in part, due to the fact that they were based in California. Their sound was to make the town of Bakersfield famous.
http://youtu.be/BaNX55olkxw
A child of the Great Depression, poverty and smothering dust storms had forced his family out of sharecropping in Texas, and to head westwards. “Buck” sang in honky tonks, in Bakersfield, drawing upon a style of hillbilly that had once been at the root of country music.
http://youtu.be/liX6eVZsbeE
Whereas the likes of Hank Williams and Lefty Frizzell had drawn inspiration for their creativity from their lives of indulgence, Buck Owens was a man of principle who set high standards of professionalism. His love of rock and roll also influenced his music and made it stand out from what was being emitted from Nashville.
Buck visited Billboard’s country music charts for thirty years from 1959, racking up twenty-one No.1 hits. Recordings that contain the same vitality as when they were released.
http://youtu.be/FxtdoJN-IIw
The death of his leading guitarist, Don Rich, as the result of a motorcycle accident, in 1974, so affected Buck that he gradually drifted into semi-retirement, just as the film, ‘Urban Cowboy’, was being popularly received and bringing country music to the fore, in 1980. In 1987 he met Dwight Yoakam, a devotee of Buck’s music, and the pair recorded Buck’s recording from 1972, “The Streets Of Bakersfield”. The duet gave Buck his first No.1 since his original recording of the song.
I was firstly introduced to the music of Buck Owens in the 1970s when what was then radio station, 2KY, in Sydney, decided to play country music for a couple of years. His only hits, in Australia, coincided with that. These were “Made In Japan”, which reached a peak of No.7, in 1972, and “(It’s A) Monster’s Holiday” (No.4, in 1974); on the pop charts here.
http://youtu.be/iqfkZ_n_TzI
Buck wrote or had a hand in writing many of his recordings. “Crying Time”, which he also wrote, rose as high as No.6 on Billboard’s singles pop chart, in early 1966, for Ray Charles, and No.5 on its rhythm and blues chart.
http://youtu.be/L-magrm3Voo
Coming from abject poverty made Buck determined to create wealth from other means than selling records. Thereby, he became a diverse and astute businessman. Buck died in March of 2006, at the age of seventy-six.
The names of more recordings by Buck Owens can be found in the suggested playlists.
This evening Channel Seven is screening the motion picture, “There’s A Girl In My Soup”, from 1970. It stars Peter Sellers and Goldie Hawn.
After I had arrived home from work Tiki took me aside to show me the draw in the kitchen where she wants the cups to be kept from now on. “That won’t fit in here!” she exclaimed, referring to the long, tall mug I was about to place in the draw. I looked at her and replied with a wry smile, “That’s what you told me this morning and I proved you wrong.”
There is a shortage of milk, due to a strike by workers within the industry.
It costs thirty dollars to renew one’s driver’s licence for a further three years.
This evening, from half past seven: “Evel Knievel’s Death Defiers”, compered by Telly “Kojak” Savalas and Jill St. John. One fellow falls eighty-four feet on to a rubber sponge.
At half past eight, an edition of the series, “The New Avengers”, on the ABC-TV’s Channel Two. Patrick Macnee still appears as John Steed, while Joanna Lumley plays the part of Purdey.