Keener 13

By Susan Whitall – From her Blog at DetNews.com

That’ll be Wednesday, July 15. Macca will sit down for an interview with Dave, and he’ll perform.

The former Beatle is launching a series of concerts in the U.S. starting July 17 at CitiField in New York City, and then heading to Washington, D.C., Boston, Atlanta, Tulsa and winding up in Dallas on Aug. 19.

Detroit? Please?

By Eileen Trombley Glick
Keener Correspondent at DetroitMemories.com

Harry Jarkey, a Detroit TV personality and nightclub entertainer in the late ’50s and ’60s, was best known for a morning variety program called Our Friend Harry, which ran from 1957-59, as well as The Fun Club, a children’s show with Soupy Sales. He continued his career at places like The Roostertail and Bay City’s Wenona Beach Amusement Park’s casino, where he worked for 30 years, until his retirement at age 75. He moved to southern California in the ’70s to live near another former Detroiter and friend, Danny Thomas.

Ed Golick, webmaster of www.detroitkidshow.com has put together a Happy Birthday Harry Jarkey! email campaign. If you remember Harry, please take a minute to send an email (include your memories of him if you’d like) to happybirthdayharry@gmail.com. And even if you don’t remember him, send an email anyway! After all, how often does one of Detroit’s former celebrity icons turn 96?! Ed, who will gather the emails and send them on to Harry, tells me that he’s really a great guy and will be elated with all of the attention. (But then, have you ever known a performer who wasn’t?)

Over the years, a number of folks have written to me asking if there were any existing Swingin’ Time shows. As luck would have it, L.A. resident Dave Fisher, Cass Tech ’63, who was a ‘regular’ on Swingin’ Time, home-taped six shows back then and has now burned them to DVD. They are dated: 8-27-66, 9-3-66, 9-10-66, 9-17-66, 12-24-66 and 3-11-67.

If you’re interested in these DVDs, contact me at info@detroitmemories.com I’ll send you a PDF that lists the shows and artists who appeared along with information on how you can obtain these disks.

Don Coles chronicles the demolition of Tiger Stadium here. Not for the faint of heart Tiger Stadium fans, this webpage provides 77 aerial views from July 5, 2008 through June 22, 2009. Sadly, more of Detroit’s history lost forever.

A poster of the final day of baseball at Tiger Stadium September 29, 1999 is available through AllPosters.com When you use this link to make your purchase, Detroit Memories is credited.

Another one bites the dust – On June 25, 2009, Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority voted unanimously to demolish the historic Lafayette Building that sits on a triangular lot at Michigan Avenue, West Lafayette Blvd and Shelby Street.

PROFILE: MARSHAL CRENSHAW Berkley HS ’71

Marshall Crenshaw is an American singer, songwriter, guitarist and rock music historian. He was born in Detroit, Michigan on November 11, 1953 and grew up in the suburb of Berkley. Crenshaw began playing guitar at age 10. From 1968 to 1973 he led the band Astigafa, an acronym for “a splendid time is guaranteed for all.” Although he came along too later to have a hit record on the WKNR Music Guide, he scored a top 40 hit in 1982 with “Someday, Someway” from the film Night Shift (1982). Retro rocker Robert Gordon took “Someday, Someway” to #76 in 1981, and Crenshaw’s version made #36 the next year. In the 2000s, Crenshaw played guitar as a special guest with the reunited members of the MC5. Crenshaw’s latest CD, Jaggedland, was released on June 2, 2009.

Do you remember – Native Detroiter and actor Curtis Armstrong? He graduated from Berkley HS in 1972, one year after Crenshaw. You may remember him as ‘Booger’ in Revenge of the Nerds and as Miss Depesto’s love interest in the Cybil Shepherd / Bruce Willis TV series “Moonlighting“.

SAVE THE DATE: ARIZONA-DETROITERS DINNER Saturday, October 10, 2009 5-10 pm, Fiesta Resort Conference Center, 2100 South Priest Drive, Tempe, AZ 85282. Our speaker will be Vic Caputo. Former Channel 2 News Anchor ~ 1968-1980. Also speaking will be Theresa (Terry) Livingston daughter of Toby David/”Captain Jolly” who’ll be bringing along a bunch of her dad’s memorabilia.

From the Mailbag: I grew up in Detroit and lived in the area until 1995 when I moved to Arizona. During the ’50s and early ’60s, I sang with a Detroit group called “Make Way for Youth,” a Don Large Chorus. We practiced every Tuesday and Thursday evening in the WJR studios and were on the radio every Saturday. It would be fun to see how many folks are still out there who participated in this group and where they are today… Joanne Blues

Well, Joanne, ‘Make Way for Youth’ produced a wealth of talent, not the least of whom was Maureen Bailey, better known as Christmas Carol. You may also be surprised to know that DJ Lee Alan was also part of this Chorus, too. Next month, I’ll feature some of the MWFY participants. In particular, we’ll take a look at the careers of Jim Beasley and his friend, the late Barry Kinder. We sorely miss Barry’s contributions to the Detroit Memories Discussion Group.

Upcoming Class Reunions

Assumption Grotto Grade School – All years | Detroit St. Thomas – All years | St. Ambrose – All classes | Cooley – Class of ’59 | Detroit Redford – Class of ’59 | Lowrey – Class of ’59 | Walled Lake Central – Class of ’59 | Mother Of Our Savior – 60’s Grade School Reunion | Fordson – Class of ’64 | Highland Park – Class of ’64 | Finney-Class of ’64, ’65 and ’66 | Lakeview (St. Clair Shores)-Class of ’67 | Waterford Township-Class of ’68 | East Catholic-Class of ’69 | Henry Ford-Class of ’69 | Lakeview (St. Clair Shores)-Class of ’69 | Livonia Franklin-Class of ’69 | Marine City-Class of ’69 | Pickney-Class of ’69 | Southfield-Class of ’69 | St. Brigid-Class of ’69 | St. David-Class of ’69 | St. Florian-Class of ’69 | St. Mary Mt. | lemens-Class of ’69 | Waterford Kettering-Class of ’69 | Wyandotte Roosevelt-Class of ’69 | Madison-Class of ’74 | Anchor Bay-Class of ’74 | Clintondale-Class of ’77 | Walled Lake Central-Class of ’77 | Lincoln Park-Class Of ’78 | Airport (Carleton, MI)-Class of ’79 | Crestwood-Class of | 79 | Romulus-Class of ’79 (also ’77-’81) | Roosevelt-Class of ’79 | St. Clement-Class of ’79. Details on all Detroit area class reunions can be found here.

For more Detroit Memories, visit the website: DetroitMemories.com

(Eileen Trombley Glick keeps Detroit Memories alive from her home base in Phoenix AZ. Click here to subscribe to the FREE Detroit Memories Newsletter.)

By Susan Whitall – From her Blog at DetNews.com

Happy news, the Rationals are playing a CD release party July 24 at the Magic Bag.

The death of TV pitchman Billy Mays, jogged memories of some of the more notable on-sit sales people of the Keener era.

Marilyn Turner was the weather person at WJBK when she began her run as the spokesmodel for Carpet Center. We remember her flying through the warehouse on a Persian rug. And who can forget the inspired series of radio commercials for Merollis Chevrolet where salesman Ernie was constantly getting advice from the owner who “made a friend for life with each car sold”.

Perhaps the most famous Detroit advertising icon was Mr. Belvedere. The man behind the president’s desk who ended each commercial with the phrase “we do good work” was actually Maurice Lezell. A Detroit native and graduate of Central High school, Lezell named his construction company after the Clifton Webb character that first garnered attention in the 1948 film Sitting Pretty. According to Detroit’s most knowledgeable TV historian, Ed Golick, proprietor of the quintessential Motor City television memory site DetroitKidShow.com, by the 1970s Belvedere Construction became one of the biggest local advertisers in Detroit, spending a reported $750,000 a year.

Many of us remember Mr. Belvedere’s repartee with CKLW-TV’s Conrad Patrick and Lezell’s scowling “Conrad, I’m not happy!” statements. Lezell told Ed Golick that the commercials were an incredible two minutes in length and were recorded extemporaneously.

For more on Lezell’s life as Mr. Belevedere, visit the DetroitKidShow Belevedere page.

By Susan Whitall – From her Blog at DetNews.com

Everybody talks about celebrity deaths coming in threes — in this case it would be Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett then Michael Jackson — but it’s also a truism that many notable deaths get lost in the shuffle.

Sky Saxon died Thursday as well, cause of death not yet official. He didn’t have the fame of Michael Jackson, but he led the Seeds, who, with “Pushin’ Too Hard” were one of the key garage bands of the late ’60s. The Seeds on the surface were one-hit wonders, but that hit had so much impact on generations of bands, and fans that it’s hard to measure.

Saxon had recently moved to Austin and was set to be a part of the California ’66 tour along with remnants of Love and the Electric Prunes.

Curator’s note: The Video link in Susan’s blog post came from an episode of “The Mothers In Law” an NBC TV series, starring Eve Arden and Kay Ballard, that ran on WWJ (now WDIV) TV from 1967-1969. Rock groups were often featured on TV series in the 60s. Perhaps the strangest appearance was when the Beau Brummels traveled back in time to sing “Laugh Laugh” on The Flintstones.

By Scott Westerman
I was in Tucson yesterday when the cell phone beeped that Michael Jackson had suffered cardiac arrest. As the day progressed, and my team was jumping on a plane back to ABQ it became clear that a troubled life was over and that another page in rock n roll history had turned.

Ryan Seacrest’s Audio Tribute to Michael Jackson

Link: Susan Whitall’s excellent MJ Piece in the Detroit News.

Thanks to my friend Don Davis, I get to channel my Keener creative juices from time to time on a small AM oldies station here in New Mexico. I called the Queen when we landed and had her meet me at the studios with her Jackson Five CD collection. We went on the air at 7PM to spend an hour pondering MJ’s impact on the Keener generation.

I am a huge Motown fan, and in 1969, it felt to me like the Jackson 5 were carpetbaggers, stealing the thunder of what I though was authentic R&B. But it was hard not to like “I Want You Back” and “The Love You Save” and I was soon adding those to the cassette music mixes that played in my car on the way to school.

The Jackson 5 charted 8 times on the WKNR. Michael did it only once as a solo artist with “Got to Be There”. There’s no doubt that, had Keener survived into the 80s, he would have been a staple on the play list even then.

How to talk about MJ to an audience that was more attuned to Elvis and the Beatles? We were working without notes last night and putting together the show on the fly. I decided to focus on early Motown’s influence on later Motown.. Juxtaposing the Temptations “Can’t Get Next to You” with “ABC” and Bobby Day’s version of “Rockin Robin” against MJs (the original is infinitely better).

I put the Queen on the air (against her will) and asked about her first Jackson Five 45. That lead to a conversation about how our older siblings influenced our musical tastes… and visa versa.

We played “Thriller“.. Had to. 50 million in sales and the first African American music video to break on MTV made it so.

Touched only lightly on MJ’s troubled life and eccentricities. There are inevitable comparisons to Elvis. They both died young and the combination of lifestyle and medication probably were contributors to each man’s demise. No matter who you most identify with, the King of Rock and Roll and the King of Pop each made indelible marks on their times.

We wound things up with a review of MJ’s philanthropies. Talked about but didn’t play “We Are the World“. Ended with “Man in the Mirror” with a set up about how complicated we are as human beings, capable at our core of incredible good, if we will it so.

KRKE program director Craig Collins and I joke that Real Oldies 1600 runs on Triple A Battery power after dark and since very few listeners called our live line during the show, Colleen and I wondered who was really out there paying attention. But the experience brought back memories of how she used to come to the studio with me when we were first married. And we were grateful, again, that we still love each other as much today as we did on those nights at the radio station over 30 years ago.

After the show, we went into the production room and played “Rock with You” and “Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough”, two of her all time MJ favorites. We remembered taking my record hop stuff to her family holiday gatherings and how everyone played DJ while the rest of us danced to stuff like that.

And we thought, as we were driving home, that perhaps when stars die, we should focus on those types of memories… where we were, what we were doing and who was most important in our world when these records were playing the sound track of our lives.

Our post about the birthday of the LP elicited some great feedback on Facebook. I asked for the name of the first LP you ever bought. I got a lot of great answers, including one from Mike Smock, who said, “LP’s? how about 45’s? – CCR – Down on the Corner/Fortunate Son.”

That spurred me to open one of the many, many boxes of 45s that have sat, untouched, in my garage over the last three moves. What a wave of memories that generated!

So what was your first 45 purchase ever? And how about your favorite 45 of all time?

The first 45 I bought was Chubby Checker‘s “Limbo Rock”. It wasn’t what I had intended to buy. I knew what the song I wanted sounded like, but didn’t know the title, so, being just seven years old, I picked the 45 that looked like the most likely candidate. Of course I was wrong.

Favorite 45? There are three that I still cherish as much as the day I bought them.

Free – All Right Now: This was a DJ record that came with two mixes, a short and long version. The guitar bridge before the final chorus pans from left to right and back again in a call-and-response that builds to and explosive climax. When my buddy John Schumacher bought the album, I thought I’d get it, too. But I discovered that the album version was a total re-record and had none of the punch of the single. Sadly the album mix is all that we hear now days and generations assume it’s the real deal. Look deep at the Free catalog over at Rhapsody and you may find the original single version.

B.J. Thomas – Rock n Roll Lullabye: Another DJ record with two versions. The Beach Boy background vocals are dead-on and the stereo mix is head-phone perfect. The long version has a 35 second intro with Fender Rhodes and vibes that is un-paralleled. I actually had two copies and wore out one of em, listening through my David Clarks on the good old Sony stereo in our living room.

Everything is Everything – Wichi-Tai-To: Jim Pepper, the Native American sax player who is behind the band Everything is Everything was the inspiration for this one hit peyote laced wonder on the Vanguard label. It’s a mono mix and didn’t do much on the charts, but it inspired a ton of others to record it, including an extended riff on the Brewer and Shipley Weeds LP. I did an Internet search a few years back and found eleven different versions, from jazz fusion to the Harpers Bizzare.

Got a first 45 / favorite 45 recollection? Share it with us!

From 1974. The late great Carson sidekick (March 6, 1923 – June 23, 2009) at his second banana best. Johnny’s network was in a slump in the mid 70s. ABC was in it’s prime and Carson wasn’t afraid to take pot shots at his bosses… and the competition. The local NBC news team was was in the audience, hence the inside jokes.

Ed McMahon passed away this week after a battle with bone cancer.

Kodak announces that it will no longer make it’s famed Kodachrome film. Let’s remember with Paul Simon.

On June 21, 1948. Columbia Records revolutionized recorded music with the introduction of Long Play record albums. The LP was the brain child of a group of engineers, lead by Hungarian born inventor Peter Goldmark, who became obsessed with finding a way to cram more content onto the circular disks that were the current state of the art in analog sound reproduction.

Before 1948, records spun at 78 revolutions per minute and could hold only about 4 minutes per side. The LP changed all that. Initially a disk could hold a total of 45 minutes (about 22 minutes per side) of monaural content. Over the next 40 years, improvements in quality and capacity lead to Extended Play disks that contained 52 minutes, and the audio output grew from one track to two-track stereo and ultimately four-track quadraphonic. LPs were at first available in both 10 and 12 inch varieties, with Frank Sinatra and the New York Philharmonic listed as catalog numbers one and two. The 10 inch disk soon lost out to the higher capacity 12 inch version, which became the standard for a generation of audiophiles until the advent of the Compact Disk.

Each side of an LP contains nearly sixteen hundred feet of groove. At 33 1/3 revolutions per minute, the playback needle travels along the grooves at about one mile per hour. Unlike CDs which change the speed of rotation to deliver a constant data stream, a record player needle travels fastest at the outside edge of the LP.

Many of us owned players with four speed settings: 16, 33 1/3, 45 and 78 RPM, with thirty-threes and forty-fives being the most popular denominations. Often, we would test the waters of a new act by buying a 45 “single”. If we liked it, we might pop for the LP.

The longer playing format lead artists to consider how tracks flowed on a side. The Beatles, Stevie Wonder and Pink Floyd made the most of the Symphonic approach to album creation. Unless we were watching the visual separation of each album band, it was sometimes hard for us to figure out where one song ended and the next began.

The 12 x 12 inch size opened up a whole new world to record company marketing departments, who used LP cover art as a way to define an artist’s brand and set a disk apart from the rest on record store shelves.

Some still believe that LPs are superior in audio quality to digital CDs. Club DJs often prefer vinyl to digital as they ply their trade scratching and cross fading tracks to influence the intensity on the dance floor.

As for Peter Goldmark, he went on to champion the CBS system for color television broadcasting. It was far superior to the RCA NTSC color system, but wasn’t compatible with the millions of black and white TV sets already in use and RCA’s iteration became ubiquitous.

Bobby Hebb’s one hit wonder, “Sunny” was entering it’s second week at number one on the WKNR Music Guide on this date in 1966. Only the second African American to perform on the Grand Ole Opry, Hebb was the son of blind musicians. His career began at age three when he teamed with his nine year old brother, Harold. He later becasme a regular on the Opry playing in Roy Acuff’s band. Hebb played trumpet in the Navy and became the second “Mickey” when Mickey Baker left the musical team of Mickey and Sylvia.

On November 23, 1963, Harold Hebb was killed in a knife fight in Nashville. That event, along with the assasination of President John F. Kennedy threw Hebb into a funk. He used songwriting as therapy, eventually penning “Sunny” as an alternative to Johnny Bragg’s “Just Walkin in the Rain.”

“Sunny” was a smash hit, leading to a tour with the Beatles. Bootleg recordings of the concerts show the audience receiving Hebb with the same wild enthusiasm shown for John, Paul, George and Ringo. The All Music Guide shows over 1000 different releases of the song. In it’s day, the tune was covered more than one hundred times by everyone from Cher to James Brown to Frank Sinatra. Eleven years later, a disco remix put Hebb back on the charts.

Some Keener Trivia: the four note hook just before the key change in “Sunny” was lifted from John Barry’s famous James Bond theme, made popular in the film Dr. No.