Conducting Scholarly Stooge Research

My earliest recollection of The Three Stooges was a show on WPIX in New York City that was hosted by Officer Joe Bolton. Each afternoon Bolton’s show, The Three Stooges Funhouse, would feature several Three Stooges short films along with NYPD safety tips and guest appearances.  

Even though many of the films were over 25 years old, they were new to me and I would flip to Channel 11 each day for a dose of nyuk, nyuk, nyuk. Apparently I wasn’t alone.   

The vaudeville comedians who made their first movie in 1930 were on the brink of extinction in the early 1950’s. Their short subject films had been running in theaters before feature films and the mostly adult audiences were losing their taste for slapstick humor.   

Moe and Larry were beginning to look at other career options when their luck literally turned around. Commercial television was in its infancy and networks provided a limited amount of programming. Local stations were left to fill the gaps, especially in the late afternoon. Columbia Pictures, owners of everything Stooge, sold broadcasting rights for the black and white shorts to the new TV stations.   

Stations across the country bought the syndicated shows and then hired children’s TV personalities such as Officer Joe Bolton and Harlow Hickenlooper (Indianapolis) and Icky Twerp (Dallas) to host the shows. As a result, Moe, Larry and Curly (and Shemp, Joe and Little Joe) were introduced to a new generation of kids.   

The Three Stooges became superstars making appearances at shopping centers and movie theaters in cities that aired their old movie shorts five days a week. It was during this 15+ year surge that most baby boomer boys were exposed to the Stooges.   

Despite their advancing age and the questionable quality of their work in the 60’s, the Three Stooges released ten full length movies and their own cartoon series. These days movies like The Stooges Meet Hercules, Have Rocket Will Travel and Around The World In a Daze are hard to find for good reason. Their best work, however, has been remastered and reissued in a series of DVD sets packaged by Columbia Pictures called The Three Stooges Collection Volume 1-8.   

My interest in the trio was rekindled this year when I heard that a new Three Stooges movie would be released in April. I found an enjoyable book called “One Fine Stooge,” which viewed the Stooge’s long career through the eyes of Larry Fine.   

The book’s references to classic Stooge fare like Women Haters and Dizzy Doctors led me to start collecting the “new” DVDs. I am proud or embarrassed to say that I now own all 8 volumes or 192 short films that span from 1934 – 1959. You might say that watching hours of knucklehead television will be a waste of time. I prefer to call it research.   

I expanded my research this past weekend by sitting through the new Three Stooges movie. For this Stooge fan, the movie was a disappointment but the kids laughed at each hammer to the head and fist to the gut. If it catches on then maybe a new generation of Stooge fans will discover the wonders of those old 15 minute black and white classics once again.

Never Too Old To Rock and Roll

Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson - Then and Now

The classic rock band Jethro Tull released a prophetic song in 1976 called “Too Old To Rock and Roll, Too Young To Die.” Lead singer Ian Anderson was 27 years old at the time and already foreseeing a time when folks might hang up their rock and roll shoes.

The band’s website shows that the 65 year old Anderson is now in the middle of a 70 city tour around Europe and the United States. He’s obviously not “too old” yet. I was 19 years old when the song was released and if asked, I would have confidently stated that 40 is clearly too old to rock and roll. Jerry Lee Lewis was 41 at the time and “ancient” in my book. He played the Richardson Wildflower Festival last summer at the age of 75.

Sitting up close at the Allen Event Center’s Starship – Survivor – John Parr concert recently, I caught myself doing the math. If Mickey Thomas sang “Fooled Around and Fell In Love” in 1976 then how old is the guy? His voice was strong and he bounced around the stage like a 40 year-old. He’s actually 63 and is certainly not too old to rock and roll. Neither were the gray haired fans nearby who were more likely to know the lyrics to the song White Rabbit than their AARP membership number.

My daughter’s 19th birthday was last week. She may tolerate the music in her dad’s car but you won’t find any oldies in her Jeep. Eight months in Lubbock have turned her tastes to country music and those young cowboy stars who dominate the charts. I don’t have the heart to tell her that Jason Aldean is 35 and Dierks Bentley is 37. When she hits my age, Jason will be 70 and George Strait will be playing Billy Bob’s Saloon at age 94.

I never acknowledged the talent of Frank Sinatra when I was a teenager. My parents would argue that he was one of the greatest ever but I couldn’t see beyond his 60+ age. Kids today dismiss Paul McCartney in the same way. How can we blame them although we might argue he is one of the greatest ever.

Baby boomer rock and roll fans have a lot of practice overlooking the visual signs of age. They do it every morning in the mirror. That’s why they don’t complain if Mick Jagger is looking a little ragged at 69 but they expect him to sound close to the Mick Jagger on their IPODs. Most of the time he does and the Rolling Stones are in their 5th decade of touring.

Rock and roll music is the time machine for baby boomers and that’s why none of us will ever be too old to rock and roll. Songs can immediately transport us back to our younger days and most of us are happy to plunk down some money to see those classic rockers in concert one more time. In the future, noisy grandchildren will no longer be the biggest problem in assisted living communities. Instead, the floors will be thumping to the sounds of Aerosmith as hearing impaired residents turn up their Bose sound systems.

Million Dollar Quartet Celebrates Famous Jam Session

Some dates in rock and roll history stand out more than others. February 7, 1964, for example, is the day the Beatles played on The Ed Sullivan Show and were introduced to America audiences. August 16, 1969 is the day the Woodstock Festival opened and February 3, 1959 is known as “the day the music died” due to the tragic plane crash that killed Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper among others.

 The writers of a hit Broadway musical would have you add December 4, 1956 to that list. That is the day that four future stars jammed in a small recording studio in Memphis, Tennessee.

The musical is called Million Dollar Quartet and it celebrates the true life events that led to Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis all performing one night and one night only at the Sun Records Studio. According to Phillips, the December 4th recording session was reserved for Carl Perkins and he invited Lewis to play piano. Elvis unexpectedly stopped in at the studio and Phillips called Johnny Cash to complete the one night quartet.

The Tony Award winning musical is a combination concert and history lesson as the audience is transported back to the small storefront recording studio operated by Sam Phillips.

Phillips, a popular DJ in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, moved to Memphis in 1950 and opened the Memphis Recording Service. He embraced the mix of blues and country music that musicians brought to his studio and started Sun Records in 1952. He is best known for launching the careers of the million dollar quartet members but he also is credited for recording the first rock and roll record in 1951; a number called Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats.

The Million Dollar Quartet musical tells the story of that famous night and offers some insight into the personalities of the musicians but the storyline frequently steps aside for the music. Popular hits such as Blue Suede Shoes, Hound Dog, Whole Lot of Shakin’ and Folsom Prison Blues are incorporated into the show. In all, audiences are treated to twenty-one early hits by Cash, Perkins, Lewis and Presley.

In the style of Jersey Boys, the show’s four stars are first class vocalists and actors who keep the show from becoming just a musical revue. They are also accomplished musicians that capture the style of those early Sun Record days.

While much has been written about the four music pioneers portrayed in the musical, Sam Phillips was the man who recognized the talent and taught his artists how to make hit records. They all moved on to successful careers away from Sun Records but for one night the stars aligned over 706 Union Avenue in Memphis and the Million Dollar Quartet gives you a front row seat.

Million Dollar Quartet is playing at the Music Hall at Fair Park in Dallas as part of the Dallas Summer Musical Series. The show runs through March 18. For ticket information visit http://www.dallassummermusicals.org/ or call the DSM ticket office at 214-691-7200.

The Most Classic Rock Song

The first time I heard it was just before Christmas in 1971. I was at a friend’s house and her older brother had brought the album home. He had already played it through several times but he wanted us to hear one song in particular – “Stairway To Heaven.”

The band Led Zeppelin was all over FM radio in 1971 and my group of friends were more than familiar with their first three albums. “Stairway To Heaven” and the untitled album referred to as Led Zeppelin IV did not change my life or even my opinion of Led Zeppelin but I knew it was one of the best rock songs I had ever heard.

Apparently I was not alone. The song was voted #3 by VH-1 on the list of 100 Greatest Rock Songs and was ranked #31 on Rolling Stone Magazine’s list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. In celebration of the song’s 20th anniversary, Esquire Magazine published these facts which show how big the song became.

As of January 7, 1991, the "Led Zeppelin IV" album had been certified platinum times ten (ten million copies sold). Also, “Stairway to Heaven” remains the biggest-selling sheet music in the history of rock. An average hit sells 10,000 to 15,000 copies. "Stairway to Heaven" has sold more than one million copies of sheet music.

The Esquire article offers a rough guess as to how many times it was played between 1971 and 1991. They figured that “the song was played five times a day on each AOR station in America during its first three months of existence; twice a day for the next nine months; once a day for the next four years; and two to three times a week for the next fifteen years.”

By 2001, the song had been played more than 3 million times on the radio, according to radio industry sources.

The song was so popular in the mid 70’s that it became uncool among the college crowd to like it. I tuned it out for many years but eventually bought the CD reissue and grew fond of it all over again - even without the scratches.

It’s certainly not the lyrics that made it popular. Even diehard Zeppelin fans are challenged to find meaning in lines like “If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow don’t be alarmed now; it’s just a spring clean for the May queen.”

Musically, it may not be the greatest rock song of all-time and a lot of music has come and gone in 41 years but baby boomers and their teenage kids still download the song and play air guitar to the climactic guitar solo. I sat in a parking lot once forcing my then 11 year-old son to wait for the “Stairway” to end before I turned the car off. It just wouldn’t be right to cut this song off, I explained.

Guitarist Jimmy Page grew tired of the song and publicly announced he would no longer perform it live. With a few exceptions he has held to that but the song continues to make best and worst lists. The song has served as the theme for thousands of proms and been performed at both weddings and funerals. It’s become more of a phenomenon than a popular song.

That’s why I am a little embarrassed to say I still listen to Led Zeppelin IV often and might be found in the Krogers parking lot strumming my air guitar as Robert Plant reminds us that “she is still buying a stairway to heaven.”

Country Radio Days - Rock & Roll Nights

The Voice of Country Music in Paris, Tennessee?

  I would say it was more of an ambition than a lifelong dream but I always wanted to be a radio DJ.

  In the days before the Sony Walkman and Apple IPOD, teenagers in the 70’s spent most of their time either spinning records at home or listening to the radio. The DJ determined what music you listened to and ultimately what records you were buying.

  It was that ambition that led me to “study” radio and television in college. The classical format of the radio station at Murray State University wasn’t exactly what I imagined. It was harder learning how to pronounce the composers than pushing the buttons but it was a start. The payoff came after 10 pm when WKMS was turned over to late night rock and roll. Only the upperclassmen who had served their time with Mussorgsky during the day could spin Emerson, Lake and Palmer at night.

  I finally got my first late night shift in 1977 and did my best imitation of DJs I had heard on WNEW FM in New York in high school. No recordings of those historic radio shows exist and that is probably a good thing.

  That same year I answered an ad for a DJ position at WTPR AM-FM in Paris, Tennessee. It was a weekend job that included spinning country music on the FM station on Friday nights, playing top-forty music on Saturday afternoons and airing church services on Sunday mornings.

  My vast exposure to country music was a 45 rpm recording of The Battle of New Orleans that my brother owned. So here I was 90 miles from Nashville trying to pass myself off as a country DJ each Friday night. It didn’t help that some of the lamest country music of the past 50 years made the charts in the late 70’s. First there was Heaven’s Just a Sin Away which was pushed out of the number one slot by Don’t It Make My Brown Eyes Blue which was then buried by the classic Convoy. I think you see my point. “Breaker, breaker…we got ourselves a long hair Jersey boy in the control room!”

  Saturday mornings I got to spin 70’s top-forty music on the AM station which was only a little better than the country experience. The station’s program director created a formula that required a top 5 song to be played every ten minutes or so. That meant you could hear Barry Manilow’s Copacabana about 5 times too many in one shift. A frustrated colleague at the station extinguished a cigarette on the Manilow record one day but a new copy appeared the next morning. It was a losing battle.

  Anyone who has ever worked at a small town radio station has stories. My favorite was the night I put on a long playing record and ran down the street for some barbeque. I returned to find the station locked. The album eventually ended and so did my pride when I called the station manager from a pay phone to come back and let me in.

  Then there was the night the control board started smoking and the time I literally fell out of my chair while on the air. Another gem was the morning I played Beatles music over the First Baptist Church of Paris services. It was an honest mistake but it was not my finest radio moment.

 Despite the bad music, working as a DJ was still a blast and that short stretch as the voice of country music in Paris, Tennessee led to many more years of radio highs and lows. Tune in to The Flipside next week for radio daze, part two

Tommy James, Greg Allman & My Mother

A long forgotten cassette tape resurfaced in my office last week. The sound quality was horrible and it was held together with old dried out masking tape. Still, I was glad to see that it had survived in a box of old stereo stuff buried deep in my closet.

The tape was recorded in May of 1968, the year I received my first cassette recorder. Years later I would become a stereo snob and switch to a dual cassette deck. This was not a dual cassette deck though – it was a cheap $30 Panasonic player/recorder but it opened up the door for a lifetime of musical enjoyment.

The old cassette tape actually came with the recorder and is labeled Panasonic C-30. One side is marked “Demonstration Tape.” The other side simply says “For Recording.”

I popped the tape into my 25 year-old cassette deck and heard the familiar voice of Chuck Leonard, a DJ with 77 WABC radio in New York and my mother. I had obviously held the crude microphone up to the radio’s speaker and you can faintly hear my mother talking on the phone in the background. The player apparently did not come with a “recording in progress” flashing red light.

Halfway through the first song, I Think We’re Alone Now by Tommy James and the Shondells, the music cuts off and the opening notes of Whipping Post by the Allman Brothers cuts in. Readers who are unfamiliar with the song should know that Whipping Post is a 23 minute jam on a record that was released in 1972. I probably recorded it over my first cassette in college when I ran short of tapes not realizing its historical significance.

Despite the lousy sound, I continued listening and was a little surprised when the guitar solo was cut short by a recording of Sussidio by Phil Collins. The hit song was released in 1985 and I remember recording it from an Lp I borrowed at the public library. Side one of the tape ended with more of the Allman Brothers song and finished with Chuck Leonard and my mother.

If a future civilization had uncovered this one tape and their spaceship happened to have a cassette player in the dashboard, Tommy James, Greg Allman, Phil Collins and my mother would represent all of the musical culture of our 20th Century. I admit that I am probably placing too much importance on this but an audio archeologist could peel off the different layers of recordings from the past 44 years and learn something about our culture or at least about my musical tastes.

Since that cassette tape was made I have recorded thousands of songs on tapes, discs and hard drives but I never worked so hard to capture music. I carefully held the cheap microphone up to the speaker of my cheap transistor radio and hit record at just the right moment – almost. I could only dream of a day that music came without DJs and commercials.

Today my I-Tunes playlist includes much clearer versions of every song on that old cassette with the exception of my mother’s voice. There is no compelling reason to play this old cassette again but I just don’t have the heart to toss it out. Instead, I will stash it back in the closet where some advanced civilization may find it and… never mind.

Seeking A Slice Of Life (Or At Least Pizza)

Ponce de Leon sought the fountain of youth. I set my sights a little lower and simply sought the pizza of my youth.

The journey for a perfect slice of pizza was part of a recent trip to the land of pizza; New Jersey. I was joined on my quest by my daughter Susan and her boyfriend Adam, a native of Glen Ridge, NJ who was familiar with the local peoples and their strange language.

Rather than study ancient maps, I searched “best pizza, north Jersey” on my IPad and immediately found enough recommendations to keep us on the road as long as Ponce. The journey began at Maggie’s Town Tavern in Little Falls (NJ). Even though I grew up 10 miles away, I had never been in the place. One reason would be that my hometown of Bloomfield had 26 pizza restaurants or pizzerias of its own.

Maggie’s thin crust pizza met with our approval although the no slice policy forced us to eat an entire pie. While that seemed like a good idea at the time, it would catch up with us later.

For no good reason, we took the word of Canadian goaltender Martin Brodeur, for our next pizza location. We figured since he played his entire NHL career with the Jersey Devils, he must have had a few good slices of pizza. According to New Jersey Monthly, “the Brodeur family visits Famous Ray’s Pizza in Verona at least once a month.” It was very convincing.
Officially called The Famous Ray’s Pizza of New York, the pizzeria was a classic slice joint with steamy windows, countertop stools and no tables. The pizza was amazing.

We headed west to the town of Caldwell where the number seven rated pizzeria in north Jersey was located. It was clearly a hit with the locals who were standing out on the sidewalk waiting to get a table.

My Allen American press credentials did not impress the crowd in front of us so we moved on to The Pizza and Sandwich Barn just up the road. This classic pizzeria was recommended by Allen resident Chris Tripucka. The local owner of Eagle Designs grew up in nearby Essex Fells (NJ) and claims to have spent many a teenage afternoon at the Pizza Barn. The pizza couldn’t compare to Famous Rays but apparently the sandwiches are to die for.

Next we circled back to Totowa (NJ) and Dominick’s Pizza. I had been to the pizzeria exactly two times before over the past 5 years and the elderly Dominick still recognized me as that guy from Texas (sort of). The pizza was probably very good but our taste buds and appetites were starting to fade from the oregano overdose.

The final destination for the night was Mario’s, a restaurant in Clifton that was a favorite from my teenage years. My plan had been to compare the previous four pies to the pizza of my youth. Instead, my two companions refused to eat another slice and I didn’t eat my crusts which is an insult to a good pizza. Like the Chicago pizza favorite – we were stuffed.

While the thrill from this pizza parade wore off quickly, we did learn that you can get a good slice of pizza just about anywhere in Jersey. We also learned that Canadian goaltenders know something about pizza (Rays was our favorite) and the next we will leave room for dessert. Spumoni anyone?