Hurricane Katrina Strikes Deep

Hurricane Katrina--NASA Photo

When I heard the news of Hurricane Katrina sweeping across southern Florida over the weekend, I worried about friends of mine living in that area. On Monday, Katrina continued across the Gulf of Mexico, severely damaging the southern portions of Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Its torrential rains caused massive flooding, destroying many homes and businesses and damaging many highways.

Hundreds of thousands of lives will never be the same.

New Orleans has been the hardest hit. The city is still being evacuated. The 25,000 people who were staying in the Superdome are being bussed to Houston's Astrodome. We will never forget the television images of residents of New Orleans and Biloxi looking tired, depressed, bewildered, dazed, thirsty and hungry. Hundreds of thousands lost everything they had. They are now beginning the next, painful chapters of their lives, filled with anxiety and uncertainty.

At the end of December, we prayed for the Tsunami victims in Southeast Asia. Now we are praying for our own citizens who have been devastated by Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans just might be lost to us as a city, but like many Americans, I truly hope not. We can only wait and see how New Orleans comes through this horrible ordeal. I've never been there, but I've always wanted to visit the city that gave the world Louis Armstrong and jazz.

Do you remember the Chicago Sun-Times cartoonist Bill Mauldin's famous cartoon of the day Kennedy was assassinated? The captionless cartoon shows the Abraham Lincoln figure from the Lincoln Memorial, bowed forward in his seat, face buried in his hands in grief.

That's how Louis Armstrong must look about now.

But after grieving for his hometown, Louis would wipe away his tears, pick up his trumpet, play a few notes to summons his musician friends behind the pearly gates, and then lead the parade, not a funeral parade, but a parade of celebration to show the world that the City of New Orleans will never be defeated.

The United States must rebuild New Orleans, Biloxi and the other communities devatated by Hurricane Katrina. Other nations must contribute to this effort as well, just as the United States has done so often to help them. American corporations should be in the vanguard of contibutors to this massive rebuilding project.

As individuals, we can take a first step by contributing to the American Red Cross or other established charities.

Click the "Play" button to hear Basin Street Blues
by
Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars
Louis Armstrong (trumpet)
Trummy Young (trombone)
Barney Bigard (clarinet)
Bud Freeman (tenor sax)
Billy Kyle (piano)
Arvell Shaw (bass)
Kenny Johns (drums)

Recorded March 19, 1954 in New York City

Ray Nordstrand: The Best

I am terribly saddened by the passing of Ray Nordstrand, a friend of mine in Chicago who died yesterday morning. Ray was 72 and had been ill for some time.

If you are familiar with Chicago's fine arts station, WFMT-FM, then you are probably familiar with Ray Nordstrand. He was one of the most influential executives in Chicago radio history, whose stewardship of WFMT-FM from its early years made it one of the most respected fine arts stations in the world. WFMT was essentially a mom-and-pop operation in 1953 when Ray, an Evanston native and then a 20-year-old economics student at Northwestern University, joined the station as an announcer.

I met Ray in 1965 while I worked at Big John's, the legendary blues club in Old Town. Each week, I phoned Ray to let him know who was appearing at the club that week so Norm Pellegrini and he would give us a plug on "The Midnight Special." Ray often stopped by to hear Paul Butterfield, Mike Bloomfied, Muddy Waters, Corky Siegel and Jim Schwall, Howlin' Wolf, Barry Goldberg and Steve Miller, Otis Rush, Buddy Guy, and other Chicago blues greats.

After Big John's closed in September 1966, I worked for Earl Pionke at the Earl of Old Town as he launched his folk music policy. Ray, of course, loved the idea of folk music at the Earl. Norm and he always plugged who was performing there, and they often had Earl's performers apppear on "The Midnight Special." Fred and Ed Holstein, Bonnie Koloc, Steve Goodman, and John Prine are just a few of the folk artists whom Ray and Norm helped become known.

Ray also was a good friend of the Old Town School of Folk Music, only a few blocks from the Earl of Old Town. Many of its students performed at the Earl over the years. The School drew students from all over the Chicago area, thanks to Ray's weekly plugs for folk music venues in Chicago.

Ray and I stayed in touch over the years. In the early 1980s, when I was assistant director of the Mayor's Office of Special Events during the Byrne Administration, Ray plugged our Neighborhood Festivals and other activities on "The Midnight Special."

I cannot emphasize enough how helpful those plugs were. They turned both Big John's and The Earl of Old Town from neighborhood bars into night clubs patronized by people from all over the Chicago area. They spread the word about everything we did in the Special Events Office, making our festivals popular all across the city.

Chicagoans will miss you, Ray. Thank you for being such a nice, wonderful person....

Soundstage with America

America's songs strike deep and remain in your heart. The years have slipped by, but not their music, sounding as fresh tonight on PBS's Soundstage as it did in the early 1970s, when "A Horse with No Name" and "Ventura Highway" soared to the top of the charts. Every time I drive Highway 101 between Ventura and Santa Barbara, enjoying the serenity of the beautiful Pacific Ocean, I hear and sing those beautiful songs.

At the height of the rock era, America gained success as an acoustic band. Dewey Bunnell and Gerry Beckley (pictured) still drive America, and to me, they sing and play better than ever. The rest of their band came across beautifully. On two numbers, they were joined by banjo player, album cover artist, and rock photographer Henry Diltz and singer Christopher Cross. For almost an hour, America played one song after another, evoking memories and images spanning the decades. Soundstage showed once again how very, very good television can be.

70 Years Later: Benny Goodman Is Still The King

After a disastrous cross-country tour, Benny Goodman and His Orchestra began a three-week stay on Aug. 21, 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom on Vermont and Third in Hollywood. Goodman started the evening cautiously, playing some stock arrangements he had purchased on the trip. The Palomar crowd seemed as indifferent to the band as the other audiences had been that summer. According to Willard Alexander, the band's booking agent, Goodman's drummer Gene Krupa said, "If we're gonna die, Benny, let's die playing our own thing."

At the beginning of the next set, Goodman told the band to put aside the stock arrangements and called for charts by Fletcher Henderson and other "swing" arrangers who were writing for the band. When the band’s trumpeter, Bunny Berigan, played his solos on Henderson’s versions of "Sometimes I'm Happy" and "King Porter Stomp," the Palomar dancers cheered like crazy and exploded with applause! They gathered around the bandstand to listen to this new music.

Radio had made the difference. Earlier that year, the crowd at the Palomar had heard Goodman’s band on the Let's Dance program. The coastal time difference enabled West Coast listeners to hear Goodman beginning at 9 p.m., three hours earlier than listeners on the East Coast heard the show. A West Coast disc jockey, Al Jarvis, had been playing Goodman’s recordings on his shows. The dancers at the Palomar had been groomed for Benny Goodman and His orchestra. And radio broadcasts from the Palomar sent the excitement from coast to coast.

The Swing Era had begun....

Note

To hear Benny Goodman's music, click either link:

Benny Goodman Playlist 1
Benny Goodman Playlist 2

To read how Benny Gooman launched the Swing Era, click this link:

Benny Goodman Launches Swing Era in Chicago