The Big O

 

The end of 2020 saw the anniversary of the death in 1988 of Roy Orbison, at which point he had been dead just as long as he had been a recording musician, 32 years. Yet despite his absence these past three decades, he's never truly gone away, has he?

 

With that gorgeous near-operatic voice, Roy sang of love and heartache like no one else. And he knew both in vast measure. For years, he could seemingly do no wrong, putting hit after hit on the charts, starting a family with the girl of his dreams, Claudette, and building a magnificent home next door to his best friend, Johnny Cash. But then it all seemed to come tumbling down in quick succession; the hits stopped, due to changing musical tastes in the second half of the 1960s (and a switch to a new record label that seemed to have little understanding of how to properly promoter their superstar artist) ...Claudette died tragically in an accident...and then two of his three young sons were killed when that mansion Roy had built caught fire and burned to the ground. Johnny Cash bought the land and put a grove of trees there to commemorate the lost lives.

 

To keep his sanity as these ill winds blew, Roy threw himself deeper into his music, continuing to write and record, even if the audience was no longer what it once was. He spent twenty years in this musical wilderness, but not alone...he found new love and a second wife with Barbara, and fathered two more sons. He continued to be a popular live act, playing to packed houses all over the world. And even if he couldn't score a hit himself, cover versions of his earlier smashes ("Blue Bayou" by Linda Ronstadt, "Crying" by Don McLean, "Oh Pretty Woman" by Van Halen) sold in the millions, and earned Roy fortunes as a songwriter.

 

The mid-Eighties saw the fates smile upon him again at last. It was a slow but steady climb back into the public eye: Director David Lynch used Roy's performance of "In Dreams" to powerful effect in his 1986 hit film, Blue Velvet, and produced a new music video of the song with Roy that found itself in heavy rotation on MTV. The following year, Roy was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, an occasion which allowed younger superstar artists to wax rhapsodic about his place in music history. Then came A Black and White Night, a concert film (in black & white, of course) in which Roy is backed by an all-star band, including Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne and k.d. lang. The film was an instant hit when it aired on Cinemax, introducing an entirely new generation of fans to Orbison's canon of classics (and to this day, PBS continues to air it each year during their pledge drives, and it consistently proves to be their biggest donation generator!).

 

 

 

But those were baby steps compared to the One-Two punch that came next. First was the recording of Roy's first full album in nearly ten years. He called upon some of his superstar friends...Costello, Tom Petty, Bono and the Edge from U2...to pen new tunes for him, to go along with some new original numbers he himself had written. And he brought in Jeff Lynne, late of ELO, as his producer; Lynne had just produced the great comeback album of 1987, George Harrison's CLOUD 9, and he was anxious to repeat that success with Orbison (for good luck, he brought along the former Beatle to play on the album). The result was MYSTERY GIRL, and it would prove to be every bit as much the smash hit anyone could hope for, both with critics and the public.

 

But first, there was a wholly unexpected triumph that no one had anticipated: The Traveling Wilburys. It was entirely unintentional...Harrison, visiting in LA, needed to record a new song as the b-side of his next single, and asked Lynne for help. Wanting to use a specific guitar, which he had loaned to Tom Petty, George swung by the rocker's house to pick it up. Upon hearing that the pair were going to record, and with nothing else to do that evening, Petty asked if he could join in. Needing a recording studio, Harrison called up Bob Dylan, who had a demo studio set up at his home; no one had expected the reclusive Dylan to actually participate, but he surprised them all by saying it sounded like fun, and he joined in. It was then that Lynne made the suggestion of asking Roy to take part. Everybody froze...here was a Beatle, Dylan, and two other million-selling rock stars, and just the idea of asking an icon like ROY ORBISON to perform with them left them stunned. "Do you really think he'd do it?" the other three asked, and Jeff said, "Well, let's ask." And in no time at all, wearing his trademark sunglasses, there was Roy Orbison in Dylan's makeshift studio, and the quintet came up with "Handle With Care".

 

Harrison's record label, Warner Bros., promptly rejected it...not because it was bad, but because it was too good. "This isn't a b-side," the label head told George, "It needs to be the first track of a whole album!" Having enjoyed the one-night experience so much, the five stars cleared their schedule for two weeks and wrote all of the songs from scratch. The album was released later that year with no advance fanfare, and it took the world by storm.

 

 

 

Suddenly Roy Orbison found himself a part of the biggest thing in rock and roll, on the eve of the release of his comeback album.

 

And then fate, as it so often did in the Roy Orbison story, took as much as it gave. Now it took everything, because it took Roy.

 

On December 6 of 1988, Roy was back home in Tennessee, having just finished another successful tour. He was leaving in a few days for London, where the Wilburys were assembling to shoot a music video, so Orbison spent the day relaxing...he visited with old friend Johnny Cash, took his boys out to indulge in one of their favorite hobbies, flying model planes, and had dinner with his mom. And later that night, that great heart, which had carried such joy and ache in equal measure, ceased beating.

 

MYSTERY GIRL was released the following month. Both the album and the first single, "You Got It", where Top Ten hits around the world. He won his fourth and fifth Grammys posthumously. By any measure, his comeback was an absolute triumph, but for the fact that destiny had decreed he would not be here to savor it.

 

The one thing that strikes me the most about Roy Orbison is that when anyone who knew him speaks of him, it's never about his fame. Rather, they speak of how, despite all of his success, he never allowed his ego to run rampant. Indeed, he was perhaps the humblest star in rock history. One example: In 1963 Roy did a tour of the United Kingdom, where if anything he was an even bigger star than he was in the U.S. His opening act was a new group called the Beatles, with whom Roy instantly made friends with. After several performances, Roy...the headline star, remember...decided that the Beatles' high energy rock set was better suited than his ballad-heavy act to close the show, so he switched places with them! What other star of his magnitude would ever do that? But for Roy Orbison, it wasn't important who finished the show...all that mattered was the show itself, and he believed trading places with the Liverpudlians made for a better show for the fans.

 

 

 

Because that's just the kind of guy Roy was. We were better for having him, and we're worse off for having lost him.

 

There goes my baby /

There goes my heart /

They're gone forever /

So far apart /

But only the lonely /

Know why I cry

 

 

 

#royorbison

Sammy

 

It's easy to dismiss Sammy Davis, Jr. as a bit of a joke, an unctuous by-product of a somewhat glib, ersatz and often uncomfortable era. But that would be a mistake.

 

Yes, he could be gratuitously flattering ("Ladies and gentlemen, with your very kind permission, I would like to sing for you now."). But he grew up in a time where a man of his color moving through the white world had to flatter the fragile egos of white folk, or else he'd quite likely take a beating...or find himself on the end of a rope from a tree. Such overweening obsequiousness was hard wired into his DNA as a survival mechanism, and it was a hard habit to break.

 

And he had his failings...years of drug and alcohol abuse, a fearful inability to maintain loving and supportive relationships, a tendency to veer toward treacly sentimentality.

 

But his virtues far outshone his vices. Sammy wasn't the best singer, the best dancer, the best impressionist, the best musician, the best actor. But he was the single best blend of all of those talents into one human being. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I call Sammy Davis, Jr. the very best overall entertainer of the 20th Century.

 

And on top of that, he was a genuinely kind and caring individual, ever willing to help a friend (or even a total stranger) in need. To know Sammy was to love him.

 

As a child he joined the dance act his father was a part of, the Will Mastin Trio, and by the ripe old age of 7, Sammy was a national star, even going to Hollywood to star in a musical short.  

 

 

 

The Trio were headliners in both vaudeville and in nightclubs, with young Sammy quickly emerging as the focus. His career was temporarily set aside during World War II when he was drafted.  In the Army, no longer celebrated for his talent, Davis was routinely beaten by white soldiers who found his self-confidence, his brashness, his very 'uppityness' to be an affront to their racism.  Despite his small size...a mere 5'6" and 120 pounds...Sammy never went down without a fight.

After the war he picked up right where he left off.  He was repeatedly urged to go solo, to leave the Trio behind, but they were family to him (literally, in the case of his father), and he knew how much he owed them.  When he finally did strike out on his own in the mid-1950s, he made sure that his dad and Mastin continued to receive a percentage of his earnings for the rest of their lives.  Sammy paid his debts.

 

 

Moving beyond dancing, Sammy established himself as a highly successful singer and actor, recording hit albums, starring on Broadway, and appearing in films and television shows.  Perhaps the great lost opportunity of this era was The Defiant Ones; Elvis Presley had been offered the co-lead as one of the escapes convicts, in what would have been his first dramatic, non-musical performance.  He insisted that the role of the other con who is chained to him be played by Sammy.  Unfortunately, Presley was then drafted...his part went to Tony Curtis, and the producers chose Sidney Poitier, not Davis, for the other role.

He suffered another great loss at the time...his left eye.  He was in a car wreck and his face hit the steering wheel, which in that model of Cadillac had a cone-shaped center.  The accident was such widespread news, General Motors immediately redesigned that feature to eliminate the cone forevermore.  In his hospital bed, Sammy went into a deep depression, believing that his disfigurement would cost him his career...no producer would hire him to be in a film, and audiences would be repulsed and stop coming to his concerts.  For the first time in his life, he lacked confidence in himself.  At this very nadir, the door to his room flew open and in walked Frank Sinatra.  They had known one another since the early 1940s, and Sinatra had long lauded Davis as one of the greatest entertainers he had ever seen.  Now, he was taking their friendship to the next level, that of brothers.  Frank told Sammy to pack his bag, he was busting him out of the hospital and taking him to Palm Springs, where Davis would recuperate at Sinatra's own home.  Frank provided medical care for him, companionship when he wanted it, and solitude when he needed that.  He never once lectured Sammy that he had to return to performing, but by his very presence and involvement silently made it clear that he would be very disappointed if Sammy gave up.

Sammy didn't give up.

 

 

He went on to success after success...but setbacks and heartaches as well.

He was feted on his 60th anniversary in show business...but what only a few knew was that he was dying of throat cancer.  He was noticeably wan and withdrawn as a long list of celebrities stood before him to extol his talents, his generosity, and courage.  But when tapper Gregory Hines honored him with a dance, the old vaudevillian in Sammy couldn't resist; he put on his shoes, and showed that neither time, nor age, nor illness, nor hip replacements could suppress that spark that had been deep inside of him since birth.

 

When he died, Las Vegas...the town where Davis had broken the color barrier, and won the right for African-Americans to stay and eat and gamble at the very hotel casinos where they nightly performed...dimmed the lights on the strip for ten minutes, that storied town's highest accolade.

It's arguably impossible to find any single example which demonstrates Sammy's wide range of talents...as a singer, a dancer, a musician, a comedian, an impressionist...but this one comes close.  Set aside an hour and be mesmerized by the man who wasn't simply an entertainer, but who was entertainment itself.

“You can stop me, but you’re never gonna stop rock & roll!”

 

If anyone can be credited with "inventing" rock & roll, it's Alan Freed. More specifically, he brought the emerging sound to a new...and predominantly white and teenaged...audience, and he also coined the name "Rock and Roll" (which was a longtime blues euphemism for...well, you can figure it out).

 

In the early 1950s Freed was the overnight DJ for WJW in Cleveland, spinning rhythm & blues songs in what was traditionally considered a 'dead zone' with few listeners. To the amazement of station management, however, they soon learned that Freed was drawing a much larger than usual audience for the middle of the night. His program was unique, in that at that period of time, radio stations that played "race music" tended to be small, low wattage stations focused almost exclusively in local black communities.. But WJW was a 50,000 watt juggernaut, broadcasting through multiple states in the Midwest, South, Northeast and Canada. Word of mouth about the exciting music he was playing raced through white high schools, and soon enough, countless kids were listening to their transistor radios under the covers when they were supposed to be asleep. To lessen potential backlash from white adults worried about 'negro sounds' corrupting their children, instead of accurately labeling the songs he played as rhythm & blues, Freed dubbed it rock & roll.

 

He was soon on the air in New York City, the seat of power at that time for virtually all of the major record labels, and from here Freed became the public voice of the rock & roll revolution. In addition to his daily radio program, he hosted a couple of TV series, and appeared in a string of low budget movies packed with musical acts...some excellent (Chuck Berry, Little Richard, LaVern Baker), some not so much (Ivy Schulman & the Bowties, anyone?).

 

By all accounts, Freed wasn't a bad guy...but he was no saint, either. Like many other DJs, he indulged liberally in payola...accepting bribes to play certain songs on the air. He also wheedled his name into the writing credits of a number of tunes (the best remembered being Chuck Berry's "Maybellene") without having contributed so much as a comma to the lyrics. He could also be arrogant, which wasn't helped by the fact that as he grew more famous, he sank further and further into alcoholism.

 

It all came crashing down on him by the late Fifties, when Congress opened investigations into payola in the recording industry, and Freed's role was publicly exposed. His station, WINS, had been looking for a reason to get rid of him, and this was it. Despite his still-strong ratings, Freed had simply become too difficult to work with. Plus, the era of the independent DJ picking his own music to play was ending, as program directors took control of playlists, creating the 'Top 40', in which a relative handful of songs were played repeatedly throughout the day. Freed refused to give up his right to play whatever the hell he wished, and so he had to go.

 

Blackballed from the major markets, he bounced around through several small radio stations across the country, his name already fading from memory as a new wave of teens got their exposure to rock & roll from the Top 40, which by the early 60s was dominated by acts that had been scrubbed lily white (I'm looking at you, Paul and Paula), and were a quantum leap from the sexually charged and oh, so dangerous R&B-steeped rockers that Freed had brought to the masses over the airwaves. By 1965, his organs ravaged by alcohol, Freed died.

 

By the late Sixties, rock & roll had been around long enough to be considered culturally noteworthy, and music historians resurrected the legacy of Alan Freed, thus saving him from everlasting obscurity.

 

 

The Record Man

 

It goes without saying that there are few non-musicians as important to American music in the 20th Century than John Hammond was.

 

A record producer, talent scout and archivist, he discovered and nurtured a veritable Who's Who of Popular Music. Honestly, having discovered just one of these performers would have ensured Hammond a piece of immortality. But over the course of fifty years, he kept moving from strength to strength, finding new talent who more often as not went on to change the culture in profound ways.

 

Need proof? Okay, here's an incomplete list of the artists John Hammond found and recorded:

 

Count Basie

Billie Holiday

Benny Goodman

Fletcher Henderson

Harry James

Charlie Christian

Pete Seeger

Big Joe Turner

Bob Dylan

Aretha Franklin

Bruce Springsteen

George Benson

Leonard Cohen

Stevie Ray Vaughan

 

Additionally, in 1961, he saved the recordings of Blues pioneer Robert Johnson from obscurity, and convinced Columbia Records to re-release them, helping to spark the Blues boom of the Sixties, and elevating Johnson to his rightful place as a founding father of a quintessential American music form.

 

Still working well into his seventies, Hammond was finally felled by a series of strokes. When he died, he was listening to the music of Billie Holiday.