If you are a fan of Old Time Radio like I am you might be interested to know today is an anniversary. It was on January 31st, 1936 that The Green Hornet was first heard on radio. It originated from the studios of WXYZ in Detroit and stayed on the air for 16 years. (Beginning in 1938 WXYZ supplied the program to the Mutual Broadcasting System then NBC Blue, the Blue Network, and finally ABC.)
This, incidentally, was the same studio where The Lone Ranger and Challenge of the Yukon (later renamed Sgt Preston of the Yukon) originated. The creators of all three series were George Trendle and Fran Striker. The title character of The Green Hornet was actually named Britt Reid. He was supposed to be the great nephew of John Reid, The Lone Ranger!
Britt Reid was the publisher of The Daily Sentinel by day, who donned his mask and by night was vigilante crime fighter The Green Hornet. Accompanying him on his rounds was trusty sidekick, Kato, driver of the super car The Black Beauty.
The Green Hornet was played on radio originally by Al Hodge. Other actors in the radio version were Donovan Faust, Robert Hall, and Jack McCarthy. Kato, meanwhile, was played by Raymond Hayashi, followed by Roland Parker and later Mickey Tolan.
The Green Hornet was adapted into movie serials, comic books, a full length feature film, as well as a 60s television series that lasted only one season.
The theme music for The Green Hornet was The Flight of the Bumblebee by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Think of some of your favorite artists of the 60s and 70s:
The Carpenters, Elvis, Sonny and Cher, Alvin and the Chipmunks, The Crystals,The Association, The Mamas and Papas, The 5th Dimension, The Righteous Brothers, Simon and Garfunkle, The Partridge Family, and on and on.
Know the answer to the above?
A: They all recorded their hits using the same musicians.
During this period there was a group of about 20-30 studio session musicians collectively known as "The Wrecking Crew". This group was responsible for many Top Ten recordings of the era as well as 7 Song of the Year honors.
The artists above were primarily singers who relied on studio musicians to record with and their own bands while on tour. But what about these groups:
The Monkees, The Beach Boys, Gary Lewis and the Playboys, The Ventures, and Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
All the same musicians. Yes. The Beach Boys songs you loved. The Wrecking Crew. Herb Alpert and TJB. Herb Alpert and The Wrecking Crew. Gary Lewis and the Playboys. Gary Lewis and The Wrecking Crew. In fact, some of the studio musicians became stars in their own right...Herb Alpert, Glen Campbell, and Johnny Rivers to name a few. These musicians even became Phil Spector's "Wall of Sound". In addition to the top songs they recorded they also performed on the theme songs for many TV shows I'll bet you remember....Bonanza, Batman, Greenacres, The Addams Family, Wild Wild West, The Brady Bunch, and more.
And check out these other artists who recorded with the Wrecking Crew...Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole. It boggles the mind almost to think that these musicians could record with the Beach Boys one week and Frank Sinatra the next but they did and did it well.
The full story is found here for my MOST eagerly anticipated documentary to hopefully come out on DVD soon. The Wrecking Crew documentary is produced by Denny Tedesco, son of the legendary Tommy Tedesco, a guitarist for the Wrecking Crew. The documentary has been out for a few years but is only shown in private screenings around the country hoping to raise enough money to pay for the music rights. The rights alone are approximately $300,000 but there are about 130 different sound cues or music bits in the movie. Hopefully it will all be paid off and the DVD can come out in time for Christmas this year.
Take a look at some of the songs recorded by The Wrecking Crew and are in the movie:
5th Dimension/Up, Up, and Away, Association/Never My Love, Beach Boys/Good Vibrations, Carpenters/Close to You, Crystals/Da Doo Ron Ron, Sonny and Cher/The Beat Goes On, Tijuana Brass/Lonely Bull, Paul Revere and the Raiders/Indian Reservation, Frank Sinatra/Strangers In the Night, Nancy Sinatra/These Boots Are Made for Walking, Captain and Tenille/Love Will Keep Us Together, Ventures/Hawaii Five-0 theme, Gary Lewis and the Playboys/This Diamond Ring, Mamas and Papas/Monday, Monday, Glen Campbell/By the Time I Get to Phoenix, Ronettes/Be My Baby....and the list, like the beat, goes on. Did you remember a few of these? If you did, thank the Wrecking Crew.
Here's a bit of trivia for you...the most recorded drummer in the world, Earl Palmer, played drums on everything from Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti", and as a Wrecking Crew member played on Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass' "Lonely Bull" and on the "Brady Bunch" theme. Quite a bit of variety there.
Explore the web site, look at all the links, check out the song list in the movie, even purchase a book or two by some of the members. (I have Hal Blaine's biography myself. An excellent read. He was another of the Wrecking Crew drummers who played on about 25,000 songs in his career.) Hopefully, we will get to see it soon. This is one movie not to be missed. In the meantime, here is the movie trailer. Enjoy!
Fans of the old 1960's "Lost in Space" TV series will be sad to note the passing of the robot from the show. To be more accurate, it was the voice of the robot, Dick Tufeld, who died recently at the age of 85. The death was announced by star Billy Mumy, on his Facebook page.
"Lost in Space" followed the Robinson Family as they charted unknown space along with the evil Dr Smith who had sabotaged their spaceship, the Jupiter II, on its mission in the future (1997!).
In addition to his voice work in "Lost in Space" Tufeld voiced the super-sub Seaview on "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea", was the announcer for "Zorro", starring a future "Lost In Space" star, Guy Williams, voiced a "Mister Bubbles" commercial, and various Disney shows of the 50s.
The man inside the robot suit, Bob May, died a couple of years ago. It won't be the same not hearing the robot saying, "Warning, Will Robinson!", without it being Tufeld's voice.
An anniversary passed by a few days ago. Probably one you didn't think of. It was on January 19, 1977, 35 years ago, that it actually snowed in South Florida. That morning the temperature got down to 29 degrees and ...it...snowed! Snow fell from as far north as Vero Beach all the way down to south of Miami. It stayed on the ground for a little while. There was enough to make snowballs out of and then it was gone by about 9:30 am.
Having grown up in the panhandle of Florida I have been exposed to cold temperatures and about every seven years there would be a snowfall of usually minor proportions. Most of the time it amounted to no more than just a mild dusting of snow that didn't cover the ground and not enough to even throw decently.
There was one time that it stayed around long enough to build snowmen and you could actually get into snowball fights. This was in 1957 or 1958. I don't really remember it, having been only a couple of years old at the time, but I have seen pictures of it and of me on the grounds of the Courthouse in Quincy so I can attest to the amount of plentiful snow that fell then. Where I live it does get into the upper 30s on occasion in South Florida. Mostly though our winters are at their coldest in the 40s and 50s. I had not moved here until years later so I missed the snowfall of 1977.
The panhandle gets much colder in the winter. Lows in the 20s and 30s are quite normal and it's not that unusual to see lows in the teens. For the "Sunshine State", we sure have some strange weather.
Front page of Palm Beach Post from January 20, 1977.
If you are like me your email is constantly bombarded with spam despite any spam filters you might have installed on your computer. I currently use Norton 360 as well as Malwarebytes anti-malware and AOL has a program for intercepting and reporting spam which does a reasonable job of removing spam from my emails.
Still, some manage to get through. I receive the usual spam emails: cut-rate drugs, meet singles in my area, and the Nigerian and UK offers to send me money based on my name match to a citizen from their country or as a result of a sweepstakes win. Millions stand to be won just by sending my name, address, banking information…..Yeah, right.
Recently though I have received emails apparently from numbers. I have no idea who (or what) 2d8e4483cb0f934aed1685427fa64d36@guillemot.barranditeexacerbated.info is. Nor do any of these ring any bells: fcfade1e1e2749d920586d3ee4d14ca8@homemaking.archbishopesshypertrophied.info,
5cc3ea54098e86508d53ecccc46d2c7e@snaffled.adelricregalo.info, and especially 333b3afdd95d3f363e7e98a917e729d1@proudful.collidinhepatonephric.info. Even someone who calls himself Mikesyouung@gmail.com won’t get any reply from me, even though we share a similar last name. And unknownname@undiscloseddomain, forget it.
I even get emails from banks offering me credit cards but Orchard Bank should have a legitimate address, not this one: 639f7afe5f221ff1f400c3b684bb515e@mopped.cardplayerlisa.info. I mean, really,
cardplayerlisa?
And Mikesyouung, if you can prove some relationship to me, contact me again.
For some time I have toyed with the idea of writing my own blog. Not that anyone may be particularly interested in what I have to say. I just feel the need to say it by writing it out in some manner. If it is read by others, fine. If not, at least it was put forward for discussion, amusement, or ridicule whatever the case may be.
I had gone on the internet several times over the previous couple of years looking at different web sites that would help you create your own blog. Some were pretty basic. Some were hard to understand. And some would allow you to create the blog of your dreams for a small price. None of which was very encouraging and so the idea sort of fizzled and I only half-heartedly searched the internet for a long time still not finding exactly what I wanted.
What got me interested again was a blog posting by one of my co-workers. He put a link on Facebook to a blog he had written about snakes. I thought it was 1) interesting about the snakes and 2) exactly how I might construct a simple blog. Over a period of time he added more to his blog including photos and videos. There was a disclaimer at the bottom saying it was “Powered by Blogger” with the word “Blogger” highlighted indicating there was a link. Sure enough when you put your cursor over the word “Blogger” there was a link leading you to http://www.blogger.com/ From there it leads you to Google’s Blogger web page to create your own blogs.
So I went to the Google page and found it might actually be something easy enough for me to understand and best of all “FREE”. On that page are examples of templates, texts, backgrounds, tutorials, everything needed to get started on your very own blog.
I decided 2012 would be the year I actually started this blog. I had no idea what I would first explore so January 1st gradually turned into the 2nd, 3rd, and so on until I finally sat down and began to type. You can see by the date of posting it took a while to get started. Not January 1st as it should have been. But at least reasonably close to the beginning of the new year. And instead of just starting out with any old random blog post I thought it might be a good idea to briefly state how it came to be that I was now “blogging”. That is what this simple posting is. I think it gives you an idea of how I got started on this and how it is possible to start your own should you decide to do so (email me with your link if you do!).
Thanks for reading this one at least. I have some ideas for other blogs. Some may be just remembrances of mine over the years of things I did or saw. Others may be random comments of current events or things happening at work. Like I said, some of it may be me just writing to get rid of random ideas in my head to make room for others you might also not be interested in. Check in from time to time. I’ll still be here.
