Frank Beacham's Journal

Tom T. Hall was born 86 years ago today

Tom T. Hall at his Franklin, Tennessee homestead

Photo by Joshua Black Wilkins

Tom T. Hall was born 86 years ago today.

Born in Olive Hill, Kentucky, Hall was a retired country music singer-songwriter. He wrote 11 #1 hit songs, with 26 more that reached the Top 10, including the #1 international pop crossover, "Harper Valley PTA" and "I Love," which reached #12 on the Hot 100.

Hall became known to fans as "The Storyteller," thanks to his storytelling skills in his songwriting. As a teenager, he organized a band called the Kentucky Travelers that performed before movies for a traveling theater. During a stint in the Army, he performed over the Armed Forces Radio Network and wrote comic songs about his Army experiences.

His early career included being a radio announcer at WRON, a local radio station in Ronceverte, West Virginia. Hall was also an announcer at WSPZ, which later became WVRC Radio in Spencer, West Virginia in the 1960s.

Hall's big songwriting break came in 1963, when country singer Jimmy C. Newman recorded his song, "DJ For a Day." Soon, Hall moved to Nashville, and within months, he had songs climbing the charts. He has written songs for dozens of country stars, including Johnny Cash, George Jones, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, Alan Jackson and Bobby Bare.

One of his earliest successful songwriting ventures, "Harper Valley PTA," was recorded in 1968 by Jeannie C. Riley. It hit #1 on the pop and country charts at the same time and sold over six million copies. The song would go on to inspire a motion picture and television program of the same name.

Hall himself recorded this song, on his album The Definitive Collection (as track #23).

Hall's recording career took off after Ms. Riley's rendition of the song, and he had such hits as "A Week in a Country Jail," "(Old Dogs, Children and) Watermelon Wine," "I Love," "Country Is," "The Year Clayton Delaney Died," "I Like Beer" and "Faster Horses (the Cowboy and the Poet)."

Hall died at his home in Franklin, Tennessee, on August 20, 2021 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head; the cause of death went unreleased and had been presumed to be natural until the Williamson County medical examiner released his findings in November.

Hall left no suicide note, had chlordiazepoxide (used to treat anxiety and alcohol withdrawal) in his system at the time of his death and was rumored to have been suffering from numerous old age-related illnesses at the time.

Here, Hall performs a medley of his hits with Johnny Cash

Smoke and Lovers, Memphis, 1992

Photo by Frank Stewart

Bob Dylan is 81 years old today

Bob Dylan, Beacon Theatre, Dec. 1, 2018

Photo by Frank Beacham

Bob Dylan is 81 years old today.

A musician, singer-songwriter, music producer, artist and writer, Dylan has been an influential figure in popular music and culture for more than five decades. He is often referred to as the Shakespeare of our times.

Much of his most celebrated work dates from the 1960s when he was an informal chronicler and a seemingly reluctant figurehead of social unrest. A number of Dylan's early songs, such as "Blowin' in the Wind" and "The Times They Are a-Changin'," became anthems for the U.S. civil rights and anti-war movements.

Leaving his initial base in the culture of folk music behind, Dylan's six-minute single, "Like a Rolling Stone," radically altered the parameters of popular music in 1965. His recordings employing electric instruments attracted denunciation and criticism from others in the folk movement.

Dylan's lyrics have incorporated a variety of political, social, philosophical and literary influences. They defied existing pop music conventions and appealed hugely to the then burgeoning counterculture.

Initially inspired by the performance style of Little Richard, and the songwriting of Woody Guthrie, Robert Johnson and Hank Williams, Dylan has both amplified and personalized musical genres. His recording career, spanning more than fifty years, has explored many of the traditions in American song — from folk, blues and country to gospel, rock and roll and rockabilly to English, Scottish and Irish folk music, embracing even jazz and swing.

Dylan performs with guitar, keyboards and harmonica. Backed by a changing line-up of musicians, he has toured steadily since the late 1980s on what has been dubbed the Never Ending Tour.

His accomplishments as a recording artist and performer have been central to his career, but his greatest contribution is generally considered to be his songwriting. In Oct. 13, 2016, the Nobel Prize committee announced it had awarded Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature "for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition."

Since 1994, Dylan has published several books of drawings and paintings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries throughout the world.

As a songwriter and musician, Dylan has sold more than 100 million records worldwide.

Here, Dylan performs “Blowin’ in the Wind” in March, 1963

Dylan, United Palace Theatre, 2009, New York City

Photo by Frank Beacham

Bob Dylan performs "Pretty Saro"

Bob Dylan performing in the Rolling Thunder Review, April 25, 1976, Gainesville, Florida

On the drums is Howie Wyeth, on the Congas is Gary Burke. Steven Soles is to the right on guitar in the black vest. The two people closest to Joan Baez are crew members. Rob Stoner plays guitar behind Dylan.

Photo by Frank Beacham

Bob Dylan performs "Tangled Up In Blue"

Photo by Frank Beacham

After 14 years and 27 deaths while being constructed, the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River in New York City opened on this day in 1883 — 139 years ago

After 14 years and 27 deaths while being constructed, the Brooklyn Bridge over the East River in New York City opened on this day in 1883 — 139 years ago.

The bridge connected the great cities of New York and Brooklyn for the first time in history. Thousands of residents of Brooklyn and Manhattan Island turned out to witness the dedication ceremony, which was presided over by President Chester A. Arthur and New York Governor Grover Cleveland.

Designed by the late John A. Roebling, the Brooklyn Bridge was the largest suspension bridge ever built to that date.

Roebling, born in Germany in 1806, was a great pioneer in the design of steel suspension bridges. He studied industrial engineering in Berlin and at the age of 25 immigrated to western Pennsylvania, where he attempted, unsuccessfully, to make his living as a farmer. He later moved to the state capital in Harrisburg, where he found work as a civil engineer. He promoted the use of wire cable and established a successful wire-cable factory.

Meanwhile, he earned a reputation as a designer of suspension bridges, which at the time were widely used but known to fail under strong winds or heavy loads.

Roebling is credited with a major breakthrough in suspension-bridge technology: a web truss added to either side of the bridge roadway that greatly stabilized the structure. Using this model, Roebling successfully bridged the Niagara Gorge at Niagara Falls, New York, and the Ohio River at Cincinnati, Ohio.

On the basis of these achievements, New York State accepted Roebling’s design for a bridge connecting Brooklyn and Manhattan – with a span of 1,595 feet – and appointed him chief engineer. It was to be the world’s first steel suspension bridge.

Just before construction began in 1869, Roebling was fatally injured while taking a few final compass readings across the East River. A boat smashed the toes on one of his feet, and three weeks later he died of tetanus. He was the first of more than two dozen people who would die building his bridge.

His 32-year-old son, Washington A. Roebling, took over as chief engineer. Roebling had worked with his father on several bridges and had helped design the Brooklyn Bridge. The two granite foundations of the Brooklyn Bridge were built in timber caissons — or watertight chambers — sunk to depths of 44 feet on the Brooklyn side and 78 feet on the New York side.

Compressed air pressurized the caissons, allowing underwater construction. At that time, little was known of the risks of working under such conditions, and more than a hundred workers suffered from cases of compression sickness.

Compression sickness, or the “bends,” is caused by the appearance of nitrogen bubbles in the bloodstream that result from rapid decompression. Several died, and Washington Roebling himself became bedridden from the condition in 1872. Other workers died as a result of more conventional construction accidents, such as collapses and a fire.

Roebling continued to direct construction operations from his home, and his wife, Emily, carried his instructions to the workers. In 1877, Washington and Emily moved into a home with a view of the bridge. Roebling’s health gradually improved, but he remained partially paralyzed for the rest of his life.

On May 24, 1883, Emily Roebling was given the first ride over the completed bridge, with a rooster — a symbol of victory — in her lap. Within 24 hours, an estimated 250,000 people walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, using a broad promenade above the roadway that John Roebling designed solely for the enjoyment of pedestrians.

The Brooklyn Bridge, with its unprecedented length and two stately towers, was dubbed the “eighth wonder of the world.” The connection it provided between the massive population centers of Brooklyn and Manhattan changed the course of New York City forever.

In 1898, the city of Brooklyn formally merged with New York City, Staten Island and a few farm towns, forming Greater New York.

In the above image, fireworks open of the Brooklyn Bridge in 1883

Courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The bridge at sunset on May 18, 2019

Photo by Frank Beacham

Patti LaBelle is 78 years old today

Patti LaBelle is 78 years old today.

A singer, author and actress, LaBelle has spent more than 50 years in the music industry. For 16 years, she was lead singer of Patti LaBelle and the Bluebelles, who changed their name to Labelle in the early 1970s and released the disco song, "Lady Marmalade."

LaBelle started her solo career shortly after the group disbanded in 1977 and crossed over to pop music with "On My Own," "If You Asked Me To," "Stir It Up,” and "New Attitude." She has also recorded R&B ballads such as "You Are My Friend," "If Only You Knew" and "Love, Need and Want You."

LaBelle possesses the vocal range of a soprano and has sold over 50 million records worldwide.

Here, LaBelle performs a Tiny Desk concert

Rosanne Cash is 67 years old today

Rosanne Cash performs at Carnegie Hall, New York City, 2012

Photo by Frank Beacham

Rosanne Cash is 67 years old today.

A singer-songwriter and author, Cash is the eldest daughter of country music icon Johnny Cash and his first wife, Vivian Liberto Cash Distin.

Although Cash is often classified as a country artist, her music draws on many genres, including folk, pop, rock and blues.

In the 1980s, she had a string of chart-topping singles, which crossed musical genres and landed on both C&W and Top 100 charts. Her most commercially successful came in 1981 with the breakthrough hit, "Seven Year Ache," which topped the U.S. country singles charts and reached the Top 30 on the U.S. pop singles charts.

In 1990, Cash released, Interiors, a spare, introspective album which signaled a break from her pop country past. The following year Cash ended her marriage with Rodney Crowell and moved from Nashville to New York City, where she continues to write, record and perform.

In 1995, Cash married producer/songwriter/guitarist John Leventhal, with whom she had co-produced, The Wheel. Since 1991, she has released several albums, written two books and edited a collection of short stories.

Her fiction and essays have been published in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Oxford-American, New York Magazine and various other periodicals and collections. Cash has had 11 #1 country hit singles, 21 Top 40 country singles and two gold records.

Born in Memphis just as father Johnny was recording his first tracks at Sun Records, the family moved to California in 1958, first to Los Angeles, then Ventura, where Cash and her sisters were raised by mother, Vivian. Johnny and Vivian separated in the early 1960s and divorced in 1966.

After graduating from high school, she joined her father's road show for two and a half years, first as a wardrobe assistant, then as a background vocalist and occasional soloist.

In 1976, Cash briefly worked for CBS Records in London before returning to Nashville to study English and drama at Vanderbilt University. She then relocated to Los Angeles to study at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute in Hollywood.

On November 27, 2007, Cash was admitted to New York's Presbyterian Hospital for brain surgery. In a press statement, she announced that she suffered from Chiari Malformation Type I and expected to "make a full recovery." The surgery was successful, though recovery was slow, and in March, 2008 she was forced to cancel her spring tour dates for further recuperation.

She wrote about the experience in her New York Times article, "Well, Actually, It Is Brain Surgery." She resumed writing, recording and performing in late summer of 2008.

Cash released her next studio album — The List — on October 6, 2009. The album is based on a list of 100 greatest country and American songs that Johnny Cash gave her when she was 18. Cash picked twelve songs out of the 100 for the album. The album features vocal duets with Bruce Springsteen, Elvis Costello, Jeff Tweedy and Rufus Wainwright.

On September 9, 2010, the Americana Music Association named The List the Album of the Year. Cash signed with Blue Note Records in 2013 to release a new original album. The River & the Thread was released on January 14, 2014. It was her first album in more than four years and many consider it her masterpiece.

The River & the Thread was inspired by trips through the American South by Cash and her husband. Cash describes the album as “a mini-travelogue of the South, and of the soul.”

The Journey included visits to father Johnny Cash’s childhood home in Dyess, Arkansas, her own early childhood home in Memphis, William Faulkner’s house, Dockery Farms in Cleveland, Mississippi, the plantation where Howlin’ Wolf and Charley Patton worked and sang, Natchez, Mississippi, the blues trail, the Tallahatchie Bridge, as well as a visit with Natalie Chanin, a master seamstress in Florence, Alabama.

Throughout 2014, Cash toured extensively with partner Leventhal, performing The River & The Thread in sequence with first-person stories woven through historical time to much critical acclaim. The album was the #1 album of 2014 on Americana radio, and was honored by by many publications and awards

Here, Cash performs “A Feather's Not A Bird” from The River & the The Thread, 2014

Rosanne Cash and John Prine, Beacon Theatre, New York City, 2013

Photo by Frank Beacham

On May 24, 1844 — 178 years ago today — Samuel F.B. Morse inaugurated the world’s first commercial telegraph line with a message that was fitting given the invention’s future effects on American life

What hath God wrought?

In a demonstration before members of Congress, inventor Samuel F.B. Morse dispatched a telegraph message from the U.S. Capitol to Alfred Vail at a railroad station in Baltimore, Maryland.

The message — “What Hath God Wrought?” — was telegraphed back to the Capitol a moment later by Vail. The question, taken from the Bible (Numbers 23:23), had been suggested to Morse by Annie Ellworth, the daughter of the commissioner of patents.

Morse, an accomplished painter, learned of a French inventor’s idea of an electric telegraph in 1832 and then spent the next 12 years attempting to perfect a working telegraph system.

During this period, he composed the Morse code, a set of signals that could represent language in telegraph messages, and convinced Congress to finance a Washington-to-Baltimore telegraph line.

On May 24, 1844 — 178 years ago today — he inaugurated the world’s first commercial telegraph line with a message that was fitting given the invention’s future effects on American life.

Just a decade after the first line opened, more than 20,000 miles of telegraph cable crisscrossed the country. The rapid communication it enabled greatly aided American economic expansion and the rest is history.

Douglas Fairbanks was born 139 years ago today

Douglas Fairbanks was born 139 years ago today.

An actor, screenwriter, director and producer, Fairbanks was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood and The Mark of Zorro. He spent the early part of his career making comedies.

An astute businessman, Fairbanks was a founding member of United Artists, and a founding member of The Motion Picture Academy. He hosted the first Oscars Ceremony in 1929.

With his marriage to Mary Pickford in 1920, the couple became Hollywood royalty and Fairbanks was referred to as "The King of Hollywood," a nickname later passed on to actor Clark Gable.

His career rapidly declined however with the advent of the "talkies." His final film was The Private Life of Don Juan in 1934.

Above Fairbanks and Mary Pickford at their home, Pickfair

Kiss Me, Stupid

New York City, 1965

Photo by Joel Meyerowitz

Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer, was born 88 years ago today

Robert Moog, inventor of the Moog synthesizer, was born 88 years ago today.

Founder of Moog Music, Moog was a pioneer of electronic music. His innovative electronic design is employed in numerous synthesizers including the Minimoog Model D, Minimoog Voyager, Little Phatty, Moog Taurus Bass Pedals, Moog Minitaur and the Moogerfooger line of effects pedals.

A native of New York City, Moog attended the Bronx High School of Science in New York, graduating in 1952. He earned a bachelor's degree in physics from Queens College, New York in 1957, another in electrical engineering from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in engineering physics from Cornell University.

During his lifetime, Moog founded two companies for manufacturing electronic musical instruments. He also worked as a consultant and vice president for new product research at Kurzweil Music Systems from 1984 to 1988, helping to develop the Kurzweil K2000. He spent the early 1990s as a research professor of music at the University of North Carolina at Asheville.

Moog gave an enthusiastically-received lecture at the 2004 New Interfaces for Musical Expression, held in Hamamatsu, Japan's "City of Musical Instruments," in June, 2004. He was the inspiration behind the 2004 film, Moog.

The Moog synthesizer was one of the first widely used electronic musical instruments. He created the first voltage-controlled subtractive synthesizer to utilize a keyboard as a controller and demonstrated it at the AES convention in 1964. He is a listed inventor on ten U.S. patents.

Moog had his theremin company (R. A. Moog Co., which later became Moog Music) manufacture and market his synthesizers. Unlike the few other 1960s synthesizer manufacturers, Moog shipped a piano-style keyboard as the standard user interface.

Moog also established standards for analog synthesizer control interfacing, with a logarithmic one volt-per-octave pitch control and a separate pulse triggering signal.

The first Moog instruments were modular synthesizers. In 1971, Moog Music began production of the Minimoog Model D, which was among the first synthesizers that was widely available, portable and relatively affordable.

One of Moog's earliest musical customers was Wendy Carlos, whom he credits with providing feedback valuable to further development. Through his involvement in electronic music, Moog developed close professional relationships with artists such as Don Buchla, Keith Emerson, Rick Wakeman, John Cage, Gershon Kingsley, Clara Rockmore, Jean Jacques Perrey and Pamelia Kurstin.

In a 2000 interview, Moog said: "I'm an engineer. I see myself as a toolmaker and the musicians are my customers. They use my tools."

Moog was diagnosed with a glioblastoma multiforme brain tumor on April 28, 2005. He died at the age of 71 in Asheville, North Carolina on August 21, 2005.

Here, Moog demonstrates the Minimoog

Building a Theremin: My Personal Odyssey

In October, 1994, at the New York Film Festival, I watched a powerful documentary by Steven M. Martin about the creation of the world's first electronic musical instrument.

Billed as part biography, part social history and part detective story, the film — "Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey" — told the remarkable story of Leon Theremin, a Russian-born inventor whose adventures spanned the avant garde music world in New York City in the 1920s to the clandestine world of the KGB in the 1930s and 40s.

In 1922, Theremin demonstrated an early version of his strange new music machine for Nikolai Lenin, the U.S.S.R.'s leader. Five years later, he played his instrument for a group of American VIPs in the Grand Ballroom of the Plaza Hotel in New York City. It was received into America's Jazz Age culture with awe and excitement.

The original theremin, which resembled a wooden speakers' podium with a loop of metal extending from one side and a vertical metal antenna on the other, was a real curiosity in the early radio days.

Audiences were mesmerized by a new breed of instrument whose music was generated not from physical contact but from hand movements made in the air around the two protruding antennas.

By controlling the pitch with the right hand and the volume with the left, it's possible to create music that suggests — as the New York Times put it — "a violin or a soprano or a Martian making a landing. It is surpassingly strange."

For about two years beginning in 1929, RCA manufactured and sold 500 theremins. From 1930 until his mysterious disappearance in 1938, Leon Theremin built the instruments for customers in his New York studio on West 54th Street.

That disappearance makes the Theremin legend even more strange and fascinating.

The inventor was apparently kidnapped by Soviet agents from his New York establishment and taken to Russia where, after a period of imprisonment, he was engaged by the government to design electronic eavesdropping technology for spies in World War II.

Long assumed dead in the West (a German newspaper reported his demise), he was spotted by chance one day at the Moscow Conservatory of Music by a visiting reporter for the New York Times. This led to his emotional return to the United States in 1991 (an event portrayed in the film).

Whether we realize it or not, most of us are familiar with the wavering vibrato sound of the theremin from dozens of 1950's-era science fiction and horror movies. Films like Spellbound, The Lost Weekend and The Day the Earth Stood Still used theremins on their soundtracks. The Beach Boys' Good Vibrations is perhaps the best known use of a theremin in a pop music recording.

The theremin caught the imagination of Robert Moog, who started building the instruments as a teenager and began to manufacture them again for sale in 1954 — 16 years after Leon Theremin's disappearance. A decade later Moog made music history when he invented the Moog synthesizer, the first in a successful line of electronic music synthesizers.

I met Moog at the film festival and quickly became enamored by the theremin. At the time, Moog made theremins at Big Briar, Inc., his company located in the mountains of Asheville, North Carolina.

Taking advantage of the explosion of new interest in theremins after the release of the film, Moog introduced an affordable Theremin called the Etherwave. It was a no compromise, fully professional instrument that had the tone color and playing characteristics of Theremin's original. A Etherwave kit cost $229 at the time.

Nostalgic for my old Heathkit days and fascinated by the idea of owning such an oddball instrument (though I had no ability to play it), I purchased an Etherwave kit from Big Briar. It came with an unfinished wood cabinet, nickel-plated brass antennas, a pre-assembled circuit card, a power supply and several bags of parts. Also included was an instructional video and a CD of theremin music by the inventor's protégé, Clara Rockmore.

The Big Briar brochure said "if you can read a diagram, solder and use basic home tools, you should be able to build this theremin in an evening or two." As with Heathkits, Big Briar (actually Robert Moog personally) didn’t let me fail. I got Moog on the phone a couple of times and he was most helpful. He nursed me through the project. When I turned on the power switch of the Etherwave, it worked perfectly.

When I finished the kit, I asked Robert Moog if he could explain why such a cult-like following has developed around this instrument — with more than 50 professional musical acts at the time using theremins in performance throughout the world.

Moog said several factors contributed to its appeal. "For one thing the instrument is responsive," he said. "With a keyboard you put your finger on a key and the note plays. That's it. This is just the opposite. The note keeps changing with every single motion of your hand. People like that. They enjoy that responsiveness.

"Another part of it," he continued, "is that's all in the air. There's something ethereal about that. Something gossamer. Back in the earlier days it was an elitist thing. It was rather sensational, but there were very few people who actually got up and played it. Now that's changed. It's much better established now than in the past. People are engrossed in it. It's almost a cult thing."

(P.S. Though I sold my home-built theremin to a professional musician who could play it, I'm still fascinated by the instrument. Now I have a theremin ring tone on my iPhone. People do a doubletake every time it rings!)

In the above photo, I attempt to play my finished theremin.