Rant #2,506: Time To Remember

Amid the growing Major League Baseball investigation and the idiotic presidential impeachment proceedings, two people left us in the past several hours who made their marks on out lives perhaps briefly, but they do rate some type of mention.

Mainly professional wrestling fans will remember Rocky Johnson, who was nicknamed "Soul Man" during this career and was one of the most popular wrestlers of his time.

Johnson was something of a trailblazer. He was with the WWE--then the WWF--in the 1980s, or several years before pro wrestling became the worldwide phenomenon it is now.

Although other black wrestlers proceeded him, Johnson became something of the All-American boy during his time with the WWF, mainly during the 1980s and early 1990s, one of the great baby faces of his time and probably the first black athlete in any sport marketed like this.

The fact of the matter was that Johnson was Canadian, but that did not stop him from becoming one of the first black wrestlers to be popular with pro wrestling fans of all colors and stripes/

He was also the first black wrestler to win the tag team championship, and his legacy was cemented for all time by doing that, and competing at a high level for his entire career with the WWF.

But personal accomplishments aside, he became even larger in life when his son followed in his footsteps and became a pro wrestler ... not just a pro wrestler, but perhaps the most successful pro wrestler of all time.

Marrying into an American Samoan family--the same one that has produced such wrestling champions as Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka and the Usos--Rocky Johnson was Duane "The Rock" Johnson's father, and the successes the younger Johnson had in the ring--and there were many--have been overshadowed by the fact that this once-neophyte actor has become possibly the world's top movie star.

But he couldn't have reached that point without the WWE, and he certainly couldn't have reached that point without his father leading the way.

The elder Johnson was 75 when he died, and he will be remembered for leading the charge of black pro wrestlers and for opening the door for his son to reach great success.

Then we have somebody who is probably of a much lesser light, but I chose to talk about him behind Johnson because I simply don't have as much to say about him, other than his voice touched me way back when, and still does now, more than 50 years after the fact.

It has been reported--although I can find no reliable source that will justify this--that Carmelo Esteban "Steve" Martin Caro has died at the age of 71.

Don't worry if you don't know the name, or his stage name of Steve Martin (no, not that one, he reached a level of stardom way before the comedian did).

Steve Martin was the lead singer of the baroque-rock band the Left Banke, which had a couple of major hits in the mid-1960s and then pretty much faded from view forever.

Martin was the lead singer on the band's best known work, "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina," and what made the Left Banke so special, to me at least, is that there sound really was their own, and it was really never duplicated.

They simply didn't sound like anyone else around at the time, and that made their music stand out.

It may have also been a death knell for them, because they could not be pigeonholed like other, more successful acts could be.

I particularly like some of their more off-beat songs, including "Barterers and Their Wives" and "Desiree," the latter of which is pictured here.

But those two big hits that they did have cemented them in oldies heaven forever, and now Martin has left us.

Some would say that this is a minor passing, but his voice will live on in those songs.

Speak to you again tomorrow.