Rant #2,582: Knock Three Times

 

Well. Let’s start off by adding Cicely Tyson to the list that I wrote about yesterday.

 
She was an ageless wonder as an actress, and she passed at age 96 yesterday … not quite the age she was in her most famous role in “The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,” but awful close to it in real life.
 
She also starred in many other TV shows and moves, including “Sounder/”
 
That film came out in 1972, which means that it was probably shot in 1971, and that is the year I am going to focus on today, 50 years ago this week.
 
For the first time in about six months, we are going to look today at the top songs on the Billboard Hot 100 50 years ago almost to the day.
 
So much has happened in the world during the past six months that I had to drop this monthly feature because, well, there were so many other things to talk about during that period, but today, finally, while the world is still a mess, we can take a few minutes and look at what people were listening to on January 30, 1971, when no one could imagine that 50 years later, we could ever be in the state that we are in today.
 
There were concerns back then, of course, but who could ever believe that we would be in a civilization that begged us to stay away from each other for our own safety?
 
So it is appropriate that 50 years later, the number 10 song on the chart was “Stoney End” by Barbra Streisand, a song written by Laura Nyro that was recorded by many artists. Hopefully, that name doesn’t apply to where we are going as a civilization today, but whatever the case …
 
The number nine song on the chart was the Osmonds’ “One Bad Apple,” and while this song didn’t spoil the whole bunch, girl, the song was reportedly turned down by the Jackson 5 during their dominant period on the chart.
 
Elton John’s “Your Song” came up at number eight on the chart this week, one of the long string of hits the singer-songwriter had that stretched into the 2000s.
 
A remake of an old song came in at number seven, and Dave Edmunds took “I Hear You Knocking” to that height on the Hot 100 this week. Edmunds later re-emerged as a popular singer, songwriter and producer during the new wave period in music, producing the Stray Cats, among others, and having some mild hits on his own.
 
King Floyd’s smooth soul came up at number six on the chart, with “Groove Me” coming in just outside the Top Five. This was the New Orleans native’s biggest hit.
 
Country crossovers were big in 1971, and “Rose Garden” by Lynn Anderson was one of the biggest of these tunes, coming in at number five this week. Anderson had many country hits, but this was far and away her biggest hit on the pop charts.
 
The 5th Dimension had established themselves as probably the top pop group in the country by 1971, and their string of hits continued with “One Less Bell To Answer,” which came up at number five on the chart this week. The song was written by Burt Bacharach and Hall David.
 
The Bee Gees were huge hit makers well before the disco days, and one of their biggest hits was “Lonely Days,” which was at number three on the chart this week.

 
Double-sided hits were all the rage 50 years ago, and George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”/”Isn’t It a Pity” was one of the biggest of these double hits, this week residing at number two on the chart, falling from its number one listing of just a few weeks earlier.
 
And the number one record of the week, and a song that stayed at the top spot for three weeks, was—
 
“Knock Three Times” by Dawn. Led by Tony Orlando, this act had many hits during the early 1970s and became ubiquitous on TV, which is ironic because the act was originally solely a bubblegum studio act, but became so huge that Orlando was joined by later TV actresses Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent as backing vocalists, and they became one of the most popular acts of the decade.
 
The highest debut record on the chart was “Mama’s Pearl” by the aforementioned Jackson 5. The song debuted at number 47 on the Hot 100, and it eventually became a number two hit for the family clan.
 
The biggest mover on the chart, or the song that moved up the most places from one week to this week, was that aforementioned “One Bad Apple” by the Osmonds, which jumped up to number 9 from number 34 that is rested at the previous week. The tune would eventually hit the number one spot and stay there for five weeks,
 
So there you have it … let’s see, back in 1971 at this time, I was 13 going on 14 years of age, in junior high school in eighth grade at I.S. 72 in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, and the only time I wore a mask was during Halloween, which I don’t think at this point I participated in anymore, and I know that I wondered whether I should or not being that I was one year removed from my bar mitzvah, and thus was a “man” and not a “kid” anymore.
 
If only I had such problems to work through today.
 
Have a good weekend, and I will speak to you again on Monday.

Rant #2,581: Gone, Gone, Gone

As we all get older, we all get older, and that applies to our family members, our friends, and those we know from afar.
 
I thought about that when I learned yesterday that Cloris Leachman died, and died at age 94 yet.
 
She lived a full life, and was extremely successful, even with a name that sounded like some type of disinfectant.
 
Know anyone else with the name of Cloris? Like Buckwheat used to say, “Me neither too, hmmph!”
 
Anyway, Leachman--who began her career as a beauty pageant winner--was an acclaimed actress who most people will remember as Phyllis Lindstrom on “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” as well as the short-lived spinoff of that show, “Phyllis,” and she was really primarily a TV actress, with many credits including being a guest star on the famed “Perry Mason” show.
 
But she had at least two big moments on the big screen, winning an Academy Award for her performance in “The Last Picture Show” and becoming one of Mel Brooks’ ensemble of players in “Young Frankenstein,” a role that she should have gotten another Oscar for.
 
I always thought that Leachman was an excellent actress as well as being eye candy for guys like me, teens growing up and just starting to see the world—and women—a bit differently.
 
She had one of the best figures in Hollywood for sure, and with Angie Dickinson, to my generation, were “MILFs” before that term became mainstream.
 
And there were two others from my youth who recently passed that are worthy of mention. They never achieved the fame that Leachman had but they are firmly in my own personal memories.

Since Leachman enjoyed lots of fame during her career, and thus, you can find her obituary and her career highlights just about anywhere, I am going to expound on the next two passings a bit more than on hers.
 
Does anyone remember Hawthorne Wingo, who played with the New York Knicks on their last championship team in the 1973-1974 season?

 
I sure do, and most Knicks fans have at least heard of his name, if nothing else. He died at age 73 the other day.
 
He came to the team with the baggage that such a name carries, and was often the last player off the bench during his career.
 
I can still hear crescendos of “HAW-THORNE WIN-GO!” or just “WIN-GO!” coming from the 400-level seats of Madison Square Garden during blowout games. The fans loved him, loved the name, and he was not the atypical 12th man, he did have some talent.
 
I was at the first game he played with the Knicks. The forward had an unorthodox shot, but his unorthodox name endeared him to Knicks fans.
 
Not much is known about Wingo after the four seasons he played with the Knicks. He did eventually play in Europe, but after his career was over, he settled in Brooklyn, appearing at Knick team reunions, but what he did with the rest of his life after basketball is unknown to me.
 
And the last passing I want to talk about here is of a former Penthouse Pet of the Year who went on to have a fairly interesting career after she appeared in the publication, appearing in a number of Z-level films and TV shows that would make even the recently-passed Tanya Roberts appear to be an Oscar-worthy talent.

 
Julie Strain was a statuesque beauty who was in more than 100 films, often as window dressing but at times as a woman who took charge of whatever situation she was put into … most of the time in a bikini to show off her incredible figure.
 
Like Roberts, Strain’s filmography was peppered with the likes of “Bikini Hotel” and “Savage Beach,” but she also starred for several seasons in the best show the Playboy Channel ever produced, the send-up of TV court shows called “Sex Court.” As Judge Julie, she presided over numerous cases that had an adult bent to them, and the show’s success led to a later film based on the series.
 
And also like Roberts, her demise was shrouded in mystery.
 
Strain had suffered a serious fall from her horse when she was in her 20s, and she had had periods of amnesia throughout the rest of her life based on this horrific accident.
 
The severity of this accident did not stop her career, and she steadily worked through her 30s and 40s and into her early 50s, but she developed dementia when she was in her late 1950s that was said to be directly linked with this accident years before.
 
In fact, her situation was so dire that it was announced a year ago that she had died, but that was untrue. She lived another full year with the dementia until she passed away On January 10. She was just 58 years old.
 
The world still turns, and as long as the world turns, people we know of in one way or the other are getting older, as we all are.
 
Leachman, Wingo and Strain can be added to the long list of people who have left us during the past year or so, and while we would hope that they would be the last of those on that list, we know that that list will expand as the year goes on.
 
But I have great memories of all three of them, as I am sure many of you do too, so their legacies will live on forever. 

Rant #2,580: I Don't Know What It is, But It Sure Is Funky

I am all talked out this morning.
 
My allergies are killing me, my entire left side being thrown off kilter by this curse that I have.
 
It is kind of strange, because when t get like this, I feel fine; I don’t feel sick at all.
 
I just feel off kilter a bit, off my game, and I really only want to relax.
 
But relax I can’t … and I am sure the allergy shots that I received two weeks ago are making whatever I have better than what I could have.
 
And my allergy shots are steroid based, so I am packed to the punch with this stuff.
 
Heaven forbid I was a major league baseball player; I would be thrown to the coals for using PEDs, or something to boost my power, to make me better than anyone else.
 
I remember a few years ago, a player was busted for just this. He took allergy shots, too, and stupidly, never told baseball about it, so his drug test came back positive, and he was suspended until all that could be worked out.
 
Taking steroids doesn’t guarantee you otherworldly powers if you are a baseball player, but it can heighten your strength and your skills, and the PED scandals of the 1990s in the sport are a sad chapter in the sport’s history, a period when you applauded some incredible feats, only later to learn that they may have been PED enhanced.
 
And it is coming back to bite MLB, as this year, no player was elected into its hallowed Hall of Fame, probably because of suspected usage of PEDs during the playing career of two players in particular.
 
Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens would have probably already scaled the heights of Cooperstown if they had not been suspected to taking anything to enhance their skills, but their link to PED use has stained their records, their Cy Young Awards, their Most Valuable Player Awards forever.
 
They supposedly took this stuff when it wasn’t illegal to do so, but certain behaviors and looks planted at least the suspicion that these two players—and several others who had heightened performance during this period—were taking something.
 
Even more interesting is the fact that Bonds and Clemens were never convicted of anything, never producing a drug test that was positive, simply because such drug tests weren’t given when they were playing.
 
They could not get away with this now, even though some try—Robinson Cano, another player who doesn’t need to use this stuff, is the perfect example of this—but the suspicion lingers to this day about Bonds and Clemens, and these two great players have been denied Hall of Fame enshrinement because of this.
 
And then we have Curt Schilling, which is another story entirely.
 
Schiling was a fierce competitor during his playing years, and while he was no Roge3r Clemens—the PED-less Roger Clemens, that is—he was one of the best pitchers of his time.
 
He should get into the Hall of Fame just on his statistics alone, but Chilling has a mouth—a rather big one—and since his playing days, he has shot it off repeatedly, espousing his views on a lot of topics, mostly bearing a far-right-wing stance.
 
Most recently, he supported the insurrection at the Capitol, and if anyone was seriously thinking of voting for him—anyone meaning the baseball writers, the body that votes in Hall of Fame players—that action totally wiped out any decision they would make in the positive for him.
 
If the term “TMI” was developed for anyone, it was created for Schilling, who shoots off his mouth at the drop of a hat, and heaven knows if he was voted in and had to make his Hall of Fame speech … God help us all.
 
So this leaves the Hall of Fame dais to the likes of players Derek Jeter and Larry Walker, who were voted in last year but could not have their formal inductions because of the pandemic. Jeter and Walker are above reproach as total straight shooters, players who would take a box of Wheaties over steroids any day, and maybe it is poetic justice that Bonds, Clemens and Schilling won’t be there to taint their day …
 
But who knows who was taking what, or wasn’t taking what, way back when they played, so unfortunately, the actions of some tainted the perception of others … and next year, we have a couple more PED Hall of Fame prospects to deal with, namely David Ortiz and Alex Rodriguez.
 
But then again, the Hall of Fame has not been a sterling organization in the past related to who they choose for enshrinement, so their handling of Bonds, Clemens and Schilling makes the shrine a bit of a contradictory place to begin with.
 
Let’s see … already in the Hall are Ty Cobb, an avowed racist and anti-Semite … Ferguson Jenkins and Orlando Cepeda not only used drugs, but were convicted of drug offenses not by baseball, but by courts of law … Bud Selig was the commissioner of baseball when the PED scandal happened, so this impropriety went on under his watch …
 
I could go on and on and on about this, but as much as the Hall of Fame and the baseball writers want to uphold virtue and truth, they also look past certain things to fit the moment … and perhaps to skirt public opinion at that given moment.
 
And you don’t think that there are already PED users in the Hall of Fame? Even Jenkins said a few years back that he knows for a fact that there are at least one or two players in there who used something to enhance their talents, although he would not tell anyone who they are.
 
But then again, Jenkins has “been there, done that” himself … can you trust him 100 percent.
 
Play ball! 

Rant #2,579: Move Over Babe (Here Comes Henry)

The past couple of weeks have been difficult ones, but I have not lost sight of what is going on beyond my own family and my own world.
 
As a sports fan, and a true fan of baseball, I can’t do anything but scratch my head at the number of Hall of Famers who have died recently and in the past year.
 
I think I read that 10 Hall of Famers have died during the past 12 months, or something in that range, the most to leave us during a similar period in the history of the game.
 
And the players that have left us were all icons during my youth, the period where baseball meant everything to me.
 
Most recently, we lost Tommy Lasorda, one of the greatest managers of all time, who spent I think it was 70 years with the Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers organization, and Don Sutton, one of his aces during that period, certainly one of the most talented players ever to take the mound.
 
But even among Hall of Famers, there is another level of player, a player so talented, so good at what he did, and so cherished by even his fellow Hall of Famers that he is on another plane, another level of athleticism that separates “normal” Hall of Famers from other-worldly Hall of Famers.
 
And that is how I would describe Henry Aaron, one of the greatest players ever to put on the spikes and walk onto a baseball field.
 
This is a guy who literally came from nothing in the Deep South, played his way through the final days of the Negro Leagues, and rose to play in the National Pastime of Major League Baseball, but not only play in it, but excel in it as few have, past, present or even future.
 
He met resistance wherever he went, wherever he played, but using Jackie Robinson as a template, he somehow made it through it all to become one of the nation’s true sports icons, a guy who spoke with his bat more than his mouth.
 
He could do it all: hit, play in the field, and he could do each of them better than just about anybody else during his playing days.
 
Honestly, while Willie Mays was getting all the bravado as the game’s best player—and deserving that accolade—Aaron simply went about his own way, and drove the old Milwaukee Braves to greatness with his bat and his glove and his presence.
 
And when the Braves moved to Atlanta, Aaron continued his onslaught of athletic heroics, culminating with his chase of Babe Ruth’s cherished 714 home runs.
 
Aaron received death threats, he received hate mail that was as vile as could be, he feared for the safety of his family during this period, all due to his race—and we have later learned, even after he broke the home run record—but when he faced Al Downing of the Dodgers that one April evening, it was time to do what he had to do, and he did it, joining Ruth as a baseball immortal, second to none with his home run total.
 
Moving on to the Milwaukee Brewers in the twilight of his career, he ended up with 755 home runs, 41 more than the Babe had, and he was the all-time home run leader until Barry Bonds supposedly eclipsed his record under the cloud of PED use.
 
Even though Bonds ended up hitting seven more homers than Aaron, many people consider Aaron the true holder of the home run record, and now that the records of the old Negro Leagues will be considered “major league” and be added to baseball statistics, Aaron will certainly gain a couple of homers to his total, but he probably has Josh Gibson in his way … more on that a few months or years down the line.
 
But whatever the case, Aaron was a true baseball immortal, one of the real, true all-time greats of the sport, and even as a former player, he carried himself with the same grace he did as a player, remembering where he had been and how he came through it all, somehow.
 
That really isn’t hyperbole, it is true, because how could he not shake his head at the life he led, going from nothing in the Deep South of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s to the pinnacle of his profession?
 
And he wasn’t the only Aaron that broke down barriers.
 
His brother, Tommie Aaron, who had a nondescript and short career in MLB during some of the years his brother was pounding the baseball for the Braves. was the first black manager in professional baseball, serving as the skipper for five years in the Braves organization at Richmond, Va., the Braves Triple-A minor league affiliate.
 
Although Frank Robinson was the first black man to manage a major league team, it was actually the younger Aaron—who predeceased his brother by several years—who opened the door for Robinson to step into this leadership position.
 
And the younger Aaron also has a share in another record—the most home runs hits by a brother combination. Adding the older Aaron’s home run total (755) with the younger Aaron’s home run total (13), you get a total of 768, a record that will probably never be eclipsed by any brother duo. I think the closest is Hall of Famer Eddie Murray and his brother Rich, but they are probably 200 homers behind the Aarons.
 
So Hank Aaron has left us, and to so many of us when we heard he had passed, once again part of our youth went with him.
 
We are all getting older, but when an immortal succumbs, it just takes our own hearts away, too.
 
Move Over Babe (Here Comes Henry) … .
 
Wow, what a baseball team there is in heaven now!