Rant #3,065: Black Pearl

It’s Thursday, February 2, it’s Groundhog Day, and do you think the groundhog will see his shadow or not?

It doesn’t really matter to me, because I go by the calendar, and we have about two-and-a-half more months of winter.

Yesterday’s snow was a big nothing, but there was a measurable amount, so the 0.4 inches or so that we received, with no snow in the immediate future say the weathermen, will have to suffice, at least for now.

But again, we have about two-and-a-half months of winter still to come, so anything can happen.

One wipe of the brush, and my car was pretty much clean, and I went on my way—

Taking my son to work, filling up my car with gas--$3.33 a gallon was the best I could do—and going from one bank to another to do some money business, in preparation for Friday, when Social Security comes due.

I get paid once a month from my remote job and once a month from Social Security, so the beginning of the month is more than that for me, it is “P-A-Y-D-A-Y.”

I was determined to get all of this done—plus do the laundry, something I hate to do, as I explained yesterday—because I wanted to do something for myself, which can only mean go to my local record store and see what they had to offer.

I wasn’t going to spend any money there, because I had a gift certificate that my wife bought me for Hanukkah sitting unused, so I figured that if I could squeeze in just about 30 or 45 minutes during the morning, it would be the perfect day to go there.

And when I got there, the place was packed, and I do mean packed with people who probably thought the same way that I did … maybe they could squeeze in a little time to see what delights the store had out for sale.

And I guess in my own little way, I killed two birds with one stone, because not only did I get to the store and have time to see what they were offering, but in a sort of weird instance, I saluted Black History Month in a very, very minor way with my main purchase of the day—a record that I had previously seen at crazy prices, but at the store, it was reasonably priced, so I jumped at it, and it is now in my collection.

We all know who Muhammad Ali was.

He was probably the best boxer of my generation, or any generation, for that matter.

He was also a great media personality, one of the first athletes who really understood television and the power it could wield.

Along with Howard Cosell, the two were ubiquitous on television during the 1960s and 1970s and Ali’s way with words—“Fly like a butterfly, sting like a bee”—were legendary.

On the flip side, Ali was also a polarizing figure during his life, because he was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War era, and he became a Muslim late in the 1960s, one of the first professional athletes to take on and convert to this once—and still—mysterious faith.

Anyway, before he became a Muslim, he was Cassius Clay, and under that name, his popularity led him to many ventures inside and outside of the boxing ring.

Columbia Records, the largest and most popular record label at the time, decided that Clay was so popular that they would take a chance with him as a musical artist, and he recorded one album on the label, named after one of his famous lines, “I Am the Greatest.”

And while he may have been “The Greatest” in the boxing ring, on this 1964 record, he was in over his head, not quite as bad as Mrs. Miller was in mangling tunes, but this heavyweight was pretty lightweight when it came to singing and not “stinging.”

The public didn’t take much notice of the LP, but by his name alone, the album did get up to #61 on the Billboard Top Album Charts.

One single from the LP, “Stand By Me” backed with “I Am the Greatest,” managed to log a double-sided Bubbling Under placement, but all told, Clay’s off-the-mark singing told him right then and there that he should not give up his day job—and I think he got the point, because while his name was linked to some other recordings, he never again put out a solo singing LP.

And I also picked up another rarity at the record store that was in line with the Black History Month theme: “Stu Gilliam At the Basin Street West,” a comedy LP by a comic who was all over television in the late 1960s—a rarity for a black personality at the time—but who never quite made it to the big time.

I always liked this guy as an actor and as a comedian, and when he wasn’t on sitcoms like “The Monkees” doing his comedic acting thing, he was on “The Ed Sullivan Show” making people laugh.

This was quite a find, too, but I wonder how many people remember Gilliam?

He and Bill Cosby really opened the door for other black comics, including Richard Pryor and Flip Wilson, to make it into the living rooms of all Americans during that time nearly 60 years ago, of course preceded by other names, like Redd Foxx, Nipsey Russell, Moms Mobley and the like.

So rather unwittingly and without doing it purposely, I put my own personal stamp on Black History Month by purchasing these somewhat rare LPs …

Which I can listen to indoors, whether we never get another snowflake on the ground outdoors, or we are buried in the white stuff.

Let it show, let it snow, let it snow!