Rant #2,620: The King Is Gone

Today, March 25, is Elton John’s birthday.
 
The singer, who went from a Hollies sideman to one of the most popular and successful pop stars ever, is 74 years old today.
 
You can read about Elton John all over the place, and I will bet that there will be many tributes to him on his birthday.
 
But I would like to talk about another singer who was born on this day who you probably won’t be able to read much about.
 
Although successful, he never reached the top of their game like Elton John did, but his special day should be noted.
 
The other singer I am going to talk about is Ronnie McDowell, a very successful country singer, who turns 71 years of age today.
 
(Some sources list his birth date as March 26, but we will go with March 25 as his date of birth—I don’t know which one is correct.)
 
If you are a country music fan, you certainly know who McDowell is, as he has racked up numerous top hits on the country charts for the past couple of decades.
 
He did have one major pop crossover song, and it was a memorable one.
 
In September 1977, just a few weeks after Elvis Presley died, McDowell had a hit with “The King Is Gone,” a tribute to Elvis that went up to No. 13 on the Billboard Hot 100.
 
Of all the recorded tributes to the King, his was the most commercially successful, and he earned a gold record for his song.
 
I bought many of these tributes, and this one was the real deal. McDowell even sounded like Elvis a bit on the record, which received tremendous airplay not just on Top 40 stations, but also on album rock stations tike WNEW-FM.
 
He had just one more pop hit—“I Love You, I Love You, I Love You,” which hit No. 81 on the Hot 100 the next year,
 
Other than those two songs, he was pretty much unknown to the music-listening public that did not listen to country music,
 
And “The King Is Gone” is such a maudlin song that it doesn’t get played on too many oldies stations, so it is sort of a forgotten song of that era, although it got tons of airplay back then.
 
But he was very successful as a country singer.
 
In fact, two of his singles--"Older Women" and "You're Gonna Ruin My Bad Reputation"--reached the top spot on the country chart, while eleven other of his singles reached country’s Top Ten.
 
McDowell has also released more than 20 studio albums, mostly on the country-oriented Curb Records and also on Epic Records.

 
But to pop radio, he is nothing but a one-hit wonder, a song memorializing a singer who had more hit singles than anyone else in the United States.
 
The story is that McDowell was a huge fan of the singer, and when he died, he wrote the song—with Lee Morgan--as a tribute to his hero.
 
What made its success even more unusual is that the song did not come out on a large record label, but on a small one, Scorpion Records, so it had to catapult over numerous releases from larger labels to get into the top 20 on the singles charts.
 
To date, the record has reportedly sold more than 5 million copies worldwide since its original release.
 
I bought one of them when it first came out—as well as purchasing other Elvis tributes—and yes, this one is the real deal, far and away the best of the lot, and it fully deserved its success.
 
McDowell became so famous as an Elvis sound-alike that Kurt Russell lip-synced to his voice in the 1979 TV film “Elvis.”
 
He also provided “Elvis-like” vocals for a couple of other Elvis-related TV movie projects during this period.
 
If you are interested, he has a website at https://www.ronniemcdowell.com/
 
There really isn’t much more to say about McDowell, but he cemented his place in recording history with “The King Is Gone.”
 
Unlike other supposed one-hit wonders, he actually has had a long and successful career, but pretty much in the country genre, so while he never attained the fame and success of Elton John, he did pretty good for himself.
 
And if you forgot the song, or perhaps never heard it, here it is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6iac57mZQcU
 
Happy birthday to Ronnie McDowell, whether his birthday is today or tomorrow.

Rant #2,619: World Shut Your Mouth

As I write today’s Rant on the 83rd day of this year, I find that the world continues to turn as it has since the beginning of time.
 
I woke up today to hear of the death of actor George Segal, who for the past 60 years or so, was perhaps Hollywood’s busiest actor. He passed away from complications from bypass surgery at age 87.

 
His boy-next-door good looks, pared with his acting skills, propelled him to stardom, when he was in his 30s with his Oscar nomination for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” through his late 80s with “The Goldbergs” TV show, and everything in between on the movies and on TV.
 
I do have a personal reminiscence of him which I am not too proud of.
 
Years ago, probably 30 years ago or more on a Sunday morning, I went out to get bagels or something else that I don’t remember, and on Sunrise Highway in Merrick, Long Island, I stopped by a red light.
 
I just happened to look out the front passenger window and this car pulls next to me, a small car whose make I don’t remember, but I look at the guy in the car, and lo and behold—it took me a moment to figure it out—it was Segal.
 
I believe he had a house out east at the time, and he was probably driving to that house when I saw him.
 
I decided to follow him as far as I could, and I did for a few miles. I think he probably figured out that I was following him, and he revved up the accelerator and took off, and I decided how stupid I was for doing this, and I went on my merry way.
 
Anyway, Segal’s career really spanned the ages, and he will be missed.
 
And then we have Elvis Presley …
 
No, he hasn’t been sighted anywhere lately, he is still not with us, but today is a major date in his life.
 
Today, in 1958, 63 years ago, Presley started his Army hitch, being inducted by the draft board in his native Memphis, Tennessee. He then boarded a bus like all the other new recruits, and went to Fort Chaffee, Arkansas.
 
He later went through basic training at Fort Hood, Texas, and he was then deployed to Germany, serving his two-year hitch in Europe and then returning to the States to continue his singing career.
 
It is difficult to understand all these years later how big a story this was, the most popular young singer in the world being drafted like every other young man and serving his military time like anybody else.
 
Some claimed that he was never the same after coming out of the Army—I believe John Lennon said that, and that his Army hitch took away the bite in his music—but whatever the case, Elvis did his service time, supposedly met the under-age Priscilla there, later married her, and later resumed his career pretty much unabated.
 
His management team covered his time in the service by releasing a slew of records, some of which even capitalized on his Army hitch.

 
But Lennon was right. His music was never the same after his military service, and although he continued to have massive records, few were as revolutionary as his early recordings were.
 
And to prove that the world really does turn, but for some it turns in the completely opposite direction as it does for most of us, my Yahoo News feed of the day brought me this startling revelation:
 
“Woman Left Horrified After Noticing Racy Reflection In Her Wine Glass: ‘My Worst Fear’”
 
Evidently, some really stupid people do exist on this planet, and here is certainly one of them, nearly as stupid of the “glue-head” lady and certainly one whose fame will last an even shorter time than that woman’s 15 minutes of fame endured.

 
According to the story, a woman took a photo which she posted on Instagram—the Internet site that seems to be the refuge of people with less than an ideal IQ—that showed her reflection in a wine glass.
 
The problem was, she did not realize that the photo of the reflection showed her to be naked, and she showed her skin to the world on Instagram without realizing it, until some “savvy” viewers told her what she had done.
 
Of course, she went to another Internet site, TikTok—on the level of Instagram for the number of morons who use it—to explain to the world what it really didn’t care about, that she had made such a terrible mistake.
 
“Seventy-four people saw my cooter,” she said. “That’s 74 people and my husband’s mom too many.”
 
If that is not the quote of the year, I don’t know what is.
 
So yes, the world continues to turn in this world we are living in.
 
The pandemic has not stopped history, it has not stopped people from dying from other things than the coronavirus, and it has certainly not stopped stupidity.
 
George Segal, Elvis Presley, and the moron with the naked reflection … you can only get those things in one single column here at the Ranting and Raving Blog.
 
Thanks for reading, and come back tomorrow—same Bat time, same Bat channel—for more riveting stories that continue to demonstrate that they world does continue to turn—
 
Maybe slightly off its axis, but it hasn’t stopped spinning—
 
Just like my own head. 

Rant #2,618: (Wish I Could Fly) Like Superman

Last night, when I heard the news that Elgin Baylor had passed away, I just thought that another piece of my childhood was gone.
 
He was one of the greatest basketball players of my youth, a dynamo that did it all on the court with the Los Angeles Lakers, a literal bull in a china shop on the basketball court who could not be stopped.
 
People talk about Michael Jordan being the greatest of all time on the basketball court, but they forget about guys like Oscar Robertson, Wilt Chamberlain, Jerry West and Baylor, who set the tone for the modern game.
 
They even forget more modern players like Julius Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.
 
These guys could play, they were leaps and bounds beyond their peers on the court, and Baylor, in particular, might have been the greatest one of them all, period.
 
He played 14 seasons for the Lakers—both in Minneapolis and when they moved to Los Angeles—and when he won the Rookie of the Year honors in his first season in 1958, he continued to terrorize other teams into the early 1970s,
 
During his career, he averaged more than 27 points a game in an era where there was no three-point shot in the NBA and defense was paramount.
 
He also played his position of small forward well, averaging more than 13 rebounds a game.
 
And Baylor, known as “Mr. Inside, Mr. Outside” because he played the entire floor, also averaged more than four assists a game.
 
He truly set the standard for what a small forward was supposed to do on the court, and he was not huge, just 6 feet, 5 inches, small by any standards for basketball players and doing what he did on the basketball court.
 
Although he is probably the greatest NBA player never to win a championship—he played in an era where the Bill Russell-led Boston Celtics won just about every year—he was thought to be a championship player even without the ring.
 
Baylor retired after a number of seasons where he was hobbled by injuries, and then he became one of the most respected NBA executives, mainly with the Lakers’ competitors, the Los Angeles Clippers.
 
He died of natural causes at age 86, and with his passing, the NBA and pro sports in the United States lost one of its greatest athletes ever.
 
The first game I ever saw in person was one that my father took me to at the old Madison Square Garden, the predecessor to the one that the New York Knicks play in today.
 
Back in 1965, when I was eight years old, they still had NBA doubleheaders, where two away teams would play the first game and the home team and another away team would play the second game.
 
I don’t exactly remember who played the Knicks or what the first game was, but it was some combination of the Lakers, the Philadelphia 76ers and another team, perhaps the Cincinnati Royals. I guess I could look it up, but it really doesn’t matter.
 
I saw these huge men playing a game that I played in the local basketball courts in my South Jamaica, New York, neighborhood, and being so little, I was completely mesmerized by their size—especially since in those days, you could sneak down almost to courtside from the rafters and get a great view of the players.
 
And I know that during one of those games, I actually saw Elgin Baylor play, and I knew that this was a game that I was going to go head over heels for.
 
I do remember that whoever the Knicks played, they lost to, but I simply don’t remember who they played.
 
I believe they probably played the 76ers, and the preliminary game was the Lakers and some other team.
 
But whatever the pairings were, I was hooked.
 
And since the Lakers were there, and their game was first, I saw Baylor play, and that was enough to convince me that, like baseball, this was a game I was going to love to not only play but to watch.
 
Today, the NBA is full of razzle dazzle, the players are incredibly talented athletes, and because of the three-point line, some say the game has actually devolved even though the players are better.
 
I don’t know about that, but I do know that the game I grew up with is quite different than the game I watch today.
 
But Baylor was one of those players who bridged the gap from the 1960s game to the game of today, and yes, if he played today, he would excel just as he did way back when.
 
He was perhaps the most gifted player in all facets of the game that I have ever seen, and if Michael Jordan was the best player ever, then he was the heir apparent to Baylor, probably the most complete basketball player I have ever seen, bar none.
 
We have seen many baseball Hall of Famers die during the past year—including one of the greatest ever, Hank Aaron—and NBA Hall of Famer Baylor is in that class, perhaps the best player of his era and maybe even the best of all time.
 
He will be missed.

Rant #2,617: Sunshine Superman

It is hard to believe, but I lost my last full-time job nearly a year and a half ago.
 
It seems like even longer, but right at this point, it is more than 17 months ago that I last had a place to go to each weekday to make my weekly wage.
 
I lost my job before most of us knew what the word “pandemic” meant, and certainly before we knew what the “coronavirus” was.
 
So many things in our lives have changed during the course of the past year, but I guess I had a head start on what was going to befall each and every one of us when I lost my job on October 11, 2019, a day that will live in infamy in my life as the day the company I had worked for for nearly a quarter of a century went under.
 
It took a while, but as you know, I retired, or actually semi-retired, as I was able to get a remote writing/editing job, a job where I simply continued to write about the subject I wrote about for all of those years, military resale, or military stores.
 
Anyway, when I lost my job all of those many months ago, I set out on what I kind of figured and what turned out to be—a completely fruitless crusade to find another full-time job, and when the coronavirus came to our shores, that was really the death knell for my job pursuit.
 
But I kept pretty chipper, found things to do at home, and when the virus came and changed our lives, I got a real head start over most people about how to cope and how to keep busy at home when there is nothing else to do..
 
Among the things that I did was to clean out my daughter’s old bedroom—the room where I store my record collection—and while the closet in the room is still crammed full with junk, the actual room really is spic and span. I can actually walk in the room without having to step over the stuff that was all over the floor for months before I kept a promise to my wife to clean it up.
 
I went on to discover and rediscover many things that I had in the room in one place or another, and even outside that room, I unearthed things that I had not seen in decades, just because I was trying to keep myself busy.
 
As many of you know, I sold most of my 2,000-issue-plus comic book collection a number of years ago, and to this day, I rue the day that I sold the collection, but it was something that had to be done. It was taking up too much room in my parents’ part of the house, and let’s just say it was time.
 
I sold probably two-thirds of what I had, and I did pretty well, but there was still that third of the collection that I still have, that still sits in a closet in my old room, collecting dust because except for when I tried to sell the entire collection, I hadn’t picked up any of these comics for literally decades.
 
Most of what I collected were DC—Superman, Batman--and Marvel—Spider-Man, Daredevil--comics, but there were plenty of other comic books, by companies like Harvey and Archie and Charlton and Gold Key and Dell, and a lot of others that I can’t remember.
 
Anyway, just on a lark and with nothing to do, I went down to that closet the other day just to see what I had—or what I still had left--in my comic book collection, and I discovered that I had as much as I did, which kind of surprised me.
 
I sold the issues that were worth the most, and those who bought my collection didn’t want the others, so I just kept them, and I am keeping them for prosperity.
 
I haven’t gone through everything that is left, but I did find three items that caught my eye, and that you are seeing as part of this Rant.
 
Comic books related to popular TV shows have been around since the 1950s, and I remember I had comic books related to “The Honeymooners” and “I Love Lucy” in my collection at one point. I don't know if I still have them.
 
In the late 1950s and through the 1960s and very early 1970s, it was almost a given that if a TV show with a large kids audience hit the airways, a comic book would certainly follow, so there were comic books for shows like “Star Trek” and “Bewitched” and shows like that, which mainly came out as part of the Dell and Gold Key lines of comic books.
 
This situation lasted through the early 1970s, and when that came to an end when the publishers of these comics went out of business, the TV-related comic book spin-offs were picked up by the larger comic book publishers. I do remember that DC put out a successful series of “Welcome Back Kotter” comic books in the mid-1970s.
 
But what made the 1950s, 1960s and very early 1970s TV-related comic book spin-offs so special were the covers of these comics.
 
They used stills and publicity photos from the actual shows on these covers, so they were collectible because the covers were so well done.
 
Inside, the stories weren’t really very good, the artwork was passable but nothing to write home about, and these comics were really directed at very young kids, those in the five-to-eight year old time frame.
 
Personally, I bought some of these, but even in the age group that these comics were directed at, I think that I was a bit beyond these books' very simplistic stories and art, and I kind of stayed away from them—when you could even get them, as they were not as well distributed as comics under the DC and Marvel banners.
 
But I did buy a few—and you see three of them here, from the series of “The Monkees” comic books that came out from 1966 to 1969—actually outliving the show they were based on, which ran from 1966 to 1968.

 
The Monkees were hugely popular back then, and the series of comic books based on the show was quite expansive. I believe that there were 18 comic books in the entire run, which is quite substantial, because most of these TV-related comic book series might run two or three or four issues, and that was it.
 
Of course, the Monkees TV show lived on in reruns after its initial NBC run, turning up on Saturday mornings for both CBS and ABC, geared toward young children, so the comic books were a natural extension of the TV series, even in reruns.
 
I thought I had four of these issues, but I could only find three, the fifth, eighth and 10th comics of the series. I could swear I had another one, but I can't find it just yet. I will have to do a little more searching, and maybe I will find it—or maybe I sold that one too.
 
Along with the records I have, these comics are nice additions to my Monkees side collection, of which I have some other things, which I will talk about at another time.

 
Those Monkees comic books—and my entire collection, which as I said is pretty much gone now—really was my childhood, right there in the covers and the pages of those books.
 
I hated to get rid of them, but the time had come. My kids didn’t want them, they were taking up valuable space, and honestly, I needed the money at that point in time.
 
They served their purpose, and the memories that I have of those comic books will stay with me forever.
 
It was just time to get rid of them, and I did what I had to do. I wasn’t too happy to do it, but I guess time moves on.
 
If I find any other of these TV-related comic books, I will let you know. Although they weren’t a huge part of my comic book collection, their presence in the collection signified exactly what my mindset was as a kid growing up.

And heck, I taught myself to read with these comic books, so I owe that collection I have and had a great debt of gratitude.
 
And by the way, as an aside, these TV-related comic books go for a pretty penny today.
 
Just for kicks, I checked out eBay, and the entire run of the Monkees comic book series just sold for more than $200, and other TV-related comic books from that ere are also pulling a bit of money in today’s collectors’ universe.
 
Heck, maybe it is time for me to start collecting comics again, not only trying to get the entire Monkees run but get those original “Star Trek” and “Bewitched” comics too.
 
Maybe … nah, there must be other things to do in this house than to start collecting comic books again …
 
I think.