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In honor of the late, great Etta James, who passed away this morning at the age of 73, here's her very first hit single and a big favorite of mine, "The Wallflower," a.k.a. "Roll with Me, Henry," a.k.a. "Dance with Me, Henry," from the year 1955:



Not much of a video, I know -- although I personally enjoy watching obsolete media technology do its thing -- but I couldn't find any actual clips of James performing the song, and this at least gives you the authentic sound of a nearly 60-year-old recording. The sharp-eared movie aficionado may know this song from Back to the Future -- it's playing in the cafe after Marty decks Biff and runs out with the meatheads in hot pursuit, launching the "skateboard chase" scene. -- and it was on the soundtrack album from that flick that I first heard it. So why do I love this song? Well, the Back to the Future connection doesn't hurt -- it's one of my favorite films, and I listened to that soundtrack a lot back in the day -- but mostly it's just a catchy tune that makes me happy when I hear it, simple as that. Curiously enough, the co-writer and producer of this tune, Johnny Otis, who is often credited with discovering Etta, passed away himself just a few days ago. (He's probably best known for his own recording of "Willie and the Hand Jive").

Etta James is most often associated with the song "At Last," which has become a standard at weddings and was so memorably significant at President Obama's inaugural ball, and for that record's sound, she is often thought of as a jazz singer. But she was far more than that. In her time, she performed pop standards, traditional blues, '60s soul, and even a cover of Guns 'n' Roses' "Welcome to the Jungle" on her final album. It is her work from the '50s and '60s that I enjoy most, though. Like so much from that era, it's just plain good music. As I said, it makes me happy for no reason... and need we ask anything more of our music?

Oh, in case you're wondering why tonight's selection has three different titles, it's because the song's original name, "Roll with Me, Henry," was considered a little racy by the standards of 1955, so it was changed to "The Wallflower." (Interestingly, the lyrics remained intact, probably because they very obviously refer to dancing and not the innuendo that many would assume, but the title was the important thing for preventing radio executives from tossing the demo before they listened to it). In a later cover version by Georgia Gibbs, both the chorus and the title were switched for the less controversial "Dance with Me, Henry." Those were very different times, to put it mildly.

I missed out on the heyday of the "let's see what's on your iPod" meme by about six years -- what can I say, I'm a late adopter, part of that whole "analog kind of guy" thing -- but I've actually got an iPod now, so when I ran across a variant of this old blogging chestnut on Tumblr last night, I couldn't resist playing along.

If this is too passe for your tastes, feel free to surf on, but I feel like I'm finally filling a hole in my soul by participating in one of these.

Okay, maybe this experience wasn't that profound, but it was kind of fun to see what a random sampling of my musical tastes might turn up. Fun for me, at least. Maybe not so much for you. But who's writing this blog, anyhow?

Right, so, moving on, here's the intro/instructions:

You can learn a lot about someone by the music they listen to. Hit "shuffle" on your iPod or MP3 player and write down the first 20 songs. No cheating or skipping songs that are shameful. That is the fun!

My list:

1. Calling All Girls -- Rick Springfield
2. Windy -- The Association
3. The Harder They Come -- Jimmy Cliff
4. Shake Your Groove Thing -- Peaches & Herb
5. Fall from Grace -- Stevie Nicks
6. Heaven Knows -- Robert Plant
7. Ask the Lonely -- Journey
8. Sweet Talkin' Guy -- The Chiffons
9. Listen to Your Heart -- Roxette
10. Mule Skinner Blues -- The Fendermen
11. The Road Home -- Heart
12. Nothin' at All -- Heart
13. Some Gothic Ranch Action (instrumental from the soundtrack of Rancho Deluxe) -- Jimmy Buffett
14. Hot Girls in Love -- Loverboy
15. I Can't Stand It No More -- Peter Frampton
16. Real Man -- Bruce Springsteen
17. Dance Hall Days -- Wang Chung
18. Don't Look Now -- Creedence Clearwater Revival
19. La Bamba -- Los Lobos
20. Son of a Preacher Man -- Dusty Springfield

Okay. Interesting that the first selection was my main man. I swear I did not set that up. I do wonder, though, exactly how that Shuffle algorithm works. You see, I can go for weeks without hearing anything from a particular genre -- oldies, say -- and then all of a sudden the machine is kicking out "Sweet Talkin' Guy" and "Windy" and "Mule Skinner Blues." Not to mention two songs by the same artist coming back to back... that doesn't seem terribly random to me. In any event, I suppose this is a reasonably good cross section of my likes: mostly '70s and '80s pop-rock, some older stuff, nothing newer than '89 or '90, and some Jimmy Buffett thrown in for good measure. Probably nothing my Loyal Readers didn't expect, right?

The West Jordan Sugar Factory is gone now, demolished last year in the name of "progress," but the theatrical company named after it (and which hoped to turn the old factory into a permanent home) is still going strong. Anne and I attended the opening performance of its latest production, The Foreigner, just last night.

The Foreigner is a fun little play about a shy Englishman who finds himself in backwoods Georgia for a couple days, pretending not to understand English in the hope that all the eccentric characters around him will leave him alone if they think he can't speak with them. Naturally, they start telling him their secrets instead, believing him to be the perfect confidante because he doesn't know what they're saying. And some of those secrets are very dark indeed (well, not that dark, I suppose; the play is a comedy after all!). Our friend Geoff Richards -- who played the title character in another production of this play a couple years ago -- has a supporting role as a crude redneck who turns out to be a leader of the local KKK. He's really terrific in the part, particularly in a very funny scene in which Charlie, the titular foreigner, spooks Geoff's character Owen with his seemingly supernatural insights. Geoff has been acting for several years now, and he's getting better and better with each new performance. The entire cast is great, and the quality of the production is very high, far better than I usually expect from community theater groups. (I don't mean to be cruel, but between the lack of money, the often too-earnest talent, and of course the local culture's tendency to favor a handful of squeaky-clean titles over anything more adventurous... well, let's just say I'm not usually a fan. But the Sugar Factory Playhouse is, in my opinion, running very close to pro level, a definite cut above the usual.)

Anyhow, if you're one of my local readers and you enjoy live theater, I highly recommend this one. I was too late posting this for you to catch tonight's performance, but there are still four more remaining -- tomorrow night, Monday, Thursday, and Friday. Tickets are only $8.00 for adults and $5.00 for children, with a 7:30 curtain time. I guarantee you'll enjoy this more than Contagion or that Bucky Larson flick that opened at the megaplex today. (What the heck is that movie about, anyhow? I feel so disconnected from my own hobby these days...) The venue is the Midvale Performing Arts Center, which people who grew up around the south end of the valley will probably remember as the former Midvale town hall at the corner of Center Street and 7800 South, in Midvale's historic downtown area. (All right, if you want the official address, it's 7720 South 700 West. It's within spitting distance of the old Comedy Circuit club, if that helps.)

I'd also like to quickly mention that my buddy Jack will be riding tomorrow in the Lotoja Classic bicycle race that runs 206 miles from Jackson Hole, Wyoming, to Logan, Utah. This is his fourth time in Lotoja, and The Girlfriend and I want to wish him and his brother Justin, who's riding with him, lots of luck.

McSweeney's Internet Tendency has posted an incisive and terribly important piece of psychological insight: a list entitled "What Your Favorite '80s Band Says About You." But while many of the items on this list are right on target -- if your fave is Big Country, for example, you probably have a Highlander poster in a tube in the back of your closet; get it? Big Country was a Scottish band, Highlander is about an immortal Scotsman -- I have to confess that I'm utterly baffled by the one that best applies to me. Here it is:

Rick Springfield: Your wallet weighs over a pound.

Huh? WTF is that supposed to mean? Anyone? My wallet... weighs... over a pound. Why would it weigh so much? And what does liking Rick Springfield have to do with that? Sometimes, I feel very dense...

ATTN: Owners of the Peppermill Concert Hall, West Wendover, NV

I just heard your latest radio spot advertising upcoming performances. It sounds like a great line-up over the next couple months. I enjoy your smaller, more intimate venue and I'm grateful for the opportunity you give to older artists who can no longer fill the big arenas, but still love to perform for their fans.

However, I would like to mention that Rick Springfield does have male fans. No, really. Trust me on this point. Prefacing his segment of the ad with a voiceover saying, "Hey, ladies...." and suggesting that a Rick concert is a perfect girls' night out -- which it is, I won't deny -- is somewhat alienating to those of us who love his music but also sport that Y chromosome. Just something to consider...

I was flipping through CDs at the library the other night, about to give up on finding anything I actually recognized -- I am so out of touch with current music, and by current I mean "released in the last 15 years" -- when a familiar cover caught my eye. It was the self-titled debut album by Wilson Phillips, an all-girl singing trio consisting of Beach Boy Brian Wilson's two daughters and their childhood friend, the daughter of John and Michelle Phillips from The Mamas and the Papas. You may remember their monster hit from the summer of 1990, "Hold On." I remember it very well, because, for a couple months that year, the Wilson Phillips CD played constantly over the PA system of the movie theater where I worked. The theater had only a single-disc player, and the management was too busy (or too indifferent) to bother changing out the CDs once in a while. Which meant all us poor buggers down on the floor got incredibly sick of whatever the current music was, usually in a real big hurry. I remember several of those CDs meeting with rather ignominious ends. A couple of them sailed out across the parking lot like silvery frisbees. One was dashed into pieces with a mallet, reassembled with splicing tape, and hung on the inside of a circuit-breaker panel, to serve as a warning to other sugary middle-of-the-road pop albums that might wear out their welcomes. My personal favorite, though, was the incident in which a CD just happened to find itself on the floor of the projection booth, on which somebody -- I'm not saying who -- had sprinkled a little of the sand we used to fill the lobby ashcans. (Yes, it was a very different world a couple decades ago, what with socially acceptable smoking and single-disc CD players.) Did you know if you do The Twist on a CD laying in a sprinkling of sand atop a linoleum floor, that CD won't ever play right again? Sure looked pretty when the light hit it, though... all those concentric circular scratches...

Anyhow, I don't recall that Wilson Phillips got destroyed, and as endlessly looping lobby music went, it really wasn't bad. I retained enough good will toward it that when I saw this copy at the library, I got all nostalgic and checked it out. I thought it might be kind of nice to hear it again.

What it was, though, was weird.

I don't know why I feel compelled to observe the deaths of celebrities the way I do. I only know that I always have, going all the way back to a couple of brief sentences I scribbled in an old pocket calendar on the day Elvis Presley died in 1977. (I was seven years old at the time.) A former girlfriend once told me she thought I was morbid for having such an interest in the passing of people I didn't even know. I see it differently, of course. No, I didn't personally know the people I write tributes for, but that doesn't mean I feel no attachment to them, no grief at the thought that they're gone, or that their lives -- or at least their work -- has had no direct effect on my own. Given my interests and obsessions, movie and television actors, novelists, screenwriters, artists, composers, and rock stars have often had more effect on me than many of my own relatives.

In any event, a lot of things got away from me in 2010, including a great many topics I wanted to blog about, and my patented celebrity obits comprise a pretty large subset of those lost blogging opportunities. That's a tremendous source of frustration for me; I feel like I've failed at some kind of calling, as pretentious and self-important as that probably sounds. But I feel what I feel, right?

To try and make up a little for my "In Memoriam" failings, I will now present a list of all the celebrities who died in 2010 that I felt worthy of mentioning. They all deserve more than a bullet point, but I'm afraid that's all I have time to give them. A handful of them did get a little more, up toward the first of the year, before the Summer Work Apocalypse got its claws into me. Those people's names are hyperlinked to the relevant posts.

And to anyone who may agree with that long-gone girl and thinks I'm being morbid, I assure you I really did feel some connection to everyone on this list, even if it was simply a sense of familiarity due to their faces being on TV all the time as I was growing up.

My main man Rick has been doing a lot of press lately in support of his memoir, Late, Late at Night, but sadly, many of the TV interviews I've seen have been pretty embarrassing, either filled with tittering "I loved you when I was 13!" silliness or focused too much on the salacious revelations in the book (yes, Rick is candid about having sex with pretty much anyone who offered, even after he married) instead of the lifelong struggle with depression and insecurity that the book is really about. Here's a good one that takes the subject seriously. Looks like it was actually a radio interview that was videotaped, and it's a little over 18 minutes long. Give it a look:

I've recently finished reading Late, Late at Night myself and plan to write down a few thoughts as soon as I get a chance. Stay tuned!

Here's a NSFW-ish but very funny song that does away with all those tedious metaphors and slang and just says what every other pop song is trying to say:

And it's catchy, too! I could make some kind of over-intellectualized case for how this is a snapshot of the state of American pop culture at the end of the first decade of the 21st Century, but really, all that matters is that it's catchy, right?

I wasn't planning on writing anything on the anniversary of John Lennon's death. I figured there would be plenty of other voices on the InterWebs this week paying tribute and remembering, and anyway I honestly didn't think I had much to say about the subject because, as crappy as this is going to sound, John Lennon just doesn't mean that much to me.

Please don't start sharpening your pitchforks and lighting up the torches. I really don't mean to be offensive or insensitive. John's murder was a horrific act that hurt thousands, if not millions, of people, and there's no question that he was a talented man who wrote some genuinely great and immensely popular songs. But when it comes right down to it, I respect the music of John Lennon and The Beatles far more than I actually enjoy it. It's been overexposed to such a huge degree that the only emotion I experience when I hear most of it is weariness. I don't really dislike The Beatles. I'm just tired of hearing them every time I turn on the radio, not to mention hearing about how damn great they were.

However, at some point while I was reading all those other blog posts about what happened 30 years ago, I had a sort of epiphany. I remembered something related to John Lennon that does mean a great deal to me, something he did not create directly but which depends on his best-known solo recording, "Imagine," to achieve its impact. I'm talking about -- and this may sound a little strange -- one of my favorite episodes of the old TV series WKRP in Cincinnati.