Spitball Army

The right angle isn’t always the correct angle.

Card is titled: “193 – North Avenue Beach, Chicago.”

Printed on back of post card:

The 440-foot beach house of the Chicago Park District in famous Lincoln Park at North Avenue Beach.  This is built to stimulate the superstructure of an ocean liner and looks out over a bathing beach more than a mile long where hundreds of thousands come to enjoy the surf on warm summer days.

Publishing information:

The J.O. Stoll Co., Chicago, Ill.  Genuine Curteich-Chicago “C.T. Art-Colortone” Post Card (Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.).

From Wikipedia:

Hard bop is a style of jazz that is an extension of bebop (or “bop”) music. Journalists and record companies began using the term in the mid-1950s to describe a new current within jazz which incorporated influences from rhythm and blues, gospel music, and blues, especially in the saxophone and piano playing.

David H. Rosenthal contends in his book Hard Bop that the genre is to a large degree the natural creation of a generation of African-American musicians who grew up at a time when bop and rhythm & blues were the dominant forms of black American music and prominent jazz musicians like Tadd Dameron worked in both genres. Another major influence in this genre was Miles Davis.

Hard bop is sometimes referred to as “funky hard bop.” The “funky” label refers to the rollicking, rhythmic feeling associated with the style. The descriptor is also used to describe soul jazz, which is commonly associated with hard bop. According to Mark C. Gridley, soul jazz more specifically refers to music with “an earthy, bluesy melodic concept and… repetitive, dance-like rhythms…. Note that some listeners make no distinction between ‘soul-jazz” and ‘funky hard bop,’ and many musicians don’t consider ‘soul-jazz’ to be continuous with ‘hard bop.'” The term “soul” suggests the church, and traditional gospel music elements such as “amen chords” (the plagal cadence) and triadic harmonies seemed to suddenly appear in jazz during the era.

Approximate playing time: 60 minutes.

1. Hank Mobley  “Soul Station”  (1960)
2. John Coltrane  “Blue Train”  (1957)
3. Horace Silver  “Sister Sadie”  (1959)
4. Lee Morgan  “The Sidewinder”  (1963)
5. Miles Davis  “Solar”  (1954)
6. Cannonball Adderley  “Somethin’ Else”  (1958)
7. Art Blakey  “Moanin'”  (1958)

[V-mail addressed to Mrs. Richard N., Berwyn, Illinois. Return addressed to Richard N., c/o Fleet Post Off. Envelope postmarked 3 August 1944 at 6:30 p.m.]

July 29, 1944

[Apparently continued from another V-mail, this letter picks up at:]

to say than to tell you that I love you. In fact, when I haven’t one of your letters to answer, that’s about all I do have to say. About the only thing new here is the fact that they have installed a new movie program. Now we have a movie in the afternoon and one in the evening on Saturday & Sunday, and a double feature program and shorts every other evening in the place of one picture every other evening. Yesterday I had another nice talk with Mrs. Watson. She knows a great deal about old silver and has a Latin hen house, so I told her about my Mexican ring. You know, hon, I feel just like I am on ice being preserved out here. There isn’t a thing in the world out here for me to do except read and I sure am tired of doing only that already. Even the pictures we see out here are lousy with a few exceptions. Today was a good one, “A Guy Named Joe.” In closing, I want to tell you again and again I love you and hope that this letter will prompt you to write more often, if you haven’t any reason not to.

All my love
Butch – Dick

I live in the Crestwood neighborhood of Birmingham. There is a movie theatre down the street from me called The Edge 12. I can walk there from my home, if I so desire. This theatre has twelve screens. They frequently show films of great merit. They also show films for everyone else. We all get to choose.

(photo: spitballarmy.com)

Five new films  – involving, variously, one auteur*, two directors**, four languages***, five writers**** and at least fourteen little blue people***** – open at The Edge 12 today:

[Read more →]

I give up on those Bush’s Grillin’ Beans. They keep falling though the barbecue grate.

[Letter postmarked on 10 July 1944 at 2 p.m. at Grand Central Station, New York, New York. Addressed to Mrs. Richard N., Berwyn, Illinois. No return address inscribed on the envelope.]

July 5, 1944

My Darling,

How are you Hon, I am fine, too. I don’t have much to tell you in this letter because I tell you most every thing in my V-mails. I know I have stopped mailing them, too, but I couldn’t hold out until I received your answer to my June 25th letter, so I put several V-mails in the mail for you. I was going to send them in this letter, but I got impatient waiting for the opportunity – you see, I never know when it is coming. However, the important thing is I am on the next shipment. I would like to tell you when I will be in N.Y., but if orders were changed, it might cause a delay and then very much unnecessary anxiety and undue worry for you; so I will tell you only that I will be home very soon – how is that? I have very high hopes of being in the States so that we might be together for our anniversary. In the mean time, I love you every minute, hon, and will be dreaming of being with you every night.

[One and ½ lines of writing scribbled out at this point.]

I love you, my darling,
Dick xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

From Twitter, July 7th:

Four score and seven ducks ago…

Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach ducks.

“Monsieur Rick, what kind of a duck is Capt Renault?” “Oh, he’s just like any other duck, only more so.”

“The last to go will see the first three go before her. And her little duck too.”

“I coulda had class. I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody, instead of a duck, which is what I am.”

Card is titled: “814 – The Towers of Fairyland, Bryce National Park, Utah.”

Printed on back of post card:

From this vantage point, most visitors get their first view of Bryce Canyon.  Its grandeur can only be expressed in silence, not words.

Bryce Canyon is 275 miles south of Salt Lake City.  It may be reached by auto over a beautiful highway, or by rail to Cedar City and thence by auto.

Card is addressed to Mr. & Mrs. E.K. Lee, 2008 Pearl St., Santa Monica, Calif.  Postmarked in Denver, Colo. on Aug 4, 1949, at 3:30 PM.

Text of written message:

Hello –

Goodbye-

Dolores Day

Publishing information:

Deseret Book Company, Salt Lake City, Utah. Genuine Curteich-Chicago “C.T. Art-Colortone” Post Card (Reg. U.S. Pat. Off.).

The music of Jackson Browne has been with me almost as long as I can remember loving music. That all may have started when I appropriated my sister’s copy of Saturate Before Using and proceeded to play the vinyl so often that the needle eventually burned through to the other side.* The rest, as they say, is history. But there is one big reason – other than that Jackson Browne is one hell of a songwriter – that his music stays with me: he records his songs in a register that I can sing along with. You have been warned.

Here’s a healthy handful of my favorite songs by Jackson Browne. Ask me tomorrow what my favorite Jackson Browne songs are and the selection will be different. Guaranteed.

(photo: Henry Diltz, 1974)

Approximate playing time: 78 minutes.

1. “Something Fine”  (1972)
2. “The Barricades of Heaven”  (1996; this is a live recording from 2005)
3. “About My Imagination”  (2001)
4. “In the Shape of a Heart”  (1986)
5. “Your Bright Baby Blues”  (1976)
6. “Farther On”  (1974)
7. “Linda Paloma”  (1976)
8. “My Personal Revenge”  (1989)
9. “Of Missing Persons”  (1979)
10. “Song for Adam”  (1972)
11. “The Times You’ve Come”  (1973)
12. “Alive in the World”  (1996)
13. “Sky Blue and Black”  (1993)
14. “These Days”  (1973)
15. “The Late Show”  (1974)

*That didn’t really happen.