I'll Call It Like I See It

by sheila morris

Category: Slice of Life

  • Songs Of The Show Boat – Oh My Darling Clementine


    “Oh my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine, you are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry Clementine.”

    A radio favorite on the Maxwell House Show Boat in the 1930s, Oh My Darling Clementine is attributed to one Percy Montrose (1884) but this American western folk ballad had questionable origins and a variety of lyrics.  The Show Boat Four, a male quartet  plus piano, had a soloist sing each of the four verses they used in their arrangement with the quartet chiming in with harmony on the chorus.

    The Show Boat Four

    The male quartet complete with appropriate Maxwell House coffee cups included from left to right Randolph (Tubby) Weyant, Harold R. “Scrappy” Lambert, Leonard Stokes and Bob Moody.  At the piano is Kenneth Christie who also handled arrangements for the four.  According to Songs of the Show Boat – A Collection of Favorite Songs That Never Grow Old, Tubby Weyant was first tenor and began his career as a soloist in a New York church.   Scrappy Lambert was second tenor and started his musical professional efforts by organizing his own jazz orchestra while he was attending Rutgers University.   Leonard Stokes was the baritone in the group and worked his way through the University of Missouri as a singing instructor.  The bass, Bob Moody, graduated from “Pathe ‘shorts’ to concert appearances.”   Ken Christie got started by playing tuba in a high school band.   Blow, baby, blow.   The most popular of the four, Scrappy Lambert,  was a backup singer for many orchestras of the 1920s and 30s and was one of the most prolific vocalists of that time according to radio historian David Lobosco.

    In a cavern in a canyon, excavating for a mine, Dwelt a miner, forty-nin-er, and his daughter Clementine.

    I definitely knew the chorus of My Darling Clementine and could sing it without skipping a word or note even though I missed the Show Boat quartet’s radio rendition.  On the other hand,  verse one I’d need a little help from my friends to be sure of the lyrics, but I would have recognized them without a doubt.   Frankly, the other three verses of Clementine floored me.

          Light she was and like a fairy and her shoes were number nine,  herring boxes without topses, sandals were for Clementine.  (Verse 2)

    Drove she ducklings to the water, ev’ry morning just at nine, hit her head a-gainst a splinter, fell into the foaming brine.  (Verse 3)

    Ruby lips above the water. blowing bubbles soft and fine.  Alas for me, I was no swimmer, so I lost my Clementine.  (Verse 4)

    Somehow in my mind the chorus and verse one conjured up images of a loved one lost.   I could go with a father who lost his daughter, I think, but my instinct was to just sing the chorus and in my own romantic storytelling I pictured a sweetheart separated forever from her one true love.   You are lost and gone forever, dreadful sorry Clementine.   Think poor man’s version of the final scene in Casablanca.   Here’s looking at you, Clementine.

    At any rate, in the Show Boat song Clementine was not a dainty heroine.   She wore size nine sandals.  I put that in the category of too much information.  Also,  I don’t know how anyone could make sandals out of herring boxes, but then as the old saying goes Necessity is the mother of invention.  Score Clementine high on the creativity scale and also off the charts on kindness for hustling the little ducklings down to the water every morning.   And then deduct points for going too close to the water when she clearly can’t swim.   She hits her head against a splinter which must be the biggest splinter in the world because it knocks her into the water and we see in verse four that she drowns for lack of a lifeguard.   I have to say I never learned these verses.

    The good news is the legend of Clementine lived on.  Luckily, alternative lyrics were created and the mystique of her melody became the theme song in the sound track of John Ford’s 1946 classic western My Darling Clementine starring Linda Darnell in the title role.   No mention was made of her shoe size or any ducklings in the film.

    In the rock ‘n roll years of the 1950s and 60s Bobby Darin and Jan and Dean created their own Clementine tunes and more recently in the 2004 film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Kate Winslet’s name is Clementine and she isn’t happy about it.

    I have gone over the deep end and must come back so I will close with this alternative stanza I found among the ruins of countless verses never sung by The Show Boat Four (plus piano).

    Now you kids may learn the moral of this little tale of mine, Artificial respiration would have saved my Clementine.

  • Looking For Simpler Times In Simpler Times


    Songs of the Show Boat

    Copyright 1935, G.F.Corp.

    In the year 1931 the United States was experiencing one of the most painful economic downturns of its relatively young history.   The Great Depression as it came to be known by economists and politicians and academics was in full ramped-up destruction mode in a period of high unemployment with as many as one in four people out of work, continuous bickering among the country’s leadership to determine the best road to recovery and a flood  of fear among the general population that money was not safe anywhere since they witnessed the failure of 2,294 banks in that particular year.   Alas, no bailouts.   The European credit structure collapsed, and the American Federal Reserve raised interest rates in an effort to stop the large whooshing sound of Europe’s loans, investments in the U. S. economy and gold  in the U.S. banks being sucked back across The Pond.   Rising interest rates meant a larger cycle of despair for individuals and small businesses, and things went from bad to worse.   Could anyone save the day, or at least make the day more tolerable?

    A new hero rode bravely on the waves of air to produce sounds for the struggling masses and it was fondly known as Radio.   For family entertainment and fun on the cheap, radio was the way to go.  RCA and CBS and NBC were born and became household names through the creative genius of the men who founded the companies.   The evolution of radio programming was swift and the dynamics ever changing.   Popularity fades as often as the wind changes its course, and the innovators in the business began to know their audience and what they wanted.

    The Maxwell House Show Boat premiered in 1931 as a Thursday night prime time NBC radio show and was a big hit for the coffee company and the network.  From 1933 – 1935 it was the most popular show on the air.   The secret to its succeessful run?   Elizabeth McLeod writes about the show in her article Radio’s Forgotten Years – Tuning Thru the Great Depression.   “The entire tone of the program was redolent of cotton blossoms and magnolia, having little to do with the grit and grime of Depression America…the Show Boat rode a river of sentimentality in a Depression Era version of nostalgia for simpler times of the Old South…”

    Captain Henry, Himself

    Frank McIntyre was a famous Broadway star

    and the skipper of the Show Boat

     In the Word from Captain Henry which was the foreward of the Songs of the Show Boat he revealed how he envisioned the collection of songs for the book.   “You know, there’s somethin’ about the old river that makes you want to sing.   It sings a song itself, you see, all th’ time…an’ the folks who live along its banks are singin’ all th’ time too, mostly.   So we’ve been a-collectin’ this list of the favorite tunes they sing, and one day Lanny said, ‘Captain Henry, why don’t we have these songs printed, and make it possible for our friends who listen in every week to have them?’  And so–here they are!   They’re our favorites, and, I reckon, they’re the favorites of most every one.  They’re comin’ to you with th’ best wishes of all of us aboard the Maxwell House Show Boat.”

    And now they are coming to you with my best wishes along with Captain Henry and the rest of his gang.  Music was an important part of my childhood and I remember my mother playing an old black upright piano with yellow keys  in our living room as my daddy and I sang while my grandmother was the audience.    I never heard Captain Henry or the radio variety show he made famous, but I do know these songs Daddy and I sang with gusto while Mama played as only she could.  My mom was an extraordinary piano player who could make those old yellow keys sparkle.   Maybe she did hear Captain Henry on the radio when she was a little girl because she taught me most of these songs which I can still sing – but with much less gusto.

    Stay tuned…

  • Click And Clink – Happy New Year!!


    Open a bottle of your favorite champagne and get out your most festive flutes and share a toast with me today wherever you are.   To my cyber space followers/friends from the beaches of South Carolina to the rural parts of Way East Texas to my bi-stateual bases in Columbia, South Carolina and Montgomery, Texas to faraway places like San Francisco, California to Rogers, Arkansas to Warsaw, Indiana to Karachi, Pakistan to somewhere in France because your primary language is French but you didn’t list a town so I don’t really know where you are –  to not too terribly faraway places like College Station, San Leon and Richmond, Texas – here’s looking at all of you and thanks for looking at my words with me for the past year.   I’m clinking you right now with my own personal glass of champagne.

    I took a trip down memory lane this morning and decided to make an Author’s Choice of my favorite posts from the past twelve months we’ve been together.   If you’d like to pick your own, I’d love to hear from you to get a reader’s perspective.   Click and Pick, we’ll call it.  Click on Archives and Pick a favorite.  Surprise me…here goes my list:

    March 09, 2012  Post Cards From The Heart – Bessie and Florence?

    Febuary 14. 2012  The Photo Finish

    January 17, 2012   I Shoulda Been A Cowboy

    January 24, 2012   Old Plantersville Road

    August 25, 2011   It’s Only Paper – Confessions Of A Financial Advisor

    September 26, 2011   Sallie and Chance – An Unusual Love Story

    December 16, 2011   Gold, Frankincense and Myrrh – A Christmas Story for the 21st Century

    When I checked out at the local grocery store this morning, the young African American woman who was the checker said with a trace of sarcasm, “Hmmm….bread, bacon and bubbly…now that’s a nice combination for you.”  And I laughed with her as I imagined her picturing me frying the bacon for a BLT and then popping the cork on the beautiful inexpensive bottle of champagne to go with my sandwich.  I’m sure  she was entertained for a few minutes.

    So Happy New Year!  We’re off to a roaring start because my book I’ll Call It Like I See It – A Lesbian Speaks Out will be available October 1st!!!   Details will be posted as we get closer to the publication date…

    Thank you so much to all of you who have followed my happenings, musings, reflections and downright opinionating.   I’m clinking you again.

  • Big Money, Vanna


    Who let the money out of the bag?   Oh, you mean who let the cat out of the bag.   No, I mean who let the money out of the big ol’ US Guvmint Bag?   Ah, how much money are we talkin’ bout, Willis?   Gobs and gobs?

    Oh, yeah.   We’re talkin’ gobs and gobs and gazillions of gobs.   We’re talkin’ so much we don’t even know how many zeroes to put after it.   As a financial person in a former life, I should never read articles about money.   As a social justice activist and relative pacifist, I should rarely read articles about wars or health care.   And I should never ever EVER read an article that contains extensive information about government spending in the past fifty years.   Step away from the computer, O Person Who Reads With Forked Mind.

    For example, today I read that the Wall Street Bailout cost us $4.76 trillion dollars of which $1.54 trillion is floating around loose somewhere with no repayment in sight.   Zing went the strings of my wallet – and yours, too.  Coincidentally, or as luck would have it,  two nights ago I watched the movie Too Big to Fail and I advise against watching it unless you have a strong stomach.   The plot traces the origins of the economic disaster that began in 2008 and continues to plague our country today.   Snow White has two new Wall Street Dwarfs named Greedy and Thiefy and they run the Big Money, Vanna.

    Can I buy a vowel?   Indeed, and you can buy a couple of wars while you’re at it.   The smartest vowel to buy is an “A’ which is found in the words IrAq and AfghAnistAn.   Wow –  that’s cost you $122 billion dollars per year since 2001 and by the way we haven’t stopped spending and we didn’t count people cost, either.   Ouch…that A was expensive.

    Can I buy a Happy Vowel now because the “A” brought a frown to the unflappable Pat Sajak and the entire Audience, too.    Let’s see.  Yes, you may buy an “I” for the eIsenhower Interstate hIghway system that was built from 1956 to 1991 for  $484 billion and counting.   The Good News is  this vowel has generated $6 in revenue for every $1 in cost so that should make you happy as you drive merrily along your favorite Interstate Highway.  Yippee – this game is fun.   Big wheels keep on rollin’ and spinnin’, too.

    Okay.   One last spin of your big ol’ US Guvmint Bag Wheel…oops!      BANKRUPT.

    Don’t you just hate it when that happens?

  • Happy Birthday To The Lady


    Aung San Suu Kyi was 67 years old Tuesday, June 19th. and was sworn in earlier this year to serve in the Parliament of Burma, where she has devoted her life to human rights and democracy.   For 15 years – almost a fourth of her life – she was under house arrest for her political opposition to the military regime that imprisoned her and other members of her party in their country.  She was ultimately released in November, 2010.   She is the recipient of the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize and numerous other awards in recognition of her bravery but  because of her arrest was unable to deliver an acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize until this past Saturday, June 16th.   Msmagazine.com reprinted the full transcript of Suu Kyi’s speech, and her moving words of hope for world peace and inclusion and plea for kindness resonate across time and geographic boundaries.   Her understanding that the cause of human rights transcends national borders and specific dictatorships and her commitment to alleviating forms of suffering wherever they exist make her a worthy Nobel winner.

    “…our aim should be to create a world free from the displaced, the homeless and the hopeless, a world of which each and every corner is a true sanctuary where the inhabitants will have the freedom and the capacity to live in peace.  Every thought, every word, and every action that adds to the positive and the wholesome is a contribution to peace.  Each and every one of us is capable of making such a contribution.  Let us join hands to try to create a peaceful world where we can sleep in security and wake in happiness…”    ——Aung San Suu Kyi

    Happy Birthday to The Lady from Burma!