There is something that haunts me every time I hear Sam Cooke’s Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha. In the song, the narrator is waiting for a dance that his partner can do. She cannot cha cha. But every song they play is the cha cha cha. Including Tom Dooley cha cha. Being extremely familiar with the folk ballad Tom Dooley, I am immediately set to ruminating what a Tom Dooley cha cha would sound like. The rhythms, the melody, everything seems as though it would not fit. And I wonder aloud that someone needs to make a Tom Dooley cha cha.
Well, someone did make a Tom Dooley cha cha! Apparently the Kingston Trio hit, Tom Dooley, inspired a number of response songs from various artists in various styles. The 1959 Thomas Dooley cha cha by the George Garabedian Troubadours was just one novelty song among many novelty and non-novelty songs. But then I had to know, was the Thomas Dooley cha cha playing at the party that inspired Sam Cooke to write his song? Or was George Garabedian, like me, inspired by the song to comment: what would a Tom Dooley cha cha be like? Before answering his own question.
Well, I couldn’t find a firm date for the George Garabedian 1959 release, but Sam Cooke’s “Everybody Loves to Cha Cha” was released in January 1959 after being recorded on January 7, 1959. So, it seems a fair bet that George’s cha cha came after. Mystery solved!
I recently grabbed a deal on a vintage zodiac clock (that in the end isn’t functioning) and I realized something I hadn’t paid clear attention to before. The zodiac on the clock, on a vintage pellon print, on a vintage chalkware wall hanging owned by my best friend, and on the examples that initially inspired me to create my own zodiac clock are all arranged counter clockwise.
Where on the clock face the zodiac begins seems to vary in these vintage clocks. When making my zodiac clock, I arranged the signs clockwise and attempted a sort of alignment of the hour and sign. This made sense to me at the time, but noticing the difference I started wondering why what made sense to me was at odds with all the examples I had found.
One explanation for this is the impact of early time pieces like sundials that tracked time by the shadow the sun cast on the face of the time piece. Newer time keeping devices copied this layout so that all of our timekeeping implements, from wall clocks to wristwatches, track time clockwise even though clockwise is essentially the shadow of time passing counter clockwise.
I’m pretty sure everyone on earth has had the feeling of déjà vu, and attributed various meanings to it. Akira O’Connor and Christopher Moulin’s “Jamais vu: the science behind eerie opposite of déjà vu” on The Conversation explains the mechanism of déjà vu as a sort of memory fact checking. Even more interesting to me is the description of déjà vu’s opposite: jamais vu. Jamais vu is when suddenly that which is known, familiar, and even common to you is somehow strange. The article sets up that jamais vu is even rarer than déjà vu, but then goes on to explain how it can be induced.
Funnily enough, I have noticed and remember several instances where I have experienced jamais vu. Is this because I have recently learned about it and, like with anything, having noticed a new thing I now see it everywhere I hadn’t noticed it before?
The described method of inducing jamais vu by writing out a word over and over again is especially memory inducing for me as I have a lot of experience with writing lines over and over again.
Victor Laughter in ‘Transmission of Photographs by Wireless’ in Popular Electricity in Plain English. v.3 n.3 pg.254
While I was being distracted by the little known 1909 precursor to solar panels when helping researchers, I noticed something else in Popular Electricity in Plain English that astonished me. One of the authors who had written about Cove’s sun harnessing experiments, Victor Laughter, had also been written about for his own experiments in wirelessly transmitting photographs in 1910! A quick search online for Victor Laughter provided none of the usual answers, no Wikipedia entry, no casual mention to his inventions. So, of course, I had to find out more.
Victor Laughter was born in Mississippi in 1988 and by twelve was likely orphaned living in the Waverly Institute, along with his sister Belva (Bensman, n.d.). Also around the age of 12, Laughter built his first experimental wireless set (Bensman, n.d.). Belva would marry and move to Memphis, making Memphis the home to which Victor would often return before residing their permanently. He would perfect and advertise his wireless telegraphy set when he was twenty (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931), quickly following this with the publication of his book the Operator’s Wireless Telegraph and Telephone Handbook published by Drake and Company in 1909. It was the most complete guide to wireless at the time, now believed to be the first book on radio (‘Victor Laughter, Radio Pioneer, Dies,’ 1966), and would sell over 30,000 copies over two printings (Bensman, n.d.).
Before getting too much further, it will be useful to understand the state of radio at the turn of the 20th century. Prior to 1920, radio, known as wireless, was extremely experimental. Most wireless telegraphy, later radiotelegraphy, prior to WWI was morse code that would turn the transmitter on and off producing the dot and dash pulses of radio waves. The waves being sent and received could not carry a voice until Reginald Fessenden invented the heterodyne receiver in 1901 (Wireless Telegraphy, 2023). Wireless telegraphy became an exciting new hobby and challenge for anyone with the time and access to equipment needed (Halper, 1999). These hobbyists made important discoveries and advancements that would cement radio’s importance in the upcoming war and as a commercially lucrative opportunity thereafter.
In 1910 Victor Laughter would take on the position of editor for Hugo Gernsback’s Modern Electrics magazine, all the while publishing consistently in Popular Electricity in Plain English and serving as Technical Director and Secretary for the American Wireless Institute of Detroit (Bensman, n.d.; Massie & Perry, 2002). His wireless transmission of photographs was highlighted in the Popular Electricity in Plain English 1910 article: “Transmission of Photographs by Wireless.” This invention, which would be an early example of a facsimile transmission, isn’t mentioned much elsewhere and may have been an experiment that was left by the wayside similar to those described by McCormack (1913):
“In later years other experimenters tried to develop improved high-frequency spark transmitters–Victor Laughter himself wrote an article about William Dubilier’s efforts along these lines in the June, 1911 Modern Electrics. (A second article on Dubilier appeared in the January, 1912 issue–this time followed two months later by a letter from Laughter, complaining that Dubilier was now claiming credit for a transmitter design actually developed by Laughter). And in spite of the optimism Laughter expressed in this article about the future of his system, no high-frequency spark system for audio transmissions was ever developed to the point that it was successfully put into commercial service.”
Victor Laughter pictured in ‘Inventor Tells About First Set’ (1913). Battle Creek Enquirer. 13 Sep 1931. pg 17
Victor Laughter would also transfer or sell most of his invention patents to various companies and organizations (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931). His first three patents, prior to 1911, were sold to Dr. Lee DeForest of the North American Wireless Corporation which would soon after go bankrupt, transferring all assets to the Radio Corporation of America (Bensman, n.d.). So the further development of many of his ideas would end up in the hands of others. He seemed most committed to developing and improving wireless broadcasting. In 1913 he had arranged to set up his equipment on the roof of the Tri-States station in the Falls Building in Memphis. Laughter called the press to his experiment testing the area limits of a broadcast and had more reporters and his brother in law waiting at a house two miles away (McCormack, 1913; Bensman, n.d.; ‘Victor Laughter, Radio Pioneer, Dies,’ 1966). Victor Laughter would also be credited with one of the first broadcasts of a live performance by W.C. Handy, the Father of the Blues, in 1914 (Halper, 1999).
“Our research during the war aided materially in the commercial development of the industry. The Superheterodyne was the work of our development”
Victor Laughter (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931)
In 1917 Victor Laughter was mustered into the army, where he would work in the U.S. Signal Corp. as a First Lieutenant and keep radio communication the the front lines in operation until 1919 (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931; Bensman, n.d.). After the war he worked in St. Louis and Memphis doing a variety of jobs, dealing radio parts, and helping the design of Clarence Saunders’ first automated grocery (‘Inventor Tells About First Set,’ 1931; Bensman, n.d.). He continued to patent inventions which he invariably assigned to other parties. By 1931 he had 18 patents, and by his death in 1966 he had 25. He also continued to work with Hugo Gernsback’s and to contribute articles to Radio Electronics magazine, the successor to Modern Electronics (‘Victor Laughter, Radio Pioneer, Dies,’ 1966; Bensman, n.d.).
Massie, K. & Perry S. (2002) Hugo Gernsback and Radio Magazines: An Influential Intersection in Broadcast History. Journal of Radio Studies. 9(2): 264-
” Transmission of Photographs by Wireless” (1910) Popular Electricity in Plain English. v.1 n.1: p 254
Victor Laughter, Radio Pioneer, Dies. (1966) Memphis Press-Scimitar, Friday September 30, 1966
George Cove’s third solar panel. Source: “Harnessing sunlight”, René Homer, Modern Electrics, Vol. II, No.6, September 1909.
My work sends me looking for all kinds of things that I would never, if entirely directing my own research, be compelled to search and learn. I am grateful for this. This is how I learned about George Cove and his solar electric generator…a little known 1909 precursor to solar panels. The Resilience article “How to Build a Low-Tech Solar Panel?” goes into detail on Cove’s work.
With the picture caption of the photograph from the Resilience article, I was able to find two articles about Cove’s work at the time:
By William Morris Agency, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=28343387
It’s been a while since I worked up an Every Month is ____ History Month post. Truth is, I got rather stalled on Pearl Bailey. The more information I found on her, the more I became completely fascinated, and nothing I found was quite enough. Unlike many other personalities that no-one I know seems to remember, Pearl Bailey wrote quite a bit about her life. I can’t tell you how excited I was to find out she had penned her own memoirs and social commentary. Suddenly, only her own words would do. I acquired a few of her books and, unfortunately, they got added to my to-read shelves. And, that is where the research post ended, until now.
No, I haven’t finished reading her biography (the one I picked up). I have read through Hurry Up America and Spit (1976), and I am currently picking through Pearl’s Kitchen (1973). The song on our Christmas mix, ‘Five Pound Box of Money’ by Pearl Bailey is just too good not to share now, and since I have got enough information for a basic biographical sketch, I figured why keep waiting. I am now a confirmed Pearl Bailey fan. I’m not going to have any trouble revisiting this great lady in another post once I have read about her story in her own words.
Pearl Baily was born in 1918 in Newport News, Virginia to Reverend Joseph James and Ella Mae Ricks Bailey (Pearl Bailey, 2022). Her brother, Bill Bailey was well known on the vaudeville stage. In a later article, Bailey recounted how she stumbled accidentally into show business by way of what sounded like a sibling spat. She had been sent to the theater to fetch her brother, who was rehearsing his dance act. He brushed her off and sent her home, so she returned, entered, and won the amateur contest that night. She was just fifteen (Pearl Bailey is serious about ambition to teach, 1956). After some time on vaudeville stages and touring the country with the USO during WWII, she made her Broadway debut in St. Louis Woman in 1946 (Pearl Bailey, 2022) to excited and complimentary reviews (Pearl Bailey’s easy style clicks on Broadway, 1946).
“The way I sing is the way I live,” Miss Bailey says…”What I do is like telling a story to music, it’s got to be something that brings a chuckle. The audience enjoys it because it tells of things they know.”
– Pearl Bailey (Pearl Bailey’s easy style clicks on Broadway, 1946)
Early on, she would describe herself as a writer when speaking with reporters and critics. Throughout a very successful career entertaining on stage, through which she was often featured in newspapers, she would carefully craft and plan her shows based on her projections of what the audience would be (Pearl Bailey’s next role, 1956). By 1956 she declared a desire to follow her long time dream of becoming a teacher, taking classes at UCLA towards that ambition (Pearl Bailey is serious about ambition to teach, 1956). She would later earn a degree in theology from Georgetown University, but before this she published several books (Pearl Bailey, 2022):
The Raw Pearl (1968)
Talking to Myself (1971)
Pearl’s Kitchen (1973)
Hurry Up America and Spit (1976)
Between You and Me (1989)
Somewhat satisfyingly, her achievements and greatness were awarded many times over during her lifetime. She was appointed special ambassador to the United Nations by President Gerald Ford; she received a Special Tony Award for the title role in the all-black production of Hello, Dolly!; she won a Daytime Emmy award; she was the first African-American to receive the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award; she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom; and she was awarded the Bronze Medallion, the highest award conferred upon civilians by New York City (Pearl Bailey, 2022). Pearl Bailey died at the age of 72 from arteriosclerosis (Pearl Bailey, 2022).
There is so much more that I haven’t covered here and, I promise, I will get to it. But for now, enjoy a little Christmas:
You see before you a picture that seems to be depicting a wedding feast. I say seems to be, because the title of the picture doesn’t say anything about a wedding. But, the order of those seated, the unhappy lady in the center, in front of a red cloth, wearing a crown with a wreath over her head are all reminiscent of other pictures from the same period that showed wedding feasts. This is ‘Burlesque Feast’ by Frans Verbeeck. This picture pulls you in and drags you down. It conjures up torrents of questions that seasoned art historians may be able to answer quickly, but maybe even the experts wouldn’t know. Allow me to show you around…
First, a little background. Frans Verbeeck (1510-1570) came from a family of important artists in Mechelen, in the province of Antwerp in the Flemish Region of Belgium. According to Wikipedia it is not always possible to attribute work to one or another of the Verbeeck family, but at least three paintings have been attributed specifically to Frans Verbeeck who lived in the middle of the 16th century.
‘Peasant Wedding’ by Frans Verbeeck‘Peasant Wedding’ by Pieter Bruegel the Elder
Burlesque Feast is not Frans Verbeeck’s most noted work. I found much more attention paid to The Mocking of Human Follies, and there is another feast picture attributed to Frans Verbeeck called ‘Peasant Wedding’ that looks very similar in composition albeit less strange. It is almost like ‘Burlesque Feast’ is making fun of ‘Peasant Wedding.’ And Verbeeck’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ in turn, almost seems to be making fun of Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Peasant Wedding’.
Plenty of analysis has gone into Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ that can help us figure out what is going on in the other two pictures, even though the customs are unknown to us. For instance, the lady sitting in front of the green cloth, wearing a crown with a ‘crown’ suspended over her head is the bride. So, the characters similarly positioned in Verbeeck’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ and also in ‘Burlesque Feast’ are also brides, or playing the part of one.
Back to ‘Burlesque Feast.’ Go ahead and open the link to the large image on Wikimedia commons and get deep in there. Do you notice how the bride in front of the red cloth, wearing a crown that appears to be made of spoons and broken egg shells, under a wreath that hangs from the ceiling, looks so utterly unhappy? Maybe she looks so sad because her groom is the fellow in the bottom right retching into the corner? But her emotional state and his apparent drunkenness are nothing compared to other things happening in the picture.
Coming in on the bottom left of the picture we see a procession of hooded figures seemingly lead by an elderly lady. From the ermine trim on her clothes and the owl on her hand – as well as the falcon on the hand of the lady behind her – I am guessing that these are quite well-to-do individuals. Falconry being a past-time of the rich. Perhaps these are the wealthy members of the town coming to give their blessing to the unhappy bride? But, look how odd and hunched the old lady is. Why is she so crooked. And why is there an unsheathed knife pointed at her on the table to her side? In Dutch still life painting, a popular art of the same time, a knife left carelessly on the table is a sign of betrayal. Is the old wealthy lady betrayed or the betrayer?
Owls in the middle ages were alternately seen as symbols of the devil or classically as representations of wisdom. Which could it be here?
This lady, to the right of the bride (from our view), why does she look as though she is psyching herself up to stab a body? Is it the man who leans closely in to talk with her that has pushed her to this point of anger or the woman chugging from a jug on her other side? Or, is it just that she is dismayed her knife has a big ole’ nick out of the blade?
And further right, on the other side of the man that leans in closely, is a ghostly image of a man who is not there. He stares directly at the audience and is, in fact one of only two characters in this whole picture that do engage with the audience directly. Is this a mistake of the digitization process, or the painting actually have this ghostly image in it? If in the painting, it seems oddly deliberate. I know many paintings were painted on top of previous compositions, but this doesn’t look like an under-layer peeking through to me. If anything, it looks like the impression you might get if you had two printouts face to face in a folder for too long and a little of one gets stuck onto the other.
Further back in the room on the right side of the painting, a bald creature with a pig like nose tends a spit that cooks a cow head over the fire. That could be odd enough on its own, but as I looked at the figure, trying to see if he was missing a foot or it was just turned to the side (I vote for turned), I noticed that he is chained to a block. Slavery was present in Europe in the middle ages and there were also some interesting punishment devices, so is this creature enslaved or is it being punished?
His is not the only face that is more creature-like than human-like. Up in the left hand corner, among other musicians playing for the feast is a flute player who looks, to me, like a lizard with a goiter. At first I was thinking that classifying some of the characters of the picture as creatures was a little harsh, but a closer look at the lizard like flute player reveals that he only has to fingers on each hand.
And finally, the most obvious but easy to overlook creature is front and center, across the table from the bride and the second character who engages us directly, or maybe the first. He has feet for hands, and, perhaps, a tail? I could also mention that he brandishes an upturned broom that holds a lit candle – something that is not safe in the least – but why dwell on that when he has feet for hands?
When I started looking at the other wedding pictures, I did notice in Verbeek’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ this spot in the picture is taken by a small jester-like human character. This is really what got me thinking that ‘Burlesque Feast’ was poking fun at ‘Peasant Wedding.’ The more I looked at Verbeek’s ‘Peasant Wedding’ I wondered if it was poking fun at Bruegel the Elder’s ‘Peasant Wedding.’ Bruegel’s picture was dated to 1567. I could not find if Verbeek’s pictures had been dated, but Verbeek and Bruegel were contemporaries, so I imagine some painterly teasing is possible.
It has been a little while since Clement Skitt showed up on the bean, but you may have gleaned from Clement Skitt’s word of the day that I have a bit of an affinity for vintage slang. I gave that affinity a place to live by making it a love of Clement Skitt, a comic character from Levi Levi and the Time Machine. Since the last word of the day post, I’ve stumbled on a couple more old slang dictionaries on the Internet Archive and figured I’d share in case you would like to peruse them while I do some reading up.
I know I am not the first person to ponder the frequent incidence of the word ‘cooky’ in old cooking pamphlets and recipe books, but no one has yet explored this ‘alternate spelling’ on the internets to my edification. And ‘alternate spelling’ is what is given as a reason for the existence of ‘cooky’ in dictionaries. I thought maybe cooky’s etymological history would explain it, but no. The Online Etymology Dictionary says simply that ‘cookie’ is possibly derived from a 1730 Scottish term meaning “plain bun,” but it’s definition in 1808 as a “small, flat, sweet cake” is more similar to the Dutch koekje “little cake,” a diminutive of koek “cake.”
The etymological histories didn’t even get into how British English calls the same types of confection ‘biscuits.’ Michele Debczak at Mental Floss (2012) points out that the two ‘sweet baked goods’ actually refer to two different types of confection, but does not explore why, even if they have been categorically described as either slower cooking soft thick dough (cookie) or a thin crisp baking stiff dough (biscuit), the terms are more often used based on country and not on type of bake.
I was foolishly hoping to find some online search or service that could comb through historical resources for word popularity similar to how Google Trends combs through the internet search history, but alas. The closest I got was the Google books ngram viewer, which can report on the frequency of words within the Google Books catalog (Wikipedia).
The graph that resulted confirmed what I was seeing in my recipe books and cooking pamphlets, that ‘cooky’ was used most during the mid 20th century, but it didn’t feel like the whole story. After all, Google Books doesn’t really have a lot of recipe books, and recipes were also popularly shared in newspapers.
Chronicling America at the Library of Congress returned massive results when searching for ‘cooky’ that I thought were bogus at first. It seemed to me that the results interchangeably included both ‘cookie’ and ‘cooky.’ This can happen sometimes when search engines are smart enough to correct for misspellings but also not smart enough to search misspellings when quotes are included.
But then I realized that the results were not because of spelling corrections! Both spellings were used in most of the results! From the earliest result I could find in my (definitely not exhaustive) search: 1826, to a mid-century result in 1948, ‘cooky’ was being used as the singular, while ‘cookies’ was the plural.
Phenix gazette. [volume] (Alexandria [D.C.]), 10 Jan. 1826. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.), 26 Sept. 1948. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.
The 1826 mention that I found, above, also calls the collected confections ‘cakes,’ bringing to mind the Dutch koekje. The earliest I could find ‘cookie’ used as the singular was in an 1895 poem about a ‘Cookie Man.’
The next time I found ‘cookie’ in the singular sense was also a name. I am not quite sure when ‘cookie’ became an alternate for ‘cooky’ but it seems safe to say that instead of simply an alternate spelling, ‘cooky’ is actually the old use singular of ‘cookies.’
By Peter Nicolai Arbo – Nasjonalmuseet, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78150204
Walpurgisnacht is known in the Germanic countries of central Europe as a night when the dead walk the earth, when witches and fairies roam about, and the division between the worlds of living and those of the dead are thin. Falling six months from Halloween, Walpurgisnacht shares many of its attributes.
Saint Walpurga
Walpurga was born, and became a nun, in England before traveling to assist her brother, Saint Boniface, in evangelizing the Germans. When Boniface died, Walpurga became abbess of the Heidenheim am Hahnenkamm monastery he established there. Saint Walburga is often depicted in stone carving and pictures as being accompanied by a dog. There is little in her autobiography to account for this faithful companion, but there is plenty of historic associations of dogs with other Germanic goddesses like the Norns and Friga, a Goddess of May Day and the Wild Hunt. This is just one way that the Saint and Goddess have been woven together through time. Saint Walburga’s tomb was also said to start weeping a miraculous healing oil on the first of May. Though the church would try and downplay the association of the oil and saint with Mayday, the connection would remain in people’s minds.
Goddess Walpurga
Walpurga, or Walburga, is all white and gold. She is a fertility goddess, a forest goddess, and a goddess of springs. She is associated with grain and the harvest, and like Berchta she has a spindle. With her she carries a unique three cornered mirror that shows the future. She has been compared to Holda, also keeper of a spindle, goddess of fertility, and sharing a tendency to reward her followers with gifts of gold. She has also been compared to Brigid, who shares her May holiday and her double life as saint and goddess.
Wild Hunt
When the sun sets on the 31st of April a storm of spirits rips through the sky, making mischief through every town in it’s path. Is Odin the leader of the Wild Hunt, atop his six legged steed, or was it Perchta, or Holda? In Scotland the Wild Hunt is made up of the Sluagh or Unseelie Court, joined by any restless spirit that did not feel much like leaving the physical world.
Walpurga has been linked to the Wild Hunt as well. Yet, different from the many spirits who might do you a trick if found in their path, Walpurga is pursued. She runs from the tumult, flying from village to village in a desperate attempt to find a hiding place. It is said that if you leave your window open, so she can hide behind the cross of the windowpane grill, she will leave you gold as thanks.
LaVern Baker has the strange distinction of being a wildly successful performing artist, the second African American woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo artist, one of the first eight recipients of the Pioneer Award from the Rhythm and Blues Foundation, and, at the same time, unknown to far too many people. Even her Wikipedia entry calls attention to its unfinished state and includes many inaccuracies. I’ve tried to cobble together the story of her life with the most reliable information I could find.
Born Delores Evans in Chicago, she was the niece of Merline Johnson, who sometimes may have gone by Merline Baker in the clubs where she sang with the Big Bill Broonzy and Blind John Davis as the Ya Yas Girl. Many sources commonly point to another aunt: Memphis Minnie, and give her the name Merline Baker, but of all the aliases that Memphis Minnie went by, Merline was not one of them. It is possible that one errant source long ago decided LaVern Baker’s aunt was Memphis Minnie and simply ran with it, molding information about Merline Johnson to fit the fantasy.
As Delores Evans she sang gospel while growing up, until, at the age of 17, she established her first entertainment persona performing at the club DeLisa under the name Little Miss Sharecropper. As Little Miss Sharecropper, she took inspiration from a contemporary, Little Miss Cornshucks, dressing herself in a tattered cotton sack to evoke the antebellum south for the southerners that were flooding into the Chicago area. During this time she also went by Bea Baker, perhaps imitating her aunt who was said to go by Baker as a back-stage alternative to her on-stage name the Ya Yas Girl.
At nineteen, she married Eugene Williams, a postal worker in Cook County. Some time just afterwards she got a gig at the Flame Bar and recorded with the Eddie Penigar Band. Then, in 1952, she adopted LaVern Baker as the name she would use for the rest of her career after joining the Todd Rhodes Orchestra and before touring Europe. Upon her return, she was signed to Atlantic Records in 1954 as their second female artist after Ruth Brown. A year later she would have her first, and one of the biggest, hits of her career: “Tweedle-Dee.”
Directly after her release of ‘Tweedle-Dee’ it was covered by Georgia Gibbs, who, like several white cover artists at the time, were taking advantage of radio’s aversion to playing ‘black’ music by making copies that would high-jack the sales of the original records. A newspaper article from 1958 gives one rendition of the story where LaVern Baker called up her Congressman, Charles Diggs, to complain about how copyright law had to be changed to rectify the situation. As excited as I was by the idea that LaVern Baker instigated a change to copyright law, I could find no mention of amendments to the law being proposed by Charles Diggs and/or made concerning music in the mid1950s.
In 1955 Baker appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, performing ‘Tweedle-Dee’ in a line up of R&B musicians arranged by DJ Dr. Jive. Her subsequent hits, including ‘Jim Dandy,’ and ‘I Cried a Tear’ endeared her to early Rock and Roll fans. She would become known as one of the first queens of the Rock and roll era.
After a tour of Australia in 1957, her marriage to Eugene Williams was ending. They were divorced by 1958 and in 1959, or 1961, she married comedian Slappy White. Some reports say that her fame was fading by the time she left Atlantic Records in 1964 and signed up to go on a USO tour in 1966. While on tour, she fell ill with pneumonia performing in Vietnam. Her recovery was long, first in Thailand and then in the Philippines. By the time she felt healthy again, in 1967, the USO tour had gone on without her and she was stranded on the Naval Base Subic Bay with no way to get home.
Slappy White, perhaps assuming the worst, both made moves to divorce Baker and to have her declared dead. He assumed all rights to her recordings.
“I decided to quit tearing myself up and accept the fact that I wasn’t going home anytime soon. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to go, seeing as my own husband just up and declared I was dead so he could make some money off my records. He never even tried to find out about where I was or if I was alive. Who wants to go back to that?”
-LaVern Baker quoted in Bob Gulla’s Icons of R&B and Soul
LaVern Baker stayed in the Philippines from 1967-1988, performing at the NCO club at Subic Bay. While in the Philippines she had two daughters, and adopted another. Upon returning to the states she jumped determinedly back to work, performing at the 1998 Atlantic Records 40th anniversary celebration at Madison Square Gardens, and obtaining a lead role on Broadway in 1990. By the time she was interviewed by the Los Angeles Times in 1995, her health had begun to infringe on her work. A few strokes and a late diagnosis of diabetes had resulted in the loss of some memory and both her legs. Baker refused to be stopped, and continued performing until she died in 1997 at the age of 67.
Lost History
Some of the most illuminating quotation and additional details about LaVern Baker’s life, especially her years in the Philippines, comes from a 2007 first hand account by D. Armenta, a navy air traffic controller who filled in a shift at the Armed Forces Radio/Television station in Subic Bay twenty years earlier when LaVern Baker came by to tell her story. Unfortunately, only the first page was archived by the Internet Archive’s Way Back Machine (in the reference list below), and, other than the quotations made in Gulla’s book and other works, is currently lost to time like much of LaVern Baker’s story.
Gardner, Elysa (1995) Hall of Famer Returns to the Spotlight : Pop Beat: After a roller-coaster career and losing both legs to diabetes, singer LaVern Baker prepares for a Cinegrill gig and plans a life beyond concerts. Los Angeles Times. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1995-08-26-ca-38992-story.html
Gulla, Bob (2008) Icons of R&B and Soul: An Encyclopedia of the Artists Who Revolutionized Rhythm. vol.1
In 1840s Louisiana, public attention was captured by the story of a German immigrant who had lived enslaved for over twenty years. The articles communicate an alarm that a white person could be forced into the very same situation that many people of color were experiencing every day. The story of Sally Miller was much more than mistaken identity, it explored how race was defined and performed, and how immigrant communities were encapsulated into a culture that made one race preeminent over all others.
Based on information that came out during the court case and investigations thereafter, we now know more about Sally Miller than she did herself at the time. She was born Salomé Müller in Langensaultzback in Alsace on the Lower Rhine in 1814 to parents Daniel and Dorothea (“Sally Miller,” 1845; “Sally Miller,”2021). Her parents were part of a group of about 1800 German immigrants from Alsace, mostly farmers and mechanics, who had contracted with a ships-master for passage to the United States. The ship-master stole away with their money and left them stranded in Amsterdam. Unable to continue their journey without paying the ship owners for passage, they were stranded, until a contract for their transport was made on their behalf by the ‘Holland Government,’ so says the article in the Hartford Courant in 1846 (“The Case of Salome Muller,” 1846).
Stockton, F. R. (1896) “The Slaves of New Jersey.” Stories of New Jersey. American Book Company. https://www.mirrorservice.org/sites/gutenberg.org/2/4/7/1/24713/24713-h/24713-h.htm
Starting in 1816 tens of thousands of Europeans, mostly German and Swiss, were leaving their countries to escape burdensome taxes, crop failures, conscription, and unemployment in the post-Napoleonic years. Upon arriving in the seaports of Rotterdam and Amsterdam many immigrants would become victims to “soul merchants” and be forced to become redemtioners, contracted to work for for free one to three years in farms and towns of the South to pay back their debt (Hasian, 2003; Sweirenga & Lammers, 1994). Many of the 1800 Germans from the Alsace, sailing on the Johanna for New Orleans, found themselves in the same position.
In March 1818, after many deaths aboard ship during their voyage, the indenture contracts of the surviving Müllers, father, son, and two daughters, were sold to John Fitz Miller of Attakapas Parish, owner of a sugar cane plantation. The Müller’s friends and fellow travelers did not immediately know that within weeks of their installation at the Fitz Miller plantation, Daniel and his son Jacob died of fever. By the time family members tried to reconnect with the two girls, they had vanished (“Sally Miller,”2021).
Sally Miller’s story was unraveled backwards for the courts after this, but I’ll try to keep it organized. Fitz Miller, referred to as Miller in the articles, would later say in court that Sally Miller was purchased from Anthony Williams of Mobile as Bridget, a ‘mulatress.’ Miller changed her name to Mary, because he already ‘had another slave named Bridget.’ During her time at Fitz Miller’s plantation Sally Miller would be given to the Miller’s ‘colored overseer’ for a wife and would give birth to four children, Lafayette (who died about 1839), Madison, Charles and Adeline (“Sally Miller,”2021). After a time Fitz Miller sold her to Lewis (or Louis) Belmonti, who owned a cabaret in a predominantly Spanish section of New Orleans. Belmonti would recount later that he had suspected Sally Miller was white and attempted to rescind the sale, upon which time Fitz Miller said that ‘she was white, and had as much right to her freedom as any one, and was only to be retained in slavery by care and kind treatment (“The Case of Salome Muller,” 1846).
It was working at this cabaret that she caught the eye of Madame Karl (or Carl) Rouff, one of the Müller ‘s fellow travelers on the Johanna. Sally Miller was about thirty. Madame Karl immediately recognized Sally Miller as the child of her friends; she approached and questioned her about her past and parentage. Sally Miller was called Mary at the time, and answered that she did not know or remember her family, and that she had always been enslaved. Not long after this meeting, Madam Karl took ‘Mary’ Miller to Salomé Müller’s cousin and godmother, Eva Schuber and her husband Francis. The Schubers also identified ‘Mary’ Miller as Salomé, the lost daughter of Daniel and Dorothea Müller (“Sally Miller,”2021; “Sally Miller,” 1845; “The Case of Salome Muller,” 1846). Friends and family of the Müller’s, local merchants, came together to file suit against Belmonti for the restoration of Salomé Müller’s freedom.
Many aspects of the trial focused on what Marouf Hasian Jr. called a performance of race. In a society where identification of race was paramount to maintaining legal division, it was important for the men who enslaved Miller to demonstrate how good and virtuous they were, and also how Miller’s own choices and behavior aligned more with non-white individuals. Miller had been classified by society as a ‘mulatress’ or someone of mixed race. She was described as having dark hair, hazel eyes, and being tanned from outside labor (“Sally Miller,” 1845). People of mixed race were difficult for the institutions of the antebellum South because they represented a taboo interaction of two races, and were difficult to categorize in a system based firmly in visual appearance. Still those actors who were responsible and interested in maintaining the categorization of races clung to characteristics, behavior, language, education, and culture as a way to discerning race classification (Hasian, 2003).
The “German mind is strongly excitable and imaginative with a fondness for the wonderful, marvelous, incredible and disposition and eager desire to believe the mysterious….”
–Hartford Courant (“The Case of Salome Muller,” 1846)
Sally Miller’s case also highlighted the difficulties of redemtioners entering into the antebellum South. In the classification systems of the South at the time, these immigrants were not considered ‘blacks’ or free whites. “They were the perfect example of what scholars today call “not-quite” white, the homeless and impoverished sojourners who lived just a few rungs above the black slaves” (Hasian, 2003). At various points in the newspaper coverage of the trial, the German family and friends of Sally Miller were characterized as silly and prone to flights of fancy as a way to undermine their contributions to her case.
Sally Miller and her German supporters did not win her initial court suit. Instead her supporters were instructed by the judge to buy her freedom; essentially to buy into the institutions and laws constructed to normalize the enslavement of non-whites (Hasian, 2003). And though Sally Miller was refused a retrial, she did bring her case to the Louisiana Supreme Court where she was ‘restored to liberty’ (“Sally Miller,” 1845). Once, free Sally Miller continued working with the court system in an attempt to secure freedom for her three remaining children, but she was not successful (“Sally Miller,”2021). Her story inspired authors of popular fiction post civil war, and was revisited again in the 21st century by John Bailey, who suggests that Miller was never Salomé Müller, but instead used opportunity and ingenuity to trick the courts into ending her enslavement (“Sally Miller,” 2021).
The most resounding part of Sally Miller’s story, to me, was the myriad of laws built around making slavery an acceptable condition in society, from defining those who may be enslaved to tracing ownership of supposed ‘property.’ The more I have studied copyright law, the more I’ve seen that law is firmly rooted in philosophy where structures of thought are built upon each other like blocks of a building. Removing one law will have ramification for the entire structure, but may not actually pull the whole building down. There are precedents and seemingly unrelated laws written with the same philosophical underpinnings still holding out, still casting a shadow.
Hasian, J. . M. (2003). Performative law and the maintenance of interracial social boundaries: assuaging antebellum fears of “white slavery” and the case of Sally Miller/Salome Müller. Text & Performance Quarterly, 23(1), 55–86. https://doi.org/10.1080/10462930310001602048
Swierenga, R.P. & Lammers, H. (1994). “Odyssey of Woe” : The Journey of the Immigrant Ship April from Amsterdam to New Castle, 1817-1818. The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography. 68(4). https://journals.psu.edu/pmhb/article/download/44946/44667/0
Flag attributed to Jacquotte Delahaye By RootOfAllLight – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=86283006
Anyone searching online for Jacquotte Delahaye may get more results for historical reenactment costuming and RPG characters than any real information. Known as ‘Back from the Dead Red,’ Jacquotte Delahaye’s existence has been called into doubt by several scholars, but her story is one that puts a strong female spin on the “Golden Age of Piracy.” So far, no primary source material has confirmed the details of her life that surfaced after her supposed death. Léon Treich, a French writer of fiction, wrote the most comprehensive account of her exploits. As someone from Tampa, a city where every January we honor a famous pirate for whom there is also no evidence of existence, I though it would be fitting to celebrate Jacquotte Delahaye for this years Gasparilla Festival.
At the start of the ‘Golden Age of Piracy’ (1650-1720), Jacquotte Delahaye was already twenty. Jacquotte’s father was French and her mother was Haitian, though some scholars hypothesize that one of them must have been Spanish. Delahaye had worked as a barmaid and a lady’s maid before beginning her pirating career in order to support her disabled younger brother after their mother died in childbirth and their father was murdered in a Spanish raid of Saint Domingue by the British Navy. Unlike many other female pirates, Delahaye’s career did not seem to depend on her relationships with male pirates.
She was ruthless and successful in battle, given to violent excess and earning the nickname ‘The Lash.’ This nickname would quickly be eclipsed by a new moniker: ‘Back from the Dead Red’ after she faked her death in battle and rose again, with a male alias and in men’s clothes. The name ‘Back from the Dead Red’ also encompasses Delahaye’s most telling characteristic: bright red hair. At 26, she captured Fort de la Roche on the island of Tortuga back from the Spanish, after which she was appointed advisor to its governor.. This exploit is considered by many to be her greatest accomplishment. Seven years later she was killed in a shoot-out with the Spanish.
Delahaye is also said to have operated with Anne Dieu-le-Veut, another female pirate who showed up in the Caribbean after Delahaye’s death. Whether or not the two women existed at the same time, scholars have indicated that Delahaye’s life corresponds closely with that of Dieu-le-Veut. Was Delahaye Treich’s fictional overlay for Dieu-le-Veut? Or should we find her reported death in 1663 unbelievable, since we know she had already faked her death once before?
Klausmann, Ulrike. (1997) “Jacquotte Delahay.” Women Pirates and the politics of the Jolly Roger. Black Rose Books.
The Lady Is a Pirate. (2017).In These Times,41(5), 38.
Viehe, F. W. (2011). The Underworld Never Seemed So Fair: Women as Pirates, G’hals, Mafiosas and Gangsteristas.International Journal of the Humanities,9(3), 65–93.
Krampus and boy by j4p4n. https://openclipart.org/detail/320772/krampus-and-boy.
Though there is plenty of creepiness about a man who sneaks into our houses after spying on us all year to reward behavior that he deems good, Santa is far from the only holiday spirit to take on the job of keeping us all in line. Most of the witches and demons of Christmas time share this reward and punish vocation, but they haven’t all been painted as benevolent, harmless, and rosy cheeked as our dear old Claus.
Let’s begin with the Krampus. Krampus has been described as a half goat – half demon, and is one of the companions of St. Nicholas. St. Nicholas’ companions vary by region, share some similar characteristics, and seem to play the part of a shadow self or the evil side of the Saint. Where St. Nicholas rewards good girls and boys with gifts during Christmas time, the Krampus punishes naughty children by whipping them with bundled reeds, locking them in chains, and/or carrying them away in a woven basket he wears on his back. Krampus may be a vestige of pagan celebrations that pre-date Christianity; they have at times been forbidden by the Catholic Church. Lately, there has been a renewed interest in the Krampus that, because of modern humor and consumerism, some worry has been diluting the dark and violent truth of this Christmas creature.
Krampus is far from the only dark creature you might find during the winter holidays. Several cultures have tales of yuletide witches that both punish and reward as deserved. In Germany and Austria Perchta keeps an eye out for young women who do not abstain from their spinning on holidays, and those who have not yet finished their work on time. Individuals not observing the traditional fasting are also likely to be visited by Perchta’s wrath. This punishment, dear reader, is nothing to sneeze at. Far from simply whipping or chaining you, Perchta will disembowel you. After she has ripped your organs from your abdomen she will replace them with sticks, rocks, and garbage before sewing you back up again. Oddly, this punishment may have a silver lining. If you mend your ways, as much as you can with garbage inside you, then she may return with your safe and clean innards and undo her previous work. The lesson, in this case, is if you don’t take care of it you can’t have it anymore.
La Befana is a much more benevolent Christmastime witch. She travels around Italy during epiphany bringing gifts to good children. The story goes that the three wisemen stopped by her home looking for direction to the baby Jesus. La Befana did not know the way and neglected to join the 3 kings on their journey to Bethlehem. Not long after she regretted her decision and attempted to catch up to the 3 travelers. La Befana now travels in search of the Christ Child and leaving gifts as she goes. It has been hypothesized that La Befana is connected to the same ancient goddess as Perchta, Mother Holle, the Russian Baboushka, and Gryla.
Gryla, however, isn’t known for her kindnesses. She is an ogress, troll, or giantess, and the mother of the yule lads, seven (or thirteen) mischievous spirits who wreak havoc during Christmas time. Gryla may have multiple heads, and multiple tails, or she may simply have been an embroidered demonization of a ‘parasitic’ beggar woman. Whatever her appearance, her raison d’être is eating children who don’t obey their mother.
So, if you didn’t already think Christmas time was a time of darkness and a time to fear that which lurks in the shadows outside your door, you now have a whole host of new imagery. To me the ancient fears of demons and witches explain some of the more beautiful aspects of the holiday season, that of banding together with family and helping your neighbors. Krampus, Perchta, and Gryla may get you if you do not.
Raedisch, Linda (2019) The Old Magic of Christmas: Yuletide Traditions for the Darkest Days of the Year. Llewellyn Publications: Woodbury, Massechusets.
Ridenour, Al (2016) The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas: Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil. Feral House: Port Townsend, Washington.
Ever had a trivia question about what a group of owls is called? I am a consumer of trivia tid-bits and miscellany, so terms like an exhalation of larks and a parliament of owls tickles me. I have lately come to find that collective nouns, at least as they refer to animals, are actually rather contentious. This Audubon post: No, It’s Not Actually a Murder of Crows sums up a few arguments against collective nouns, mainly that the terms are useless, are nothing but whimsy, and are not used by scientists. The article also mentions the origination of many of the collective nouns that often make it onto trivia lists.
The tradition of using “terms of venery” or “nouns of assembly”, or collective nouns that are specific to certain kinds of animals, stems from an English hunting tradition of the Late Middle Ages (Wikipedia). Many of them were originally captured in the 1486 Book of Saint Albans, which included information of interest to ‘gentlemen’ of the time. The Wikipedia’s list of animal names gathers a bunch of historic and more modern collective nouns together for easy perusal. The Merriam-Webster article, A Drudge of Lexicographers Presents: Collective Nouns, goes further to discuss collective nouns covered in the Book of Saint Albans that referred to people of a certain profession, like a melody of harpers.
In our world, it would be a bit silly to assert that using the correct collective noun is the only correct speech. From a writer’s point a view, however, the whimsy carried through a historic collective noun could do a lot to liven up prose and poetry.
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