Humor

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Harold Reid died last week at age 80 after a long battle with kidney failure. He was bass singer with “The Statler Brothers,” a country and gospel quartet that had many hits. Many were arranged to feature Harold’s bass voice, including “Flowers On The Wall” — their big breakout single.

A salute to Harold Reid, Bass singer for the Statler Brothers, who died last week.
Phil, Don, Jimmy behind Harold

The group appeared frequently on the Johnny Cash TV show and toured with The Man In Black. In fact, the group is most often associated with him in the mind of their public. They went so far as to write a tribute song, “We Got Paid by Cash.”

They are credited with merging gospel harmonies with country music. They certainly mainstreamed gospel, which has always been embraced by country and folk music.

What distinguished them and made them so lovable was their injection of humor. Not only did they do schtick (Harold and his brother Don were primarily the instigators) but they recorded a couple of comedy records as Lester “Roadhog” Moran and the Cadillac Cowboys, and one of their albums had a parody of small town radio stations local shows on the second side. (If you are too young to know what an “album” was and what it means that they had “sides,” ask your nearest senior citizen).

A dozen or so years ago, I met (through a Craigslist musician’s forum) a wonderful lady named Linda Loegel. She had a bunch of lyrics she’d written over the years and I picked out a few I thought were my style, and wrote some music with her. We did one called, “The Ride Of My Life” that was about a person taking a balloon ride, and using it as a metaphor for going to heaven. She said her own mother was one of those daring senior citizens who enjoyed things like ballooning and skydiving — and this was before people were talking about “bucket lists.”

She was thrilled when I decided to do the song in the style of The Statler Brothers. And, as ususal, I did all the instruments and harmonies. It was a challenge to be a gospel quartet on my own, and I didn’t have any electronic helpers like pitch-shifters and voice ding-dongs and whatever. I just sang. You can hear the song on my music page (here).

Here is the link to listen to “The Ride Of My Life.”

https://www.soundclick.com/html5/v3/player.cfm?type=single&songid=5204329&q=hi&newref=1

Another of the Statler Brothers, Lew DeWitt, predeceased Harold.

And I’ll leave you with a little trivia:

Only two of the Statler Brothers were siblings — Harold and Don Reid. And none were named Statler. The name came from a box of facial tissues they saw in a hotel room. The joked that they could have named themselves “the Kleenex Brothers.”

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Oscar host Seth MacFarlane performed a comedy song 'We Saw Your Boobs' The 2013 Oscar telecast was newsworthy for many reasons — both the obvious and some unique reasons. But the most visible result (at least right here) is that it spurred me to post something new for the first time since December.

Face it — Network TV is a dinosaur.  It is a Dead Man Walking.  It doesn’t know it has died and has not yet laid down in a grave.  The networks flail around trying to attract a public that is more interested in something that respects their intelligence and gives quality instead of pandering to advertisers.

One example is the three yearly broadcasts of Ricky Gervais hosting the Golden Globes awards Gervais is well known for his snarky style, and the producers obviously thought he’s got that “edgy” attitude that would bring about some excietment and some buzz to the awards show.  It did — and the feedback was usually that people were outraged by his behavior.  Perfect!  The awards show got attention and people would turn in to see what the bad-boy would do next.

Oscar producers tried the same strategy with Seth McFarlane.  He is far from an unknown quality.  McFarlane is one of the most prolific producers of multimedia comedy working today. He has at least three television shows in production and scored a huge hit with the theatrical film “Ted.”  So getting him to be host was obviously done with eyes wide open.

Looking at the resulting headlines tells the stories.  His opening number “I Saw Your Boobs” was offensive to women.  His “Ted” presentation with Mark Wahlberg was offensive to Jews.  His irreverent attitude toward Hollwood and Movies and Oscars was basically offensive to to everybody.  Or so the Outrage-Press would have us believe.

In other words — the strategy worked like a charm  Look for other programs to try this tactic now that it is well-proven.

WBW

 

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