Johnny Cash: Singer, Outlaw, and, Briefly, Television Host

in Music, Television | July 6th, 2012

John­ny Cash needs no intro­duc­tion. But unless you hap­pened to be watch­ing ABC between June 1969 and March 1971, The John­ny Cash Show might. Cash added one more chap­ter to his leg­en­dar­i­ly sto­ried career by host­ing 58 episodes of the musi­cal vari­ety show from the Ryman Audi­to­ri­um in Nashville, then the home of the Grand Ole Opry. You might expect from such a set­up noth­ing but coun­try music, and Cash and his pro­duc­ers did indeed make a point of intro­duc­ing the gen­re’s stars to all of Amer­i­ca as well as high­light­ing its skilled but low-pro­file per­form­ers who would­n’t oth­er­wise have received nation­al expo­sure. But many John­ny Cash Show broad­casts reached well beyond Cash’s own pre­sump­tive base, mak­ing non-coun­try lumi­nar­ies acces­si­ble to coun­try lis­ten­ers as much as the oth­er way around. Above you’ll find a pop­u­lar video of Joni Mitchell singing “Both Sides, Now” on the pro­gram; Bob Dylan and Neil Young also made appear­ances rep­re­sent­ing the next gen­er­a­tion of singer-song­writ­ers.

But Cash also rou­tine­ly shared the stage with his elders, most notably Louis Arm­strong in a broad­cast that fea­tured Arm­strong singing “Crys­tal Chan­de­liers” and “Ram­blin’ Rose” and both of them per­form­ing “Blue Yodel #9.” He also joined in when he brought on Pete Seeger, which demon­strates an impres­sive col­lab­o­ra­tive range. I did­n’t expect to see poet Shel Sil­ver­stein turn up on the show, but then I’d for­got­ten that he wrote “A Boy Named Sue,” one of Cash’s best-known songs, not to men­tion the less­er-known “25 Min­utes to Go,” which each of them record­ed indi­vid­u­al­ly on their own albums. Alas, despite its sur­pris­ing cul­tur­al reach, The John­ny Cash Show could­n’t sur­vive the caprice of net­works eager to cap­ture a younger demo­graph­ic; it got the axe, along­side the likes of Green Acres, The Bev­er­ly Hill­bil­lies, and Hee-Haw in the so-called “rur­al purge” of the ear­ly sev­en­ties.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The 1969 Bob Dylan-John­ny Cash Ses­sions: Twelve Rare Record­ings

John­ny Cash Remem­bered with 1,000+ Draw­ings

Den­nis Hop­per Reads Rud­yard Kipling on John­ny Cash Show

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Allen Ginsberg Reads a Poem He Wrote on LSD to William F. Buckley

in Poetry, Television | July 5th, 2012

On Sep­tem­ber 3, 1968, William F. Buck­ley invit­ed poet Allen Gins­berg onto his TV pro­gram, “Fir­ing Line.” It was an odd encounter. “We’re here to talk about the avant-garde,” Buck­ley says grandil­o­quent­ly. “I should like to begin by ask­ing Mr. Gins­berg whether he con­sid­ers that the hip­pies are an inti­ma­tion of the new order.”

“Ah,” says Gins­berg, “why don’t I read a poem?”

Buck­ley smiles uncom­fort­ably as Gins­berg reach­es into his bag and pulls out a poem called “Wales Vis­i­ta­tion,” writ­ten under the influ­ence of LSD dur­ing a vis­it the pre­vi­ous year to the ancient ruins of Tin­tern Abbey, on the Riv­er Wye in South­east Wales. It was the same place that inspired William Wordsworth to write his “Lines Com­posed a Few Miles above Tin­tern Abbey” in 1798 and Alfred, Lord Ten­nyson to write “Tears, Idle Tears” in 1847. Buck­ley set­tles back in his chair as Gins­berg reads three of nine stan­zas from “Wales Vis­i­ta­tion,” begin­ning with the first:

White fog lift­ing & falling on moun­tain-brow
Trees mov­ing in rivers of wind
The clouds arise
as on a wave, gigan­tic eddy lift­ing mist
above teem­ing ferns exquis­ite­ly swayed
along a green crag
glimpsed thru mul­lioned glass in val­ley raine–

To fol­low along with the oth­er two stan­zas recit­ed by Gins­berg and to read the rest of the poem, you can open this page in a new win­dow. Also don’t miss Gins­berg read­ing his sig­na­ture Beat poem, “Howl”. It’s a rol­lick­ing 26 minute affair, and you can always find it in our col­lec­tion of Free Audio Books.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William F. Buck­ley Meets (Pos­si­bly Drunk) Jack Ker­ouac, Tries to Make Sense of Hip­pies, 1968

Ken Kesey’s First LSD Trip Ani­mat­ed

William F. Buck­ley Flogged Him­self to Get Through Atlas Shrugged

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Jon Stewart’s William & Mary Commencement Address: The Entire World is an Elective

in Comedy, Graduation Speech, Life, Television | July 4th, 2012

In 1984, Jon Stew­art grad­u­at­ed from The Col­lege of William & Mary. In 1999, he began host­ing Com­e­dy Cen­tral’s news pro­gram The Dai­ly Show. In 2004, he returned to his alma mater, immea­sur­ably more influ­en­tial than he’d left it, to give its com­mence­ment address. Despite a dat­ed crack or two — this was the hey­day of George W. Bush, the Pres­i­dent who arguably gave Stew­art’s Dai­ly Show per­sona both its foil and rai­son d’être — the speech’s core remains sound. You, Stew­art tells the massed grad­u­ates, have the pow­er to become the next “great­est gen­er­a­tion,” though the chance appears espe­cial­ly clear and present because of how the last gen­er­a­tion “broke” the world. “It just kind of  got away from us,” he half-jokes, his grin com­pressed by seri­ous­ness. That admis­sion fol­lows a stream of self-dep­re­ca­tion hit­ting every­thing from his ten­den­cy toward pro­fan­i­ty to his unusu­al­ly large head as an under­grad­u­ate to how his pres­ence onstage deval­ues William & Mary’s very rep­u­ta­tion.

Whether or not you find the world bro­ken, or whether or not you believe that a gen­er­a­tion could break or fix it, Stew­art still packs a num­ber of worth­while obser­va­tions about the place into fif­teen min­utes. He per­haps deliv­ers his most valu­able words to these excit­ed, anx­ious school-leavers when he con­trasts the world to the aca­d­e­m­ic envi­ron­ment they’ve just left: “There is no core cur­ricu­lum. The entire place is an elec­tive.” Stew­art com­mu­ni­cates, as many com­mence­ment speak­ers try to but few do so clear­ly, that you can’t plan your way direct­ly to suc­cess in life, what­ev­er “suc­cess” might mean to you. He cer­tain­ly did­n’t. “If you had been to William and Mary while I was here and found out that I would be the com­mence­ment speak­er 20 years lat­er, you would be some­what sur­prised,” he admits. “And prob­a­bly some­what angry.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Conan O’Brien Kills It at Dart­mouth Grad­u­a­tion

Jon Stew­art: Teach­ers Have it Too Good (Wink)

‘This Is Water’: Com­plete Audio of David Fos­ter Wallace’s Keny­on Grad­u­a­tion Speech (2005)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

 

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Andy Griffith (1926–2012) Gives a Lesson on the American Revolution

in History, Television | July 4th, 2012

As we roll into the 4th of July hol­i­day, let’s take a nos­tal­gic look back at Andy Grif­fith as he tells the sto­ry of the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion on his clas­sic 1960s TV pro­gram, “The Andy Grif­fith Show.” Grif­fith died Tues­day at the age of 86. In the eight years “The Andy Grif­fith Show” was broadcast–from 1960 to 1968–Griffith was a humane and ratio­nal pres­ence in Amer­i­can homes. His char­ac­ter, Sher­iff Andy Tay­lor, was sur­round­ed by eccentrics yet always man­aged to keep things in per­spec­tive, embody­ing what the show’s pro­duc­er, Aaron Ruben, once described as “this Lin­col­nesque char­ac­ter.” It’s a fit­ting phrase, and a good way to remem­ber Grif­fith as we enjoy the hol­i­day.

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Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí in Classic 1968 Braniff Commercials: ‘When You Got It, Flaunt It!’

in Art, Business, Television | July 3rd, 2012


One of the scari­est things about air trav­el is the seat­ing assign­ment. You nev­er know who you’ll end up next to. This clas­sic 1968 adver­tis­ing cam­paign from Bran­iff Inter­na­tion­al Air­ways lets you imag­ine what it would be like to find your­self elbow-to-elbow with Andy Warhol and Sal­vador Dalí.

In the com­mer­cial above, Warhol tries to explain the inher­ent beau­ty of Cam­bel­l’s Soup cans to heavy­weight box­er Son­ny Lis­ton. Below, Dalí and major league base­ball pitch­er Whitey Ford com­pare notes on the knuck­le­ball ver­sus the screw­ball. The com­mer­cials were part of Bran­if­f’s ambi­tious “End of the Plain Plane” rebrand­ing cam­paign, which com­plete­ly revamped the com­pa­ny’s stodgy image. Adver­tis­ing exec­u­tive Mary Wells Lawrence hired archi­tect and tex­tile design­er Alexan­der Girard to redesign every­thing from air­plane fuse­lages to ash trays. Ital­ian fash­ion design­er Emilio Puc­ci cre­at­ed flam­boy­ant uni­forms for the stew­ardess­es, or “Bran­iff girls.” And in 1968 Lawrence brought in art direc­tor George Lois to over­see the “When You Got It, Flaunt It!” adver­tis­ing cam­paign for print and tele­vi­sion.

Lois lat­er said he came up with the slo­gan before the celebri­ties were cast. In addi­tion to the Warhol/Liston and Dalí/Ford pair­ings, the cam­paign includ­ed ads with anoth­er odd cou­ple: pulp writer Mick­ey Spillane and poet Mar­i­anne Moore. In an inter­view with the New York Dai­ly News ear­li­er this year, Lois remem­bered that Warhol had trou­ble with his lines. “Andy had to say, ‘When you got it, flaunt it.’ But I end­ed up hav­ing to dub his voice. Lat­er, after I sent him a copy of all the com­mer­cials, he told me that he said the line bet­ter than any­body.” The ads were a prod­uct of Lois’s gut-instinct approach to adver­tis­ing. “Those ads,” he said in anoth­er inter­view, “would have total­ly bombed in ad tests. As things turned out, it tripled their busi­ness.”

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William Shatner Sings O Canada (and Happy Canada Day)

in Television | July 1st, 2012

There’s some­thing time­less about William Shat­ner. The man hard­ly looks his age — 81 — though syn­thet­ic enhance­ments prob­a­bly have some­thing to do with it. And he has­n’t lost his gift for shtick. Back in the 1960s, Shat­ner began talk-singing his way through var­i­ous songs. Per­haps you’ll recall his ren­di­tion of “Lucy in the Sky with Dia­monds” record­ed in 1968, which we recent­ly fea­tured on our list of The 15 Worst Cov­ers of Bea­t­les Songs Ever. A good four decades lat­er, the tra­di­tion con­tin­ues. For Cana­da Day, eh, we have the Shat recit­ing the nation­al anthem, O Cana­da, is his inim­itable way. The clip was record­ed in 2011 when Canada’s Gov­er­nor Gen­er­al gave Shat­ner a Life­time Achieve­ment Award. Thanks to Denise for the tip.

Fol­low us on Face­book, Twit­ter and now Google Plus.

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Alfred Hitchcock Presents a Chilling Tale by Roald Dahl (1960)

in Literature, Television | June 27th, 2012

“Good evening, ladies and gen­tle­men.” From 1955 to 1962, Alfred Hitch­cock greet­ed view­ers to his week­ly series Alfred Hitch­cock Presents with some ver­sion of this phrase, in his unmis­tak­able Eng­lish drawl. After the icon­ic intro­duc­to­ry sequence fea­tur­ing Hitch­cock step­ping into a caricature—drawn by himself—of his jow­ly pro­file, the vet­er­an direc­tor intro­duced the audi­ence to the week’s episode with a droll mono­logue writ­ten by long­time TV writer James B. Allardice, in which Hitch­cock would poke fun at him­self, the view­ers, and the show’s spon­sors. In addi­tion to Allardice, Hitchcock’s series relied on the tal­ents of sev­er­al well-known writ­ers, includ­ing lit­er­ary names like John Cheev­er, Robert Bloch (author of Psy­cho), and, most famous­ly, the much-loved Roald Dahl.

Pri­mar­i­ly known for his whim­si­cal, and often quite dark, children’s books (James and the Giant Peach, Char­lie and the Choco­late Fac­to­ry, Fan­tas­tic Mr. Fox), Dahl was also a nov­el­ist, screen­writer, and a writer of macabre short sto­ries for adults (he won three Edgars, or mys­tery writer awards). In 1958, Alfred Hitch­cock Presents adapt­ed Dahl’s sto­ry “Lamb to the Slaugh­ter.” And, two years lat­er in 1960, Dahl’s sto­ry “Man from the South” pro­vid­ed the basis for AHP’s most pop­u­lar episode (above). The episode stars Steven McQueen as a young man talked into a gris­ly wager by a mys­te­ri­ous fig­ure named Car­los, played by Peter Lorre. “Man from the South” was adapt­ed sev­er­al more times in the fol­low­ing years: in 1979 by Dahl him­self in a tele­vi­sion series called Tales of the Unex­pect­ed, again in the 1985 revival of AHP (star­ring John Hus­ton as Car­los), and in 1995 as the basis for Quentin Tarantino’s seg­ment in the film Four Rooms. With­out a doubt, how­ev­er, this orig­i­nal adap­ta­tion of Dahl’s sto­ry remains the most mem­o­rable and haunt­ing.

J. David Jones is cur­rent­ly a doc­tor­al stu­dent in Eng­lish at Ford­ham Uni­ver­si­ty and a co-founder and for­mer man­ag­ing edi­tor of Guer­ni­ca / A Mag­a­zine of Arts and Pol­i­tics.

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Dick Cavett’s Epic Woodstock Festival Show (August, 1969)

in Music, Television | June 27th, 2012


Even if you nev­er tuned in back then, you need only watch a few famous clips of Dick Cavett in action to under­stand why he earned the rep­u­ta­tion of run­ning the first major Amer­i­can talk show that qual­i­fied as “cool,” “smart,” or “hip.” His oper­a­tion show­cased some of the most impor­tant ele­ments of late-six­ties and sev­en­ties Amer­i­ca, those that the oth­er talk shows tend­ed to ignore, mis­rep­re­sent, or sim­ply mis­un­der­stand. Cavett him­self embod­ied a sen­si­bil­i­ty, nei­ther strict­ly friv­o­lous nor strict­ly high-toned, that allowed him the widest pos­si­ble cul­tur­al range. “The idea that one man could be both play­ful and seri­ous was nev­er deemed to be quite nat­ur­al on Amer­i­can tele­vi­sion, and Cavett was regard­ed as some­thing of a freak even at the time,” wrote crit­ic and Cavett guest Clive James. “Even­tu­al­ly he paid the penal­ty for being sui gener­is in a medi­um that likes its cat­e­gories to be clear­ly marked.” For an idea of what that posi­tion enabled, just watch Cavet­t’s musi­cal guests: he had Frank Zap­pa, he had John Lennon, he had Janis Joplin for her final inter­view.

And then we have the “Wood­stock episode.” Aired on August 16, 1969, the day after the fes­ti­val, but taped mere hours after the last notes rang out in Bethel, it brought Cavett togeth­er with Jef­fer­son Air­plane, David Cros­by, Stephen Stills, and Joni Mitchell. (Jimi Hen­drix, though sched­uled to show up, played long at the fes­ti­val and wound up too “zonked” to appear on tele­vi­sion.) Specif­i­cal­ly, it brought them togeth­er on a strik­ing­ly elab­o­rate, aggres­sive­ly col­or­ful one-off set that seat­ed host and guests on a cir­cle of what look like Nau­gahyde marsh­mal­lows. What­ev­er the aes­thet­ic trans­gres­sions of this broad­cast’s design, they lead to more than one mem­o­rable moment in talk-show his­to­ry, as when Cavett tears off in frus­tra­tion the tacky scarf his staff insist­ed he tie on for the occa­sion. Pull up the Wood­stock episode on YouTube for the per­for­mances — Mitchel­l’s “Chelsea Morn­ing” and Jef­fer­son Air­plane’s “Some­body to Love” fea­tur­ing Cros­by, to name two — but stay for the con­ver­sa­tion, espe­cial­ly the part when Cavett responds to Grace Slick call­ing him “Jim” one time too many: “You’ve got to learn my name, Miss Joplin!”

Relat­ed con­tent:

George Har­ri­son in the Spot­light: The Dick Cavett Show (1971)

John Lennon and Yoko Ono on the Dick Cavett Show

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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