My Pretty Baby Cried She Was a Bird

Monday, May 26, 2014

Rerun: Happy Memorial Day!

This post originally appeared on She Was a Bird May, 27, 2013.

Good morning!

It's Memorial Day, yesssss! Any paid holiday is a good holiday for me. I'm about to sit back and drink some coffee while working through this book of Victorian ghost stories in my idle moments before we head out to a friend's baby shower, but I didn't forget about you, dear readers! Here are some gorgeous old greeting cards from the turn of the century and a little before. You can read more about Memorial Day (including its history under its past moniker, "Decoration Day"...note how a few of these cards are specifically about decorating the graves of the fallen dead, which speaks to the actual roots of the holiday) history here. Have a good day off, and I'll talk to you tomorrow!

source

Friday, May 23, 2014

Photo Friday: Dad in Korea Edition (1953)

Good morning!

It's Photo Friday, and you know what that means...well, pretty much what it says, photos upon this sunny Friday. And don't I have a doozy. I know I say that every week, but I MEAN IT every week! I was looking at some photos of a handsome mid century couple and their pretty much adorable offspring when I came across a whole slew of photos the father had taken in Korea during the US involvement in that conflict. BUST. MY. BUTTONS. These are even better than a lot of the history books, owing to tank driver/photography enthusiast Roy Hatch's keen eye for a good picture, and the jaw-dropping clarity of the Kodachrome color slides after all these years.

I don't know nearly enough about the in's and out's of military life and especially at this particular place and time, so I'll just share with you the photos that really caught my eye and look like they came directly from a Spieldburg calibre movie about it, along with the flickr user's comments on each for identification purposes. I love that the dad chimed in on some of these! See the original posts (along with other user comments and extra photos) here, click right to start the progression.

"C-124 loading troops from Seoul, South Korea to Kokura, Japan for R & R. Korea 1953"

"Lunch is Served"

"Tank Training with ROK Army"

"Tank Training"

"Army Life"

"Writing Home"

"ROK Army Training"

"Big Gun School"

"Training with ROK Army"

"Cards"

"M-46's--This was the 2nd Platoon, 64th Tank Battalion. (Note each number starts with a 2 and 21 would be the platoon leaders tank)"

"Seoul"

"View From the Tank"

"Parade Dress"

"Children View from US Army Tank"

"Chipmunk Dreas"

"Ride with a View"

"Tank Transport"

"Going Home"

"Boat Ride Home"

I'm sorry, the last one is like "COULD THIS BE ANY MORE BEAUTIFUL AND MOVING AT THE SAME TIME." Between the words "going home", that sea of olive drab capped hopefuls, and the majestic boat in the harbor, I mean, I can't even handle it.

So! I hope you enjoyed these photos, and remember to check out the rest of the photostream here. As always, I thank the people who took the pictures of yesteryear I enjoy digging up every week, almost as much as I thank the flickr user/family member for uploading them so the world could see little pieces of history on the internet for free. A treat indeed!

Have a great weekend! I am gone with the wind for this week, but I'll see you back here Monday! Take care (maybe I'll see you at the Flea Market, Tennesseans!). Til then.

Thursday, May 22, 2014

The Exotic Sounds of Arthur Lyman (Midcentury Cocktail Music for the Tiki Lover Within)

Good morning!

Hope you guys are having a good Thursday as we inch towards the weekend. I've been gluing books, working through reference questions, and filing errant paging slips, but there's one thing that elevates all these activities to the level of glamour and intrigue I've become accustomed to-- it's the sweet, sweet sounds of Arthur Lyman records, ALL OF WHICH it seems like are available on Spotify. Thank you, Jesus; thank you, the Internet... I'm going to make it through this work dredge if it kills me!

Brother, have you heard the good word about Arthur Lyman?

In spite of his poindexter-sounding name, Arthur Lyman actually has solid exotic roots, born in 1932 on the island of Oahu in a pre-statehood Hawaii to native parents. As a child, his father encouraged him to play along with Benny Goodman records on a toy marimba to "learn what good music was", and who could be a better tutor on the in's and out's of the instrument than a Goodman-era Lionel Hampton? An apt pupil, Lyman grew into an accomplished vibraphone and marimba player, working in local bands through high school. His big break came in 1954-- Lyman had hung up his mallets for steady employment as a desk clerk in a hotel when pianist Martin Denny heard him play, and offered him a place in his lounge band. This would lead to a successful run at Don the Beachcomber and the Shell Bar at the Hawaiian Village, as well as the mega hit instrumental album Quiet Village in 1957. Arthur Lyman left the group that same year, missing out on recording another Denny tiki-bar classic, Exotica, but freeing the musician to form his own four piece combo that recorded nine classic albums in the next three years!

I bought Taboo at either an estate sale or Goodwill a few years ago, in the heat of my midcentury Mad Men obsession (which, to be honest, has never really cooled). At the time, I saw the cover and thought, "Oh, neat, this might be a hoot," without realizing what I was getting into. People, this is the MAINLINE DRUG of exotica lovers. Ain't no Sing Along with Mitch. Ain't no Lawrence Welk. No schmaltzy strings or weird choral vocal accompaniments...this is exactly the kind of music I imagine would be playing when going on a clandestine date with Kirk Douglas in a movie like Strangers When We Meet (I am Kim Novak and this and all other hypothetical scenarios). Weird jungle animal sound effects? Check. Dreamy faux-Polynesian type music with unexpected percussion? Check. This is real stuff.

I love thinking of the sixties' hostess who bought this album in 1960 with the full intention of having her guests sample the advertised "jazz sounds" within. I've been reading books on hoarding lately (keep your jokes to yourself, it's a semi-preemptive measure!) and one of the most interesting things I've learned about the psychology of "stuff" and why we want it is the idea of future intentionality. You buy the adorable vintage cocktail caddy because "Won't that be something when people come for dinner and I bring their after-dinner drinks ON A CADDY". Women, especially...myself particularly... shop for the lives they want to have a lot more than the lives they actually have. Who wants to buy paper towels when you could buy fancy playing card sets for canasta lunches you may not ever have (mainly because you nor anyone you know plays canasta). Do you know what I mean? In trying to cut down items in my attic, I've had to be very real with myself about "you may like having a full badminton yard set, but when was the last time you actually set this up? Do you love the idea of it enough to keep it, or wouldn't you rather have the reality of an extra foot of space?". And that's a hard call, kids!

But back to the music...can you see the record buyer in the sixties' with visions of tropical themed dinner parties floating through her head? I hope she got to have them before she gave this record away!

I am cuckoo-go-crazy for almost everything I've listened to on Spotify of Arthur Lyman's group...Taboo and Taboo 2 are probably the best bet for your ad hoc luau, but other good "get a taste of the Lyman sound" records are Love for Sale (see above), Today's Greatest Hits (I am listening to a laid back marimba version of the Hawaii Five O theme song, and I couldn't be happier with it), or even The Shadow of Your Smile, where the man tackles songs like "Yesterday" and "Hang on Sloopy" (I am not kidding, and it's not half bad!!). Every track is a kind of interesting-peaceful, which is not a label I would slap on a lot of music. It's interesting enough that you don't forget you're listening to it (as with a lot of non-vocal jazz of the sixties', sometimes I really do forget it's on), but peaceful enough that it doesn't distract you from whatever else you're doing. Now, is that perfect party music or IS THAT PERFECT PARTY MUSIC?

But don't take my word for it! Start with these albums from Spotify and then branch out if you like what you hear...again, I can vouch for the 60% of his catalog I've listened to so far as five out of five stars.

So! What do you think? Are you a fan of the Polynesian beat? Which of these tracks leaves you THE MOST in the mood for a Zombie or a Mai Tai? When should I start planning my next luau (correct answer: YESTERDAY)? What have you been listening to lately?

That's all for today-- I'm going to hula back to work, but you guys have a great Thursday and I'll see you back here for Photo Friday tomorrow! Take care! Til then.

Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Spacemen (1961-63 Atomic Age Space/Sci-Fi Fan Magazine)

Good afternoon!

Ugh, it's so bright and beautiful outside I hardly wanted to come back inside after lunch! The temperature in this library workroom is glacial for some reason-- probably good for storing furs or preserving wooly mammoths in ice, but not so much for poor little library workers with S-U-M-M-E-R on the brain (cue Antonio Carlos Jobim soundtrack here). Ah, well. I'll be free soon enough! In the meantime, why not journey into midcentury space with me?

AAAAH, right?! I left you yesterday with a digital pile of Hollywood magazines from the thirties' and forties'...today's Internet Archive spoils include seven issues of the sci-fi fan magazine Spacemen. I even went through and selected some choice cuts from the crazy illustrations and articles dedans. Interested? Of course you are! I can palpably sense your atomic age excitement from across the computer screen! Take a look:

Spacemen was a short-lived Warren Publication in line with Famous Monsters of Filmland, sharing an editor and a general sense of ghoulish zany with that magazine. Forest J. Ackerman, arguably one of the earliest and most prolific sci-fi/horror collectors and proponent of the genre, oversaw the production of eight issues of this magazine...which was long enough for him to receive a fan letter and story submission from a fourteen year-old STEPHEN KING (check out his precious pre-teen typewritten letter here). And no wonder! In those lazy, hazy pre-Google, pre-Youtube days, if you were a sci-fi fan, the entire run of Eerie covers or the last scene of King Kong weren't only a mouse click away. If you were interested in Flash Gordon or giant gila monsters in prehistoric settings, you were going to have to do a little leg work-- or at least subscribe to one of the many monster and movie and monster-movie magazines at your local newsstand or Piggly Wiggly.

I am a big fan of, oh, EVERY PAGE OF THESE OLD ISSUES. Think about being a space-mad twelve year-old and wrestling with the Sophie's Choice like decision of keeping your latest issue in mint condition for your collection, or cutting out one of these photos to look at on your bedroom wall before you go to sleep at night.

Doesn't this one remind you of Mr. Goodbody? PS does anyone remember Slim Goodbody?

It's a Gila monster's world, we're just livin' in it.

Most of the content in these issues has to do with a few key topics: sci-fi or space travel movies, past and present; speculation on the possibility of real-life space travel and or the probability of meeting intelligent life out there; and MOON LOOT. The number of space tie-in toys and memorabilia is surprising, considering it was only 1962. What I like to think about in this golden age of interest in our solar system was how NOTHING HAD BEEN PROVEN OR DISPROVED ABOUT SPACE. The first human space flight, by Russian cosmonaut Yuri Garagin, was launched in 1961, and it would be another seven years before Armstrong and Aldrin made good on slain President Kennedy's promise to put a man on the moon. Who was to say what was out there? Captain Kirk really could meet space babes and weird rubber-prosthetic races of men on distant or not so distant planets...at this point, it was all a matter of finding out HOW to get up there. Not how to get over our disappointment that there were just moon rocks on the moon instead of, say, little green men. Think of what an age of imagination it was.

Lou Reed: "How d'ya...speak to a...how do you speak to Martian space man... You say HELLO..."

I somehow don't think this is a "real" photo....

File this under #hellyesraybradbury. As a precocious little bookworm, I spent about an entire summer between sixth and seventh grade working through the complete Ray Bradbury body of work as owned by the Nashville Public Library, supplementing any gaps with musty paperbacks from Book Attic in Rivergate. I could still give you credible plot summaries of almost anything he's written-- the stories stick with you BUT GOOD. While I like Richard Matheson and Cornell Woolrich and Charles Beaumont and lots of other "speculative fiction" writers, Bradbury was the man. Here he poses, contemporaneously, with some of his creations.

I like to think of this next panel as a laugh-track sitcom of a giant lizard/turtle hybrid who just can't get it right. "Varan! Did you forget to pick up your kids from school....AGAIN? You're unbelievable! Varan, did you go out on a date with that moon monster and then never call her? UNBELIEVABLE." I crack my own self up.

The aforementioned "moon loot" is really one of the neatest parts of the magazine-- I can feel a vestigal twitch of childhood excitement looking at the ads, even though grown-up me knows FULL WELL sea monkeys and mail-order treasures in general are never, never, never what they're hyped up to be on the ads.

With the exception of maybe this space map-- I actually saw this on the wall of an estate sale once! It was in battered conditioned (obviously, if I had one of these things I'd be tracing space patterns on it every chance I got) and THIRTY DOLLARS, unframed, for some reason. Siiiiigh. Maybe I'll find one for cheap on the internet some day (Ebay shakes it weary head at me with more $30 examples...wth?).

Ok, ok, and THIS WEATHER BALLOON. Oh my God, I could seriously get one of these and have my own Rover of The Prisoner fame. And die happy.

Creed Taylor was a bandleader known for importing the sounds of several Brazilian artists in the sixties (SUCH AS the aforementioned Antonio Carlos Jobim and Astrud Gilberto...what a weird coincidence!), but he also brought into the world these intriguingly titled albums of "weird music and chilling sound effects" known as Shock and (I can't get over this) Panic: The Son of Shock. Shock is on Spotify, and ISN'T THE WORLD A RICHER PLACE FOR IT. The first track, "Heartbeat", features a man breathing heavily (in a less sexy, more spooky way) over a soft jazz soundtrack that eventually culminates in screaming. I could listen to junk like this ALL. DAY. Spike Jones in Hi-Fi: Spooktacular in Screaming Sound is also available on Spotify AND features song titles like "Monster Movie Ball" and "Teenage Brain Surgeon"! I love this modern age we live in sometimes....that is going to save me a lot of digging in record bins for this oddity.

GIVE ME THIS, I WANT THIS. I would wake up and see that thing in the dark and have my hair turn white, but the heart wants what the heart wants. And in this case, it apparently wants to have a heart attack.

How not-like-the-picture do you think this thing would be in real life on a scale of 1 to 10? I would say about a 30.

How did you know EXACTLY what image I would project on the wall?

Just...some weird plants?

ALSO very cool though I know I don't have nearly a scientific enough brain to do Frankenstein, even in plastic form, justice...

I would answer the first line of the ad, "Is it a bird? A plane? No...it's a flying vampire!" with "Try again, Buddy, I'm pretty sure that's a box kite you've kind of put batwings on but-not-really."

Pick on somebody your own size, human! I'm siding with the lizard here:

And last but not least, who's been reading my dream journal? My kingdom for one of these shirts. Can you get over how they just superimposed the logo on a photo of these unsuspecting, blank t-shirted kids?

Ok, ok, I've gone on and on at the mouth about these magazines...it's time for you to get a load of them yourselves! There's a living ton more where this came from. Check it out here:

What do you think? Are you a sci-fi fan of the classical mold? Which of these crazy retrofuturist images are your favorite? Do you have any space age interests or collections of your own? What's something that really appealed to your little imagination as kid? Let's talk!

That's all for today but I'll see you back here tomorrow with even more. Have a great Wednesday! Til then.