Someone handed me a small card. It had a simple black-and-white line drawing with an autograph. Eric Clapton’s autograph, perhaps? A crudely drawn riff on the “Slowhand” cover? A stick drawing, really, not close to what you see here.
(Clapton must have been lingering in my subconscious. I’d read he’d just turned 79. I’d also just read a biography of George Harrison, in which Clapton was a major figure.)
“Where did you get this?” I ask.
I’m directed to a tiny record shop. Seemed like it was in Milwaukee.
I show the card to the guy at the small counter.
“Where did you get this?” he asks.
“A friend gave it to me,” I say.
I pull out a chain made of bottle caps and paper clips with a small metal bar on top.
“Oh, maybe I should give you this, too,” I say.
I hang it on a hook at the top of the stairs to the basement. It seems to be a pass key of some kind. I have no idea where I got it.
To my left is Cousin Itt Girl. She’s a small thing with long bright green hair covering her face and reaching to the floor. She starts giving me the third-degree stink eye, inspecting my clothes, my look, my vibe, clearly disapproving. Behind her is long-haired, scraggly bearded Hippie Guy, watching her intently and nodding yes, probably stoned to the bejeezus.
I look around. All the walls are white, but there are no records on the wall. No record bins, either.
I ask the guy at the counter what kind of records they have. He says “outsider records” and do I have any?
“No,” I say, “I live in Green Bay. There are no outsider records there. A lot of country records but not that.”
I leave. It’s not my kind of place.
Dream or hallucination? Repressed animosity toward hipster swine?
Five years ago today — on Saturday, March 30, 2019 — I went record digging at a place that was new to me. (I don’t much care for that place today, but that’s another program.)
That day, I found this record, one I’d been seeking for a while.
Tongue was a blues-rock group from western Wisconsin. This record is from 1970. They made the rounds of an old Midwest roadhouse/club/festival circuit that’s long gone.
I’d long had a copy of this — their “Keep On Truckin'” LP — but it was rough. Missed out on another copy at the Chicago record show in the summer of 2018. The guy standing next to me grabbed it before I got to that crate. Passed on a $25 copy at a Minneapolis record store the following winter.
As I’m wont to do, I put my more reasonably priced find on the back porch when I got home, took the picture you see above and posted it to Facebook. My friends had some great stories about it. Enjoy.
Jay, who lives across the street, shared this:
“I met a Dial Corp. VP executive a few years back and we were reminiscing about both going to Stout. He told me he was in a band called Tongue during his college days. This same clean-cut, suit-wearing executive pulled out a picture of him in long hair and clothes similar to your cover photo. The name of the band always stuck in my head. This has to be the same one?”
It was the guy in the striped pants, bass player Bob Collins.
Jay again:
“He had a three-piece pinstripe suit and short hair when I met him. Guess he likes stripes.”
Fun fact: One of the songs Bob Collins co-wrote for the LP was called “Get Your Shit Together.”
Then my friend Jim K. shared this:
“Won this album on Feb. 2, 1972 — the night of the Vietnam draft lottery. Tongue was playing at the UW-Oshkosh union and anyone who was in the draft lottery that night was also entered into a drawing for this album. Double-winner that night — won the album and my draft number was high enough to never be called.”
That was a big deal when the draft was a thing. Jim still has his Tongue LP, too.
Fun fact: The band was called the Tennis Shoe Tongue Band when it came together in 1967. They shortened it to Tongue in 1970 and played under that name until they broke up in 1976.
My friend Larry took one look at my Tongue LP and said:
“That is one I would buy for the cover alone, no matter what it ended up sounding like.”
Pretty much everyone took notice of the guy with the walrus mustache and the huge Fro. That’s Paul Rabbitt, the lead singer and lead guitarist. He no longer has the walrus mustache and huge Fro. These days, he looks like a lot of 70-something guys from California, where he’s lived since Tongue broke up.
Fun fact: Tongue cut one single, also titled “Keep On Truckin’,” in 1970.
Paul Rabbitt has taken that single — a fan favorite at those long-ago gigs at roadhouses, clubs and festivals — to heart. He’s kept on truckin’, still playing rock and blues in his 70s.
(I can’t find a video of that single, but here’s the entire LP for anyone interested. Last time I saw it in the wild, in December 2022, it was priced at $84. Yikes.)
As AM, Then FM quietly celebrates 17 years on the web, we may have arrived at a crossroads.
On this sunny Wisconsin afternoon, I’m sitting in my office for the first time in almost two months. Doctor’s orders. I’ve done almost nothing since having Achilles tendon surgery in early January. Stay off the foot. Only now — with this big walking boot having replaced the cast — am I getting a wee bit more mobile.
Unable to sit at my desk until now, I’ve been doing a lot on my phone.
Listening to music is one of those things.
My wife and I sit together in the living room. She has the TV on as background noise as she works. I’ll pop on the streaming shows put together by my friends Larry and Vincent, or stream my friend JB’s Saturday night ’70s show out of Madison, or stream WXPN out of Philadelphia, then turn the volume low and put the phone up to my ear so only I can hear it. Kind of a throwback to transistor radios late at night.
Digging for vintage baseball cards, that I’ve done on my phone, too.
Digging for records, though, is best done in person. It’s more fun. I still like doing it. I still like visiting record shops while traveling. But I’m not sure when I’ll be able to get back to that. Recovering from a torn Achilles can take up to a year, and I’m not exactly an athlete in his prime. I’ll be in the boot and on crutches for some time.
I did less record digging last year, in 2023, than in any year in recent memory, certainly less than in any year in the AM, Then FM era. Some of that was due to doctor’s orders to be less active in the immediate wake of detached retina and hip replacement surgeries. Some of that was already having found a lot of grail records. There isn’t much left on the wish list.
So I’m starting to wonder whether having a big record collection is becoming a burden. Having retired at the beginning of this year, I have more time to listen to records. Maybe I’ll go through them all and then begin moving them out.
One such record? You know the one. I found it three summers ago.
Nancy’s boot looks nicer than mine, but I’ll stick with mine for now.
2023, though, was a bit different. We lost some musical and entertainment giants whose gifts, greatness and accomplishments were so substantial that they defy categorization.
First, a farewell to this magnificent seven:Burt Bacharach, Jeff Beck, Harry Belafonte, Tony Bennett, David Crosby, Gordon Lightfoot and Tina Turner.
Many more, however, went in threes as usual …
ABA alumni: Henry Logan (also first Black athlete at Western Carolina), George McGinnis (ABA all-time team), Cincy Powell (two-time all-star)
Adventurers: David Kirke (first bungee jumper, 1979), Peter Tarnoff (diplomat planned Iran escape that inspired “Argo”), Don Walsh (deep sea explorer)
Artists I saw:David Lindley (2013, 2016), Gary Rossington (Lynyrd Skynyrd, 2001, 2003), Gary Wright (1978) … also Jimmy Buffett (1978, 1992, 1993), David Crosby (2003), Tina Turner (1983, 1987)
Beatlemania: Caroline Buckman (studio violist who played on Beatles’ latest record, “Now and Then”), Sandy Farina (Strawberry Fields in “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” film), Chas Newby (briefly the Beatles’ bassist in December 1960)
Big men: John Brockington (NFL), Frank Howard (MLB), Willis Reed (NBA)
B movies: Ricou Browning (Gill Man in “Creature from the Black Lagoon,” 1954), Phyllis Coates (Lois Lane in “Superman and the Mole Men,” 1951), Bert I. Gordon (wrote and directed giant monster films from the ’50s to the ’70s)
Buffett and his sidekicks:JimmyBuffett, Charlie Munger (investor Warren Buffett’s right-hand man), Greg “Fingers” Taylor (Coral Reefer Band harmonica player)
By the time we got to Woodstock: John Morris (production coordinator and stage voice), Robbie Robertson (The Band), Bobbi Urcoline (hippie girl in blanket on LP cover)
Cartoonists: Sam Gross, Al Jaffee, Edward Koren
Citius, altius, fortius: Tori Bowie (sprinter, 2016), Tom Courtney (middle distance, 1956), Jim Hines (sprinter, 1968)
Comic books: Rachel Pollack (created first trans superhero in “Doom Patrol”), Ted Richards (underground comix), John Romita Sr. (“Amazing Spider-Man”)
Culture warriors: Pat Robertson, James Watt, Donald Wildmon
Dazzling designers: John Gordon (college art student who designed the Packers’ G logo in 1961), Bruce McCall (retrofuturistic pieces for “National Lampoon”), Jamie Reid (Sex Pistols logo, “God Save the Queen” single cover)
Detectives: Richard Belzer (“Homicide: Life on the Street,” “Law and Order: Special Victims Unit”), Andre Braugher (“Homicide”), Richard Roundtree (“Shaft”)
Fiddlers on the roof: Sheldon Harnick (lyricist), Walter Mirisch (film’s uncredited executive producer), Chaim Topol (played lead on Broadway and in film)
Good trouble: Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers), Norman Lear (TV and film producer, activist), Victor Navasky (“The Nation,” “Naming Names”)
Hasta la bye bye: Carolyn Bryant Donham (Emmett Till’s accuser), Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), Henry Kissinger (war criminal)
Hammered by Henry: Bob Bolin (gave up four of Henry Aaron’s 755 home runs), Roger Craig (pitching in his 2nd career game in 1955, a solo shot), Dick Drago (Aaron’s last career home run in 1976)
Founding fathers: Myles Goodwin (April Wine), Denny Laine (Moody Blues, Wings), Tom Verlaine (Television)
Great American women: Rosalynn Carter, Sandra Day O’Connor (first woman to serve as a Supreme Court justice), Pat Schroeder (women’s and family rights pioneer)
Hall of Famers: Dick Butkus, Bobby Hull, Brooks Robinson
Houston, we’ve got it: Mary Cleave (shuttle astronaut, climate change tracker), Firouz Naderi (led NASA Mars rover missions), Virginia Norwood (“mother of Landsat” satellite land imaging)
Inspirational: Ady Barkan (ALS patient, health care activist), Rick Hoyt (a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy, his dad pushed him in a race wheelchair in 32 Boston Marathons), Donald Triplett (first person diagnosed with autism)
Inventive: Dennis Austin (PowerPoint), William P. Murphy Jr. (vinyl blood bags), John Warnock (PDF documents)
It’s a drag: Walter Cole (Darcelle XV, world’s oldest drag queen), Barry Humphries (Dame Edna Everage), Paul O’Grady (Lily Savage, then a mainstream British performer)
It’s complicated: Robert Blake (“Baretta”), Jim Brown, Bob Knight
Jazz men: Richard Davis (bass), Redd Holt (drums), Wayne Shorter (sax)
Jazz pianists: Carla Bley, Ahmad Jamal, Les McCann
Kids, once: Lance Kerwin (“James at 15”), Lisa Loring (“The Addams Family”), Adam Rich (“Eight is Enough”)
Last one standing: Richard Barancik (last of the Monuments Men of World War II), Ben Ferencz (last prosecutor from the Nuremberg war crime trials), Traute Lafrenz (last survivor of White Rose Nazi resistance in Germany)
A league of their own: Wilma Briggs (outfielder, 2nd on All-American Girls Professional Baseball League career home run list), Jean Faut (pitcher, two-time player of the year, only pro player to throw two perfect games), Helen Nordquist (outfielder, led league in assists in 1951)
Let’s dance: Arthur Duncan (Lawrence Welk tap dancer), Len Goodman (“Dancing with the Stars” judge), Maurice Hines (“The Cotton Club”)
Let’s eat: Bob Born (“Father of Peeps”), Bill Granger (Australian chef created avocado toast), Bob Richards (first athlete on a Wheaties box)
May the road rise to meet you: Sean Keane (Chieftains fiddler), Shane McGowan (Pogues), Sinead O’Connor
M*A*S*H roll call: Judy Farrell (Nurse Able), Eileen Saki (ran Rosie’s Bar), Burt Young (enlisted man who wanted to marry a Korean woman and take her and their child home, 1973)
Music by design: Justin Bartlett (metal album cover illustrator), Ian Emes (animated sequences for Pink Floyd shows), Bruce Gowers (music video director, “Bohemian Rhapsody”)
NBA wasn’t enough: Bud Grant (also CFL, NFL player, CFL, NFL coach), Dick Groat (also MLB player), Cotton Nash (also ABA, MLB player)
Need for speed: Craig Breedlove (five-time world land speed record holder), Gil de Ferran (Indy cars), Cale Yarborough (NASCAR)
Never forget: Damas Gisimba (saved more than 400 Rwandans during 1994 Tutsi genocide), Ben Helfgott (Holocaust survivor, British Olympic weightlifter), Hughes Van Ellis (youngest known survivor of 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre)
The next generation: Robbie Knievel, Lisa Marie Presley, Otis Redding III
Notorious: Robert Hanssen (FBI agent turned Russian spy), James Lewis (1982 Tylenol poisoning suspect), Kevin Mitnick (hacker)
Now, your host: Bob Barker (“Truth or Consequences,” “The Price is Right,”) Jerry Springer, Mark Zelich (longtime news/sports anchor at WSAU-TV in Wausau, Wisconsin, my hometown)
Oh, Canada: Chad Allan (Guess Who founder, singer), Robbie Bachman (Bachman-Turner Overdrive drummer), Tim Bachman (BTO guitarist)
One-hit wonders: Daniel Boone (“Beautiful Sunday,” 1972), Bobby Caldwell (“What You Won’t Do For Love,” 1978), Jerry Samuels (Napoleon XIV, “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” 1966)
Original members: Colin Burgess (AC/DC drummer, eventually succeeded by Phil Rudd), Laura Lynch (Dixie Chicks lead singer/bassist, succeeded by Natalie Maines), Anthony “Top” Topham (Yardbirds guitarist, succeeded by Eric Clapton)
Oscar nominees: Melinda Dillon (“Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” 1977; “Absence of Malice,” 1981), Ryan O’Neal (“Love Story,” 1970), Tom Wilkinson (“In the Bedroom,” 2001; “Michael Clayton,” 2007)
Oscar winners: William Friedkin (director, “The French Connection,” 1972), Bo Goldman (screenplay, “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” 1975; “Melvin and Howard,” 1980), Glenda Jackson (“Women in Love,” 1970; “A Touch of Class,” 1973)
Popular pianists: Max Morath (ragtime), Peter Nero (jazz), George Winston (New Age)
#Resist: Leon Gautier (France’s last D-Day survivor), Adolfo Kaminsky (French Resistance forger who helped save 14,000 Jews), Simone Segouin (French Resistance fighter as a teenager)
Radio, East Coast: Dick Biondi (WLS, WCFL, Chicago), Jerry Blavat (Philadelphia), Lin Brehmer (WXRT, Chicago)
Radio, West Coast: Jim Ladd (Los Angeles), Lewis Largent (KROQ, Los Angeles), Dusty Street (San Francisco, Los Angeles)
R&B legends: Toussaint McCall, Huey “Piano” Smith, Billy “The Kid” Emerson
Record men: Clarence Avant (“The Black Godfather,” Sussex Records), Jerry Moss (A&M Records), Seymour Stein (Sire Records)
Session men: Dennis Budimir (Wrecking Crew guitarist), Bobby Eli (MFSB guitarist), Floyd Newman (Mar-Keys, Memphis Horns sax)
Sex symbols: Gina Lollobrigida, Stella Stevens, Raquel Welch
Sitcom royalty: Matthew Perry (“Friends”), Suzanne Somers (“Three’s Company”), Cindy Williams (“Laverne and Shirley”)
’60s fashionistas: Jane Birkin (singer, actress, style icon), Mary Quant (British miniskirt designer), Paco Rabanne (futuristic Spanish designer)
’60s TV legends: George Maharis (“Route 66”), David McCallum (“The Man from U.N.C.L.E”), Tom Smothers (“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour”)
Songwriters: Bob Feldman, Barrett Strong, Cynthia Weil
Soul sisters: Vicki Anderson (James Brown Revue), Fanita James (Blossoms), Jean Knight
Space, the final frontier: Frank Borman (Gemini 7, Apollo 8), Walter Cunningham (Apollo 7), Ken Mattingly (helped save Apollo 13 crew, then flew on Apollo 16)
Sports innovators: Dick Fosbury (high jump’s Fosbury Flop), Homer Jones (New York Giants receiver did first spike celebration, 1965), Art McNally (NFL officials’ instant replay)
That one thing: Ed Ames (actor/singer’s tomahawk throw on “The Tonight Show,” 1965), Newton Minow (FCC chairman declared television “a vast wasteland,” 1961), Harry Whittington (accidentally shot by Vice President Dick Cheney while hunting, 2006)
Their beats go on: DJ Casper (“Cha-Cha Slide”), David Jolicoeur (Trugoy the Dove of De La Soul), Magoo (Timbaland & Magoo)
Three innings of Vida Blue: Sal Bando (his Oakland A’s teammate, 1969-76), Russell Batiste Jr. (drummer in the electronic jazz-funk tri0 Vida Blue), Vida Blue
Trailblazers: Zandra Flemister (first Black woman to be a Secret Service agent), Hettie Simmons Love (one of the first Black women to earn an Ivy League MBA), Larry “Gator” Rivers (helped integrate Georgia high school basketball, then played for Harlem Globetrotters)
Vegas guys: Doyle Brunson (poker champion), Pat Cooper (comedian), Shecky Greene (comedian)
War’s absurdities: Alan Arkin (“Catch-22”), Frederic Forrest (“Apocalypse Now”), Yoshio Yoda (“Fuji” on “McHale’s Navy”)
War heroes: Bob Pardo (Vietnam War pilot whose Pardo’s Push moved wingman’s badly damaged fighter jet to friendly airspace, 1967), Brian Shul (Vietnam fighter pilot, SR-71 Blackbird spy pilot), Maureen Sweeney (Irish weather watcher whose forecast prompted one-day postponement of D-Day invasion, 1944)
Women’s sports pioneers: Marlene Hagge-Vossler (LPGA co-founder at 16), Lisa Lyon (bodybuilding), Betsy Rawls (early LPGA star)
World music: Astrud Gilberto (Brazil), Rita Lee (Os Mutantes, Brazil), Sixto Rodriguez (dropped in Detroit in the early ’70s, he became a star in South Africa and Australia)
Wrestlers: “Sheik” Adnan Al-Kaissey (aka Adnan Al-Kaissie), Superstar Billy Graham (aka Wayne Coleman), the Iron Sheik (aka Hossein Vaziri)
Wisconsin progressive legends: Ada Deer (Indigenous activist), Tony Earl (governor), Herb Kohl (U.S. senator)
Gone in Threes, the band
Front men: Steve Harwell (Smash Mouth), Terry Kirkman (The Association), Dwight Twilley (Dwight Twilley Band)
Bass: Randy Meisner (Eagles), Andy Rourke (Smiths), Sweet Charles Sherrell (J.B.’s)
Drums: George “Funky” Brown (Kool & The Gang), Jim Gordon (Derek and the Dominos, session man, influential hip-hop drum break on Incredible Bongo Band’s “Apache,” 1973), Teresa “Nervosa” Taylor (Butthole Surfers)
The last word
Some memorable farewells
Bruce Adams, journalist and a friend of friends, going in style.
Frank Bennett, White Sox fan who’d leave his daughters with a hot dog vendor or organist Nancy Faust while he went to the can.
Donald Kiey, Wisconsin dentist who once had a surreal Canadian camping trip.
Jim Zima, my friend, a longtime co-worker and a world-class rascal. (A couple of us arrived late for his wake, but the party wasn’t over. The family invited us over to Jim’s basement bar for some rather tall whiskey old-fashioneds.)
Best first line of an obit this year: “World Traveler Myrtle T. Ripley, 93, Green Bay, ran out of gas on Tuesday, July 4, 2023.”
The stunner
There always is one death that takes your breath away. My friend Tony Drews was one of the kids who lived across the street. We played a ton of baseball, basketball and football in our neighborhood while growing up. Good dude. Gone too soon.
Noteworthy
This is not intended to be an inclusive list of all who died in 2023. This is my highly subjective list. Yours will be different.
The credits
Each year, I use these sources for this list.
We start with Wikipedia’s month-by-month lists of prominent deaths. Then we check with our friend Gunther at Any Major Dude, who compiles lists of notable music deaths each month. Each of those is more thorough than this roundup. Highly recommended.
(If you wonder why this always lags the new year by a few days, it’s because some deaths aren’t announced immediately. For example, Cindy Morgan — Lacey Underall in “Caddyshack” — found dead on Dec. 30 but the news delayed a week. This new year is but six days old and already we’re going forward without Soul … David Soul.)
In 1965, Charles Schulz started drawing Snoopy as a World War I flying ace battling the Red Baron. But “it reached a point where war just didn’t seem funny,” he told biographer Rheta Grimsley Johnson. Even so, Snoopy and the Red Baron inspired this novelty Christmas song with explosions, gunfire and a message of hope that came as the Vietnam War escalated.
The second Christmas wish
Someday all our dreams will come to be Someday in a world where men are free Maybe not in time for you and me But someday at Christmastime
My friend Derek reminded me of this one on Christmas Eve morning a couple of years ago. When Stevie sings of “men” throughout this one, songwriter Ron Miller clearly means everyone, of any age.
I have this cut on “A Motown Christmas” from 1973, a comp I’ve had since I was in college in the late ’70s.
The third Christmas wish
A very Merry Christmas And a happy new year Let’s hope it’s a good one Without any fear
These are mp3s from my collection, taken from vinyl whenever possible. Enjoy. All music presented here is shared under the premise of fair use. This blog is solely intended for the purpose of education, a place for me to tell stories and write about music and cultural history. If you are a rights holder to any of the music presented and wish for it to be removed, please email me directly and it will be taken down.
About the words
The text is copyright 2007-2024, Jeff Ash. Text from other sources, when excerpted, is credited.
AM, Then FM 