Coffeyville

I've always liked themed albums where music is used to tell a story even if they aren't associated with a particular musical. One of my favorites is The Eagles, "Desperado". Today in history is the event that made the songs and back cover of that album possible. For those familiar with the album, it opens with the line, "They were duelin', Doolin-Dalton" and goes on to tell of the wild life in the outlaw gang and ends with the deaths of Grat and Bob Dalton in Coffeyville. Small aside: If I were a choreographer I've always thought this music and story would make a great story ballet.

On October 5, 1892 the Dalton gang made their last robbery attempt by trying to rob two banks at once in Coffeyville, Kansas. The citizens killed four of the five bandits. It was the classic scene from your favorite western. The good citizens gunning down the outlaw gang. As the gang was about to make their getaway, they were surprised by the town defenders. The five thieves shot their way to the alley where their horses were waiting and tried to defend themselves, but they were greatly outnumbered. In the gunfight that followed, all five men were shot, but not before killing a number of the townfolk.

The previous year in 1891 they had tried to rob a Southern Pacific train heading to Los Angeles, CA. That fact alone tells you that the very short history of what we consider the "wild west" (from the end of the civil war to the turn of the century) was coming to an end. Civilization was catching up with all the characters that became famous in the penny novels. The automobile had been invented and Edison was making movies

Emmett Dalton, who had been shot more than 20 times at Coffeyville, was the only one that managed to survive. He received a life sentence for the murder of the men who tried to stop him but was released a mere 15 years later. He lived a peaceful and law-abiding life until his death in 1937. On April 19, 1894, law enforcement officials shot his younger brother Bill Dalton, who was not at the Coffeyville robbery, Bill Doolin, The Bitter Creek Kid and Jack Boone finally bringing an end to the Doolin-Dalton gang. Emmett Dalton returned to the scene nearly 40 years later with this advice, "The biggest fool on earth is the one who thinks he can beat the law, that crime can be made to pay. It never paid and it never will and that was the one big lesson of the Coffeyville raid."

Better keep on movin', Doolin-Dalton
'Til your shadow sets you free
If you're fast, and if you're lucky
You will never see that hangin' tree

The Party's Over

Over the months, you have all become aware how much I love musical theater. Recently, I wrote about the revival of A Chorus Line. Unfortunately, there are musicals that it would be almost impossible to bring back without major changes unless it is darn fast simply because the audience wouldn't understand the premise of the story.

How long has it been since you have seen a phone answering service advertised? For the younger readers, in this age of cell phones and voice mail, do you even know exactly what they are/were or how one works? We are not so far removed that younger readers might not have seen the 1960 movie version on one of their parent's DVD's, but the last professional production of Bells Are Ringing was a less than successful broadway revival in 2001. At the time of it's original 1956 production, it was a collaboration of Broadway legends: Jule Styne, Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Jerome Robbins, and Bob Fosse, and starred the brilliant, luminous and lost too soon, Judy Holliday. Now I have a real soft spot for this musical since my first job out of high school while going to college was as a telephone operator.

If an answering service weren't enough, there is a subplot about police pursuing illegal bookies. Now "Off Track betting" may still be illegal in some states, but your access is fairly simple via your home computer, but the comic lyrics of "A Simple Little System" sung the bookies mentions some race tracks that no longer exist. What makes this dating of material unfortunate is that songs get lost. A few of the songs from Bells Are Ringing have become standards and will show up when good singers are looking for material such as the duet below with Tony Bennett and Michael Buble singing Just In Time, but can you hum "Long Before I Knew You" or "The Party's Over"?

Do you have a favorite musical that you would like to see brought back in revival? Are there ones that you think would require major rewrites or have production problems because their premise is so dated?

If You Think It's Dirty Now

I am currently reading A Magnificent Catastrophe by Edward J. Larson about the political campaign between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson that so clouded their former friendship at the time of the American Revolution that they did not speak for decades after the election and only resumed writing to each other in their final years. The bitter infighting was so bad that it set up the current wide division between political parties and forever turned elections into contentious battles rather than gentlemanly group discussions of enlightened philosophy that was their ideal.

Imagine learning that this towering battle between founding fathers and heads of opposing powers is only ranked fourth in hard fought, contentious, and bruising campaigns. Here is the rundown from fifth to first (Winners of the elections are listed first) with some of the shenanigans:

1972 - Richard Nixon vs. George McGovern - (IRS intimidation of Democratic big wigs, the Enemies List, press manipulation, and, of course, the Watergate burglary by the Special Investigations Unit, aka "the Plumbers.")

1800 - Thomas Jefferson vs. John Adams - (Adams accused of being a "hideous hermaphroditical character", Jefferson's sexual relations with slaves, and an election thrown into the House of Representatives, where Jefferson almost certainly made a secret deal to win it all.

2000 - George W. Bush vs. Al Gore - Republicans acting in a truly narrow, partisan fashion at every stage to subvert the democratic process and hand victory to George W. Bush. Charges of racism and voting fraud against Bush. - Hanging chads and Supreme Court anyone?

1964 - Lyndon Johnson vs. Barry Goldwater - Anti-Goldwater stories planted in newspapers; children's coloring books portraying Goldwater as a Klansman; CIA invasion of Goldwater's campaign; FBI bugging of Goldwater's campaign plane, and the famous daisy commercial.

And the most destructive election of them all?

There they are. Don't they look like nice, respectable gentlemen? Couldn't you easily believe they are each someone's kindly great grandfather hanging on the family tree? Why one is even a President of the United States. Which one? Well that is a little difficult since one served and one won, and the outcome is still referred to as "The Stolen Election". Number one is the contest between Rutherford B. Hayes (bearded) and Samuel Tilden (clean shaven).

1876: Rutherford Hayes vs. Samuel Tilden -- This is the granddaddy of them all: a truly stolen election in which Republicans turned defeat into victory for Rutherford Hayes. Democratic votes were miscounted in the Southern states. Both parties used violence to intimidate former black slaves. Republicans extorted money from the salaries of Federal employees while Democrats accused Hayes of shooting his mother and robbing the dead, and Republicans claimed that Samuel Tilden suffered from venereal disease.

So the next time you think the mud slinging is just too much to stand and no sane person wants to have anything to do with politics consider Hayes and Tilden. It could get worse, it could get better. Either way, the nation will probably survive.

Squeezing Out A Memory

Mother and one aunt lived in Los Angeles, one aunt in Fowler, two aunts in Fresno, and the last of the six Pifer girls in Chowchilla: A sisterhood chain down Old Highway 99. Their children (the cousins) migrated up and down that road every summer almost at will to mix and match, occasionally by bus or train, but usually by car driven at speeds unheard of today except by cars being chased by police while TV station helicopters whirr overhead.



Going north, you climbed up the grade from LA to Gorman and then started the long twist of the grapevine hitting the great drop above Bakersfield where it was pedal to the metal on an empty road, only slowing down for the tinier three block main streets equipped with stop signs and cruising through Bakersfield to look at the bridge that it recently took Buck Owens to save.



With that drop came the heat in an age when auto air conditioning was high speeds and open windows. When the heat became too great we started looking for them. The great orange blobs dotting the landscape and the howls would start: Stop, please stop .... oh please, please, please.

In the searing summer heat of the San Joaquin, those orange blobs had an elixer of such heavenly proportions as to make children weep when without halting one faded in the rear view mirror. When you stopped there was the flimsy wooden Mammoth Orange with a window. It meant shade, a glass filled with ice and fresh squeezed juice from oranges that had been on the trees just that morning. In the blazing sun and rural valley dust, it was the most remarkable drink ever served with just the right acid bite to quench thirst.

It is over fifty years later now. But every once in a while you will see one of the giant oranges dusted and boarded up. Only a few still exist, and almost too late there is a move to preserve the few that remain in museums, while a couple are still trying to stay open for business, just in case you find yourself in Chowchilla or heading over Pacheco Pass to Los Banos.

To this day, when I order a breakfast juice or a champagne Mimosa for breakfast or brunch, I judge the quality of a restaurant by one question, "Is your orange juice fresh squeezed?"