Dionne Warwick: For the Record

Can you believe that the incomparable Dionne Warwick is 78?  Still classy after all these years.

RIP: Aretha Franklin, 1942-2018

Your Head Trucker played the wires off this 1968 album.

America mourns the loss of a national treasure: Aretha Franklin, the Queen of Soul, died earlier today at her home in Detroit, aged 76.

Silent Songbird

I'm sure many of my truckbuddies who are around my age are saddened, as I was, to hear that Linda Ronstadt's golden voice, part of the sound track of our lives, is now silenced by Parkinson's disease.  But though she cannot now sing a note, as she puts it, one of the greatest American voices ever heard will echo down the ages through the magic of recording technology - like a

happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new.

A commenter at the New Yorker's paean to Ronstadt's career nails the essence of her great talent:

. . . underlying the great singing was a very pure voice with a range wider than that of most of her contemporaries. She also had perfect pitch and could sing in tune. Never did she have to "slide" up to a note (unless she wanted to for style's sake) and she always nailed every interval, no matter how unusual it might have been. Finally, she understood the importance of dynamic range-- something missing in most pop music. That is, she could and did sing softly as well as loudly.

In short, she made the songs she sang into works of art.

Here are just four of my favorites by Linda from her vast repertoire - what are yours?

Phyllis Diller, 1917-2012; Scott McKenzie, 1939-2012

Well, another favorite is gone:  Phyllis Diller died today at her home in Los Angeles, aged 95.  She had quite a life, and quite a career, though - and made millions laugh.  Which is no small thing in this world of sorrow and woe. 

My contemporaries will recall how very, very funny she was at the peak of her stand-up career in the late 1960's, really the first woman to do that, overdressed to kill with feathers, rhinestones, and the most outrageous wigs and miniskirts that showed off her bony legs - and capping it all with that unforgettable cackle of a laugh:



Your Head Trucker can recommend the 7-part interview done with her in 2000 by the Archive of American Television, which covers every facet of her life and career. The link is here, and the first part is below:




And coincidentally, on Saturday Scott McKenzie also died in Los Angeles, at age 73. As far as I ever knew, he had only the one hit song, "San Francisco" - but OMG what a one-hit career to have: it was, of course, the anthem of the flower-power years of the 1960's, and though your Head Trucker was never part of the counterculture - and didn't want to be - I've always stopped whatever I was doing and cranked up the volume whenever that song came on the radio. I just always thought he had the most marvelous, manly, sexy voice. Sad to think it is forever stilled now, but the song will live on and on:



He was a good-looking rascal too, as you can see.

Goodnight, Ladies: Miriam, Odetta, Eartha

As we leave the old year behind, time for a last goodbye to three great ladies who entertained millions with their songs and also worked for peace, justice, and civil rights in this country and abroad. You should read about them if you aren't already familiar with their careers.

All were part of the civil rights struggle from way back that paved the way for the election of Obama, and greater freedom in places like South Africa. Not every fight is won with a gun; sometimes a song is an even better weapon.

Here are clips of each of them from their heyday, voices that will never die.

Miriam Makeba - "Mama Africa"

Odetta - "The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement"

Eartha Kitt - "Catwoman"

Thanks, ladies, for all you did. We'll miss you.