Welcome to Lost in Cyberspace. You’ll notice I’m not charging a subscription. Not that I don’t like money, but the primary purpose is therapy through writing. If you find yourself feeling inclined to throw in an occasional donation, I’ll not complain.
Recurring themes are likely to be music (primarily jazz and blues, but not exclusively) and computer technology – the two dominant secular interests of my life since adolescence. But we’ll also dive into sports from time to time, as well as the general absurdities of life – which seem to be in the kind of accelerating expansion our universe is experiencing. Perhaps the two are related.
A bit about me: I was a newspaper reporter and editor for about a quarter century, but have been in recovery for about seven years now, since my last paper – the North County Times in San Diego – was bought by the larger competition and shut down.
When I was about 15, my dad built a kit computer in our basement back home in Ohio – a KIM-I homebrew. He hooked that up to a surplus Teletype, and I was hooked. A few years later, shortly after the Apple I and Radio Shack TRS-80 came out, he bought an Atari 400 computer with a cassette drive for loading programs.
In the 1980s, I was active in the San Diego Computer Society, discovered dial-up bulletin boards (BBSs), and began writing the “San Diego On-Line” column for ComputorEdge Magazine here in town in the early 1990s. Around the same time, I also got involved with the Computer Museum of America, founded and then run by Jim and Marie Petroff. I was on the advisory board there for many years, and curated several of their exhibits at the California Computer Expo at the San Diego Convention Center. (The museum lost its main benefector, the Coleman College Foundation, about a decade ago, and we donated our holdings to the San Diego State University library. I’m hoping that at some point they are able to exhibit what is one of the top 5 collections of Computer Revolution artifacts on Earth.)
About the same time my dad was building that computer in our basement, I was also assembling my first stereo system with my paper route profits: My older cousins Renee and Kelly had come to spend a few weeks with us one summer and were horrified to find that my father’s LP collection tilted far more toward Herb Alpert and Martin Denny than it did, say, Dylan or the Beatles. So they dragged me to the local department store and we picked up some Paul McCartney & Wings and Chicago (okay, fine: and Captain and Tennile. There, it’s out). That started me on a lifelong love affair with music – something that years of fairly unsuccessful lessons on cornet, piano, violin and guitar had never accomplished.
But it was going to see Count Basie at the San Diego Zoo in the early 1980s that really brought me into music’s embrace. Nothing in rock had prepared me for the energy, the sophistication, the elegance of a world-class swing band. Twelve men hitting a note as one - it was a pivot in my life.
Soon after that, I found out that if you reviewed a new album for the campus newspaper at San Diego State, you got to keep said LP – for free! Suddenly my music addiction was looking to become far more affordable.
I later got a freelance gig for the San Diego Evening Tribune, interviewing touring musicians when they came to town, reviewing concerts, and still reviewing albums. The thrill of seeing my byline in a major metropolitan daily is hard to put into words: I felt like I’d arrived in some vaguely important way.
It still doesn’t get old, seeing my byline in print or online – being published in anyone’s outlet is a privilege and an honor, and one I never to take for granted.
I still write for outlets like Living Blues magazine, AllAboutJazz, and San Diego Troubadour, and I’ll highlight new articles as they come out. In addition, colleague Michael J. Williams and I are working on a history of San Diego jazz, and I’ll update that here as well. I also write for a couple medical industry publications, and am managing editor of a national Catholic magazine, as well as editing a newsletter for a religious society promoting dialogue between the Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Assyrian and Catholic branches of Christianity.
The aim here is to avoid overt political harangues here; I do have an off-and-on again private email newsletter, View From the Ramparts, that gets political (from a Libertarian-slightly right of center perspective), but that’s been “off” more than “on” of late. Still, if you want to subscribe (it’s free), shoot me a note. No promises when or if it gets active again.
But I am blessed to have a widely varied circle of friends and colleagues of seemingly infinite philosophical perspectives, and I’d like this space to be one where everyone feels welcome and comfortable. Not that I expect anyone to agree with anything I write, but our society today is divided enough that I think we can use more oases where we can come celebrate what we have in common and simply enjoy one another’s company.
I do ask that in comments you remember that those with whom you disagree are also my friends – the Golden Rule ought to apply in online discourse as well, although admittedly that is an area where I am in need of some improvement.
Not that I won’t delve into some tough subjects here – in the next article in this space, I’m going to look at how the costs of the growing professionalism of college athletics are not being paid for by TV contracts or rich benefactors, but increasingly by non-scholarship students who are being assessed all kinds of fees to underwrite athletic departments. If the old adage that what you value is disclosed by what you spend your money on , then it’s getting more and more difficult to argue that our universities actually exist to educate young people.
But I’m not going to get into Democrats vs. Republicans. Because ... why?
And we’ll do fun stuff – I’m going to take a look at the growth of college baseball programs over the past few decades, and try to explore whether that can fill the void being left by the contraction of minor league baseball.
Finally, this Substack is likely only to get published once a week: I have a full-time job as a project manager at a medical device company, plus family and church commitments, plus other nonprofit volunteer work, so ...
I hope you enjoy what appears here, and find it a welcome respite from your own grind.
Break out the headphones
Each column, we’ll dive into some music. It may be an artist I’ve recently interviewed, or someone who is overlooked. Or it might be a song that’s stuck in my head.
This week, it’s a bit of both of the latter two: Harry James and his last No. 1 hit single.
At one time, James was a major star and celebrity in America, leading a popular big band, hiring a then-unknown Frank Sinatra as vocalist, and marrying heartthrob Hollywood star and pinup girl Betty Grable. (One year in the mid-’40s, the IRS announced that James and Grable were the highest-earning couple in America.)
James was discovered by bandleader Ben Pollack, who found him playing in local dance bands in his hometown of Beaumont, Texas. Two years later, in 1937, he left Pollack’s band to join Benny Goodman - where his stunning trumpet technique and gorgeous tone (Louis Armstrong was both an obvious and an admitted influence) made him a featured soloist in a band already filled with stars.
Goodman apparently recognized James’ talent was too big to stay a sideman forever, because he provided the financial backing for James to start his own band. James quickly signed Sinatra (who would only stay for seven months), but found that leading a band was more difficult than starring in one. He ended up losing his contract with Columbia Records in 1940 (at which point Sinatra bolted for Tommy Dorsey’s outfit), but regrouped, added strings – and then scored a series of hits with his revamped “sweet” orchestra. (Jazz purists never forgave him – even as the public bought millions of his records.)
While he was always able to secure top-flight singers for the band, not only Sinatra but also Helen Forrest, perhaps the best match for his own soaring trumpet solos was singer Kitty Kallen. Her deep, rich vocals play off his resonant lead trumpet to create an atmosphere of palpable longing on “It’s Been a Long, Long Time,” which came out just as World War II was wrapping up:
Composed by the legendary songwriting team of Jule Style and Sammy Cahn, this is a near-perfect encapsulation of a generation’s desire to return to a peacetime existence: It spoke to the millions of American and Canadian couples torn apart by military service. (And, of course, for all those women whose beloved was never coming home, it undoubtedly was a particularly bittersweet song.)
The song was a Number 1 Hit in the fall of 1945, ironically to be supplanted by Bing Crosby’s own version!
Crosby’s version, of course, was from the perspective of the returning serviceman. It’s slower than the James-Kallen arrangement, with Crosby backed only by guitarist Les Paul and his trio, anchored by Crosby’s signature conversational vocal style.
Attesting to how powerfully Styne and Cahn captured the yearning of an entire nation, two more versions were also in the Top 10 that fall: The first, by Charlie Spivak’s band featuring Irene Daye on vocals:
While the Harry James version was also labeled as a “foxtrot” on the label, the Spivak arrangement is played at a much faster tempo and actually feels like a foxtrot. Spivak’s lead trumpet is sparkling (he had also begun his career with Pollack), and Daye’s vocal is even a shade deeper than Kallen’s. But the song feels almost rushed compared to the James version.
Stan Kenton’s version is played at about the same tempo as James’. But instead of a lengthy trumpet lead, Kenton opens with a short piano intro before June Christy comes in. Christy is still in her early 20s here, and has not yet developed her voice into the supple instrument she would become famous for.
In a coda, Hungarian singer Eve Boswell (no relation to the Boswell singers) recorded “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” in England, her adopted home, in 1957.
This lush arrangement, with Boswell’s crystalline voice framed by strings, hearkens to the James-Kallen version. But, of course, recorded 12 year after World War II had ended, this is more of a revivalist song - and her Marilyn Monroe-styled husky sighs distract more than entice.
What I’m reading this week
“Island Infernos: The U.S. Army’s Pacific War Odyssey, 1944,” by John C. McManus.
The second volume of McManus’ history of the Army in the Pacific, this volume focuses heavily on MacArthur’s campaigns in the western Pacific, but also does also get into the central Pacific island invasions the Army conducted under Nimitz’ command.
McManus seeming goal of this trilogy (the third hasn’t yet been published, I don’t believe) is to counter the mythology that the Marines did all the heavy lifting in the Pacific. In fact, the Army conducted more amphibious landings, took more casualties, provided more of the manpower than the smaller Marine Corps. While never downplaying the Corps’ valor (he takes pains to point out that the Marines suffered proportionately higher casualties than the Army), he wants to ensure that the contributions the soldiers made are not forgotten.
Neither revisionist nor loyalist, McManus is willing to cite strong criticisms of senior generals and admirals from those who served with them. Neither McArthur nor Chesty Puller is immune to such criticism - the former for his glory hounding, the latter for his willingness to send his men in costly frontal attacks rather than adapt to the situation on the ground.
It’s an enjoyable read so far, and I am looking forward to the final entry in this series.
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Your writing therapy is good reading for the rest of us. I too used my paper route money to buy my first stereo setup.