Knocking On Heaven's Door

 In 1973 I saw the movie Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid as soon as it was released.  I'd greatly anticipated the film.  Director Sam Peckinpah had done The Wild Bunch, Straw Dogs, and The Getaway during the prior three years and this new movie could feature James Coburn, Kris Kristofferson, Jason Robards, Harry Dean Stanton and even Bob Dylan.

The film turned out to be an incoherent, uninteresting mess (and we discovered Dylan cannot act).  Very disappointing except for one scene, featuring a song written for the occasion by Dylan; Knocking on Heaven's Door.  In the scene Sheriff Pat Garrett (James Coburn), along with fellow Sheriff Colin Baker (Slim Pickens) and his wife (Katy Jurado) ride to a ranch to question some associates of Billy the Kid.  A gunfight erupts and Sheriff Baker is mortally wounded.  He wanders off to the riverside to quietly die, watched by his grief stricken wife.  It was very affecting to watch in 1973 and has always remained with me, while I've forgotten everything else about the movie, except disliking it.

Slim Pickens was one of the great character actors of American cinema, appearing in many films during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s.  Though most of his appearances were in Westerns, he's best known for his H-bomb riding role as Major "King" Kong in Dr Strangelove.  He plays this scene perfectly without saying a word.

The Mexican actress Katy Jurado was the first Latin actress nominated for an Academy Award for her 1954 role in Broken Lance in which she co-starred with Spencer Tracey.  She's probably best known in America for her role as Gary Cooper's former lover in High Noon.  Like Pickens she conveys so much in this scene without saying a word.

Reading about the movie recently, I learned it was taken away from Peckinpah during the editing and changed significantly.  A director's cut was released in the late 1980s and is apparently highly regarded.

Here's the full version of the song, one of Dylan's finest.  Please avoid the terrible cover by Guns 'N Roses.

Nacho's End

 

That Ignacio (Nacho) Varga would not make it to the end of Better Call Saul was clear.  But it was very hard to see him go tonight.  Unlike most of the characters in the series, as well as in its predecessor Breaking Bad, who devolve morally, Nacho tried to find the better path, though he was repeatedly thwarted.  The deal he struck with Gus Fring allowed his father to remain safe but at the cost of Nacho's life, though in a final twist he went out in his own way.

Michael Mando, with his expressive eyes, was simply wonderful in the role of Nacho.  

As with most of Better Call Saul, I felt I hardly drew a breath during the episode and it is only going to get more stressful in the last ten episodes of the series, particularly as we await the reemergence of Lalo Salamanca.  There will be more wrenching scenes.

It remains the most creatively filmed series on TV, with its unique look and cinematography.  The Breaking Bad/Better Call Saul universe is a magnificent achievement.  I've sung its praises before (most recently in Never Was There More Woe) and will certainly do so again. 

The Experiment Begins

The Lexington Green is today surrounded by constant traffic, though many of the buildings bordering it were also there on the morning of April 19, 1775.  The immediate surroundings around North Bridge in Concord remain more bucolic; the reconstructed bridge over the peaceful river, the site where the British took their first casualties of the day, the adjoining meadows still intact.

This link takes you to my 22 previous posts on the war and the entire Revolutionary Era (1765-1789), the starting point for our grand national experiment.

How Deep Is The Red?

From Elvis Costello's 2009 album, Secret, Profane and Sugarcane.  Backed by country players with no drummer.  How Deep Is The Red is a poignant tune, with a fine example of Elvis wordplay.  The fiddle is by Stuart Duncan.

Is this is not a pretty tale? Is this not a riddle?
A bow shoots arrows through the air
A bow drags notes from a fiddle
But who is the beau of a young girl's heart?
That a king may send to battle

The Horn Of Africa

 Came across this fascinating 1938 map on the twitter feed of Vintage Maps.  It caught my attention for several reasons:

The unusual perspective; an aerial view from high above the Indian Ocean just off the Horn of Africa.

The way it emphasizes topography, particularly the mountains of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and of the southwestern corner of the Arabian Peninsula.  No surprise as they were once joined before the continents drifted apart and the Red Sea formed.

The representation of the final gasp of the colonial era.  Abyssinia had been conquered by Italy in a 1935-36 campaign launched from its existing colonies in Somaliland and Eritrea.  The British ruled British Somaliland, Kenya, and the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan.  Though Egypt was nominally independent it was actually run by the British.  And off to the northwest is the vast expanse of French West Africa.

The portrayal of the pivotal cockpit of conflict between the Ottomans and Portuguese during the 16th century, a subject covered in a couple of recent THC posts.

Best of all, if you look closely, about a 1/4 of the way up from the south end of the Red Sea you will see the Farasan Islands designated, the location of the Roman garrison which was the subject of the THC post, The Farthest Outpost.

It seems we've had quite a bit of serendipity recently regarding the topic of the Indian Ocean, leading to three posts.

Full Moon

It's full moon time.  From our back patio.  The original reminded me of an Impressionist painting, so I added a little Brushstroke artistry to it.  That's our neighbor's big saguaro cactus on the left and the McDowell Mountains in the distance.

The Far Side Of The World

On this date in April 1578 occurred an early example of the first wave of globalization when a Spanish led army, based in the Philippines, descended on the capital of Sultanate of Brunei, on the island of Borneo.  The Spanish force included Spaniards, Filipino tribesmen, and Mexican warriors.  Opposing them were Ottoman Turks, Egyptians, Somalis, Gujaratis, and Malays.  Welcome to the New World Order!

I'm not particularly interested in the battle itself as the entire campaign (the Spanish won the battle but eventually withdrew after being overwhelmed by disease) is yet another dreary chapter of warfare but was fascinated by the diversity of the combatants.

The Spanish first encountered the Philippines when Magellan landed in 1521, during the first circumnavigation of the globe.  The Filipinos promptly killed Magellan and the voyage was eventually completed by eighteen survivors of the original crew of 235.  During the 1560s the Spanish began the conquest of the islands.  They also pioneered a Pacific trading route from China and the Philippines to Acapulco, Mexico from where goods were transhipped to Mexico City and then on to the east coast from where they could be shipped to Europe.  It was this trade that led Charles Mann, author of 1493, to describe Mexico City as the first global city (though Rome or Alexandria might be earlier contenders for this title) as described in Ten Years After:

Chinese, Japanese and Southeast Asians ended up in Mexico and Mann claims the first Chinatown in the Americas was in Mexico City, centered around an Asian marketplace built upon atop the old city center of Tenochtitlan.  Samurai protected the trade caravans as they moved from Acapulco to Mexico City.  The ceramics industry started in Puebla, Mexico and probably employed immigrant Chinese workers who brought their designs along with them.

The standard 17th century text on China for Europeans, published in editions in many languages, was a History of the Most Notable Things, Rituals and Customs of the Great Kingdom of China composed by Juan Gonzalez de Mendoza, a Dominican in Mexico City and a 17th century traveler, described an Easter Parade in the city:

"a company of soldiers . . . on horseback, and was preceded by mournful horn-players.  When the procession came to the royal palace, the Chinese and the [Franciscans] fought to be at the head of the line; they beat each other over the shoulders with clubs, and with their Crosses; and many were wounded."

We'll close with these words from 1493:

. . . Mexico City's multitude of poorly defined ethnic groups from Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas made it the world's first truly global city . . . it was the place where East met West under an African and Indian gaze.  Its inhabitants were ashamed of the genetic mix even as they were proud of their cosmopolitan culture, perhaps none more so than the poet Bernard de Balbuena, whose Grandeza Mexicana is a two hundred page love letter to his adopted home. "In thee," he wrote addressing Mexico City,

Spain is joined with China
Italy with Japan, and finally
an entire world in trade and order.
In thee, enjoy the best of the treasures
of the West; in thee, the cream
of all luster created in the East.

The specific tribal identities of the Mexican warriors who joined the Spanish during the conquest of the Philippines are not known, but they are most likely to have been Tlaxcalans, allies of Cortez during his war with the Aztecs and who continued to enjoy favored status under Spanish rule, or from the upper strata of Aztecs who married into the Spanish aristocracy.

As to the crew supporting the Sultan of Brunei, we have descriptions of their ethnicities but not how they ended up in Borneo.  During the 15th century the rulers of Brunei were converted to Islam and the sultanate became a powerful state during the 16th and 17th centuries, and all those mentioned would have been Muslim.

It was coming across this reference to the battle in 1578 that prompted me to track down the book I recently read on Ottoman expansion in the Indian Ocean but was unable to find there, or elsewhere, any further explanation of how Ottomans and other enlisted in the service of the Sultan of Brunei.

The Ottomans and Egyptians may have been part of the detachment of gunners and soldiers sent by the Ottoman sultan to Aceh in Sumatra in preparation for an offensive against the Portuguese (which was ultimately derailed).  The Gujarati kingdom was also fighting the Portuguese, and the Gujarati fighters may have come to Borneo to help against another Christian incursion, while Muslim Malays had repeatedly tried to expel the Portuguese from Malacca.  In that respect, the events of 1578 can also be seen as a religious war.

Keep On The Sunny Side

From the classic 1972 album, Will The Circle Be Unbroken by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band and a host of old-time country musicians.  This double album introduced me to country music.

The vocal on Keep On The Sunny Side is by "Mother" Maybelle Carter (1909-78).  In the studio audio before the song you can hear her mentioning other songs that were also included on the album.  The male voice you hear near the end asking Maybelle a question is Doc Watson.  Along with Maybelle, Doc, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band members you can also hear Earl Scruggs on banjo, Randy Scruggs on autoharp, Pete Kirby dobro, and among the backup vocalists is Merle Travis.

Keep On The Sunny Side was published in 1901 and credited to Ada Blenkhorn (lyrics) and Howard Entwisle but made famous by the Carter Family Band, founded in 1927 by AP Carter (1891-60).  At the center of the band were AP, his wife Sara, and Sara's cousin, Maybelle, who was married to AP's brother Ezra.  They toured for many years, adding their children as they grew up, and are considered one of the most important founders of country music.  Maybelle eventually became the headliner and a figure looked up to by other country performers.

Among Maybelle's children was her daughter June, who became a star in her own right and later married Johnny Cash.

Keep On The Sunny Side can also be heard on the soundtrack of O Brother, Where Art Thou?

Mohi

On the morning of April 11, 1241 King Bela IV of Hungary, a large and prosperous kingdom, awoke near the small village of Mohi.  With him were his younger brother Prince Carloman and the five leading prelates of the Hungarian Church, who doubled as military leaders.  Around him a large army, the best of Hungarian fighters.

By sunset Carloman and the prelates would be dead, the army annihilated, and King Bela in flight for his life, a flight that would not end until the King found refuge on a small island in the Adriatic Sea, while his kingdom was overrun.

The Mongols had arrived.

Mongol expansion began during the reign of Genghis Khan (1206-27) during which he united the tribes of Mongolia, invaded north China, and conquered much of Central Asia.   In 1222-23 he sent a large raiding force under the brilliant general Subutai to explore areas to the west.  The raid swept through Persia and into and over the Caucasus, across the Volga and Don, where it encountered the forces of Kievan Rus (the first Russian state founded by Scandinavian adventurers), which the Mongols quickly destroyed.  Then, they vanished back east.

Genghis was succeeded as Great Khan by one of his sons, Ogedei who, in 1235 ordered an attack on  Kievan Rus to be carried out by one of Genghis' grandsons, Batu.  In December 1237 the Mongol assaults began and Rus towns were sacked and destroyed one by one, culminating in the utter devastation of Kiev in December 1240.  The destruction was total, with the populace either slaughtered, enslaved, or left in poverty to fend for themselves.  Six years later a Papal envoy to the court of the Great Khan passed through the region and left this description:

They (the Mongols) attacked Rus', where they made great havoc, destroying cities and fortresses and slaughtering men; and they laid siege to Kiev, the capital of Rus'; after they had besieged the city for a long time, they took it and put the inhabitants to death. When we were journeying through that land we came across countless skulls and bones of dead men lying about on the ground. Kiev had been a very large and thickly populated town, but now it has been reduced almost to nothing, for there are at the present time scarce two hundred houses there and the inhabitants are kept in complete slavery.

It was the utter destruction of Kiev and other Rus cities, that led to the eventual rise of Muscovy, which had escaped the worst of the Mongol onslaught. 

Even as Kievan Rus was subdued, the Mongols were planning their next advance, across the Carpathians and into the plains of Hungary; flatlands suitable for the maintenance of the large horse herds necessary to sustain their way of life.  A permanent occupation was planned.

Hungary was ruled by the descendants of the Magyars, a steppe tribe which had attacked the area from the east in 895, quickly conquering the flat and fertile lands on either side of the Danube.  For the next sixty years, Magyar raiders terrified Europe, attacking not only nearby neighbors in Austria, Germany, and Poland, but ranging as far afield as France, Italy, and even Spain (for more on this period, read Having A Bad Century).  After being decisively defeated in 955, the Magyars settled down and began to be integrated into the European feudal structure and accepting Christianity by the end of the century.

The kingdom prospered, covering not only present day Hungary, but large portions of Romania, Slovakia, Croatia, and Slovenia.  The king's annual income easily exceeded that of his counterparts in France and England.

Secure, and not comprehending the Mongol threat, Bela had not even bothered to respond to Batu's demand that he surrender his kingdom.

In early 1241, Subutai and Batu swept through Moldavia and Wallachia and into Hungary, reaching the outskirts of Pest on the banks of the Danube(1).  However, the Mongols then began a withdrawal, giving hope to the Hungarians that they were discouraged and leaving the country.  It was instead an elaborate trap.

When Bela awoke that morning he was unaware that just two days before another Mongol army had destroyed a Polish/Silesian army to the north.  This Mongol force was a diversionary thrust, designed to keep Poland and Silesia from coming to the assistance of the Hungarians.  On April 9, at Leignitz in southern Poland, Henry II, Duke of Poland and Silesia, died, along with most of his army.

The battle of Mohi was hard fought for most of the day, until the Hungarians finally collapsed in the afternoon.  The Mongols left open an avenue for the retreat of their opponents, designed to string them out and allow them to be slaughtered at leisure.  Though Bela escaped, almost all of his soldiers were killed.

After their triumph, the Mongols broke into separate columns pillaging and destroying towns.  If they encountered any resistance, all in the town would be killed.  Over the next few months, every town in Hungary fell to them, with the capital, Esztergom, being last in December 1241.  However, because of their lack of siege engines, the Mongols were unable to capture the stone citadels and castles within many of the towns.

Another Mongol force rode in search of Bela, following his path all the way to the Adriatic, but always a step too slow.

What was to happen next?  What happened was unexpected, at least for the Europeans who had experienced the Mongol assault.  In March 1242 the Mongol army began its withdrawal from Hungary.  It is still uncertain why.  One theory is the death of Ogedei in December 1241 required all the Mongol blood princes to return to the capital in Mongolia to select a new Khan.  Another is that, though the Mongol invasion had been successful, the costs were too high to maintain a presence in Hungary.  Various other theories have been offered, but there is no consensus.  The bottom line is the Mongols were gone.

By the time the Mongols returned in the 1280s, the Hungarians were prepared.  Bela, who ruled until 1270, had noted how castles and citadels had held out, and fortified Hungarian towns much more strongly and the invasion was repelled.

The Mongols continued to dominated the Russian steppes for the next two centuries and extract tribute and obtain submission from the principalities in the wooded lands, such as Muscovy.  Though they did not return for conquest further west, over the next quarter century, the Mongols occupied much of the Middle East, ending the Caliphate in Baghdad, occupying Syria, and coming within a few days march of Jerusalem.  To the east, they completed the conquest of all of China, and attempted to invade Japan and Java.  By 1270 they had established the largest contiguous land empire in human history.

-----------------------------------------------

(1)  Opposite Pest, which lay on the Hungarian plains, was Buda on the hills west of the Danube.  The towns were later combined to form Budapest.  At the time, Hungary's capital was Esztergom, about thirty miles north of Pest.  After the Mongol invasion, Bela transferred his capital to Pest.

MacArthur On Democracy

At least according to William Manchester in his biography of General Douglas MacArthur, American Caesar, which I'd read many years before but forgotten about until seeing this quote..  I've written of the ups and downs of MacArthur's career before.  I ran across this quote, which I found surprising, on the twitter feed of Nemets who has a wide variety of history posts.

During the war, the general was at a dinner with his subordinates.  MacArthur's chief of staff argued that America should abandon democracy in wartime, elections should be abolished and a dictatorship proclaimed.  According to Manchester's account:

General MacArthur listened for a while and then told Sutherland he was wrong: that democracy works and will always work, because the people are allowed to think, to talk, and keep their minds free, open, and supple.  He said that while the dictator state may plan a war, get everything worked out down to the last detail, launch the attack, and do pretty well, at the beginning, eventually something goes wrong with the plan.  Something interrupts the schedule.  Now, the regimented minds of the dictator command are not flexible enough to handle quickly the changed situation.  They have tried to make war a science when it is actually an art.  He went on to say that a democracy, on the other hand, produces hundreds and thousands of flexible-minded, free-thinking leaders who will take advantage of the dictator's troubles and mistakes and think of a dozen ways to outthink and defeat him.  As long as a democracy can withstand the initial onslaught, it will find ways of striking back and eventually it will win.  It costs money and at times does look inefficient but, in the final analysis, democracy as we have it in the United States is the best form of government that man has ever evolved. 

MacArthur's comments may be surprising to some who have cast him as a full fledged villain and autocrat.  They also reflect the confidence of mid-20th century Americans in the strength of their country.

The validity of the general's comment rests upon the definition of what constitutes the prime aspects of a democratic people.  If that definition changes, even if what remains is still referred to as a democracy, his comments may no longer be valid.

One-Hit Wonders Of The 1960s

This is a ten year old post and still the most viewed one on this blog.  Revised and reedited with broken links fixed.  These songs actually cover a period of less than four years - the first released in fall of 1964; the last in early 1968.

The Rules

• This is not trying to be a definitive list of one-hit wonders.  I have to like the song.  There are a lot of one-hit wonders which I don't care for so you won't see songs like Keep On Dancin' by The Gentrys, Five O'Clock World by The Vogues or Psychotic Reaction by Count Five.

• Excludes bands or artists with successful album careers who happened to only have one hit single, though some on this list had longer-term successful performing careers.
  

• In some cases I've included artists who had two minor hits (like The Merry Go Round) or one huge hit and a minor hit (like Percy Sledge).

• If you don't like the rules, too bad.  It's my blog.

Away we go (in rough chronological order):

Let's start with two from The Beau Brummels, the first American band to emulate the British Invasion sound with two top twenty songs - the first released in the fall of 1964, the second in early 1965, after which they disbanded.

Laugh, Laugh
Just A Little (produced by Sylvester Stewart who later gained fame as Sly Stone of Sly & The Family Stone).

She's About A Mover (1965) by The Sir Douglas Quintet.  This band, fronted by Doug Sahm, came out of Texas and had a minor hit which mixed a lot of musical styles.  The band had another hit, Mendocino, around 1970.  Doug Sahm was still the front man but the rest of the band had changed and it was a California hippie song so I'm ignoring it.  

Rescue Me (1965) by Fontella Bass.  Top 5 hit.  Great vocal and bass line.  A Motown single.  She should have had more hits.

Pushin' Too Hard (1965) by The Seeds. An LA band with kind of a punk sound and attitude - "you're pushin' to hard on what you want me to be, you're pushin' too hard on me!".  A similar sentiment was conveyed a couple of years later by Jimi Hendrix - "let me live my life, the way I want to".  Really terrible lead guitar solo - by The Seeds, not Hendrix.

You Were On My Mind (1965) by We Five.  A San Francisco based folk band (you can tell they're folk music people from the video since they are wearing turtlenecks, they are all singing and they all seem cheerful).  Terrific lead vocal, good use of dynamic sound variation to build tension.  The song is a remake of an original by Ian & Sylvia (which was not very good) and made it into the Top 3.

Gloria (1966) by The Shadows of Knight (get it?).  Top 10 song.  A remake of an Irish original by Them (featuring Van Morrison, who wrote the song) and another great punk sounding vocal (the vocalist is trying to imitate Morrison).  The lyric was considered very racy for the time. Two finger organ part.  I liked it cause it was simple enough for our band to play.  G-L-O-R-I-A!!! 

Lies (1966) by The Knickerbockers.  Some folks thought it was The Beatles when first released as it certainly captured their sound and melodic hooks, but they were actually a bunch of guys from New Jersey.  And listen to how the lead singer says "gurls" instead of "girls" so he can sound just like John Lennon.  Something similar happened with the Bee Gees first single in 1967, New York Mining Disaster 1941, which many thought was The Beatles.

This tune always reminds me of the best One Hit Wonders movie - That Thing You Do, produced by Tom Hanks, which captures this period perfectly, and features a song with the same title. The song was written by a member of the 90s band, Fountains of Wayne.

Dirty Water (1966) by The Standells.  "I love that dirty water, ah Boston you're my home".  For those of you who remember the state of the Charles River back then, a very appropriate sentiment.  Strong lyric and cool vocal from start to finish.  Well produced, a rarity for garage bands.

When A Man Loves A Woman (1966) by Percy Sledge.  You all know this one.  Monster #1 hit, amazing vocal and great production.  Perfectomundo.

Hey Little Girl (1966) by The Syndicate Of Sound.  Interesting sound (no back beat on the drums).  Another vocal with attitude.  A Top 10 song, it was covered by a lot of late 70s punk bands.  Watch the video - nice suits and that lead singer can sure clap his hands!

Talk Talk (1966) by The Music Machine.  Wild instrumentation and production, and then there are the lyrics:

"I got me a complication and it's an only child
Concernin' my reputation as something more than wild
I know it serves me right but I can't sleep at night
Have to hide my face or go some other place

I won't cry out for justice, admit that I was wrong
I'll stay in hibernation till the talk subsides to gone
My social life's a dud, my name is really mud
I'm up to here in lies, guess I'm down to size, to size

Can't seem to talk about the things that bother me
Seems to be what everybody has against me

Here's the situation and how it really stands
I'm out of circulation, I've all but washed my hands
My social life's a dud, my name is really mud
I'm up to here in lies, guess I'm down to size, to size

Talk talk, talk talk, talk talk, talk talk"

And it's all jammed into one minute and fifty-six seconds.  This might be my favorite 60s one-hit wonder.

Walk Away Renee (1966) by The Left Banke,  Reached #2, part of the short-lived baroque rock period (see also A Whiter Shade Of Pale by Procol Harum, released in early 1967, for the biggest hit of this genre).  The first in this genre was Lover's Concerto by The Toys, which topped the charts in 1965.  If you understand the words please let me know - did they say something about Foster Grant sunglasses in the second verse?  The Four Tops charted with a cover in 1968.

96 Tears (1966) by ? And The Mysterians.  This song should be in the dictionary next to "One-Hit Wonder".  Composed by ? (subsequently identified by many as as Rudy Martinez though he never confirmed it - he's one odd guy).  The term "punk rock" was first used by rock writer Dave Marsh to describe the band in a 1971 article.  Notice the cheesy Vox organ.  A large percentage of 60s one-hit wonder songs featured cheesy organs.  Watch the band on the link and dig Rudy's shirt and shades.

Knock On Wood (1966) by Eddie Floyd.  From Stax Studios in Memphis.  Co-written by Steve Cropper, guitarist for the Stax house band and later The Blues Brothers, and also co-composer of In The Midnight Hour and Dock Of The Bay.  Great hook, perfect vocal and the Stax band is just so tight.

Friday On My Mind (1967) by The Easybeats, an Australian band.  Catchy and clever guitar riff and a Top 10 tune.  The link takes you to what appears to be a rare TV show live version by the band.  One of the guitarists is George Young, the older brother of Angus and Malcolm Young of AC/DC.

I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night) (1967) by The Electric Prunes (yes, you read that right).  Psychedelia begins to enter the field and the song hit the Top 20.  Horrible production but I thought it was pretty cool.  For some reason this band had a lot of success in Sweden.Subject of a recent THC post with more background on the song.

Pretty Ballerina (1967) by The Left Banke.  The follow-up to Walk Away Renee, it charted weakly and then the band faded away.  Was I surprised?  No, not at all.  Features one of the few oboe solos in rock.

We Ain't Got Nothin' Yet (1967) by The Blues Magoos.  A rockin' song with some more cheesy organ!  I bought the album that featured this song and it was pretty good.

Live (1967) by The Merry Go Round.  The first of two minor hits by this LA band, both from their one and only album.

You're A Very Lovely Woman (1967) by The Merry Go Round.  Very odd lyric, particularly when you realize it's written and sung by 17 year old guitarist Emitt Rhodes.

Tighten Up (1968) by Archie Bell & The Drells.  It hit #1.  I still love this song.  Did you know they are from Houston, Texas and that according to Mr Drell "we don't only sing but we dance just as good as we want"? I like it when they "make it mellow for everyone". Funky guitar, great bass line, and, of course, some cheesy organ. The only thing marring this single was the hand clapping that starts about halfway through.

Time Has Come Today (1968) by The Chambers Brothers.  This is an oddity and an appropriate tune to end on.  The song has a long and complex history.  The four Chambers Brothers were from Mississippi, starting out as folk musicians before electrifying their sound in the mid-60s.  Time Has Come Today was recorded in 1966 for their album, The Time Has Come, which was released in November 1967.  It contained an 11 minute version of Time, a song which contained elements of gospel, blues, rock and psychedelia and used reverb, guitar fuzz and lots of cowbell.  For the next 18 months if you listened to FM radio you were guaranteed to hear the song at least once a day in its entirety.

During 1968 there were two different edited versions of the song released as singles with one version hitting #11 on the charts.  A mixture of some wonderful off the wall lyrics ("and my soul has been psychodelicized") with possibly the most annoying mid-section of any song ever (in the unedited original version that section goes on for about 6 minutes), this song IS 1968 in all its coolness, craziness and excess.  I've linked above to the closest clip I can find to one of the single versions. This is an abbreviated version from the Ed Sullivan Show.  For the masochists out there here's the full length version.

Well, I think I'm done for a while.

The Ottoman Perspective

Captain Major of the Seas of Arabia discussed how Portugal became the dominant power in the Indian Ocean during the 16th century.  The Ottoman Age of Exploration by Giancarlo Casale provides a different perspective on that time and place.

The Ottomans have been frequently portrayed as reactive and relatively uninterested in the Indian Ocean but Casale's thesis is that the Ottoman encounter with the Indian Ocean and that empire's attempts to exert its controls had parallels to the Western European experience during the age of exploration in the Americas and the Indian Ocean. (For more THC posts on the Ottomans go here.)

It was in 1517 that the Ottomans first came into direct contact, via the Red Sea, with the Indian Ocean and its surrounding territories after destroying the Mamluks and occupying Egypt.  Before carrying forward the story, Casale gives us some context.  He reminds us of the relative isolation of Western Europe, during the 15th century, before Columbus sailed, at a time when Muslim merchants could travel "virtually unobstructed" from Morocco to Southeast Asia, and Ming China was sending naval expeditions which reached Ceylon, the Persian Gulf, and East Africa.  But Muslim is not equivalent to Ottoman.  In the 15th century, the Ottomans were focused on expansion in Europe from their original base in what is now western Turkey.  They conquered Greece, the southern Balkans, and made Constantinople their capital after its capture in 1453.  Ottoman merchants were not traversing the Muslim world at the time.

As to the Portuguese, who reached India in 1498, pioneering a direct trade route for precious spices from South Asia to Europe via the Cape of Good Hope, they continued to have bigger goals.  In the short term the Portuguese royal family used the wealth generated in the spice trade to finance its plans for expansion in Morocco, but its longer term goal was even more ambitious.  Casale writes:

"As contemporary records make clear, they were well aware of the superiority of the traditional Egyptian route, such that Egypt and the Holy Lands remained at the very center of their strategic calculations throughout the early decades of the sixteenth century.  By their own admission, in fact, early Portuguese strategists hoped not to permanently bypass Egypt, by means of their blockade of the Red Sea, by rather to pave the way for an invasion of Egypt by weakening the Mamluks' access to customs revenues and raising money for themselves in the process".

Ultimately the goal was to conquer Egypt and the Holy Land and open a more direct, less risky, and less expansive route to the Indian Ocean.  In retrospect it seems a lunatic aspiration, given Portugal's limited financial and manpower resources, but what that country and Spain accomplished in the early 16th century in the Americas, Africa, and South Asia on a relative shoestring budget showed anything was possible.

Prior to the arrival of the Portuguese in the Indian Ocean, the spice trade to the Middle East, North Africa and Europe was routed through Egypt.  Between its agricultural productivity and the revenues generated via the spice trade, Egypt prospered (for the similar role Egypt played in the Roman Empire, read The Farthest Outpost).  With its conquest, the Ottomans now had access to that trade, but faced Portugal's efforts to blockade the Red Sea and seize outposts in the Persian Gulf and along the southern coast of Arabia.

Rapidly acquiring knowledge of South and East Asia and with access to maps and charts of the area, in the 1520s the Ottomans began to challenge Portugal's dominance, first attempting to conquer Yemen at the south end of the Red Sea, and developing alliances with the rulers of Gujarat, in what is now western India, efforts that were to continue until near the close of the century.

Casale documents the difficulties faced by the Ottomans, attributable to several factors:

The lack of a direct sea link between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, meant an entirely new fleet had to be constructed for operations in the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, a costly proposition as galley and ship construction was extremely expensive.  On three occasions during the century, the Ottomans began construction on a canal to link the Nile with the Red Sea, but abandoned each due to cost and technical issues.

Difficult logistics.  The lack of sufficient mature forests in Egypt and Arabia meant wood and other basic raw materials needed for shipbuilding had to be imported from Anatolia or Lebanon, and expensive and time consuming proposition.

Continued instability in Yemen.  After its initial conquest in the early 1520s, there were several revolts by Yemenite tribesmen, a couple of which temporarily ended Ottoman control of the territory.  These revolts impeded Ottoman plans for action in the Indian Ocean and, once again, required diversion of financial, naval and land forces to reassert control.

Over and above these regional issues there was an ongoing back and forth in Constantinople involving the Sultans and their viziers over where the Empire's priorities should be - Europe?  The Safavid dynasty in Iran?  The Indian Ocean?  The degree of Ottoman aggressiveness in South Asia depended on how the winds were blowing in the Bosporus, and the winds frequently changed.

Despite these challenges the Ottomans accomplished quite a bit during the 16th century.  In the 1530s the dynasty conquered Iraq, seizing Basra, giving it access to the Persian Gulf trade and opening a new front with Portugal, which had taken Hormuz, at the narrowest part of the Gulf, in 1509.

The Ottomans were able to prevent Portugal from gaining a permanent foothold in Yemen, despite repeated efforts, and finally decisively defeated efforts to blockade the Red Sea.

Along with maintaining, at a high cost, its position in Yemen, the Ottomans also seized Eritrea on the opposite side of the Red Sea.

Developed close relations with Gujurat and Aceh, at the north end of the island of Sumatra, supplying arms and troops to both to support their opposition to the Portuguese.

In 1589, a raid by corsair Mir Ali, came within a whisker of evicting Portugal from the Swahili Coast of East Africa, which would have transformed the entire conflict and the ability of the Iberian Kingdom to continue its spice trade.  Only a series of freakish events prevented this from becoming a reality.

All of this helped the Ottomans to develop a free trade position for its merchants which allowed it to become a bigger player than Portugal in the spice trade. 

Perhaps the biggest threat was the plan for a major Ottoman offensive in 1567, which was derailed by yet another revolt in Yemen.  This involved a coordinated offensive with the Ottomans sending a large fleet into the Indian Ocean, also involving Muslim Indian states and the Sultanate of Aceh (which would move against the Portuguese stronghold of Malacca).

Despite its ultimate failure, Portugal remained continually worried about the Ottoman threat, but by the end of the century both powers were in decline.

The royal obsession with Morocco led Portugal to disaster in 1578, when its young king launched a crusade to conquer that North African kingdom, an effort that resulted in its army being destroyed and the king and much of the royal male line killed.  Two years later, Portugal was absorbed by King Philip  of Spain, for whom the Indian Ocean was a backwater to which he would pay little attention.  By the time Portugal became independent again in 1640 most of its possessions were gone, taken by the English and Dutch.

The Ottomans began a period of stagnation in latter decades of the century, with less resources being allocated to the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.  In 1622, the Iranian Safavids took Hormuz from Portugal, severing Ottoman Basra's links with India and by the 1630s, Ottoman rule of Yemen permanently ended, weakening the Red Sea-India connection.

Along with telling this story, Casale's book also introduces us to fascinating characters like Sokollu Mehmed, the long serving vizier from 1565 to 1579, and advocate for an expansive Indian Ocean policy, Ozdemir Pasha, who rose from lowly origins to suppress a huge revolt in Yemen and conquer Eritrea, and Sefer Reis, the corsair, whose clever tactics drove the Portuguese from the shores of Arabia and the Red Sea.

It's Alright With Me

It's the wrong time

And the wrong place

Though your face is charming 

It's the wrong face

Composed by Cole Porter for the 1950s musical Can Can and performed by the magnificent Ella Fitzgerald.

Traces Of Texas

I like websites with old photos like Shorpy and Babel Colour.  Here's another one, Traces of Texas.  Old photos with good commentary of Texas people and locations over the years.

Traces of Texas reader Rose Anderson graciously sent in this wonderful photo of her father, Joe Guiseppi Mormena, bugling at the site of the Pecos River bridge near Langtry, Texas. Rose didn't say when this was taken but her father bugled at nearby Fort Clark from 1917 to 1946. pic.twitter.com/KK8m0B7Bzr

— Traces of Texas (@TracesofTexas) April 6, 2022

A small bodega in San Antonio, 1939. So amazingly clear. You can make out the brand names of pretty much everything behind the counter.

Another awesome shot by Russell Lee. pic.twitter.com/RDfNYPWX7p

— Traces of Texas (@TracesofTexas) April 6, 2022

One of my favorite Texas history photos. Men drinking beer at the Tondre Saloon in Castroville, early 1900s. This building still stands as part of the Castroville State Bank. Here's what it looks like now: https://t.co/748QSLiGUI Wouldn't it be great to sit down and have a beer? pic.twitter.com/8nHMQEignv

— Traces of Texas (@TracesofTexas) April 3, 2022

Scene in San Juan, Texas, 1939. I'd love to walk into that place, order a cold Southern Select, Grand Prize, and Budweiser, sit down, drink them, and talk to the locals. I always wonder if beer 80 years ago tastes like beer today. @indybrewing
@TexasHighways
@TexasMonthly pic.twitter.com/xwdHMPPup5

— Traces of Texas (@TracesofTexas) April 2, 2022

Mr Hitter

Among the former ballplayers I enjoy checking in on occasionally on twitter are Fergie Jenkins and Rod Carew.  Reading seven time batting champ Carew's feed yesterday I was reminded of a game in Fenway in which Rod got three hits and made it look easy.

What I remembered

Mike Torrez was the starting pitcher for the Red Sox

Rod Carew was with the Angels

Carew had three line drive hits and made one out on a hard hit liner

It was a night game

With the assistance of Baseball-reference.com I was able to find the game, which took place on September 3, 1980.  I was working in Cambridge at the time and decided that afternoon to head over to Fenway after work to see the game.  Only needing one ticket allowed me to score a seat perhaps 10-15 rows behind home plate - plenty of seats were available, attendance was only 22,340.

Carew had a relaxed stance in which he leaned back in a crouch (he began crouching because it was the only way he could handle Nolan Ryan's fastball). His batting stroke was level and smooth and looked the same in all his at bats.  He always looked calm and under control.

Here's what Rod did that night (I include the description of the at bat from Baseball-reference):

1st - Hit a 2-run homer to "deep RF" off Mike Torrez.  I remember it as a line shot that did not seem to elevate a lot.

4th - "Lineout CF".

5th - "Single LF" driving in his third run of the game.  Another line shot which I remember as going to Left-Center.

8th - "Single CF".  Another line shot.

The Angels won the game easily, 7-2 and it only took 2:38 to play.

Read a ESPN article explaining Carew's batting brilliance.

Ten

Well, I've been at this for ten years now, starting two days after my retirement.  2,487 posts as of today. Who'd have thought I would be working in the blogging mines this long?  I didn't.  Guess I'll keep going for a while longer.

My first post featured this song.  It's still pretty good so let's do it again.