HAPPY BIRTHDAY to the late, great King of truck driving music, Dave Dudley

Happy Birthday, Dave Dudley!  Darwin Dave Pedruska was born in Spencer, Wisconsin in 1928. He grew up to be Dave Dudley, the acknowledged King of Truck Driving Music. Above, you'll find him bantering with Charlie Louvin' and singing "Truck Drivin' Son of a Gun". He always sang with authority (and he was a hell of a baseball player too). Such a Wisconsin boy - he never really left his hometown, and when he did, he was quick to return. In the video he tells the story of an 18 wheeler that slid off an icy road and smashed into his property in Spencer. After a concert in Deerfield, Wisconsin he handed a friend of mine a book entitled "Everything I Know About Fishing and Women by Dave Dudley." My friend opened the book. All the pages were blank.
His final recording was a collection of patriotic truck driving songs written in response to 9/11. My favorite of these new tunes tells the tale of an army of eighteen wheelers chasing down Osama Bin Laden. Priceless. Dave Dudley died in 2003 at his home in Spencer.

When In China....ask for it by name

Just received this snap from Gordon Specht, on the road in China.
"Wisconsin Ginseng is the most potent Ginseng on the planet. No other Ginseng comes close."
Over 90% of the ginseng grown in the United States is grown in Wisconsin - most of it in Marathon County, Wisconsin. Sales average exceed 70 million dollars a year. Not bad. It's also an industry with a long history in the Badger State that goes something like this....
The Fromm brothers lived in the town of Hamburg, not far from Wausau, in Marathon County. In 1904 they transplanted 100 wild ginseng plants from a nearby forest onto their own land. They carefully grew their new crop by recreating the conditions of the plant's native setting. The brother's diligent work and ideal area growing conditions would eventually make Marathon County the ginseng capital of the United States.

This week, the Ginseng Board of Wisconsin signed an agreement with the Beijing-based Tong Ren Tang Health Pharmaceutical, to use the trademark seal on their purchases of Wisconsin ginseng from the Marathon-based Ginseng & Herb Co-op over the next 10 years, The Ginseng Board of Wisconsin brand is registered in several Asian countries, including China, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.

Vatican Announces New Pope

Move over former Pope Benedict and say goodbye to the guitar mass (I have a theory that Satan invented the guitar mass), it's time to let a real fashionista take over. Our very own Liberace, soon to be the subject of an upcoming HBO film... Such a good Polish/Italian Catholic boy - his mother must be proud. The black and white photo above was probably taken in the late 50's. Below is a fascinating post from the California Catholic Daily, Sept. 16, 2012.....

San Bernadino diocese rents out church for gay-theme Liberace film

    Hollywood producer Jerry Weintraub and director Steven Soderberg are making an HBO movie based upon the 1988 tell-all book, Behind the Candelabra, the story of flamboyant entertainer, Lee Liberace, as told by Scott Thorson who claims to have been Liberace’s young gay lover.
Thorson’s 242-page book sells for almost $200 on Amazon.com. The book is promoted as a “sorry, seamy tale.” According to Amazon.com, “the book is uncomfortably candid with revelations about ‘Lee’ (Liberace) who was driven to experience sexual variety with younger males.”
According to the book, when Thorson was jilted by Liberace, he filed an acrimonious suit in 1982 against the entertainer for “palimony.” It resulted in an out-of-court settlement in 1986 of $95,000 plus two cars and two pet dogs. Thorson’s book makes a reference to Catholicism on page 83: Thorson writes, “While at the Cloisters (the name for Liberace’s Palm Springs, California house), Lee (Liberace) occasionally invited gay priests to say a private mass.” While some people thought that Liberace was close to his mother, Thorson writes that Liberace never cried at the death of his mother but wept “buckets” when his poodle dog died.
While Liberace spent most of his time in Las Vegas, he stayed at his house in Palm Springs during the 1980s, where he died in 1987. The house was across the street from a parish church, Our Lady of Solitude, which is in the San Bernardino diocese.

Jerry Weintraub in photo from the Los Angeles Times

      The diocese, headed by Bishop Gerald Barnes, and under the legal advice of attorney, Wilfred Lemann, reportedly approved and facilitated a deal with Weintraub or HBO to allow Our Lady of Solitude to be used as a movie set for filming the gay-themed movie about Liberace. The Hollywood internet news site, TMZ, reported that Zsa Zsa Gabor signed a deal with Weintraub so that her house could be used, and Gabor received “about $70,000.”
Neither Bishop Barnes nor his attorney Lemann have disclosed what amount the diocese received for use of Our Lady of Solitude for two days of filming on site.
However, John Andrews, the spokesman for the diocese, stated in a September 11 phone interview that “the parish (of Our Lady of Solitude) was paid money” and that this decision was approved by the diocese. When asked if anyone in the diocese, including the bishop, was aware of the content of
this movie, Andrews replied, “Yes.” Andrews went on to say that they chose to read only the script pages involving the funeral scene.
On August 20, Soderberg’s film crew rolled an empty casket into Our Lady of Solitude and placed fake flowers by the altar. The casket served as a prop for the final scenes of the movie, scenes depicting a Requiem Mass for Liberace.
According to the Palm Springs Desert Sun and other news sources,  Liberace’s body was never brought into Our Lady of Solitude church nor into any Catholic church and that there never was a Requiem Mass in Our Lady of Solitude with Liberace’s body/casket present.

According to news sources, when Liberace died at his Palm Springs house on February 4, 1987, his body was taken to Forest Lawn Mortuary in Hollywood where it was embalmed. However, the day after his death, someone contacted the Riverside County coroner to raise suspicions and Liberace’s body was brought back for autopsy. On the same day (February 6) Liberace’s body lay in the coroner’s office, a prayer and hymn memorial service was underway at Our Lady of Solitude. Shortly thereafter, the coroner held a major news conference to disclose that Liberace died from pneumonia as a complication of AIDS. The coroner released the body back to Forest Lawn for burial in Hollywood.
In his book, Scott Thorson mentioned a “commemorative service held in Palm Springs two days after he died.” That would have been the prayer service at Our Lady of Solitude on Friday February 6. Thorson refers to a “gloomy chapel” service on February 7 (a Saturday), apparently at Forest Lawn in Hollywood. It was at this location that Thorson was shunned by Liberace’s family, not at Our Lady of Solitude.
Several local Catholics in Palm Springs said they had no recollection of Liberace ever being a member of Our Lady of Solitude or ever even attending Mass there. Some parishioners did remember that Liberace held adult costume parties at his house across the street from the church, especially at Halloween.

     The Liberace HBO movie is not the first time that the San Bernardino diocese has been involved with homosexual events. In 2003 Bishop Barnes hosted the convention of the National Association of Catholic Diocesan Lesbian and Gay Ministries at the Palm Springs Hilton where he celebrated Mass for the group. (In 2012 the association, under the new name Catholic Association for Lesbian and Gay Ministry,  refused to sign an oath of personal integrity as faithful Catholics, requested by their Oakland bishop, Bishop Salvatore Cordileone, presently of San Francisco.)
     In 1987 Father Paul Shanley and his gay partner, Father Jack White, bought a property in the Warm Sands (gay) district of Palm Springs and operated it as gay men’s resort called the Cabana Club. The now infamous Father Shanley, who had come from the Boston archdiocese, was welcomed into the San Bernadino diocese in 1990 and celebrated Mass occasionally at Our Lady of Solitude when Father William Erstad was pastor. Shanley was eventually convicted and imprisoned for oral and anal rape of a six-year-old boy. Shanley was a founding member of the North American Man Boy Love Association which promotes sex between adult men and little boys.
      Another priest who made headlines for the diocese of San Bernardino was Monsignor Peter Covas, a financial director of the diocese. Not only had Covas given $225,000 of church money to federal convict Frank Nicoletti as an “investment,” but he had bought a prominent gay men’s resort, the Palm Canyon Inn in Palm Springs under the alias of “Peter Palmer.”
      Covas was twice arrested in the 1980s for public sexual misconduct. In one case, a police officer observed Covas masturbating in a porn shop video booth. The Riverside Press Enterprise reported that the diocese turned over to the police an allegation from the diocese that Covas had an intimate sexual relationship with a 14-year-old boy. When Covas died in 2004, Bishop Barnes gave him a celebratory Mass of Resurrection at Our Lady of the Rosary Cathedral where fourth degree Knights of Columbus in full regalia, including swords, flanked Covas’s casket. The eulogist, Monsignor John Ryan lauded Covas as once “the face of the Catholic Church…”
Behind the Candelabra is scheduled for release in January 2013. Michael Douglas portrays Liberace and Matt Damon is Thorson. Presumably, the San Bernardino diocese will be acknowledged in the film credits.

Murph the Surf and The Eagle Diamond

1964. The heist of the century. Musician, author, artist, con man, one time east coast surfing champion, Jack Roland “Murph the Surf” Murphy (pictured above) and two accomplices hit the American Museum of Natural History in NYC and stole the JP Morgan Collection of Precious Gems. Among the stones taken were the 563 carat Star of India and the "sunny colored" 16.25 carat Eagle Diamond from Eagle, Wisconsin. (When it was found in a glacial deposit in Waukesha County in 1876, it was the largest diamond yet found in the United States.)Within 48 hours of the heist, Murphy and his partners - apprehended while celebrating their success at a tavern - were behind bars. The Star of India was recovered. The Eagle Diamond was never seen again.

The Eagle Diamond (above) was the first documented diamond discovery in Wisconsin. In the summer of 1876, Charles Wood was digging a well through glacial drift in southwestern Waukesha County. “The digging had passed through 10 to 15 m of clay, and then through loose gravel, when a two meter layer of hard yellow material was struck. While penetrating this stratum, a hard stone of unknown identity was struck.” A few years later Wood’s wife, Clarissa, took the rock to a jeweler in Milwaukee named Samuel Boynton.  Boynton initially identified it as topaz and paid Clarissa Wood $1.00 for the stone. Shortly thereafter, the stone was correctly re-identified by Boynton as a diamond. Clarissa offered to buy it back for $1.50. Boynton refused the offer and Mr. and Mrs. Wood sued him. The couple quite literally did not have any ground to stand on as they did not own (they rented) the land they were digging through at the time of the stone's discovery. The case eventually landed in the State Supreme Court in favor of Boynton. The stone, now valued at $700 was sold to Tiffany’s for $850. Tiffany’s sold it to almost richest man in the world J. P. Morgan, who eventually donated it to the Museum of Natural History.
After the heist, Murph the Surf became a minor celebrity. He was America's "cool thief" and the press loved him. He would soon add "convicted murderer" to his resume, and, like many near genius ego-driven cons who bottom out, he found God and became a Christian Preacher. Murphy always needed to have some kind of project going. Cool shades, Murph.

Most of the diamonds that occur in the Great Lakes region have been found in glacial deposits (moraines) in southeastern Wisconsin.  The Teresa Diamond, the largest of the diamonds found in Wisconsin, was disovered in 1888 near Kohlsville on or near the Green Lake Moraine.  The stone weighed 21.5 carats and is currently the fifth largest diamond found in the United States. It has since been cut into 10 pieces. The Eagle Diamond may have met the same fate in some nefarious back room and, yes, there are still diamonds and precious gems to be found in the rolling hills of the Kettle Moraine. 

HBO's LIBERACE

First glimpse of HBO's upcoming Liberace biopic. The (arguably)greatest star of the 20th century is portrayed by Michael Douglas. Matt Damon is his youthful lover, Scott Thorson. Here's the official press release, I wonder who wrote this...
Before Elvis, before Elton John, Madonna and Lady Gaga, there was Liberace: virtuoso pianist, outrageous entertainer and flamboyant star of stage and television. A name synonymous with showmanship, extravagance and candelabras, he was a world renowned performer with a flair that endeared him to his audiences and created a loyal fan base spanning his 40-year career. Liberace lived lavishly and embraced a lifestyle of excess both on and off stage. In summer 1977, handsome young stranger Scott Thorson walked into his dressing room and, despite their age difference and seemingly different worlds, the two embarked on a secretive five-year love affair. BEHIND THE CANDELABRA takes a behind-the-scenes look at their tempestuous relationship — from their first meeting backstage at the Las Vegas Hilton to their bitter and public break-up.

Wisconsin, the Enemy State

On this date in history the United States congress voted to denounce Robert La Follette and 9 other Wisconsin congressmen for opposing American entry into World War I. La Follette opposed a violent tide of war fever that swept the nation and Wisconsin was branded an enemy state. The war was pointless, about absolutely nothing other than senseless slaughter, and, for the most part, our people could see that with a rare clarity. How ironic that our Red Arrow Division had to put a fork into the entire damned enterprise by cracking the Siegfried line wide open. Once again, like Russ Feingold did when we entered the equally pointless Iraq War, Wisconsin stood on the side of sanity. The US congress wasn't through with the Badger state. Prohibition, an all out attack on our beer culture in the form of the 18th amendment, was just around the corner for this country. Both WW I and prohibition were disasters of a magnitude that would touch later generations in the form of WWII and the birth of wide scale organized crime. May we always be doubters,
independent and forward thinking.



The excerpt below is courtesy our wonderful State Historical Society and it's website.

 The move to denounce Sen. Robert LaFollette and the nine Wisconsin congressmen who refused to support World War I failed in the State Assembly, by a vote of 76-15. Calling LaFollette "disloyal," the amendment's originator, Democrat John F. Donnelly, insisted that LaFollette's position did not reflect "the sentiment of the people of Wisconsin. We should not lack the courage to condemn his actions." Reflecting the majority opinion, Assemblyman Charles F. Hart retorted that "The Wisconsin State Legislature went on record by passing a resolution telling the President that the people of this state did not want war. Now we are condemning them for doing that which we asked them to do."

WISCONSIN GIRL GUILLOTINED BY HITLER

Here's a favorite post of mine from a few years back. I've updated it and posted a new picture. It shows Mildred Fish Harnack and her husband, Arvid..

Berlin, 1942. Milwaukee born UW grad Mildred Fish-Harnack led a double life. She and her husband Arvid Harnack, a German national who she met while attending the University of Wisconsin, were respected academics at Berlin University. They also led The Red Orchestra, an anti-Hitler resistance group that included Greta Lork Kuckhoff, a UW grad student from Germany who had met Mildred and Arvid in Madison during the 1920s.
In early 1942, the Red Orchestra was rounded up and put on trial. Arvid Harnack was sentenced to death and Mildred was sentenced to six years in prison. The defense argued well in her favor, convincing the German judges that because of her job at the University translating great German works into English, she was an asset to the German cause. The decision angered a Fish/Harnac obsessed Hitler. He now took a personal interest in her case.
Arvid Harnack and many other members of the Red Orchestra were quickly hung with a short rope, a technique meant to prolong the agony of the victims. For Mildred, there was to be a retrial. On Jan. 16, 1942, she was sentenced to death and transferred to Prison. Five months of interrogation left her broken, unable to stand upright. On February 16, 1943, she was led into a courtyard and inside a red brick building that housed a guillotine.
She would be the only American woman to be executed on direct orders from Hitler.
In a cemetery in the Zehlendorf neighborhood of Berlin is Arvid and Mildred's headstone. "It was only by luck that Mildred was buried there. After execution, her headless body was put in a wooden crate and sent to an anatomical institute for dissection. But, as it turned out, a professor that Mildred knew recognized her remains and secretly cremated her. He kept her ashes in an urn and, after the war, returned them to the Harnack family."
On the night before their trial, Arvid wrote a farewell letter to Mildred, he wrote of Wisconsin.
"Do you remember picnic point, when we became engaged? Before that our first serious conversation in the restaurant on State Street? That conversation became my guiding star, and has remained so. You are in my heart. You shall be in there forever. My greatest wish is for you to be happy when you think of me. I am when I think of you."
Lovely.
On Wisconsin.

Marques Bovre 1962 -2013

I recently learned that songwriter/musician, Marques Bovre, passed away after a two year battle with brain cancer. Marques lead the great Madison-based band Marques Bovre and the Evil Twins. Although the band’s popularity peaked in the early 90’s, they continued off and on to the end of that decade and in 2012 re-united for a memorable celebration of Marques' 50^th birthday at the High Noon Saloon in Madison. Tonight, I’m thinking about him and I thought I’d share some memories.

Smart Studios, Madison…sometime in the early 90’s. I’m playing pedal steel on a remarkable composition Marques has written for the Evil Twins latest album - Ghost Stories from Lonesome County. The track is called called Sleepytown.  I can still picture Marques at that session. He is seated at the recording consul, next to album producer Doug Erickson (Doug is a singer/songwriter/producer and a member the band, Garbage) and I’m behind both of them seated at my pedal steel. We are all only about 4 feet apart in the 1^st floor control room. Marques has a big smile on face and we are conversing about both of us  growing up in small towns in Dane County (while I run through the song). He is truly enjoying this part of the process. So informal, so easy (it’s always easy when the band is good).  We are not quite done laying down the track and his mind is already on the next song, one called Drunk and Disgusting. “Grab your accordion and play like an old drunk Norwegian farmer on a Saturday night.”  Pause. I answer, “Am I a Norwegian farmer from Deerfield, Edgerton …..or Stoughton?”  He replies quickly, “Ahh, the golden triangle. Let’s go with Utica.”  Brilliant answer. He always had a brilliant answer to any important questions.  It would shortly result in many long conversations and even longer phone calls (at the time he lived in Stoughton and then Cottage Grove) filled with esoteric conversation on every subject imaginable during that decade.  It was a fun time and the peak of Marques and his band’s popularity as a live act. The boys let me play with them at Summerfest that summer(of the recording) and, for awhile, it seemed like the band would break out of Madison (where they were huge and very much loved) and onto the national scene. I lost touch with Marques for awhile in the early 2000's and last saw him at the Wisconsin Film Festival in 2007. By then, the osteoarthritis that had plagued him for most of his life had taken an enormous toll on his body. He never complained of the pain or difficulty it caused and he was as wry, observant and serene as ever. He was a devoted Christian who found it very funny that I couldn’t stand Christians. I never told him that he was one of only three real authentic Christians I’ve ever met in my life – the others being a Jesuit in the Philippines and a filmmaker in Oregon, all nonjudgemental and with great senses of humor. I’ve kept a quote that Marques enjoyed (from one of our 90’s phone calls). It’s from Thomas Merton and I think it describes the way Marques approached his faith. “Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. That is not our business and, in fact, it is nobody's business. What we are asked to do is to love, and this love itself will render both ourselves and our neighbors worthy.” Marques walked the walk. 

PS  Marques was a big, big Packer fan. Amen.

   

To sample both Sleepytown and Drunk and Disgusting or buy the album…..click here.

In honor of Marques, his family is asking that people make a donation to Haiti Allies (www.haitiallies.org) …..It’s an excellent cause and I urge you to give. I did. Don't let me down you cheap bastards!

Killer of Bin Laden offered a job DRIVING A BEER TRUCK IN MILWAUKEE.......Awesome!

The killer of Bin Laden is pissed off. Our government is historically famous for not keeping promises and forgetting about it's veterans. In an interview with ESQUIRE MAGAZINE, our highly trained former special forces vet tells about being offered a job "driving a beer truck in Milwaukee". This of course begs many questions, the most obvious of which I'm not going to mention. The bad news is that this guy appears to be screwed. The good news is that Milwaukee is making highly trained, special service world class beer again.
Here's the link to the man who shot Bin Laden

THE WISCONSIN WILDERS...All Together

There they are. Two celebrated authors and an actor from Milwaukee. It's rather odd that the three most famous Wilder's in the world are from Wisconsin. They certainly aren't related - and Wilder, not a common Wisconsin name and certainly not in the league of Koepke, Skaar, Lynngas, Koolz, Dembrowski, Majiewski, Vanevenhoven or even Guldebransen, is usually of older Yankee orgin. Left to right , they are Gene Wilder, 70's movie star pictured in his most famous role (he designed his own costume) as Willy Wonka. In the middle is Pepin, Wisconsin native Laura Ingalls Wilder, author of The Little House on the Prairie, and finally - Thornton Wilder, the hopelessly serious intellectual who became a brilliant author and playwrite. His Pulitzer Prize winning 1927 book, The Bridge of San Luis Rey was a brand new way to write a novel (The latest acknowledged imitation of Wilder's innovative writing style is the 2004 novel, Cloud Atlas) and every high school on this planet has performed his play, Our Town........at least once.  Wilder gave fellow Wisconsin native, Orson Welles, a job in the theater when he needed it most. He also gave the young genius this bit of storyplay, as recounted in January 13 edition of  The Independent. (The lesson is: If you're going to steal, steal from a Badger.)

 There's a famous scene in Citizen Kane where Orson Welles chronicles the disintegration of a sixteen year marriage in two minutes of screen time through a montage of increasingly chilly breakfast confrontations.
It was only after he had created the sequence that Welles realised that the idea was “stolen from The Long Christmas Dinner by Thornton Wilder”.  The latter piece –  in which four generations of the Bayard family take their turn at the festive board in a speeded-up succession that compresses ninety years into thirty minutes – is now presented with another early one-act Wilder play, also published 1931, The Happy Journey to Trenton and Camden, in this theatrically fascinating, if somewhat slight-seeming, double-bill directed by Tim Sullivan for Savior Company. 
Wilder was that comparatively rare bird – a man intent on deploying newfangled and subversive theatrical methods to communicate not an ideology of alienation but old-fashioned democratic sentiment and a fortifying resistance to despair.  Part of the interest here lies in watching Wilder experiment with techniques he developed in the major works.  The temporal foreshortening in The Long Christmas Dinner anticipates the dramatist's games with time in The Skin Of Our Teeth (1942), his comic-strip history of mankind.  With its resident Stage Manager who orchestrates and participates in the proceedings, The Happy Journey looks forward to Our Town (1938). 
Sullivan's characterful cast prove attractively equal to the challenges posed by plays that stipulate a bare stage and minimal props.  Registering every lurch and jolt of the car trip from New Jersey in their body language, the actors portraying the archetypal Kirby family in Happy Journey beautifully convey the folksy charm, humour and sharp poignancy of a piece which celebrates how people survive grief and loss through force of habit and attending to life's practicalities.
Stephanie Beattie is deeply affecting as Ma, the gabby, moralising (and brave) incarnation of this spirit.  The eloquently paced Long Christmas Dinner offers a time-lapse look at successive phases of the Bayard family from a period when the oldest member can recall Indians through the First World War and its casualties to an age of youthful rebellion.  This endless Yuletide ritual has both elements of farce and an achingly bleak poetry of ironic repetition with refrains such as “only the passing of time can help in these things”.  You can see why the play moved Orson Welles to unconscious theft.

The Former Packer Cheerleader's Cyberbully Response,

This girl is beautiful, intelligent and classy which is a lot more than I can say for many fans of either team. I hate Packer/Bear fan BS. In fact, at the moment, I don't really give a flying fuck about either team or professional football. (That being said, I can still out trivia and remember more key and not so key Packer moments than any fan out there.) AND...If I see another pro football prayer circle....

Fictional Characters from Wisconsin #5 - Christopher Walken as Duane from ANNIE HALL

Annie Hall is a fictional girl from Chippewa Falls Wisconsin - birthplace of the Cray supercomputer (the machines featured in the novel Jurassic Park) and home of Leinenkugel Beer. I prefer to focus on her brother, Duane, played by Christopher Walken.
Fictional characters abound in the former lumber railroad center.  Chippewa Falls is the birthplace and hometown of Jack Dawson in TITANIC, Dr. Jennifer Keller of STARGATE ATLANTIS, and Dorothy McGuire's character in TILL THE END OF TIME.

The Winter Dance Party from Hell...The Last Days of Buddy Holly

Above is a photo taken of Buddy at the Riverside Ballroom in Green Bay. He's probably wondering if his drummers frostbitten feet (drummer Carl Bunch was at a nearby hospital) will be amputated. A brutal upper midwest tour through a snowbound, subzero landscape in an unheated relic of a tour bus would lead to his doomed decision to fly out of Cedar Lake, Iowa in a chartered plane. Here's a very nicely written (By Pamela Huey) account of the ill fated winter dance party tour - a tour that was, like the Edmund Fitzgerald, launched in Milwaukee.  Buddy, Waylon Jennings, -37 temperatures, frostbitten limbs, 10 foot drifts, slept in clothes, neighbor states.... What more do you want? This article is from StarTribune.com in Minnesota.

The Tour From Hell
by Pamela Huey

The rickety old bus pulled out of the Duluth Armory late on Saturday, Jan. 31, 1959, and headed across St. Louis Bay into the frigid Wisconsin night. On board were some exhausted, stinky rock 'n' rollers and their harried manager. The Winter Dance Party tour had just finished its ninth gig in as many days and was headed east for Appleton and Green Bay, for shows 10 and 11 on Sunday.
But as the temperature plunged to around 30 below and the wind howled, fate intervened. The southbound bus creaked to a stop as it struggled up an incline on Hwy. 51 about 10 miles south of Hurley. Buddy Holly, the Big Bopper, Ritchie Valens, Waylon Jennings, Dion and the others were stranded on a remote highway in the northern Wisconsin forest. They huddled under blankets and burned newspapers to try to stay warm. Buddy's drummer was nursing painful frostbitten feet. It was the night the music almost died.
As Holly fans from around the world converge on Iowa's Surf Ballroom to remember his death in a plane crash 50 years ago and celebrate his music, the little-known story of the Wisconsin bus breakdown and the rest of the grueling tour is worth telling to understand why Holly chartered the airplane at Mason City. Holly had reluctantly signed onto the midwinter Midwest tour because he needed the money. But after 11 days of touring, he was tired -- tired of the endless miles on frozen buses, tired of performing in dirty clothes, tired of bickering with his manager in Clovis, N.M., and tired of sleeping sitting up on hard seats. By all accounts, the rockers gave a rousing performance in Clear Lake on Feb. 2, 1959. But rather than get on that cold bus again to travel 365 miles to Moorhead, Holly, J.P. Richardson (the Big Bopper) and Valens got on a single-engine Beechcraft Bonanza that crashed into a cornfield in a snowstorm just after takeoff. All three and pilot Roger Peterson were killed.
The story of "The Day the Music Died" is legend -- made more famous by Don McLean's '70s song "American Pie." Not so well known is what some call the "Tour from Hell."

Brutally cold
The midwinter tour was particularly difficult for Texans Holly and his reconstituted Crickets, and for Valens, a Southern California boy who hadn't packed a winter coat.
"It was so cold on the bus that we'd have to wear all our clothes, coats and everything. ... I couldn't believe how cold it was," wrote Waylon Jennings, who played bass for Holly on the tour. The original Crickets were back in Texas.
General Artists Corp. had organized the tour with no thought to geographic sanity.
"They didn't care," says Holly historian Bill Griggs. "It was like they threw darts at a map. . ... The tour from hell -- that's what they named it -- and it's not a bad name."
Griggs, who long ago moved to Holly's home town of Lubbock, Texas, from Connecticut, estimates they had used five different buses before driving into Clear Lake -- "reconditioned school buses, not good enough for school kids."
The tour started in Milwaukee on Friday, Jan. 23, 1959. It then zig-zagged during the next 11 days from Wisconsin to Minnesota to Wisconsin to Minnesota to Iowa to Minnesota to Wisconsin to Iowa to Minnesota.
There were no roadies to help set up and pack up, and only icy two-lane highways to get from town to town.
On Saturday, Jan. 31, the tour made its second-longest haul -- 368 miles from Fort Dodge, Iowa, to Duluth. Bob Dylan, then a young high schooler from Hibbing named Robert Zimmerman, has told the story of making eye contact with Holly.
"He was great. He was incredible. I mean, I'll never forget the image of seeing Buddy Holly up on the bandstand," Dylan told the Rolling Stone in 1984.
The Duluth show ran until about 11 p.m. The balky bus had been kept in the Armory basement to stay warm. Tour members packed up and headed into the brutally cold Wisconsin night.
Tommy Allsup, the Crickets' lead guitarist who will be in Clear Lake at the big 50th anniversary bash on Feb. 2, has vivid memories of that next unscheduled stop on Hwy. 51. "We had started up this incline, it was snowing real bad, and the bus just started going slower and slower, and the lights got dimmer and dimmer, and all of a sudden the bus stopped," Allsup recalls.
"The driver said, 'The bus is frozen,' ... It was so cold, and we were just sitting there right in the middle of the road. Everybody started thinking we were about to freeze to death."
Dion's Belmonts started lighting newspapers to generate warmth. Holly's drummer Carl Bunch was in pain and having difficulty moving his legs. Allsup looked at his feet; they had turned brown. At that moment, they saw headlights in the distance. "It seemed like it took forever to get to us."
A sheriff's deputy, who had been alerted by a passing trucker, sized up the dire situation and got four cars to take the musicians to Hurley. He also got Bunch to the hospital in nearby Ironwood, Mich., where the drummer would learn two days later about the plane crash.
The Iron County Miner carried a short item on the rescue -- published three days after the crash -- calling the stranded entourage an orchestra. "The men were lightly dressed and suffered from extreme cold of 35 below zero that morning with no heat in the bus while they waited for someone to come along."
There are few people in Hurley still alive who remember that night. One is Gene Calvetti, now 85, who towed the bus to his dad's garage. He recalls arriving at the scene to find the guys "complaining about the cold and scared of bears." He also remembers that the bus engine "was shot."
The singers ended up at the Club Carnival in Hurley to get something to eat. Some went to a hotel in Ironwood to get a short night's rest. The next day, they headed to Green Bay by train and Greyhound bus; the Appleton show was canceled (damn!!!).
Monday, Feb. 2 was supposed to be an off-day. But at the last minute, tour organizers booked Clear Lake. So it was back on the bus for the 355-mile trip.
"We tried to hang our wrinkled suits in the aisle, and after a while, it got kind of ripe in there. We smelled like goats," Jennings wrote.
Allsup puts it another way: "We were running out of white shirts and underwear."
But the awful conditions also sparked camaraderie, story telling and lots of jamming.
Dion described in his autobiography how he and Holly huddled under blankets.
"Through the dark hours while we waited for something to happen, we would tell each other stories. Him, about Lubbock. Me, about the Bronx. I could always get a laugh out of him -- soft and low like his drawl ..."
John Mueller, who plays Buddy Holly in a traveling road show called "Winter Dance Party," has rare insight into what the '50s performers endured. In 1999, Mueller and the other musicians tried to replicate '59 tour. It was the 40th anniversary of the plane crash, and he wanted to honor the '59 tour by going back to the original cities and original venues. "By the time we got to Clear Lake, I had lost my voice, I had lost about 10 to 15 pounds, I was just physically exhausted, as was everybody in the group. The grueling nature of the tour, following the exact geographic routing, it really hit me in the head why they chartered the plane," said Mueller, whose group traveled in warm, comfortable minivans.
Griggs, who has dedicated his life to Holly's music and story, thinks the Wisconsin bus breakdown was the last straw.
"Buddy had his mind made up then. He thought, 'I don't want to go another 400 miles on this bus.' "
As many a Holly aficionado knows, Allsup and Jennings were supposed to be on the plane. But they gave up their seats to Valens and the Bopper, who was sick. Allsup lost out to Valens in a last-minute coin toss. When Buddy learned that Waylon's seat had gone to the Bopper, he told his bass player with a grin, "Well, I hope your damned bus freezes up again."
"Well, I hope your ol' plane crashes," responded Jennings, who was haunted for years by that exchange. Holly headed for the plane, and the bus headed for Moorhead.
Holly buffs also know that 15-year-old Robert Velline of Fargo, and his band -- named at the last minute the Shadows -- filled in at the Moorhead Armory show the next night. Velline became Bobby Vee, who now lives near St. Cloud. At 65, he is still touring the country and once again is part of this year's Clear Lake show.
"I shamelessly do a tribute to Holly in just about every show that I do. He was my Elvis, as much as I loved Elvis, Buddy was the guy who spoke to me."

Thanks to Guy Weber and Pete Anderson.

The Songwriter, Joseph Philbrick Webster

Elkhorn, Wisconsin resident and songwriter, Joseph Philbrick Webster wrote what can only be described as three of the the biggest hits (I should say "monster hits") in the eternal American songbook. "In the Sweet By and By" and "I'll Twine mid the Ringlets", the song that would later be known as "The Wildwood Flower", are among many he published out of his Elkhorn home in the years during and just after the Civil War. Sanford Fillmore Bennett was a Poet and a veteran of the 40th Wisconsin volunteers when he met Webster. He and other young writers and intellectuals were a part of the great composer's salon. At the time, everyone was aware of Joseph Philbrick Webster.  He had written "Lorena", the most beloved song of the era and the defining song of the Civil War on both sides of the conflict. Soon, the two men would collaborate.  Below, Bennett describes the moody musician and how the writing of the lyrics for "In the Sweet By and By" came about.
"Mr. Webster, like many musicians, was of an exceedingly nervous and sensitive nature, and subject to periods of depression, in which he looked upon the dark side of all things in life. I had learned his peculiarities so well that on meeting him I could tell at a glance if he was melancholy, and had found that I could rouse him up by giving him a new song to work on. He came into my place of business [in Elkhorn, Wisconsin], walked down to the stove, and turned his back on me without speaking. I was at my desk. Turning to him, I said, “Webster, what is the matter now?” “It’s no matter,” he replied, “it will be all right by and by.” The idea of the hymn came me like a flash of sunlight, and I replied, “The Sweet By and By! Why would not that make a good hymn?” “Maybe it would,” he said indifferently. Turning to my desk I penned the words of the hymn as fast as I could write. I handed the words to Webster. As he read his eyes kindled, and stepping to the desk he began writing the notes. Taking his violin, he played the melody and then jotted down the notes of the chorus. It was not over thirty minutes from the time I took my pen to write the words before two friends with Webster and myself were singing the hymn."
Webster died in 1875. He was 56 years old. Sanford Bennett became a physician and practiced in Elkhorn for many years. J P Websters home is now The Webster House, home of the Walworth County Historical Society and Museum. http://walcohistory.org/


Now, here's Johnny Cash, Tom Roush and Robin and Linda Williams

Downtown Appleton, 1962...from Shorpy

Downtown Appleton in 1962. From a favorite site, shorpy.com comes another great hi-res photo. Click on it, it's a very large and highly detailed kodachrome. Here's a link to the original posting...http://www.shorpy.com/node/14428?size=_original#caption

Elvis, Bringer of Peace...The night he broke up a fight in Madison

 (photo above and clipping courtesy of surroundedbyreality.com/Misc/Famous/Elvis.asp)
There is a historical marker that marks the spot in 1977 where Elvis Presley and entourage pulled into a local gas station to break up a fight between three people. Elvis was between bloating binges when he broke up the fight on the corner of East Washington and highway 51, and he was sporting bangs. Here's the details from The Wisconsin State Journal...

The following night,  I saw his show at the Dane County Coliseum. He rushed through songs, mumbled a lot and handed out scarves to screaming middle-aged ladies. He was going through the motions as fast as he could. It could just as well have been a middle of the road Elvis impersonator on stage that night, and we're talking about a time when there were maybe 2 or 3 Elvis impersonators in the entire nation (including Andy Kaufman).....and then...............and then.....Out of nowhere,  just when I thought he was going to end the show by rushing through standard bullshit kitsch like "You gave me a Mountain" or "My Elusive Dreams", or far worse, "The Wonder of You"... He pulls out the great 1961 Timi Yuro hit (and true r&b power ballad) "Hurt"...And he actually sings it. For real. No clowning, no scarves, no mumbling, no awkward asides, no rushing through the song. He gave it everything he had. He built the song to a powerful climax and closed in an extended operatic sustain. Magic. He really was the King. And then he was gone.

The Haunting of Michael Jackson

Ed: Here's an updated Wisconsinology favorite from a few years back. The upcoming HBO serial about Liberace has our staff restless with anticipation.
 Liberace's Ghost haunts a restaurant in Las Vegas called Carluccio's Tivoli Gardens. He should...he once owned it and he designed it's flamboyant interior. There have been continued sightings of Liberace, as well as strange moving shadows, sudden electrical surges and flying wine bottles. Doors in the ladies toliets continually lock and unlock themselves. And it's not the only place he haunts. Lee's ghost has a very busy travel schedule. The late superstar Michael Jackson claimed that he was in constant communication with Liberace. Said Michael,"I have my own secret room, with a moving wall and mirrors, and that's where I talk to Lee. His is the voice I hear in there. I feel his presence so very close to me. He's my guardian angel. He's even given me permission to record his theme song 'I'll Be seeing You'."
Liberace's life was filled with supernatural mystery. A Roman Catholic from the great eastern European melting pot that was Milwaukee, he was once was saved from an illness that brought him close to death by a mysterious nun whose identity still remains a mystery. "I was once so ill that the last rites were given. I started to give away all my money to my friends. Then, in the midst of this orgy of giving, a nun I'd never seen before came into my room, sat next to my bed and said softly... 'St Anthony has performed many miracles. Pray to him."
Liberace recovered quickly. "Doctors smiled, feeling their work had finally begun to take effect. I'm willing to believe that. But I also have to believe what the sister had said and what happened as a result of it."
Liberace tried to track down the nun's identity. No one who was at his house during the illness recalled seeing her entering or leaving his room. Was she an angel? (Was she St. Anthony in drag?).  Later, Liberace discovered that St Anthony was regarded as the 'doctor of the church' and was credited with many miracles.
Liberace also had healing powers. "Why, the other day, in the Hollywood Bowl two cripples arose and walked at my command. I said to them. 'If you really want to walk for me, you can!' So they did, I have never professed to be a faith healer but the incidents referred to actually happened."
Finally, here's a description of a ghostly encounter during a tour at Liberace's Mansion.
"I left the main tour and went by myself into the back part of the house, into the opulent bedroom. It was here, in a room that would put shame to high priced brothel, that I first felt it. It was a cold chill that seemed to grip my spine and slowly make its way to my scalp. I wasn’t alone in the room. Someone, or something I could not see was there with me. I walked backwards into the attached bathroom. A huge double shower and sunken tub filled much of the room. I saw something out of the corner of my eye, I quickly looked into a mirror. Reflected was a shadow on the wall. It moved quickly out of my vision. I had the impression it was a man. I froze, my head moving left and right trying to see if what ever it was would manifest itself before me. The air grew colder. I left the room as fast as I could. There was a presence here and it didn’t seem happy."
Nosy bastard. I'd be angry too.

I'm from Milwaukee.....Blatz ads blitz nation Pt. 1

In the late 40's and early 50's Blatz launched a series of magazine ads featuring some serious (and some not so serious) homegrown star power. Here they are, in no particular order and with room for more in a future post.

Hank Marino was the greatest professional bowler of the first half of the 20th century. He moved to Milwaukee to open a bowling alley in 1930 and immediately fell in the love with the city. At the time, the cream city was establishing itself as the world's bowling capital and Marino, winner of the world bowling title in 1938, became Milwaukee's #1 bowling ambassador.

 

Actress Pamela Britton played many roles during her Broadway and Hollywood career. She is probably best remembered as Mrs. Brown, the nosy neighbor, in the 1960's sitcom MY FAVORITE MARTIAN.

Milwaukee's favorite son, Wladziu Valentino Liberace, flashes his trademark "You look tired....maybe you should lie down" look while hawking hometown product.

Vaudeville Kingpin, Broadway and Hollywood character actor, Charles Winninger, was born in Oshkosh and raised in Appleton. He was the child of an acting family and lived a gypsy life while growing up. Later, he did  live in Milwaukee. He is identified with the role of Captain Andy in fellow Appletonian Edna Ferber's long running musical, SHOWBOAT.

LaVerne Sunde was a Milwaukee fashion designer - well known in her time. Nice pose LaVerne!

Pat O’Brien was born and raised in Milwaukee and attended Marquette University.  Like so many Wisconsinites, he was a major Hollywood star during its' golden age (1931 -1949).  He’s best remembered for his portrayal of Knute Rockne in KNUTE ROCKNE, ALL AMERICAN. As a boy, he was an altar boy at Gesu Church. His good friend and fellow altar boy was Spencer Tracy.

Madison’s Uta Hagen was a 3 time Tony winner and a highly respected acting teacher.  Her enduring influence as a stage actor is immeasurable.

Fred MacMurray was raised in Madison and Beaver Dam by his Wisconsin born parents. Another great star from Hollywood’s golden age and beyond. He was at his best playing against type in Billy Wilder’s DOUBLE INDEMNITY(1944) and later, THE APARTMENT(1960). Most people, however, prefer him in the 60’s television series, MY THREE SONS and in Disney’s FLUBBER films.

Osa Johnson and her husband Martin were America’s premiere adventurers. The couple made films and wrote numerous books about far away exotic lands. Although not a Milwaukee native, she certainly spent a lot of time in the great city.

Milwaukee native Pat Harder played college ball at UW where he lead the legendary 1942 Badgers to an 8-1-1 record. After a WWII stint in the marines, he was selected second in the 1946 NFL draft. He went on to play for the Chicago Cardinals. “Harder became the first player in league history to score over 100 points in three consecutive years, which he did from 1947–1949, leading the league all three years. In 1947, the Cardinals won the NFL Championship.” Mr. Harder chooses to drink from a bottle.

Milwaukee’s Max Gene Nohl.  The world's deepest deep sea diver and Inventor of the aqualung, A legend. Type his name in the search bar.