SECTION FOURTEEN
EMAIL PAGE TWO
sm
COLUMN
SIXTY-EIGHT, FEBRUARY 1, 2002
(Copyright © 2002 Al Aronowitz)
PHONY EMAIL FROM AN ASSHOLE
Subject:
Undeliverable: Re: America Unite!
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 07:09:12 -0500
From: System Administrator <postmaster@aclu.org>
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
Your
message
To: Open
Minded
Subject: Re: America Unite!
Sent:
Thu, 20 Dec 2001 07:01:47 -0500
did
not reach the following recipient(s):
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Subject:
Re: America Unite!
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2001 07:01:47 -0500
From: al aronowitz <info@blacklistedjournalist.com>
To: Open Minded <openminded@aclu.org
ACLU:
SIRS:
Did
this e really come from you? What
cause are you talking about?
Open
Minded wrote:
The
People Begin To Speak Out
On
April 18, 1983 a martyr drove a van packed with explosives into the U.S. embassy
in Beirut. Unfortunately, 63 died in relation to the cause.
On
October 23, 1985, a martyr drove a truck packed with explosives, equivalent to
the power of 18,000 pounds of dynamite, into the lobby of the Marines Corps
headquarters in Beirut. Unfortunately 241 died in relation to the cause. Two
miles away, on that same morning, a martyr drove a truck packed with explosives
into a French barracks. Unfortunately 58 died in relation to the cause.
On
February 26, 1993 the World Trade Center was bombed by Eyad Ismoil. Eyad was
deprived of status as an Islamic martyr in that, against his will, he remains
detained.
On
August 7, 1998 a martyr devastated the US Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya.
Unfortunately, 214 died in relation to the cause. At about the same time another
martyr bombed the US embassy in Dar es Salaam, the capital of Tanzania.
On
October 12, 2000, a martyr bombed the USS Cole. The British embassy in Sanaa,
Yemens capital, was bombed the following day. Unfortunately, people died in
relation to the cause. On October 16, 2000, Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh
warned that these were deliberate events.
On
September 11, 2001 the World Trade Center was destroyed by Osama Bin Ladens
religious network, adding yet another vein of martyrs. Thousands died in
relation to the cause.
CONCLUSION
Those
of us educated by modern standards can see that the cause is to overcome
underprivileged status.
Intellectuals
recognize the above as mere symptoms of a much greater issue. Underprivileged
people did not commit these acts, but rather, they expressed themselves in ways
that plead for our support. Americas elite must now rally to help the masses in
their plight. By our sitting idle, the retaliatory voice of a few could hold
back the true strengths of our democracy.
LINK
http://forms.aclu.org/feedback/feedback.cfm
http://forms.aclu.org/feedback/feedback.cfm
##
The
asshole return email address was a phony!
* * *
FROM A GEORGE HARRISON FAN
Subject:
George Harrison
Date: Mon, 17 Dec 2001 14:02:33 -0800
From: <imemine@san.rr.com>
To: <Address:info@blacklistedjournalist.com>
Dear
Al,
Thank
you so much for sharing your many stories of your time spent with George
Harrison. George has always been a favorite person in my life, I'll miss him
tremendously.
I
look forward to any future memories with George you care to share. I also love
the photos of George taken by your son. If there is any chance in having prints
of these (would love to see more) at a reasonable price, please let me know.
Om
shanti om,
Karen
ANOTHER GEORGE HARRISON FAN
Subject:
Re: [AGALIST] COLUMN SXTY-SIX
Date: Tue, 18 Dec 2001 13:39:05 -0500
From: "Jonathan W. Lim" <jwlim@med.cornell.edu>
To: AGALIST-owner@yahoogroups.com
Dear
Al,
Loved
your George Harrison article. He
was always my favorite. Can't wait to read more.
Hope you're well. Happy
holidays and all.
Jonathan ##
* * *
THANKS FROM PIG
Subject:
Re: [AGALIST] COLUMN 67
Date: Sat, 29 Dec 2001 19:43:59 EST
From: PIGPROD@aol.com
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
Dear
Al,
Your
George columns were absolutely wonderful.
Thank
You so much for including my hastily-scribbled remembrances therein.
Tis
an honor, as always, to be included,
Gary. ##
* * *
RUFUS THOMAS IS DEAD AT 84
Subject:
Rufus Thomas dead at 84
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 2001 15:52:31 퍍
From:
"Jordan Green" <dickeee59@hotmail.com>
To: info@blacklistedjournalist.com
A
giant of American popular music has left us. Rufus Thomas career cut across the
middle of the 20th Century in Memphis, the funky mid-section of the country
from a start as a tap dancer in the vaudeville tent circuit in the 30s to
disco performer as a partner to Chaka Khan on the hit, Tell Me Something Good.
Thomas career made a critical encounter with rock and roll (his was the first
single issued by Sun Records), but he retained a bitter and critical stance
towards the music since the label sidelined black performers in favor of Elvis.
But his real impact would come later with the birth of Stax Records in 1960. His
1968 cut, Memphis Train, is seminal funk. Rufus Thomas is the no-nonsense cat
dressed in wrap-around shades and a pork pie hat taking care of business on the
cover of Peter Guralnick's classic music history, *Sweet Soul Music*. Rufus
Thomas. Singer. Dancer. DJ. Humanitarian. Critic. Scene-Maker. Raconteur. He
will be greatly missed. Heres the obituary from the Memphis Commercial Appeal:
Rufus
Thomas, Memphis music treasure, dies at 84
By
Bill Dries and Bill Ellis (Dec. 16)
The
world's oldest teenager died Saturday at the age of 84. Rufus Thomas was one of
the city's most influential and colorful entertainers, with a career that
spanned more than 70 years.
During
that time, he was never far from the pulse of the city's storied musical
heritage - whether as a pioneering disc jockey at WDIA in the late 1940s or
performing before a hometown crowd at the Memphis in May Beale Street Music
Festival just last year.
"W.C.
Handy wrote the blues a long time ago," the octogenarian and writer of the
classic song Walking the Dog told the crowd that night. "He passed them on
to me, and now I'm passing them on to you."
The
entertainer's son, Marvell Thomas, said his father died of apparent heart
failure around 3 a.m. Saturday at Saint Francis Hospital after being
hospitalized since Thanksgiving. He had undergone open-heart surgery in 1998.
"This
is the end of an era, and the world will miss him dearly," his son said.
Though
known for many novelty dance hits like Do the Funky Chicken, Mr. Thomas had a
diverse career that extended beyond his funny signature tunes and side-splitting
one-liners.
If
anyone could claim to be the guru of Memphis black music from blues and R&B
to soul and funk, Rufus Thomas could. He helped kick-start the city's two
seminal record labels - Sun and Stax - along the way.
"He
was one of the pioneers of Memphis music," said Jimmy Ogle, director of the
Rock 'N' Soul Museum, which features Mr. Thomas prominently.
"He
visited the museum quite a bit. He was quite an accessible person," Ogle
said. "The old footage of him at WDIA is really neat to see. It's still
fresh."
Mr.
Thomas was an entertainer with an authentic vaudeville pedigree. He claimed to
be the "funkiest man alive" and often wore disco-era short pants and
boots.
He
used his vaudeville roots not only to sing his hits but always involve his
audiences in the good time he was having on stage. Sun Records founder Sam
Phillips said in an interview last year that Mr. Thomas was a "consummate
showman."
While
the self-proclaimed "world's oldest teenager" taught audiences to
dance, he also taught young musicians how to entertain.
That
work ethic influenced those in the vanguard of the city's soul music scene of
the 1960s and 1970s. The musicians, many who worked with Mr. Thomas at the dawn
of their careers in the 1960s and '70s, didn't believe in tuning up on stage or
ignoring the audience. Like their mentor, they came to play and to entertain.
His
philosophy toward the music helped define the legendary status of the city's two
best-known record labels.
"It's
all deep bottom, all from feeling deep inside," he said. "You've got
to feel it."
At
WDIA-AM, Mr. Thomas spun blues records at an important time in the
popularization of black music with American youth. (He was honored in 1998 at
the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for those achievements.) Until recently, Mr.
Thomas even maintained a show every Saturday at WDIA.
Mr.
Thomas also emceed amateur talent contests on Beale Street in the 1940s and '50s
at the old Palace Theater, where he helped launch the careers of B. B. King,
Bobby 'Blue' Bland and others who competed for a prize of a few dollars.
King
fondly recalled decades later that the meager cash prize helped sustain his
sometimes battered musical ambitions when he first came to Memphis in the late
1940s.
In
1953, Mr. Thomas gave new label Sun its first big hit, Bear Cat " an answer
song to Big Mama Thornton's Hound Dog that was perhaps too close for comfort
since Sun was sued over the similarity.
Mr.
Thomas also was there at Satellite when it formed, giving it its first big hit,
the 1960 duet with daughter Carla Thomas called 'Cause I Love You. That song
sparked a distribution deal with Atlantic that soon gave the world the label
under its better-known name, Stax.
At
Stax, Mr. Thomas had some of the label's most memorable songs, a string of
novelty classics that included Walking the Dog, Do the Funky Chicken, Can Your
Monkey Do the Dog?, (Do the) Push and Pull, Breakdown and Do the Funky Penguin.
Many
artists, including the Rolling Stones and Aerosmith, have recorded his songs.
Until
an illness in November, he continued to perform and he never talked of
retirement.
"I
ain't old," he said just before his 60th birthday in 1976. "You don't
get old when you are doing what you love and enjoying every minute of it in the
process. Getting old is all in the mind."
More
than most, Mr. Thomas saw - and helped initiate - nearly a century of music from
his Memphis vantage point.
Born
in Cayce, Miss., in 1917, Mr. Thomas was raised in Memphis and began his career
as a vaudeville performer, tap dancing as a teen in the 1930s in the Rabbit Foot
Minstrels. With Robert 'Bones' Couch, Rufus and Bones became a popular local
comedy act.
Decades
later, Mr. Thomas could summon dozens of the routines that he began performing
for 50 cents a night in tents and at private homes without a sound system.
"You
really had to have some kind of voice and I could scream loud with any of
them," he would remember.
Mr.
Thomas used that voice not only to entertain, but as a guardian of the city's
musical heritage.
When
a group of Chicago musicians and promoters once claimed at a press conference in
Memphis that their city was the birthplace of the blues, Mr. Thomas firmly and
loudly contradicted them.
He
was also an outspoken advocate in behalf of some of the city's forgotten musical
figures and was critical of Sun Records founder Sam Phillips for the label's
shift to white performers that came with Phillips's discovery of Elvis Presley.
Innately Memphis, Mr. Thomas never hesitated to mention the harsh racial climate
that helped shape the Memphis sound - beloved around the world for its soul and
earthy feel.
In
his later years, Mr. Thomas appeared in virtually every documentary made about
any aspect of Memphis music. His realistic assessment of the city made him an
ambassador for the city.
Known
for energetic and witty live shows, Mr. Thomas performed at the 1996 Olympic
Games and played several times in Porretta, Italy, where he was a headliner at
its annual soul festival and where a park is named in his honor.
Locally,
a stretch of Hernando Street between Beale and Peabody Place is called Rufus
Thomas Boulevard. The section of street, with a marker honoring Mr. Thomas, runs
by the corner where the Palace Theater once stood.
When
city leaders set aside an "honorary" parking place on the street for
him, Mr. Thomas immediately made it more than honorary by parking his car there
whenever he was in the entertainment district.
An
80th birthday bash at the Orpheum in 1997 featured B. B. King, plus Stax peers
William Bell and J. Blackfoot.
Said
Memphis Mayor Willie Herenton at the event, "I can't talk about Rufus
locally. I must talk about him globally."
Mr.
Thomas also recorded for the Alligator label (1988's *That Woman Is Poison*),
and locally Ecko, (the Olympics set, Rufus Live!) and the 1999 High Stacks disc,
*Swing Out with Rufus Thomas.*
In
recent years Mr. Thomas's profile extended into film. He was featured in the
1989 Jim Jarmusch cult hit *Mystery Train*. He also had a part in the 1996 film
*A Family Thing*, which was filmed in Memphis and starred James Earl Jones and
Robert Duvall. Mr. Thomas is also in the Sun documentary *Good Rockin' Tonight*
that aired last month.
Mr.
Thomas also performed with Prince at the latter's invitation in 1997 at a New
Daisy Theater show.
Funeral
arrangements are pending. R.S. Lewis & Sons Funeral Home has charge.
The
family asks that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to The Rufus Thomas
Scholarship Fund, c/o The Community Foundation, 1900 Union Ave., Memphis, TN
38104.
In
addition to his son, Marvell, and his daughter, Carla, Mr. Thomas, the husband
of the late Lorene Thomas, leaves another daughter, Vaneese Thomas, of Pound
Ridge, N.Y. and a granddaughter.
http://www.gomemphis.com/mca/local_news/article/0,1426,MCA_437_910773,00.html ##
*
* *
CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX OF COLUMN SIXTY-EIGHT
CLICK HERE TO GET TO INDEX
OF COLUMNS
The
Blacklisted Journalist can be contacted at P.O.Box 964, Elizabeth, NJ 07208-0964
The Blacklisted Journalist's E-Mail Address:
info@blacklistedjournalist.com
THE BLACKLISTED JOURNALIST IS A SERVICE MARK OF AL ARONOWITZ