Coming to a big screen near you

Zero Mostel and Gene Wilder in The Producers

Movies released this month included:

March 8: The first of three Elvis movies of 1968 was foist upon an unsuspecting public. Stay Away, Joe was called a “comedy-drama western film with musical interludes set in modern times." Elvis' co-stars were Burgess Meredith and Joan Blondell. One commenter on the Internet Movie Database called it an unusually bad film. It was the 65th highest grossing film in the U.S. of the year.

March 18: The Producers, written and directed by Mel Brooks, starring Zero Mostel, and Gene Wilder. Producers Max Bialystock (Mostel) and Leo Bloom (Wilder) make a fortune by producing a sure-fire flop. Premiere voted this movie as one of "The 50 Greatest Comedies Of All Time" in 2006. Mel Brooks won an Oscar in 1969 for Best Writing, Story and Screenplay - Written Directly for the Screen. A musical based on the film hit the boards on April 19, 2001, for a very successful run on Broadway, and later across the nation and the world.

March 21: The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band was a Disney film that goes down in history as the setting for the first meeting of Kurt Russell (then age 16) and Goldie Hawn (then age 21), who both were in the film. They have been partners since 1983.

Cowboys and Hillbillies light up the Dome

Actors Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan starred
as Jed and Granny Clampett
in the 1960s comedy The Beverly Hillbillies

If you’re one of the lucky 70,000 or so “rodeo fans” who are holding tickets to see Hannah Montana this year at Reliant Stadium, or planning to see the other rodeo entertainment, such as Alan Jackson Thursday night, John Fogerty and perennial favorites Brooks and Dunn, to name just a few, you might be looking ahead to the excitement or longing for a quieter time. A look back at the 1968 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo shows how the focus of the rodeo has changed..

The show ran for 12 days - Feb 21 to March 3 - at the pre-Reliant Astrodome and featured as several TV stars as nightly entertainment.

Appearing the first three nights were Buddy Ebsen and Irene Ryan – Jed and Granny Clampett – of the Beverly Hillbillies, which was one of the most popular TV shows of time and was aired on KHOU-TV.

Michael Landon – Little Joe on Bonanza – and singer Marty Robbins were on stage for the next three nights. A big singing star, Robbins had recorded at least 15 No. 1 songs on the pop and country charts between 1955 and 1968.

Following them was 25-year-old Wayne Newton who was just getting his 40-year run as “Mr. Las Vegas” off and running. His two big hits, Danke Schoen and Red Roses for a Blue Lady carried him through the 60s.

Playing that other kind of music – western – Roy Rogers and Dale Evans made their first appearances in Houston's Astrodome on March 2 and 3 along with the Sons of the Pioneers. Worried that their music would not be heard properly over the Dome sound system, Rogers and pre-recorded their musical numbers which were played by tape while they lip-synced from the portable stage in the middle of the arena.

Restaurant owner James A. "Bill" Williams bought the Grand Champion Steer for $16,700. The Hereford steer was exhibited by Henry Musselman from Albany, Texas. Last year’s Grand Champion Steer sold for $300,000, just half of the record price of $600,001 set in 2002.

It’s hard for me to imaging what Ebsen, Ryan and Landon did to entertain the audience, but even with Newton and Robbins, I would imagine the Dome sounded like a church service compared with the high-energy shows of today. I wonder how many daughters dragged their parents out to see the hottest TV stars of the day.

Source: Houston's Rodeo History http://www.houstonhistory.com/rodeo/rodeo12.htm

Life as it was March 1, 1968

Georgia O'Keffe

Photo: John Loengard, David Lees

Catching up -- Here are some things that happened the first week of March 1968:

March 1 - NBC's unprecedented on-air announcement, Star Trek will return. Star Trek premiered on Sept. 8, 1966. The last show in the original series aired on June 3, 1969. Here's a clip from YouTube from Sept. 15, 1967.

March 1- Singers Johnny Cash, 36, and June Carter, 38, wed, less than a week after winning a Grammy award for their duet Jackson. Johnny left us on Sept. 12, 2003, almost four months after June died.

March 2- Worlds Ladies Figure Skating Champ in Geneva won by Peggy Fleming, about a month after winning the gold medal in the Grenoble Olympics.

March 4 - Joe Frazier TKOs Buster Mathis in 11 for heavyweight boxing title

March 4 - Martin Luther King Jr. announces plans for Poor People's Campaign (There will be more on MLK in the next couple of weeks.)

March 4 - Orbiting Geophysical Observatory 5 launched

Also, on March 4, my childhood friend and school chum Larry Reid turned 18. For some reason, I can still remember the birthdays of three longtime schoolmates, and every year about this time, my thoughts turn to this guy that I haven't seen since college. So, happy 58th birthday to you Larry.

Source: www.HistoryOrb.com

Bits and pieces leftover from February

• Feb. 1: Priscilla Presley gives birth to Elvis's only child, Lisa Marie, in Memphis, Tennessee.
• Feb. 18: A 22-year-old guitarist named David Gilmour joins Pink Floyd, soon replacing his childhood friend Syd Barrett, as Barrett’s mental condition deteriorates.
• Feb. 25: 430 Unification Church couples wed in Korea.
• Feb. 27: Frankie Lymon, former singer of the Teenagers, is found dead of a heroin overdose in Harlem at age 25. The Teenagers' biggest hit was Why Do Fools Fall in Love.
• Also in February: Peggy Fleming won the gold medal in figure skating, the only gold medal that the U.S. Olympic team won in the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, France. Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy won gold medals in all three alpine skiing events.

It was 40 years ago today that the Beatles took the Grammys away

Most years, I yawn when I see the list of nominees for the Grammy Awards. It always seems to me that the more I like a song or an album, the less likely it is to be honored. And in the past, some of the winners have really seemed like somebody’s idea of a cruel joke.

But that was definitely not the case 40 years ago Feb. 29 when the Beatle’s eighth album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, took honors as the Album of the Year at the 1968 Grammy Awards.

The Beatles had played their last live show, in San Francisco, on Aug. 29, 1966. About three months later, on Dec. 6, they started rolling the tape at Abbey Road Studios. Their masterpiece was complete on April 21, after some 700 hours in the studio. It was released on June 1 in the United Kingdom and the next day in the United States. (Click on album cover for a short video.)

In addition to Album of the Year, Sgt. Pepper’s also was honored for Best Album Cover, Graphic Arts; Best Contemporary Album; and Best Engineered Recording – Non-Classical.

Rolling Stone magazine said "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is the most important rock & roll album ever made, an unsurpassed adventure in concept, sound, songwriting, cover art and studio technology by the greatest rock & roll group of all time." Rolling Stone put it atop their 500 Greatest Albums of All Time list in 2003.

I recognize the greatness of Sgt. Pepper's, but I hardly ever listen to it. For pure listening pleasure, I'll take Revolver, Rubber Soul or the 2nd side of Abbey Road (cd cuts 7-17).

Founding father of "Jesus Music" dies

There are two songs that to me are the epitome of peace, love and understanding: Get Together by the Youngbloods and I Love You by People!. I seem to hear Get Together all the time -- it's on the radio regularly and it's one of my most listened songs on my computer. I Love You is so rare that I can barely remember hearing it on the radio, although it, too, is also on a medium computer rotation. I still just an old hippie peacenik at heart and both songs kind of speak right to my inner being.

Driving to work Tuesday, I was blown away to hear People! singing their one hit from 1968 on KPFT’s Sound Awake program. After the song ended, the disk jockey said that singer Larry Norman had died at his home in Oregon at age 60. Larry Norman’s brother Charles Norman announced Larry’s death on Sunday, Feb. 24, on Larry’s Web site.

People! was a psychedelic rock group from San Jose, Calif., that released three albums between 1968 and 1970. The title track of the first album, released in 1968, was cover of a Zombies B-side from a couple of years earlier. I Love You went Top 15 in the spring and summer of 1968.

Norman left People! after the first album to become one of the founding fathers of “Jesus Music” in the late '60s, His record Upon This Rock in late 1969, which, along with Mylon LeFevre’s solo debut, marked the beginnings of the genre. Norman’s Only Visiting this Planet was a high-water mark for Christian rock. Hen was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame in 2001.

Norman was born April 8, 1947, in Corpus Christi. His family moved to San Francisco when he was young,

In 1990, CCM magazine voted his Only Visiting This Planet as the greatest Christian album ever recorded. But Norman never gained widespread acceptance from the religious establishment, the Portland Oregonian reported in Norman's obituary.

"The churches weren't going to accept me looking like a street person with long hair and faded jeans," he said in an interview with CCM. "They did not like the music I was recording. And I had no desire to preach the gospel to the converted. I wanted to be out on the sidewalk preaching to the runaways and the druggies and the prostitutes."

Weren't You My Neighbor

On Feb. 19, 1968, National Educational Television began airing Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. (NET was replaced by PBS in 1970.) Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was produced by public broadcast station WQED in Pittsburgh. The last original Mister Rogers' Neighborhood aired in 2001, making it PBS' longest-running program ever. It ran for 998 episodes. Fred Rogers, a Presbyterian minister who became a cultural icon and kindly neighbor to generations of American children, died on Feb. 27, 2003 at the age 74.

I can't say that I saw Mr. Roger's Neighborhood much for it's first 12-15 years or so. Sometime in the early '80s, my oldest daughter got addicted to the show and refused to go to day care before the show ended. In the mid-1990s when the second set of children came around, I became quite a fan. There weren't a lot of surprises on the show. Mr. Rogers always came in singing the theme song, Won't You Be My Neighbor?, took of his jacket, put on a sweater and began the show. A video, a trip to the bakery or the music store, a chat with a special guest and sometimes a musical performance -- I can remember seeing Yo Yo Ma in one episode -- and then a trip to the Neighborhood of Make Believe and it was time to feed the fish and wrap things up. Most of episodes ended with Mr. Rogers singing the song It's Such a Good Feeling.