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In the political world, doppelgangers seem to be more the norm than ever. Exhibit A:
SEPARATED at BIRTH - Politico's Mike Allen and Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)
Our men in Washington, indeed. For now: stop in for a look at news items outside the headlines, in the arts and sciences; foreign news that generates little notice in the US media and ....well, just plain whimsy.....
ART NOTES - an exhibit entitled New Work Miami 2010 - covering approximately 35 artists - is at Florida's Miami Art Museum through October 17th.
BOOK NOTES - a new biography of Gustav Mahler is sub-titled "How One Man and Ten Symphonies Changed the World".
WEDNESDAY's CHILD is a Minnesota office cat erroneously reported to authorities as a trapped cat.
EDUCATION NOTES - high school students working full-tilt to be accepted into selective universities are increasingly taking a gap year off after graduation so they can enter college refreshed, not exhausted.
CHEERS to a wonderful long weekend at our every-other-year family reunion that took place this year in Connecticut. No arguments, no petty jealousies or the like .... not a given at these type of events, and for which I'm grateful.
Hence, somewhat light posting this week - will return to normal next time around.
ALTHOUGH being the head of Nigeria's securities and Exchange commission has historically been an unenviable job, Arunma Oteh - a Harvard MBA - is comforted by the full support of President Goodluck Jonathan.
ART NOTES - the first British retrospective of the US painter Alice Neel is at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London through September 17th.
A RECENT CARTOON by Tom Tomorrow is entitled "Petraeus Speaks".
ART NOTES #2 - a possible undiscovered Caravaggio painting has been found in Rome, with researchers eager to determine its authenticity.
RITES of SUMMER - I know when summer begins: when that first sheet of paper comes out of the printer at work ... with the edges curled up. Then I know when summer is at its peak: when the first Zucchini dump of the season takes place.
THURSDAY's CHILD is Splat the Cat - a South Carolina kitteh who (possibly) was thrown off a bridge but now recovering nicely and will be up for adoption soon.
BOOK NOTES - a BBC essayist notes that South London's Dulwich College educated two seemingly disparate authors that he feels share many qualities: P.G. Wodehouse and .... Raymond Chandler.
TV NOTES - Entertainment Weekly examines "30 TV stars with two classic roles" although they omitted Buddy Ebsen and Bill Bixby.
SEPARATED at BIRTH - film star/director Jodie Foster and the new Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard.
......and finally, for a song of the week ............... having been away for a recent long weekend, there wasn't time to do a full musical profile. So what I did the last time this happened: was to take a classic song that needs little introduction - In My Room - and look at an unusual version (a 2007 trio version led by Bill Medley along with composer Brian Wilson and Phil Everly).
This time: it's the nearly fifty year-old song Stand By Me whose origins are a 1955 Gospel song by the Staples Singers. Ben E. King - photo left, and a member of the soul group The Drifters - adapted it for a secular audience, but was unable to interest the group's manager in it, in its present form. After leaving the Drifters in 1960, Ben E. King began recording as an Atlantic Records solo artist (although his first album release of singles did not occur until 1963). After recording songs like Spanish Harlem he had a little studio time left over one day. Fatefully, the legendary songwriting team of Jerry Lieber & Mike Stoller asked King if he had anything in reserve, with that extra time available. And when King sat down at the piano and sang them his rough version of this song .... well, they were glad they asked.
Lieber & Stoller went to work adapting it once again, adding a more contemporary sound plus a string session (and Mike Stoller utilized the bass line as the song's intro) - hence, the songwriter's credits read "King-Lieber-Stoller". It reached #4 in the US and #1 in Great Britain in its original release and when a film of the same name used Stand By Me as its theme song in 1986, a re-release made it up to #9. The rest is history: it was ranked #121 on the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time by Rolling Stone in 2004, and in 1999 the performing rights organization BMI declared it as the fourth most-performed song of the 20th century, with about 7 million performances.
Its appeal is almost universal - with noted cover versions by performers as diverse as: Otis Redding, Mickey Gilley, Seal, U2, Green Day, Ronnie Milsap, Lady Gaga and in TV commercials. It was also featured in Lieber & Stoller's Smokey Joe's Café Broadway musical. When Ben E. King was asked what cover versions he liked, he mentioned David Ruffin (of the Temptations), Prince Royce and Sean Kingston. He added, "the one that held up in my head the most was the John Lennon version (from 1975). He took it and made it as if it should have been his song as opposed to mine".
Yet there is one cover version that not many people are aware of .....
In 1963, an up-and-coming athlete from Kentucky named Cassius Clay (photo right) - yes, the future Muhammad Ali - recorded the album I Am the Greatest (a mainly spoken album) in which he did sing "Stand By Me". And below you can listen to it.
When the night has come
And the land is dark
And the moon is
the only light we'll see
I won't be afraid
No, I won't be afraid
Just as long
as you stand by me
If the sky that we look upon
Should tumble and fall
And the mountains
should crumble to the sea
I won't cry
No, I won't shed a tear
Just as long
as you stand by me
