Halloween Hits: "The Haunted House Blues" Bessie Smith (1924)

If there is one person who can rightfully claim to be the TRUE pioneer of rock n' roll, it's Bessie Smith.

She had attitude, she had an opinion and she had one hell of a voice. Her blues recordings are not only legendary, they've set the standard for all great blues singers to come. And her influence has spread far beyond the blues. Janis Joplin idolized her. So have contemporary stars like Melissa Etheridge, Bonnie Raitt and Susan Tedeschi. And for good reason - she opened the door for all strong, independent people in blues, pop, country R&B and rock music to come. And her influence reverberates to this day

But tragically, Bessie Smith never got the appreciation she really deserved in her life. In fact, in 1937 when she was in a horrific auto accident that claimed her life, her right arm was nearly severed and needed to be amputated. She died from blood loss. Bessie Smith's Wikipedia entry claims she did not die as a result of not being able to find a "coloured" hospital in time. I have a hard time believing that personally, as time was of the essence in such a life threatening injury. A closer "white" hospital could have saved her (and contrary to the "separate but equal" rule of Jim Crow, black hospitals were also grossly underfunded, under equipped and understaffed compared to the white hospitals - especially in the South.)

And to add to this injustice, she was buried in an unmarked grave and forgotten for decades until Janis Joplin personally bought a proper headstone.

Halloween III: Silver Shamrock Commercial

It's almost time kids.......

Early Colour Film

If you never knew colour film existed this long ago, there's a reason.

The earliest movie film stock was made of cellulose nitrate. There were not many other materials that were feasible for film making. However cellulose nitrate had a couple horrifying drawbacks.
 
First, it was extremely volatile. If not stored under carefully controlled conditions, the film would deteriorate rapidly

Fact: 90% of all film before the late '40s is lost forever due to deterioration of their nitrate film .

If the film lamp was too hot, the entire reel would instantly burst into flames or even explode. And the fire/heat would ignite other film reels in the projection booth. This caused several theater fires.

So the early theater industry came up with a horrifying solution. Should the film catch fire (as sometimes did), some theaters had an automatic shut down mechanisms that would not only close the projector portholes, but also in some cases actually locked the projection booth door, incinerating the projectionist alive or suffocating him (it was usually men who were projectionists. Female projectionists were very rare) using them as a sacrifice to save the theater. Until safety film became standard in the 1950s, it was truly a dangerous job and only for the highly skilled.  

I volunteered as a projectionist at an old theater (and luckily, this was modern safety film I worked with) and I remember seeing the old portholes and the shut down doors above them. It truly is creepy. And those booths were HOT!

Growing Up Skipper

 

She's two dolls in one.

You just moved her arm to make her an inch taller.....And her breasts grow.

Amazing what passed under the radar in the '70s...... 

Cooking With The Stars: Food Products Made By Pop Stars

Frank Sinatra was one of the world's greatest pop music singers. So when Ol' Blue Eyes decided to come out with his own line of spaghetti sauce, the world wildly licked it's chops. Sinatra has often told of his family's famous pasta sauce recipe (and with Sinatra's family hailing from Sicily, you KNEW it HAD to be absolutely DELICIOUS.) Unfortunately, the spaghetti sauce bearing his name was a commercially processed sauce not much better than the Classico or other mid-level sauces. While fairly good, it was a disappointment. And a look on the ingredients label indicated why. They had pretty much the same artificial and preservative ingredients as any other of these sauces.

 

The late Linda McCartney had a wonderful idea - make a line of convenient and healthy vegetarian food products that didn't taste like nuts and twigs, the biggest fear of any foodie. That's easier said than done. Because you have to remove things like meat and anything resembling flavour. And usually replace them with tofu and strange things like oats and mushrooms to give it some texture. Her line was available in America for a few years in the '90s, but was discontinued (I haven't seen it in years in most food co-ops). However, you can still find it in the UK. The Chili Non Carne was surprisingly good.

http://www.lindamccartneyfoods.co.uk/

Country singer Dwight Yoakam came out with a line of microwaveable snack foods called Take 'Ems. They also come in cheeseburgers and pork rib sandwich varieties and chicken fries and rings. I've tried some of them and I'm pretty impressed.

 http://www.bakersfieldbiscuits.com/products.html

Sammy Hagar's Cabo Wabo Tequila - I got a bottle of this a few Christmases ago. Pretty good stuff.

http://www.cabowabo.com/age-gate?url=/