A hero outside of the ring as well: Deceased Artiste Muhammad Ali

So much has been said about Muhammad Ali as an athlete, an entertainer (for he surely was that), and as a civil rights icon. The guy was a hero in a bunch of ways, but one of those ways isn't talked about as much, because it made us all “uncomfortable” while it was going on. I'm referring to his dealing with Parkinson's, and the fact that he didn't shrink from the spotlight even after he admitted he had it. (He had been denying it for some time before that.)

His obits were accompanied by images of him as a champion boxer, a lot of them using the famous photo of him looming over Sonny Liston (which in and of itself was a victory but a cloudy one – read Nick Tosches' The Devil and Sonny Liston for more details). However, the most stirringly heroic image of his life for me wasn't when he was young, lean, clever, articulate, and “pretty” (the word he most often used in interviews to describe himself). It was when he lit the Olympic torch in 1996.

At the time I was younger and found it upsetting, seeing him in that condition. Now that I'm older I realize that it truly was a heroic act – letting the world see him in that state, one hand shaking wildly. Yet he did it, proudly showing he could do the task he was called up on to do. He was relatively young, a middle-aged man of 54 at that time and gravely afflicted by Parkinson’s, and while he was not the Ali of old (the loss of his dazzling verbal skills was indeed heartbreaking), he was still an athlete and a proud individual. The only footage of the event that is not punctuated by unnecessary talking heads can be found here.

The last surprise he had for us was when he spoke about the 9/11 attacks on a charity program, urging Americans not to associate the attacks with the Muslim faith as a whole. By that point Muhammad no longer consented to interviews, and the public perception was that he was incapable of audible speech. But he came out and delivered a message of tolerance that, while clearly rehearsed and scripted, was a triumph for those who had written him off as a “sad victim of Parkinson’s.”

He of course wasn’t the Ali of old, playing with words like he toyed with his opponents, but it was a touching moment to hear him speak about something that mattered to him deeply. Even while stricken with an irreversible ailment he was a man of principle who was fine with being seen in public in an “unflattering” (but still majestic) state.

Those are the two moments that I immediately flashed on when I heard about his death, but as a bonus I’ll just add this particular encounter between Ali and Prince I discovered in researching those clips. Here the normally quiet Purple One speaks about his reverence for Ali at a July 1997 press conference promoting an upcoming charity concert.

Ali’s condition in the last three decades (plus) made many argue that he should’ve quit boxing sooner, or that the sport should be outlawed entirely. Both of those options make sense, but if the latter had happened before 1960, we would’ve never been treated to some of the greatest moments in the sport, courtesy of the “prettiest” of them all.

Eh, Julie!: Deceased Artiste Julius La Rosa

Every obit for singer Julius La Rosa, who died last week at 86, led off with the fact that a well-beloved (then) radio and TV host fired him live on-air in 1953 (on a radio show, not on TV). I want to dump that angle summarily and move on to what I valued most about La Rosa, who was affectionately known to friends, fans, and listeners as “Julie.”

I have extremely fond memories of listening to Julie as a deejay back in the Seventies. He was part of a sterling group of “radio personalities” on WNEW-AM, a NYC institution that was sadly killed off in the early Nineties.

The weekday line-up started off with “Klavan in the Morning” (the great character comedian Gene Klavan) from 6-10. The immortal William B. Williams (he who coined the phrase “Chairman of the Board” for a certain Francis Albert) was on-air from 10 to 1 p.m. Julie had the early afternoon slot (1–4) and was followed by the late, great Ted Brown (4-8, “drive time”), who was a rambunctiously entertaining deejay. Jim Lowe (yes, the guy who sang “Behind the Green Door”) hosted from 8 to midnight, presenting interviews with celebrities as well as music. Stan Martin had the late shift as the host of “the Milkman’s Matinee.”

The most interesting thing about WNEW in the Seventies was the fact that the station was fully “adult contemporary” (read: mellow pop) while still playing the “great American songbook” (the phrase “American popular standards” came into heavier use later), mostly on Willie’s B shifts. Thus they were still playing Sinatra, Lady Ella, Nat King Cole, Judy Garland, et al, but were mostly spotlighting softer numbers by the Beatles, bubblegum tunes and one-hit wonders (think: K-Tel comps), and the work of the mellower singer-songwriters. Now that I look back on it, it was a terrific blend that counterpointed the best of songwriting from “the past” (the Thirties through the Fifties) with that of “the present” (the Sixties and Seventies).

Of all the deejays on the station, Julie seemed to have the highest regard for the “MOR” songs that he played. As a singer he clearly had respect for the new breed of singer-songwriters. He also seemed to be “taking notes” for his singing career, which continued on while he was a deejay. He later wound up performing a number of the songs he used to play on WNEW on a regular basis.

Julie on the right, Klavan in the hat, unsure of
the other gents.

So, as a kid, I first heard Carly Simon, James Taylor, Jim Croce, and most importantly, Joni Mitchell (my first concert) on Julie’s show. I was also introduced to the music of the late, great Harry Chapin by Julie, who played Harry’s more radio-friendly (read: shorter) songs when they were new. He seemed very touched by “The Cat’s in the Cradle,” playing it quite often and making complimentary remarks about it and some of the other “new sounds” he was playing.

Julie was clearly fascinated by what different singers could do with the same material. To illustrate this (and, seemingly, to put himself in a state of reverie) , he would play two or three versions of the same songs by different artists, back to back. The NYC free-form legend Vin Scelsa did this in a more conceptual fashion for years after Julie, but Vin was doing it on FM rock stations at odder hours, whereas Julie’s “mixes” were on a very mainstream AM middle-of-the-road outlet in the middle of a weekday afternoon.

The oddest memory I have of Julie’s rapport with his listeners was an incident where he spilled coffee on a turntable (yes, the deejays used to actually be in the same room with the recordings) and his pants. He admitted his mishap, joking about how management was going to love him gumming up the turntable, and then took phone calls on the air, chatting with listeners (mostly women) who gave him advice on how to clean the stain out of his pants.

Before, during, and after his days as a deejay (which apparently began again after his departure from WNEW, in 1998 when he worked at WNSW in Newark), Julie kept up his singing career, playing nightclubs and auditoriums and releasing LPs. (He did occasionally play a record of his on the air.) The only place on television that I would see him as the years went by was on the Jerry Lewis MDA telethon.

Julie’s onstage persona seemed like an extension of his real-life demeanor: easygoing, cheerful, and self-effacing. In a New York Times interview, he admitted, "I know my limitations," he said. "Maybe I'm not an exciting performer, and sometimes I wish I were. But I like to sing a song so people really hear the lyrics, so they listen to the words and have that mean something to them." An interesting statement from a guy who lacked “humility,” according to the TV star who fired him back in ’53.

In the Seventies Jerry aimed some of his ethnic jokes at Julie (getting back at Dean through a surrogate?), but Julie always laughed them off and seemed genuinely happy to be on the telethon.

I found it touching that one year, instead of doing his own hits from the Fifties or standards from the Great American Songbook, he performed “Cat’s in the Cradle.” His version had a nightclub sound, but what it lacked in folksiness it gained in emotion, thanks to Julie’s evident admiration for the song.

I have no idea if he found some echo of one of his own family relationships in Chapin’s lyrics, but what his version of the song did convey was that, even many years later, he remembered the moving (and very well-written) pop hits he had played at WNEW.
*****

And now for the clips available online. I should note that two of the songs I wanted to included here are nowhere to be found: Julie's version of Randy Newman's "I Think It's Going to Rain Today" from his "You're Gonna Hear From Me" LP. Julie's version was the first cover of the song, released in September of '66, before the memorable hit rendition by Judy Collins. Julie does it with a kind of ironic bemusement, an interesting take on Randy's downbeat lyrics.

I also would like to have included "Pieces of Dreams" here. It's on his 1971 LP Words (image above), which featured him covering a number of contemporary "sounds." "Pieces..." was sung by many singers at the time (including Streisand and Mathis), and it was one song for which Julie did an on-air "megamix" (of course he didn't call it that). The song was written by Michel Legrand and Alan and Marilyn Bergman, and Julie did it justice (but you'll have to discover that on your own....)

A sample of Julie on the Arthur Godfrey show (the one and only time I’ll mention the name of the “Old Redhead”):

A somewhat anonymous love song, but one that shows Julie’s voice at its best. One of those it’ll-be-great-when-we’re-married songs from the Fifties:

Julie guest-hosted for Perry Como in Feb. of ’55. He starts out with a memorable upbeat number, “Tweedlee Dee,” at the opening:

Julie only starred in one movie, Let’s Rock (1958), which is misleadingly titled, since he plays a singer much like himself, who was not a rock fan (or performer). The whole film can be found here. This sorta-rock-y number closes out the film (which he mocked in later years). Phyllis Newman costarred as his love interest.

Julie’s biggest-ever hit was “Eh, Cumpari” (loosely translated, “Hey, Buddy”) a novelty number about different musical instruments. It’s catchy as hell, and it seemed to me as a kid that he was singing “Dippity dippity doc” (it’s actually “tipiti tipiti tah,” which appears to be nonsense syllables).

The single BEST clip of Julie being a teen idol (which he was indeed for a few years in the Fifties) doing his boppin’ little hit “Lipstick and Candy and Rubbersole Shoes” back in 1956:

Julie did a lot of appearances on the Jerry Lewis telethon. One of the most unusual is him doing a song adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s “If” poem. In the long clip below he appears at the 45:00 mark, doing “The Still of the Night” and “Days of Wine and Roses”:

And here he does a duet with Jerry (at around the 11:00 mark) on “Bye Bye Blues.” Old show biz!

He appeared on some of the “oldies” TV programs (the kind you see when PBS stations are in “pledge drive” mode). Here he does a medley on one of them:

Onto the tunes he either picked up at WNEW or would play on the station. First, “The Good Life,” which was an English translation of a 1962 French song. It was the theme for a short-lived 1971 sitcom with Larry Hagman. The best known version is by Tony Bennett:

A jazzy number by George Benson and Al Jarreau:

Stevie Wonder was an artist who was played a lot on WNEW. Here Julie covers his hit “You Are the Sunshine of My Life”:

One of those sad, beautiful songs that Julie played on WNEW, Charles Aznavour’s “Yesterday When I Was Young”:

One of the oddest discoveries: Julie released a single in in 1970 of the song from Hair “Where Do I Go?” He’s backed by the Bob Crewe Generation on this insanely catchy record, and his voice sounds sped up.

In closing, a quartet of special items. First Julie does one of Neil Diamond’s grittier Seventies songs, “Brooklyn Roads”:

An amazing early Fifties home movie of a ladies “card club” visiting NYC to see Ernie Kovacs’ TV show (they were fans of his previous show in Philly). One of the guests the day they saw it was Julie (who is seen in full color at :25 and 2:30):

Two clips of “old man Julie.” First an informal interview from 2011 in which he talks about his past. And then a nice little sliver of him in a very sparse looking dressing room answering the cameraman’s question about how he’s doing:

I’ll close with one of Julie’s odder gigs: singing the theme from the incredibly brilliant and dark-as-hell Mr. Mike’s Mondo Video. The melody is the British instrumental hit “Telstar.” Julie sings the song in English in the opener here, but can be heard singing it in Italian at the end of the show (in an obvious nod to the original “Mondo” movies made by Jacopetti and Prosperi):

Julie, photographed by Weegee.