Hoagy on My Mind

Of my interviews over the years, I think my hour-long chat with song writer Hoagy Carmichael is the most important to me now.

As the 27-year-old Associated Press correspondent in Las Vegas, I was assigned to write about this famous musicianon on his 70th birthday in 1969.

We met for breakfast at poolside at the Desert Inn hotel—not bad, huh? It sure would beat covering a war! A phogo was taken by the Las Vegas News Bureau as Carmichael sat across the table. No selfies or autographs for me!

I don’t remember a lot from the interview, except that he hated rock ‘n’ roll music, which eclipsed his own writing since the late 1950s. Most of all, I noticed how sophisticated he seemed compared with the country-boy small-town hick he seemed to portray in his 1950s television show. He was in numerous movies too.

Carmichael seems more important to me now as I play or sing his songs, such as “Georgia on My Mind,” “Stardust,” or “Skylark.” Why did he put in a chord change from F to A minor at this point? I would have liked to have asked.

I almost got a chance to be Hoagy Carmichael myself! The Double Nickel Players (over 55) in Clarksville were going to do a play in which he was a character, and I insisted on playing him. But the kids in the group (age 55 to 65) never heard of some of the old-time stars, including Gloria Swanson or Wallace Beery, so we dropped it.

(In case you were wondering, the sandwich was not named after him and he wasn’t named after the sandwich.)

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Speaking of Las Vegas stories, imagine you were my date at an opening night in the same year—1969. I needed someone to join me for the debut concert of Nancy Sinatra, who had just had a hit record, “These Boots Are Made for Walking.”

So I invited a young lady in the advertising department of the Las Vegas Review-Journal, whom I had met in the lunchroom.

She was only in town for a few months, while her parents were also on a temporary assignment in Sin City. 

We were both blown away by the celebrities that Nancy’s dad, Frank, coaxed to the International Hotel theater. We sat at a table across from two of the Supremes (but not Diana Ross). I especially remember Sergio Mendez (of Brazil 66) sitting on the floor because there were no chairs left. Fred Astaire, Burt Lancaster, Milton Berle and Kirk Douglas were also there.

At the after-show party we sat at a table with Mac Davis, who had his own TV show. Several tables over were Elvis Presley, Colonel Tom Parker, Nancy Sinatra, Nancy Sr., and Frank. Try to top that!

After my date (whose name I don’t recall) moved back to Mississippi, we still corresponded. I’ll bet she is entertaining her grandchildren with this story. (If they even know who Elvis Presley was.)

 

 

A day in the life of Ai

My music session with my B&B guest wasn’t going well. The background music I was playing on the piano wasn’t in the right key for her singing. I didn’t know any of the songs her friend wanted to sing.

Then, magic! Melissa McMurrick got out her phone and said,“I’m going to create a song right here on my Suno App. Watch!”

She dictated about 10 words for lyrics and then told the app how much guitar and drums she wanted and the mood of the piece. Out came an amazing song. Rodgers and Hammerstein, Lennon and McCartney: You are obsolete.

Another song she had done about aging was so good, I asked her to send it to me. Uh-unh! She is having her friend sing it and hopes to collect royalties.

Educated by this experience, I went to my writers’ group that afternoon. One participant said she had written a poem and got AI to turn it into a sonnet, which has a more fixed structure. We decided we would rather hear her read her poem than a machine-written work. (No machines attend our monthly sessions.)

In the evening, I finished a new novel by one of my favorite authors, Michael Connelly, called “The Proving Ground.” An AI company is sued after a teenage boy kills his girlfriend, encouraged by a character in one of its apps. I don’t think this has really happened, but I understand there have been suicides by AI-using teens.

So, what do I make from all this? I use ChatGPT frequently to answer questions. So do 123 million people worldwide every day. It is just amazing! If I can’t work my coffeemaker, I don’t have to comb through the manual. I just ask ChatGPT a question. It’s not always right, but it is often enough.

There’s a lot not to like. Teachers hate it because kids use it to write essays and do other homework. Some teachers use it to grade them. So, it is a machine talking to a machine, but the grade goes to the kid. AI steals the work of writers, artists and musicians. With a voice generator, you can get anyone’s voice to say anything you want. And AI is eliminating jobs.

But I look at it this way: Blacksmiths didn’t like automobiles. Stagecoach drivers hated railroads. A lot of us wish there was no atomic bomb. But they aren’t going away. Boundaries need to be set, sure, but AI is here to stay.

 

 

 

Thiongs I will never do

In your mid-80s, you begin to realize that some things on your “bucket list” will never happen. I guess I will never:

—Run a mile again.

—Visit Japan or China. Too tiring and complicated. Not sure I wanted to do that anyway.

—Make love to Brigitte Bardot. What? She just turned 90? Nah!Too old for me. Your loss, baby!

—Have a hangover again. It wouldn’t be hard, but it would take a week out of my already diminishing life.

—-Climb Mount Everest. Even if I did, I would probably hear“You haven’t already? I did it last year.”

—Play second base for the Washington Nationals. I can’t even get a tryout!

—Win an Academy Award as James Bond.

—Win a Pulitzer Prize, though this column certainly deserves it.

—Become a trillionaire. I would settle for a billionaire!

—Be chosen for to the Supreme Court. Am I too old for that too?

—Parachute out of an airplane. George H.W. Bush did that at age 90, so there is still time. But I can get dizzy already just getting out of bed.

 

But there are still things I CAN do:

—Be a loving grandfather to children ranging from 9 to 18.

—Do Silver Sneakers three times a week at the YMCA.

—Walk 2 miles or bike 10 miles.

—Play in a cabaret at my own house.

—Make exotic, adventurous trips to Lynchburg, Richmond and Durham.

—Direct the music for a famous musical. Yes!

 

 

Memories, memories

• 
  Do you remember these? (Or am I older than you?)

—Test patterns on TV, when the three stations were off the air. The national anthem was played when their day was over.

—Rumble seats in the back of old cars. Kids loving to ride in them. Some old cars had running boards below the doors on the sides. Seat belts were unheard of.

—White margarine coming with coloring packages. You had to mix them up to make it yellow. I refused to eat white margarine! Yuck! And milk with the cream on top—you had to shake it up before they made it homogenized.

—Big John and Sparky on the radio on Saturday mornings. Jack Benny, Phil Harris and Fibber McGee and Molly on Sunday afternoons.

—Hitch hikers on the roads. I did it a few times myself.

—Milton Berle getting a 30-year contract with NBC in 1951, only to be dumped by the network several years later.

—Door to door salesmen, for the Encyclopedia Britannica, Fuller Brush and Watkins. They weren’t afraid of getting shot by residents.

—Milk delivered by the milk man. You left empty bottles on the front porch.

—Great cartoons in the Saturday Evening Post.

—Party lines on telephones. They were irritating when you wanted to call someone—but entertaining if you wanted to listen in.

—Soda fountains in drug stores serving chocolate coke or lemon coke. Did they have real food, too? I don’t remember.

—Before rock n roll, such bland singers as Frankie Laine, Patti Page and Guy Mitchell. I never liked Mitch Miller, Ray Conniff or Lawrence Welk.

—As long as we got home for dinner, parents not worried about where we went.

—Games played in the street. Red light/green light. Kick the can. Baseball.

—Roller derby and wrestling—all the rage. We didn’t know or care that they were fixed.

—Drive-in movies with double anod triple features. A portable heater with a long chord attached to a stand next to each car.

—In 1954, the NBA basketball league had eight teams: Boston, Philadelphia, New York, Syracuse, Rochester, Fort Wayne, Milwaukee and Minneapolis. I guess Chicago wasn’t big enough. The farthest west Major League Baseball team was in St. Louis. 

Am I longing for the Gold Old Days? Well, no. Kids got polio, women couldn’t get decent jobs. Racial discrimination was pervasive. Life spans were shorter.

Count your blessings!

 

 

 

Nw life for old actors

 

My brief acting career began at age 70 with Prizery Summer Theater. I just adored the mostly small roles I had in six musicals and mixing in with serious acting students from out of town.

But by 78, I abruptly stopped. I couldn’t remember the lines anymore. The 20-something kids were coaching me. I couldn’t remember when to get on stage as the baker’s father in “Into the Woods.” The schedule was brutal. Two shows on Saturday? What?

Then, just three months ago, came a life-changing bombshell.

I found out about new one-hour versions of Broadway musicals tailored for performing old people. My friend Monica Walter told me that Musical Theatre International, which owns the rights to the shows, was providing abbreviated scripts, scores and recordings at a low price. Just like the kids’ musicals, “Frozen Jr.” and “Little Mermaid Jr.”

Wow. We could rehearse between afternoon naps! No late-night tech rehearsals.

Monica asked me to be music director. What? I have never done that before. (But I have accompanied numerous singers on the piano.) Sure, why not? If I’m terrible, I’ll just plead old age. My life’s work won’t be measured by this show.

We decided to see if the Clarksville Community Players would give us a date to put on “Guys and Dolls Senior” at the Clarksville Fine Arts Center. As we came to the group’s board meeting, we were advised that the calendar was full for the 2025-26 year.

As we walked in, Charlie Simmons, the long-time chair, said, “You look tired, Mike. Have a seat.”

“That’s what I want to talk about, Charlie,” I smiled.

After Monica described our plans, she said, “Now Mike will explain why he wants to do this sooner rather than later.”

I have never been very persuasive, I thought, but here goes:

“I’m not getting any younger. I am in perfect health, but I’m almost 84. Who knows how I will feel a year from now? I gave up theater five years ago. Now I can do it again!”

I could feel the mood of the room changing.

 The board agreed to give us Saturday Feb. 14, Valentine’s Day, for a 2 p.m. show. Perfect! Then we decided to add a second performance on Sunday, Feb. 15.

Then reality set in: We saw the abbreviated show performed flawlessly at the sold-out Raleigh Little Theatre in early October. How could we match them?

I told myself that the Raleigh-Durham metro area has 2.4 million people to draw on for a cast, volunteers and audience. We have about 60,000.  So, our sights aren’t as high, but it will be a great challenge.

We are holding auditions for 20 actors in “Guys and Dolls Senior” at 2 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday Nov. 17 and 18 with possible callbacks on the 19th. All actors must be at least 55 years old. Rehearsals will be on Mondays and Wednesdays from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. starting Monday Dec. 1, with a week-long break for Christmas.

We need a volunteer crew as well as actors and singers. Come on! You can be young again! To schedule an audition or volunteer, go to https://clarksvilleplayers.org/auditions I can answer questions or you can message the director, Monica Walter at monica.walter58@yahoo.com

Column: Rando thoughts on decisions, coffee and aging

 My big decisions in life have been easy: marriage, jobs, retirement, location. It’s the little ones I have the most trouble with: Where to have dinner, what to watch on TV.

 

I think we underestimate the power that our minds have over our bodies. Why else do they have placebo pills?

 

You can fix half of all technology problems by turning the device off and on again.

 

But when that doesn’t work and you call repair helpers, why does your appliance suddenly work when they show up?

 

In journalism, “experts say” often just means “I think….”

 

Ever notice? What seems obvious to you is not obvious to everyone else. You have to fight for it.

 

I think of the calories I saved over the decades by drinking my coffee black.

 

When you are young and wasting your time, it feels like a wonderful luxury. When you are old, it feels like dying a day early. I have a deadline to meet, and I don’t know when it is!

 

Never look at email before taking a nap. It may keep you awake. And don’t deal with tech support on the phone just before bedtime.

 

I do some of my best work on subjects I know nothing about. It reminds me of a history teacher who substituted in my algebra class. She knew nothing about algebra so crammed all evening for the subject. She gave a terrific lesson that I could understand. She started on the same level we did.

 

Eyewitness to history…without realizing it

When the air traffic controllers’ union announced a walkout on Aug. 3, 1981, I  did not take it seriously. I left their press conference on a Friday afternoon thinking:  “They won’t go on strike. That would be stupid!”

So, I left Washington, D.C., for the weekend confident that nothing would happen. I didn’t listen to the radio, read a newspaper or watch TV news.

 I returned for the Monday morning staff meeting at U.S. News & World Report. I was ambushed.

After others talked about the Middle East and the economy, the managing editor turned to me, the transportation writer.  “Tell us, about the air traffic controllers, Mike.”

“Huh,” I thought. But somehow, I bluffed my way through with a non-answer. Maybe the labor beat reporter bailed me out. I learned that not only had the controllers walked out, but the Reagan administration had fired them and permanently replaced with new workers.

When the unthinkable strike happened, I was assigned to go to the control tower at Dulles International Airport to see how replacement workers were handling the air traffic.

I was gladly allowed in as the administration wanted to demonstrate that things were going on just fine. And they were, apparently, though I did get a little uncomfortable when one of the novices took his eyes off the screen and turned to chat with me. “Get back on the screen!” I wanted to yell.

I have read recent commentaries that the strike was a turning point in American history. Private employers took a cue from the government’s tough stance and took a hard line against labor. Union membership declined, and businesses had the upper hand.

In fact, they were still talking about this disaster in 1995 when I covered the labor beat for the Kiplinger Letter and attended AFL-CIO conventions in New York.

Guess I was right: they made a mistake!

 

I have come across two Halifax County men who were air traffic controllers at the time of the strike. One was Boyd Archer, a supervisor of the controllers  who walked out. Boyd recalls having to work long hours when it happened. He says that the air traffic system never fully recovered from the event.

 

Another is Wayne Stanfield, who was chief air controller of the military radar facility in Fairfield, California. Wayne says a lot of the controllers he supervised were transferred to replace the striking workers.

 

 

 

 

Tracking a reclusive billionaire

 

As a reporter, how do you cover one of the world’s richest men if he lives just down the street but never comes out of his hotel?

That was my dilemma as the Associated Press correspondent in Las Vegas in 1968, while Howard Hughes lived there.

The once-dashing billionaire sneaked into town in 1966 and bought the Desert Inn hotel, where he ensconced himself in the top-floor penthouse.

After I took that job in 1968, I would often get a visit from a security guard delivering a one-sentence statement: “The Hughes Tool Co. today announced the purchase of the Frontier Hotel.” Period. I would write a 400-word story with background on the billionaire and the famous hotel. Easy! I loved it!

This famous man inherited wealth from his father, who owned a lucrative oil drilling business and later got richer himself in the airline industry. Before he became a recluse, Hughes made movies, hung out with attractive movie actresses and flew small airplanes himself.

Now in Las Vegas, somehow he had a screw loose. We learned later than he was terrified of germs and the people that carried them. Yet he lived a very unhealthy life, eating poorly and neglecting his own body. His personal staff consisted mostly of loyal Mormons sworn to secrecy.

His top aide, Robert Maheu, was a former FBI and  CIA agent who was once involved in plans to assassinate Fidel Castro. I’m not sure if Maheu ever saw Hughes in person.

As a hypochondriac, Hughes especially hated the underground nuclear testing that went on only 70 miles from Las Vegas. He brought in leading scientists to tell us that the explosions might destroy Hoover Dam. One of them was Barry Commoner, a leading environmentalist, who I remember interviewing. But Hughes’ efforts failed, and the tests continued.

I was never able to get Maheu or anyone else on Hughes’ staff to talk about anything substantive, even off the record, Neither could any other news media, as far a I could tell.

As a curious reporter, I would love to get a look at this guy. You couldn’t possibly get into his penthouse, whose floor was blocked off on the elevator.

A writer at the Las Vegas Review-Journal convinced me that Hughes must come out of that penthouse secretly some time. How could anyone stay sequestered for two years? Let’s take turns waiting for him in the parking lot.

They reality set in: That wold seem awfully boring for us and time-consuming to our employers, who wanted news copy.

Did he ever come out? After Hughes’ death in 1976, several wills were found, including one that left much of his money to the Mormon church and a young man who supposedly picked him up in a car and saved his life while he was wandering around in the desert.

This man never got any money, but years later a pilot claimed that he picked Hughes up from Las Vegas and took him to some location in the desert, where he had disappeared.

I was starting to believe this story, until a later AP correspondent who covered the “Mormon will” trial, assured me that the will was a fake and the story untrue.

So he must not have ever come out. I’m glad we never staked out the hotel parking lot!