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Dunk or die trying: a 58-year-old man with a potentially fatal disease will dunk y’all (blog version)

It occurred to me the other day that I’ve always wanted to dunk a basketball.

So I’ve decided that by mid-July, about the time of our next Mike Madness basketball tournament to raise money for Lewy body disease awareness, I will dunk.

Bucket list item.

That’s right, I will throw it down on a 10-foot goal. This 58-year-old white man with a brain disease who has never dunked in his life, will SLAM.

Hah!

Colleague John Archibald heard me thinking out loud about this scheme and said, No, you can’t dunk. He laughed. Then he put his money where his mouth is: He said he will donate $1,000 toward  Lewy body research and awareness.

$1,000. Wow.

This man who plays basketball with me –and has half of my 4-inch vertical leap– must have some inside information. Oh yeah, he’s seen me play. My philosophy as I’ve aged is playing basketball without jumping because too much can go wrong when you’re in the air. But this won’t  be in a game.

There’ll be no big players ready to swat it away. I just rise up and BAM. I can visualize it. I can do it if I try hard and believe in myself. You can tell I just saw the Mr. Rogers bio-pic. Can you see Fred Rogers on the court? Soft blue sweater. He might be good. Never judge a book by the cover he used to say.

Despite Mr. Rogers’ well-intentioned philosophy, I have doubts bigger than Shaquille O’Neal,

This is where I need help.

I have several questions:

Does anybody know of anyone over 55 years old who can dunk?

Does anybody know of anyone who trained to dunk, especially later in life and accomplished it?

Does anyone know of someone with Parkinson’s or Lewy body dementia who can dunk. The muscles in my arms are getting weaker from the disease, I can tell. My outside shot has diminished some. But I still have bad days and good days. My legs, I don’t think have been affected strength-wise.

I hear there are machines today that target specific muscles that can help. I don’t want to buy a super expensive machine though especially if it has dubious outcomes. I always have the Y.

I want to dunk. I want to rise u p 8 inches above the rim palming the ball and slam it through.

Dear readers please respond but remember it’s not official yet, until I do a little more research.

Archibald Googled ‘who is the oldest dunker?’ The first answer was 63-year-old Julius Dr. J Erviing can still dunk.

Not sure that gives me much comfort. The best dunker in NBA history can still dunk.

Here’s how I break it down:

Against me: Disease and age.

Favorable to me: I used to be able to grab the rim (about 30 years ago). I am 6 feet and one-half inch tall.

I weigh about 185, having gained about 20 pounds over the course of a year.

I think I need to drop about 15 pounds or more to get to my old playing weight.

I know the odds are long, but if nothing else I’ll get in shape and it will give me another deadline – like counting down my 678 vinyl records at MyVinylCountdown.com .

Speaking of records, it should be a record of some type if I do indeed dunk.

Onward to research. (Typing, typing Into Google.):  ‘Was Mr. Rogers ever able to dunk.’

Slightly different AL.com version here.

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Dexter Gordon — 449

ALBUM: One Flight Up (Reissue 1985)

MVC Rating: 5/$$$$$

Great jazz combo here from 1964. Led by Dexter Gordon, this is a jazz classic. I got as a cut-out reissue from 1985. If I see a cut-out or discounted record with Blue Note on, it I’ll buy, no questions.

The band, which includes Donald Byrd, Art Taylor, Kenny Drew and Niels-Henning Orsted, is tight.

Byrd almost steals the show with his tasteful rapid fire trumpet runs, like automatic fire — pup, pup,pup – landing like marshmallows, soft and sweet. Particularly on his song, ‘Tanya’ which covers all of side 1.

Gordon was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the jazz movie ‘Round Midnight.’

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Eddy Grant — 451

ALBUM: Going for Broke

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$$

I thought I had the album with his big hit: ‘Electric Avenue.’

But I don’t.

My album ‘Going For Broke’ is the album AFTER his big one. My album is pretty good, rock inflected reggae, which means it has rock guitar in it.  It’s not what I’d call real roots reggae, more of a fusion pop reggae.

On this album, he has a song “Romancing the Stone’ which was commissioned for the hit movie starring Kathleen Turner, however it was not used in the movie (except for a short guitar solo).  The song, a so-so piece of reggae pop, never succeeded at the level of ‘Electric Avenue.’

In Barbados, Grant operated a popular recording studio for years. He also wrote ‘Police on my Back’ recorded by the Clash, one of the better tracks on the Clash’s Sandinista album.

I have to say  after a few listens, this album is nice. Good playing, happy reggae beat. I’ll play it again and keep my eye open in record stores for ‘Electric Avenue.’

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Lowell George — 453

ALBUM:  Thanks I’ll Eat it Here

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$

Here’s another bargain bin find. One takeaway I am having doing this blog and going one-by-one through my 678  albums is that I was not a bad ‘picker’ of records. I could find some good ones for a couple of bucks.

Lowell George, the lead singer of Little Feat, put this one out in 1979 just before he died of a drug overdose in a Virginia hotel room while on tour for this record.

I agree with AllMusic.com that at first this record seems slight, and it didn’t follow in the jazz-fusion direction that Little Feat was heading (part of the reason he did the solo thing.) But back to being ‘slight’ or not so slight. Some really good renditions  of songs here. “What Do You Want that Girl to Do,’ an Allen Toussaint – penned song, is excellent.   The Ann Peebles song ‘I Can’t Stand the Rain,’ though oft-covered, is done well by George.

“20 Million Things,’ a George original, is  gorgeous and should be a classic. George was a multi-instrumentalist prodigy from childhood. Born in Hollywood, Calif., he was a binge eater, binge alcohol consumer and then, of course the drugs. He weighed more than 300 pounds when he died. Sad we only have this one solo album from him. But there’s a lot of good Little Feat music, which I’ll review when I get to the ‘L’s.”

If you do find this record you get the bonus of having a very cool cover by Neon Park that apparently has several pop culture references including Bob Dylan in there.

I’m including a live video of George with Little Feat backed by Bonnie Raitt and Emmylou Harris to show you just how good that George and Little Feat were.

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Dizzy Gillespie — 454

ALBUMS: New Faces  

MVC Rating: 4.5/$$$$

Now I’m not huge into jazz but I have some good  jazz records.

I have this Dizzy; a Dexter Gordon Blue Note label album; a Harry James record; some Miles Davis; John Coltrane on CD);Teo Macero, another Blue Note special of Bud Powell, one of my favorite jazz pianists along with Errol Garner. I also have some rock/soul/jazz fusion, if that’s a thing, Steve Howe, Dixie Dregs, Sea Level, and Glenn Phillips.

And going A to Z, I also have some Chet Atkins and Frank Zappa that I would consider jazz or jazzy.

And I have Louis Armstrong, one of my favorite old schoolers,  mainly because my father was a big fan of Satchmo, and I heard it at an earl age around the house.

The cool thing about this album is it brings in some newcomers — at least they were new in the 1980s when this was made, including Branford Marsalis, who went on to be the bandleader for Jay Leno for a couple of years and is one of the top saxophonists in the world.

So this has old man Dizzy, he of the bent trumpet and swollen cheeks, has rounded up some youth to make a contemporary jazz record with some old stuff mixed in.

The sound jumps out of the speakers, I must say, which I like on all vinyl productions but especially jazz. I like the trumpet player right in the room with me. I know this seems like my ongoing advice, but this is a good pick in a used record store, high high quality jazz in the ‘bop’ style with an old cheek-ballooning patriarch overseeing some  top notch jazz youngsters.

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Bobby Goldsboro — 456

ALBUM: Bobby Goldsboro Greatest Hits (1970)

The tears wrenched out of human beings by Bobby Goldsboro can be measured in gallons.

Hundreds, thousands of gallons.

‘Honey’ was a huge worldwide hit in 1968 for Goldsboro, born in Florida but who grew up in Dothan and attended Auburn University. Bobby Russell, who wrote  ‘The Night the Lights Went Out in Georgia,’  was ‘Honey’s’ writer.

It was a sentimental tissue-thin manipulation of a song. It was the best of songwriting, and the worst of songwriting.

I’d admire the suspense and mystery built up around the singer’s descriptions of his wife/lover. The La-Tee-Da casual storytelling style draws you in as it drops foreboding hints all the way.

My critique is that the words are often silly, and combined with the syrupy strings, comes off as maudlin. And the casual storytelling style, once you get the whole picture, is kind of  creepy.

That said, the songwriter used some deft devices to make this sad. For example never really telling us what happened requiring our brains to think harder to speculate what happened a la ‘Ode to Billie Joe.’

My mother, a longtime educator, gave me this album recently, but we used to cry in the car over it decades ago. It was a No. 1 hit in the U.S. and charted all over the world.

So again the overarching question here is what happened? She died, but what other clues are there.

Let’s react to the lyrics and find out.

Song lyrics italics, my comments bold.

Honey by Bobby Russell, performed by Bobby Goldsboro

See the tree, how big it’s grown 
But friend it hasn’t been too long
It wasn’t big (good open, foreshadowing)
I laughed at her and she got mad, (what was so funny?)
The first day that she planted it
Was just a twig
Then the first snow came and she ran out
To brush the snow away
So it wouldn’t die (Foreshadowing, concisely paints picture of soft-hearted, sentimental person. Was the tree somehow going to be cause of death? Listeners are tuned in now)
Came runnin’ in all excited,
Slipped and almost hurt herself (So she’s becoming clumsy but husband  thinks it’s hysterical)
And I laughed till I cried (throwing the word cried in there is like a subliminal message readying the tear ducts.)
She was always young at heart,
Kinda dumb and kinda smart (Well you are no rocket scientist either BoGo..)
And I loved her so
And I surprised her with a puppy (Uh oh gratuitous puppy introduction: he’s pulling out all stops in the manipulative attempt to make you cry).
Kept me up all Christmas Eve two years ago (aw he loves her so much,  he not only gave her the puppy but lives with the dog causing sleep deprivation).
And it would sure embarrass her
When I came in from workin’ late (working late, huh?)
‘Cause I would know
That she’d been sittin’ there and cryin’
Over some sad and silly late, late show (again showing how ‘endearing’ her sentimentality is.)
And honey, I miss you and I’m bein’ good (Working  late, huh?)
And I’d love to be with you if only I could (here we go again, hint hint: Where did she go?)
She wrecked the car and she was sad (Oh my gosh is she going to die of car wreck injuries?)
And so afraid that I’d be mad
But what the heck
Though I pretended hard to be
Guess you could say she saw through me
And hugged my neck
I came home unexpectedly
And caught her cryin’ needlessly (Needlessly is certainly in the eye of the beholder. I mean, did she get bad news like perhaps she was DYING!)
In the middle of a day
And it was in the early spring
When flowers bloom and robins sing
She went away (Reach for tissue.)
And honey, I miss you and I’m bein’ good
And I’d love to be with you if only I could  (Sure about that?)
One day while I was not at home (Working late again?)
While she was there and all alone
The angels came (Good gosh, the Hell’s Angles took her out. What in the name of everything holy were you involved in, man?)
Now all I have is memories of honey (tears)
And I wake up nights and call her name (tears)
Now my life’s an empty stage (tears)
Where honey lived and honey played
And love grew up
And a small cloud passes overhead
And cries down on the flower bed (more tears, some blubbering)
That honey loved
And see the tree how big it’s grown
But friend it hasn’t been too long
It wasn’t big (good writing example, coming full circle)
And I laughed at her and she got mad
The first day that she planted it,
Was just a twig (sob)
(One question: Can a twig grow into a tree?)
Other songs on his ‘Greatest Hits’ never approached the sales and popularity of ‘Honey.’ His first hit was “See the Funny Clown,” who happens to be crying on the inside. The song is way inferior to the Smokey Robinson and the Miracles hit “Tears of a Clown.’ He also had a hit called ‘Watching Scottie Grow,’ that for some  reason isn’t on this album.
Goldsboro has another song on this disc called “The Straight Life” with lyrics that kind of blow my mind. Here’s the second verse of the song.:
Sometimes my thoughts may find me in Mexico,
Drinking tequila going out of my mind
Having a ball on a couple ‘a bob,
Treating the ladies to corn on the cob,
Leaving the straight life behind
Huh? First off, couple a’bob is an English term for money not Spanish. Tequila will make you nuts but not sure about the hi jinks behind a tequila and corn cob party.
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Late summer reading: Tate Drawdy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let’s step away for a second from music to reading, books, that is.  I have a great friend, my former boss, Michael Ludden, who has a few books under his belt. His latest I have read and it is fantastic.

“Tate Drawdy” is the book’s title and the name of the main character.  The book  is a slow burn Deep South pulse quickener.

I have Lewy body dementia, as you who are familiar with this blog already know.  That means books are more difficult for me now because every advancement is followed by a retreat as I work to gather my memories. It seems to be a little different when I’m writing because, well, I don’t know why. It’s like my fingers have  muscle memory.

As I mentioned before, Ludden is my former boss. He was the editor who back in 1987 lured me from the Birmingham News to central Florida and the Orlando Sentinel. I worked with him there about a decade and I  consider him a great friend and a fine editor. He was a key editor on a Sentinel Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative project on  a sheriff’s department  abuse of asset seizure forfeiture.

Ludden was the kind of an editor who wanted to sit down and talk about a story in a big picture sort of way before it was written. Then when he got a copy of the story,  he wouldn’t say, ‘Move this comma over here, tighten up this section.’ No, Mike would say: ‘Explain to me what you are doing here?’

I remember getting defensive one time when he did that and he said, ‘No, I really like what you are doing here, I just want to hear you talk about what that is.’

Big picture. A journo lesson that stuck. Think about it macro before getting down to the nitty gritty.

Ludden sets this in Savannah, Ga., and even if you have never been there, you will end up smelling the life and decay of a humid coastal city that keeps its past close.

Ludden has an eye for detail, another practice he used to preach. The descriptions setting up a scene put you there. In the place and moment.

Here’s a passage describing the first meeting of the bad guy,  John Robert Griffin and the good guy cop, Tate Drawdy.

In an interrogation room in the police station.

Griffin turned to face him. Standing motionless, a small grin showing his teeth.  Nothing else changed. But in that moment Tate saw a piece of himself he’d never seen before, something he had thought might not happen to him,  not until he was old and put up.

It made him dizzy, as if the ceiling had lifted back and now he was staring into a burning sky, hoisted up, swaying in the breeze, shadows fading in, fading out, slowly revolving, a vein throbbing behind his eye. His scalp tingling, his face suddenly wet. 

He wanted to turn away.

 He reached for his coffee, took a sip, set it back down. He kept his hand on the cup, feeling the heat. Told himself Griffin can’t read his mind, couldn’t hear his heartbeat. He counted to 10.

“Where’d you grow up?”

Ludden is also the author of ‘Alfredo’s Luck,’ another Tate Drawdy thriller set in Miami and ‘Tales from the Morgue,’ a tightly written noir-esque rendition of actual newspaper stories culled from Ludden’s journalistic experiences, including his time at the Orlando Sentinel.

His books are on Amazon.

Learn more at www.michaelludden.com

 

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David Gates — 458

ALBUM: First  (1973)

MVC Rating: 4.0/$$$

This is soft rock AKA as Adult Contemporary.  I bought this used recently for loose change after reviewing the Best of Bread for MyVinylCountdown.com.

I admired Bread’s songcraft and was impressed with Gate’s guitar and vocals. It was pretty but that’s about it. A little like the Carpenters, a little like America.

In fact some of us debated which one was best (or worst) Bread vs. America. Think that dispute is still ongoing. One colleague said  he would pick America but only if they never do ‘Muskrat Love’ again.

So I bought this Gates’ solo album and it is pretty much a Bread album, pretty, but that’s about it.

But maybe that’s  enough.

Song picks: ‘Ann’ shows off his voice. ‘SIght and Sound’ shows some guitar  skills. Suite Clouds and Rain shows his piano chops. ‘Do you Believe He’s Comin’ shows his aforementioned guitar skills as well as religious faith. In fact for a guy who seems so partial to soft rock, Gates can play a mean guitar as he does here in the “Do  You Believe He’s Comin’ and with Bread the song ‘Guitar Man.’

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MVC now has 238 posts: Here are the favorites and least favorites

Some of My Vinyl Countdown’s top posts.
As of today, here are songs taken from the most-clicked on and the ones that received the most reaction, some judgement calls here by me.

So we’ll have Top 12 music reviews from my 678 records.  This is followed by the Top-12 blog essays.

And we’ll also throw in the bottom 5 in both categories.

(Click on the names to go to the full blog post).
Top 12 Album reviews

Dave Davies  Kink’s guitarist solo albums are surprise here at No. 1

Dolly Parton Country music legend, and that’s without hyperbole.

The Allman Brothers Band  No surprise that this iconic Southern band is high on the list.

The Alarm  The Welsh rockers with their big hair and their big anthemic songs are apparently well loved.

Dickey Betts  Allman’s great guitarist.

King Sunny Ade He was making world music before it was cool.

Aerosmith Steven Tyler seems like he’s on TV all the time. But that was decades after this hard rocking album, arguably one of their best.

Bo Diddley  Underappreciated in his time, his record stands – on records.

Joe Cocker This man felt the music. It was like he plugged himself  in.

Joan Baez  Distinctive strong voice that was one of many voices of the 1960s and civil rights protests.

T Bone Burnett Major producer for others. Lesser known for his own excellent discography.

Big Audio Dynamite BAD, Clash remainders forge new sound and funny crazy video.

When Particles Collide      A husband-wife  rock duo from Maine. (with some local connections).
Top 12 Blog Essays
Gordon Hayward, broken bones and Lewy body dementia

Life lessons of adaptation from a serious injury.
I Have to Laugh (To Keep from Crying)

Title says it all.

Holy Zeus, God and Lightning 

Strange coincidences crop up in my life.

Is there time?

The billion dollar question.

Rules of ‘street’ ball

Tips from 35 years of playing pick-up basketball.

Peter Himmelman’s ‘Song for Catherine’

A wonderful tribute to my wife Catherine
 Some People are Mean

Yes, there are mean people and I describe one.
Porter and Me

Writing about the death of a child from  over the course of years prepared me to face my own prognosis.
Lewy Lewy. Come on, call it by its name!

It’s mysterious, baffling and wrong but for some reason Lewy body dementia has become the disease no one will name.
How the heck am I doing?

The word FINE may not mean what you think it means.
Today is Silent Saturday 

It’s a tradition I  did not know about.

Another hugging, this has got to stop

Beloved pastor retiresl.
Bottom 5 Album reviews
The Drifters
Kurtis Blow
Fleshtones
Focus

The Flying Lizards   

Bottom 5 Blog essay/posts

D-Party

History of Journalism Part 2: from ‘socialist rag’ to ‘tool of the man’ (blog version)

Seeking Miss Mamie, or Mike, Catherine and Mary’s fantastic road trip

Jerry Sloan, legendary NBA coach, still battling dementia (blog version)

Sugar Sugar’: Archies vs. Josie and the Pussycats’ Riverdale version

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Watch: Birmingham singer covers ‘next big song’ about Alabama

Janet Chitty plays The Bigger Moon in Alabama

This is an opinion column.,  

Bruce Rutherford, an Alabama lover who lives in Texas,  last week or so, sent me a YouTube video of himself performing a song he wrote about Alabama.  I dismissed the song called The Bigger Moon of Alabama, at first, but then the little tune kind of stuck in my head. My motto is you have to pay attention to ear worms.

What if a great singer and full band did this song. Well, haven’t heard from Jason Isbell or Wet Willie.

I wrote about it.

But Rutherford tipped me off that his Birmingham friend and colleague in the singer-songwriter world on YouTube, has already done a cover like in the last  48 hours  (video below).

The singer’s name is Janet Chitty and I think her version demonstrates what I’m talking about. And that is, this can be sung many ways. Her version is slowed down. Rutherford’s is faster. But at least one commenter said it should be faster than Rutherford’s version (a speed metal version?) Nevertheless, the song is versatile, catchy and as I said yesterday rhymes Montgomery with succumbing —  how can you not appreciate that?

So now we know at least two versions exist. Listen to them and see what you think. Newer  version first of The Bigger Moon in Alabama.