Ninth Month Ninth Day

The Compromise of 1850 was put in place 162 years ago today with the admission of California as the 31st state and the creation of New Mexico and Utah territories.

Joe Theismann is 63. Allegedly his name was pronounced Thees-man until he went to Notre Dame and they realized that Thighs-man rhymed with Heisman (as in the Trophy). No, really. (Theismann was runner-up to Jim Plunkett of Stanford for the Heisman in 1970.) NewMexiKen was at RFK that Monday night in 1985 when Lawrence Taylor broke Theismann’s leg.

Once-upon-a-time child star Angela Cartwright is 60. She was Danny Thomas’s step-daughter, Brigitta in Sound of Music, and Penny Robinson in Lost in Space.

Hugh Grant is 52. Is it just me, or do he and Phil Mickelson have the same goofy look?

Adam Sandler turns 46 today.

Michelle Williams is 32.

Otis Redding was born on this date in 1941.

Though his career was relatively brief, cut short by a tragic plane crash, Otis Redding was a singer of such commanding stature that to this day he embodies the essence of soul music in its purist form. His name is synonymous with the term soul, music that arose out of the black experience in America through the transmutation of gospel and rhythm & blues into a form of funky, secular testifying. Redding left behind a legacy of recordings made during the four-year period from his first sessions for Stax/Volt Records in 1963 until his death in 1967. Ironically, although he consistently impacted the R&B charts beginning with the Top Ten appearance of “Mr. Pitiful” in 1965, none of his singles fared better than #21 on the pop Top Forty until the posthumous release of “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay.” That landmark song, recorded just four days before Redding’s death, went to #1 and stayed there for four weeks in early 1968.

— Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Redding wrote the song known as Aretha Franklin’s signature hit, “Respect.”

Try a Little Tenderness

Tolstoy was born 184 years ago today.

Elvis Presley’s first famous TV appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show was 56 years ago tonight.

From Peter Guralnick’s excellent Last Train to Memphis:

On September 9 he was scheduled to appear on the premier Ed Sullivan Show of the season. Sullivan, however, was recuperating from an August automobile accident and, as a result, was not going to be able to host the program, which Elvis would perform from the CBS studio in Los Angeles. Elvis sent Sullivan a get-well card and a picture autographed to “Mr. Ed Sullivan” and was thrilled to learn that the show would be guest-hosted by Charles Laughton, star of Mutiny an the Bounty. Steve Allen, who had presented him in his last television appearance, was not even going to challenge Sullivan on the night in question: NBC was simply going to show a movie.

He opened with “Don’t Be Cruel,” strolling out alone from the darkened wings onto a stage spotlighted with silhouettes of guitars and a bass fiddle. He was wearing a loud plaid jacket and an open-necked shirt, but his performance was relatively subdued, as every shoulder shrug, every clearing of his throat and probing of his mouth with his tongue, evoked screams and uncontrolled paroxysms of emotion. Then he announced he was going to sing a brand-new song, “it’s completely different from anything we’ve ever done. This is the title of our brand-new Twentieth Century Fox movie and also my newest RCA Victor escape – er, release.” There was an apologetic shrug in response to the audience’s laughter, and then, after an altogether sincere tribute to the studio, the director, and all the members of the cast, and “with the help of the very wonderful Jordanaires,” he sang “Love Me Tender.” It is a curious moment. Just after beginning the song he takes the guitar off and hands it to an unseen stagehand, and there are those awkward moments when he doesn’t seem to know quite what to do without his prop and shrugs his shoulders or twitchily adjusts his lapels, but the moans which greet the song — of surprise? of shock? of delight? most likely all three — clearly gratify him, and at the end of the song he bows and gestures graciously to the Jordanaires.

When he comes back for the second sequence, the band is shown, with Jordanaire Gordon Stoker at the piano and the other Jordanaires in plaid jackets at least as loud (but nowhere near as cool) as his own. They rock out on Little Richard’s “Ready Teddy,” but when Elvis goes into his dance the camera pulls away and, as reviews in the following days will note, “censors” his movements. It doesn’t matter. The girls scream just when he stands still, and when he does two verses of “Hound Dog” to end the performance, the West Coast studio audience goes crazy, though the New York Journal-American‘s Jack O’Brian, after first taking note of Presley’s “ridiculously tasteless jacket and hairdo (hairdon’t)” and granting that “Elvis added to his gamut (A to B) by crossing his eyes,” pointed out that the New York audience “laughed and hooted.” “Well, what did someone say?” remarked host Charles Laughton, with good humor, at the conclusion of the performance. “Music hath charms to soothe the savage breast?”

The show got a 43.7 Trendex rating (it reached 82.6 percent of the television audience), and in the Colonel’s view, which he shared gleefully with Steve Sholes, really boosted Presley’s stock with an adult audience for the first time.

It was about this time that Elvis began dying his hair from its natural sandy-dark blond to jet black — “Clairol Black Velvet.”