NewMexiKen

… of Mike Wallace; 89 today. 60 Minutes is the only place where the average age is higher than that of the College of Cardinals.

… of Glenda Jackson; 71 today. Ms. Jackson has four Oscar nominations, two of them winners for best actress — Women In Love and A Touch of Class.

… of Albert Finney; he’s 71 as well. Finney has been nominated for an Oscar five times, but no wins.

… of Sonny Curtis; 70 today. Curtis started out with Buddy Holly but earned fame as a songwriter — I Fought the Law and the Law Won. It’s Curtis who wrote — and who sang — Love Is All Around. You know, the theme song from “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

Who can turn the world on with her smile?
Who can take a nothing day, and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it’s you girl, and you should know it
With each glance and every little movement you show it

Love is all around, no need to fake it.
You can have the town, why don’t you take it.
You’re gonna make it after all

… of James L. Brooks; he’s 67. Brooks won Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay for Terms of Endearment. He received nominations in various categories for Broadcast News, Jerry Maguire and As Good as It Gets, too. For my money, I like his work as executive producer of Mary Tyler Moore and, of course, The Simpsons.

… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Richie Furay; 63 today. Furay, Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer, Stephen Stills and Neil Young were the founders of Buffalo Springfield.

There’s something happening here
What it is ain’t exactly clear
There’s a man with a gun over there
Telling me I got to beware
I think it’s time we stop, children, what’s that sound
Everybody look what’s going down

… of Candace Bergen; she’s 61. Ms. Bergen was nominated for the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1980 for Starting Over.

… of Billy Joel; 58 today. If you need a couple notes of Billy Joel, click here.

… of Kermit (yeah, that Kermit). He’s 52 today. Maybe it is easy being green. The original Kermit was made from a coat belonging to Jim Henson’s mother.

John Brown was born on May 9th in 1800. The American Experience has a good biographical essay on Brown.

He has been called a saint, a fanatic, and a cold-blooded murderer. The debate over his memory, his motives, about the true nature of the man, continues to stir passionate debate. It is said that John Brown was the spark that started the Civil War. Truly, he marked the end of compromise over the issue of slavery, and it was not long after his death that John Brown’s war became the nation’s war.

J. M. (James Matthew) Barrie was born in Scotland on May 9th in 1860. His Peter Pan first appeared in 1902 in a book of children’s stories, The Little White Bird. In 1904 Barrie produced the play “Peter Pan, the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up.”

And on May 9th, 1950:

A fire crew fighting the Capitan Gap fire in Lincoln National Forest rescues a bear cub clinging to a tree. The burned animal later became known as Smokey Bear and the cub grew into a national symbol for the prevention of forest fires. The bear lived on and later died of natural causes and his body was returned from Washington, D.C., to be buried in the same area of the Lincoln fire.

New Mexico Magazine

… of Don Rickles, 81 today.

… of Toni Tennille, 67 today. (The Captain, Daryl Dragon, is 64.)

… of Bill Cowher. The former Steelers coach is 50.

… of Ronnie Lott. The Football Hall of Famer is 48.

… of Melissa Gilbert, 43. Yup, “Half Pint” from The Little House on the Prairie. She was 10 when the show began. Ms. Gilbert was President of the Screen Actors Guild 2001-2005. (Past presidents include Ronald Reagan, Charlton Heston, Ed Asner and Patty Duke). Ms. Gilbert was the youngest person ever to receive a star in the Hollywood Walk of Fame. She dated Tom Cruise and had a relationship with Rob Lowe. She is married to Bruce Boxleitner. They have a son and Ms. Gilbert has another son from her marriage to Bo Brinkman.

Eric Hilliard Nelson would have been 67 today. (He died in a plane crash on New Year’s Eve 1985.)

Ricky Nelson was a teen idol who had something more than good looks going for him – namely, talent. On television, he acted out his real-life role as the son of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson in the Fifties. As a rock-and-rolling teenager on The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet, he practically grew up in the nation’s living rooms. In the recording studio, having landed a contract based on his TV stardom, he more than made the grade. No mere rock and roll pretender, Nelson was the real thing: a gentle-voiced singer/guitarist with an instinctive feel for the country-rooted side of rockabilly. And he had exquisite taste in musicians, utilizing guitarist James Burton (formerly a Dale Hawkins sideman, later an Elvis Presley accompanist) as his secret weapon in the studio.

Nelson’s first single – “A Teenager’s Romance” b/w “I’m Walkin’,” the latter a Fats Domino song – made the Top Ten shortly after its release in April 1957. He was sixteen years old at the time. The next year, he reached #1 with “Poor Little Fool” (which was written by Sharon Sheeley, who was Eddie Cochran’s girlfriend). His discerning taste in material – a rare talent in one so young – also led him to “Hello Mary Lou” (his signature song) and “Travelin’ Man,” both of which topped the charts. All totaled, Nelson scored an incredible 33 Top Forty hits in a seven-year period.

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Robert Johnson was born on May 8th in 1911.

Though he recorded only 29 songs in his brief career – 22 of which appeared on 78 rpm singles released on the Vocalion label, including his first and most popular, “Terraplane Blues” – Johnson nonetheless altered the course of American music. In the words of biographer Stephen C. LaVere, “Robert Johnson is the most influential bluesman of all time and the person most responsible for the shape popular music has taken in the last five decades.” Such classics as “Cross Road Blues,” “Love In Vain” and “Sweet Home Chicago” are the bedrock upon which modern blues and rock and roll were built.

Or, as Eric Clapton put it in the liner notes to the Johnson boxed-set, “Robert Johnson to me is the most important blues musician who ever lived….I have never found anything more deeply soulful than Robert Johnson. His music remains the most powerful cry that I think you can find in the human voice, really.”

The very first Coca-Cola was sold at Jacob’s Pharmacy in Atlanta on this date in 1886. Dr. John S. Pemberton created the formula, which until 1905 had extracts of cocaine, as well as caffeine-rich kola nut. Bookkeeper Frank Robinson coined the name and it’s his handwriting we know from the trademark.

And, today is the birthday of Jill, official oldest daughter of NewMexiKen and frequent contributor to these pages. Happy Birthday Jilly!

U.S. Senator Pete Domenici (R-Losing His Marbles) is 75 today.

Tim Russert is 57.

Steve Arroyo is 37.

Johannes Brahms and Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky were born on May 7th in 1833 and 1840 respectively.

Poet, playwright and Librarian of Congress Archibald MacLeish was born on May 7th in 1892.

Gary Cooper was born on May 7th in 1901. Copper twice won the best actor Oscar and had three more nominations in the category. His wins were for Sergeant York and High Noon.

Edwin Herbert Land was born on May 7th in 1909. Land invented the Polaroid Land Camera.

And Eva Peron was born on May 7th in 1919.