Jukebox In My Head

In the fall of 1969, I entered Concordia Teacher's College in Seward, Nebraska. After leaving the ministerial program for teacher training, I needed some classes to get my degree.

It was a time of great upheaval in America, and it was no different even out on the Great Plains. I quickly fell in with the anti-war crowd and other people as obsessive about music as I was. In many cases, they were the same, and in 1969, pretty easy to pick out in a conservative Lutheran college in a farming community in central Nebraska. We all stuck out, something I would learn very quickly when I took a job as bartender in a redneck Seward tavern.

One of those friends was Ray Dunbar. Coming outta Detroit, Ray was a rather large fellow, 250-plus pounds, and he was as charismatic and charming as he was huge. He also played guitar and was – at least to me at the time, with his girth and his fingerpicking skills -- a white teenage B.B. King when he plugged in his axe.

I had just picked up a guitar for the first time that spring, so anybody who could play better than me (and that included pretty much everyone) was considered a guitar god. Ray and I quickly became music pals. I’d go up to his room to shoot the shit about music and play rhythm guitar at which he could throw lead figures. How many hours did I repeat the Em-A figure upon which “Cowgirl in the Sand” is based on my acoustic guitar while Ray peeled mighty notes out of his electric?

One time I was in his room, and he showed me a copy of a single, “Mind, Body and Soul,” by a group I had never heard of, Flaming Ember. It was on Hot Wax Records, a small Detroit label. And, Ray said in passing, he was co-writer and producer of the song. I looked at the single, and sure enough, there was a credit on the label as co-songwriter: “R. Dunbar/ E. Wayne, and a sole production credit for R. Dunbar.

I thought that was cool, and didn’t think much more about it.

Then something happened. The single, not surprisingly, since it is catchy beyond belief, became a hit on the national charts. “Mind, Body and Soul” was soul pop music that just totally knocked me out. “Are you digging ‘Mind, Body and Soul?’ Well, it’s #36 on the Billboard charts, and one of my best friends wrote and produced it,” I gushed to my friend Frank Kresen in a letter dated December 2, 1969. “This guy is a genius with music, beautiful lead guitar.”

“Mind, Body and Soul” eventually reached #26 on Billboard’s charts in November of 1969. And so it was that Ray Dunbar became a celebrity on the campus of Concordia Lutheran College. I was proud to be his friend and to be able to provide that Em-A so he could wail on his electric guitar for twenty minutes at a time.

Ray tried to play live in the Seward area, and he performed a couple of times down at Heumann's, the redneck bar that had become a college hangout in the months after I started working, and we drove to Lincoln one night to watch him play in a club there.

Not long after I bought a single by a group that called itself Chairmen of the Board. “Give Me Just a Little More Time” was another melodic soul-pop number with a stuttering singer named General Johnson. By this time, my habit was to read all the information on the label. One thing caught my attention immediately.

It was written by R. Dunbar/E. Wayne.

Equally curious and annoyed, but more the latter. I took the single up to his room, showed it to him and asked the obvious question.

“Did you write this one, too, Ray?”

He quickly fessed up. He found the single, he said, saw the name and brought it out to Seward with him. Who would know? Once the momentum began building, he said, he just couldn’t resist soaking up the adulation. It wasn't long before everyone on campus knew of the deception.

“‘Give Me Just a Little More Time’ was written by R. Dunbar and E. Wayne, the same team that wrote ‘Mind Body and Soul,’ I informed Frank a couple months later. "My friend, Ray Dunbar, confessed that he didn’t write it. It was a giant hoax. (This is hoax time, it seems.) But it’s still a good record.”

I have tried to ascertain who actually comprised the Dunbar/Wayne team, and there is still some confusion. R. Dunbar seems to have been Ronald Dunbar, and E. Wayne was Edith Wayne, a pseudonym for Lamont Dozier and Brian and Edward Holland, the talented writing/production team responsible for many Motown hits of the mid-1960s.

"Mind, Body and Soul" came out on Hot Wax Records, and "Give Me Just a Little More Time" on Invictus, two labels owned by the songwriters and producers, who had left Motown in a money dispute and likely had to use the fake names because they were involved in litigation with Berry Gordy over their departure.

Some question whether Ron Dunbar actually existed. Freda Payne, for whom the same team wrote "Band of Gold," claims he was real and contributed to the songs. Others claim both songs are the work of Holland/Dozier/Holland. Both have the sound and feel of HDH, and it's easy to question why they would let a staff producer helm their first singles after the break from Motown. But it is possible.

One message-board post said that there is an as-yet-unreleased version of "Give Me Just a Little More Time" by the Four Tops, who were produced by HDH. (Would I love to hear Levi sing that one.)

Whatever the reality of the credits, the two songs are still sterling examples of 1960s soul music.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A volcano along the Aleutian chain erupted, this one on Unmak Island. Unless there is loss of life, these kinds of stories pass quickly through the news cycle. But with friends in Anchorage and Homer, I always want to find out more.

This one was far enough away from either of those places to have much impact. And the residents of the island, apparently less than a dozen people, were plucked quickly from the island and moved to nearby Dutch Harbor.

A volcano blowing its top is another chance to learn a little geography, and my first choice to get beyond the news story, so to speak, is to do a little exploring on my own. My first destination is Google Earth, the software program that allows you to fly over the planet at any height and see geographical features three-dimensionally. I find it infinitely useful for many things: in this case, to get a closer look at the topography than I can get from the news story or photograph.

After reading the Associated Press story -- in my local hard-copy local newspaper by the way -- I fired up Google Earth and typed in "umnak island, ak." Actually, I misspelled it and the program asked me if I wanted the correct spelling. I clicked yes and soon was hovering over the island. Zooming to a lower altitude, I easily discerned a couple of volcanic peaks covered in snow at one end and a battered caldera at the other. By that time, I had the A.P. story in another window, and read that it was the Okmok Caldera that blew.

Google hasn't finished mapping the entire planet up close, though it updates the images as the satellite (it uses the Quickbird satellite owned by DigitalGlobe in nearby Longmont and is the same technology that gave us those clear images of Baghdad in the lead-up to the Iraq War). But the caldera has a newer image that allows me to fly right into it and hover just above the lake in the middle.

Remembering, of course, that the features I am seeing, high ridges and ash flows down one side, vegetation around the edges, are all now gone or altered forever in the blast, which apparently happened without warning soon after an earthquake hit the area.

A regular Google search gives me a page that says the caldera has erupted regularly in history since at least 1805, and the last one was in 1996. Most are ash emissions and some lava flows, which are easily visible in Google Earth from the top of the volcano to the ocean below.

I click on a purple dot near the caldera and it brings up a Wikipedia page that says the caldera is at the top of a shield volcano and that it once was filled with a lake 500 feet deep which eventually drained out through a notch on the northeast rim. The notch is easily visible, and if you zoom in close you can see rapids flowing down the flanks.

Another purple dot near the caldera brings up a WP page that describes Cape Field at Ft. Glenn, aka Umnak Airport, a WWII historical site for "for providing defensive cover for the U.S, bases in Unalaska Bay." It is also described as the most intact WWII base in the Aleutian chain that, at one time, housed more than 10,000 people.

The base is about 12 or 13 miles from the caldera. It will be interesting to find out in coming days whether the base is still intact or now covered in ash. I'll put an RSS search on some keywords and see what I can find out.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 08:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the most interesting things about this year's tour is that, with all the brand names and dopers out of the picture, we are watching a new generation, as it were, of new coming into their own that will guide the destiny of tours future.

At the top of the list would have to be Riccardo Ricco, a 24-year-old rider who took the peleton at the end of Stage 5 on Super Besse and again waited until just the right moment to strike (he is called the Cobra) as he outlegged the peleton over the second high mountain of the day and led the way into the finish line at Bagneres de Bigorre.

There were reports insinuating Ricco had been targeted by the drug squad. He also crashed hard at the end of Stage Eight, which left questions about his health.

He answered both today, Ricco was superb. He stayed with the main peleton, which included all the favorites playing their usual game of watching each other and staying together, went over the first climb, the Col de Peyresourde, without gathering attention to himself.

The riders dropped quickly off the first mountain and almost immediately hit the Col de Aspin, not quite as bad as the Peyresourde, but one in which the gradient becomes progressively steeper as it gets higher. Ricco waited patiently for the steepest part of the road to kick in – about three miles from the summit – and shot off the front of the pack like a rocket.

Accelerating at a pace I have rarely seen on a nine-degree slope, Ricco passed Sebastian Lang, who had led since near the beginning of the race, like he wasn't even moving, went over the top and was never again seen by the rest of the riders during the 16-mile descent to the finish line.

Ricco, in his second tour, said in an interview a couple of days ago that he was here to learn the tour, not to win. With one of the tour's most difficult stages tomorrow, we will see how this day affects his legs, but you have to think that Ricco is pretty darned close to being ready. He is still no threat to the leaders – he's moved up to 21st, 2:35 behind – but he's somebody to watch for.

Also impressive has been Stefan Schumacher, who lost the yellow jersey when he fell near the top of the climb to Super Besse and is currently standing 4th, 0:56 behind leader Kim Kirchen. Obviously still bothered by that incident, he ran another strong race today. He might not be as ready as the better-known riders, but he's definitely, for now, in the running.

All in all, there are 23 riders within two minutes of the leaders. Let's see whether the most difficult Pyrenean stage tomorrow will change those numbers while we watch somebody, anybody, attack in the high mountain passes.

The leaders play cat-and-mouse up mountains, while the rest of us beg for the leaders to challenge each other. So far, that hasn't happened. The only significant event today was when Cadel Evans, hands-down the favorite in the general classification, had an apparently ferocious crash halfway along the course that bounced his head on the pavement, cracking his helmet. Cameras didn't catch the incident, but later footage showed a huge gash down the back of his jersey and with many visible bruises and cuts. All indications from the team are that Evans, who finished the stage with the rest of the leaders, is all right. That could have implications with Monday's difficult Pyrenean stage looming, however.

Manuel Beltran was thrown off the tour and suspending from his team after testing positive after the first stage for EPO. While this actually put the tour on the front page of American newspapers, which generally ignore or give lip service to the race unless drugs are involved, there is a change in attitude this year.

One of the problems with cycling and doping is that riders have kept a code of silence in talking about other riders. This year the riders themselves are on record against dopers; the general attitude the next day in interviews was, "Fuck Beltran and his cheating ways." I might be wrong about this, but I think the tour has turned a corner in the fight against doping.

I am also reminded that the tour is one of the only sports that is actually trying to do something about drugs. No American major-league sport has taken the action cycling has taken, yet cycling is generally seen (if you read headlines) as a tawdry sport. As this year's version proves once again, the race is still a unique and amazing spectacle. Onward to Hautacam.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 09:16 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The sixth stage of Le Tour de France 2008 is in the books, and one image has dominated the coverage so far. It's an advertisement from Versus, the station that carries the tour for American television, that shows, among others, Jan Ullrich, Alexandre Vinokourov, Michael Rassmussen and Floyd Landis, all major riders caught cheating in tours past. The film runs backwards, so that it looks like Landis is actually having the yellow jersey TAKEN OFF his shoulders.

It's a powerful icon, and Take Back the Tour is most definitely the message of the 2008 race. It's the only time that Versus mentions doping in its coverage. There are no references to Ullrich, or Rasmussen or Landis in the telecasts, and it's obvious that everybody has their fingers crossed that no test comes up positive.

Except for dancing around the subject of doping, the tour has been splendid thus far. Tour officials change the rules and routes every year. Nearly every tour we have seen began with several days on flat roads, so this year the race started in Brittany along the west coast, and riders spent three days battling the wind, rain and elements as well as challenging courses that didn't necessarily set up well for sprinters. Thor Hushvov grabbed Stage Two, but there wasn't a pure sprint until Stage Five, when the whole pack thundered across the finish line on the wide streets of Chateauroux Wednesday.

One of my favorite things about the tour is watching individuals or small groups that beat the peleton across long stretches or attack on high mountains. Physics has proven that a large group of riders in formation can overcome large time gaps, and computers can calculate how long it will take the peleton to overtake attackers. So far at least, the computers can't judge the quirks or subtleties of humanity, so watching whether breakaways succeed can be the biggest thrill of many sprint stages.

Stage Three included a breakaway in the first couple of miles started by Will Frischkorn, a Boulder resident in his first tour, that actually defeated the peleton and successfully broke away, giving Samuel Dumoulin the stage win and Romain Feillu the yellow jersey in the general classification race. The trio beat the pack by more than two minutes! Frischkorn paid for his frivolity in the time trial the next day, but I can't imagine the thrill he had putting the pedal down on an angry peleton that blew it badly on his third tour stage.

In a footnote, the end of Stage Five showed what a bitter poison the tour can be for those who challenge the peleton. A three-man breakaway early on proved troublesome, and the peleton didn't catch Agritubel's Nicolas Vogondy until just meters from the finish. After leading for more than 200 kilometers, his legs gave out ten seconds before he might have grabbed the stage victory.

Today's stage brought the first drama in the race for the yellow jersey. It was a half-mountain stage that wound first through fields and among ancient volcanoes now covered with grass and ended with two second-category climbs, first up the Col de La Croix Morande and then almost straight up a two-kilometer 10-percent gradient to the ski village of Super Besse.

Attacks began early on the last 2K climb, which just kept getting steeper the higher the riders went, began early. This kept the pace high, although every attacker was hauled in. Versus announcers Phil Liggett and Paul Sherwen kept saying that the leaders were watching CSC's Alejandro Valverde, who was bandaged up after a fall Wednesday and needs to catch up some time on favorite Cadel Evans. But as it turned out, all the favorites stayed bunched together and Valverde and Evans came in second and third, strong races for both.

Stefan Schumacher, the man wearing the yellow jersey for the second day today, lost it, in another ironic twist, after he claimed he hit the rear wheel of Kim Kirchen just below the finish line. When all was said and done, Kirchen, who didn't fall, wound up wearing the yellow on the podium. Schumacher now is in third, 16 seconds behind Kirchen.

Posted by Leland Rucker at 06:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)