Domestic comedy

“You know, I think competitiveness is a default male setting.”

“It is not.”

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All “domestic comedy” posts

American ones

Ivie Anderson : Louis Armstrong : Clarence Ashley : Fred Astaire : Joan Baez : Mildred Bailey : Tony Bennett : Dock Boggs : James Brown : Chester Burnett (Howlin’ Wolf) : A.P. Carter : Betty Carter : Bo Carter : Maybelle Carter : Sara Carter : Johnny Cash : June Carter Cash : Ray Charles : Patsy Cline : Bing Crosby : Bo Diddley : Bob Dylan : Sleepy John Estes : Ruth Etting : Ella Fitzgerald : Slim Gaillard : Tess Gardella : Art Garfunkel : Judy Garland : Inara George : Lowell George : Clifford Gibson : Ronnie Gilbert : Al Green : Woody Guthrie : Bill Haley : Annette Hanshaw : Johnny Hartman : Screamin’ Jay Hawkins : Lee Hays : Fred Hellerman : Al Hibbler : Bob Hite : Billie Holiday : Judy Holliday : Buddy Holly : Son House : Alberta Hunter : Mississippi John Hurt : Mahalia Jackson : Skip James : Al Jardine : Blind Lemon Jefferson : Robert Johnson : Tommy Johnson : Rickie Lee Jones : B.B. King : Carole King : Tom Lehrer : Matthew and Mark (The NuGrape Twins) : Mike Love : Randy Newman : Laura Nyro : Anita O’Day : Van Dyke Parks : Charley Patton : Wilson Pickett : Elvis Presley : Gertrude “Ma” Rainey : Otis Redding : Malvina Reynolds : J.P. Richardson (The Big Bopper) : Jimmie Rodgers : Jimmy Rushing : Pete Seeger : Joya Sherrill : Paul Simon : Frank Sinatra : Bessie Smith : Jo Stafford : Sufjan Stevens : Koko Taylor : Elvie Thomas : Mel Tormé : Joe Turner : Ritchie Valens : Tom Waits : Thomas “Fats” Waller : Ethel Waters : Muddy Waters : Gillian Welch : Geeshie Wiley : Lee Wiley : Joe Williams : Alan Wilson : Brian Wilson : Carl Wilson : Dennis Wilson : Jackie Wilson

One-hundred American voices for this Fourth of July.

[Title borrowed from Clark Coolidge’s American Ones (Noise & Presentiments) (Bolinas, CA: Tombouctou, 1981).]

Corrections of the Times

From the Corrections page in today’s New York Times:

The Political Times column on Wednesday, about the role of ethnic identity in politics, misstated the subject of an ethnic joke that the biographer Lou Cannon said Ronald Reagan frequently regaled crowds with while campaigning. The joke, which most likely would destroy a promising candidacy today, centered on a monkey and an organ grinder — not Polish and Italian participants at a cockfight.

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Thomas Jefferson’s handwriting

[Image from the Library of Congress.]

Looks kinda Warholian, no?

Hyperspectral Imaging by Library of Congress Reveals Change Made by Thomas Jefferson in Original Declaration of Independence Draft (Library of Congress)

Dowdy mug

[Photograph by Michael Leddy.]

This dowdy mug (distressed by design) is a gift from my son. For use in and out of “the dowdy world.” Thanks, Ben!

Related reading
All “dowdy world” posts (via Pinboard)
Dowdy cup and saucer
From Lady Killer (1933) (Another dowdy beverage receptacle)

“House on Loon Lake”

From This American Life, a New Hampshire story: “House on Loon Lake.” It is as described, “a real-life Hardy Boys mystery.” Listen online, or download for 99¢.

(Thanks, Rachel!)

The Old Trading Post, Lisbon, New Hampshire

Elaine Fine found this postcard in a library book. Paul Drake is busy on a case with Perry Mason, so Elaine asked me to investigate.

The Old Trading Post was the work of Janet and Paul Rothenburger. The earliest reference to the Post that I can find is in a 1945 issue of Publishers Weekly. An item about the bookstore appears in the April 15 and July 15, 1950 issues of Billboard, in the unsigned columns “Dealer Doings” and “Merchandising Ideas Increase Disk Sales.” So the Post sold both books and records:



In the 1950s, the bookstore ran small classifieds in the New York Times. From April 1, 1951:



In 1967, the American Book Trade Directory (New York: R.R. Bowker), lists Janet Rothenburger as the sole proprietor. The Social Security Death Index lists a Paul Rothenburger, 1900–1967, with Lisbon, New Hampshire as his last residence. The last reference to an active store that I’ve found is from 1968, a listing in Book Dealers in North America (London: Sheppard Press, 1968). No SSDI record for Janet Rothenburger.

The Old Trading Post closed in 1968. A 1970 New York Times article on rural bookstores explains in passing the Post’s passing, in an account of Donald and Georgene Wattses’ Coventry Bookstore, which opened in Coventry, Connecticut, in 1968:


[Lewis Nichols, “Speaking of Books: Rural Byways to Bookshops.” New York Times, October 4, 1970.]

No sign of the Coventry Bookstore anywhere. That’s a case for Paul Drake.

[Sources: Google Books, the New York Times archive, the Social Security Death Index.]

A related post
Invitation to a dance (An old invitation, investigated)

Duke Ellington, morning person?

From Joya Sherrill’s children’s television show Time for Joya, WPIX, New York, 1970. Sherrill has just introduced her “very first boss”:

Joya Sherrill: Duke, I tell you, I can’t tell you how much it means to me to know that you got up this early to come and be on Time for Joya.

Duke Ellington: Well, eight o’clock in the morning, one never gets up. One only stays up.

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Joya Sherrill (1927–2010)

Joya Sherrill (1927–2010)

The news comes this morning from Chris Albertson’s Stomp Off in C that the singer Joya Sherrill has died. She sang with Duke Ellington in the 1940s (and again in 1957 and 1963), starting in July 1942, with her mother as chaperone:

“I opened in Chicago at the College Inn in the Hotel Sherman, July of 1942. Ivie Anderson, I shall never forget, was still with the band. You called me to sing ‘Mood Indigo’ (it was Ivie’s song), and she pulled me back before I walked out to sing, and said, ‘Sing it good, or I’ll come behind you and sing it too!’ I was terrified, but determined to do a good job.”

Quoted in Duke Ellington’s Music Is My Mistress (New York: Doubleday, 1973).

Here, from 1943, is a sample of Sherrill’s work with Ellington: “The Blues,” from Black, Brown and Beige.

Joya Sherrill later hosted two children’s television shows on WPIX in New York. Here, from 1970, are the surviving audio clips of Duke Ellington’s appearance on Time for Joya. Listen as Sherrill sings “Heritage” and Ellington answers children’s questions and mistells the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Sherrill and the kids then correct him. It’s eight o’clock in the morning, it’s charming and hilarious, and thank goodness that it lives on.

[To listen to .ram files without RealPlayer, use VLC media player.]

Visualizing the Gulf oil spill

Type in your location and better understand the size of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil spill: If It Was My Home.

Here in the American midwest, the spill would stretch from west of St. Louis to east of Indianapolis.

(Yes, if it were my home is right, as the site’s maker Andy Lintner acknowledges in the FAQ.)