Monday, November 26, 1945. Now's the Time, Wolves and War Brides, Questionable claim about Goering, Test tube babies in Virgin hospitals, Japanese social insurance, ties for Christmas.

Recorded on this day in 1945:

 The Sheridan Press reported on wolves and war brides.

The story on the big wolf is ironic in a contemporary context.  Wolves were wiped out in Colorado, probably and in Wyoming, probably, until the major reintroduction effort of the 2000s began.  It's been a huge success in Wyoming, for which I'm glad, in spite of my initial skepticism.  An ongoing effort is occuring in Colorado, which is meeting a lot of opposition in the anti nature Freedom Caucus era.

The Rocky Mountain News, which I remember from the 70s, 80s and 90s, when it was the best, in my view, of the two Denver papers, was a bit sensationalist at the time, which I've only recently come to appreciate.  It was always a "tabloid", with that sort of paper format for some reason having a reputation of that type.  I've never heard of the story related by the headline here:

A little digging finds that this claim was flat out untrue.

The News also reported on, oddly enough, test tube babies, something that is way earlier than I'd have ever supposed.

The first "test tube" baby was born in 1978.  That person Louise Brown, is still with us.  The first example of IVF in a mammal did not occur until 1959.  Apparently the proponent of this suggestion was well ahead of her time in terms of scientific knowledge.

It's notable that the suggestion had a strong eugenics characteristic.  That drive is also now very much coming into fruition, with designer babies now becoming a thing.

On the underlying concern, the explosion in births and the drop in the average age for a woman to first give birth that commenced at this time shows the concern was misplaced.  As a Catholic, of course, I regard IVF as both unnatural and immoral.  The bizarrely pro natalist Trump administration is all in on it.

The News also reported on Japanese social insurance, something being brought in by the progressive and distributist MacArthur occupation.

The cartoons of the day.

A classic gift was suggested.

British troops swept the Sharon plain in reaction to a prior days terrorist attack.

Ezra Pound was indicted for a second time on 19 counts of treason.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 25, 1945. Taxing war profits.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Austria, Christian Democrats, Douglas MacArthur, Japan, Occupation of Japan, Taxes

Thursday, November 12, 1925. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five.

Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five (Lous, his then wife Lil Hardin Armstrong on piano, Edward "Kid" Ory on trombone, Johnny Dodds on clarinet and Johnny St. Cyr on guitar and banjo) recorded their first songs for Okeh Records.

The British submarine HMS M1 was hit by the SS Vidar and sank in the English Channel with the loss of all 69 hands.

Last edition:

Sunday, November 8, 1925. The Eagle.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, 1925 at the movies

Saturday, July 7, 1945. Japanese killings.

The Japanese carried out the Kalagong massacre, killing villagers in the area after they failed to provide any information about guerrillas in the area.

Peter to Rot.

The Japanese also murdered Peter To Rot, a Catholic from New Guinea, in a bizarre incidence demonstrating the severe Japanese anti Western view and, frankly, the Japanese debasement of the period, which not only reflected itself in murder, but in a chattel slavery view of women and sex.  He was executed for defending a woman whom another planned to kidnap and force into a plural marriage, with the Japanese supporting plural marriages in New Guinea (they were not legal in Japan).  He was arrested and then later murdered on this day.  He will be canonized this October.

Japanese rocket propelled fighter the Mitsubishi J8M made its first flight under it's own power.  The test flight was not really a success as the engine stalled. The pilot, Lieutenant Commander Toyohiko Inuzuka, was able to glide the power into a landing, but the plane hit a building.  He died the following day.

The plane was intended as a licensed copy of the ME 163.  Only seven were built.

"First American Red Cross workers to leave Europe for duty in the Pacific are these girls shown waiting to board their transport: L-R: Brownie Thain, Waukomis, Okla.; Jean Fiegel, 7021 Hollywood Bvd., Hollywood, Cal., and Mildred Blandford, 1735 Chichester St., Louisville, Kentucky. Marseille, France. 7 July, 1945. Photographer: Cpl. Becker."

Heloísa Pinheiro (Helô Pinheiro), who inspired The Girl from Ipanema, was born.

Last edition:  

Friday, July 6, 1945. Norway declares war, a parade in Berlin, an award for King Michael, the US establishes an award, Operation Overcast, Nicaragua ratifies, Chennault resigns, and the mystery of Madelen Mason.

Labels: 1940s, 1945, Harry S. Truman, It was because of World War Two, Operation Overcast, Post WWII Occupation of Germany, Romania, USSR, Women, World War Two

Tuesday, June 10, 1975. Refugees.

Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass held a concert at Camp Talega, Camp Pendleton, to entertain Vietnamese refugees.

President Ford reported that 3,341 refugees had been relocated to third countries, with a majority going to Canada.

An artillery salute at Shea stadium for the Army's 200th anniversary went wrong.

Last edition:

Sunday, June 8, 1978. Võ Văn Ba.

Labels: 1970s, 1975, Espionage, North Vietnam, South Vietnam, Vietnam, Vietnam War

Thursday, March 19, 1925. Sweet Georgia Brown.

New Mexico adopted its state flag.

Calvin Coolidge invited the nations of the world to participate in the Sesquicentennial Exposition to be held in Philadelphia in 1926.

Sweet Georgia Brown was first recorded.

The British government announced it was developing a major naval base at Singapore.

Last edition:

Wednesday, March 18, 1925. The Tri State Tornado.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, China, Chinese Warlord Era, Disaster, Weather, Yunnan–Guangxi War

Friday, March 6, 1925. Wes Montgomery born.

 

Jazz guitarist Wes Montgomery was born in Indianapolis.

Last edition:

Wednesday, March 4, 1925. The Second Inauguration of Calvin Coolidge.

Labels: 1920s, 1925, Calvin Coolidge, the spoken word

Tuesday, February 12, 1924. Rhapsody In Blue.

Rhapsody In Blue, a jazz masterpiece, premiered today.  It was written by George Gershwin for Paul Whiteman, for "An Experiment in Modern Music". That event occured on this day in Aeolian Hall, New York City.

It's a masterpiece.  Indeed, it competes for the title of greatest American musical composition.

It's never aged, and indeed, was used relatively recently by United Airlines in its television commercials.

Indeed, that overlapped a bit with their net based and on board commercials that featured sports broadcasting figure Katie Nolan, who recently was a finalist on Celebrity Jeopardy.

 Coolidge put firing Denby on ice, for the time being.

Tuesday, January 18, 1944. The Seige of Leningrad broken.

B-17s over Linz, Austria, January 18, 1944.

The 900-day siege of Leningrad was broken by the Red Army, but only thinly.

The 3d Panzer Army repulsed the Red Army at Vitebsk, Belarus.

The British 5th and 56th Divisions were firmly across the Garigliano.  The Germans begin to move reinforcements in from Anzio.

British General Kenneth Anderson was relieved of command of the British Second Army.  He had fallen out of favor some time ago with Alexander and Montgomery.  Lt. Gen. Miles Dempsey took over.

U.S. railroads return to their private owners' control.

From Sarah Sundin's blog:

Today in World War II History—January 18, 1944: 80 Years Ago—Jan. 18, 1944: US Fourth War Loan Drive begins, runs through February 15; sales made in pharmacies are designated for C-47 ambulance planes.

Billie Holiday performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in Esquire's first jazz festival. 

December 15, 1943. The cavalry arrives.

The 112th Cavalry, which had been dismounted, landed at Arawe in the opening battle of the New Britain Campaign, Operation Cartwheel.

The landings were actually a diversion for an upcoming landing at Cape Gloucester.

The 112th Cavalry was a cavalry regiment of the Texas National Guard. They had at first been retained along the boarder with Mexico until Mexican attitudes towards the war could be ascertained.  They were deployed to the Pacific without horses and would never recover their mounts.

Australian forces took Lakona on New Guinea.

Three German officers and a collaborator were tried for war crimes by the Soviet Union. Abwehr Captain Wilhelm Langheld, SS Lieutenant Hans Ritz, Corporal Reinhard Retzlaff of the Secret Field Police, and Mikhail Bulanov of Kharkov were found guilty on December 18 and hanged the next day in what some inaccurately regard as the first war crimes trial.

The Soviets had, in fact, already conducted at least one.  Unlike the prior ones, however, this one, whose results were basically foreordained, was photographed by the Soviets.

Famous musician Thomas Wright "Fats" Waller died of pneumonia at age 39 while traveling on the Los Angeles to Chicago Super Chief train.

Friday, April 6, 1923. Armstrong records

Louis Armstrong was recorded for the first time, playing with King Oliver's Creole Band, on Chimes Blues.

Weather Bird Rag was on the flip side, on which Armstrong also played.

20s Charleston Dance - "Bei mir bist Du schön" New Orleans Jazz Band

Sunday, February 19, 1922. A revolution in Mexico?

Officially, by this date in 1922, the Mexican Revolution was over.

On the ground in northern Mexico, and at the border, things didn't quite appear that way.

Or at least to the press. 

The recent invasion of Mexico from the United States side, at Columbus, was only 30 men in strength.  The Obregón government, which had been consolidating power, strongly reacted, however.  And not just in this instance.

The United States Bureau of Prohibition successfully interdicted the British rum runner Annabelle with aircraft, the first successful use of its new fleet of eleven airplanes.

WJZ in New York made the first broadcast of a live radio entertainment program. Comedian Ed Wynn reprised his "Perfect Fool" character with difficulty, given as he lacked the reaction of a live audience.

Political cartoon by Clifford Berryman, published in the Washington Evening Star on 19 February 1922.

Jazz had come to Washington, D.C.

Thursday July 10, 1941. The death of Jelly Roll Morton and the Pogrom at Jedwabne.

 

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, more famously recalled as Jelly Roll Morton, died on this day in 1941.  He was 40 years old.

Morton was instrumental in the rise of jazz and sometimes claimed to have invented it.  He had not, but he was the first jazz arranger, so his claim was not completely without merit.  Fame came to him early with his famous Jelly Roll Blues.

Born in Louisiana of creole parents, he adopted the name Mouton when his mother married a man by that last name after his father, to whom his mother was not married, left the family when he was still young.  He later changed that to the anglicized version of Morton.

Famous in the 1920s, his career carried on into the late 1930s.  At that time, he was interviewed by Alan Lomax who encouraged Morton to record a series of songs for his collection from the early jazz era.  Morton was highly disinclined to do so, as the songs contained a ribald selection and Morton himself was a devout Catholic.  The song titles were not published until 2005 given their nature.

While paying at Washington D. C.'s Music Box bar he was violently stabbed.  He was refused treatment at the nearest hospital on the basis that it was all white.  While he did receive medical treatment at a hospital for African Americans, he never really recovered from the event and died on this day in 1941.

The Finns began a campaign to retake the Lake Ladoga region which they'd lost to the Soviets in the Winter War.

340 Polish Jews were murdered Jedwabne, a region that had just been taken by the Germans.  The pogrom is remarkable, however, in that it was carried out by Poles.

Details of the atrocity only came to light in the 1990s, so there's some murkiness regarding them.  What seems to have occurred is that animosity between the areas non Jewish population and Jewish population started when the town was turned over to the USSR following the joint German/Soviet invasion of 1939.  Jewish residents of the town, which made up about half of its inhabitants, were understandably relieved to be under the Soviets rather than the Nazis, with some welcoming the Soviet arrival.

The Jewish residents were hardly Communist supporters but the actions by a few cast suspicion upon an already disliked group.  On July 10 members of some German official unit arrived, probably the SS based on the discussion, and met with the town council. What occurred is murky but Poles from outside of the town, including at least one former NKVD operative, arrived and the pogrom commences.  Most of the victims were burned to death in a barn.  Residents of the town did participate.

As noted, many of the details were lost, probably more than a few intentionally.  The Germans seem to have had an early role, but they did not carry out the atrocity.  By some accounts, the Germans themselves were a bit surprised by the level of violence.  They may have filmed it, by some accounts, which was a common German practice, but no films have come to light.  

The revelation of the event after the collapse of the Soviet Union ultimately sparked a Polish law seeking to suppress stories which suggest that the Poles were more than victims during the war.  Poland did suffer terribly, but throughout Eastern Europe events like this occurred with local civilians often independently murdering local Jews whom they had lived with for decades.

The Germans commenced their assault on Smolensk.  They would take the city, but only after weeks of effort.  While it was a Soviet defeat, it was notable that already by this point in Barbarossa the Soviets were proving difficult to dislodge from urban areas.

Main gate,  Quonset Point Naval Air Station, during rush hour.  July 10, 1941.

Bobby Darin "Beyond the Sea"

How High The Moon

La Mer (Beyond the Sea) – Avalon Jazz Band

Jazz isn't dead.

Jazz isn’t dead, it just smells funny.

Frank Zappa

Dire Straits-Sultans Of Swing Gayageum ver. by Luna

We've put up now three different versions, with this entry, of Dire Straits' Sultan's of Swing, without putting up the original.  Perhaps we'll do that next.

Why?

Well, mostly because I like the first two versions I put up quite a lot, better than the original Dire Straits version, which I also like.  I'm not a big Dire Straits fan, but this particular song of theirs is compelling, which apparently they also know, as the lead singer from the band noted that he feels compelled to keep singing it as it means so much to people.

I think it actually does.  It touches something, and one of the things it touches is the nature of some people's work.  Musicians, even ones who have "day time jobs" are working at their vocation when they play, and quite a few work in conditions like those referenced in this song, playing music that isn't really popular, to a limited audience, as its their craft.  An analogy could be made to the work of many other people's work, but we'll leave it at that.

The work connection is why all of these have appeared in our "Mid Week At Work" series.

"Denver has outgrown us". El Chapultepec closes.

I really wondered how it was hanging on.

I'd never been in there, and I apparently never got a picture of it from the outside for our Painted Bricks blog.  It wasn't very photogenetic anyway.  But when the Mexican restaurant turned jazz club found itself no longer in the seedy Five Points district it had survived in for years, but in the new gentrified up and coming Coors Field area, without moving an inch, it just didn't look quite right.  It's old school "the nightlife ain't the right life, but it's my life" type of genuine atmosphere didn't squire with the hipsterization of where it was.

COVID 19 didn't help things, but the owners were quick to note that it wasn't solely responsible for brining its 87 year existence to an end.

Jazz musicians and blues musicians, they shouldn’t have to time their sets around baseball innings and when the crowds are going to get out and be wild. They should be able to play their music, and the crowd should just be there to enjoy them, The employees and our musicians, our customers, we shouldn’t have to be worried about our safety when it’s time to leave.

Denver’s outgrown us.

So stated one of the owners.

I love Coors Field and baseball, about the only thing about Denver I actually like. But there isn't anything I like about Denver without some degree of reservation.  Like everything else, there really isn't a permanent "old Denver" that was in some state of perfection.  The area that El Chapultepec was in prior to Coors Field was a scary dump which was a bit scary to drive through in the middle of the day.  It wasn't until Coors Field overhauled everything downtown that it changed.

But it was a change that to an end the feeling that the jazz club belonged there.  A jazz club could probably exist somewhere else in Denver, but it wouldn't be genuine in the same fashion that El Chapultepec was.

But that's true of a lot of Denver now.

Indeed, that's true of a lot of the US, but Denver is somehow sort of unique in this way.  The town that my father was born in, four years before El Chapultepec opened, was still around in many ways into the 1980s when I first started to go there on my own. Bits of that, indeed, still are.  But when it pulled out of the oil recession of the 1990s it really started off in another direction even as the oil companies came back.  Prior to that point it was sort of an overgrown cow town in some real ways. Then it started to become a hipster epicenter, followed soon thereafter by a new weedy culture based on pharmacological stupefaction. That's what basically characterizes the town town today.  And the change hasn't overall been a good one.

Not that those who hung out at the jazz club were models of universal clean living.  It was a bar. But the set in seediness in the old Five Points district was of a different sort than the new widespread seediness that characterizes a lot of Denver.  In between was sort of a high point when it looked like the city would overcome its decay without creating a new one, based on Coors Field and what it brought to the downtown.  It did partially succeed but weed took a lot of it away.

Wednesday, April 7, 1915. Billie Holiday born.

Eleanora Fagan, better known to history as Billie Holiday, was born.

Last edition:

Tuesday, April 6, 1915. The Battle of Celaya commences.

Labels: 1910s, 1915, Álvaro Obregón, Battle of Celaya, Battle of Hartmannswillerkopf, French Army, Mexican Revolution, Mexico, Pancho Villa, World War One