My mother was more of a music fan than my father. My father's record collection consisted a few albums he had bought after, I'm pretty sure, my parents bought a very large and heavy combination radio and stereo set. It's a massively substantial piece of furniture. The records he purchased were all of military marches. Nothing else.
My mother had a pretty extensive set of 45 rpm records, or singles as they were called, which weren't really singles but which had one song each on each side. I should commit more of them to digital. They included a lot of Elvis Pressley, and some jazz, and some odds and ends. She later bought some albums that were from the 60s, but they were people like Tom Jones.
Musically, FWIW, I can recall The Lawrence Welk Show being a weekly staple in the house. I can barely recall The Ed Sullivan Show playing from time to time, which must mean that my father watched it on rare occasion. It ran until 1971.
Red Cross helping men at 5th Army rest center prepare packages for sending home. 9 January, 1944.
The Red Army took Polonne and Kamianets-Podilskyi.
Polonne had been within Poland until the Russo Polish War, when it went to the Soviets in 1920. It had a major Jewish population before World War Two. Kamianets-Podilskyi had also been part of the post World War One Polish state until 1920.
The U-81 was sunk at Pola Italy by American aircraft.
The US 2nd Corps attacked Cervaro and Monte Trochio in Italy.
The US constructed a second airfield on Bougainville.
Pvt. R. Dennis, 182nd Infantry, Americal Division, Bougainville, January 9, 1944.
Allied forces took Maungdaw in Burma.
Jimmy Page of Led Zeppelin fame was born on this day in 1944.
T/5 Cletus H. Moert, Louisville, Ky., holds pigeon and while reading message taken from its leg. Pozzilli Sector, Italy. 18 December, 1943.
Heinrich Himmler revoked most exemptions for Jews married to Gentiles in Germany. Jewish spouses, for the most part, ordered deported to Theresienstadt in January, with exceptions for couples that had very young children or who had lost a child in combat.
The SS murdered 118 men at Drakela, Greece, in a reprisal for partisan activities.
The US 5th Army captured Monte Lungo. San Pietro is taken by the 36th Infantry Division.
Three officials of the Kharkov Gestapo were tried before a Soviet military Court, found guilty and sentenced to death. All three, Hans Rietz, Wilhelm Langfeld, and Reinhard Retzlaff would be executed the following day.
The U.S. Army formed a Counter Intelligence Corps unit for the Manhattan Project.
The Japanese destroyer Numakaze was sunk by the US submarine Grayback.
Famous British rocker Keith Richards was born in Kent.
Cpl. Albert Allen of Chicago, Ill., and Cpl. Byron Davis of Lansing, Mich., (15th Weather Squadron), sit down to a meal of "J" rations, December 18, 1943 on New Britain. Cpl. Davis appears to be wearing jump boots.
German General Karl von Le Suire, commander of the German XXXXIX Mountain Corps, ordered the burning of the Greek city of Kalavryta and the execution of its male population in reprisal for the execution of 80 German prisoners of war by partisans. They would ultimately kill 58 men and boys in Rogoi, and 37 in Kerpini. At Mega Spilaio they murdered 22 monks and visitors.
Von Le Suire would surrender his command to the Soviets at the end of the war, and he would die in their captivity in 1954 at age 55.
The Battle of San Pietro Infine commenced with Italians fighting alongside the Allies.
On the same day Free French troops, some of whom were North African, began to be introduced to the fighting in Italy while veterans American and British units started to be withdrawn in order to be used in Overlord.
President Roosevelt visited Malta.
The Australians prevailed in the Battle of Wareo.
The U.S. Navy bombed Kwajalein
Legendary rock music artist Jim Morrison was born in Melbourne, Florida.
Talented but deeply personally troubled and an alcoholic, Morrison's father was a Navy officer who would rise to the rank of Admiral.
"The Battle of the Sexes" took place in the Houston Astrodome between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs. King won three straight sets.
King and Riggs prior to the match.
This event was a big deal at the time, and I can recall my parents watching the television coverage of it. It's always seemed odd to me as Riggs, who had been a tennis great in his youth, was well past his prime, while King was in hers. Riggs, however, was quite the promoter and much of the attention can be attributed to that.
It was, up until that point, the most watched tennis match of all time.
Jim Croce, age 30, was killed along with five others when a chartered Beechcraft E18S hit a tree during takeoff from the Natchitoches Regional Airport in Louisiana.
Croce was a well known pop singer at the time. When in grade school, one year we had to learn his Time In A Bottle song for a performance of some sort. Perhaps it's for that reason, but I've never liked that song since then, and I didn't like it then. Or maybe its just the song. I have always liked his Leroy Brown song.
US bombing of Cambodia halted, bringing to an end US combat operations in Southeast Asia.
A7 Corsair II at Korat.
The last raid was flown by two A7's flying out of Korat Air Base in Thailand.
When I was a National Guardsman, I had the interesting experience of having had a Colorado Air National Guard A7 roll over upside down above me as I was driving a Jeep attempting to clear an artillery location. The pilot spotted me from quite high as I was driving around a curve and went into a dive, while still upside down, and came right over the top of me as I drove around the curve. Had it been an actual conflict, I and everyone in the Jeep would have been killed.
On the same day, the USS Constellation departed Yankee Station, a fixed point off of the coast of North Vietnam.
Nixon addressed the nation on Watergate for the first time, asking the country to look forward rather than backwards, and declaring he had no knowledge of the events until after they had occured.
A rock band by the name Sick Man of Europe renamed itself Cheap Trick.
The Military Personnel Archives Center in Overland Missouri caught fire shortly after midnight, resulting in one of the worst archival accidents in American history. The center relates:
The Fire:
Shortly after midnight, on July 12, 1973, a fire was reported at the NPRC's military personnel records building at 9700 Page Boulevard in St. Louis, MO. Firefighters arrived on the scene only 4 minutes and 20 seconds after the first alarm sounded and entered the building. While they were able to reach the burning sixth floor, the heat and the smoke forced the firefighters to withdraw at 3:15am. In order to combat and contain the flames, firefighters were forced to pour great quantities of water onto the exterior of the building and inside through broken windows. The fire burned out of control for 22 hours; it took two days before firefighters were able to re-enter the building. The blaze was so intense that local Overland residents had to remain indoors, due to the heavy acrid smoke. It was not until July 16, nearly four and a half days after the first reports, that the local fire department called the fire officially out.
During the long ordeal, firefighters faced severe problems due to insufficient water pressure. Exacerbating the situation, one of the department's pumper trucks broke down after 40 hours of continuous operation. Numerous times, the fire threatened to spread down to the other floors; but firefighters were successful in halting its advance. In all, it took the participation of 42 fire districts to combat the disastrous blaze. Due to the extensive damages, investigators were never able to determine the source of the fire.
The Aftermath:
The National Archives focused its immediate attention on salvaging as much as possible and quickly resuming operations at the Page facility. Even before the final flames were out, staff at the NPRC had begun work towards these efforts. All requests and records shipments from other government agencies were temporarily halted, and certain vital records were removed from the burning building for safekeeping. These included the NPRC's operating records, a computer index for a major portion of the NPRC's holdings, and more than 100,000 reels of morning reports for the Army (1912-1959) and Air Force (1947-1959). The latter proved especially important in the days following, as NPRC's officials determined that the fire damage had been worst among the Army and Air Force records for this same time period. As such, on July 23, 1973, the Government issued a Federal Property Management Regulations Bulletin (FPMR B-39) halting Federal agencies from disposing of records that might be useful in documenting military service. Such records have proved vital in efforts to reconstruct basic service information for requestors.
On July 23, the NPRC awarded a construction contract to clear and remove the remains from the ruined sixth floor. That same day, employees, previously on administrative leave, returned to work to assist in recovery efforts and resume reference services. The removal and salvage of water and fire damaged records from the building was the most important priority, and such efforts were overseen by a specially appointed project manager. Their work led to the recovery of approximately 6.5 million burned and water damaged records.
Following the fire, the most immediate concern in the center revolved around water. In order to combat the blaze, firefighters had been forced to pour millions of gallons of water into the building. To stop sporadic rekindling of fire, firefighters continued spraying water on the building until late July. In addition, broken water lines continued to flood the building until they could be capped. Water damage was heaviest on the 5th floor but was spread throughout the building. Standing water, combined with the high temperatures and humidity of a typical St. Louis summer, created a situation ripe for mold growth. As paper is highly susceptible to mold, officials sprayed thymol throughout the building to control any outbreak.
Controlling the spread of mold was one concern; but, so too, was the issue of how to dry the millions of water-soaked records. Initially, NPRC staffers shipped these water-damaged records in plastic milk crates to a temporary facility at the civilian records center on Winnebago, where hastily constructed drying racks had been assembled from spare shelving. When it was discovered that McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Corporation in St. Louis had vacuum-drying facilities, the NPRC diverted its water damaged records there for treatment. The vacuum-dry process took place in a chamber that had previously been utilized to simulate temperature and pressure conditions for the Mercury and Gemini space missions. The chamber was large enough to accommodate approximately 2,000 plastic milk cartons of water and fire damaged records. Once inside, McDonnell Douglas technicians lowered the air in the chamber to the freezing point and then filled the room with hot dry air, which squeezed out the water molecules. For each chamber load, they were able to extract approximately 8 pounds of water per container - the equivalent of nearly 8 total tons of water for each session. In addition to utilizing two more supplemental drying chambers at McDonnell Douglas, the NPRC also sent records to a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) facility in Ohio for drying.
Towards Reconstruction:
As part of the reconstruction effort, the NPRC established a "B" registry file (or Burned File) to index the 6.5 million recovered records. So too, the NPRC established a separate temperature controlled "B" file area to protect and safeguard the damaged records. Later, in April 1974, the NPRC established the "R" registry file (or Reconstructed File) to further assist with reconstruction efforts. Since then, staffers have placed all newly reconstructed records into the "R" registry file and stored them in an area separate from the "B," or burned, files.
In the months following the fire, the NPRC initiated several new records recovery and reconstruction efforts, including the establishment of a new branch to deal with damaged records issues. As many military personnel records had been partially or completely destroyed by the fire, the new branch's central mission was to reconstruct records for those requesting service information from the NPRC. While some staffers sought to recover such information from documents and alternate sources outside of the NPRC, others searched through the center's organizational files for records to supplement the destroyed OMPFs.
These alternate sources have played a vital role in the NPRC's efforts to reconstruct service files. Some of the more important records used by the NPRC to supplement damage files include: Veterans Administration (VA) claims files, individual state records, Multiple Name Pay Vouchers (MPV) from the Adjutant General's Office, Selective Service System (SSS) registration records, pay records from the Government Accounting Office (GAO), as well as medical records from military hospitals, entrance and separation x-rays and organizational records. Many work hours were spent making these sources usable. Efforts included: the transfer of records to the NPRC, screening projects and securing access to VA computer records.
In terms of loss to the cultural heritage of our nation, the 1973 NPRC Fire was an unparalleled disaster. In the aftermath of the blaze, recovery and reconstruction effort took place at an unprecedented level. Thanks to such recovery efforts and the use of alternate sources to reconstruct files, today's NPRC is able to continue its primary mission of serving our country's military and civil servants.
Learn more about burned records and how the NPRC's Preservation Laboratory works to treat and make these damaged files accessible
In my experience, records in the destroyed range often have actually survived and, given that service records tend to be duplicated in all sorts of ways, they can often be reconstituted. Nonetheless, it's been reported that, 80% of records for U.S. Army personnel discharged November 1, 1912, to January 1, 1960, 75% of U.S. Air Force personnel discharged September 25, 1947, to January 1, 1964, with names alphabetically after Hubbard, James E., were lost.
Of note here, the Army was of very small size, following 1865, up until 1917, after which it remained large until the end of the Cold War. Even at that, it has never returned to its pre-1940 size. Additionally, of note, up until 1947 the Air Force was a branch of the Army. The damage range includes World War One, World War Two and the Korean War.
On a personal note, my father's Korean War Air Force records would not have been touched, as they were not in the damage range. One of my uncle's records from the late 1950s would have been, however, although I don't know if they were included in the destroyed records. The records of other family members from World War Two might have been.
The cause of the fire was never determined. A workman who was smoking and who had extinguished a cigarette shortly before it began assumed he was the cause, but was not found culpable in a grand jury investigation. An electrical short is strongly suspected.
President Nixon was reported to be suffering from pneumonia. On the same day, Alexander Butterfield, head of the Federal Aviation Administration, and chief assistant to H. R. Halderman, revealed taht almost all of President Nixon's Oval Offce conversations had been taped.
Nixon was not having a good day.
Héctor José Cámpora resigned as President of Argentina in order to allow Juan Perón to return to power.
Only a Fool Would Say That was Steely Dan's song in reaction to John Lennon's Marxist anthem Imagine.
I'm glad some other musicians reacted. Imagine is a horrible song, espousing an ideology that, while he claimed it would result in "nothing to kill or die for", killed more in the 20th Century than any other ideology going.
Lawrence Reed has an article on Lennon himself in The American Spectator. It catalogs Lennon's real character, including his physical abuse of his first wife and his multiple extramarital affairs. He's not a guy to be admired for any reason, but for some reason, perhaps his late physical appearance, and a decades long Libby Custer like effort to boost his image has created a false one for him.
I don't really get why people idolize performers anyway, except for their work. I love the music of Jimi Hendrix, but he wasn't example a model of clean and effective living.
And interestingly, people will recite music and sing it without really pondering what the lyrics actually mean. In our "Me Too" era, this is astounding. Imagine is a Communist anthem. Sweet Home Alabama excuses ongoing racial segregation in the South. Brand New Key really does have sort of a creepy set of double meanings quality to it.
And in spite of my self, I like those last two songs.
But at the same time, I guess, I don't idolize the Leonard Skynard or Melanie Safka
The Defense Department discovered that a North Vietnamese provided list of 555 POWs included Marine PFC Ronald L. Ridgeway of Houston, who had been listed as Killed In Action. He would be promoted to Sergeant and medically discharged in November 1973.
His girlfriend, Lawanda Taylor, had not married since his disappearance in 1968, and they would subsequently marry. He would go to work in the Veterans Administration.
Chae Myung-shin (채명신,; 蔡命新), commander of South Korean forces in South Vietnam. He had served in the Imperial Japanese Army as a conscript late in World War Two, and then escaped to South Korean to avoid the Communists. A Korean Protestant Christian from a Christian family, he died in 2013 at age 88.
On the same day, the first 125 of 37,000 South Korean troops in Vietnam left the country. The South Korean Army retained a large presence in South Vietnam right up into 1973 and had to be pressured by the US to leave, although the US also considered leaving South Korean troops in the country into 1974 given the slow progress of the ARVN in the regions the Korean troops were located. By 1973, South Korean troops constituted the vast majority of foreign combat troops in South Vietnam
Senator John C. Stennis was shot and wounded in front of his Washington, D. C. home in a robbery attempt.
The rock band Wicked Lester rebranded itself and performed for the first time as KISS.
What's additionally notable that the football season wrapped up so much earlier then, than now. Would that this would not have changed.
The Dolphins beat the Redskins 14 to 7 and took the only perfect season with no defeates.
The Elvis Presley television specials were a big deal at the time. I can recall us watching them on television from our kitchen, where the tv was located.
The Mossad prevented a PLO attempt at shooting down an aircraft transporting Prime Minister Golda Meir to Rome.
Most of us know the song, House of the Rising Sun. Probably most people who think of it, when they do, think of the version by Eric Burdon and the Animals.
It's a great song.
Anything ever seem a little off about it, however?
The song is about a house of prostitution, which most people familiar with the song are aware of. As Burdon sings it, the lyrics are:
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one
My mother was a tailor
She sewed my new blue jeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans
Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and a trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's all drunk
Oh mother, tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House of the Rising Sun
Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain
Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God, I know I'm one
Now, it is a great song. And I like this version of it, which was released in 1964.
The interesting thing, however, is that song from a male point of view, which it is, it's sort of way ahead of its time. Not that it isn't relevant, it's just a point of view that I can't think of any other song from the mid to late 20th Century expressing that view. Basically, the protagonist is confessing that he's a sex addict and addicted to frequenting the prostitutes of The House Of The Rising Sun.
The song wasn't written by Eric Burdon, or any of his band. They were covering a song, which many are unaware of, that had already had a successful recording run when sung by Woodie Guthrie and Hudey Ledbetter (Leadbelly). Indeed, I thought Leadbelly had written the wrong, but I was in error on that.
The Guthrie version, from 1941, has the following lyrics:
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
My mother was a tailor
She sewed my new bluejeans
My father was a gamblin' man
Down in New Orleans
Now the only thing a gambler needs
Is a suitcase and trunk
And the only time he's satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk
Oh mother tell your children
Not to do what I have done
Spend your lives in sin and misery
In the House Of The Rising Sun
Well, I got one foot on the platform
The other foot on the train
I'm goin' back to New Orleans
To wear that ball and chain
Well, there is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
And it's been the ruin of many a poor boy
And God I know I'm one
Identical. What about Leadbelly? Well, he recorded it twice, first in 1944, which had these lyrics:
There is a house in New Orleans
You call the Rising Sun
It's been the ruin of many a poor soul
And me, oh God, I'm one
If I'd listened to what mama said
I'd be at home today
Being so young and foolish, poor girl
I let a gambler lead me astray
My mother she's a tailor
Sews those new blue jeans
My sweetheart, he's a drunkard, Lord God
He drinks down in New Orleans
He fills his glasses to the brim
Passes them around
The only pleasure that he gets out of life
Is a hoboin' from town to town
The only thing a drunkard needs
Is a suitcase and a trunk
The only time that he's half satisfied
Is when he's on a drunk
Go and tell my baby sister
Never do like I have done
Shun that house down in New Orleans
That they call that Rising Sun.
It's one foot on the platform,
One foot on the train.
I'm going back down to New Orleans
To wear my ball and my chain
My life is almost over
My race is almost run
Going back down to New Orleans
To that house of the Rising Sun
Oh, now wait a moment, that's a lot different. In this version, which is earlier, the protagonist, while sung through Leadbelly's male voice, is a girl entrapped in prostitution. Frankly, the song makes a lot more sense all the way around.
Leadbelly's 1947 version of The House of the Rising Sun.
In the second recording, which is the one people normally here, Leadbelly had followed Guthrie's lead, and the protagonist was male.
The first one presents a really grim warning. The girl who is the subject of the song has obviously left the house, and now is returning? Why? Well, contrary to the way prostitution is portrayed in film, her reputation would have been completely ruined and by this point that probably would have been her only option to try to make enough money to stay alive. Not only that, she's noting that she's expecting an early death.
More on that in a moment.
Leadbelly, it should be noted, didn't get around to recording until very near the end of his life. He died in 1949, and was first recorded in 1933. He was born in 1888 and was preforming professionally by 1903. Indeed, at first he preformed in Shreveport audiences in St. Paul's Bottoms, its red-light district, with his career interrupted by stints in jail, which are referenced in some of his most famous songs. He was in fact discovered, and truly was a great musical talent, by Alan Lomax while serving a prison stint.
Leadbelly preformed so early that some have speculated to what degree he was an indeterminable influence on the blues. He definitely was, but he also was unique in that he played a twelve-string guitar, very unusual for bluesmen, and his songs were always in the blues format but in sometimes in a near blues, ten bar, format. Indeed, some of those were converted to eight bar blues formats by later recording artists, probably basically by accident.
Anyhow, Leadbelly's songs often had a really old origin. This seems to be one. And the fact that the first version he recorded was sung from a female point of view is telling. Taht's probably how he learned it.
How early is that version?
Well, the song first makes its appearance by reference in 1905. By that time, it was being sung by miners in Appalachia, which means that one of the references doesn't quite fit unless the song had really travelled in the South. I.e., a song about somebody in New Orleans is out of regional context. The first printed version of the lyrics appear in 1925, with this:
There is a house in New Orleans,
it's called the Rising Sun
It's been the ruin of many poor girl
Great God, and I for one.
Just like Leadbelly had it.
The first recorded version came in 1933, later than I would have supposed, but still pretty early in the recording industry. It was by Applachain artist Clarence "Tom" Ashley and Gwen Foster. Ashley claimed to have learned it from his grandfather, which pushes the song back to the mid 19th Century. Ashley's version has a male protagonist:
There is a house in New Orleans
They call the Rising Sun
Where many poor boys to destruction has gone
And me, oh God, are one.
Note, this one has a blunter warning than any others with a male protagonist. The male vocalist hasn't gone to "ruin", but to "destruction".
Hmmmm. . . . so was it a male or female song?
My guess is that it was originally a female one, but because of its compelling popularity, it's been switched back and forth from its near onset.
So, was there a House of the Rising Sun that induced poor girls into lives, and probably shortened ones, of prostitution?
Nobody really knows for sure, but applying Yeoman's Eighth Law of History, as we should, would suggest it's likely. That law, as you'll recall, stated the following:
While that eight law mostly referred to old myths, it applies to more recent ones as well, as the basic principle is the same. The song clearly came out of Louisiana, and it traveled the South pretty extensively while persistently retaining its references to a House of the Rising Sun. There likely was such a place in Louisiana, or at the chances that there was are pretty good.
Indeed, a whole series of theories hold that it was on Conti Street in the French Quarter or on Ursulines Street or on St. Louis Street. In 2016 however, the New Orleans Times Picayune ran an article about an advertisement they'd found in which a hotelier was advertising the Mechanics Hotel, just outside of town, and with obviously pretty good rooming accommodations, which was noted to have formerly been "the old establishment of the Rising Sun".
Hmmm. . . .
The owners of the Mechanics Hotel wanted his potential guests to note that the hotel had a variety of rooms and offered a variety of services and accommodations, none of which included prostitution. The prior role of the Rising Sun wasn't mentioned, just that the Mechanics Hotel was where it formerly was, or rather that it was being rebranded. Perhaps it was also being repurposed. If so, that advertisement would have served two purposes, one being "don't stay away if you would have avoided the old Rising Sun", and the second being "don't come around if you are expecting the old services of the Rising Sun".
That advertisement, by the way, ran in 1828, which would mean that the song would have to have dated back to at least that approximate time.
So, what's the moral of the song? It clearly has one.
The basic warning is against living a life of depravity, that's clear enough. More than that, it was a direct warning about living a life of sexual depravity. Further, it warns the audience that the vocalist can't get out of it, now that the protagonist is in it, even though it would see, that the protagonist has tried. In the male variant sung by Guthrie, and in the female variant sung by Leadbelly, the protagonist informs the audience that the subject is at a railroad station with one foot on the platform, and one on the train, and is going back to New Orleans "to wear that ball and train". That tells us that the male protagonist is going back to New Orleans where he intends, seemingly against his will, to resume visiting the House of the Rising Sun. In the female protagonist version, she's going back to be a prostitute.
The female version is even grimmer. In that version, not only does the lyrics indicate that the subject is a slave to the situation, she's a different sort. Her slavery, in essence, is implied to be economic. Her reputation is ruined and she can't do anything else at this point. Moreover, she knows that she's going to die young, either at the hands of one of her clients, or more likely through disease.
Which takes us to this. That in fact was then and is now the thing that kills prostitutes early. It's odd how in Western movies like Lonesome Dove or Open Range this is ignored. Prostitutes were nearly guaranteed to get a venereal disease at the time, and it was probably going to kill them. Regular clients were likely to get a "social disease" as well, and the number of men who came down with one even where they were not regular customers, but who had made a visit a few, or perhaps even one, times were likely to as well.
Indeed, it wasn't really until after World War Two that it was the case that VD could really be effectively treated. . Nearly all of the treatments before then were ineffective to varying degrees. But that's not the last of it. Girls who fell into prostitution didn't simply think it an economic option, but were often victims of what was termed "white slavery". Kidnapped and drugged, or kept against their will in some fashion, sometimes by force, sometimes by addition. This is also still the case.
It's worth noting, in addition, that modern pornography has its origin in prostitution and indeed the word stems from it. "Graphy" indicates depiction, and pornea is Greek for of or pertaining to prostitutes. Very early pornography, going back to the first really easy to use cameras, came from photographing prostitutes to expand on their marketability. I.e., the working girls were basically captives of their procurer, and those people expanded their profits, not the girls profits, by photographing and selling their images, which had the added impact of being a species of advertising. This aspect of pornography was very heavy in the industry up until the mid 20th Century, when some of the subjects limited themselves to selling their own images in some fashion, but it's apparently returned in spades since the Internet, with many, apparently, of the images around now being once again of young girls trapped most likely by drug addiction.
The whole thing is pretty bad, suffice it to say.
Okay, we went down sort of a rabbit hole here, and for an odd reason. The trip to House of the Rising Sun started off as it refers to the mother of the subject sewing his blue jeans. We'll explain that in the other thread, but we would note that the song has one final aspect. It's a warning about the decay of a family.
Mandatory screening of airline passengers went into effect in the United States.
Salt Lake City Airport.
The Canadian Parliament unanimously condemned the 1972 "Christmas" bombing of North Vietnam by the United States. This infuriated President Nixon, who was otherwise busy with an Executive Order designed to reorganize the Federal Government and cut the number of White House staff, 4,000, in half.
Mali and Niger broke diplomatic relations with Israel and the Netherlands recognized German Democratic Republic, i.e., East Germany.
The Republic of Ireland amended its constitution removing the "special position" of the Catholic Church, making reference to other religions present in Ireland, and reducing the voting age from 21 to 18. The special position had been resisted by the Catholic Church at the onset of its inclusion but included due to the insistence and influence of Éamon de Valera.
Joe Biden was sworn in as Senator from Delaware at a chapel at the Wilmington, Delaware hospital where one of his sons was hospitalized following a December 18 accident that killed Biden's first wife and his daughter.
Aerosmith released its first album, which was called Aerosmith. On the same day, Bruce Springsteen released his famous debut studio album, Greetings from Ashbury Park, N.J. Both albums showed an evolution away from the Rock & Roll of the 1960s.
The Vichy French scuttled their own ships in harbor in Toulon to keep them out of German hands. It was a brave act by Vichy, perhaps the most admirable thing it did during the war. Operation Lila, the German offensive operation to seize the French Navy, had in fact commenced on November 19.
Three battleships, seven cruisers, fifteen destroyers, twelve submarines and thirteen torpedo boats of the French Navy went down at French hands.
Admirable though it was, it was not as admirable as what the Italian Navy would do the next year, which was to bolt to the sea so that it could join the Allies. Indeed, in retrospect, or even at the time, the decision not to break out can be questioned, but Vichy was still making pretenses to being the de jure French government at the time, even though it was rapidly losing that status, and in fact already had.
Venezuela broke off relations with Vichy.
James ("Jimi) Marshal Hendrix, the greatest guitar player who ever lived, was born in Seattle, Washington.
Self-taught, and unable to read music, Hendrix came out of a blues saturated background and crossed over into Rock & Roll during its greatest era. Nobody played the guitar like he did before him, and nobody has surpassed his abilities since. Amazingly, Hendrix did not take up the guitar until he was 15.
A master of distortion at a time in which using it had not yet been figured out, Hendrix became a full time musician following his discharge from the Army in 1962. Entering the music scene in the turmoil of the 1960s, Hendrix was unfortunately drawn to the drug culture of the era, which ended up taking his life in 1970 at age 27. In his short musical career he established a body of music which stands out to this day.
Hendrix was just learning how to read music at the time of his death, and interestingly enough, was learning how to play wind instruments in addition to the guitar and bass that he already knew how to play. Given that 80 years of age isn't an uncommon one, had drugs not taken his life, he could still be living today, and the music scene would have undoubtedly developed much differently than it did since 1970.
The British submarine Seraph smuggled French general Henri Giraud out of France.
Giraud was an opponent of the Vichy regime and had escaped German captivity, for Switzerland, back in April. Vichy tried to lure him back, but he demurred.
While all in anticipation of Torch, the submarine took Giraud to Gibraltar, where he remained until November 9. Relationships between the Free French officers were always highly complicated and tense, in part because their legitimacy was really legally questionable, which their organization, supported by the Allies, reflected. The Allies always tried to split the difference between outright firebrand rebels, like DeGaulle, and those who still held some ties to Vichy as the legal government. Those in a position in between, like Giraud, were in an odd spot.
Stalin issued his Order of the Day proclaiming, on the 25th anniversary of the October Revolution, that Germany had "yet to feel the weight" of the Red Army, a promise which turned out to be true.
The Australians flanked the Japanese on the Kokoda Track.
Johnny Rivers, blues influenced rock musician, was born in New York City.
I started my review here on this documentary a long time ago and failed to finish it for some reason.
Anyhow, this will be a surprising entry here, probably, but this "rockumentary" is on Netflix right now and it's worth watching.
I suppose I should qualify that by saying it's worth watching if you like ZZ Top. But maybe it's worth watching even if you don't. Indeed, I sort of like the Clash, but there's a rockumentary out there on them that's really good, even if I can't recall its name.
Anyhow, this look at ZZ Top, filmed before the recent death of one of its members is a nice, and fannish, look at the band, it's origins and where it was just prior to the noted death. It touches on their rise as a Southern Rock/Blues band into a rock band, including a period of time in which they sat out for a while and why they did so.
It's a nice look at the band, and better, frankly, than some documentaries of this type. Worth watching.
I don't know who Japanese Breakfast is (or for that matter what an actual Japanese breakfast is) but they've showed up on this Twitter headline:
Japanese Breakfast is too busy returning to Coachella and making 'music for bottoms' to care about your 'basic' fashion sense
Oh, bull. That's the exact thing you say when you've tuned your fashion sense to look like you don't have a fashion sense, so you can appear to stay edgy for Coachella.
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