GA Russell

Fred Williams Week 17 preview http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform...aspx?id=4185660 ***** Michael Bishop was so bad for the Riders last week that Darian Durant will start for them this week. http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/new...66-21fccb629045 ***** The Roughriders team has a long history of involvement in the community. This week, five players had their heads shaved as part of a fundraiser for breast cancer research. http://www.canada.com/reginaleaderpost/new...dd-217bc26d0630

RIP. I was not a fan of Motown, but I enjoyed very much Same Old Song, which was not as big a hit as its predecessor I Can't Help Myself, but which over the years has in my experience received much more airplay on the oldies stations than Help Myself has.

That's right! She was the pianist. I had no idea that she was a graduate of Julliard or an opera singer.

I don't remember Narz on Video Village. That must have come later. I remember Monty Hall as the host of Video Village. As I recall, I was home sick from school and watching Video Village when Walter Cronkite broke in to say that President Kennedy had been shot.

Could be! Particularly if it was for a one-season record. I don't think the K-R-S combination played together more than four years, so I think that the Tinkers combination would have been more likely for a career, but maybe not!

Dave, the principals in the harmonica incident were Phil Linz and Yogi Berra. I don't recall if Tresh had a role.

Thanks for that link, Dan. I had forgotten that she was in my favorite movie, Lover Come Back, and that she was at one time married to Pete Candoli.

Allen, I think that Pepitone was already at first base when Tresh came up in '62.

It's been a while since I ordered from BMG. Today I tried the code from Aggie's August 12 post but it was no longer valid. So then a tried a code from his September 19 post, and it went through. Thanks Ag!

I remember Jack Narz well. I liked him. I remember Dotto well too. They had a contestant who was a goon named Harvey Peck. As I recall, Peck was a big winner on the daytime show, and because he was such a goofball he was allowed to play the nighttime show when it was started up as well. As I recall, Peck was one of the contestants who was found to have been given answers. From the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...,0,765784.story Jack Narz dies at 85; host of one of first programs involved in quiz-show scandals Among the other shows Jack Narz hosted were "Video Village," "Seven Keys" and a version of "Beat the Clock." "He was the Dean Martin of game-show hosts . . . because he was so easygoing, so smooth," said friend and game-show expert Steve Beverly. By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer October 16, 2008 Jack Narz, the host on "Dotto" when it became one of the first television programs ensnared in the quiz-show scandals of the 1950s and who went on to emcee "Concentration" and other game shows, died Wednesday. He was 85. Narz, brother of veteran game show host Tom Kennedy, died of complications of a stroke at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, a family spokesman announced. While lined up to get tickets for a Broadway show on a Friday night in 1958, Narz was paged to the telephone. On the line was a spokesman for "Dotto" sponsor Colgate-Palmolive, who told him that CBS had determined the daytime show was rigged and that it would not air the next Monday. The version that aired nights on NBC also was pulled. Narz was as surprised as anybody by the show's sudden cancellation, Steve Beverly, a game-show expert and professor of broadcasting at Union University in Tennessee, told The Times on Wednesday. "Jack was called to give a deposition before the grand jury investigating. He passed the polygraph test and was completely exonerated," said Beverly, who became a close friend. Before he testified, Narz said he was "unaware" of the game-show cheating, Narz recalled in a 1990 interview with The Times. "While we were on the air, one of the future contestants on the show went through a woman's purse in the contestants' dressing room," he said. "While going through the purse, he discovered someone had given her some answers." Narz said he had never met the standby contestant who charged that another contestant received answers in advance. On the show, contestants won the right to connect the dots and try to identify a famous figure by answering questions correctly. The abrupt cancellation of "Dotto" in August 1958 helped trigger a widespread investigation of the game-show industry that revealed rigging to be rampant. Almost all prime-time quiz shows were taken off the air. Congress held full-scale hearings in 1959 and federal regulations of quiz shows were instituted. Game show hosts from that era -- including Narz -- were little more than hired guns who showed up about half an hour before the live broadcast and ran through the material, Beverly said. They were not tightly connected to the producers, many of whom fixed the game shows to heighten the drama. Although Narz would host several more game shows, he told Beverly on more than one occasion: "I always felt that I was a 'day late and dollar short' kind of guy. From that point on, that maybe there were some shows I didn't get because they said, 'He was on that show, maybe we shouldn't take a shot on him.' " Narz may have been best known for hosting the mid-1970s remake of "Concentration," which filmed 195 shows -- a season's worth -- in nine weeks. The schedule left plenty of time for him to golf, which he did at least three times a week, Beverly said. Among the other game shows Narz hosted were "Video Village," "Seven Keys" and a syndicated version of "Beat the Clock" that debuted in 1969. "He was the Dean Martin of game-show hosts. . . . because he was so easygoing, so smooth . . . when you saw him on the air, you felt he was a guest in your home," Beverly said. "He never overpowered his shows . . . . He was a textbook example of what an emcee ought to be." Narz and Kennedy were the only brothers to make their living primarily as game-show hosts, according to Beverly. Kennedy, who hosted "Name That Tune" in the 1970s, changed his name from Jim Narz to avoid being confused with his older brother, whom he followed into the business. Jack Narz was born Nov. 13, 1922, in Louisville, Ky. He served as a military pilot during World War II. After military service, he broke into radio at a station in El Centro, Calif., and worked for several stations before landing a job as an announcer on television's "Queen for a Day," which led to a spot on the popular 1950s children's science-fiction program "Space Patrol." "Narz is fondly remembered by many baby boomers as the announcer who got us to scarf down cereal that tasted like cardboard so we could get box-top premiums for '25 cents in coin,' " Jean-Noel Bassior, author of the 2005 book "Space Patrol: Missions of Daring in the Name of Early Television," told The Times in an e-mail.

Edie Adams has died. One of the things that impressed me about her was that she had the good sense to exit the limelight when she was still beautiful and people thought well of her. As I recall, Ernie Kovacs left her with a lot of debts to pay. After those were taken care of, she spent every penny she had to buy the videotapes of his work, which were being systematically destroyed by the networks out of some sense of frugality. This obit is clearly inadequate, and I'll post a better one if I find it. From the AP: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,1526931.story Tony winner, Kovacs wife Edie Adams dies Email Picture Don Bartletti / Los Angeles Times Edie Adams autographs photos of herself and late husband, comedian Ernie Kovacs, in 2007. From the Associated Press 9:31 AM PDT, October 16, 2008 Actress and singer Edie Adams, the blonde beauty who won a Tony Award for bringing Daisy Mae to life on Broadway and played television foil to husband Ernie Kovacs, has died. She was 81. Publicist Henri Bollinger says Adams died in Los Angeles Wednesday from cancer and pneumonia. Edie Adams for Muriel Cigars (1965) Adams was a graduate of the Juilliard School of Music and hoped to become an opera singer. Instead, she gained fame for her sketches with Kovacs and her pivotal roles in Broadway musicals. She also had a long stage and film career. Adams also was known as the sexy spokeswoman for Muriel cigars in the 1950s and 1960s. In TV ads, she famously purred: "Why don't you pick one up and smoke it sometime?"

Happy Birthday HG!

I suppose if he were not a Yankee, Tom Tresh would not be so well remembered. But he was good! From the AP: http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsBaseball/home VENICE, Fla. — Tom Tresh, the 1962 American League rookie of the year and part of three New York Yankees teams that reached the World Series, has died. He was 71. Tresh died Wednesday after a heart attack, according to the funeral home handling the arrangements. Tresh was an 1962 all-star as a shortstop and made the team again in 1963 as a centre-fielder. He later earned a Gold Glove in the outfield. "Tommy was a great teammate," Yankees great Yogi Berra said in a statement. "He did everything well as a ballplayer and was an easy guy to manage." The Yankees were nearing the end of their decades-long dominance in the AL when Tresh became a regular, taking over at shortstop when Tony Kubek went to serve in the U.S. Army. He hit .286 with 20 homers and a career-high 93 RBIs in 1962. Tresh joined a powerful lineup that already boasted the likes of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris and helped the Yankees reach the World Series from 1962-64. The switch-hitting Tresh homered in the Game 5 victory over San Francisco in 1962, and made a running, backhanded catch on Willie Mays' drive to left field in the seventh inning in a 1-0 win in Game 7. Tresh homered off Sandy Koufax in the 1963 Series loss to Los Angeles and homered twice in the 1964 loss to St. Louis, including a shot off Bob Gibson. Overall, Tresh hit .245 overall with 153 home runs and 530 RBIs. He was traded by the Yankees to Detroit in 1969 and retired after that season. Tresh, who was born in Detroit, attended Central Michigan and later was an assistant coach at the school. "This hurts. He was my roommate for six years of my life, my hitting instructor and my best friend. He let me be me, but he was also the guy who kept me in at night," longtime teammate Joe Pepitone said. "Tommy was a constant in my life and a calming influence. He was always there for me and stuck up for me. He was like my brother. When I had personal issues, he was always the person on the team I would turn to. During some rain delays, he would take out his guitar and we'd sing and dance," he said.

Yes I did, CW. My choice was between Windows XP & Vista, Mac OSX and Linux. So I downloaded the Windows XP version, and it's not working. That's why I thought that the problem might be caused by my using Windows 2000.

Thanks, Peter! This is my first time trying to download from Amazon, and I'm having trouble. Perhaps it is because the Amazon download file is for Windows XP or Vista, and I use Windows 2000. Any ideas?

fasstrack, my first thought is that the situation may have been generational as well as racial. In the 90s I visited the downtown Atlanta library religiously once every two or three weeks to read the seven (!) Canadian newspapers they subscribed to to catch up on the Canadian league games. Between the staff and the patrons, I dealt with people of every sort (including winos). I found that the most charming and gracious people were consistently the middle age and older black women, and the rude and chip-on-the-shoulder types were always the young (early 20s) black women. I remember thinking to myself, I'm glad I'm not a young black man in the market for a wife, because those guys have nothing but bitches to choose from. So now it is ten years later, and those young black women are now in their 30s with children, and apparently are rude to cab drivers. It's not just racial, because I'm sure that the gracious black ladies I met were the victims of discrimination too. That's why I suspect it's generational.

Happy Birthday Bluerein!

Dan Ralph says here that Edmonton has clinched a playoff spot. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/New...7079996-cp.html Calgary is in first place in the West at 10-5, and the other three teams are tied at 9-6.

Happy Birthday John! My birthday is often an Election Day, and now this year yours is too!

Two boring games today. Oh well, they can't all be good. Montreal Alouettes 42....Hamilton Tiger-Cats 11 http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/sto...ory/GlobeSports http://www.sportsnetwork.com/merge/tsnform...aspx?id=4185073 It took the Als a quarter to get it in gear, but after that it was no contest. The loss mathematically eliminated the Ticats from the playoffs for the fourth consecutive year. ***** Calgary Stampeders 42....Saskatchewan Roughriders 5 http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home http://64.246.64.33/merge/tsnform.aspx?c=s...aspx?id=4185110 Really grim. Henry Burris was on his game today, while Michael Bishop stunk the joint out.

RIP. I have one of his albums, music from the Batman tv show. I also have a Best of compilation of Basie's Roulette recordings. I'll pull them out tonight.

From the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...,0,166844.story William Claxton dies at 80; photographer helped make Chet Baker famous Email Picture Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times "I didn't want to stage my pictures," noted jazz photographer William Claxton once said. He died Saturday at age 80 of complications from congestive heart failure, according to his wife of 49 years, Peggy Moffitt Claxton. By Jon Thurber, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer October 13, 2008 William Claxton, the master photographer whose images of Chet Baker helped fuel the jazz trumpeter's stardom in the 1950s and whose fashion photographs of his wife modeling a topless swim suit were groundbreaking years later, has died. He was 80. Claxton died from complications of congestive heart failure Saturday morning at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, his wife, actress and model Peggy Moffitt Claxton, told The Times. Photos: William Claxton's... In a career spanning more than a half century, Claxton also became well known for his work with celebrities including Frank Sinatra and Steve McQueen, who became a close personal friend; but he gained his foremost public recognition for his photographs of jazz performers including Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Mel Torme, Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk and Stan Getz. But it was his photographs of Baker that helped teach him the true meaning of the word photogenic. "I was up all night developing when the face appeared in the developing tray," Claxton told the Irish Times in 2005. "A tough demeanor and a good physique but an angelic face with pale white skin and, the craziest thing, one tooth missing -- he'd been in a fight. I thought, my God, that's Chet Baker." Claxton observed that over the years he had taken photographs of some ordinary-looking guys whose faces would just pop out on film. He said that's what Baker had. His 1951 photograph of Baker started a relationship that continued for the next five or six years as he chronicled Baker's rise to fame as one of the most visible jazz performers of the decade. Claxton called photography "jazz for the eyes" and tried to capture the often dynamic tension between the artist, the instrument and the music. "For the photographer, the camera is like a jazz musician's ax. It's the tool that you would like to be able to ignore, but you have to have it to convey your thoughts and whatever you want to express through it," Claxton told jazz writer Don Heckman some years ago. Almost as much as the recordings themselves, the photographs reach into the essence of making music. "That's where jazz and photography have always come together for me," Claxton told Heckman. "They're alike in their improvisation and their spontaneousness. They happen at the same moment that you're hearing something and you're seeing something, and you record it and it's frozen forever." Born in Pasadena on Oct. 12, 1927, Claxton grew up in an upper middle-class family in La Cañada Flintridge. His mother was a musician and his older brother played piano; Claxton said he tried the keyboard but had no patience for it. He started collecting records, especially jazz, at an early age. At 2 years old, he was taking the bus to downtown Los Angeles to hear jazz greats, including Ellington, at the Orpheum Theatre. Years later, he would go to jazz clubs and shoot photographs of up-and-coming musicians just for fun and to listen to the music. An incident that he recounted in the introduction to his book "Jazz: William Claxton" speaks of a more innocent time between celebrities and photographers. Claxton recalled taking his old 4-by-5 Speed Graphic to photograph the legendary saxophonist Parker at the Tiffany Club on 7th Street in downtown L.A. He hung out with Parker until the place closed and then took him and some of his young fans to his parents' home in La Cañada Flintridge, where he improvised a studio in his bedroom and posed Parker with his fans in a formal portrait. He said that he had never seen Bird, whose life was cut short by drug problems, look happier. Claxton started at UCLA but gave up college when Richard Bock, who was starting Pacific Jazz Records, hired him as a photographer. He created a vast array of memorable album covers for the label. Toward the end of the 1950s, he started moving into fashion work. He married Moffitt, who was the muse of fashion designer Rudi Gernreich. In the early 1960s, they created the photographs of the topless bathing suit designed by Gernreich with Moffitt as the model. "That was a big family decision," Claxton told Heckman. "Whew. Was I going to let my wife show her breasts in public? We hassled about it for a long time. Finally, we decided to employ nepotism. Only I could photograph it, we would have control of the pictures and Peggy would never model the suit in public. And it worked out OK. The pictures were tasteful, I thought, Peggy looked great, and it was historically a breakthrough for women, that they could feel free enough to show the beauty of their breasts." Claxton also directed the film "Basic-Black," which is viewed by many as the first fashion video and is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York. While taking assignments for Life magazine, he photographed Sinatra at a recording session at Capitol Records, Barbra Streisand in New York, and McQueen. All were notoriously tough assignments, stars distrustful of the media and reluctant to be photographed. But he gained their trust and developed a friendship with McQueen through their common love of sports cars, race cars and motorcycles. His work is collected in an array of spectacular books, including "Jazz: William Claxton," "Young Chet," "Claxography," "Steve McQueen" and "Jazzlife." Claxton is survived by his wife of 49 years; his son Christopher; sister Colleen Lewis of Eagle Rock; and several nieces and nephews.

I listened to this just the other day. Evans recorded it on Disc One of his Complete Village Vanguard 1961 box.

RIP. A few years ago I had a daily calendar of his photographs of jazz musicians. Some of them I pulled out and inserted in the jewel cases of the artists. Just now I have been playing Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil, into which I slipped a photo of Wayne from 1996.

For the 1960 and '61 football seasons, my family lived in Seattle. NBC carried the Baltimore Colts games (with Chuck Thompson announcing) and the Pittsburgh Steelers games (with Lyndsay Nelson). They started at 10:30 am pacific time. CBS carried the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers games, which of course were in the afternoon. Gil Stratton announced those. The NBC games were always good. The CBS games were always boring. I never blamed Stratton for that. The 49ers and the Rams were both pretty bad in those days. But the CBS games were so often boring (and in those days as a kid I would watch just about anything!) that in '61 I tried the ABC broadcasts of the San Diego Chargers with Charlie Jones announcing. Those Charger games were great, and I quickly became an AFL fan for the duration. Stratton was also a radio actor in the 50s, known as Gil Stratton, Jr. I never knew who Gil Stratton, Sr. was. I heard him often when listening to radio shows was a hobby of mine. You will notice that the obit says that Stratton was also a Coast league umpire in the 50s. I never knew that! Excerpted from the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,7894390.story Gil Stratton, 86, a Southern California sportscasting fixture File photo In addition to sportscasting, Stratton's career included a stint in the Army Air Forces as well as acting roles. He appeared in the film "Girl Crazy" with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, singing "Embraceable You" in duet with Garland. The voice of the Rams and TV and radio anchor who said, 'I call 'em as I see 'em,' dies at home in Toluca Lake. 1:09 PM PDT, October 12, 2008 Gil Stratton, a longtime presence in Southern California sportscasting as the voice of the Rams, as the host of horse racing from Santa Anita and as an anchor on Channel 2 news and KNX 1070 Newsradio, died Saturday of congestive heart failure at this home in Toluca Lake, according to his wife Dee. He was 86. A former Pacific Coast League umpire, Stratton's signature line, "I call 'em as I see 'em," became familiar to generations of Southern Californians during his 17-year tenure on "The Big News," the trailblazing KNXT, now KCBS, broadcast in the mid-1960s that also featured Clete Roberts, Jerry Dunphy, Ralph Story and Bill Keene. In his sportscasting career, he covered the Summer Olympics from Rome in the 1960s, hosted the feature horse race on Saturdays from Santa Anita, Hollywood Park and Del Mar, and worked as an announcer for the Rams, when they played in the Memorial Colisieum. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Stratton was born June 2, 1922. He attended Poly Prep in Brooklyn and earned his bachelor's degree from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y. He started his acting career as a teenager and, at the age of 19, appeared on Broadway in the George Abbot production "Best Foot Forward" and also worked as a radio actor. Two years later, he appeared in the film "Girl Crazy" with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, singing "Embraceable You" in duet with Garland. Stratton joined the Army Air Forces during World War II, being inducted on stage in Chicago after a performance of "Best Foot Forward," and was trained at the gunnery school in Las Vegas. But he spent much of his time umpiring service ball, a skill he had picked up while going to college. Years later, he would remember calling Joe DiMaggio out on a third strike at a game in Westwood and having the Yankee Clipper remark to him, "It was a little low, wasn't it son?" After the war, he settled in Southern California and picked up his acting career, appearing in films including "Stalag 17" with William Holden, "The Wild One," which starred Marlon Brando, and "Monkey Business," with Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Charles Coburn. He also did a wide variety of classic radio broadcasts, and when he wasn't working behind the mike or the camera, he made a living, often behind the plate, as an umpire for Pacific Coast League games for nine years in the 1950s.