Wendy Holcombe's effort to become an all-around entertainer hit a couple of huge bumps in 1981-82.
First of all, in the summer of 1981, the pilot the Alabaster, AL native did for NBC, the sitcom Wendy Hooper, US Army, didn't get picked up (America's TV viewers hitched their wagons to another Army-based comedy, CBS' Private Benjamin, which presented Lorna Patterson in the role made famous by Goldie Hawn in the previous year's big-screen hit of that name).
Had Wendy Hooper caught on, Holcombe (then 18 years old) would've been one of the youngest to ever get top billing on a prime-time sitcom on American television. (Jay North was just seven in 1959, the year he landed the show that gave him his fame: Dennis the Menace.)
Bill's and Helen's multiinstrumentalist-singer-comic daughter got a sitcom anyway when, on 10-29-1981, Lewis & Clark premiered on NBC.
The same viewers who kept WHUSA from joining the Peacock Network's 1981-82 schedule stayed with L&C's biggest Thursday-night competition, CBS' Magnum, P.I. (That crime drama- the one that made a household name out of Tom Selleck- survived its rookie campaign, the 1980-81 season.)
Not even a pair of time-slot changes could save Lewis & Clark, where Holcombe played a server (okay, waitress) in the Luckenback, TX nightclub run by Gabe Kaplan and Guich Koock.
Even if many people couldn't get into Wendy Holcombe the actor, they still fell head over heels in love with Wendy Holcombe the musician. And some extra proof of that came in 1983, when Wendy, her hubby Tom Blosser, and their band traveled to Israel to play alongside bluegrass legends Bill Monroe and Mac Wiseman.
Not long after that, Tom and Wendy turned their 1983 travels into a world tour, focusing on Australia, New Zealand, and several Asian countries.
The closing act on that international tour: None other than Perry Como.
Meanwhile, back in the United States, the banjo-playing wife and her bass-playing husband set up shop in Florida, only to move to North Carolina...to get closer to relatives.
And a year or so before WLH and TYB set out for their overseas tour, Wendy Lou started performing alongside fellow banjoist Buck Trent.
Their performances set that twosome up for a 1982 Music City News Bluegrass Act of the Year award nomination. Later on, the Country Music Association nominated them for Instrumentalists of the Year.
All this time, Wendy was performing despite a degenerative heart condition (first diagnosed at an early age).
By the middle 1980s, that heart condition (technically known as cardiomyopathy; in lay terms, enlargement of the heart) wasn't improving.
Several times, an ambulance would arrive at the Holcombe-Blosser house to pick Wendy up...but she'd beat the odds whenever they were stacked against her recovery.
Then came that ill-fated Saturday...the seventh Saturday of 1987.
Country music's much the poorer because of Wendy's 2-14-1987 death. The Alabaster Kid strove for perfection in everything she did...including in her musical endeavors. And that pursuit of perfection showed whenever she appeared in front of any kind of live audience or whenever Wendy appeared in front of a set of TV cameras.
Even if you and I can't go online and find Holcombe's acting performances (you'll strike out on www.youtube.com if you're looking for Lewis & Clark episodes), there's plenty of audio evidence (the posthumously-released CD "Memories of Wendy" is finally available...on www.cdbaby.com as well as www.amazon.com) and plenty of video evidence right here on the Internet that Cindy's and "Muley's" sister was a powerful musician.
And a powerful, energetic, enthusiastic influence.
Wendy, I'm glad you came along...and I'm glad you brought so many great things.
Nope...not Winona Ryder.
Winona, Minnesota.
This is one extremely beautiful city, and the reason I'm in town (a city of over 25,000 people) is...the tenth annual Frozen River Film Festival.
Winona State University puts this event on each winter (last year, it took place in January); during five or six days, different venues across town present movies of all kinds.
The festival officially kicks off tomorrow and lasts until 2-22-2015, but tonight...one of Winona's most famous hot spots, Ed's (No Name) Bar, jumps the gun at 7:30 PM (CST) by showing that initial documentary about the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival, the 2012 release "The Entertainers."
Right now, Faye Ballard, her mother Erma, and I are staying at the home of two of the FRFF's volunteers and supporters, Steve and Nancy Bachler.
The house isn't too far from the WSU campus...and the school isn't too far away from Ed's, the bar located at 3rd and Franklin Sts.
Faye, Erma, Nancy, Steve, and I are having a real groovy time right now; as I'm typing this out, the FRFF showing of "The Entertainers" is less than three hours away.
Speaking of real groovy time...I had one yesterday while driving from Omaha to Winona (a trip I wouldn't have made if last week's prediction of a winter storm for Nebraska and Iowa to fall on 2-16-2015 had come true).
I was tooling along in a 2014 Chevy Malibu that Enterprise Rent-a-Car loaned out to me, groovin' to the music on Sirius XM Channels 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 49, just glad to get on the road for the first time in 2015.
And then...at the 200-mile mark on Interstate 90 in the Gopher State, it started to snow.
Things stopped looking so groovy for the moment.
Had to pray that I could get to the Bachlers' house safely (and get that Chevy parked and out of harm's way).
Managed to make the right exit (Exit 252 on I-90)...but then, the seven miles on Minnesota State Highway 43 that led to Winona started to take a harrowing turn: After nearly driving off the road, I had to slow down.
It would've been worse if another driver hadn't sped by me.
So I decided to follow said motorist...and got inside Minnesota's Most Beautiful City at 6:54 PM.
Then I spent the next half hour finding Steve's and Nancy's house. (This, even after spending part of Sunday night studying an online map of Winona and planning out how to get from Exit 252 to the area around the Winona State campus!)
At The Weather Channel, they like to say: "It's amazing out there!"
Sometimes, I like to strip out "amazing" and put in "depressing!"
But things got straightened out, and I got to the hosts' house at 7:30 PM...when Nancy, Erma, Steve, and Faye greeted me with open arms (and my choice of beer, wine, coffee, tea, or water).
I had a roaring case of dry mouth, so...I opted for the water.
It came in a large mug. (Thanks so much, Nancy!)
If you're visiting Winona, maybe you'll like the restaurant the Ballards and I have been visiting: Jefferson Pub and Grill (on Center St. between 1st and 2nd Streets). Great sports bar, great food...especially the burgers (such as the "Goody Burger," which features barbecue sauce and an onion ring).
Well, that's it for now...and I hope to see you at the Frozen River Film Festival!
By the way...to learn more about this event, log onto www.frozenriver.org.
I had to fight to get this opportunity.
And I'm glad for this chance.
Things have worked out so that I could attend the 40th annual World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival...which is now on its sixth venue: The Embassy Suites Hotel in East Peoria, IL.
If my boss at the plastics factory I work at hadn't encouraged me to fill out a vacation request form earlier this month (and if the plant manager hadn't okayed the form), and if my car had broken down someplace along the way, well...I'd be typing this out in Omaha, NE (and talking about another subject).
This time, I went from the Omaha/Council Bluffs/Bellevue area directly to the Peoria area...and I commenced the trip yesterday morning. And I fought the rain (okay, much-needed rain) until I reached Exit 110 on Interstate 80 (eleven miles west of West Des Moines, IA).
In addition, I fought through six different lane closings on the Iowa stretch of I-80...and through the demolition of the Bettendorf, IA convenience store where I filled up my car's gas tank before reaching Illinois.
But here I am...seven hours away from reaching the Green Room at the hotel's Conference Center to join eighteen other contestants in drawing out numbers to determine playing order as the meat of this year's OTPP Contest approaches.
Before that...
Made it to the hotel at 4:22 PM (Central time) yesterday, then an hour later, I caught a shuttle to the Sky Harbor Steakhouse (located in another Peoria suburb, West Peoria) to be a part of the contest-opening tuneups.
At the tuneups, anybody who wants to has an opportunity to play the restaurant's rinky-tink piano, a Grinnell Bros. upright from early in the 20th Century.
Lots of people- not just OTPP contestants- did.
On top of that, those who signed up to pound away at that upright were treated to a free buffet...featuring ribs, chicken, macaroni and cheese, a roll, your choice of vegetables, and your choice of beverage.
Personally, things went better at the Sky Harbor than they did a year ago. What's more, the steakhouse party didn't stop until around 9:15 PM.
Then earlier today, I tackled an experience I wasn't able to engage in since 2007: I boarded, for just the second time in my life, the local riverboat known as Spirit of Peoria.
I want to go back on that boat next year, too!
Just as is the case at the Sky Harbor Steakhouse, the food on the riverboat is great. On the Spirit, you get a lunch buffet that includes several different salads, your choice of chips, a few dessert items, three beverage choices, and a wonderful line of sandwich fixin's.
And...the boat has a spinet piano on each of the first two decks plus a calliope on the third (top) deck. (Okay...the actual calliope doesn't work anymore. They hooked up an electronic keyboard to the calliope's framework. And it still sounds great!)
Had a chance to work out on both the electronic keyboard-cum-calliope and the second deck's spinet. (Things turned out better for me here in 2014 than was the case seven years ago.)
At 4:38 PM this afternoon, it was off to the Embassy Suites Conference Center, where Paul Asaro did an impressive workshop on 1920s-1930s stride piano.
One great thing about this Embassy Suites is all the eateries within close proximity...like the Steak 'n' Shake next door. [About 50 minutes prior to the start of this year's New Rag Contest, I joined contestants Samuel Schallau and William Bennett (nope...not THAT William Bennett) and William's mom Sue for dinner at Steak 'n' Shake.]
And I tasted just why Steak 'n' Shake is legendary.
I want to go back there, too!
At 7:00 PM, it was time for New Rag...and out of seven contestants (it would've been eight had I entered), William McNally walked away with his fourth rag-writing title.
He gets to split it with a Californian named Vincent Johnson, who wrote the entry William M. played: "And So Fourth."
Then came the first of several get-togethers called "afterglows." In these afterglows, they've got open piano (two studio models) in one room- the one where the New Rag competition took place- while the other afterglow room is meant for people who play other instruments (you'll find a studio piano there, too).
I stayed in the New Rag room and was the last of seven to sign up to play.
And it felt more comfortable this time around than in 2013.
When I come back, I'll let you know how the first round of non-New Rag OTPP competition went.
I'm Jim Boston...thanks for reading this blog!
That's where I went last week.
And I found out just how San Diego, CA lives up to its nickname: "America's Most Beautiful City."
Until 3-12-2014, I'd never, ever set foot on America's West Coast before.
National University's decision to show "The Entertainers" (that 2012 documentary about the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival) gave me all the more reason to come out to California.
To get to the Golden State, I caught a pair of Southwest Airlines Boeing 737s (I changed planes in Denver, CO).
On the way out to San Diego, I was nervous. After all, this was just the fifth flight I'd ever taken in my life. (My other plane trips happened in 1967, 1981, 2002, and 2012.)
And this 2014 flight was the first plane excursion that didn't involve work or going to see relatives.
Once I saw Michael Zimmer (one of the documentary's codirectors) at the San Diego International Airport, I started to finally relax.
I knew everything was going to be all right.
Michael rented a Chrysler 200 sedan and drove us out to our hotel, Courtyard (by Marriott) San Diego Central (8651 Spectrum Center Dr., 92123).
Great place to stay!
Not only did National pay for our hotel rooms and fly us out to America's most heavily-populated state...the school (Michael teaches a screenwriting class at National's Los Angeles campus) wined and dined us.
Matter of fact, a few hours after I had a chance to kick back in my room, we ate dinner at a restaurant on Park Blvd. [I've been racking my brains trying to remember the eatery's name. All I know is that its name has "Bellezza" in it...and that its menu features pizzas with people's first names as the pizzas' monikers (handles such as "Julieta").]
And we- Michael, girlfriend Tiara, his parents (Michael Sr. and Margaret), "Perfessor" Bill Edwards, and I- really loved that restaurant.
The pizzas themselves are fired up in a brick oven- the same way they were made when pizza came over to the United States around and after World War 1.
Speaking of fired up...I was really fired up about the next day, one that would culminate in the actual showing of "The Entertainers."
And after we ate breakfast at the hotel's restaurant, we went sightseeing...and we focused on Balboa Park.
Balboa Park, all by itself, makes Ess Dee earn the "America's Most Beautiful City" nickname. Lots of gardens (including a striking Japanese one)...lots of museums...and the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, home of America's largest outdoor pipe organ.
The 1915 installation (built by the Austin Organ Co.) used to be the world's largest...until one of the cities in Austria put up an outdoor pipe organ that passed up the San Diego one. (But now, the Spreckels Organ Society and San Diego's government leaders are out to give the lead back to the instrument that currently boasts 4,518 pipes with 73 ranks...with four manuals to control it all.)
We split the pre-movie sightseeing in half...and in the second half, Faye Ballard joined us. (A blizzard messed things up in the Chicago area, forcing flights out of O'Hare International Airport to get canceled...meaning Faye couldn't get a plane from Champaign, IL to Chi-Town that Wednesday. So she got a plane from Champaign to Dallas-Fort Worth, then changed planes in the Metroplex and came out to San Diego.)
Meanwhile, Four Arrows was in San Diego...at a teaching seminar across town.
Before we were all given the chance to get inside the Spreckels Organ Pavilion, the entourage splintered...and Faye and I got a chance to tour Balboa Park's Museum of Photographic Arts (the very venue where "The Entertainers" would be screened that night).
That week, MOPA exhibited a mind-blowing display of photos depicting political leaders in action, acts of civil disobedience, and virtually anything else that could've been ripped out of your local newspaper (or at least out of the Associated Press files).
Then, after touring Spreckels, we all made it inside MOPA, whose 200-seat auditorium was set up to show that documentary about the World Championship Old-Time Piano Playing Contest and Festival.
At that time, Four Arrows (an online college professor when he's not playing old-time piano) was en route from the seminar across town.
It was 7:00 PM (Pacific time)...and just as the film started rolling, Bill, Faye, Tiara, Margaret, the two Michaels, and I went out to eat (Bill: "We've all seen the movie before!").
So we ate at a restaurant in the middle of the park, The Prado.
Even if Omaha's got more eateries per capita than any other city in America, that's no reason to put San Diego's cuisine down. When it comes to restaurants, SD gives the Big O a run for its money...and The Prado is one of the many proofs.
At The Prado, they serve a half chicken as an entree...and that chicken rocked!
As things turned out, the 140 people who came to see "The Entertainers" found out the movie rocked, too.
They loved Bill, Faye, Four Arrows, Michael the Younger, and me. The Q-and-A session was a blast...and so was the concert Four Arrows, Faye, Bill, and I launched into after the Q-and-A.
Had a great time in San Diego...and if things turn out, I'm going back there as soon as possible.
Last year, I set foot in the state of Texas for the first time in my life (the occasion was our family's first reunion in nine years). To get to America's Lone Star State, I traveled in a plane for the first time in ten years.
The reunion took place on Labor Day weekend in the Dallas/Fort Worth/Arlington area. And in between the hassles of getting in and out of both Omaha's Eppley Airfield and one of the world's biggest airports (Dallas-Fort Worth International), I did have a good time.
*Well, this week, the Metroplex opened up a new amusement park (see the pictures above).
I've got to be honest with you: If I get a chance to go back to North Texas, and I want to go to an amusement park (and I mean a REAL amusement park), it's going to be Six Flags. (Correct me if Six Flags over Texas changed its name in recent years.)
*Speaking of plane travel...I understand that, for the first time since enacting it earlier this year, Congress decided to back off a taste on upholding its sequester.
Today, after the Senate took action, the House voted to get many of the air traffic controllers off the furlough the sequester brought on.
The whole point was to help out all those frequent fliers and all those business travelers.
It's fine that today's Republican-led House wants to put a stop to (or at least a crimp in) all those flight delays and cancellations. Restoring jobs to those air traffic controllers is great.
It's too bad those same US representatives don't have the guts to restore the money that keeps programs like Head Start and Meals on Wheels available to all who NEED those programs.
*And speaking of guts...I'm still incensed at the 46 US senators who showed they wouldn't stand up to the National Rifle Association.
Some (if not all) of those 46 cowards (that's right, cowards) got on TV, radio, and/or this here World Wide Web to explain just why they wouldn't stand for background checks- the measures that would've made sure buying a gun here in America is no longer as easy as buying a carton of cigarettes.
No telling how many of those chickenhearts (oops, I mean senators) told reporters "It wasn't an easy vote."
No telling how many of them cited the Second Amendment.
I mean, background checks were the very least of the demands gun-control advocates have wanted all this time. We keep hearing that nine out of every ten Americans who answer opinion polls have come out in favor of those background checks.
Both of Nebraska's US senators (that's right, Republicans Mike Johanns and Deb Fischer) played chicken on background checks.
If you don't want as little as to put a background check between someone and his or her wanting to buy a "shootin' arn," then you're in favor of keeping the gun violence going. It's as simple as that.
*On something just a little bit lighter...after some details have come out this week, I'm not as excited about the upcoming College Football Playoff system as I would've liked to be.
And it's all because it'll be run by the same people who cooked up the BCS nonsense: The commissioners of the now five wealthiest Division 1-A football-playing conferences (Atlantic Coast, Big Ten, Big 12, Pacific-12, and Southeastern).
I'd have preferred to see the NCAA take it over...but we keep hearing that there's no longer any real leadership in that governing body.
Got the feeling that the commissioners will rely on the USA Today and Harris Interactive polls (and maybe the Associated Press poll will be a deciding factor here, too, a la the past).
And if that's going to be the case...instead of each league's champion qualifying for the playoffs, get ready for things to get to the point where all four of the playoff clubs will be from the SEC.
One more, and I'm going to wrap it up:
*Lots and lots of sports reporters and sports talk-show hosts have been worried about this year's NFL draft; the consensus feeling is that the 2013 selection process just doesn't have the glamor that last year's did.
It's time for the media people to calm down.
More 2013 NFL draftees are going to turn out to have great playing careers than any of us might think. (Yeah...I know: How often do you get a situation in which an Andrew Luck, a Robert Griffin III, and a Russell Wilson come out of college at the end of the same academic year?)
Far as I'm concerned, all this media fear about this year's National Football League draft manifested itself in (1) a USA Today article about the biggest busts in the draft's history and (2) an ESPN report looking back on the 1983 NFL draft...the one that produced Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterbacks John Elway and Dan Marino.
Don't feel disappointed that the Kansas City Chiefs went with offensive lineman Eric Fisher as their top draft pick- the NFL's first choice here in 2013.
And don't automatically label Geno Smith a failure.
Let's just see what happens.
One thing that's happening is: My time is up.
Thanks for reading "Boston's Blog!"
This past Monday, my favorite PBS series, American Experience, presented one of the most riveting documentaries in the program's history.
Nebraska's PBS stations (they're called NET) have since been rerunning this week's American Experience, and as a matter of fact, the program's back on the air right now this afternoon...just as I'm typing out this post.
This week's AE focused on an event that took place fifty years ago this very month...an event that helped shape the America we've got now.
On 5-4-1961, twelve people set out on regularly-scheduled buses from Washington, DC, with the goal of making it to New Orleans, LA, two weeks later.
All they wanted to do was test- and put an end to- America's Jim Crow laws, especially as they pertained to interstate travel.
The Freedom Rides of 1961 were designed as a way to, among other things, get this country's brand-new chief executive (and his people) to start thinking about- and acting on- putting domestic issues (especially the BIG one, civil rights) on the front burner.
That's right: John F. Kennedy's inaugural speech was more than "the torch has been passed" and "Ask not what your country can do you for you...ask what you can do for your country." During that address, JFK talked about spreading freedom all over the world.
He just didn't talk about spreading that freedom all over these fifty states.
Two buses- a Greyhound and a Trailways- pulled out of the nation's capital that first Thursday in the fifth month of 1961.
The Greyhound bus didn't make it, because a mob at Forsyth & Son Grocery, just outside Anniston, AL, firebombed it.
But the six people who'd traveled on that Greyhound bus made it alive.
The Anniston incident didn't stop the Freedom Riders. Neither did mob violence in Birmingham and Montgomery, the Camellia State's two biggest cities...and neither did then Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett's decision to throw one rider after another- 340 in all- in jail (Parchman Farm, one of the worst jails in the world).
And not even Bobby Kennedy's plea to get the Freedom Riders to get off the road and let the government do its job could stop the trips.
RFK's plea came not long after Montgomery was put under martial law...in the wake of vandalism directed at that city's First Baptist Church. (First Baptist was the one where Ralph Abernathy- the man who became the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated almost seven years later- preached.)
Martial law came to Alabama's capital city all of eighteen days into the Freedom Rides.
At last, thanks mainly to MLK's and RFK's frequent telephone conversations, did the US government finally decide to give the riders protection.
And you can bet the whole planet was watching.
They were watching a country whose very name is supposed to mean "freedom" continue a situation that couldn't possibly mean "freedom."
Like it or not, the mob violence- and Barnett's and John Patterson's (Alabama's then governor; in fact, George Wallace's predecessor) endorsing of said violence, to say nothing of Birmingham Police Chief Bull Connor's hand in creating and endorsing that violence- gave the United States a real egg stain.
And that violence couldn't prevent the September 1961 ruling that, at long last, outlawed segregation in interstate travel...from the bus stations to the buses themselves.
The documentary, "Freedom Riders," showed interviews of people on both sides of the Jim Crow-in-travel issue...from original Freedom Rider John Lewis (now, of course, a US representative from Georgia) to Patterson himself.
To this day, I'm not really sure if Patterson ever showed any, any, ANY remorse for his hand in helping to make the Freedom Rides some kind of difficult.
One thing I'm really sure about is this: People such as Lewis, Jim Zwerg, Diane Nash, Hank Thomas, Genevieve Houghton, Benjamin Cox, Jim Peck, Bernard Lafayette, and hundreds of others, did something completely and totally courageous...and America is much the better for it.
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