It was while listening to Johnny Winter‘s Progressive Blues Experiment album (oh that first cut–“Rollin’ and Tumblin'” with Johnny’s slide, Uncle John Turner’s drums, and Tommy Shannon’s bass!) and reading its cover that I first saw Tommy’s name.
Bassist Tommy Shannon
Woodstock Music and Art Fair
That August weekend’s hunger, time, work obligation, soaking rain, and car concerns sent me home from Woodstock on Sunday and I missed bands I’d come to see. Johnny Winter was one of them and hearing that set today makes me wish there were time machines.
Before I continue, let me thank Donna Johnston who wrote the bio notes from Tommy Shannon’s site. Click thru for the complete story. It’s a long and interesting one.
Tommy Shannon was born on April 18, 1946 in Tucson, AZ, but grew up in west Texas. Like many musicians’ stories, he played in various bands during high school.
After high school, he moved to Dallas and there met Uncle John Turner. Turner eventually became drummer for young Johnny Winter and one night Tommy went to hear his friend play. The visit became an invitation by Johnny to Tommy to join the band.
Never much into the blues, Winter immersed Shannon via a vast record collection. According to Shannon, ““After I … listened to all that stuff, all the way back to the beginning, when I picked up my bass and started playing the blues, it was just the most natural thing I’d ever done”
After Johnny Winter formed a new band, Tommy and Uncle John continued with other musicians. The musician’s life offers many opportunities and for Tommy Shannon some of those opportunities forced the legal system to deny Shannon any interaction music scene. At one point he was a bricklayer.
In 1980, Fortune smiled on Tommy Shannon and old Texas friend Stevie Ray Vaughan invited Shannon to join Vaughan’s Double Trouble band. He did and life was good again.
Bassist Tommy Shannon
Too good for his own good
Both Tommy Shannon and Stevie Ray Vaughan sought help.
Again Donna Johnston, “The story of Tommy’s time with Stevie is well known: the musical highs of sold-out concerts all over the world (including that magical Carnegie Hall gig), [NYT article] the multiple Grammys, the gold and platinum records…and then the personal lows of drug and alcohol addiction, which eventually led the two best friends to enter rehab facilities on the same day in October, 1986.”
They emerged healthy again, but Fortune frowned this time. On August 27, 1990 after a performance with Eric Clapton, Vaughan’s helicopter crashed killing him and other members of Clapton’s group. [NYT article]
Bassist Tommy Shannon
Arc Angels
Shannon w Arc Angels
Tommy Shannon and the other members of Double Trouble wandered musically after Vaughan’s death, but in 1992 he and others briefly formed the Arc Angels and released the highly-acclaimed eponymous Arc Angel album.
Here they are on the Letterman Show, June 9, 1992. Bassist Tommy Shannon
Nearly Stoned
Tommy thought he would replace Bill Wyman as the Rolling Stones bassist, but that didn’t happen.
The band Storyville was next.
After that breakup, Double Trouble re-formed and continued to give us great music.
Bassist Tommy Shannon
Tommy Shannon Blues Band
Nowadays, Tommy can be heard regularly with his Tommy Shannon Blues Band at Antone’s in Austin. His band mates are Tommy Taylor and David Holt.
Newly-elected Presidents inherit their predecessors’ successes and failures. Even though a new President must approve any continuances, once underway, plans and policies, carry a bureaucratic momentum.
In April 1960, the Central Intelligence Agency had recruited 1,400 members of the Frente Revolucionario Democratico (FRD), an active group of Cuban exiles who had fled Cuba when Castro took power.
The group formed the Brigade 2506 and on April 17, 1961, more than 1,000 CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs on the southern coast of Cuba intending to overthrow Fidel Castro’s recently established government.
The plan failed completely and the negative long-term impact is still part of Cuban-American relations.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Background
17 March 1960: President Eisenhower approved a document at a meeting of the National Security Council (NSC). The stated first objective of the plan (“A Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime”) began as follows: Objective: The purpose of the program outlined herein is to bring about the replacement of the Castro regime with one more devoted to the true interests of the Cuban people and more acceptable to the U.S. in such a manner to avoid any appearance of U.S. intervention.(my emphasis)
18 August 1960: President Eisenhower approved a budget of $13 million for the operation.
By 31 October 1960: most guerrilla infiltrations and supply drops directed by the CIA into Cuba had failed, and plans to mount an amphibious assault replaced further developments of guerrilla strategies.
18 November 1960: CIA Director Allen Dulles and CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard Bissell first briefed President-elect John Kennedy on the plans. Dulles was confident that the CIA was capable of overthrowing the Cuban government.
29 November 1960: President Eisenhower met with the chiefs of the CIA, Defense, State, and Treasury departments to discuss the idea of an invasion. Those present expressed no objections and Eisenhower approved the plans. He hoped to persuade Kennedy of the plan’s merit.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Pre-Invasion Issues
One of President Kennedy’s main concerns, was that the operation remain covert not just to Castro but disassociated from the United States.
Not surprisingly, a number of Castro’s agents were among the Brigade and they shared the intelligence that they collected on the upcoming invasion.
The planned invasion site was the town of Trinidad. It offered a US-friendly population, a good port, and nearby mountains to escape to if necessary.
As the invasion date grew near, Kennedy grew nervous about the site. It was too associated with the United States making it difficult to deny US culpability. He demanded a change.
A month before the invasion, the CIA decided on Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs). Unfortunately, this was a place Castro knew well and whose population loved Castro.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Phase One–Air Attacks
The plan had three phases and early in the morning of April 15 six Cuban-piloted B-26 bombers struck two airfields, three military bases, and Antonio Maceo Airport in an attempt to destroy the Cuban air force.
This phase was successful: the attack destroyed most of Castro’s combat aircraft.
Castro raised complaints to the UN. The US denied all.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Phase Two–Second Air Attacks
April 16 was Phase Two: a second bombing of targets. But the UN attention to the initial attack worried Kennedy and he cancelled Phase Two.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Phase Three–Land Invasion
April 17. The landing did not go well. Many men lost their equipment because of the rough approach to the shoreline.
From an article at the CIA site: Once ashore, they were met instantly by Cuban armed forces who outnumbered them. The salvaged and undamaged Cuban planes that had survived the April 15 strikes, the very planes that should have been destroyed that morning had Kennedy not canceled the planned strike, were now flying overhead wreaking mayhem on the Brigade.
The invasion did not go as planned, and the exiles soon found themselves outgunned, outmanned, outnumbered and outplanned by Castro’s troops.
From there things got worse. Rescue attempts went poorly. A few from the Brigade escaped, but Cuban forces captured most of the Brigade.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
JFK Shows Some of his Cards
April 24, 1961: President Kennedy accepted “sole responsibility” for the invasion, but on November 30 he authorized an aggressive covert operations (code name Operation Mongoose) against Fidel Castro in Cuba. Air Force General Edward Lansdale led the operation.
Operation Mongoose was to remove communists from power, including Castro and it aimed “for a revolt which can take place in Cuba by October 1962”.
US policy makers also wanted to see “a new government with which the United States can live in peace”.
April 14, 1962: a Cuban military tribunal convicted 1,179 Bay of Pigs attackers.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
James Donovan
President Kennedy tapped James Donovan to negotiate the release of the prisoners. This the same James Donovan who had just successfully negotiated the release of Gary Powers from the U2 incident on February 10, 1962.
Donovan made several trips to Cuba and Castro. Their relationship was a good one
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Cuban Missile Crisis
but the far more historic and nearly apocalyptic Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 intervened their negotiations.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Back to Donovan
Due to Donovan’s personality, the negotiations continued following the crisis.
While playing cards with the President of Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, Donovan continued to think about what would succeed with Castro and the idea of exchanging the prisoners for much-needed medicine and food might work.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
It did
On December 21, 1962, Castro and Donovan signed an agreement to exchange the 1,113 prisoners of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion for $53 million in food and medicine and on December 23, Cuba released the participants in the Bay of Pigs.
Bay of Pigs Invasion
Review
Jim Rasenberger summed up the invasion and its aftermath in his well-received book, The Brilliant Disaster:
In the early hours of April 17, 1961, some fourteen hundred men, most of them Cuban exiles, attempted to invade their homeland and overthrow Fidel Castro. The invasion at the Bahia de Cochinos — the Bay of Pigs — quickly unraveled. Three days after landing, the exile force was routed and sent fleeing to the sea or the swamps, where the survivors were soon captured by Castro’s army. Despite the Kennedy administration’s initial insistence that the United States had nothing to do with the invasion, the world immediately understood that the entire operation had been organized and funded by the U.S. government. The invaders had been trained by CIA officers and supplied with American equipment, and the plan had been approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the president of the United States. In short, the Bay of Pigs had been a U.S. operation, and its failure — “a perfect failure,” historian Theodore Draper called it — was a distinctly American embarrassment. Bad enough the government had been caught bullying and prevaricating; much worse, the United States had allowed itself to be humiliated by a nation of 7 million inhabitants (compared to the United States’ 180 million) and smaller than the state of Pennsylvania. The greatest American defeat since the War of 1812, one American general called it. Others were less generous. Everyone agreed on this: it was a mistake Americans would never repeat and a lesson they would never forget.
Apparently we did. Several more times. And still are.
Jason Falkner performed this instrumental cover of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds YouTube link
Albert Hofmann Changed Things
Not April 19
Today is not April 19, aka Bicycle Day, the day in 1943 when Albert Hofmann deliberately ingested lysergic acid diethylamide and decided to ride his bicycle home to relax and recover.
Albert Hofmann Changed Things
Albert Hofmann
Albert Hofmann was born on January 11, 1906 in Baden, Switzerland. He attended the University of Zürich and graduated in 1929 with a doctorate in medicinal chemistry.
Sandoz Laboratories in Basel, Switzerland hired him for a program that was developing methods for synthesizing compounds found in medicinal plants. It was there that Hofmann stumbled upon LSD-25 (the 25th such derivative tested) in 1938.
Albert Hofmann Changed Things
Set aside
He put it aside for five years until on April 16, 1943. On that day, when Hofman accidentally consumed LSD-25 and experienced unusual sensations and hallucinations.
In his notes, he related the experience: “Last Friday, April 16, 1943, I was forced to interrupt my work in the laboratory in the middle of the afternoon and proceed home, being affected by a remarkable restlessness, combined with a slight dizziness. At home I lay down and sank into a not unpleasant, intoxicated-like condition characterized by an extremely stimulated imagination. In a dreamlike state, with eyes closed (I found the daylight to be unpleasantly glaring), I perceived an uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors. After some two hours this condition faded away.”
He came to the conclusion that it could be of significant use in psychiatric treatment and spent years investigating LSD’s hallucinogenic properties. He disapproved of the casual recreational use of LSD.
Albert Hofmann Changed Things
Problem Child
Hofmann did believe that in addition to LSD’s possible psychiatric uses, it could also be used in spiritual contexts. He proposed those ideas in his book LSD, mein Sorgenkind (LSD: My Problem Child, 1980).
The following is a brief video where he discusses his surprise at discovering an alternate reality in which the world transmits through our senses (acting like an aerial) and our consciousness acts like a TV screen.
Albert Hofmann Changed Things
Long legacy
Hofmann died of a heart attack on April 29, 2008, but even today, the idea of using LSD as more than a recreational compound–using it for therapeutic use–is still a fringe part of scientific research.
