The intro is Bob Dylan from his Theme Time Radio Hour (Season 1, Episode 39—Tears)
When I watched Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, I couldn’t believe how many amazing musicians had come to the party. I’d heard of nearly all the performers (surprised about Neil Diamond), but Bobby Charles was unknown to me.
He shouldn’t have been.
“See You Later Alligator”? Bobby Charles wrote it.
One of my favorite singles was Fats Domino’s “Walking to New Orleans.” Bobby Charles, again.
He’s barely a part of the released movie, barely seen in the group performance of “I Shall Be Released.”
The song he did do (“Down South In New Orleans“) was on the released soundtrack, but not featured in the movie itself. A video-taped outtake of his “Down South In New Orleans” exists. Unfortunately for Charles, it’s Levon Helm’s voice that mainly heard. Perhaps a reason for the song’s exclusion? Or perhaps the brighter starlight of Louisiana compatriot Dr John who had preceded Charles in the show (“Such A Night”) and stuck around for Down South.
Bobby Charles Swamp Pop
Abbeville, Louisiana
Robert Charles Guidry was born in Abbeville, Louisiana and thus it is no surprise that he grew up listening to Cajun music.
When he was 15, he heard Fat Domino’s “Goin’ Home” on the radio. It was a revelation. According to the Poderosa Stomp site, “…Charles remembers the epiphany this way: “That was it, it changed my life forever. It hit me hard. Something hits you that hard you don’t forget it.”
Bobby Charles Swamp Pop
White?
He had written “See You Later” for his idol Fats Domino, but Fats didn’t do alligator songs. Charles ended up singing the song over the phone to Leonard Chess, of Chess Records in Chicago.
Heard, but unseen, Chess sent a airplane ticket to Charles.
In 2012 Terry Gross, of NPR’s Fresh Air show, did a piece on Charles. Ed Ward spoke on the report: “…when Charles showed up at his office, Chess said something I can’t say on the air. The sentence ended with the word “white” and a question mark, though. ” (The report has plenty of great song snippets by Charles.)
Bobby Charles Swamp Pop
Homebody
Though a successful songwriter, a jealous wife and a dislike of touring kept him off the road. When a divorce eased that issue a bit, a pot bust in 1971 put him on the run rather than be jailed.
Where did he end up? A place called Woodstock, NY. A place he’d never heard of, not even the festival.
Bobby Charles Swamp Pop
Albert Grossman
I suppose it’s hard to be a musician in Woodstock and not run into others in the business. Fortunately for Charles, he ran into Albert Grossman, the manager of, among others, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin.
Along with his neighbors (I guess you’ve already figured out that they were the guys with the last names Helm, Hudson, Robertson, Manuel, and Danko), he recorded an album. One that people who know it and have it will enthusiastically tell someone who doesn’t, “Oh yea, you should get it!”
Bobby Charles Swamp Pop
Light In the Attic
Here’s the track list. Click on a title for a sample.
Small Town Talk (co written w Rick Danko) The radio DJ and historian Charlie Gillett summed up…[the] song’s appeal: “It was precisely the uneventful nature of the music that made it so alluring. Alongside the Band’s rhythm section, Dr John slipped in behind the organ to play an instantly addictive melody that is still in my blood.”
Unfortunately, but not surprisingly given Charles’s track record, the album did not sell. He eventually left Woodstock and returned to Louisiana.
And I guess we all can figure out now his Last Waltz invitation in 1976.
He didn’t stop writing. In 1976, Joe Cocker covered Charles’s The Jealous Kind. So did Ray Charles and Etta James.
He did release more albums with equal outstanding quality and equal non-commercial success.
In 2004 the double CD Last Train to Memphis was a retrospective of his compositions, with guest appearances by Neil Young, Willie Nelson and Fats Domino.
Bobby Charles Swamp Pop
Louisiana Music Hall of Fame
On September 24, 2005, Charles lost his home to Hurricane Rita when it struck southwest Louisiana.
Among that summary, is the amazing fact that Charles neither played an instrument nor read or wrote music.
Keith Spera said in a NOLA article, “Songs popped into his head, fully formed. To capture them, he’d sing into the nearest answering machine; sometimes he’d call home from a convenience store pay phone.”
By the early 2000s he was in poor health with diabetes and was in remission from kidney cancer. He died on January 14, 2010. He was 71.
Cover for a collection of personal reflections, stories, and poems from ten children’s authors celebrating the hard-earned promise of equality in education.
February 20, 1943 – March 25, 2018
Linda Brown lived in Topeka, Kansas with her parents and two younger sisters. Topeka, like many American school districts, had separate schools for their black children and white children so Linda was not allowed to attend Sumner School, the nearest school, but for whites only.
She later said: “We lived in a mixed neighborhood but when school time came I would have to take the school bus and go clear across town and the white children I played with would go to this other school,”
Oliver Brown, Linda’s dad, decided to enroll his daughter in Sumner. He walked her there, spoke to the principal who not surprisingly refused to admit Linda, not for any academic or classroom space reasons, but simply because Linda was black.
Oliver and Leola Brown decided to do something.
Linda Carol Brown
US history of legal apartheid
19th century
The judicial history of US Courts ruling that African-American were not entitled to the same rights and privileges as other Americans is a long one.
In the 1857 decision in Dred Scott, Plaintiff in Error v. John F. A. Sanford, the Supreme Court held that Blacks, enslaved or free, could not be citizens of the United States. Chief Justice Taney, arguing from the original intentions of the framers of the 1787 Constitution, stated that at the time of the adoption of the Constitution, Black people were considered a subordinate and inferior class of beings, “with no rights which the White man was bound to respect.”
In 1865, following the Civil War, many state governments passed laws designed to marginalize its blacks using Black Codes. These laws imposed severe restrictions such as prohibiting the right to vote, forbidding Black from sitting on juries, and limiting their right to testify against white men. They were also forbidden from carrying weapons in public places and working in certain occupations.
TheCivil Rights Act of 1866guaranteed Blacks basic economic rights to contract, sue, and own property, but enforcement was rare.
In 1868, the ratification of the 14th amendment overruled the Dred Scott decision. The amendment’s Section 1 reads: All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
But on April 14, 1873, the US Supreme Court decided in the Slaughterhouse cases that a citizen’s “privileges and immunities,” as protected by the Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment against the states, were limited to those spelled out in the Constitution and did not include many rights given by the individual states.
Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1875 which prohibited discrimination in places of public accommodation, but on December 15, 1883, the US Supreme Court ruled that The Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to safeguard blacks against the actions of private individuals. To decide otherwise would afford blacks a special status under the law that whites did not enjoy.
The Court continued to uphold the legality of discrimination with its 1896 Plesy v Ferguson decision that held that separate but equal facilities for White and Black railroad passengers did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
In 1899, in Cumming v. Board of Education of Richmond County, State of Georgia,the Supreme Court upheld a local school board’s decision to close a free public Black school due to fiscal constraints, despite the fact that the district continued to operate two free public white schools.
20th century
Linda Carol Brown
In 1908, inBerea College v. Commonwealth of Kentucky, the Supreme Court upheld a Kentucky state law forbidding interracial instruction at all schools and colleges in the state.
In 1927, in Gond Lum v Rice, the Supreme Court held that a Mississippi school district may require a Chinese-American girl to attend a segregated Black school rather than a White school.
Linda Carol Brown
Crumbs of progress
On December 12, 1938, in the State of Missouri ex rel. Gaines v. Canada, the Supreme Court decided in favor of Lloyd Gaines, a Black student who had been refused admission to the University of Missouri Law School. The decision did not mean separate but equal was unconstitutional. It was because there was no Black law school that the Court based its decision for Gaines.
10 years later on January 12, 1948, in Sipuel v. Board of Regents of University of Oklahoma, a unanimous Supreme Court held that Lois Ada Sipuel could not be denied entrance to a state law school solely because of her race.
On June 5, 1950, in Sweatt v Painter: the Supreme Court held that the University of Texas Law School must admit Herman Sweatt, a Black student. The University of Texas Law School was far superior in its offerings and resources to the separate Black law school, which had been hastily established in a downtown basement.
Linda Carol Brown
Stage set
And so under the auspices of the Topeka NAACP, on February 28, 1951 Brown v. Board of Education was filed in Federal district court, in Kansas. The plaintiffs were thirteen Topeka parents on behalf of their 20 children. The case listed the plaintiffs names alphabetically and Brown came first. Brown was Oliver, Linda’s father. The ohter 12 plaintiffs were: Darlene Brown, Lena Carper, Sadie Emmanuel, Marguerite Emerson, Shirley Fleming, Zelma Henderson, Shirley Hodison, Maude Lawton, Alma Lewis, Iona Richardson, and Lucinda Todd, each a parent and representing 20 children.
In August, a three-judge panel at the U. S. District Court unanimously held that “no willful, intentional or substantial discrimination” existed in Topeka’s schools. The U. S. District Court found that the physical facilities in White and Black schools were comparable and that the lower court’s decisions in Sweatt v. Painter and McLaurinonly applied to graduate education.
The NAACP appealed that decision and in June 1952 the Supreme Court announced that it would hear oral arguments in Briggsand Brown during the upcoming October 1952 term.
Briggs was a similar case and was “bundled” with Brown. Actually the case of Brown v. Board of Education as heard before the Supreme Court combined five cases: Brown itself, Briggs, Davis v. County School Board of Prince Edward County (filed in Virginia), Gebhart v. Belton (filed in Delaware), and Bolling v. Sharpe (filed in Washington, D.C.). All were NAACP-sponsored cases.
The case was argued for the states in early December 1952. Politicking by some justices in an attempt to get a unanimous decision in favor of Brown caused a delay, so it wasn’t until December 1953 that the NAACP’s Thurgood Marshall presented the case for the plaintiffs.
Linda Carol Brown
May 17, 1954
The Court delivered its unanimous decision in favor of the plaintiffs and in its decision said in part:
Does segregation of children in public schools solely on the basis of race, even though the physical facilities and other “tangible” factors may be equal, deprive the children of the minority group of equal educational opportunities? We believe that it does. …
“Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The effect is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.” …
We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Linda Carol Brown
Linda later
By May 1954, Linda Brown was in middle school and in Topeka the upper grades had already been integrated.
From Wikipedia: Throughout her life, Brown continued her advocacy in the cause of equal access to education in Kansas. Brown worked as a Head Start teacher and a program associate in the Brown Foundation. She was a public speaker and an education consultant…
In 1979, with her own children attending Topeka schools, Brown reopened her case against the Kansas Board of Education, arguing that segregation continued. The appeals court ruled in her favor in 1993.
Linda Carol Brown
Death
When she died in 2018, Kansas Governor Jeff Colyer tweeted: “Sixty-four years ago a young girl from Topeka brought a case that ended segregation in public schools in America. Linda Brown’s life reminds us that sometimes the most unlikely people can have an incredible impact and that by serving our community we can truly change the world.”
2017 video with Linda’s sister, Cheryl Brown Henderson, speaks about modern educational inequality. She is a part of the Brown Foundation. whose “ mission is to build upon the work of those involved in the Brown decision, to ensure equal opportunity for all people. Our cornerstone is to keep the tenets and ideals of Brown relevant for future generations through programs, preservation, advocacy and civic engagement.”
Maya Kulkarni Chadda excels in three areas: that of dancing, that of playing the tanpura, and that of being an academic.
Parents
From Lassi With Lavina site article: Her father, Gopalrao Kulkarni, was a writer and editor of Harijan, a newspaper published by Gandhi. Her mother, Nalini, was a political activist who also briefly served in the Indian Parliament after Independence. Her parents spent many months in jail during the freedom struggle, and were part of every satyagraha from Dandi March to the Quit India movement. Their lives were tied to Gandhi and they lived with him, and two of their sons were born in the ashram.
Dancing
A September 19, 1966 Clive Barnes article in the New York Times wrote of Maya Kulkarni, “In acting and dancing, Miss Kulkarni was delightful. Her rhythmic sense is strong (and this is difficult to sustain with the mental monotony of recorded sound, which permits not immediate response)….
Maya Kulkarni Chadda
Woodstock
Three years later, Maya was a 22-year-old postgraduate student when she serendipitously became part of Ravi Shankar’s tour, replacing an ill tanpura player. She joined the Pandit Shankarand the celebrated tabla player Ustad Alla Rakha Khan.
I know little about Indian music and perhaps the tanpura (or tampura) can be a lead instrument, but at Woodstock, it appears that Maya was simply a background musician to Shankar and Khan.
According to a 2012 article by Somya Lakhani for the Indian Express, “Woodstock was not Chadda’s introduction to Shankar or his sitar notes. As a young child, she used to be a regular at Bhulabhai Desai Institute in Mumbai, where she learnt Bharatnatyam. ‘Raviji used the institute to work on his own productions. I also worked on one, a dance-drama called Chandalika, written by Rabindranath Tagore, to which he gave music. Vyjayantimala Bali had choreographed the piece and I was her chief assistant. Raviji and I developed a strong bond of affection, and he would invite me to all his performances and to his home.”
Also, from a 2019 Hindustan Times article: Maya Kulkarni was on a scholarship at New York University to study economics. She knew Pandit Ravi Shankar, the sitar maestro, from her Bombay days, where she had been assisting actor Vyjayanthimala in the production of a dance drama. “Ravi ji had given its music,” says the artist and academic Maya Chadda (formerly Kulkarni) talking over the phone from New Jersey. “So when his regular tanpura player, Kamala Chakravarty, fell ill just before Woodstock, and there was need for a quick replacement, I stepped in. Alla Rakha ji was accompanying him on the tabla. There was no question of saying no. Besides, for me, Woodstock was always more than rock ‘n’ roll….”
Maya Kulkarni Chadda
Hendrix
In the same article, Chadda relates an unusual story. ““Once, we were to share a helicopter with a rock band, and I saw a man chasing a chicken around the farm while we were waiting for the helicopter. Later, during the ride, he sat in the cabin pulling hair from of his chest with studied concentration. While I sat frozen in embarrassment, Raviji kept smiling away at his antics. Later, I found out he was Jimi Hendrix,”
Maya Kulkarni Chadda
“Incredible Thread“
In a 2012 liveMINT article, Chadda related how the Woodstock experience was one of a kind: ““The distinctions between artist and audience collapsed—not physically, but there was an incredible thread stretching between us,” she notes. “It’s a spontaneity that I have never encountered since then.”
Maya Kulkarni Chadda
Choices
Though her live for music and dance remained, her career choice became academia. Dr Chadda is on the staff of William Paterson University (Wayne, NJ) and according the staff site she holds an M.A. in Government from NYU and a Ph. D. From the Graduate Faculty, The New School of Social Research and is a research fellow at the Southern Asian Institute, Columbia University.
Her publications include Indo-Soviet Relations (Bombay, Vora & Co.); Paradox of Power: The United States Policy in Southwest Asia (Santa Barbara, California, Clio Press);Ethnicity Security and Separatism in South Asia ( New York, Columbia University Press/Oxford University Press) and Building Democracy in South Asia: Pakistan, Nepal and India (Lynne Rienner Publishers, March 2000). Maya Chadda has worked as a consultant to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and the United Nations Family Planning Agency (UNFPA).
In 1998 she was appointed as the Director of Undergraduate Research for William Paterson University responsible for setting up a grant and scholarship program and served on the review board of the United States Institute of Peace, a prestigious think tank in Washington D. C.
Chadda is a recipient of many grants, the most recent among these is the Rockefeller Residency Fellowship at Bellagio, Italy. In 1998 she was given the Excelsior award for excellence in academic achievement by the Association of Indians in America and the Network of Indian Professionals.
Maya Kulkarni Chadda
Dancing Feet
Maya Kulkarni performs at Anamika Navatman Studio in New York
Writer Lavina Melwani was walking in New York City when she came upon the Anamika Navatman Studios and a production called Bhinna Pravaaha: Memories of a Performing Artist – Maya Kulkarni.
Melwani found the experience “a rare treat.” In a 2017 blog piece, she described the early life of Maya.
Her father, Gopalrao Kulkarni, was a writer and editor of Harijan, a newspaper published by Gandhi. Her mother, Nalini, was a political activist who also briefly served in the Indian Parliament after Independence. Her parents spent many months in jail during the freedom struggle, and were part of every satyagraha from Dandi March to the Quit India movement. Their lives were tied to Gandhi and they lived with him, and two of their sons were born in the ashram.
Melwani continued.
Ask her about the greatest joy that she has got from performing and she says, “I live for that moment when movement, music and emotions all blend to elevate the self beyond bodily existence. The dancer simply melts away and what remains is that indescribable state of being. Unfortunately not every time one dances one experiences it. But if one had, then you live for it. I have many times, but not often enough for me. To me that is nirvana.”
Maya Kulkarni Chadda
What's so funny about peace, love, art, and activism?
