Today’s Impromptus is headed “When Obama is appalling, &c.,” and is subheaded “Iraq, Iran, ISIS, Stalin, Hillary, and more.” Does Hillary belong in that string? Isn’t that a hate crime? Well, I was just taking my subjects in order . . .
Eventually, I get to country music — in this fashion: Loretta Lynn has come out for Donald Trump. In 1988, she made a bit of a political splash.
With her sisters, Crystal Gayle and Peggy Sue, she toured for George Bush. They sang at his events. At one of them, Loretta exclaimed about the Democratic nominee, “Why, I can’t even pronounce his name!”
It was “Dukakis.” Over and over, Democrats cited Loretta’s remark, claiming it was proof of Republicans’ stupidity and bigotry. They didn’t have much that worked for them that year. Oh, it was a glorious campaign.
Here in the Corner, I’d like to remember the late Tammy Wynette. And the next campaign, the ’92 one. Hillary Clinton — or was she “Rodham” then? — went on television to explain, “You know, I’m not sittin’ here as some little woman ‘standin’ by my man’ like Tammy Wynette.” But she was, wasn’t she? And is?
To watch her — Hillary, that is — go here. And note how southern she is. She was still Arkansas’s first lady. The ruination of America was but a glint in her eye.
This morning, I read the Wikipedia entry for Tammy Wynette. I was touched by something. She grew up in difficult circumstances, of course. Father died when she was a baby. She lived in her grandparents’ home, “which had no indoor toilets or running water.”
After marrying at 17, she “worked as a waitress, a receptionist, and a barmaid, and also in a shoe factory. In 1963, she attended Beauty College in Tupelo, Mississippi, where she learned to be a hairdresser. She continued to renew her cosmetology license every year for the rest of her life — just in case she ever had to go back to a daily job.”
I love that.
My Impromptus ends with another musical matter. I note that Gilbert Kaplan died. He was an extraordinary story in music — classical music. He made a fortune in the financial world, then devoted the rest of his life to the piece he was obsessed with: Mahler’s Symphony No. 2, the “Resurrection.” (That’s a good piece to be obsessed with. I too experienced some obsession with it, right after college.) He bought the manuscript. He learned to conduct the piece. He lectured on it. Etc.
And here’s what I never knew, until reading his obit: His brother, who went by “Joe Brooks,” wrote “You Light Up My Life.” One of my favorite pop songs of all time.
Here is the hit recording, from YouTube (with Portuguese subtitles!). The first words are “So many nights, I’d sit by my window, waiting for someone to sing me his song.”
“His song”? Shouldn’t that be at least “their song”? Hate speech!