“its never too late to have a happy childhood”
I thought I might have dreamed about this man but discovered it to be a real dream. As indicated, The Banana Man was often featured on “Captain Kangaroo.”
The Banana Man was a vaudeville character created by Adolf Proper (November 27, 1886–December 17, 1950[1]) who worked under the stage name "A. Robins".
The Banana Man (BZ) act consisted of Proper, dressed as a clownish character in a baggy tuxedo, producing an amazing and apparently impossible number of props from countless pockets and secret places in his costume. He would then perform various clown routines with the props. These props included (among many other things) a clarinet, a mandolin, a huge magnet, a violin, a music stand, several watermelons, and three hundred bananas. He did not speak in words, but uttered cries of delight, surprise, etc., in a nasal falsetto, and imitated the sounds of the musical instruments he "played." His costume was also capable of quick transformation, converting to a woman's dress and back again in seconds. A profile of Proper in The New Yorker reported that the costume weighed 60 pounds loaded, and it took him 45 minutes to prepare it for each performance.[2] Proper performed as The Banana Man in the Broadway musical Jumbo, in the short film Seeing Red starring Red Skelton, and in the 1947 feature film Mother Wore Tights starring Betty Grable.
-notes from, of course, Wikipedia-
A lesser known folk luminary and political activist, Barbara Dane, still with us at 94 made some deft records and a legacy of great live performances, heard here with the Chambers Brothers
Justin Dowd from Worcester, MA. was a physics major at Northeastern who entered a contest to win a trip into space. He entered the competition with this his first animated film done with still chalk drawings and won!
“Love – Forever Changes
by Alan West
Just six weeks after its’ recording, Love came out with their initial self-titled release in March of 1966. It sold 150,000 copies. I got my hands on one of them and was hooked. The leader, Arthur Lee, originally from Memphis, had lived in LA since he was five. In 1965 the band came together in LA. Originally they called themselves, The Grass Roots, but when another band had a hit with that name, they changed it to Love. Lee met singer, songwriter, guitarist Bryan MacLean when he was working as a roadie for The Byrds and the lead guitarist was also from Memphis, Johnny Echols.
Just a few months after the album was released, my family was visiting southern California to spend some time with my grandfather. My mission was to find the castle that was pictured on the album’s cover and was supposedly where they lived.
While I saw sunset strip, Knotts Berry Farm, Disneyland and Hollywood and Vine, there wasn’t Google Maps or Zillow that could get me to the castle.
Their second album, Da Capo came out later in the same year. It featured a 19-minute piece, Revelation on side Two, one of the first on a rock/pop album.
But it was their third album, which Rolling Stone ranked as number 40 on the top recordings of all time that endures to this day as a classic. Due to the orchestration involved and the dissolving of the original band, there wasn’t a tour to support the album. The album had greater success in Britain than it did in the US. In 2003 Arthur Lee with the help of LA band, Baby Lemonade, toured performing the entirety of Forever Changes with local string sections. Larry and I were fortunate to see the show at The Paradise in Boston in 2004. Arthur Lee died in Memphis in 2006 from leukemia.
See the url below for an excellent review of one of the reissues
https://www.analogplanet.com/content/loves-forever-changes-finally-gets-long-deserved-first-class-vinyl-reissue
Lyrics from the last track on Forever Changes
“You Set The Scene”
This is the time and life that I am living
And I’ll face each day with a smile
For the time that I’ve been given’s such a little while
And the things that I must do consist of more than style
There are places that I am going
This is the only thing that I am sure of
And that’s all that lives is gonna die
And there’ll always be some people here to wonder why
And for every happy hello, there will be good-bye
There’ll be time for you to put yourself on
Everything I’ve seen needs rearranging
And for anyone who thinks it’s strange
Then you should be the first to want to make this change
And for everyone who thinks that life is just a game
Do you like the part you’re playing
”
“Song of the Week”
“MONK HATS”
3.15.47 Happy 74th Birthday Ry Cooder