"Appreciation" vs. "Nostalgia"
Dean
I hate the word "nostalgia," and I rarely use it. The reason I don't like nostalgia is that it seems to carry with it an unhealthy impulse to romanticize the past. People waxing nostalgic sit around talking about "the good old days" as if they were infinitely better somehow than today. Usually, that's nonsense. In the past some things were better, some things were worse, and some were about the same.
I know I startle some of my older readers sometimes, because they see me write about modern rock and pop music, and modern movies and television shows, and when I do I generally write appreciatively of those things. I also don't pan things very often because frankly, if I don't like them, I have no urge to write about them. But modern things I like, I write about with enthusiasm.
But then all of a sudden I'll write about Artie Shaw, or Benny Goodman, or Sarah Vaughan, or beer that required a can opener to drink. Well I have no urge to go back to cans that require a can opener, but I do love much that's found in old music, old movies, and old books. Furthermore, I like what I write about NOT because it's old, but because it's GOOD, and sometimes informative in surprising ways.
For example, I've listened to a good bit of what they nowadays call "old-time radio," which basically means radio shows from the days before television. Now as it happens, most old-time radio was crap. Sorry, but it was. I you're old enough to remember the heyday of radio and you try to tell me that most of what was on the radio in those days was fabulous I probably won't believe you. I generally subscribe to what is best known as Sturgeon's Revelation: "90% of everything is crud."
Sure most old-time radio and television and movies and books were crap. Which is exactly the truth about radio and television and movies and books today. Crud, 90% of it.
The advantage you get with the older stuff is, usually (not always but usually), the stuff that survives years, decades, generations later is much less likely to be crud. It's no guarantee of course, but if 50 years after a song first becomes popular it is still well known and widely recognizable, there's a very good chance it was not crud at the time and still is not crud. Sometimes it may seem a little dated or a product of its time, but you can say that about Shakespeare or Bach too.
See for example this 1941 Glenn Miller Orchestra video featuring the great Dorothy Dandridge:
I do not love this song or this video because it's old. I don't care that it's old. I don't care that it's in black & white. I love it because (A) that's a great song, and (B) those are some great performances.
Nor do I have any "nostalgia" for the period. I have no idea of wanting to get into a time machine and live in 1940s America. I just appreciate it for what it is: a great performance that is partly a creature of its time and place but also a just plain great performance.
I might also note that I think it is cool to learn that Glenn Miller was working with great black performers in the 1940s. Not because they were black either, but because "wow, great black performers were not as invisible as we have often been led to believe about that era... good to see!"
I thought similar things when I recently uncovered this little internet treasure: a free Jack Benny radio program from 1939. Now this thing was recorded on live radio in 1939. Nearly 30 years before I was born, I only just heard this for the first time yesterday. Jack Benny was already a fading star when I was born in 1966. He died before I was a teenager. But dude, this guy was funny.
I mean, funn-neee!!!
You don't even have to know much about the time and place it was recorded, although it helps if you know that the great Jack Benny developed a well-known stage personality: he was supposedly very self-centered, self-absorbed, and extremely stingy with his money. Plus he had a wife named Mary, a butler/personal assistant named Rochester, and a small cast of supporting players who he supposedly paid almost no salary. In real life everyone who worked with him said that was the opposite of his real personality, which was generous, kind, and not stingy at all. But those were the running gags of his stage persona: egotistical, selfish, and extremely stingy with money. He supposedly loved money more than people.
I listen to that old live radio show and I laugh out loud at most of it. Sure some of it's dated but most of it is timeless and much of it is just hysterical. And all of it performed live, decades before there was any "Saturday Night Live."
Give it a listen and tell me if you agree. The West Coast version is a little funnier than the East Coast version, in case you don't want to listen to both.
Oh, and I suppose it helps to know that Jell-O was Jack Benny's main sponsor at the time. Yes, the same Jell-O you can buy in supermarkets now. I notice that the Jell-O theme song has not changed since then, which is also cool.
I have no "nostalgia kick" for any of this. I just think it's great entertainment.
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There are letters extant in Armstrong's hand full of praise for Crosby.
And then there's Jack Benny. The greatest timing in the history of broadcast comedy. Praised by every comic who knows what the hell he (or she) is talking about.
I DID NOT grow up listening to him, or watching him on television. I was born in 1966 and his star was already fading then. By the time I was old enough to watch television he was a semi-obscure celebrity to me, someone who was "famous for being famous" and not much else. I'd never watched his television show, and saw him only occasionally in a movie or as an occasional "guest star" here and there.
He died in 1974. I was 8 years old. Literally, I had no clue about the guy.
But now I'm an adult and I've seen some of his classic TV shows. Not many, but a few. And heard some of his radio shows. Not many, but a few.
But Jesus Christ, this guy in his heyday was FUNNY. I have no worship for him, no adulation, but what I've heard and seen of him at his best is HILARIOUS.
He could just drop a line and make the whole audience laugh more for what he didn't say than what he did. That's genius.
My grandfather tells stories of growing up in Chicago back in the day. He's lived there his entire life (born in 1926). He'll wax poetic about the great jazz music then he'll get bitter about the way black folks were treated. He's told me countless time that he wouldn't go back in time if he could simply because the feeling of "feeling safe" usurps the "good ol' days". He told me he loves surfing the 'Net, making his own greeting cards for the family on his PC, and watching Woody Woodpecker cartoons on YouTube. Things are better.
One more thing about Benny. Notice that the only person really being made fun of in Benny's routines was Benny himself. This is not today's sardonic humor.
I am like Dean, but a little older, I just like quality, and there was plenty of quality back when the record player and radio were first invented.
Jack fingers his chin.
Robber: "Well?"
Jack: "I'm thinking, I'm thinking."
Of course that doesn't mean they were saints either. Nor does it mean that every black entertainer who didn't make it big was screwed. There were mediocre black entertainers then, just like now. That doesn't even mean that every successful black entertainer of the era was MORE talented than successful white entertainers. You can't take anything away from a Jack Benny or a Frank Sinatra or a Bing Crosby and just say "the black entertainers were all better." No, that's not the point: the black entertainers, like black people generally, were just not treated FAIRLY, had an unnatural handicap that should not have existed.On the flip side, I think it's fair that occasionally just the challenges of racism forced some entertainers to work even harder to transcend it. Not that we should go back to those days but I think that's not out of line to say.
Indeed, I think these days that SOME great black entertainers of that era are unfairly maligned. Sammy Davis Jr. and Louis Armstrong and Count Basie come to mind as good examples. They were stellar talents, just immortal in some of what they did. But they came up in an era where they had to put up with some jokes about some things that are a little painful to look at now.
Modern people (black and white) often look at Sammy Davis Jr. and accuse him of being a little too shuck-and-jive, a little too obsequious to white audiences, a little too apologetic for his "blackness." Frank Sinatra, who supported Sammy from the very beginning, occasionally made a joke at Sammy's expense that would seem racist by modern standards, and Sammy would just laugh and make a joke about Sinatra's italian heritage.
Which misses the point that all these folks came up in a very, very different era from now. Which misses the point: Sinatra was a blue-collar dago immigrant kid from Hoboken New Jersey, and he recognized the young Sammy early on as a phenomenal talent and treated him like a friend from the beginning, and refused to do business with people who treated him like garbage because he was a negro. Now today we look at it like Sinatra was a racist and Davis was an Uncle Tom, but in truth that's a horrible insult to both men.
This to me is a big part of why I eschew "nostalgia." I prefer to say "appreciation of history." Not to degrade anyone, and not to wish to go back to those days, but to appreciate both what was good and what was bad in those days, and to learn from it all. Both good and bad, just learn from it.
If you get a chance, Tyrone, I'd love it if you shared my comment here with your grandpa and asked him what he thought. I'll bet he mostly agrees. Black men from his era were not treated right, but that didn't mean they had no pride or were just looking to indict the world. They weren't treated right at all. That didn't make the old days all bad, and that doesn't mean today is perfect either. To me the real deal is to appreciate the good in the past, and also to appreciate the good in the now.
I'm damned glad I did not grow up in 1941. If I had a time machine I might like to go back and spend a weekend there. I also might like to go forward in time to 2041, and I hope when we get there it's all better still.
Again, I don't want to go back to those days, but the disrespect that came later is just WRONG! Toward the end of his life Calloway was nothing but a disrespected old black has-been who hadn't done nothing valuable to begin with.
Why did it take two white boys--Jake &Elwood Blues, aka John Belushi and Dan Ayckrod--to resuscitate Cab Calloway in their 1980 movie? Until that movie he was a totally disrespected. Just look at the man, a black man who grew up in an era where everybody hated black people but he not only taught himself to be a great musician but learned to lead an orchestra, write great original songs, and wow both white and black audiences. But by the 1970s he was treated as an embarrassment by the black community and utterly forgotten by the white.
I didn't mean this to turn into a black vs. white thread but damn it still puts a burr under my saddle. It's part of why I say I don't like nostalgia but I do appreciate history and the great artistic contributions of history.
There wouldn't have been no Betty Boop if'n there weren't no Cab Calloway. Sho'nuff.
Mike remembers one of my favorite Jacky Benny moments. That "your money or your life" "I'm thinking it over" moment was classic.
But since we seem to be talking about racial issues (which was not my point in starting this thread) it seems worth remembering Rochester Van Jones, known in real life as Eddie Anderson. Rochester, as the stereotype of the day went, was merely Benny's black butler/personal assistant. But you listen to those old shows, even as far back as 1939 when the civil rights movement hadn't even started, and it was obvious that Rochester was his equal and often got the better of him. This is no joke. Rochester was f**ing funny, and was no stepin'fetchit guy at all, at all. I mean, he was REALLY funny, and often in a very subversive way.
Just go ahead and listen to that 1939 radio show I linked? Was he a stupid, illiterate, obedient type? Oh my God, he was FUNNY, and he was anything but just a dumbass darkie. He was self-possessed, intelligent, and just damned funny.
God, you totally lose it when you attempt to speak with any authority when you try to re-create how it was back then, solely on your presumably unbiased, objective review from written material, records or video's.
No one in my era ever called Rochester, a dumbass darkie.
For that matter, Sinatra's career was non-existent and in the dumps when Sammy Davis, Dean Martin and and Peter Lawford showed up. Sinatra was washed up, a victim of a bought Oscar for supporting role in From Here to Eternity for which he was paid $ 8,000.
Sinatra once showed up in Detroit for a show and Sinatra bought most of the tickets and gave them to the local VIPS and still he couldn't get enough gate to pay for the show. That was in the Mayor Cobo era. And Sinatra walked in like he owned Cadillac Square.
That Cab Calloway was totally disrespected was never in anyone's lexicon, that I know. And your two white boys resuscitated Cab Calloway. Really ?
Sometimes, you have too many opinion.
Sorry, it wasn't a slam. But you know older folk ought to be able to be allowed to remember how it was. We may even call it nostalgia. And we remember the good. And the bad. And Guy Lombardo, and Joe Louis, and how the Red Wings were good with only six teams in the NHL, and Stevie Wonder
when he was on Happy Hollow Hank's as a pre-teen. We remember the real Sugar Ray, Ray Robinson, Yusef Lateef, the Gaylords, and Via Con Dios. And we remember WWII and the songs, Caledonia (What makes your big head so hard) and Sentimental Journey in 1945.
We call it nostalgia.
We return you now to Webley Edwards and Hawaii Calls on Sunday nights.
Dang, you guys wouldn't remember, you're too low on nostalgia.
I do not think--and I NEVER DID think--that the average fan of great and immortal black entertainers were racist or condescending.
Rochester was a simply brilliant character who was never anybody's "stupid negro." Cab Calloway was a BRILLIANT songwriter and entertainer. So was Louis Armstrong. So was Sammy Davis Jr.
My objection is that MODERN audiences lay that crap upon these great entertainers, and that MODERN AUDIENCES are wrong to do so.
My point is that they were wrongly under-recognized at the time, and that, sadly, today they are STILL under-recognized by those who say they were just uncle toms and aunt jemimas.
So once again, McKiernan, you've pissed on my head to no purpose, accused me of believing things I don't believe and saying things I didn't say. My entire point was that these entertainers did not get a fair shake in their day, and that today they are still not properly appreciated. That's it, nothing more.
It REALLY offends me that you don't even ATTEMPT to understand my point on these things.
I promise not to hum Guy Lombardo or Fred Waring or
the theme song to Happy Hollow Hanks:
Hygrades, hygrades honey brand ham, its the finest in the land.
Tender, juicier, tastier too its the ham for you.
I surrender.
I don't want to go back to the days when black and white TV was the norm. I don't want to go back to the days when non-white performers were treated like second-class citizens. I want to recognize the great performances of the past, and that is all.
I used to watch reruns of the (TV) Jack Benny Program when they were on cable. Well before that, though, there was a strech in the late '70s or early '80s when NBC ran kinescopes (I suppose they were) of Your Show of Shows after Saturday Night Live. Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Imogene Coca, and Howard Morris. Brilliant stuff, and done live (as a lot of things still were in those days).
" The advantage you get with the older stuff is, usually (not always but usually), the stuff that survives years, decades, generations later is much less likely to be crud." This is why I've always enjoyed the oldie radio stations and movie channels. The decent stuff/crud ratio is better.
Like I said, I don't like "nostalgia." Nostalgia to me seems to be all about wishing things in the past were still true. That to me is crazy.
I don't want to go back to 1946 or 1956. But I can still appreciate great art from that era.
Thanks to men like Wynton Marsalis and Terrence Blanchard, their seems to be a growing appreciation of black jazz greats from the youth.
And the tin partially used in real tin cans was in somewhat short supply, because the japanese empire captured on the world's largest sources of tin ore in the Netherlands East Indies (now Indonesia) and hung onto it right up till the end of the war.
But Benny Goodman wasn't rationed at all, thanks to radio.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Now that is nostalgia Arnold!
... Of course that is my opinion. I see nostalgia as a good thing, and feel I can. My children are in their 30's and 40's and I have two teen age grandchilren. Check the meaning of nostalgia in an old dictionary of, Oh say the 40's.
Nostalgia is a state of mind to some. It also has some sad memories. Hey, in three years I will be 60 &I can think of nostaliga anyway I would like to.
Good article Dean. I understand what you are saying in your article and your comments.