March 2023 – According to The Kidd

GHOST STORY 14 – Use All Your Well-Learned Politesse

ONYO – FROM THE KINSEI-KAIDEN-SHIMOYONOHOSHI
By Katsushika Hokusai – scanned from ISBN 4-3360-4341-8., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5802587

A series of posts about important people long ago whose names are either forgotten, or were never well-known in the first place. The posts may also deal with little known aspects of the lives of famous people no longer alive.

A previous post talked about and linked to a dozen religious musical clips that included Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Hindu and Satanic concepts in an attempt to be democratic. Here are a dozen more religious clips (a baker’s dozen) presented by everyone from Queen and Led Zeppelin to the entertaining Robbie Williams. There are no Christmas songs here, and no religious classical music works – there are just too many of them. There’s no Christian Rock either – it’s too preachy and too boring. No Al Quaeda or Shining Path songs here either, thank you very much. Most of the musicians here are ghosts, as noted in the brief descriptions below. There are many different styles here but all these carefully selected tracks are well-crafted and well-executed. I don’t agree with all of the things that all these tracks are saying but I defend their right to say them. I recommend that you give them all a try – if you don’t like a track’s style, or lyrical content, just skip to the next track.

1. Monty Python – EVERY SPERM IS SACRED – it was during this live show that Python Terry Jones first experienced the symptoms of the rare disorder that led to his death – “Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great” –

2. Queen – MUSTAPHA – Freddie Mercury, who is no longer with us, was born Farrokh Bulsara in the Sultanate of Zanzibar (now part of Tanzania) in East Africa. The predominant religion there is Islam though Mercury’s parents were Parsi-Indian, and Zoroastrianism is the religion of the Parsi community – “Mustapha Ibrahim, Mustapha Ibrahim, Allah, Allah, Allah, Will pray for you” – 1978 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5-zh0a6nDTo&ab_channel=QueenOfficial

3. Jethro Tull – WIND UP – Ian Anderson, the leader of Jethro Tull, is deeply religious but has no patience with hypocritical Christians. This song is the final track on Jethro Tull’s CD ‘Aqualung’ aimed squarely at organized religion; other songs on the CD include ‘My God’, ‘Hymn 43’ and ‘Locomotive Breath’ – “And I asked this God a question and by way of firm reply / He said ‘I’m not the kind you have to wind up on Sunday’ ” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tLd7BuiC5co&ab_channel=JethroTull-Topic

4. Led Zeppelin – THE IMMIGRANT SONG – a short paean to the gods of Norse mythology – the drummer on this track is the late John Bonham – “The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands”

5. Dave Matthews – SAVE ME – meeting Christ in the desert – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-ImSpdQb8Y&ab_channel=davematthewsbandVEVO

6. Bob Dylan – WITH GOD ON OUR SIDE – This is one of Dylan’s early songs, with powerful lyrics which were a welcome relief after popular music had produced a decade of rock and roll songs about teenage lust and hot rods. Unfortunately Dylan’s music soon changed dramatically after this and so, it seems, did his personality. Eventually this change was best demonstrated when he took the stage as the final ultimate act at Live Aid in 1985 and he savaged the entire purpose of that unprecedented global event (famine relief for Africans dying under horrendous conditions) by saying that some of the money raised should go to American farmers instead to pay off mortgages. The organizer of the event, Bob Geldof, said this about Dylan’s remarks: “He displayed a complete lack of understanding of the issues raised by Live Aid . . . Live Aid was about people losing their lives . . . it was a crass, stupid, and nationalistic thing to say”. Oh yes, and Dylan was also awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Give me a break. Here’s that early track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5y2FuDY6Q4M&ab_channel=BobDylanVEVO

7. The Rolling Stones DANCING WITH MR. D. – This is from their 1973 CD ‘Goat’s Head Soup’, during their gender bender days, and that’s new band member Mick Taylor in the floppy hat replacing the recently deceased Brian Jones. The drummer on the track is the late Charlie Watts and the song is about dancing with the Devil – “He never smiles, his mouth merely twists” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9hw1SKn5eFM&ab_channel=TheRollingStones

8. The Rolling Stones again, from 1968 – SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL – Perhaps their most famous song, with lyrics of some substance – once again the drummer is the late Charlie Watts, and rhythm guitarist Brian Jones also contributes. Jones (not Mick Jagger or Keith Richard) was the one who founded The Rolling Stones, and despite the reputations of Mick and Keith, Jones was the most hedonistic member of the band. A year after this recording Jones died, at the age of twenty-seven – “Use all your well-learned politesse or I’ll lay your soul to waste” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GgnClrx8N2k&ab_channel=ABKCOVEVO

9. Leonard Cohen – HALLELUJAH – Live in London, 2009. Take note of the amazing Charley and Hattie Webb as two of the backing singers, and an excellent organ solo by Neil Larsen starting at the 3 minute 8 second mark. Leonard Cohen is no longer among the living – “The baffled King composing Hallelujah” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q&ab_channel=LeonardCohenVEVO

10. Randy Newman – GOD’S SONG – a track from his best CD (the classic ‘Sail Away’) – “That’s why I love Mankind” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwC1HDaw6s8&ab_channel=RandyNewman-Topic

11. U2 – IN GOD’S COUNTRY – an Irish take on America – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sERtcG-TUCU&ab_channel=U2VEVO

12. Rachid Taha – YA RAYAH (i.e. Oh Traveller) – Algerian singer / political activist Taha is his usual amazing self here singing a shortened version of his biggest hit, a song that has been covered worldwide by all manner of musicians, a song with an infectious melody based, unusually, on a ten beat pattern. He is backed here by friend and virtuoso oud player Nabil Khalidi (who opens the song). Rachid Taha died in 2018 in his fifties, of a heart attack. He suffered from a Chiari malformation all his life. I highly recommend that you give his other works a listen – “This is it till the heart returns to its Creator, the Almighty” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUurNgFEUG0&ab_channel=haideros

13. Finally, the consummate performer Robbie Williams – ANGELS – Live at Live 8 in Hyde Park. I’ve never seen anyone connect with his audience as much and as well as he does – “I sit and wait / Does an angel contemplate my fate?” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KNl40iCABzs&ab_channel=Live8

PREVIOUS GHOST STORIES

1 – Houdini’s Secret Army and The Decline of Democracy – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/19/ghost-story-1-houdinis-secret-army-and-the-decline-of-democracy/

2 – The Power of the Spirit (Sophie Scholl, Stephen Biko, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero) – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/25/ghost-story-2-the-power-of-the-spirit/

3 – A Slaughterhouse, a Melancholy Dane, an Impossible Cat and a Cambridge Apostle (Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Richard Burton, Niels Bohr, Frank Ramsey) – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/12/02/ghost-story-3-a-slaughterhouse-a-melancholy-dane-an-impossible-cat-and-a-cambridge-apostle/

4 – Tickling the Ivories 1 (Jon Lord, James Booker, Dave Brubeck, Leon Russell, Oscar Peterson, Gary Brooker, Oscar Levant, Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and Glenn Gould) –

GHOST STORY 4 – Tickling the Ivories 1

5 – Tickling the Ivories 2 (Cleo Brown, Hazel Scott, Nina Simone, Alice Herz-Sommer, Myra Hess, Lil Hardin, Maria Mozart, Hiromi Uehara and Yuja Wang) –

GHOST STORY 5 – Tickling the Ivories 2

6 – Marching to Different Drums (Ginger Baker, B.J.Wilson, Chick Webb, Levon Helm, Gene Krupa, Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, Baby Dodds, Joe Morello, John Bonham and Tony Allen (Yuriko Seki, Matt Chamberlain, Ringo Starr) –

GHOST STORY 6 – Marching to Different Drums

7 – Quantum realities, electromagnetism, genetic insights and the transfinite (Werner Heisenberg, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel and Georg Cantor) –

GHOST STORY 7 – Quantum Realities, Electromagnetism, Genetic Insights and The Transfinite

8 – Hats off to Antoine-Joseph Sax (David Bowie, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti, Charlie Parker, Frankie Trumbauer, Sam Butera, Don Redman, Leroi Moore, Paul Desmond and Dick Parry) –

GHOST STORY 8 – Hats Off to Antoine-Joseph Sax

9. More Complicated Than It Looks

GHOST STORY 9 – More Complicated Than It Looks

10. Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals (Richard Rodgers, Georges Bizet, Larry Adler, Marlene Dietrich) –

GHOST STORY 10 – Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals

11. Political Metaphysics

GHOST STORY 11 – Political Metaphysics

12. By Which We Measure Our Pain

GHOST STORY 12 – God is a concept by which we measure our pain

13. They Are Afraid of Us Because We Are Not Afraid of Them (Berta Caceres, Rachel Carson, Enriqueta Medellin, Wangari Maathai, Penny Whetton, Katharine Giles, Idelisa Bonnelly)

GHOST STORY 13 – They Are Afraid of Us Because We Are Not Afraid of Them

GHOST STORY 13 – They Are Afraid of Us Because We Are Not Afraid of Them

AN IFRIT GHOST NAMED ARGHAN DIV
By Unknown author – Online Collection of Brooklyn Museum; Photo: Brooklyn Museum, 24.47_front_IMLS_SL2.jpg, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10959147

You have probably heard of environmental activists Greta Thunberg and Naomi Klein, but there are others, no longer with us, who you may not have heard of. Some have even sacrificed their lives for the environmental movement.

BERTA CÁCERES
By UN Environment – ONU Brasil – https://vimeo.com/214055225, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75284769

BERTA CACERES

In 2013 Honduran environmental activist Berta Cáceres wrote: “The army has an assassination list of 18 wanted human rights fighters with my name at the top . . . I take lots of care but in the end . . . when they want to kill me, they will do it.” After years of death threats, on the night of March 2, 2016 armed intruders entered her home and killed her. Within a month of the killing two other environmental activists were also murdered in Honduras.

As a student activist Berta Cáceres protested illegal logging, plantation owners, and the illegal presence of U.S. military bases on indigenous land. Later she became the co-founder and coordinator of the Council of Popular and Indigenous Organizations of Honduras. The Goldman Environmental Prize was given to her for her grassroots campaign which successfully pressured the largest dam builder in the world to abandon plans to build the Agua Zarca Dam at the Rio Gualcarque. The dam builders had broken international law in not first consulting the indigenous inhabitants of the area, and the dam, one of four, would harm the environment and compromise indigenous access to water, food and material for medicine. The campaign succeeded but it took a long time, three protesters died and three were seriously injured in the process.

One of Berta Cáceres’ favourite expressions was “They are afraid of us because we are not afraid of them.”

ENRIQUETA MEDELLIN (1948 – 2022)

Medellin was a Mexican surgeon and environmentalist, focusing particularly on the relationship between disease and the environment. She had a degree as a surgeon from the National Autonomous University of Mexico specializing in human genetics, and has also studied environmental education and management. She also participated in humanitarian aid projects following the 1985 Mexico City earthquake.

MEXICO CITY EARTHQUAKE 1985
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=10821360

She founded the Ecological Consciousness organization in 1992 which set up the first recycling operation in Mexico as well as raising awareness about waste disposal and preserving the environment. It also organized protests against environmentally harmful development projects. Medellin was the first person to be awarded the state prize for Environmental Merit in 2006, and she received Mexico’s highest environmental award, the Ecological Merit Award, in 2012. She received various other awards and honours as well, and recognition for her work on clean water, habitat preservation and tree planting initiatives.

STATUE OF RACHEL CARSON AT THE MUSEO ROCSEN, ARGENTINA. NOTICE THE CAT.
By LFSM – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4110663

RACHEL CARSON (1907 – 1964)

I’m not sure how many people today know of Rachel Carson. She was well known when I was a teenager but that was over sixty years ago so I’m going to include her in this post. Carson was a marine biologist whose trilogy of books Under The Sea Wind, The Sea Around Us, and The Edge of the Sea were all bestsellers. However her 1962 book Silent Spring had an enormous impact on the environmental movement. Despite fierce opposition from chemical companies against its publication the book, focusing on pollution, led to a nationwide ban on pesticides, including DDT. It also helped create a grassroots movement which was strong enough to lead to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Carson was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for her work.

She graduated from John Hopkins University with a Masters degree in Zoology in 1932 and had been invited to get a Ph.D. but had to drop out due to a lack of finances – this was during The Great Depression. In 1936 she joined the Bureau of Fisheries as an Aquatic Biologist having outscored all other applicants when she took the Civil Service exam. This was the beginning of a long career of effective writing and rigorous research on environmental issues.

WANGARI MAATHAI (1940 – 2011)

Kenyan activist Maathai’s story is a long and complicated one. She was the first African woman to win the Nobel Peace Prize, and when she received a Ph.D. from the University of Nairobi she became the first woman and East and Central Africa to do so. She was a Member of Parliament, and the Assistant Minister for the Environment and Natural Resources, and so much more. She was also an author and intellectual whose published works dealt with the philosophy of ecology, and she received the Goldman Environmental Prize. But perhaps her most important achievement was the establishment of the Green Belt Movement.

WANGARI MAATHAI 2005
By Kingkongphoto & http://www.celebrity-photos.com from Laurel Maryland, USA – Wangari Maathai 2004 Nobel Peace prize winner, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=75053665

Maathai set up the Green Belt Movement in 1977 to address environmentally-related concerns for rural Kenyan women. The organization paid poor rural women to plant tree seedlings throughout the country. In order to encourage literacy the organization also paid people to keep accurate records of the seedlings planted. In 1986 the movement expanded across Africa and led to the formation of the Pan-African Green Belt Network. This organization successfully combated desertification, deforestation and water crises. Maathai also organized many other environmental initiatives.

Throughout her career she had to face a great deal of misogyny because women were generally expected to stay at home and have babies in Kenya, but that never stopped her. As a pro-democracy activist in Kenya as well she was on a government list of assassination targets. She was also charged and jailed for her political activities at one point but international pressure resulted in all charges being dropped.

PENNY WHETTON (1958 – 2018)

Penelope Whetton was an Australian climatologist and her area of expertise was regional climate change projections. She had a Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne and became a researcher in the Department of Geography in Victoria in the late 1980’s. Later she became the Lead Author on several climate assessment reports put out by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and it was in that role that she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. She has been a popular speaker at conferences of environmental issues and published numerous article in scientific journals as well as contributing to popular publications.

Whetton lived with her wife Janet Rice, a Greens Senator and former mayor of Maribymong, and they have two sons. In 2003 she underwent sex reassignment surgery. Here is a two minute visit with Penny Whetton and Janet Rice – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVSiEAszFk4&ab_channel=EliasClure

KATHARINE GILES (1978 – 2013)

Giles was a British climate scientist researching sea ice cover, ocean circulation and wind patterns. She was given first class honours for her degree in earth and space science at University College, London, and earned her Ph.D. in 2005. She performed the first ground-based experiments to demonstrate how to use satellite altimetery to monitor the thickness of sea ice. At the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling she used the European Remote-Sensing Satellite and Envisat to prove that fresh water in the Arctic was due to an intensification of the winds in the Beaufort Gyre. She also showed that between 2003 and 2012 the Arctic sea ice volume in the winter had decreased by 9%.

POLAR BEAR ON ARCTIC SEA ICE
By No machine-readable author provided. Polarbear~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=693376

There are those on the right who are aggressive climate change deniers. There are formidable corporate interests which stand to lose billions if climate scientists are to be taken seriously. It was soon after she was appointed lecturer at University College, London, that Katharine Giles was assassinated, at least that is the claim of Peter Wadhams, professor of Ocean Physics and Head of the Polar Ocean Physics Group in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. Giles, and her colleagues Seymour Laxon and Tim Boyd all died within the first few months of 2013. Giles was thirty-five when she died.

IDELISA BONNELLY (1932 – 2022)

Born in the Dominican Republic Bonnelly moved to New York in order to study marine biology and she completed her Masters at New York University in 1961. She returned to the Dominican Republic where she established the country’s first institute for the study of biology. In 1966 she also established the Research Centre for Marine Biology, and in 1974 the Academy of Sciences of the Dominican Republic. She also published influential works on the conservation of marine resources, and she created the first protected area for the humpback whale.

Over the years she was given a variety of awards and prizes, and in 1991 she created the Dominican Foundation for Marine Research. She was also a member of The Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World. She died in 2022 at the age of 90.

A BREACHING HUMPBACK WHALE
By Even Neuhaus (6.2.1863-20.4.1946) – http://www5.kb.dk/images/billed/2010/okt/billeder/object11164/da/, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=90160922

PREVIOUS GHOST STORIES:

1 – Houdini’s Secret Army and The Decline of Democracy – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/19/ghost-story-1-houdinis-secret-army-and-the-decline-of-democracy/

2 – The Power of the Spirit (Sophie Scholl, Stephen Biko, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero) – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/25/ghost-story-2-the-power-of-the-spirit/

4 – Tickling the Ivories 1 (Jon Lord, James Booker, Dave Brubeck, Leon Russell, Oscar Peterson, Gary Brooker, Oscar Levant, Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and Glenn Gould) –

GHOST STORY 4 – Tickling the Ivories 1

5 – Tickling the Ivories 2 (Cleo Brown, Hazel Scott, Nina Simone, Alice Herz-Sommer, Myra Hess, Lil Hardin, Maria Mozart, Hiromi Uehara and Yuja Wang) –

GHOST STORY 5 – Tickling the Ivories 2

GHOST STORY 6 – Marching to Different Drums

7 – Quantum realities, electromagnetism, genetic insights and the transfinite (Werner Heisenberg, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel and Georg Cantor) –

GHOST STORY 7 – Quantum Realities, Electromagnetism, Genetic Insights and The Transfinite

8 – Hats off to Antoine-Joseph Sax (David Bowie, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti, Charlie Parker, Frankie Trumbauer, Sam Butera, Don Redman, Leroi Moore, Paul Desmond and Dick Parry) –

GHOST STORY 8 – Hats Off to Antoine-Joseph Sax

9. More Complicated Than It Looks

GHOST STORY 9 – More Complicated Than It Looks

10. Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals (Richard Rodgers, Georges Bizet, Larry Adler, Marlene Dietrich) –

GHOST STORY 10 – Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals

11. Political Metaphysics

GHOST STORY 11 – Political Metaphysics

12. By Which We Measure Our Pain

GHOST STORY 12 – God is a concept by which we measure our pain

GHOST STORY 12 – God is a concept by which we measure our pain

KRASUE – A THAI GHOST
By Unknown author – British Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49337770

In the developed world religion is having less and less of an effect on the lives of most people. In the United States it is more complicated. Though religion is on the wane in some sectors there as well, in other sectors Christian nationalism is on the rise. Antisemitism is also on the rise. The point of this post is that religious views cover a wide spectrum of ideas and those ideas are often conveyed through music. This post is simply a set of links to thirteen songs with religious themes (including Christian, Islamic, Jewish and Hindu music). These are songs that touch on religious concepts but there is no preaching here, no attempts at conversion or forced acceptance of specific religious norms. No formulaic Christian hymns sung by bored parishioners. No Taliban songs here either, thank you very much.

There are no Christmas songs or religious classical music songs either – there are just too many of those. I have not included Christian Rock either because it tends to be preachy, not to mention uninteresting. Some of the musicians here are somewhat obscure, many are ghosts, and many of the songs are not well known but each song is well-crafted and well-executed so I recommend you give them all a try. If you don’t like a track’s style, or lyric, just go on to the next track. I don’t agree with all that they have to say but you can give them a listen and make up your own mind. Most songs have a sentence or two of context, and sometimes a quote from the lyric, with one exception. Some of the songs are dark but the second one, ‘Church’, is guaranteed to raise a laugh or smile. The first song requires a bit more explanation, and here it is –

GOD IS A CONCEPT BY WHICH WE MEASURE OUR PAIN

John Lennon’s song ‘Imagine’ infuriated the religious right with its lines advocating an atheistic mind set. The song was a hit and is still remembered; a few months ago I listened to a post defending it from an attack by Ben Shapiro. However Lennon’s less well-known song ‘God’, released at about the same time as ‘Imagine’, is more interesting, and was explosive at the time of its release. Lennon is a very celebrated ghost, and his songs live on. When ‘God’ was released The Beatles had just broken up (disbanded by its creator John, and a few months later publicly by Paul). Many Baby Boomers were young when Beatlemania made the world forget about the Cuban Missile Crisis (that almost destroyed the world) and the assassination of President Kennedy. As the Boomers grew into their twenties The Beatles turned pop into rock and replaced pop hits with highly sophisticated music. The break-up of the Beatles meant the end of youth for the Boomers, the end of good times and good feelings, time to grow up. As Lennon says in the lyrics, “the dream is over”.

In the song ‘God’ Beatle Lennon gently exhorts the listener to move beyond The Beatles, and beyond Bob Dylan and Elvis Presley, and most importantly move beyond the Bible, the I-Ching, Jesus, Buddha, Mantra and Gita and Yoga. Perhaps he’s saying that societies in general must grow up and, with sadness, put religion away and learn to walk without that crutch. Here is the track – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dr2efHjt5Cs&ab_channel=diversaorula

Then there are the following tracks:

ALL THE GOOD GIRLS GO TO HELL

2. Lyle Lovettt – CHURCH – some comic relief here from 1989 sung wonderfully deadpan. Lovett is well-known but he’s supported here by many people you’ve probably never heard of, not all still alive – the band is phenomenal, and listen for the piano bits from Matt Rollings, one of the best session pianists on the planet. Also take note of the amazing backing singers (Francine Reed, Sir Harry Bowens, Willis Alan Ramsey and Sweet Pea Atkinson – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n2OrBhVMKrk&ab_channel=kraeschpilot

3. Yamma Ensemble – KONDJA MIA – This is a complex piece of music written in alternating unusual time signatures of 5/4 and 6/4 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jq5cAJuUjAE&ab_channel=YammaEnsemble-%D7%99%D7%90%D7%9E%D7%94-%D9%8A%D9%85%D8%A9

JOHNNY CASH 1969
By Joel Baldwin – LOOK Magazine, April 29, 1969. p.72, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1208091

4. The late Johnny Cash – GOD’S GONNA CUT YOU DOWN – the dark side of Christianity, obey God or you go to Hell forever – The song is under three minutes long yet all of the following people can be seen in this video: Keith Richards (The Rolling Stones), Chris Martin (Coldplay), Flea and Anthony Kiedis (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Justin Timberlake (N Sync), Jay-Z and Q-Tip, Travis Barker (Blink-182), Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top), Bono (U2), Tommy Lee (Mőtley Crűe), Mick Jones (The Clash), Adam Levine (Maroon 5), Patti Smith (Patti Smith Group), Graham Nash (The Hollies), Amy Lee (Evanescence) and Sheryl Crow, Iggy Pop, Kid Rock, Kris Kristofferson, Shelby Lynne, Corinne Bailey Rae, and also Johnny Depp, Patricia Arquette, Dennis Hopper, Whoopi Goldberg, Woody Harrelson, Terrence Howard, Kate Moss, Lisa Marie Presley, Sharon Stone, Owen Wilson and Chris Rock – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJlN9jdQFSc&ab_channel=JohnnyCashVEVO

5. Billie Eilish – ALL THE GOOD GIRLS GO TO HELL – “And once the water starts to rise and Heaven’s out of sight / She’ll want the Devil on her team” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PZsSWwc9xA&ab_channel=BillieEilishVEVO

6. The Band / The Staple Singers – THE WEIGHT – Sadly, three members of The Band (Rick Danko, Richard Manuel and Levon Helm) are no longer with us. Unfortunately Roebuck ‘Pop’, Cleotha and Yvonne Staples have also passed on – “old Carmen and the Devil walking side by side” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-w9OclUnns&ab_channel=GreatOldiesDJ

7. The late George Harrison of The Beatles – AWAITING ON YOU ALL – A song in praise of Hinduism with the lines: “The Pope owns 51% of General Motors / The stock exchange is the only thing he’s qualified to quote us” – Harrison was a devout follower of Hinduism and his beliefs found their way into several Beatles songs. As the band’s lead guitarist he also mastered several Indian musical instruments, including the sitar – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGI3RWBhuUo&ab_channel=J.Lauschner

RACHID TAHA 2011
By Unknown author – http://www.knittingfactoryrecords.com/artists/rachid-taha/news/rachid-taha-algerian-roots-american-rock-n-roll, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15416355

8. This was a modern response by a Moslem Algerian singer / political activist to fundamentalist Islam – this is the late short-lived Rachid Taha with Mick Jones of The Clash on lead guitar – ROCK THE CASBAH – “jets flying between the minarets” (in Arabic) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1p_dkJo6Y8&ab_channel=RachidTahaOfficial

9. The Rolling Stones – SHINE A LIGHT – The Rolling Stones had a reputation for a Satanic hedonistic lifestyle and two of their songs (‘Sympathy For The Devil’ and ‘Dancing With Mr. D.’) were about Satan, so this song, an obscure Stones song, sympathetic to the Christian God, is most surprising. The drummer here, Charlie Watts, is no longer with us – “May the Good Lord shine a light on you”

10. Robbie Robertson (formerly of The Band) – SHOWDOWN AT BIG SKY – Robertson is indigenous and began to musically explore his native spiritual roots after leading then disbanding the best band to come out of Canada – “In the holy night it will be written / By the children of Eden and the Holy Ghost” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3u7UZPxu7H0&ab_channel=RobbieRobertson

11. Leon Russell – PRINCE OF PEACE – Russell has played on over 400 recordings as a consummate session musician before embarking on a successful solo career as a multi-instrumentalist, composer and producer. He has recorded with Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, Frank Sinatra, Tina Turner and many more. Other professional musicians respected him so much that the following high profile musicians at the time played on his first solo album in 1970: George Harrison and Ringo Starr of The Beatles; Mick Jagger, Charlie Watts and Bill Wyman of The Rolling Stones; Steve Winwood of Traffic, B.J.Wilson of Procol Harum, Eric Clapton of Cream, Joe Cocker and several others. Leon Russell died in 2016, the year that also saw the deaths of David Bowie, Prince and George Michael – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2DYzLna5UzA&ab_channel=LeonRussell-Topic

LEONARD COHEN 1988
By Roland Godefroy – Own work, CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4609735

12. Leonard Cohen – YOU WANT IT DARKER – a carefully crafted, enigmatic, dark masterpiece recorded by Cohen (a Buddhist Master raised Jewish) shortly before he died (that’s his voice, that’s his hat) – Cohen is widely-respected in Canada and across Europe but enjoyed only limited success in the United States. This is one of his greatest compositions, the culmination of a lifetime of religious and musical growth – “I didn’t know I had permission to murder and to maim” – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGm8z0 ykxdU&ab_channel=GSIMusique

13. The song ‘The Sound of Silence’ was the first hit for Simon and Garfunkel back in 1966. As good as their recording of the song was, an even better rendition of the song was recorded in 2015 by Disturbed. I posted a link to the excellent video for the song in a previous post. Here is a LIVE version of the song to confirm that the lead singer, David Draiman, was capable of an impressive vocal performance without any camera tricks – listen carefully to the words – notice too how the song, written in 4 / 4 time, subtly inculcates an uneasy feeling by inserting measures in 6 / 4 time periodically. Notice too that Draiman’s vocals cover a span of 18 notes when most songs only span 8 to 11 (or less) because most singers couldn’t handle a span of 18. Nicely done – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk7RVw3I8eg&ab_channel=TeamCoco

PREVIOUS GHOST STORIES

1 – Houdini’s Secret Army and The Decline of Democracy – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/19/ghost-story-1-houdinis-secret-army-and-the-decline-of-democracy/

2 – The Power of the Spirit (Sophie Scholl, Stephen Biko, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero) – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/25/ghost-story-2-the-power-of-the-spirit/

4 – Tickling the Ivories 1 (Jon Lord, James Booker, Dave Brubeck, Leon Russell, Oscar Peterson, Gary Brooker, Oscar Levant, Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and Glenn Gould) –

GHOST STORY 4 – Tickling the Ivories 1

5 – Tickling the Ivories 2 (Cleo Brown, Hazel Scott, Nina Simone, Alice Herz-Sommer, Myra Hess, Lil Hardin, Maria Mozart, Hiromi Uehara and Yuja Wang)

GHOST STORY 5 – Tickling the Ivories 2

GHOST STORY 6 – Marching to Different Drums

7 – Quantum realities, electromagnetism, genetic insights and the transfinite (Werner Heisenberg, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel and Georg Cantor) –

GHOST STORY 7 – Quantum Realities, Electromagnetism, Genetic Insights and The Transfinite

8 – Hats off to Antoine-Joseph Sax (David Bowie, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti, Charlie Parker, Frankie Trumbauer, Sam Butera, Don Redman, Leroi Moore, Paul Desmond and Dick Parry) –

GHOST STORY 8 – Hats Off to Antoine-Joseph Sax

9. More Complicated Than It Looks

GHOST STORY 9 – More Complicated Than It Looks

10. Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals (Richard Rodgers, Georges Bizet, Larry Adler, Marlene Dietrich) –

GHOST STORY 10 – Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals

11. Political Metaphysics

GHOST STORY 11 – Political Metaphysics

GHOST STORY 11 – Political Metaphysics

THE CANTERVILLE GHOST
By Oscar Wilde (1836-1911)Wallace Goldsmith (1873-1945) – Complete Writings of Oscar Wilde [Vol VIII]: Lord Arthur Saville’s Crimes, The Nottingham Society, New York, Philadelphia, and Chicago., PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=23997834

These are narratives about little known but important aspects of the lives of some very well-known and important people. Over time more and more people in the developed world, including the United States, are self-identifying as non-religious or atheist but Christian Nationalism is also on the rise in the United States as their society becomes increasingly polarized. Religion, like reproductive rights and gun safety and immigration and so many other issues, are becoming more and more fraught in the USA. The United States is de facto an intensely religious nation, and religious concepts are tied up closely with patriotism there. They put ‘In God we Trust’ on their money, and students pledge allegiance to ‘one nation under God’ in their schools. However, things are not always as they seem.

GEORGE WASHINGTON (ON THE WHITE HORSE) PAINTED BY THOMAS SULLY
By Thomas Sully – [2], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9100890

THE FOUNDING DEISTS

Many Americans, particularly on the right, seem to worship the Founding Fathers but what many don’t realize is that many of those Founding Fathers were deists. That is, they rejected beliefs in miracles and prophecies, divine revelation, and the Holy Trinity. President Thomas Jefferson was also the author of The Jefferson Bible. This was a modification of the Christian Bible in which all mentions of the miracles of Jesus, sections of the Gospels which mention the Resurrection and other miracles, and passages describing Jesus as divine have all been removed. That would not go over well in the Bible Belt these days.

Deists believe that only reason, and observation of the natural world, are sufficient to determine the existence of a Supreme Being as the creator of the Universe (God as revealed through nature). Deists reject all religious authorities (Clergy, the Priesthood, Imams, the Papacy etc.) and divine revelation (and therefore many sections of religious texts). Some deists also reject the idea of an afterlife, a soul and the efficacy of prayer. The following people were deists: President George Washington, President Thomas Jefferson, President James Madison, President James Monroe, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, President Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Edison, Adam Smith, Ethan Allen, Voltaire, Neil Armstrong, James Watt, Jules Verne, Carl Friedrich Gauss, Sir Humphrey Davy, Victor Hugo, Dmitri Mendeleev, Max Planck and Mark Twain.

THE JEFFERSON BIBLE
By Thomas Jefferson – History: Jeffersons Construction, The Jefferson Bible, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution. americanhistory.si.edu. Retrieved on 2016-06-10., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49348955

IT IS WRITTEN

William Shakespeare has written that “The Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose” (The Merchant of Venice, Act 1, Scene 3, Line 99). The Christian Bible was written by multiple authors from multiple perspectives, authors who are not infallible, with text passages open to multiple interpretations. There are many progressive ideas and insights in the Christian Bible (The Protestant Bible, The Catholic Bible, The Eastern Orthodox Bible) but there are some parts of the Old Testament which are problematic, to say the least. The New Testament is more civilized. There are parts of Revelations in the New Testament, however, which have been used by Christian nationalists to defend their abhorrent behaviour. Be wary of misinterpretations. Also remember that if a particular passage in any sacred text is clearly misogynist, racist, antisemitic or homophobic, then don’t use the passage to condone unjustified hatred, use it to condemn the passage itself, and if necessary the document it comes from.

JOHN LOCKE (1632 – 1704)
By Godfrey Kneller – 1. Unknown source2. derivate work of File:Godfrey Kneller – Portrait of John Locke (Hermitage).jpg (from arthermitage.org), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=110128

SEPARATION ANXIETY

The concept of the separation of Church and State emerged as far back as the sixteenth century, a doctrine advocated by Martin Luther during the Protestant Reformation. In 1636 Roger Williams expounded on the concept in his work ‘Soul of Liberty’ and John Locke took the idea and expanded on it, and came up with the concept of a Social Contract.

Thomas Jefferson talked about a “wall of separation between church and state.” Religious freedom was contained in the American Bill of Rights as part of the Constitution. The idea also appears in France, in the Declaration of the Rights of the Man and the Citizen of 1789. The United States is not unique in advocating the separation of church and state, however, as it is also enshrined in the laws and constitutions of Australia, Canada, Brazil, China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, The Philippines, Singapore and Switzerland.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion in the United States. Christian nationalists on the right, in opposition to that freedom, talk about the United States as a Christian nation. Some actually believe that the United States was chosen by God to rule the world. Not so. Neither God nor any preferential treatment of Christianity appear in the Constitution. Some on the right dispute this by pointing out that in the introduction there is a reference to the date, a reference containing the phrase “in the year of our Lord”. This is known officially as grasping at straws.

For a nation celebrating the separation of church and state I find it inconsistent that American presidents attend prayer breakfasts, and government officials send thoughts and prayers after the many mass killings that occur there. Do you suppose they will ever elect a Moslem president in the United States? A Jewish president? An atheist president? Forget about religion, what about a female president? It hasn’t happened yet.

BARUCH SPINOZA – DUTCH COMMEMORATIVE COIN – 1927
By Johannes Cornelis Wienecke – http://hdl.handle.net/11259/collection.37141, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=87413235

ALBERT EINSTEIN’S UNIVERSE

When Albert Einstein took out American citizenship many on the religious right welcomed him into their flock when he said: “God is subtle but He is not malicious” and “God does not play dice with the world”. However, as Einstein’s biographer Ronald W. Clark writes: “Einstein’s God was not the God of most other men.” Finally Rabbi Herbert Goldstein of New York came right out and asked Einstein point blank whether he believed in God. Einstein replied: “I believe in Spinoza’s God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with fates and actions of human beings.” This sounds like a rejection of metaphysics, a form of Naturalism or perhaps Materialism, probably Deism, possibly Atheism.

Baruch Spinoza (1632 – 1677) was a Dutch philosopher who was expelled from the Jewish community in Amsterdam for his views on religion. He was excommunicated. He had to publish his most important work, the ‘Tractatus Theologico-Politicus’, anonymously, a work that was banned. That work rejects Biblical authority. His other great work, ‘Ethics’, rejected the existence of a personal creator, and an afterlife. Spinoza was called an atheist by his contemporaries and by the religious authorities of his day. Einstein’s God was Spinoza’s God.

Einstein was actually to the left of centre, so much so that he was investigated by the FBI for his leftist views. He publicly condemned German militarism in World War One and Nazism in World War Two (Hitler tried to have him killed), he championed pacifism, and publicly supported philosopher / logician Bertrand Russell’s campaign for nuclear disarmament.

HITLER’S UNIVERSE

On the other side of the coin, some religious extremists have claimed that Hitler was an atheist. No serious historian has made that claim however. Hitler was born into the Roman Catholic Church, died without ever being disowned by the church, and he paid his church dues until the end of his life. In his work ‘Mein Kampf’ he writes: “I am acting as the agent of our Creator. By fighting off the Jews I am doing the Lord’s work.” On the other hand, some white supremacists would be quite happy to accept the idea that Hitler was deeply religious.

POPULARITY CONTEST

In 1966, in an interview in Britain, John Lennon said, at the height of Beatlemania, that The Beatles were more popular than Jesus. The comment was shrugged off in Britain. In the United States people went crazy when they heard what Lennon had said. Beatle records and Lennon’s books were burned in public ceremonies, attendance at Beatle concerts dropped off, the Ku Klux Klan issued veiled death threats when The Beatles arrived for their tour of the United States, and given the proliferation of guns in the US the Beatles took to the stage night after night as sitting ducks.

Something like this is hard to measure, but given the record sales of The Beatles and attendance at their concerts and films, and the decline in church attendance, in Britain, Lennon was probably correct. American broadcasters claimed that Lennon had said that The Beatles were better than Jesus. He said no such thing. He said they were more popular. He also said it with sadness, not as a boast. In a civilized society the response to what Lennon said, even if he had said that The Beatles were better than Jesus, would not be death threats. It might be discussion and debate, even ridicule, or possibly social self-examination.

FAMILY VALUES

In the late 1990’s the American religious right were championing family values and the atheist organization Council for Secular Humanism, based in New York, were inundated with an avalanche of invective. In response that organization published their own set of non-religious family values, including the following:

People should be free to choose their own family structure (e.g. nuclear family, single parent, extended family, married or unmarried).
People should be able to marry across any racial or religious divide (people of the same sex should also be able to marry).
All marriages should be based on the equality of each partner.
Family members should be free from all forms of mental, physical and sexual abuse, including marital rape.
Adoption or custody decisions should be made in the interests of the children’s welfare, rather than based on a religious or social test.
Children have the right to proper medical care, regardless of their financial circumstances, and caregivers do not have the right to withhold treatment or impose medically unsound treatment based on religious beliefs.
Children have a right to an education, free from indoctrination, regardless of their financial circumstances.

THE WORDS OF THE PROPHETS ARE WRITTEN ON THE SUBWAY WALLS, AND THE TENEMENT HALLS

A final very powerful thought on religion in the United States. Cover versions of great songs are usually inferior to the original. When Simon and Garfunkel released this Paul Simon song in 1966 it was a great song but when the band Disturbed released this song re-imagining it in 2015 it was even better. Lead singer David Draiman’s powerful voice and breath control is impressive, and the video images (and the lyrics) are truly disturbing. After 49 years it seems that things have become worse, not better – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9Dg-g7t2l4&ab_channel=Disturbed

PREVIOUS GHOST STORIES

1 – Houdini’s Secret Army and The Decline of Democracy – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/19/ghost-story-1-houdinis-secret-army-and-the-decline-of-democracy/

2 – The Power of the Spirit (- https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/25/ghost-story-2-the-power-of-the-spirit/

Sophie Scholl, Stephen Biko, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero

3 – A Slaughterhouse, a Melancholy Dane, an Impossible Cat and a Cambridge Apostle – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/12/02/ghost-story-3-a-slaughterhouse-a-melancholy-dane-an-impossible-cat-and-a-cambridge-apostle/

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Richard Burton, Niels Bohr, Frank Ramsey

4 – Tickling the Ivories 1 –

GHOST STORY 4 – Tickling the Ivories 1

Jon Lord, James Booker, Dave Brubeck, Leon Russell, Oscar Peterson, Gary Brooker, Oscar Levant, Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and Glenn Gould

5 – Tickling the Ivories 2 –

GHOST STORY 5 – Tickling the Ivories 2

Cleo Brown, Hazel Scott, Nina Simone, Alice Herz-Sommer, Myra Hess, Lil Hardin, Maria Mozart, Hiromi Uehara and Yuja Wang

6 – Marching to Different Drums

GHOST STORY 6 – Marching to Different Drums

Ginger Baker, B.J.Wilson, Chick Webb, Levon Helm, Gene Krupa, Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, Baby Dodds, Joe Morello, John Bonham and Tony Allen (Yuriko Seki, Matt Chamberlain, Ringo Starr)

7 – Quantum realities, electromagnetism, genetic insights and the transfinite –

GHOST STORY 7 – Quantum Realities, Electromagnetism, Genetic Insights and The Transfinite

Werner Heisenberg, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel and Georg Cantor

8 – Hats off to Antoine-Joseph Sax

GHOST STORY 8 – Hats Off to Antoine-Joseph Sax

David Bowie, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti, Charlie Parker, Frankie Trumbauer, Sam Butera, Don Redman, Leroi Moore, Paul Desmond and Dick Parry

9. More Complicated Than It Looks

GHOST STORY 9 – More Complicated Than It Looks

10. Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals

GHOST STORY 10 – Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals

Richard Rodgers, Georges Bizet, Larry Adler, Marlene Dietrich

GHOST STORY 10 – Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals

KING SAUL ENCOUNTERING THE GHOST OF SAMUEL – BY NIKOLAI GE
By Nikolai Ge – [1], Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7710607

Take a look at this brief but chilling rendition of a rather famous song, if you would:

The song is ‘Edelweiss’ written by Richard Rodgers for the musical ‘A Sound of Music’. This is a far cry from the sweet film version of the same song. These are the opening credits of THE MAN IN THE HIGH CASTLE about America run by the Nazi Party after Germany is victorious in World War Two. The man in the high castle is Hitler. For all you MAGA people out there, many nations, including Canada, spent over two years fighting Hitler in World War Two while the United States stayed out of it in isolation, and the slogan ‘America First’ was often used by the isolationists, a phrase recently revived by Trump. The United States entered the war after Japan attacked the United States at Pearl Harbour.

RICHARD RODGERS (1902 – 1979)

How many people can you name who have written over 900 songs? Obviously Richard Rodgers did or I wouldn’t be asking the question. He wrote the music for 43 successful Broadway musicals including The Sound of Music, made into one of the most successful films of all time. Initially he crafted a musical partnership with Lorenz Hart. Then when he partnered with Oscar Hammerstein II they came up with some ground-breaking changes. Before that Broadway musicals were just lighthearted escapist entertainment. Rodgers and Hammerstein changed that by writing more mature stories based on character and drama.

Rodgers was the first of a small handful of people to have won all four of the major entertainment awards – a Tony (he won 39), an Academy Award (he won 15), a Grammy (he won 2) and an Emmy (he won 2). Furthermore, he was also awarded the prestigious Pulitzer Prize (twice). He started writing music in his teens and ended up writing the music for Oklahoma, South Pacific, The King and I, Flower Drum Song, Pal Joey and many more. Rodgers’ daughters Mary and Linda, and his grandsons Adam Guettel and Peter Melnick were all professional composers as well. Despite all his talent, hard work and success Rodgers suffered from depression and alcohol abuse. He was also an atheist which wasn’t a popular thing to be for someone born back in 1902. Here are some excellent and unusual covers of some of the music of Richard Rodgers:

The incomparable JANIS JOPLIN, bullied and attacked growing up and dead at the age of 27 – LITTLE GIRL BLUE – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYHJ_A8qnXw&ab_channel=29Bulland
YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE is a song which has been adopted as a universal theme by football clubs around the world. It started with Liverpool United and a version of the song recorded by GERRY MARSDEN, seen here leading the singing. Marsden was one of the leaders of the British Invasion in the 1960’s with his group The Pacemakers. He was a good friend of another Liverpool group called The Beatles, the bands often played on the same bill, and one amazing night the two bands played as one calling themselves Gerry Marsden and the Beatmakers and brought the house down – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3bNWDXUVWM&ab_channel=Karen-Thatter .
THE MARCELS – BLUE MOON sung as a doo wop song – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qoi3TH59ZEs&ab_channel=MANNYMORA
THE RAY ANTHONY ORCHESTRA (1956) – SLAUGHTER ON TENTH AVENUE – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INi_bs6h6b0&ab_channel=RayAnthony
PENTATONIX – MY FAVOURITE THINGS – an a cappella performance (singing without a net – or musical instruments) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGOz9f78IjI&ab_channel=PentatonixVEVO

GEORGES BIZET (1838 – 1875)

Take a look at this 1954 interpretation of a song from one of the most popular operas ever written. The singer is Dorothy Dandridge, the clip is from the film ‘Carmen Jones’ which co-starred Harry Belafonte, with an all-African-American cast updating Bizet’s opera Carmen. Dandridge won an Academy Award nomination for this performance.

Georges Bizet was a French composer and an outstanding pianist who enjoyed considerable fame as a student at the Paris Conservatory. After graduation, however, he found little success, his works being poorly received. Bizet served in the National Guard during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 – 1871, and afterwards he continued to try unsuccessfully to carve out a career. Finally his incidental music for the play L’Arlésienne was quite popular. Most of his compositions were secular works because Bizet was an atheist. However, the production of his final opera, Carmen, was unable to go ahead due to the themes of murder and betrayal which, it was thought, would offend audiences.

Carmen premiered on March 3, 1875 but it was not very successful. Three months later Bizet, thinking of himself as a complete failure, died of a heart attack at the age of thirty-six. Upon his death his work was largely ignored. His manuscripts were given away or lost, and even his published works were modified and revised by others. He had no famous students or successors and few supporters. Gradually, however, in the twentieth century, his works began to be performed more and more frequently. Eventually musicologists declared his music brilliant and the popularity of Carmen with audiences worldwide confirmed this, a popularity Bizet died far too soon to witness.

LARRY ADLER (1914 – 2001)

Here is the song Summertime played by Larry Adler and the great classical violinist Itzhak Perlman – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mrdauSqH_EI&ab_channel=rockystorm

Harmonica virtuoso Larry Adler was born in Baltimore, Maryland. At fourteen he taught himself to play the harmonica and at fifteen he ran away from home. After a series of theatrical jobs he had the chance to play a transcription for the harmonica of Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for Gershwin himself who thought it was incredibly good. Adler performed in England and was a big hit. Unlike other harmonica players Adler played and recorded many difficult classical pieces including works by Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Bartok, Debussy, Mozart, Ravel and Stravinsky. He recorded works for the harmonica composed specifically for him by Ralph Vaughan Williams, Darius Milhaud, Arthur Benjamin and Malcolm Arnold, and he also collaborated with Sting, Elton John and Kate Bush.

LARRY ADLER 1947
By William P. Gottlieb – http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.gottlieb.00031/enlarge.html?page=1&section=ver01&size=1024&from=, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11110480

During the McCarthy era Adler was accused of being a Communist but, unlike some, he refused to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He was also an atheist which must have infuriated the committee as well. As a result of his refusal he was blacklisted and couldn’t find work in the U.S. so he re-located to London where he remained and prospered for the rest of his life. He was a vocal and harsh critic of President Ronald Reagan; Reagan had been an enthusiastic supporter of the rabidly anti-Communist House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1940’s and 1950’s. For his work on the soundtrack of the film Genevieve in 1953 Adler received an Oscar nomination but when the film was released in the United States his name was removed from the credits. No comment. Adler also did the music for six other films. He was also a competent pianist, and when he gave a series of concerts in his eighties to promote an album of Gershwin songs he had just released, he opened the concert by playing Summertime on the piano and harmonica simultaneously.

Here is Larry Adler doing Body and Soul with the great gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt recorded in Paris in 1938 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ViO_DUbAZak&ab_channel=HeinzBecker .

MARLENE DIETRICH (1901 – 1992)

MARLENE DIETRICH 1932
By Don English (1901-1964); Paramount Pictures – Heritage Auctions [1](Image from source cropped and contrast-adjusted for upload to Wikimedia.), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17190820

Dietrich was born in Berlin before the First World War into an affluent family. She studied violin as a child and later even trained as a boxer. She made her name in Germany as a singer and actor and in 1930 she moved to Hollywood with a film contract based on her international reputation. Dietrich, who was secretly bisexual, caused a stir in the film Morocco in which she sings a song wearing a man’s outfit and kisses a woman, something scandalous back then ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnD5bkUmUz8&ab_channel=TerrySanderson ). The film won her an Academy Award nomination. In 1930 she was having simultaneous affairs with the actor Gary Cooper and the actress Lupe Valez. Over the years Dietrich had a long list of lovers, including President John F. Kennedy, Frank Sinatra and Jimmy Stewart.

Her films were extremely popular and visually very stylish. In the 1930’s Dietrich was one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. On a trip to England in 1937 she was approached by Nazi Party officials and offered enormous amounts of money to return to Germany and work as a film star. She not only refused but returned to Hollywood and became an American citizen.

Dietrich and German exile / director Billy Wilder created a fund to help Jews and political dissidents to escape from Nazi Germany. For the 1937 film Knight Without Armor she was paid $8,984,500 (in today’s money) and she put every cent into that fund. When the US entered the war Dietrich was one of the first public figures to sell war bonds (selling more than any other star). She toured American bases for hundreds of thousands of troops in Algeria, Italy, France, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. She even travelled into Germany itself with Generals James M. Gavin and George S. Patton. She made musical recordings for the Office of Strategic Services designed to demoralize German soldiers, songs she sang in German, including Lili Marlene, a song that was extremely popular with soldiers on both sides of the war. Dietrich was later awarded the Medal of Freedom in the US and the Legion d’Honneur in France for her wartime work –

MARLENE DIETRICH SINGING LILI MARLENE

After the war she appeared in several major dramatic acting roles, and also toured as a cabaret singer in front of large audiences. When she toured Israel she was the first German (and the first woman) to receive the Medallion of Valor, in 1965. She spent her declining years in Paris, bed-ridden but still politically active. She died at the age of ninety and thousands attended her funeral, including ambassadors from several nations. She was raised Lutheran but became disillusioned at the rise of Nazi Germany and the advent of World War Two, and she became an atheist.

One thing that these four musical artists have in common is that they were all atheists. Here is a bit of music from four more musical atheists:

1. JOHN LENNON – WORKING CLASS HERO – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D77dbv-xNfE&ab_channel=JohnLennon-Topic

2. SIMON LeBON fronting DURAN DURAN with GRANDMASTER FLASH – WHITE LINES – keep your eye on guitarist Andy Taylor here – he is currently fighting stage four inoperable cancer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ah4f62bYAcw&ab_channel=DuranDuranVEVO

3. ROGER WATERS formerly of PINK FLOYD – BRAIN DAMAGE – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nc7YW1Xa02U&ab_channel=LamegoAlvelos

4. PETER BUCK with REM – LOSING MY RELIGION (2004) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLhD-h1LRQs&ab_channel=remhq

PREVIOUS GHOST STORIES:

1 – Houdini’s Secret Army and The Decline of Democracy – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/19/ghost-story-1-houdinis-secret-army-and-the-decline-of-democracy/

2 – The Power of the Spirit (- https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2022/11/25/ghost-story-2-the-power-of-the-spirit/

Sophie Scholl, Stephen Biko, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Oscar Romero

Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Richard Burton, Niels Bohr, Frank Ramsey

4 – Tickling the Ivories 1 –

GHOST STORY 4 – Tickling the Ivories 1

Jon Lord, James Booker, Dave Brubeck, Leon Russell, Oscar Peterson, Gary Brooker, Oscar Levant, Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy and Glenn Gould

5 – Tickling the Ivories 2 –

GHOST STORY 5 – Tickling the Ivories 2

Cleo Brown, Hazel Scott, Nina Simone, Alice Herz-Sommer, Myra Hess, Lil Hardin, Maria Mozart, Hiromi Uehara and Yuja Wang

6 – Marching to Different Drums

GHOST STORY 6 – Marching to Different Drums

Ginger Baker, B.J.Wilson, Chick Webb, Levon Helm, Gene Krupa, Charlie Watts, Keith Moon, Baby Dodds, Joe Morello, John Bonham and Tony Allen (Yuriko Seki, Matt Chamberlain, Ringo Starr)

7 – Quantum realities, electromagnetism, genetic insights and the transfinite –

GHOST STORY 7 – Quantum Realities, Electromagnetism, Genetic Insights and The Transfinite

Werner Heisenberg, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel and Georg Cantor

8 – Hats off to Antoine-Joseph Sax

GHOST STORY 8 – Hats Off to Antoine-Joseph Sax

David Bowie, John Coltrane, Fela Kuti, Charlie Parker, Frankie Trumbauer, Sam Butera, Don Redman, Leroi Moore, Paul Desmond and Dick Parry

9. More Complicated Than It Looks

GHOST STORY 9 – More Complicated Than It Looks