THE GHOST OF PERCHTA
By Wolfgang Sauber – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=71253185
Please take a look at this clip – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvDSsxL3Hc8&ab_channel=YuriTabak – This is SAM BROWN bringing the house down at the tribute concert for George Harrison singing ‘Horse to the Water’ – Have you heard of Sam Brown? She is more well-known in Britain than in North America. Her father Joe Brown was a popular British rock and roller, and her mother Victoria was a well-respected session vocalist before dying prematurely of cancer. Brown has more recently lost her ability to sing for medical reasons but she continues to be musically active. Will Sam end up being a ghost? She’s not nearly as famous as Madonna in the U.S. or Kylie Minogue in Australia. These posts have been about important people now deceased who were and are ignored or underappreciated (I’m calling them ghosts), but the factors that determine whether or not someone will end up being either famous or a ghost are worthy of examination.
GUSTAVE WHITEHEAD
Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11552788
WHAT’S TALENT GOT TO DO WITH IT?
Have you heard of the Wright Brothers? Probably. They made the first flight in a heavier than air machine on Kill Devil Hill near Kitty Hawk right? Wrong. The first such flight was made by German aviator GUSTAVE WHITEHEAD. Ever heard of him? Mathematical historians pretty much agree that the three greatest mathematicians of all time were NEWTON, GAUSS and EULER. Most people have heard of Newton but what about the other two? Who invented the incandescent light bulb? You’ve probably heard of Thomas Edison. Have you heard of JOSEPH SWAN? They both invented the light bulb independently at about the same time. Swan is the ghost, at least in the US. On the original Star Trek there was an ongoing joke about how Pavel Chekov (Walter Koenig) used to erroneously claim that the Russians invented things they didn’t really invent. Perhaps it wasn’t just the Russians. RY COODER is a better guitarist than the more famous Jimmy Page or Keith Richards IMHO. Perhaps the greatest musician / composer of them all, many people agree today, is JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH but in his own time he was not considered to be particularly great. It was Felix Mendelssohn, born 59 years after Bach died, who revived interest in Bach, and Bach’s greatest work, the St. Matthew Passion, had been largely forgotten until Mendelssohn performed the massive work in 1829.
Here is RY COODER doing an energetic atmospheric cover of the old Johnny Cash song ‘Get Rhythm’ (the cafe owner in the video is the late American actor Harry Dean Stanton who starred in more than a dozen successful feature films including Alien, Escape From New York and Lucky) – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AG91Y62T4C0&ab_channel=DirkJung .
NOTHING SUCCEEDS LIKE SUCCESS
Should a musician go down in history as great because they sold a lot of records? The Archies were a laughable manufactured formulaic American pop group who didn’t even play their own instruments (they used session musicians). Their biggest hit, ‘Sugar Sugar’, went to Number One in the US and sold over six million copies. Rolling Stone Magazine gave their first record a one sentence review, something like this: The twelve tracks on this record are the twelve most convincing arguments for the abolition of capitalism. Kermit the Frog once had a number one hit in the UK. Some of the greatest musicians were session musicians most of whom never released any of their own records at all. BOB DYLAN has never had a number one hit, nor has THE GRATEFUL DEAD. A record is not going to sell if no one hears it no matter how good it is and in the 1950s, during the payola scandals, people in the US were bribing radio stations to play particular records no matter how awful the records were, thus increasing sales for the songs. Those scandals destroyed the career of Alan Freed, and Dick Clark was also tainted. Here is the Number One hit ‘Sugar Sugar’ by THE ARCHIES. Try not to throw up – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eX28cgKHHyc&ab_channel=SolracEtnevic
LOOK AT THE MAP
Some excellent Canadian musicians have had success outside Canada (e.g. Justin Bieber, Guy Lombardo, The Band). Some have not (e.g. Stan Rogers, Holly Cole, Don Messer). Would GORD DOWNIE (lead singer / composer of The Tragically Hip who died of a brain tumour in 2017) be considered a ghost in the US because no one has heard of him there? He was no ghost in Canada – everybody knew who he was. Here is HOLLY COLE doing a track called ‘Everyday Will Be Like a Holiday’ – with some excellent minimalist piano playing – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4U63thBESU&ab_channel=c16031 .
Remember also that some countries are more populous than others. If some mediocre K-Pop or J-POP group releases a catchy song that catches the fancy of people in China, with a population of over 1.4 billion people, the song may sell more copies than records by much more talented people in countries with much smaller populations.
Have you ever heard of French Rai singer and actor Faudel Belloua? He has had a string of gold CDs in tha Arab world. Algerian Rai singer / musician / songwriter Khaled Hadj Ibrahim has sold over 80 million units worldwide as one of the best-selling Arabic singers in history. Then there’s Rachid Taha, a charismatic Algerian singer and political activist whose 1997 monster hit ‘Ya Rayah’ has been covered by dozens of people worldwide. He died in his fifties in 2018. Watch this clip and note the ecstatic audience reaction – FAUDEL, KHALED and RACHID TAHA will never be ghosts in France or Algeria but they would be in most of North America – Here are these three musicians doing the track ‘Ya Rayah’ – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cur39MJDWX4&ab_channel=DeepFreeze11
Sophie Scholl is deservedly well-known in Germany. Not so much in the rest of the world. Albertina and Walter Sisulu, anti-Apartheid activists, are probably more well-known in South Africa than Iceland or Peru. Roger Federer was once asked about Rosa Parks by an American reporter and he was really pissed off that Federer had never heard of her. Federer was born in Basel, Switzerland. What did the reporter expect? Rosa Parks is a ghost in Switzerland. I suspect Norman Bethune is a ghost in the US, but not in Canada, or China. How many Americans (or people from Zimbabwe or Pakistan or New Zealand) have heard of Bobby Sands or Bernadette Devlin? Simon Bolivar? Aleksandr Dubcek? What about Rocket Richard (probably the greatest hockey player who ever laced on a pair of skates)? Terry Fox? Rick Hansen?
I read today that Moon Bin has died at the age of twenty-five. Do you know who he is? He is not a ghost in South Korea and Southeast Asia. Have you heard of Song Yoo Jung, Sulli, Goo Hara, Cha In Ha, Lee Hye-Ryeon, and most famous of all, Jonghyun? These people are all incredibly famous, musically talented, and dead. They are K-Pop musicians who committed suicide. Here is MOON BIN performing ‘Candy in My Ears’ with his sister MOON SUA – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtZbPDXH1dI&ab_channel=KBSWORLDTV
FAME PUTS YOU THERE
If you are good but have never been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland are you a ghost? Induction doesn’t always have to do with talent or success so there probably are some very talented ghosts who have either never been inducted or were only inducted long after eligibility. In one instance a group with the greater number of votes (The British group The Dave Clark Five) was passed over in favour of one with fewer votes (The American group Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five). Also, one of the officials has actually instructed the nominating committee to give preference to musicians who were more commercial than musically accomplished and creative. The selection process is also incredibly biased in favour of the United States. The first twenty-six inductees were American. Clyde McPhatter and Big Joe Turner were inducted before The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin or Pink Floyd. One hundred and forty-three inductees made it in before U2. 76% of the inductees to date are American, 20% from the United Kingdom, 4% from everywhere else in the world. When the Sex Pistols were inducted, the group refused to appear and sent a note describing the Hall of Fame as a “piss stain”. Good for them. The Sex Pistols – Anarchy in the UK – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cBojbjoMttI&ab_channel=jaroshy
AWARD WINNERS
Winning awards may make you famous even if you didn’t deserve the award, and some who do not receive prestigious honours but deserve them may unfairly lose out in terms of fame, success and a place in the history books. They have become ghosts. As of 2017, 2126 different people have won Grammies. 73.66% were American. When Tool was awarded a Grammie they refused to attend. Maynard Keenan of Tool described the awards as the music industry congratulating the music industry.
The Fields Medal has been awarded to many since its inception in 1936. It is the highest award that can be given to a mathematician (there is no Nobel Prize for Mathematics). The first 55 went to men. Finally a woman, Maryam Mirzakhani, won in 2014. How many women were good enough to win the Fields medal previous to 2014 but didn’t? How many women previous to 2014 had the potential to win the Fields Medal but weren’t able to get grants, or academic support, or enough help from a partner to devote enough time to her Mathematics the way that Andrew Wiles was supported by his wife in the eight years it took to prove Fermat’s Last Theorem? We’ll never know. There may be a few ghosts there.
EYE OF THE BEHOLDER
Deciding who are the ghosts sometimes depends on who is doing the deciding. Here are clips by three pianists with limited fame you have probably never heard of who can play circles around well-known popular pianists such as Elton John, Billy Joel, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Jon Batiste, Little Richard, Taylor Swift etc. Are these three ghosts or potential ghosts? I happen to like these tracks but I wonder whether that fact gets in the way of my own assessment of the skill of these performers:
1. HIROMI UEHARA – I’ve Got Rhythm – She starts slowly, gains momentum, and what she does from the 3 minute 6 second mark on is amazing. Notice who she dedicates the piece to. Notice how the rhythm pattern in the left hand is not always the same as the right – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6JfKY0K_NQk&ab_channel=PickingSaffron
2. MAKOTO OZONE – Gravy Waltz – This is one of the 8500 compositions written by pioneering television comedian Steve Allen. The song won a Grammy in 1964 – Trombonist Phil Wilson opens the piece and Ozone starts his solo at the 43 second mark – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNVSIpqWgg4&ab_channel=PhilWilson-Topic
3. JESS STACY – Sing Sing Sing – This is a two minute excerpt from the famous 1938 Carnegie Hall concert by the Benny Goodman Orchestra that ‘made jazz respectable’ – at the start it’s Goodman who grabs the house mike and says: “Yeah, Jess!” –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dGdD0NztzsA&ab_channel=Cmisner .
When it comes to music, literature, art, cinema and other aspects of culture subjectivity becomes a factor. THE PRETTY THINGS released what is arguably an excellent concept album, ‘S.F. Sorrow’, but that work has been largely overlooked. As a musician I think Van Dyke Parks and The Rankins are better at what they do than others who have enjoyed greater success and visibility than they have.
THE RANKINS – Fare Thee Well Love (from 1992) – superlative harmony singing, range and breath control. Eight of the Twelve siblings in the family have recorded several successful CDs as ‘The Rankin Family’ in Canada but three of those eight have also died before their time becoming ghosts to most non-Canadians (Raylene age 52 of cancer, Geraldine age 49 of a brain aneurysm, John Morris age 41 in a car accident) – Raylene and John Morris appear in this video – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6-mo4jS8VI&ab_channel=BanjoMaloner . Here is American VAN DYKE PARKS with a song mocking ultra-capitalists Henry Ford (a Nazi sympathizer), Harvey Firestone and Ronald Reagan – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3reIsQq6RgU&ab_channel=VanDykeParks-Topic
PERSONALITY COUNTS
Some musicians are very good but not very successful. They may not have been ambitious or flamboyant, or they may have suffered from mental illness or substance abuse or simply introversion. Keith Emerson was larger than life, and had great success with Emerson, Lake and Palmer with his keyboard pyrotechnics but he was not as good as lesser-known keyboardists such as Matthew Fisher and Earl Hines. Have you ever heard of Dave Tough? Adjectives that professional drummers have used to describe Tough’s drumming include intelligent, restrained, sensitive, thoughtful, tasteful, dependable, subtle and complex. He rarely played solos, by his own choice, took no illegal substances and was not an alcoholic. He was quiet, hard-working, and very creative musically. He died at the age of forty-one when he hit his head with great force during an epileptic fit.
Richie Havens rose to prominence when he brought the house down at Woodstock with his impassioned performance. Then he quickly faded into history. Alvin Lee, guitarist / vocalist was known for the speed at which he played and his band, Ten Years After, had eight consecutive top forty CDs in the UK. They are largely forgotten today. Steve Marriott was an excellent guitarist and vocalist with the Small Faces and Humble Pie and Keith Richards wanted Marriott to join The Rolling Stones after their guitarist Brian Jones died. Marriott’s cocaine and alcohol addiction contributed to his death in a house fire at the age of forty-four. He is largely forgotten today.
GENDER AND RACE
Bonnie Raitt and Orianthi are wonderful guitar players. Tai Wilkenfeld is possibly the best bass player on the planet. Caroline Corr and Cindy Blackman are great drummers. Pianists / composers Lil Hardin and Cleo Brown should have been more famous than they were. Hazel Scott, a classically trained African-American jazz piano virtuoso had a promising career but as soon as she became an out-spoken Civil Rights activist in the 1940s and 1950s her career collapsed though she was still in her prime. Was her lack of continued fame due to racism, misogyny, something else, all of the above? Women have excelled as vocalists but have been discouraged from becoming instrumentalists or taking leadership roles.
Here is the recently deceased guitar legend Jeff Beck at Ronnie Scott’s famous club in London. Beck mentored the Australian bass player / composer / singer TAI WILKENFELD and here Beck plays the Stevie Wonder song ‘Cause We’ve Ended as Lovers’ and at the 1 minute 25 second mark he simply points to a very young Wilkenfeld and lets her solo while he smiles and applauds but have you ever heard of Wilkenfeld? Will she end up being just a ghost? – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VC02wGj5gPw&ab_channel=YOSHIKI19621962
Some may argue that the preponderance of Nobel Prizes in Science have gone to men so men must be intrinsically better at Science than women. But if women have not accomplished as much as men in Science because they were denied the opportunities to develop any scientific skills they might have then we’ll never know how many great female scientists there might have been if only. The existence of one great female scientist (e.g. Marie Curie) tells us that a lack of scientific skill is not intrinsic to being female. All you need is one counter-example. There are also examples of women who have overcome gender-related barriers, accomplished great things, then have been trivialized or ignored (or had their ideas stolen from them) and so they have become ghosts.
Einstein’s Theory of Relativity turned the world of physics upside-down but without Emmy Noether’s mathematical formulations it would have died in obscurity, and Einstein had high praise for her. Her axiomatic methodology was one of the great achievements in twentieth century mathematics. But there is no mention of her in the landmark work Mathematics and the Imagination (by Edward Kasner and James Newman) though 215 males are mentioned in that work. Sofia Kovalevskaya’s mathematical expertise astounded Karl Weierstrass, The Father of Modern Analysis. She was honoured by the French Academy of Science and the Stockholm Academy. She appears nowhere in the four volume work The World of Mathematics (ed. By James Newman) though 1153 males are mentioned. Sophie Germain was one of the founders of mathematical physics. Her work was highly praised by Gauss. She is completely absent from The Book of Numbers (by Peter J. Bentley) though 123 males are mentioned.
Who gets to be famous and who ends up being a ghost? As the song ‘Fame’ (by John Lennon, David Bowie and Carlos Alomar) says: “Fame puts you there where things are hollow”.
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)
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) –
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 (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 (Werner Heisenberg, James Clerk Maxwell, Gregor Mendel and Georg Cantor) –
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 – Atheism
10. Immortal Music / Extraordinary Mortals (Richard Rodgers, Georges Bizet, Larry Adler, Marlene Dietrich) –
11. Political Metaphysics
12. 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)
14. Use all your well-learned politesse
15. Danger, Will Robinson
16. They’ll find my corpse draped over a rail – Eddie Cochran, Jeff Healey, Charlie Christian, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Django Reinhardt – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2023/04/14/ghost-story-16-theyll-find-my-corpse-draped-over-a-rail/
17. Cryin’ Won’t Help You, Prayin’ Won’t Do You No Good, Peggy Jones, Norma-Jean Wofford, Luise Walker, Care Failure, Memphis Minnie, Rosetta Tharpe, Maria Luisa Anido, Kim Shattuck, Ida Presti, Loretta Lynn – https://thekiddca.wordpress.com/2023/04/21/ghost-story-17-cryin-wont-help-you-prayin-wont-do-you-no-good/
According to The Kidd 