1948 ******* Movies t Albuquerque, Red River, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, I Remember Mama, Key Largo, The Paleface, Hamlet, Joan of Arc, Fort Apache, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein
Milestones
Creation of the State of Israel Columbia Records releases the first 33 1/3 rpm records First color newsreel (Rose Bowl Parade & Game) Poet W.B. Yeats grave is moved from Italy to Ireland The first Polaroid "Land Camera" is introduced Last steam engine for the Santa Fe RR is test fired Writer Jack Kerouac coins the term "Beat Generation" Marvin the Martian makes his debut in a Bugs Bunny cartoon
This hit was actually recorded by Pee Wee Hunt, a fascinating guy who had been a band leader, trombonist, and vocalist - then left to be a Hollywood radio D-J, then joined the Merchant Marine in WW II, then came back, got a new band, and soon the #1 hit for 1948! I haven't found a Pee Wee Hunt version that is useable yet, but I will! For now, here's a version by Tony Evans & His Orchestra, from their Ragtime Swing CD, released on the Tima International label. (2:25)
The song was written in 1927, but it didn't become a big hit till '48 when Art Mooney recorded it, along with "Baby Face." It's out now on the Art Mooney: Greatest Hits and More CD, released in '06 on Sepia Records Ltd. (2:27)
The song, by Eden Ahbez, tells of a "strange enchanted boy" who claims that "the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return." Ahbez was a 40's beatnik, an early post-war flower child. It's been recorded by a LOT of folks, from Sinatra to David Bowie to Cher. This is from Cole's Too Marvelous CD, off the Chacra Music Licensing label in 2006. (2:50)
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Albuquerque - Where The Tracks and The Highway Cross
Route 66 follows a slightly different course than the Chicago-LA tracks of the Santa Fe. The highway veers down into Missouri, Oklahoma, and north Texas - crossing into New Mexico east of Tucumcari. "TUCUMCARI TONITE!" shout the billboards. After that it's pretty much a direct line through Albuquerque to the coast. The train tracks make a jog or two out of Chicago, zip across northern Missouri, then roll across the breadth of Kansas, a dismally boring run that is thankfully scheduled for the dead of night going both ways on Amtrak, as it was on the first-class Santa Fe trains, for the most part (there's always a few exceptions with train scheules, as any person who's been waiting on the platform can tell you). Out of Kansas the tracks skirt across southeast Colorado before entering New Mexico just before Raton Pass, the highest point on the line. From there they roll southwest through old Las Vegas, NM; then Lamy, the connection for the city of Santa Fe; the Rio Grande Pueblos; and on to Albuqueque, where the train and highway first cross. It happens in downtown Albuquerque - where the tracks are running north-south, (just briefly) and the highway runs east west, and drops down through a tunnel under the tracks. From there begins an on-again, off-again, but mostly parallel run to the west coast. t
The CD is titled MUSIC FROM THE ALL-AMERICAN HIGHWAY, released in '98 by Lazy S.O.B. Recordings. It I.D.'s the band as "The Route 66 Orchestra." Nonsense, this is the original theme from the TV show - it's Nelson Riddle & His Orchestra. (2:15)
Here's Bobby Troup, the composer of the song, from his album Kicks on 66, put out by Hindsight Records in '95. (3:21)
Here's the Texas swing outfit Asleep At The Wheel, from a compilation CD titled More Songs of Route 66: Roadside Attractions. It came out in 2001 on Lazy S.O.B. Recordings. (2:37)
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d ARRIVAL IN ALBUQUERQUE
I arrived in Albuquerque, so my father told me, about dawn, after a long night of sweat and labor on my mother's part. It was July 25, 1948 at St. Joseph's Hospital - a few blocks south of Route 66, a few blocks east of the train tracks. My parents had ended up in "The Duke City" after the war following some time in Phoenix, where my father was treated in a hospital after they brought him back from Japan, and then Santa Fe, where my mother acted as a private nurse for Katherine "Peach" Mayer, grande dame of Santa Fe fundraising (Maternal and Child Health Center, New Mexico Heart Association, Santa Fe Boys Club, Museum of New Mexico Foundation, and later the Santa Fe Opera Foundation). While my mother nursed Peach back to health, my father worked as a driver for indian-detours during the day, carting tourists off to the Indian Pueblos, and at night bartended at the La Fonda Hotel, the famous hostelry at the end of the Santa Fe Trail. Both enterprises were owned by the Santa Fe Railway, and in those days, both were wildly successful in introducing the American southwest to Americans and foreigners alike. When they left Santa Fe they had a small nestegg, though it's hard to believe they actually knew it at the time. My father, with a good eye for something of real value, purchased more than a half dozen pieces of black pottery at San Ildefonso Pueblo, a short drive north of Santa Fe, one of the pueblos he motored the tourists off to. Over the years, my mother gave them all away, one by one. If some family friend, a member of the clergy, or at times even a complete stranger, especially admired something they saw at our house - it generally went home with them. My father just shook his head when the last pot headed out the door in '64, in the hands of one of the Jesuits from the high school in El Paso, Texas I attended who had come for dinner. Now there were none in the house. The Jesuits proceeded to use the large vase for flowers in the high-school chapel, and kept it filled with water. The bottom eventually fell out. You don't put water in them - they're decorative. They had all been made by one woman - Maria Martinez. As I said, my father had a good eye. He had purchased them for a song - well, they couldn't have cost much, Bill and Joanne didn't have much. The pots were beautiful, but the collectors and the pottery experts and the museum boys hadn't arrived yet. Today those pots would be worth thousands and thousands of dollars. None of this would have mattered to my mother in the slightest, and she would have been taken aback and confused if anyone were to call her "generous to a fault." To Joanne, that would have been pure heresy. How could anyone ever give too much? d
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t The La Fonda Hotel in Santa Fe in the late 1920's f
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d Albuquerque, September, 1948 My brothers Michael (l.) and Mark (r.) and parents Joanne and Bill b
Porter Wagoner, the guy who was noted for the unbelievable sequined cowboy outfits, sings here, on an unusual country album, titled: Out of the Silence Came A Song: The Somber Sound of Porter Wagoner, released on the Legacy Recordings label in '07. (2:19)
