How about we do a newsletter focusing on this week in history …
On May 12, 1963, the young and unknown Bob Dylan walked off the set of “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the country’s highest-rated variety TV show, after network censors rejected the song he planned on performing.
The song that caused the flap was “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues,” a satirical talking-blues number skewering the ultra-conservative John Birch Society and its tendency to see covert members of an international Communist conspiracy behind every tree. Dylan auditioned “John Birch” days earlier and had run through it for Ed Sullivan himself without any concern being raised. But during dress rehearsal on the day of the show, an executive from the CBS Standards and Practices department informed the show’s producers that they could not allow Dylan to go forward singing “John Birch.” While many of the song’s lyrics about hunting down “reds” were merely humorous – others raised the fear of a defamation lawsuit in the minds of CBS’s lawyers. Rather than choose a new number to perform or change his song’s lyrics, Dylan stormed off the set in angry protest.
On May 12, 1907, Katharine Hepburn – who due to her performances in such films as The Philadelphia Story and On Golden Pond, became one of the most celebrated actresses of the 20th century – was born in Hartford, Connecticut.
The daughter of New England intellectuals who stressed rigorous exercise and independent thinking, Hepburn studied at Bryn Mawr College, in Pennsylvania, and went on to become a stage actress. She first gained notice on Broadway in 1932, for her performance in The Warrior’s Husband. After a screen test, Hepburn signed with RKO studios and landed her first role, in A Bill of Divorcement, (1932), starring John Barrymore and directed by George Cukor, who would become Hepburn’s frequent director and one of her closest friends. Critics and fans alike immediately took note of the young actress, with her unconventional beauty and upper-crust New England accent, as a fresh presence on screen.
May 12, 1780 – Americans suffered their worst defeat of the revolution with the unconditional surrender of Major General Benjamin Lincoln to British Lieutenant General Sir Henry Clinton and his army of 10,000 at Charleston, South Carolina.
With the victory, the British captured more than 3,000 Patriots and a great quantity of munitions and equipment, losing only 250 killed and wounded in the process. Confident of British control in the South, Lieutenant General Clinton sailed north to New York after the victory, having learned of an impending French expedition to the British-occupied northern state. He left General Charles Cornwallis in command of 8,300 British forces in the South.
South Carolina was a deeply divided state, and the British presence let loose the full violence of a civil war upon the population. First, the British used Loyalists to pacify the Patriot population; the Patriots returned the violence in kind. The guerrilla warfare strategies employed by Patriots Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter and Nathanael Greene throughout the Carolina campaign of 1780-81 eventually chased the far more numerous British force into Virginia, where they eventually surrendered at Yorktown on October 19, 1781.
On May 13, 1846, the U.S. Congress overwhelmingly voted in favor of President James K. Polk’s request to declare war on Mexico in a dispute over Texas.
Under the threat of war, the United States refrained from annexing Texas after the latter won independence from Mexico in 1836. But in 1844, President John Tyler restarted negotiations with the Republic of Texas, culminating with a Treaty of Annexation. The treaty was defeated by a wide margin in the Senate because it would upset the slave state/free state balance between North and South and risked war with Mexico, which had broken off relations with the United States. But shortly before leaving office and with the support of President-elect Polk, Tyler managed to get the joint resolution passed on March 1, 1845. Texas was admitted to the Union on December 29.
May 13, 1950 – blind soon after birth, Stevland Hardaway Judkins, (who later changed his surname to Morris, making it Stevland Hardaway Morris), was a child prodigy, signed to Motown records in 1961, at age 11 and given the stage name ‘Little Stevie Wonder.’ He gained fame in 1963 with the No. 1 hit “Fingertips – Part 2.”
Wonder went on to focus more on songwriting, penning such hits as “Tears of a Clown” and “Signed Sealed And Delivered I’m Yours” before releasing his ground-breaking album Talking Book in 1972, which featured the single “Superstition” and songs increasingly focused on political and social issues.
In 1973 he was in a car accident which left him in a coma for four days. His 1976 album Songs In The Key Of Life debuted at No. 1, and garnered him his third consecutive Grammy Award for Album of The Year, following Innervisions and Fulfillingness’ First Finale.
Wonder’s success continued into the 1980s, his album Hotter Than July included the single “Happy Birthday,” aimed at promoting Martin Luther King’s Birthday, a national holiday.
Wonder has won more Grammy Awards, (25 plus a Lifetime Achievement Award), than any other solo male artist. He became the youngest living inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989, and was named a United Nations Messenger of Peace in 2009.
Did You Know?Cap Tossing Origin – the tradition of throwing caps began in 1912 at the U.S. Naval Academy. Before that, graduates were issued midshipman hats and required to immediately switch to officer caps; the toss signified they no longer needed the old caps.