Joe Meek was a pioneering record producer and songwriter acknowledged as one of the world’s first and most imaginative independent producers. His service in the Royal Air Force as a radar operator spurred a life-long interest in electronics and outer space. His most famous work was The Tornados’ 1962 hit “Telstar”, which became the first record by a British group to hit number 1 in the United States.
Meek’s other notable hit productions include “Don’t You Rock Me Daddy-O” and “Cumberland Gap” by Lonnie Donegan, “Have I the Right?” by The Honeycombs and “Tribute to Buddy Holly” by Mike Berry. Meek’s concept album I Hear a New World is regarded as a watershed in modern music for its innovative use of electronic sounds.
Meek was an intense and obsessive perfectionist. He manipulated recordings of instruments, including reversed, sped-up and slowed-down playbacks, to achieve the sound he was looking for. He was the innovator of a great deal of recording techniques that are today’s standards.
As with many musical geniuses, he was very eccentric. Meek was obsessed with the occult and communicating with the dead. He would set up tape machines in graveyards in a vain attempt to record voices from beyond the grave. In one instance, he captured the meows of a cat he claimed was speaking in human tones. He also had an obsession with Buddy Holly, claiming the late rocker had communicated with him in dreams.
His professional efforts were often hindered by his paranoia. Meek was convinced that competitor Decca Records would put hidden microphones behind his wallpaper in order to steal his ideas. He was prone to attacks of rage and depression, due in part to his drug use. Eventually, the hits had dried up and as Meek’s financial position became increasingly desperate, his depression deepened.
On the eighth anniversary of Buddy Holly’s death, Meek killed his landlady with a shotgun then turned the gun on himself.
The Honeycombs perform “Have I The Right” in the film Pop Gear.
The Tornados’ original version of Joe Meek’s “Telstar”.
Spotted by a Warner Brothers talent scout while acting in a local Pasadena play, 27 year-old Byron Barr was off to Hollywood. After two years of bit parts, he starred opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Geraldine Fitzgerald in The Gay Sisters in 1942. He played a character named “Gig Young”. He and the studio liked the name and Byron was renamed Gig Young. He appeared in numerous supporting roles throughout the 40s, leading to two Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations in the 1950s — playing an alcoholic in 1951’s Come Fill the Cup and an intellectual drinker in 1958’s Teacher’s Pet.
Life imitated art. Young was an incorrigible and sometimes out-of-control drunk. He was married five times including a stormy six years to Elizabeth Montgomery. His marriage to Montgomery ended amid rumors of domestic violence. Nine months after his divorce from Montgomery, he married fourth wife Elaine Williams. Williams gave birth to Young’s only child, a daughter Jennifer, in 1964. Young proclaimed this a miracle, as he had undergone a vasectomy at age 25. However, after his divorce from Williams, Young publicly denied Jennifer as being his biological child.
In 1969, Young portrayed seedy dancehall host Rocky in Sidney Pollack’s They Shoot Horses, Don’t They? The character of Rocky was an acting tour-de-force for Young and netted him an Oscar, his life-long dream. Unfortunately, that win, coupled with his growing alcoholism, was the beginning of the end of Young’s career. He was fired from the role of the Waco Kid in Blazing Saddles because his excessive drinking caused him to suffer delirium tremens on the set. He lost the role of the voice of Charlie Townsend in Charlie’s Angels because he was too drunk to record dialogue. In the 1976 television film Sherlock Holmes in New York, Young’s drinking problem is visible on screen, as he steps on the cues of other actors in trying to get his lines out and appears to be in a fog.
In 1978, Young met script supervisor Kim Schmidt on the set of his final film, Game of Death with Bruce Lee. The two were married, although Schmidt was thirty years Young’s junior. Three weeks after their marriage, the couple was found dead in their Manhattan apartment. Young had shot Schmidt and then turned the gun on himself. Police found Young’s Oscar beside the bodies. It was later discovered that Young had been receiving experimental LSD from the controversial psychologist Dr. Eugene Landy, who was later professionally decertified for his controlling treatment of Beach Boy Brian Wilson.
Young’s will left his Academy Award to his agent, Martin Baum. Young left ten dollars to his daughter Jennifer.
Viacom cable network TV Land added The Beverly Hillbillies to their line-up of classic television shows. I started watching. I have come to appreciate the social commentary that The Beverly Hillbillies presented. The contrast between the backwoods country ways of the Clampett clan versus the modern hippie culture of the 1960s is priceless. The upscale snobs of Beverly Hills play as the perfect foils against the Clampetts’ genial modesty. The characters were unusual compared to other sitcoms of the time. There was patriarch Jed, who remained a humble mountain man despite having become a millionaire. There was Jed’s mother-in-law, the feisty shotgun-wielding Granny, who did the cooking for the family and was a self-proclaimed doctor. Rounding out the family was Jed’s daughter, the obliviously hot Elly May, who cared more about her “critters” than about the men who were throwing themselves at her and the hunky idiot Jethro, Jed’s nephew. The Clampetts lived in a huge, furnished mansion purchased for them (with their money) by their banker/investment adviser/kiss-ass Milburn Drysdale.
I understand that The Beverly Hillbillies was not Shakespeare, but it truly worked on a different level that I originally realized. Plus, the show featured famous guests, like Louis Nye, Mel Blanc, Soupy Sales, Paul Winchell, Rob Reiner and Sharon Tate in early career roles.
On the day after Thanksgiving, I was watching an episode of The Beverly Hillbillies that first aired in 1963. It featured the Clampetts preparing for a traditional Thanksgiving feast, including a live turkey that Jed needs to behead, but Elly has taken as a pet. Jethro and Jed are preparing the “fancy eatin’ table” for the evening’s dinner guests. Jethro explains to Jed that someone told him that the “fancy eatin’ table” is called a “billy-yard (billiard) table” and the room is called a “billy-yard room”. The naive Jethro then gestures towards a mounted rhinoceros head hanging on the wall. “That there must be a ‘billy-yard’”, he says. Jed and Jethro make plans to one day hunt for “billy-yards” and confirm that a sturdy table like this is needed to hold such a large animal.
