from my sketchbook: j.g. parry-thomas

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I wasn't built for comfort, I was built for speed
J. G. Parry-Thomas was a race car driver who at one time held the Land Speed Record.

On April 27, 1926 at Pendine Sands Beach in Wales, Parry-Thomas took his car to over 170 miles per hour, despite poor conditions and soft, wet sand. The record would stand for almost a year until it was broken by rival driver Malcolm Campbell on the same beach.

Parry-Thomas was anxious to recapture the record and the glory that came with it. His modified car used exposed chains to connect the engine to the drive wheels and the way that the high engine was situated required him to drive with his head tilted to the right. On his attempt at regaining the Land Speed Record, the right-hand drive chain broke at a speed of 170 miles per hour. The chain whipped up and Parry-Thomas was decapitated.

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from my sketchbook: teresa graves

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You're under arrest, Sugar!
The neighbors in Hyde Park knew her as “Tootie”, the devoted daughter who came to take care of her ailing mother. She had the back porch enclosed and turned into a bedroom so she could stay with her mother full time. She was a devout Jevhovah’s Witness and was active in raising awareness of the persecution of fellow Jehovah’s Witness in Malawi. On October 10, 2002, Tootie was asleep in her bedroom when a space heater malfunctioned and burst into flames. Tootie’s mother managed to escape, but emergency workers removed an unconscious Tootie from the home. She died from burns and smoke inhalation. Her neighbors never knew of Tootie’s prior life of fame.

Tootie was Teresa Graves, the iconic star of the 1974 police action series Get Christie Love!  Patterned after 70s blaxploitation films, Get Christie Love!  was very popular, despite only lasting one season. Teresa had worked her way up in show business, first starting as a member of the easy listening group The Doodletown Pipers, then becoming a regular on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In  in its third season. But, it was Get Christie Love!  that made Teresa a household name. She retired from acting in 1983.

When she died in that house fire in 2002, she was just “Tootie” to those closest to her.

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IF: pioneer part 2

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This week’s challenge word on Illustration Friday is “pioneer”. This is my second illustration for this topic. HERE is the first.
Jane! Stop this crazy thing!
John Lautner was an architect and student of Frank Lloyd Wright. He was a pioneer and the originator of “Googie” architecture. “Googie” architecture was a somewhat derogatory term for the futuristic building design popularized in Southern California in the late 1940s into the 1950s. It was named for Lautner’s design for Googie’s Coffee House in Los Angeles.

Lautner designed many residences and commercial properties in Southern California, each unique, but each featuring the same space-age flair. One of the most famous of Lautner’s creations was the Chemosphere, which is situated on the San Fernando Valley side of the Hollywood Hills, just off of Mulholland Drive. It is a one story octagon with around 2200 square feet of living space. Most distinctively, the house is perched atop a concrete pole nearly thirty feet high. This innovative design was Lautner’s solution to a site that, with a slope of 45 degrees, was thought to be practically unbuildable.

The Chemosphere overlooks the original home of Hanna-Barbera Cartoon Studios. It is believed, although unsubstantiated, that The Chemosphere was the model for the Jetsons’ home, as frustrated animators, seeking inspiration for their new cartoon, glanced out the window at the Hollywood Hills.

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IF: pioneer

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This week’s challenge word on the Illustration Friday website is “pioneer”.
O resistless restless race! O beloved race in all! O my breast aches with tender love for all! O I mourn and yet exult, I am rapt with love for all.
Louis Jordan, a pioneer in jazz, blues and rhythm & blues, was the link between big band swing and rock and roll. He was a prolific songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. He was known as “The King of the Jukebox” and was very popular with both black and white audiences in the days of segregation. Jordan fronted his own band for over twenty years. He was as popular as contemporaries Count Basie and Duke Ellington. His comedic flair was a major part of his popularity. This also helped him as a sought-after star of “race” films in the 1940s.

In the 1940s, Jordan released dozens of hit songs, including the swinging “Saturday Night Fish Fry”, “Blue Light Boogie”, the comic classic “Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens”, the multi-million seller “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” and his biggest hit “Caldonia”. “Saturday Night Fish Fry” featured a distorted electric guitar and one of the first uses of the term “rocking”. It also included a rapid-fire narration that was evolutionary basis for today’s rap.  Jordan also popularized the slang term “chick”.

Louis Jordan and his band The Tympany Five dominated the 1940s R&B charts. In this period Jordan scored fifty-four Top Ten recordings, eighteen of them rising to number one. To this day, Louis Jordan ranks as the top black recording artist of all time in terms of the total number of weeks at number one— – an incredible total of 113 weeks. From July 1946 through May 1947, Jordan scored five consecutive number one songs, holding the top slot for 44 consecutive weeks.

Jordan switched his sound to full-on rock & roll in the mid-1950s, but his popularity waned. He seldom recorded at all after the early 1960s. Jordan died in Los Angeles, California, from a heart attack on February 4, 1975.

Louis Jordan was a major, and often cited, influence on rock pioneers Little Richard, Chuck Berry, James Brown and Bill Haley and The Comets. Blues legend B.B. King and British singer Joe Jackson have each recorded tribute albums to Louis Jordan.

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from my sketchbook: michael johnson

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thought you didn't see me, now, did ya?
On September 10, 1995, two men robbed a convenience store in Lorena, Texas. 27 year-old Jeff Wetterman was shot and killed during the robbery. The two men, David Vest and Michael Johnson, each named the other as the gunman. Vest pleaded guilty to aggravated robbery and, in exchange for an eight-year sentence, testified against Johnson. Despite his unrelenting  denials, Johnson was found guilty and sentenced to death by lethal injection.

As per prison policy, guards check every fifteen minutes on inmates facing imminent execution. On October 19, 2006, Johnson spoke briefly with guards at 2:30 AM. When the guards returned for their 2:45 AM check, they discovered Johnson unresponsive and lying in a pool of blood. He had fashioned a metal blade attached to a stick and slit his jugular vein. He had enough time, before he died, to write “I didn’t do it” on his cell wall in his own blood.

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IF: undone

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The current challenge on the Illustration Friday website is “undone”.
It's too late/She's gone too far/She's lost the sun
Lancelot’s evening plans were interrupted when he was faced with the challenge of getting Guinevere’s chastity belt undone.


Hey Everyone! My annual compilation of eclectic Christmas music is now available!
That’s right! 23 songs (and a bonus track) plus a custom color cover in PDF format to print,
all convenietly zipped and ready for FREE DOWNLOAD !
Just click HERE and let the holiday fun begin!

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from my sketchbook: d. boon

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Punk rock changed our lives
D. Boon was the lead singer, guitarist and songwriter of the California punk group The Minutemen. The band was known for their intelligent, yet radical, songs and minimalist approach to music. A typical Minutemen live performance would cram 50 songs into less than 40 minutes. The Minutemen released a series of albums and EPs between 1980 and 1985. Their most notable release was Double Nickels on the Dime, considered to be D. Boon at his best in both songwriting and guitar playing.

On December 22, 1985, Boon was in a van in the Arizona desert near the Californian border on route I-10. He had been sick with fever and decided to lie down in the rear of the van without a seatbelt. Boon’s girlfriend was driving when the rear axle broke and the van ran off the road. Boon was thrown out the back door of the van and died instantly from a broken neck. He was 27 years old.

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Monday Artday: family

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This week’s challenge word on the Monday Artday website is “family”.
catch a wave and you're sitting on top of the world
Years before Joseph Jackson was humiliating his kids into pop stardom, there was Murry Wilson.

As a young man, Murry Wilson desperately longed to be a songwriter. He worked at a Goodyear factory and even suffered the loss of an eye in an industrial accident, all while his songwriting aspirations failed. He had minimal success with a novelty dance song, “Two-Step Side-Step”, which was featured on Lawrence Welk’s radio program. Some of Murry’s songs were recorded in the early 1950s by doo-wop group The Hollywood Flames, a band with no hits and little popularity outside of Los Angeles. Murry’s success was very short-lived.

With his musical career at a halt, Murry started a machining business, but maintained an active interest in music. He encouraged his sons, Carl, Dennis and Brian, to learn to sing and play instruments. The Wilson boys, along with their cousin Mike Love and a friend Al Jardine, formed the Beach Boys in 1961. Murry appointed himself their business manager, co-producer, and publisher. He devoted himself to music full-time, producing and managing several other groups in addition to the Beach Boys.

Murry was a domineering and manipulative man and a tough negotiator on behalf of the Beach Boys, earning them a contract with Capitol Records. However, Murry took an active, though sometimes unwanted, role in molding the sound of the Beach Boys. He obsessed and often viciously fought with son Brian, who was now emerging as the creative force of the group. Murry was abusive, condescending and violent in his outbursts. He allegedly whacked Brian in the head with a 2 x 4, causing a loss of hearing. In the studio control booth, Murry would tinker endlessly with knobs and switches, much to Brian’s chagrin. Brian eventually bought a fake mixing board for Murry and placed it in the studio. Murry happily fiddled with it, although it wasn’t plugged into any real equipment. Finally fed up with the constant interference and second-guessing, Brian relieved Murry of his management responsibilities in 1964, after a forty minute tirade by Murry on how Al should properly sing “Help Me Rhonda”. Murry’s rant climaxed with him yelling “I’m a genius, too!” as a reminder to Brian.

In 1969, Murry sold their publishing company, Sea of Tunes, against the groups’ wishes, for a fraction of what it proved to be worth in later years. Brian claimed that his signature was forged by Murry on several related business documents, making the sale illegal. Mike Love claimed later that Murry purposely left his name off the credits for many songs to avoid paying royalties.

Even after the Beach Boys ended their formal business relationship with Murry, he continued to take an active interest in their career, and continued to give them both solicited and unsolicited advice until he died at age 55 from a heart attack.

there's a world where I can go and tell my secrets to
This monument, located at 3701 W. 119th Street in Hawthorne, California, stands on the site of the Wilson home, which was demolished in the mid-1980s during construction of the Century Freeway.

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from my sketchbook: frederick fleet

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husbands and wives and little children lost their lives/it was sad when the great ship went down
“Iceberg right ahead!”

Those famous words were spoken by lookout Frederick Fleet aboard the the RMS Titanic  on April 14, 1912. Just after seven bells, Fleet saw a black mass in the ocean ahead. He immediately struck three bells and telephoned the bridge. His report received the standard “Thank you” reply. While still on the telephone, the ship started swinging to port. The starboard side of the ship scraped alongside the iceberg and ice fell on the decks.

As instructed in such emergency, Fleet began his second duty as lifeboat operator. He assisted in loading some 28 women and children and the boat was lowered to the water. In the morning, his lifeboat was picked up by the Carpathia.

In the aftermath of the Titanic  disaster, Fleet served briefly as seaman on another ocean liner. Later, Fleet sailed with various companies, finishing with the sea in 1936. He  worked as a shipbuilder, and as he grew older, he sold newspapers on a street corner in Southampton, England.

A few days after Christmas 1964, Fleet’s wife died. Filled with a lifetime of guilt from his survival and now distraught over wife’s death, Fleet hanged himself in January 1965. He was the last victim of the Titanic.

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