Who?<\/p>\n
Every day my father used to wake up my mother saying “Muggs, guess who died!”<\/p>\n
Well, not every day, but often enough that it became a regular joke in our family. My father read the obituaries assiduously, after all, he grew up in Bridgeport and he knew most of the names.<\/p>\n
Not anymore. Today you can die and most people are unaware. Oh, you can purchase an obit in the paper…then again, who reads the paper? No, at this point very few purchase obituaries, but the papers publish their own words for significant people. And it’s interesting who makes the cut, who they choose.<\/p>\n
Of course Dolly Parton gets reams. To tell you the truth, I don’t remember this much passion and furor about anybody dying since Elvis. (Of course, except for John Lennon, who is in his own category, I’m still not over that.)<\/p>\n
So Dave Marsh earned an obituary. But more well-known people do not. Seems the more idiosyncratic your success was, the more impact you had in a certain field, however narrow, the greater the odds you’ll be featured. Just being rich is not enough. Although if you reach a certain amount of fame, you’ll get some words.<\/p>\n
But the thing about obits is they come after you die. So you can’t bask in the admiration. It’s kind of like that “Curb Your Enthusiasm” episode with Albert Brooks watching his own funeral. That’s what you want, to hear the accolades before you pass.<\/p>\n
And the funny thing is obits are not always consistent. Like with Jaye P. Morgan. The “Los Angeles Times” said this:<\/p>\n
“Morgan was class treasurer of her California high school, and her peers nicknamed her J.P. after the 19th century financier J.P. Morgan. She later feminized it by changing the initial J to Jaye.”<\/p>\n
The “New York Times” this:<\/p>\n
“‘My name was Mary Morgan, and at the time there were a lot of singers with the last name “Morgan,”‘ she said. (Their ranks included\u00a0Jane Morgan\u00a0and Marion Morgan.) It was Mr. DeVol who came up with Jaye P., a play on the name of the Gilded Age financier J.P. Morgan.”<\/p>\n
What is the truth? I tend to trust the “New York Times,” its obits are usually more in-depth, but when it comes to entertainment figures, the “Los Angeles Times” is occasionally superior.<\/p>\n
Which raises the question whether Barrett Strong, singer of the song, was one of the composers of “Money (That’s What I Want),” the first hit Motown single, albeit on Tamla. <\/p>\n
Here’s what Wikipedia says:<\/p>\n
“Singer Barrett Strong claimed that he co-wrote the song with Berry Gordy and\u00a0Janie Bradford. His name was removed from the copyright registration three years after the song was written, restored in 1987 when the copyright was renewed, and then excised again the following year. Gordy has stated that Strong’s name was only included because of a clerical error.”<\/p>\n
(Wikipedia was determined to be almost as accurate as the Brittanica…)<\/p>\n
So that’s who Janie Bradford is\/was. She co-wrote “Money.” You know, that song that every garage band played back in the sixties, never mind the new wave version by the Flying Lizards in 1979.<\/p>\n
Of course the Beatles covered it. Was that our inspiration? “Money” just seemed to be a song in the air, the kind that was always there, the concept of someone actually writing it seemed if not unfathomable, at least superfluous. It was bigger than its composers.<\/p>\n
Now depending on which obit you read, Janie Bradford either got a gig as a receptionist at Motown and worked her way into becoming a songwriter or Gordy Berry was introduced to her by Jackie Wilson as a songwriter and she was regarded as such from the very beginning.<\/p>\n
Does it matter?<\/p>\n
Yes, only because the story is so unique. For all the stories of Carole King and Cynthia Weil, the truth is successful woman songwriters were a rarity, especially in the Black soul music world. Hell, we’ve heard about Holland\/Dozier\/Holland and Smokey Robinson, as for Ashford & Simpson, their first hit didn’t come until 1966, with Ray Charles’s version of “Let’s Go Get Stoned.” But “Money” was released in 1959.<\/p>\n
Now anybody can get a credit once. Maybe you were just in the room. But to do it twice?<\/p>\n
We all know “Money.”<\/p>\n
But we also know “Too Busy Thinking About My Baby.” <\/p>\n
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Who? Every day my father used to wake up my mother saying “Muggs, guess who died!” Well, not every day, but often enough that it became a regular joke in our family. My father read the obituaries assiduously, after all, he grew up in Bridgeport and he knew most of the names. Not anymore. Today […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-69h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23639"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23640,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23639\/revisions\/23640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}