Before blogging, there were proto-bloggers, and I have encountered another example: Rose Kennedy.

I have commemorated proto-bloggers before. For example, something John Keats did in 1816. And, in the first year of my own blogging, I told you about my grandfather, Pop. And though I can’t find where I've blogged about it, there's something I myself used to do in the 1990s. I'd read the paper NYT at the dining table in the morning and if I found something distinctly interesting, I'd tear it out and put it on the other side of the table, where my sons would see it when they eventually came into the room.

Anyway, the proto-blogger I discovered today was Rose Kennedy. As a consequence of reading that Rebecca Traister article about RFK Jr. — blogged here — I started reading his book "American Values/Lessons I Learned from My Family." 

Here's what I consider to be like blogging:

"At the point of 'Pump It Up,' he obviously had been listening to Springsteen too much. But he also had a heavy dose of 'Subterranean Homesick Blues.'"

"'Pump It Up' is a quasi-stop-time tune with powerful rhetoric, and with all this, Elvis [Costello] exuded nothing but high-level belligerence.... With tender hooks and dirty looks, heaven-sent propaganda and slander that you wouldn’t understand. Torture her and talk to her, bought for her, temperature, was a rhyming scheme long before Biggie Smalls or Jay Z. Submission and transmission, pressure pin and other sin, just rattled through this song. It’s relentless, as all of his songs from this period are. Trouble is, he exhausted people. Too much in his songs for anybody to actually land on. Too many thoughts, way too wordy. Too many ideas that just bang up against themselves. Here, however, it’s all compacted into one long song."

Writes Bob Dylan in "The Philosophy of Modern Song" (published today).

Here's the song — with a very cool video (I want to stand on my feet like that):

 

I was listening to the audiobook as I went on my sunrise run, and as soon as I heard the title of the song Bob was about to discuss, I called on Siri to play it for me. Listening, I thought, this is so much like "Subterranean Homesick Blues" — if Bob praises it, is he praising himself?

This is new, not old: Dion sings "Song for Sam Cooke (Here in America)."

Notice the "quoting" of "Chain Gang" and the harmony sung by Paul Simon. Dion — who is 80 years old — says it's "an old song," but it's a new recording, part of a new album, "Blues with Friends" — which has also features Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Gibbons and Jeff Beck. And the liner notes were written by the Nobel laureate, Bob Dylan.

About "Song for Sam Cooke":

“At first, I just had the melody and the refrain ‘Here in America.’ A friend suggested I use an episode from my memoir about walking southern streets with Sam Cooke in 1962. It’s a good story, a true story. We were in the South together. And he stood up for me. He was a good guy. I miss him.”

He finished the song, he said, but put it aside, thinking it was too personal for other people to get. He put it in his drawer, where it remained, unsung and unrecorded, for years.

“Then in 2019,’ Dion said, “I saw the movie Green Book and after that, I couldn’t shake the song. I thought, 'Hey, they almost wrote a movie about my song.’ I loved the movie so much that I thought I’d better take that song out to see it if works. And it did. It actually did.”

I've loved Dion since 1961, when "Runaround Sue" was a hit. And — as I told you back in 2006 — "I saw him in a small club here in Madison in 1990, and I can honestly say it was the most enjoyable concert I've seen in my whole life."

"I always felt it is a high honor to be associated with the name of Christ ~ this classic iconic man who lived and died for the poor, the hungry and the broken."

Writes Dion, commenting on this video of "Center of My Life" ("I'll tell you a story about my lord Jesus/He is the only one... Through the years and all the changes/You've been my friend/Never a stranger..."



I ran across that after I played "Teen Angel" (for this post) and YouTube thought I'd want to watch this video of Dion singing "Runaround Sue"...



... which I enjoyed so much — I love the audience reaction to the music! — that I clicked through to see other videos on Dion's playlist and found "Center of My Life." I love Dion (and have since the days when "Runaround Sue" was #1 on the record charts, and I saw him do a great show here in Madison around 1990 (really, the most enjoyable show ever)), but I didn't know about his Christian period.

By the way, Sue — according to that song — ran around "with every single guy in town." Every single guy! Not until today did I take that literally and try to picture the effort and the insanity of getting together with every single guy. Even in a small town...

"The Wanderer..."

"... sings the blues."

"Dion, every time I see him — every time I see him, I get so tired of it—the first words out of his mouth are..."

"'If it wasn’t for you, there’d be no ‘Runaround Sue.'"

Said Gary U.S. Bonds.

"I could dance all f***ing day."

This is a nice trend. Young people finding very old grandmas adorable.

"Why must I love you so much? Sandy, I long for your touch..."

"I thought I saw him walkin' up over the hill, with..."

I'm listening to the old Dion song this morning:

No, it's not because I'm trying to come up with a verse about Teddy Kennedy... or that I picture him — accompanied by angel-harp music — walking into Heaven with various beloved dead political heroes. (Get a grip, people, Teddy lived to a ripe old age and died in the normal course of things, which is the best any of us can hope for. He was not cut down in his prime like Abraham, Martin, John, and Bobby.) It's because I need to pull this comment just buried under the "Third Man" post and elevate it to the heaven of today's front page. It's a comment about lost commenters — a song parody. And please, write new verses for that song. The collection of beloved old commenters who have wandered off is longer than Trooper, Titus, and Palladian. And they haven't died. I'm picturing them not in Heaven, but drinking and talking late into the night in some bar over on Atlantic Avenue.

"I don't sing black, I don't sing white, I sing Bronx."

Have you ever thought about how great Dion is? He is a brilliant singer, and a completely warm performer, whose patter between songs is as entertaining as a good stand-up comedian's. I saw him in a small club here in Madison in 1990, and I can honestly say it was the most enjoyable concert I've seen in my whole life. I just loved him. He sang his old songs -- even, just to make us happy, "Teenager in Love" -- though he had a new album out, "Yo, Frankie." (A terrific album.) I remember him talking about how "The Wanderer" wasn't really what he was like. It was just an attempt to do a follow up to "Runaround Sue," a male version of the female character who meant a lot to him. He married Sue, he said, and was still married.

Now, he's made a CD of blues songs:

Dion said that despite being urged at various times by Bonnie Raitt, Van Morrison and Steven Van Zandt to make an album of blues, he never seriously considered it until a record producer, Richard Gottehrer, heard him talking about his early influences and performing examples on the National Public Radio program "Fresh Air," and suggested a session on his Dimensional Music Recordings label. And it wasn't until Dion actually began working on the record that he realized how these songs had been "the undercurrent of everything."

"You can't hear me thinking on this record," he said with a laugh. "I guess when you're an adult, things don't affect you like they do when you're 13 and vulnerable, and I didn't realize how much Hank Williams and Jimmy Reed were a part of me. It's all the music that kept me honest through the years. You can learn how to sing rock 'n' roll, but I don't know if you can learn how to sing blues because you have to sing without an agenda to capture it. It's so beautiful; you can express anything. I think it fell out of the sky."

Well, beautiful. A beautiful guy with a beautiful voice.

The new CD is "Bronx in Blue":