Update: Since it's Sunday night, it's slowed down a bit. We're still at 3/4 of the way to our goal and the deadline is getting uncomfortably close (Tuesday). I can't thank those of you enough who have donated, and donated whatever you could. You have made a huge difference. But we're not quite there yet and there's still a little ways left to go before we can breathe again. It's a nail-biter, I will admit. But I have faith we'll get through this crisis, and come out the other end. If you haven't made a donation yet, please consider whatever amount you can afford. I know these are tough times - this Fundraiser is proof of that right now. I need your help. We're slowly getting through this and you're making a huge difference. Thank you all for your help so far - I could not have come this far without you.

If you've just discovered Newstalgia for the first time (and you're scrolling through the 3,000+ posts since we got started in 2009), you'll notice the weekends are mostly made up of music; a lot of different kind of music. The weekends at Newstalgia are usually reserved for Popular Culture and flat-out Culture. Live rock concerts from the 1960's all the way to last week. Jazz Concerts (like this one) and a thing called Weekend Gramophone, which originally stared out as a place to play Classical 78's, but which has wound up in recent months as a sort of showcase for early radio broadcasts of some rare and seldom heard performances from the world of Classical music. The weekends at Newstalgia are rather eclectic and it sort of works that way.

Tonight it's a live concert, broadcast by NET (the forerunner to PBS) on July 5, 1970 featuring Jazz-Blues singer Joe Williams in one of his typically great concerts, but this time for a TV audience.

It's the audio-only portion of the concert that we're playing today. And if you've never heard Joe Williams before, or only casually heard about him in connection with Count Basie, now's your chance to hear why he was such a popular singer, among not only the audience, but with other singers.

Sadly, TV ran on a strict time schedule and the half hour program came to an abrupt end, just as Williams was getting ready to wrap up and truly wonderful set. So it fades out at the end.

Still, a great concert by one of the legendary figures of the Jazz-Blues contingent.

Enjoy.

We still have a ways to go, but I am forever indebted and thankful to the people who have donated so far. My deepest thanks to the readers who have told their friends about Newstalgia. We're still at 25% of our goal and we don't have that much time left. Newstalgia is facing extinction and the archive is facing destruction. I have to save both. You can help. Any amount you care spare to donate in order to keep the archive and keep Newstalgia will be gratefully appreciated. We need to raise $5,000.00. We can do it. We're on our way now. We're not there yet, but we can if you help.

Forty-two years ago to the day, the first Earth Day got off the ground. Ironically, last year on this day we were getting news on the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, unfolding and creating probably one of the worst environmental disasters in that region. So maybe we were preoccupied and cynical on that particular day. On this particular Earth Day it may seem more cynical and loaded with lip-service than it has before and even acknowledgment of the day seems not to be coming from mainstream media aside from scant mention of it.

But on the first Earth Day there was promise and there was commitment and people were involved. NBC's Today Show devoted an entire week to the cause of the environment (back when the Today Show had something of a conscience going for it).

Hugh Downs (host – Today Show): “We’re exploring the grassroots sentiment of the Ecology Movement today and concerning ourselves with the social implications in the struggle to cleanse and to save our environment.”

As the years have gone by, and we're further and further away from the first Earth Day, the original vision and intent seems to have gotten lost, smeared, ignored and belittled by those elements portraying the Environmental movement as overrun with agenda-grinders and lunatics. It has lately been demonized as some extreme left-wing conspiracy by some, even though one of the original founders of the movement was a Republican (Pete McCloskey R-CA.).

That part seems to be missing along with the original message.

In case you forgot, here is what it sounded like on April 22, 1970, excerpted from that first hour of the Today Show.

Sadly, the name Lurlean Hunter has been overlooked lately, as an entry in the vast catalog of Jazz singers from the 1940's to today.

Hunter, born in Mississippi, raised in Chicago and migrating to New York where she landed a contract with RCA in the early 1950's and turned in four highly regarded albums for the RCA and subsidiary VIK labels.

Publicized primarily as a "torch singer", Hunter had a very good following on the club and lounge circuit throughout the 1950's and early 1960's.

But as tastes and venues changed, and as the vagaries of the music business did what they usually do, Hunter slowly faded from public view. Surfacing only occasionally, such as this guest spot on the Pre-PBS, NET-TV program Jazz Alley, broadcast on June 4, 1970.

A wonderful singer performing to a very appreciative audience, Lurlean Hunter certainly deserves some re-evaluation. At least some serious re-discovery of a memorable back catalog.

In the meantime though, here she is in a live setting.

Technical note: the transmitter for this broadcast got a little crazy about two minutes into the first song and it gets noisy for about 20 seconds. It goes away and the rest of the broadcast sounds fine. Worry not.

Dig, you must.

If you haven't seen this post before (it was posted on this day last year and this day the year before that), it's a reminder that protesting a wrong your government is doing is legal - it is part of our democracy. And when 100,000 people do it, as they did on this day in 1970, it sends a message.

As an outgrowth to the violence that met the anti-War protests at Kent and Jackson State Universities only a few days earlier, a mass demonstration and protest to the Vietnam War and our incursion into Cambodia on April 30th was organized and a march on Washington was held on May 9th.

It was the biggest demonstration of its kind, and the most peaceful. This was the demonstration made somewhat famous by the presence of President Nixon, walking through the crowd unannounced and without Secret Service in the middle of the night, talking with protesters.

News reports remarked Nixon thought the exchange with the demonstrators was "interesting". At a time when the word "interesting" could either mean enthusiasm, revulsion or the Chinese Curse - it was hard to pin down exactly what Nixon meant. But suffice to say, this demonstration brought mass opposition to the Vietnam War very much to the forefront.

Here is a special broadcast as presented by NBC News on May 9,1970.

As names and titles and ideologies become blurred and distorted in recent years, the old adage that if you repeat a lie over and over enough times it winds up becoming fact certainly rings true where the subject of Socialism pops up. The tendency of our media and our friends on the right wing side of the spectrum to paint Liberals with the same brush as Socialists is one of those stereotypes that just ain't so.

From the same batch of interviews that gave us Saul Alinsky earlier this week, I also ran across an interview recorded two weeks later, also for Harper's Magazine and their weekly radio program At Issue, with Michael Harrington. A name not mentioned much these days, Michael Harrington was an American Socialist, political activist and Political Science Professor who was also founder of the Democratic Socialists Of America. A writer of several books, the most popular being The Other America: Poverty In The United States which came out in 1962. Since his death in 1989 he's been largely overlooked and mostly forgotten where discussions of political ideology are concerned. Too bad. Perhaps Harrington isn't as catchy a name as Alinsky.

In this interview he talks about the differences between Liberalism and Socialism:

Michael Harrington: “The Liberal is convinced that working within the structure of a Capitalist society, no matter how modified, still a Capitalist society; an ameliorated, reformist welfare-state Capitalist society. But a society in which wealth is systematically maldistributed. That working within the framework of such a society it’s possible to achieve a just social order through reform without attacking the basic fundamentals of the society, the structure of the society. I believe, and Socialists believe, that as long as you have that fundamental structure of inequality, every reform is going to be eviscerated or subverted. For example; although most people don’t know it, the money spent on public housing in the United States is about half the value of one tax deduction for the homebuilding, middle-class and rich. In 1962 we spent about $865 million on Public housing and that tax deduction for the one-fifth top income recipients in this country was worth a $Billion and a Half. Or let me take an example from Europe which is sited in my article in the current issue of Harper’s: In Europe, when industry was nationalized, the main recipient of benefit from that nationalization, and I’m in favor of it, but the main recipient of benefits from it was private industry.”

An insightful interview with more than the average number of eerie prophecies, particularly since the interview was conducted in February 1970.

More essential listening.

The name Saul Alinsky rings few or no bells with most people these days, aside from near constant references by the likes of Gingrich and Beck to paint him as the personification of evil. As a figure in the social movements going back to the 1930's he was well known as probably one of the cornerstone figures in community organizing, whose ideas became the foundation for much of the 60's social movements in civil rights and protest to the Vietnam War. Affiliated with no political organizations and not having much use for mainstream political leaders, Alinsky sought to give power to people who had no power. He once said that Machiavelli's book The Prince was written as a blueprint for the Haves to hold on to power, while Alinsky wrote Rules For Radicals as a blueprint for the Have-nots on how to take it away.

At the time of this interview, in February 1970 for Harper's Magazine and their weekly radio program At Issue, Alinsky is interviewed on the occasion of the reissue of his 1946 book Reveille For Radicals and discusses where the radical movement has gone and where it's going.

So now you know when someone asks you who Saul Alinsky is.

That's why we're here.

The '70s were interesting times (interesting in the Chinese curse sense). We had Inflation, Stagflation, Whip Inflation Now and host of other economic maladies in between.

In 1970, NBC Radio as part of their Second Sunday Documentary series, ran this episode called Inflation: The Economic Plague from March 3, 1970. On hand were a host of pundits, including Milton Friedman and the Chicago School of Economics, which loomed large during the Nixon years and every sign that things weren't getting any better or planning on getting better any time soon.

And 41 years later, it's still about the economy.

Editors Note: A Repost from October 2010 with added relevance.

When Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser died suddenly at 52 on September 28, 1970 it cast doubt on what the future of the Middle East was going to be. For a long time, Nasser was considered by many to be the glue that held the otherwise volatile region together. He was widely admired and respected throughout the Middle East and many speculated who would be taking his place, once the 40 day period of mourning was over.

On the day of his death, NBC Radio ran a special program regarding his place in the world, with tributes and speculations coming in from various capitols around the region.

Nasser's vice-President Anwar Sadat took over and a new page in history began.

When Nixon decided to invade Cambodia in May of 1970, even the most ardent supporters of the White House position on the war were taken aback. The wave of protests (culminating in the shootings at Kent State and Jackson State) and general condemnation of such an action stunned even our allies throughout the world.

So when Under Secretary of State Elliot Richardson was sent out to the Sunday talk shows, carrying what was essentially the White House Kool-aid, he was met with withering cross-examination by the Press.

When asked if there really was any support anywhere in the world for this operation, Richardson blurted out a fascinating list of supporters:

Elliot Richardson: “There’s been a public expression of support, for example, by Prime Minister Sato of Japan, President Marcos of The Philippines, who has written the President in support of the position. The Southeast Asian countries in general communicated support to us. The government of The Netherlands, among others in Europe. And in general, they are . . .simply anxious to be certain that the course we followed does have the results predicted for it and that we do follow through on the basis of withdrawal of U.S. forces from the Cambodian occupied areas within the timetable that the President announced.”

When asked, pointedly, if any NATO allies had actually approved of the action, Richardson muttered The Netherlands "kind of" did. But in the end - no, no one from NATO thought it was a good idea at all. Richardson was shuffled out of the State Department less than two months later.

Such was life in the Nixon White House.

(Justice Warren Burger - replaced Earl Warren and then some)

Going back to the Nixon Years today with what was hoped to be a yearly event, but never quite accomplished, a State Of the Judiciary address delivered by Chief Justice Warren Burger in 1970.

Burger was a Nixon appointment, after the failed attempt at appointing Abe Fortas to the position during Lyndon Johnson's last months in office. Fortas was the object of a filibuster by Republicans and Warren stayed on until Nixon came to office.

Burger received a decidedly mixed review of his time as Chief Justice. He was instrumental in delivering many of the decisions regarding Nixon and Watergate, but he was also largely instrumental for the trend in deregulation from which we are suffering under today.

In his State of The Judiciary, he decried the lack of funding for the Court and how the Judiciary has changed considerably since the beginning of the 20th century.

Chief Justice Warren Burger: “The Federal courts need, and they need it immediately, a court executive or administrator for each of the eleven circuits and for every busy trial court. We need them to serve as the traffic managers and a sense as have hospitals used Administrators for the past forty years to relieve doctors and nurses of Management duties. We are almost a half century behind the Medical profession. In our basic principles it is indeed important that we maintain our links with the past and build carefully upon those foundations because they are the result of thousands of years of human experience in the evolution of the law. There is great value in stability, predictability and continuity. But the procedures and the methods of the law ought to respond more swiftly. Hospitals, doctors, farmers and businessmen have changed their methods and we must change ours and bring them up to date.”

Ironic that he cites the Medical Profession as a model of efficient advancement, since it was his decision to relax the regulations on Physician Owned Hospitals. And we all know where that headed.

At the end of the address, George Herman of CBS News hosts a round table discussion/assessment of Burger from Senator Sam Ervin, former Attorney General Ramsay Clark and Ernest Friesen. Sam Ervin, as you'll remember, achieved prominence if not pop-star status as Head of the Watergate Hearings in 1973.