Another voice silenced

There was some bad news on TV today.

Linda Ronstadt can't sing anymore. She's announced she has Parkinson's Disease. Seems the disease, which attacks the muscles, including those in one's throat, makes it impossible for the victim to sing. And she is having trouble getting around. Spending some time in a wheelchair.

Ah, well. That sucks.

I first heard of her by way of her first hit record, "Different Drum" (by The Stone Poneys "Featuring Linda Ronstadt" as it says on the label of the original 45 - which I have a copy of somewhere.) Her voice was wasted on the Stone Poneys and she soon went out on her own.

But I don't have to tell you that. You know her as a famous recording artist, Rock and Roll, Country, Pop. Even more.

I don't like her politics, and I didn't like her political rants at her concerts where people paid good money to hear her sing, not preach. But I sure liked her music.

And I will miss it now.

I remember being shocked when I saw her in a TV production of Gilbert and Sullivan's "Pirates of Penzance". Shocked, because I always thought of her as a Rock and Roll singer and Rock and Roll singers don't sing opera. Linda sure did, though. Wow.

Why do I post this info about an American singer of Mexican heritage on my BritishSpeak blog, you ask? And well you might.

Because Mssrs. Gilbert and Sullivan were British. Doncha remember?

Here is Linda as Mable singing Poor Wandering One near the beginning of "Pirates."




Here is a related post I made a long time ago which also links to another "Pirates" clip with Mable and her many sisters, daughters all of the Modern Major General, and the cast, singing a reprise of "Wandering One" which segues into "Go Ye Heroes". So cool.

I love Gilbert and Sullivan, did I tell you? I love Pirates of Penzance. I loved Kevin Kline as the Pirate King. And Angela Lansbury...

Ah well.

Here's the pirates in "With Cat-Like tread" if you'd like to listen to it again. How could you not?

Highwayman's Lair

Hounslow is a London borough. Hounslow Heath is a public open space of about 200 acres. It is all that remains of the original 4000 acres or so that was once open land there.

I was reading that in the olden days, I'm guessing 1600's and 1700's, there was a place there known as Highwayman's Lair. This was, I think, probably not a motel or tourist attraction, but rather something quite different. More "Hole in the Wall Gang" -like, I'd reckon.

Back before the Great War, Heathrow was a ... row... of cottages located on the NW edge of the historic Highwayman's Lair of Hounslow Heath. Just to get your bearings, Highwayman's Lair was located approximately where terminal #3 is today. Or at least Heathrow was. From recent photographs, it appears they have torn down the row of cottages and heaved them handily into the hoary heath hereabouts. If there are residual panhandlers, they may be descendants of the original highwaymen. It could happen! Today I picture them living with their belongings stuffed in plastic bags hogging two rows of seats in the gate waiting areas. Or perhaps not. I don't see why not, though.

As a side note, in case you are tempted to go out there thinking you can catch a flight, this blog's official research scientist, A., whom I trust without question on all matters pertaining to, ummmm, blog research, has advised me that Heathrow has been converted from an airport into a madhouse. So, think "Amsterdam" unless you live in Kansas.

An extra bit of information - a reward for reading this post - that I just read not 10 minutes ago was that apparently Shakespeare named one of his plays after the original Heathrow. At least, the article I read called it a Hamlet. So I assumed. And now you know too.

Well, I don't know much about London, except that one doesn't need to wear a watch downtown, but I assume where Heathrow is now would have been quite far out from the city then. And if it was quite far out from the city THEN, by god it is probably quite far out from the city NOW. There must have been a main road there, though, so the highwaymen could ply their trade, and lucrative enough to have enough money left over to construct a lair. One assumes rather poorer airport security back in the 1600's.

Now, this is just an idle thought, but it seems to me that if there were so many of them that they had their own watering hole, lair, whatever, that this might have been a tip-off to police. This was pre-bobby era but surely they had SOMEthing back then. Or maybe you just had to bring your own guards. Probably the redcoats came out with their Brown Besses later on and maybe cleaned them out from time to time. The highwaymen, I mean, not the Besses. One pictures "nests" in the lair to clean out.

Arrrrr! "Why join the navy when you can be a pirate?" —Steve Jobs.

Which reminds me of one of my favorite Highwayman-Brown Bess-Ghostly Galleon poems, but don't worry, I have no intention of inflicting it upon you right now.

This started out to be a post about how Heathrow got it's name, but that got pretty evident rather early on, and as soon as I started reading about highwaymen, it was so much more interesting than airports that I followed up and found out that there were more lairs about. Like "Peak". Do you know of that? It's a good way for me to learn your geography, too - though little of it is likely to be retained.

Today they say the Peak District is very safe indeed. Right. All the tourist brochures say that. Now, again, I don't know as much of your geography as I should, but there is a dot on the map that looks to be to the north of London. Admittedly, so is Scotland - but I mean just a LITTLE north of London.

Have you ever heard of Baslow and Wigley? Me neither, but somewhere in between the two is a pub called The Highwayman. They say this is on the eastern end of the Peak District, but that is an embarrassment to me as well. I'm not sure what that is all about. Peak of what? How can a district be peaked? Ah, well. I'm counting on Expat Mum to tweak my peak knowledge, but this place may be after her time. I don't mean after her time as in dead, but rather after her time as in it may have been built after she left England. Fled England. Whatever. It won't be a total loss, even so, because she will come and read this post if there is a link in it to her blog. So there's that.

The brochure says there was a Peak Panic. I'm assuming levity. This was back even earlier than I thought, like 1500's and 1600's. So apparently highway robbery is hardly something new in England. My own levity bubbles to the surface here. Well. The mystique is shattered somewhat by them calling that scary road the A619, which, I'm almost sure, it wasn't called that in the 1500's. But it is a long and winding road (are you a Beatle's fan, dear reader?) and the brochure author says the road triggers (conjures up, I'm thinking he means) images of innocent travelers (only he called them travellers) being robbed and then butchered on the highway. And, being who I am, I immediately think that if you are going to butcher them later anyway, why not do it right at the very beginning and then just rob the unresisting bodies? So I'm guess he is telling a TALL one about the butcheries. This is not Scotland-in-famine we are talking about, after all.

Later he called them "innocent civilians" which doesn't make sense unless the brochure writer is a Major General or something. Perhaps he is.

"The roads linking Chesterfield with both Manchester and Derby represented veritable goldmines for the outlaws of yesteryear." Couldn't prove it by me; I am still struggling with Buzlow and Wiggerley... BUT then this ersatz (a SoubyWord) military brochure narrator bastid goes on to say:

"Difficult to believe now, but 300 years or so ago the Peak District resembled the wild west." [Sorry Toni. Definitely NOT after your time.]

Hey! Hey hey hey hey! Unless you are talking about the Pirates of Penzance, let's leave the "wild west" out of this! We've done nothing to deserve comparison to your pussy highwaymen! I was going to try to work in the word "besmirch" here, but the time for it came and went and here I am two sentences later and unable.

So where is this Derby Manchester place anyway? Do they have a football team? If so, is it called The Highwaymen?

Animal House; supermarket cucumber scene; with Otter and Mrs. Dean Wormer; Mrs. Dean Wormer: "Doubtful."

Well, then, maybe Manchester DOES have a soccer team today. If so, it is probably called the 'Coonians. The 'Coonites. The 'Coonsters. Or similar. Oh, Toto, I seem to have wandered off the highwayman highway again.

There is SO much information in the Peak Panic brochure that I could barely read it all. Could barely TRY to read it all. But there was a mention of highwayman punishment called Gibbeting and you KNOW how Max loves your odd-yet-fair punishments! So I am going off now to study this, hoping it was in addition to execution, which most of yours were.

I am tempted to talk about a gang of highwaymen headed by a guy named Pym who ruled them from a stone chair, but if I did I would have to talk about yet another town in the area called Braxton, and, frankly, the story sounded too much like a ripoff of Peter Pan combined with Lord of the Flies, and I am, sincerely and respectfully, your obedient servant, etc. etc. totally confused already. No, "Buxton," I mean. No help there, though.

I am starting to think that dot on the map is a heaphell more north of London that it looks though.

A little Gilbert and Sullivan

Some of you know that one of my major hobbies is collecting music. I collect just about all genres if I like it, and I like a lot.

This post is not really about the lives or professional careers of Gilbert and Sullivan, except to say briefly, for those who may not be familiar with the names, that they wrote words and music for operettas (short, light, operas) and that they were mostly active in the last quarter of the 19th century, in Great Britain.

These men collaborated on 14 comic operas, geared for Victorian audiences. Of these 14, three were more popular than the others: H.M.S. Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, and The Mikado.

Their business was parody. For the most part, their operettas poked fun at the Victorian establishment, the hypocrisy, the incompetence at high levels. Their stuff is fun to watch. It is very witty and it goes by really fast; you can see the same one several times and pick up more and more each time that you didn't get the first time.

My personal favorite Gilbert and Sullivan happens to be The Pirates of Penzance. I won't go into a summary of the "plot" because if you know Gilbert and Sullivan then you already know what it is about. What I want to talk about is a particular performance of Pirates. Bear in mind that if one sings opera, even if that opera is light comedy, one must have the kind of voice that can sing opera. Well, I guess that is obvious.

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Linda Ronstadt is of Hispanic origins through her father, though there was (obviously) a German ancestor somewhere in his family history. His ancestors were wagon makers and came up from Mexico to Arizona way back when. Her mother is of German, Dutch and English heritage. Linda was born in Tucson, Arizona. Her father was a successful machinery merchant.

Linda Ronstadt came onto the music scene in late 1967. The name of the group was The Stone Poneys; the name of the hit song was "Different Drum" and in small print on the record under Stone Poneys were the words, "Featuring Linda Ronstadt." To my knowledge, that was the only record she cut with The Stone Poneys. She has been a single artist since then, though she has appeared on many collaboration albums with other singing stars. Since 1967 she has become an international star in several musical genres, famous enough that you don't need me to tell you who she is. She sings rock and roll and Folk Rock, became a big-time Country singer, and has released albums in Jazz, Latin American (Canciones de mi Padre), Rhythm and Blues, Big Band, Pop, and one more. Well, you know.

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I can't tell you how many theater companies and college drama classes have staged The Pirates of Penzance over the past 130 years, much less how many millions of people have fallen in love with the songs and mouth the words along with the singers, much like the Rocky Horror Picture Show. Except that The Pirates of Penzance was written in 1880.

There really is a town called Penzance in England. It's in Cornwall. I don't think there are any pirates there, though.

In my music collecting, I came accross a video tape of an old TV special of a live production of Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. As I say, I like Pirates, so I watched the tape. A live performance, as I say, but both the male and female leads were rock and country singers, not opera people. That disappointed me, I must say, knowing they were going to screw up one of my favorite operettas.

Linda Ronstadt was cast in the female lead (Mabel, one of the Modern Major General's many daughters.) The Pirate King is sung by Kevin Kline, a comedic actor, but with a great singing voice, and Little Ruthie is sung by Angela Landsbury (Murder, She Wrote), who, of course, has a professionally trained voice as well. The other principal singers and chorus are just dandy. But Linda Ronstadt can't sing opera, right? No way. Well, I watched the TV production of Pirates anyway, and let me be frank: when Linda applied her pipes to Gilbert and Sullivan, she just blew me away!

Go, ye heroes, go to glory,

Though you die in combat gory,

Ye shall live in song and story.

Go to immortality!

Go to death, and go to slaughter;

Die, and every Cornish daughter

With her tears your grave shall water.

Go, ye heroes, go and die!

See if you agree with me that the lass can sing opera too. At least Gilbert and Sullivan. Let me know what you thought. Were you as surprised as I?

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Note: this was posted on BritishSpeak blog because Gilbert and Sullivan were British.