Answered and Unanswered Questions

I Should Have Known Better
Many posts back I acknowledged a DeeJay from Shreveport, Lawsbanana, radio station KWKH who called himself the Groovie Boy and who I as a very young kid loved and who introduced me to black music, he and the cat that announced the Stan's Record Review Show on the same station late at night. In one post, I called the Groovie Boy a black man. I just got a comment from Groovie's son. Groovie's real name was Ray Barlett.

got an education listening to disk jockey Ray Barlett who played hillbilly boogie records under his own name and rhythm & blues disks under the name Groovy Boy.

That explains it then: I as a kid didn't know the Groovie Boy was an Amos & Andy character-voice for Ray Barlett, who, yes, I do remember as a hillbilly DeeJay, and I remember he had Webb Pierce and Red Sovine on his show all the time.

Thanks, Ray Barlett, Jr., for correcting me. Your dad was an important character in my life regardless of how we now view what he was doing. I thought he was black; he scammed a little white boy way out in the prairielands of West Texas who learned the blues off the big stations like KWKH and WLAC in Nashville and KNOK in Fort Worth. Later in life, my brother made a recording for Paula Records, which was a label owned by Stan of Stan's Record Shop in Shreveport (I'm going out on another limb here now--Ray Jr. correct me again if I'm wrong, but I think Stan originally was a New Yorker. That's pretty easy to double-check; but anyway, Stan had Paula Records and he also had a label called Jewel that produced some very original blues recording sessions with especially the late great Buster Benton, the Chicago bluesman who at the end of his career lost both his legs in a way we hear about but never believe can happen--in cutting off one of Buster's legs due to diabetes, they cut off the wrong leg--Buster lost both his legs--and though he kept on playing--he didn't last long after that.

Ray Jr. tells me his father survived to be 90 (blogspot.com seems to not be publishing my comments--I don't see your comment coming up on the post--oh well, who needs comments anyway?), dying just recently. I raise a piece of syrup-sopped toast in Ray Barlett, Sr's honor--it's sorghum syrup, too, right out of those Lawsbanana canebreaks.

Now Tell Me
Did anyone else out in cyberspace wake up this morning and all your computerized clocks were an hour ahead? Am I involved in some kind of spirit-goings-on here? I do live in a building over 160 years old. If there are ghosts, there's gotta be some lost souls wandering the dank stairwells of this even danker building, but why change all my computer clocks? Does this ghost know some time-forward software or something, or was this ghost simply playing an April Fool joke on me?

One'll never know, will one?

A computer-friendly friend of mine said it could be my Daylight Savings Time automatics are just now clicking in since Daylight Savings Time came early this year.

I'll take that as the answer to my question. Still, why on April Fool's Day?

I noticed it when I woke up this morning. The time on one of my VCRs was an hour ahead of my downstairs digital clocks and the clock on my phone answering machine. The time on my television set was also an hour ahead of the digital clocks and also the clocks on both my laptop and my Mac G4 were an hour ahead. Something's fishy, said I.

From the Frying Pan Into the Fire
Rumor has it our unelected, appointed, impeachable "president" is replacing long-gone El Senor Speedy Gonzales, who'll soon be heading back to his Tex-Mex hacienda, with Oren Hatch!!! Wow. Will Oren make polygamy legal? Bush can really pick 'em can't he? Just as you think nobody's worse than Alberto Gonzales, Bush comes up with Oren Hatch, the nutjob Mormon with the really whacko morals and extreme right-wing bullshit philosophies. Patrick Leahy tore into Oren this morn on one of those network bullshit newsmaker interview shows, I think it was pig-jowled Tim Russert's show, but anyway, Patrick Leahy looked far down his nose at Oren Hatch, and tagged it with a kind'a of "Oren will be attorney general over my dead body" statement. Let's hope so; though I don't even trust Patrick Leahy as far as I can throw him. He's been up there all along and hasn't done a damn thing until the Amurican voters gave the son of a gun some power and I guess now he's decided to use it--better late than never, is that the Dumbocrats's motto? What's that red glare in the distant sky there?

Yesterday's Harold Pinter Piece
Am I wrong but did Harold F up there at the end of his charming put down of Bush and Blair and Britain and America's policies with regards to murdering and killing and maiming with impunity? Didn't he mean the US seems intent on attacking IRAN and not Iraq there in his last paragraphs?

I like his statement that the 2,990 who died in the 9/11 tragedy were the only deaths that mattered to Amuricans while all around the world millions are being killed in wars, millions are dying of AIDS, millions have died from the leftovers of war, and millions have just disappeared, and on and on these unjustified deaths go unnoticed by the American press for the most part. Katie "Cheerleader" Couric hasn't battle-jacketed up yet and sneaked into Iraq for a first-hand report--wait a minute, Katie said, I'm a cheerleader not a news reporter. Wasn't old Dan "What's the Frequency, Kenneth?" Rather over there riding around in a bulletproof van, or was that the late, great, cigarette-smoking Canadian, Peter "Can I Borrow a Smoke?" Reynolds (instead of Peter J. Reynolds, his name should have been R.J. Reynolds)? I get them so confused.

Have a superSunday.

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler