"Yeah"'s titular shouts--well, sometimes when it the excitement builds and builds and it finally arrives, then exclamation is all know and all we need to know, especially when the excitement is over tomorrow's 2009 NFL Draft!
Football's not over; it's only just begun. Yeah!
NOTES
*Yeah, but he's making his way back!
Again ( #284 before), we hear Wright's voice--a more soulful, jazzy update of Joan Armatrading's. Here, Wright offers shelter and support and open arms, but she does so by walking with her feet on the ground, as there's little joy in her voice this time around. Her tone bespeaks of optimistic fatalism, her voice strong and sure and knowing, offering unconditional love and nuturing, a voice that shows if not joy then hope and confidence, a voice of experience that knows of the world and all its travails and travesties and sees them clearly yet still refuses to run, instead inspiring, nay asking, her loved one to do the same, to come to her, for as though the skies may be dark and the future bleak--as represented by not only Wright's voice, but by the stark, desolate music with its empty spaces and its Duane Eddyesque tremoloecho guitars--Wright's still there, waiting, her faith in her love and in her ability to beat back the encroaching abyss strong...she's Danny Rand's mother, taking the wolves herself while she sends her son across the bridge; she's Banquo thinking only of Fleance's safety, she's Ms. Berryhill, Mrs. Zimmerman, Mrs. Satterfield, giving their husbands not only encouragement but themselves, refusing to admit defeat, staying the course when so many would have surrendered to inevitability, believing that there's always hope, that there's always a chance to keep the wolves at bay, perservering, fighting back, not letting their loved ones slip away into the abyss, telling their lovers to not go gentle unto that good night.
Last week was strangely serendipitous for me. I received updates on the situations of three people in similar, uh, situations, on consecutive days. It was this that prompted me to include this song in this position on the chart this week (as before, I had it ranked higher). The stories of the three people and their families I'm going to mention are touching, sad, sweet, and uplifting, and I hope I'm up to the task of conveying their importance to me. As best I can, today, I'll refrain from hyperbole and invention and treacle and smarminess and smugness, and I'll try to let these stories speak for themselves.
My very dear friend Sarah Satterfield, who lives in Atlanta with her husband Shawn (both pictured above) and her five-month-old daughter Sophie, called me last week to tell me of some good news. Her husband had finally been accepted into one of the country's top brain research, treatment, rehabilitation, and recovery programs in the country. It's in Atlanta. Sarah was delighted, for this meant that--in addition to the obvious fact that the facility was close to home--someone thought that Shawn had a chance of improving his condition.
Three weeks ago, on a Monday morning, Shawn took some new prescription pain medication. On her way out of the house with Sophie, Sarah found Shawn on the floor in the living room. She had him rushed to the hospital, where he lapsed into a coma. Shawn's reaction to the medicaton had caused him to seizure, which caused a loss of oxygen to his brain. The doctors, who (at least at the time) didn't know how long Shawn's brain had been without oxygen, weren't very optimistic, nor at the time had they reason to be. Shawn wasn't responding to stimuli. Once, he opened his eyes and squeezed Sarah's hand, but this was viewed as an anomaly, because for three days--otherwise--Shawn hadn't moved. The physicians tried taking Shawn off his ventilator to see if his body could breathe on its own, but when they did, Shawn's heartbeat increased to an unhealthy rate. Fearing cardiac arrest, the doctors put Shawn back on the ventilator. Within the next two days, the doctors repeated the procedure, but Shawn's body reacted in the same fashion.
A few days later, Sarah was apprised of (some of) the doctors' prognosis: Shawn was essentially brain dead. Sarah would either have to care for his comatose body, or she would have to decide to have the physicians remove all means of artificial resperation. Sarah had three weeks to make her decision.
As of yesterday, Shawn was walking almost completely unassisted, eating regular food by himself, and was speaking in coherent, complete sentences.
In two (or three) weeks, Shawn will move in with his mother in Tupelo (MS) while Sarah soldiers on--with their baby--in Atlanta. When Shawn is released, he'll need constant care, and right now, Sarah can't provide that for her husband. Sarah's insurance is covering Shawn right now, so Sarah can't leave her job and still pay for Shawn's care and medication.
. . .
Last November, Sports Illustrated writer Paul Zimmerman suffered three successive strokes.
Zimmerman--known as Dr. Z to his many readers and admirers (he's not only the best sports writer I've ever read, he's one of the best writers period)--has had a slow rehabilitation process. He can know speak, but stringing sentences together proves to be painful if not impossible. He's slowly learning to move again, but this too has been an arduous process. He has to work at visual recognition and recall. He hasn't learn to write again. Most likely, he never will, certainly not at his previous level.
There is a program that has had enormously-high success rates at rehabilitating stroke victims; unfortunately, this program is extremely expensive, and as of right now, his wife Bailey--the Flaming Redhead whom Dr. Z spoke so highly of in each of his twice-weekly columns for SI.com--cannot afford it.
Fortunately, Dr. Z's fellow Sports Illustrated NFL writer Peter King has put together a benefit dinner and auction for Dr. Z and his wife to take place on May 18, at 7:00 p.m., at Mayfair Farms in West Orange, New Jersey. King will host a round-table discussion of this Saturday's NFL draft and the upcoming season with New York Giants' coach Tom Coughlin and New York Jets' coach Rex Ryan--and a few other prominent NFL guests as well--with the auction to follow. A few items will be auctioned online.
For more information about what both Dr. Z and his beloved Flaming Redhead are going through, you can check her blog here. You can find out more information about Dr. Z's benefit dinner and auction here (though that link is a couple of weeks old, it still contains all the prescient information. Check Peter King's Monday and Tuesday's columns on sportsillustrated.cnn.com for updates).
. . .
Two years ago, anti-folksinger Cindy Lee Berryhill (who appeared earlier on the chart at #296) released her album Beloved Stranger. The title track tells in heartbreaking, painful detail the
Director: Peter Cornwall
The most old-fashioned R&B song to hit the top ten in the past ten years, R. Kelly's "Step in the Name of Love (Remix)*" sounds like something Johnny Taylor or Z.Z. Hill or Marvin Sease could have released twenty-five to thirty years ago, a last concession to the more dance-oriented, disco market before these guys (and many of their contemporaries) were dropped from their major labels, only to find homes (if they ever did) at smaller labels (such as the Jackson, MS standout label Malaco), where their records would soon thrive again, but on a much smaller level and in a much smaller market. These artists would have to work the chit'lin circuit again, but Malaco (and it wasn't the only label for those whom the charts left behind, but it was the most prominent one) afforded these soul/blues artists a sense of independence that they never had at their major labels, where they had to record the dance/disco records that ultimately proved their undoing (on a national level).
Ironically, most of these artists (that didn't turn gospel) retained that part of that smooth disco style that buried them, and often, these hybrid disco-soul-blues records were their most lively, their most entertaining, as if this combination of styles seemed to squeeze out sparks when each rubbed against the other ones. There are a slew of great dance records from these Southern soul/blues/dance artists--from the late '70s up till today--with only a handful of songs ever reaching any national chart. Most of these great songs only resonate with older--primarily African-American--audiences in the South.
I've deejayed many a time and had numerous requests for, say, Little Milton or Denise LaSalle or Tyrone Davis, and all of these requests have come from folk older than thirty five. Many of these same older folk also frequently request "Step in the Name of Love" by R. Kelly. Why? Not only does this song sound like those older Malaco numbers, but it's also a song about dancing, about a particular type of dancing: stepping. Stepping derived from the Jitterbug, but over the years--via L.A. and later Chicago--the motion grew less frantic, the steps slowed down as the music did, and the focal point of the dance changed to the offbeat. Steeping--in its current variation--has been around now for about, oh, thirty years or so, but it started to grow beyond its Chicago/L.A. (and, via migration and transmigration, the Deep South) roots into a more national limelight with the (relative) popularity of the Spike Lee joint School Daze, in which fraternities have a stepping contest. Now, this type of stepping is different from the stepping dance, but the term got thrown about often, and eventually, we get what he have hear today: a song by a black man about a dance first made popular--sixty years ago--by white folk, only to have their dance adopted and adapted by black folk, only to....
It's all cyclical, mostly. R. Kelly doesn't originate anything new here; he just recycles, but he does so with panache and care and a melody half lifted from Marvin Gaye and a voice straight lifted from Marvin Gaye. Like Isaac Newton said, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and like R. Kelly said, we step in the name of love.
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