For John Harold Olson
Deserts were the first thing we
tamed,
tarmac whipped
on serpents' nihilist backs,
then came the Clydesdale -
branded, shadows forged in dust;
we swore we saw genies
as hooves cooled
in steam from bubbling troughs,
and then there was us,
heads specs of light
that crossed a map
of sun-filled camera glares;
in 1971
our kindled bones
are all the rage,
circles and circles
of sun
bind our bodies, on closing reels -
Bacharach, Pete Duel,
Burbank California -
genies arisen, from sizzling desert
tar
Clydesdale Horse -- Margo Petterson
Clydesdale (Dail Chluaidh in Scottish Gaelic) is an archaic name for Lanarkshire, a county in Scotland. In the mid-18th century, Flemish stallions were imported to Scotland and bred to local mares, resulting in foals that were larger than the local stock, including a black stallion imported from England by John Paterson of Lochlyloch and a dark-brown stallion owned by the Duke of Hamilton. Written pedigrees were kept of these foals beginning in the early 19th century, and in 1806 a filly, "Lampits mare," born that traced her lineage to the black stallion and is listed in the ancestry of almost every Clydesdale living today. The first recorded use of the name "Clydesdale" in reference to the breed was in an 1826 Glasgow exhibition. By 1837 local agriculture improvement societies began holding breed shows to choose the best stallion, whose owner was then awarded a monetary prize but was required to take the stallion throughout a designated area to breed the local mares, promoting the spread of Clydesdale throughout Scotland and northern England. Large numbers were exported in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with 1,617 stallions leaving the country in 1911 alone, and export certificates were issued for 20,183 horses between 1884 and 1945. Due to their importance in haulage, they became known as “the breed that built Australia.” In the 1920s and 1930s, Clydesdales were smaller than Shires, Percherons, and Belgians, but beginning in the 1940s breeding animals were selected to produce taller horses that looked more impressive in parades and shows. The best-known members of the breed are the teams owned and bred by the Budweiser Brewery, whose breeding program, with its strict standards of color and conformation, have influenced the look of the breed in the US to the point that many people believe that Clydesdales are always bay with white markings; but the British Household Cavalry uses Clydesdales and Shires as drum horses to lead parades on ceremonial and state occasions, and they are often piebald, skewbald, and roan. However, as farms became increasingly mechanized, the number of Clydesdale breeding stallions in England dropped from more than 200 in 1946 to 80 in 1949. By 1975, the Rare Breeds Survival Trust considered them vulnerable to extinction, meaning there were fewer than 900 breeding females in the UK, but by 2005 it changed their status to "at risk" status, meaning there were fewer than 1,500 breeding females in the UK, then returned to “vulnerable” by 2010.
ReplyDeletePete Duel was an American actor best known for his role as Hannibal Heyes in the television series “Alias Smith and Jones” from 1970 to 1971. He shot himself in the head on 31 December 1971. The series’ opening narration referred to the pair of outlaws: “they never shot anyone!” But, ironically, Duel did shoot himself, and he was replaced on the series by that narrator, Roger Davis.
ReplyDeleteBurt Bacharach was an American songwriter, record producer, pianist, and singer who composed hundreds of popular hit songs from the late 1950s through the 1980s, many in collaboration with lyricist Hal David specifically for and performed by Dionne Warwick
. Bacharach and David met in 1957, and one of their early collaborations (“The Story of My Life”) was recorded by Marty Robbins and became a #1 hit in the US and UK; Perry Como’s recording of “Magic Moments” went to #1 in the UK, making the duo to be the first first songwriters to have written consecutive No. 1 UK singles. In 1961 Bacharach discovered session accompanist Warwick and composed her first hit, "Don't Make Me Over.” Over the next 20 years her recordings of his songs sold over 12 million copies, with 38 singles making the charts and 22 in the Top 40; these included "Walk on By", "Anyone Who Had a Heart," "Alfie," "Say a Little Prayer," "I'll Never Fall in Love Again, and "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?" In 1973, Bacharach and David wrote the score for the movie “Lost Horizon,” leading to lawsuits and a split between the three hit makers (though Warwick would continue a successful career singing others’ song,; among female vocalists, only Aretha Franklin would record more hits than she); Bacharach and David reunited briefly in 1975 to write and produce other records, but they failed to create any new hits. In the 1980s Bacharach and his lyricist wife Carole Bayer Sager managed to revive his hit-making career, including "That's What Friends Are For"(19850 which reunited Bacharach and Warwick. In 2016, Bat 88, he persuaded director John Asher to let him write the score and a theme song for the movie “A Boy Called Po” about an autistic child; Bacharach’s daughter, who had gone had gone undiagnosed with Asperger's, committed suicide at 40. A six-time Grammy Award winner and three-time Academy Award winner, Bacharach’s songs have been recorded by more than 1,000 artists (including Gene McDaniels, Jerry Butler, Gene Pitney, Cilla Black, Dusty Springfield, Jackie DeShannon, Bobbie Gentry, Tom Jones, Herb Alpert, B. J. Thomas, and Carpenters); 73 of them were Top 40 hits in the US; those which topped the Billboard Top 100 include "The Look of Love" (1967), "This Guy's in Love with You" (1968), "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (1969), "(They Long to Be) Close to You" (1970), "Arthur's Theme (Best That You Can Do)" (1981), "That's What Friends Are For" (1986) and "On My Own" (1986).