Bending, Lifting, Straining, Twisting!

Shana, are you ready for the Quiz?

Yes, Mom.

But first, The Death Report, which, by the way, is pretty overwhelming this time! 

I know!

I don’t even know where to start!  Some major legends in the world of sports and entertainment have died!  OMG!  You know what?  I’m just going to put their pictures up:

Tony Dow (“Wally”) from “Leave It To Beaver”:

 

William Hart of the Delfonics:

 

Bill Russell, Boston Celtics legendary Center:

Lamont Dozier of Holland, Dozier and Holland

Last but not least and the worst possible news in the world, Sam Gooden, legendary bass/baritone of

The Impressions:

 

Oy vey!  Each one of these deaths came as a shock!  And Shana told me about them without even so much as a “Hey Mom, you better sit down for this,” or, “Mom, I have bad news…” or… oh nooooo!  She just blurts it out!  She told me William Hart died in the shower! 

Well I am so sorry!  Who knew you were going to drop the soap!

Let’s begin with…

Tony Dow 

I’m not sure whether “Leave It To Beaver” was popular because Beaver was so cute or Wally was so handsome; but, anyway, this is the show that became synonymous with mid-century America!

William Hart

the lead singer of one of the greatest groups of all time, The Delfonics; or, as we used to say, The Supersonic Delfonics:

 

Bill Russell

Russell with legendary Celtics coach, Red Auerbach.  The Celtics were a dynasty, and their giant Center was the glue that held them together.  Bill Russell has 11 championship rings, most basketball players would be thrilled to have just one!  After his death, the NBA retired his number!  No one, on any basketball team, can wear the number 6 again!

Just like the number 42 has been retired in baseball?

Yes, Shana, exactly!  Jackie Robinson’s number, no one can wear it again.

Except, on “Jackie Robinson Day” at the ballpark, when everyone wears the number 42!

I’m sure there will be a “Bill Russell Day” sometime soon when everyone will wear the number 6.

 

Lamont Dozier

You simply can’t imagine that just about everything that came out on Motown Records was written by Holland, Dozier and Holland!  You can’t even begin to comprehend that level of productivity!  Let me give you just a tiny idea of the hits they’re responsible for:

Heatwave

Quicksand

Dancing In The Street

Come See About Me

Stop! In The Name Of Love

Can I Get A Witness

I Got To Dance To Keep From Crying

Mickey’s Monkey

Baby Love

How Sweet It Is To Be Loved By You

Ahem!  Excuse me, Mom, and don’t forget, covered by James Taylor!  We can’t forget that.

Dear God!  Yes, actually, I think we can!

Nowhere To Run

Back In My Arms Again

I Hear A Symphony

Darling Baby

You Can’t Hurry Love

Heaven Must Have Sent You

You Keep Me Hanging On

Jimmy Mack

Forever

Too Many Fish In The Sea

Baby I Need Your Loving (Got to Have All Your Loving)

The Same Old Song

etc.

So….  I don’t know what to play!  How do you pick just one song out of hundreds?  Well, here we go with one of Motown’s signature songs, reaching all the way to #11 on the Pop Chart, The Four Tops with, “Baby I Need Your Loving”.  I went crazy for this song!!!!

Motown was such a phenomenon that it wasn’t just the recording artists who became famous, it was the songwriters, the studio musicians (“The Funk Brothers”), the choreographer…  The bass player (James Jamerson) had a cult following! 

Don’t believe me?  Just google him!  Rolling Stone Magazine ranked him #1 in their awards for the “50 Greatest Bassists of All Time”!

And of course, everybody knows who the President is—Berry Gordy!

High school drop-out, Berry Gordy, turned an $800 loan into a 400 million dollar fortune!

And the list of artists who sang on Motown?  OMG, you could never name them all!

The Temptations

The Miracles

The Supremes

Diana Ross

Lionel Richie

The Four Tops

The Marvelettes

Martha and the Vandellas

Stevie Wonder

Marvin Gaye

The Jackson 5

The Commodores

The Contours

Mary Wells

Kim Weston

Smokey Robinson

Tammy Terrell

Junior Walker

The Spinners

Gladys Knight and the Pips

The Isley Brothers

And there’s more, there’s actually more.  And the reason why it’s so amazing is that the founders of Motown Records were just barely making it, Berry Gordy worked in the auto industry, The Supremes lived in the projects, it was the middle of segregation in the South, the Motown tour bus was shot at, there was nothing easy about this enterprise, and yet… Wow!  What a success they pulled off!  Their music changed the world!  Located in Detroit, Michigan; Motown Records is a museum now:

Didn’t Bernie Sanders visit there?

He did!  He and the tour guide sang “My Girl” together!  Bernie, by the way, is known as our only thoroughly honest politician, the Senator from Vermont; everybody loves him!

His campaign manager wrote a book about him.  Can we go to the Motown Museum?

How would we get there?

 

Sam Gooden

Talk about phenomenons… OMG!  Sam was the unmistakable baritone (sometimes bass) voice of The Impressions!

 

He often shared the lead with Curtis Mayfield which is why he’s so well-known for someone who is ostensibly just a “background singer”.  His voice was so unique, so distinguished, it was like icing on a cake—not the biggest part of the cake but, it wouldn’t be a cake without it, and you expected it to be there! 

“I’ve Been Trying” is a perfect example.  Curtis Mayfield is the high tenor lead but Sam comes in with “…to understand why, can’t I be your only man…” to finish the verse, and you just know the song needed him to be there!  Give a listen:

So, the reason I chose that song–2 reasons–is that when Curtis Mayfield was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995, Eric Clapton sang “I’ve Been Trying” as a tribute to him.  There was a reason Curtis couldn’t sing it himself, he had been the victim of a horrible accident in 1990, in Brooklyn, in an outdoor concert where a gust of wind blew a light tower down on top of him and broke his neck.  He was paralyzed from the neck down after that and died in 1999 at the young age of 57. 

So, the second reason I picked this song is because I found a rehearsal clip of “I’ve Been Trying” from 2012, with a replacement lead singer for Curtis; but, the main thing is, it shows Sam sounding every bit as great as he did back in 1962, and this is the only live rendition we have of The Impressions singing “I’ve Been Trying”!  It’s not a professional video, but still, we’re lucky to have it.  I’ve explained before that black singers from the ’50’s and ’60’s were pretty much ignored by the mainstream media.  You’re lucky if you can find any footage of them at all!

I can’t believe they cut the end off!  Grr!!!!  Still, that was amazing. Fred and Sam were amazing and so was the band.  Sam was 77 in this video and he looks great!

Curtis wrote all the Impressions songs

and, in fact, if you were a singer from Chicago, chances are really good that Curtis Mayfield wrote your song; that means songs by Jerry Butler, Gene Chandler, Major Lance and others.  In fact, when a Gene Chandler song came on the radio recently–I think it was “Nothing Can Stop Me”–I said, “Shana, do you know who’s singing this?”  She goes, “Curtis Mayfield?”  Close, very close!

So, anyway, Shana wants me to tell you this story.  She was 4 years old.  We were watching “Wishbone” on PBS.  “Wishbone” is a great children’s show where a dog, “Wishbone”, imagines himself playing the lead part in classic literature, such as Tom Sawyer, Silas Marner, Oliver Twist, etc. 

In this episode, the book is The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allen Poe.  We see Wishbone’s owner, Joe, wondering what happened to the “love letter” he wrote to his teacher that he didn’t want anyone to see but which he suspects Curtis, his classmate, has stolen!  He says out loud, “Maybe Curtis has the letter!”  Wishbone “says”, “Who’s Curtis?”  Four-year-old Shana goes, “Curtis Mayfield.”  (Ha!  They don’t call her “Shanapedia” for nothin’!)

To wrap up this segment, which is very hard for me as I have a lot to say, I was lucky to find a recent interview with Fred Cash and Sam Gooden on a morning show in their hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee:

Isn’t he a sweetheart?  You have to watch it!  That’s Phosphorus for you.  Sam Gooden is a Phosphorus.  Always smiling, you’re just drawn to him, you want to be his friend, you just want to sit with him.  Phosphorus is light; and he’s like a welcoming light that you want to be a part of.  Also, did you see how tall and thin he is, especially when he was younger?  Even his face is long; that’s the classic Phosphorus look.  (This IS a homeopathic journal, OK?)

Mom, speaking of homeopathy, do we have a quiz this month?

Do we ever!  Pam is back….  Remember Pam from last month?  The horrifying “Wasp Sting”?  Well, this time she’s back to tell the story of how she saved her husband from a Back Attack! 

So if you’re ready Pam, step up to the microphone please, the audience is all yours!

“Mitch’s” Back Injury

Thank you, Elaine!  It’s great to be back here on stage at the Hpathy.com Theater and Amusement Park.  OK, I will try to recall the events of yesterday as best I can, but I am also interrogating him right now!  He is IMPOSSIBLE to get information from!!  Sheesh! 

His regular self is very happy, lively, funny/cracking jokes, extroverted, sociable, talkative, but when he is not feeling well he clams up.  He just won’t talk!  He will just lie there…quietly.  That is when I know he must not be feeling well.  Then, it’s as if I am playing 20 Questions…or more like 200 Questions!!!  He only gives one word answers, if that!  Usually, it’s just a nod or a grunt or a blank stare.  Ugh.  

It’s like pulling teeth.  You have to be a master sleuth to figure out if he has a headache, a cut, or a muscle pull!  He hates answering questions when he is ill, even though he knows I am asking in order to help him.  He just would rather be left quietly alone.  Even if he needs something, he won’t ask!  I have to just try and anticipate his needs when he is not feeling well.

He is rarely sick, and always feels he can beat whatever it is, without any help from anyone or anything.  He hates any feeling of weakness or helplessness or to feel dependent on anyone for anything.  He always has to feel strong, in control, unemotional, stoic.

– Around 1pm, he went outside to fire up the smoker to cook a pork shoulder for Mexican carnitas.  He first cleaned the smoker (so he was bending over to do this).  He put in the pork shoulder in and then began deadheading our rose bushes.  We had 4 days of rain here, so the Rose bushes were all loaded down and in rough shape.  There were well over 100 roses that he deadheaded.  He was out there doing it for at least an hour.

He hurt his back about 10 minutes into deadheading the bushes.  He said he was stretching forward to reach the back rows of roses which were against a fence (he couldn’t get around them, so he had to stretch forward and down).  He then twisted to his right to get to more roses, and that is when he says he felt a stitch on his left side above his hip, towards back of his hip.  He said the pain at that point was mild.

He then continued to work on the rose bushes, despite having pulled his back, for about another 45 or so minutes — approximately one hour total.  It was upon walking back to the house that the pain intensified.  He told me that the pain got worse if he twisted his torso, and also with every step of his left foot while walking.  He never complains of pain, unless it is bad.  And he almost never volunteers info to me regarding any pain he feels.  I am usually the one who will figure out something is wrong by reading his face….or if he is very quiet.

This time around, he was the one to let me know he was in pain, but he did so in a nonchalant, very calm way.  He was not panicky, nor did he sound in pain. He was very matter of fact.  He came in and actually volunteered the info to me!  Highly unusual for him to do so without my prodding and questioning!

He came upstairs around 2pm and said:

“I hurt my back.  Remember when you gave me that remedy that helped me a few weeks ago when I had pain on my left side?  Can you give me that?”

I said “No, I don’t think so.  That was for a left-sided neck muscle pain….I think your back pain is going to need something different.  Where exactly does it hurt?”

HE told me it was a stitching pain on his left upper hip, towards the back of the hip.  It took LOTS of interrogation to get all of the details out of him!  I then learned the pain also radiated up to the left side of his middle back…..below his left shoulder blade.  He said that it hurt to twist, and also hurt when he stepped with his left foot.  I’m sure he made his back much worse by continuing to work on those roses!  He should have come inside to tell me what happened immediately upon hurting his back.  He said he only felt relief from the pain when not moving.

***

I gave him a dry dose of __________30C at around 2:30 pm.  He did not want to be cooped up inside, so we went outside to lay down in a lounge chair.  He fell asleep, but then as I finished up with the Roses myself, he got up and began trying to help me!

I told him to lie back down, but then he kept getting up to check on the pork shoulder!  Finally, he laid back down on the lounge chair.  He fell asleep again. We headed back inside around 5pm.  I asked him if his pain was gone and he said no.

I am sure that his constant moving about made his muscle pull worse!  When we got upstairs, I gave him another dose of __________ 30C in water. He just laid in bed, quietly.  He did not complain, nor did he let me know he felt better.  He just watched tv. Within a few minutes I could read his face and saw that he was much more relaxed!  The strain on his face was gone.

I asked him how he felt — was the pain gone?  He said he didn’t know because he was lying still.  So, I told him to get up and move, to find out.  He was hesitant, but the look on his face was priceless!  He got up from bed and said, “Yeah…wow…the pain’s gone.  I guess it worked.”

Well, that’s about as excited as he ever gets.  LOL.  So, YAY!  Homeopathy has come through for us again!

I hope that is enough info!  If not, let me know what other information you need!

Thanks!!

Pam

No other information is necessary!  OK, that’s it folks.  If you know the remedy, write to me at [email protected].  The Answer will be in next month’s ezine. 

Going out…did you know that when The Impressions started out in 1958 their original lead singer was Jerry Butler?

Here are the Impressions from 1958 with “The Gift Of Love”. 

RIP, Sam, you are missed already!

______________________

Elaine Lewis, DHom, CHom

Elaine takes online cases. Write to her at [email protected]

Visit her website: https://ElaineLewis.hpathy.com