Our Daily Dead

NY Times
Long John Baldry, a British blues-rock singer who helped start the careers of the Rolling Stones, Rod Stewart, Elton John and other British stars, died on Thursday in Vancouver, British Columbia. He was 64 and had been a longtime resident of Vancouver.

The cause was a severe chest infection, his manager, Frank Garcia, said.

A central figure in the nascent British rock scene of the early 1960’s, Mr. Baldry - whose nickname referred to his lanky 6-foot-7 frame - sang and played guitar alongside some of the biggest stars of the era, often as a coach and bandleader. Among those who played with him early in their careers were Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts of the Rolling Stones, Jimmy Page of the Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin, Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker of Cream, Mr. Stewart and Sir Elton.

And though Mr. Baldry never became as famous as many of his onetime apprentices, he was revered as a model and inspiration for his gruff, earnest singing and dedication to the blues. Mr. Stewart, in an appreciation in Reader’s Digest last year, said: “In those days the only music we fell in love with was the blues, and John was the first white guy singing it, in his wonderful voice. It was true blues and everyone looked up to him.”

An ardent student of American blues and folk music, Mr. Baldry first took after Leadbelly, learning to play the 12-string guitar in his style, and from 1957 to 1961 toured Europe with the American folk singer Ramblin’ Jack Elliott.

When he returned to London, he joined Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated, called the first electric blues band in Britain. Sir Mick and Mr. Watts played in that band, and on July 12, 1962, when Korner canceled a show at the Marquee Club in London to appear on a BBC radio program, an early version of the Rolling Stones played its first gig as a replacement.

Mr. Baldry also sang in Cyril Davies’s R&B All Stars, and when Davies died of leukemia in early 1964, Mr. Baldry took over the group and renamed it the Hoochie Coochie Men. He recruited Mr. Stewart, then 19, as a secondary singer after hearing him sing on a train platform in London. Two years later Mr. Baldry began playing with Bluesology, which featured on keyboards a young man named Reg Dwight; in tribute to his bandleader, Mr. Dwight took the stage name Elton John.

As his protégés became famous, Mr. Baldry made his own attempts at stardom. In the late 60’s he turned from the blues to a syrupy, crooning pop style, and had a No. 1 hit in Britain in 1967 with “Let the Heartaches Begin.”

In an effort to revive his reputation as a blues-rock singer, he recorded the album “It Ain’t Easy” in 1971; Mr. Stewart and Sir Elton each produced one side of the disc. The album featured his signature song, “Don’t Try to Lay No Boogie-Woogie on the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” which cracked the Top 100 in the United States. But Mr. Baldry began to receive harsh reviews, and his career never took off in America.

By the early 1980’s he was living in Canada, and while continuing to record and perform, he developed a second career as a voice-over artist. He was heard on numerous television commercials in Canada, narrated on Disney children’s albums and was the voice of Robotnik, the villain on the popular “Sonic the Hedgehog” video game and cartoon series.

In 1998 he was nominated for a Grammy Award for best spoken-word album for children for “The Original Story of Winnie-the-Pooh.” (The award went to another Winnie-the-Pooh album, recorded by Charles Kuralt.)

Since 1991 he recorded for the Canadian folk and blues record label Stony Plain. His last album was “Remembering Leadbelly,” in 2001, a tribute to his first musical love.

He is survived by his partner, Felix Rexach; a brother, Roger; and a sister, Margaret.

NY Times
Myron Floren, an accordion virtuoso whose televised solos with the Lawrence Welk band became a staple of the cheerful folksiness that was the Welk show’s hallmark, died on Saturday at his home in Rolling Hills, Calif., said Margaret Heron, syndication manager for the show. He was 85.

Largely self-taught, Mr. Floren was one of the country’s most famous accordionists, certainly the only one featured weekly by a big band with a coast-to-coast television audience. A farmer’s son from South Dakota, he was a quintessential part of the Welk musical family - a wholesome and amiable company of singers, dancers and musicians adored by nostalgic viewers for their easygoing take on big-band music.

His serene smile earned him the moniker “the happy Norwegian,” and he liked to make a song hum by trilling each note. During his renditions of “Lady of Spain,” his showpiece, he would place a leg against his sequined accordion and furrow his brow in concentration.

Welk, a farm boy turned bandleader, described the band’s sentimental and danceable arrangements as “Champagne music.”

“Keep it simple so the audience can feel like they can do it, too,” Welk would say. And, “You have to play what the people understand.”

Despite the disdain of highbrow critics, “The Lawrence Welk Show” became one of the most enduring programs in television history, and its weekly reruns still attract millions of viewers. At its heart was a folksy familiarity that Welk attributed to his and Mr. Floren’s Midwestern roots. Both were sons of immigrant farmers in the Dakotas (Welk in Strasburg, N.D., Mr. Floren in Roslyn, S.D.), and both took up the accordion, whose tremulous music reminded their families and immigrant neighbors of home.

Then and now, it was a peculiar instrument to feature in a big band. In his autobiography, “Accordion Man” (Stephen Greene Press, 1981), written with his daughter Randee, Mr. Floren relates that the director of his college orchestra coolly informed him there was no place for an accordionist. “I thought to myself, ‘Maybe not now, but just wait!’ ” Mr. Floren recalled.

The oldest of seven children, Mr. Floren was born on Nov. 5, 1919, in Roslyn to Ole and Tillie Floren, Norwegian immigrants. He began playing the accordion when he was 7, and he later said he had honed his technique by milking cows on the family’s farm. He took piano lessons to learn to read music, and he paid for them with eggs from the family’s chickens.

After attending Augustana College in Sioux Falls, S.D., he performed as the Melody Man on a radio station in Sioux Falls, and he entertained troops in Europe during World War II. He then joined the Buckeye Four, a country music group in St. Louis.

His audition for Welk was an impromptu performance with the Welk band at a ballroom in St. Louis. Welk, an acquaintance, had spotted him with his wife on the dance floor and invited him to play. During his solo, Welk crawled under the band’s grand piano and waved a white handkerchief in surrender.

Mr. Floren was offered a job during intermission and held onto it for the next 32 years, making several solo albums on the Welk Music Group’s record label. He collaborated with Welk on a popular compilation of the world’s greatest polkas, and he worked as backup conductor, assistant band director and stage manager - “my right-hand man for over 30 years,” Welk later called him.

Ah one, and ah two, and ah… There are some unhappy Norwegians because “The Happy Norwegian” Myron Flores, long-time accordion player for the “Champaign music” of Lawrence Welk has died. Maybe they need some Prozac sprinkled on their lutefisk ? Speaking of accordion music, we ODDfellows urge you to check out our “ODD Recommends” “The Gourds.” You got to love a band that fronts an accordion when they cover Snoop Dog’s “Gin and Juice”
(Rollin down the street, smokin indo, sippin on gin and juice
Laid back [with my mind on my money and my money on my mind])

On the other end of the musical psyche spectrum, we have word of John “Long John” Baldry relocation on the cosmic fret board . Baldry was an early British rocker who played with Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts of The Stones , Jimmy Page of The Yardbirds and Led Zeppelin
(No “Stairway to Heaven”
references please), and Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker of Cream . Gad, these guys all started to play together when Lyndon Johnson was President. Wunnerful, wunnerful.

Yes, it is an ODD day. Somebody turn off-a the bubble machine-a .

LA Times
After high school, while his parents lived in Europe for several years, Matthew G. Axelson of Cupertino, Calif., saw a chance to learn about the world and eagerly took advantage of it.

Using his parents’ overseas homes as his base, he traveled to Italy, Switzerland, Spain, France, England, Poland, Holland and Germany.

As a political science major in college, he had a penchant for comparing other countries to the U.S., recalled his father, Cordell, who was a telecommunications manager in Europe.

“It made him appreciate the freedoms and opportunities we have in this country,” added his schoolteacher mother, Donna. “He wanted to give something back.”

But Axelson wanted adventure as well. In 2000, he enlisted in the Navy and earned a place in the elite SEAL unit.

A year later, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks strengthened his resolve to serve his country.

“I asked him, ‘If this had happened before you joined, would you still have done it?’ and he said, ‘Absolutely, because the world is a more dangerous place,’ ” his mother said.

He told her, “If I can work [fighting terrorism] and get rid of some of the bad guys, I’ll be happy.”

Axelson, a 29-year-old petty officer 2nd class, was part of a four-man SEAL unit ambushed June 28 in the Kunar province of Afghanistan while searching for Taliban and Al Qaeda forces.

One SEAL was rescued July 3 and two were found dead the next day. Axelson’s body was recovered July 10 after an extensive search, during which 16 Army and Navy commandos perished in a helicopter crash.

Gregg Hurwitz, 31, a Los Angeles crime novelist, said his tall, well-muscled friend was gentle and philosophical, even when it came to military duty.

“Matt had a very deep current of patriotism, but there was nothing dogmatic about him,” Hurwitz said. “He wasn’t the unthinking soldier. He was smart enough to seek an understanding of the cultures they were interacting with.”

Even as a youngster, Axelson seemed to grasp the need for a harmonious world.

His mother recalled, “One day when he was about 5, he said, ‘You know how we’re supposed to pray for our enemies? Are we supposed to pray for Satan?’ I thought that was a really deep question for a 5-year-old.”

After graduating from Cupertino’s Monta Vista High School in 1994, Axelson attended Cal State Chico for four years and earned a political science degree.

After Axelson decided to enter the military, a friend who was a SEAL helped persuade him to try for the top-notch Navy unit. Axelson lifted weights, ran, swam, took scuba lessons “and did all the things he would need” to qualify for the SEALs before he even enlisted, his mother said.

Axelson, who was assigned to SEAL Delivery Vehicle Team 1 in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was deployed to Afghanistan in April.

“When I found out it was Afghanistan, I was relieved because I thought it’s safer there,” his mother said.

Axelson e-mailed his wife, Cindy, 27, whom he married in 2003, and other family members almost daily but said little about his work. Three days before the ambush, he turned 29. But his parents have no idea how he spent his birthday.

“The last time we heard from him was June 20, the day after Father’s Day,” Cordell Axelson said. “He just said he was working and doing a little bit of everything he was trained to do.”

The SEAL didn’t mention it, but he was sending a Father’s Day present — a shop manual, which he ordered on the Internet, for a 1973 Triumph TR6 the two planned to restore when he returned home.

“It arrived a few days after he went missing,” his father said.

In addition to his wife and parents, Axelson is survived by a brother, Jeff, of San Diego. Axelson was buried Thursday at Glen Oaks Memorial Park in Chico, Calif.

Hear me more plainly.
I have in equal balance justly weigh’d
What wrongs our arms may do, what wrongs we suffer,
And find our griefs heavier than our offences.

(2 Henry IV 4.1.70-3)

NY Times
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: July 24, 2005
Alain Bombard, who deliberately drifted across the Atlantic for 65 days in a lifeboat with no provisions - subsisting on plankton, saltwater and raw fish - to prove it was possible, died on July 19 at a hospital in Toulon, France. He was 80.

His death was reported by French, English and American news agencies, none of which gave a cause.

Dr. Bombard became an instant legend in France in 1952 when he drifted from the Canary Islands to Barbados in a small rubber boat. He joined a long list of Frenchmen who have performed seemingly silly feats at great hardship and, often, immense risk.

French adventurers were the first to traverse Niagara Falls on a tightrope, walk from Paris to Moscow on stilts and row across the Pacific Ocean. When a Frenchman, Guy Delage, swam across the Atlantic in 1995, journalists turned to Dr. Bombard for comment. “I will certainly refrain from tearing Guy Delage apart, since people made fun of me,” Dr. Bombard said in an interview with The New York Times.

Dr. Bombard was born in Paris on Oct. 27, 1924, and became a medical doctor. Time magazine reported that he became interested in survival techniques in 1951 when he was rescued during an unsuccessful attempt to swim the English Channel. He and a friend made do with a half-kilogram of butter for five days.

Dr. Bombard went to an oceanographic institute in Monte Carlo to develop ways for people lost in small boats to survive on even less. He concluded that drinking limited quantities of seawater and fluids pressed from raw fish, and eating fish and plankton would do the job.

After getting married on July 15, 1952, to Ginette Brunon, with whom he eventually had five children, he began his journey in Monaco. Emergency provisions were loaded onto the 15-foot-long, 6-foot-wide rubber boat, but a notary sealed them so it would be obvious if Dr. Bombard used them. The seal was reported to be still affixed at journey’s end.

He went first to Tangiers, then Casablanca, hoping a friend would join him. The friend called him to say “family circumstances” prevented him from making the trip. Another companion had already dropped out.

Dr. Bombard floated away on the craft he had named l’Hérétique (the Heretic) on Aug. 25, 1952. After arriving in Las Palmas in the Canary Islands, he flew to Paris to see his wife and newborn daughter.

He returned to Las Palmas and on Oct. 19, hoisted his small, triangular sail and drifted into the Atlantic. He encountered storms, and weeks of dead-calm seas. When he encountered a tanker, he found that he was 600 miles off course. The mix of raw fish and plankton, which he first thought tasted a bit like lobster purée, grew tiresome.

He told Life magazine that it added up to “a starving, thirsty hell.” He became something of a hero in France, where he became a spokesman for the Bombard line of lifeboats, secretary of state for the environment for a month in 1981 and a deputy representing France at the European Parliament for 15 years.

It was a German doctor, Dr. Hans Lindemann, who some think took wind out of Dr. Bombard’s sail.

Dr. Lindemann became fascinated by Dr. Bombard’s survival ideas and tried to survive two short voyages drinking saltwater. His feet and legs swelled dangerously. Dr. Lindemann wrote a book, “Alone at Sea” (1958), in which he not only cast doubt on seawater’s potability, but also charged that Dr. Bombard had cheated by sneaking provisions aboard.

A New York Times reviewer in 1958 said he was not able to weigh Dr. Lindemann’s scientific claims against those in Dr. Bombard’s “The Voyage of the Hérétique,” published in the United States in 1954.

The critic also expressed no opinion on what Dr. Lindemann, having ruled out sea water, drank on his own solo trans-Atlantic crossings, one in a dugout canoe and one in a kayak.

Beer.

Today brings word of the death of Alain Bombard who purposely drifted across the Atlantic claiming to subsided on raw fish, plankton and sea water. Fat chance. Sea water
has about a third more salt than does blood. When you drink it, the concentration of salt in your blood goes up, and this sucks water out of your cells. This leads to no end of problems, including kidney failure, brain damage, and death. Next time you’re at the beach, drink down a big glass of sea water and enjoy puking your guts out. (Well there is some good news re. sea water. It turns out that reports that a whale ejaculates 400 gallons of sperm is just another Urban Legend.
) Bombard’s rival in doing the semi-absurd was a German doctor, Hans Lindemann,
who crossed the Atlantic in a folding kayak , but in proper Teutonic fashion, Lindemann did not claim to drink sea water, he drank beer.

Then again, Bombard joined the legion (semi-pun) of Frenchman who did inane things, such as Silvain Dornon
, a baker who walked on stilts from Paris to Moscow in 58 days in the spring of 1891, Benoit Lecomte
who swam across the Atlantic in 1998 (and now wants to swim around the world—he does live in Texas now), and Francois Gravelot
who walked a tightrope stretched across Niagara Falls multiple times (once carrying his manager on his back, and another stopping to cook an omelet mid-way). Here are some pictures
. Gravelot, aka “Charles Blondin” also walked across Niagara Falls on stilts
. But, in the name of definite gender equality if nothing else, you have to recognize Anne Quemere
who rowed solo across the Atlantic—both directions. (Quemere’s current plan is to surf across the Atlantic
.) On Deck?

Ironically, we recently received the following message from an ODDfan:
“The AP and UPI reported that after the London bombings the French Government announced it raised its terror alert level from Run to Hide. The only two higher levels in France are Surrender and Collaborate. The raise was precipitated by a recent fire which destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively disabling their military.”

Oh boy are we going to get the e-mails.

Just remember, “pate”
is French for “goose guts,” and we ODDones would rather ride horses than eat them