On Tuesday I was cleaning up while listening to Babatunde Olatunji's 1959 album "Drum's of Passion". There are three songs on that album that have been plagiarized and one of them twice. "Jin-Go-Lo-Ba" was lifted directly onto Santana’s first album as “Jingo” and credited as written by Carlos Santana.
Serge Gainsbourg took the melody and the drum style and turned it into his song "Marabout".
The song "Akiwowo" was made into Gainsbourg's "New York, USA" and the song “Kiyakiya (Why do you run away?)” became Gainsbourg's "Joanna" which I’ve translated and sing every day. In a way it would be very flattering to be ripped off that much but not if the copiers are getting rich while you’re not.
I spent a couple of hours turning a pdf of the works of Percy Shelley into a Word document and then formatting some of the poems that are required reading for my course. I had hoped it wouldn’t take that long because this was my first free day since the fall term ended and there were other things that I wanted to do. Oh well, I guess it had to be done and I’ll probably have lots of free days over the next month.
I watched an episode of Peter Gunn. This story begins with two hoods named Drago and Jules killing a man in a bar named Gimpy. At Mother’s, Edie is singing “Goody Goody” by Matty Malneck and Johnny Mercer.
A man named Alastair is waiting to see Gunn. He needs protection from Drago and Jules though he doesn’t know their names. He had been desperate to provide for his family and so he hired a hit on himself so they could collect the insurance. Since then his situation has changed and he no longer needs the insurance but the man he’d made the arrangements with was Gimpy and since he doesn’t know the hit men he can’t stop them. Gunn gives Alastair the keys to his apartment and tells him not to open the door for anyone. Gunn goes to the joint where Gimpy was killed and finds out from the bartender that one of the killers wore a single red rose in his lapel. From Lieutenant Jacoby Gunn finds out that Gimpy's only friend seemed to be a dance teacher named Belle Decanto. At her studio there is only one student, a pretty young woman named Jeannie who begins flirting with Gunn as soon as he walks in. Belle says she has no information for Gunn. Outside on the steps of her building he finds a red rose. Gunn goes back to his apartment and tells Alastair that he’s being followed and so he’ll have to move him someplace else. He takes him to a cheap hotel where he feels he can trust the reformed safe cracker named Herman who works there as a clerk. Back at Gunn’s place is Jules waiting with a gun. Gunn tells him Alastair wants to call off the hit but Jules says it’s too late for both Alastair and Gunn because they can connect him and Drago with Gimpy’s murder. He says the bartender is already in the river. Jules tells Gunn to turn up his hi-fi loud but while doing it Gunn tosses a stack of records at him. The gun shoots wild and they struggle. In most Peter Gunn fight scenes a lot of things are knocked over, but obviously the African and pop art sculptures that decorate Gunn’s apartment are too expensive for the studio to trash and so miraculously they struggle around without toppling a single one. Jules’s gun goes off and he is killed. Gunn calls Jacoby to tell him that he’s learned that the other hit man’s name is Drago. Gunn goes to the dance studio and finds Belle dead. Jacoby has an address on Jules and they go there to look for a clue to Drago. On the street where Jules lived is an ancient lady selling flowers with a cart and singing about roses for sale. They find out Drago is her best customer and he lives just up the street. The apartment is empty but the name of the hotel where Gunn put Alastair is written on a note. They find Herman is beaten but alive. They run upstairs. Alastair has barricaded the door and calls to them that Drago had just been there but couldn’t get in. He starts to move all the furniture away from the door but hears a noise on the fire escape. Gunn runs and goes out to the adjacent fire escape through the hall window. Drago fires at him but Gunn shoots him and he falls. The last scene is kind of eerie with the old lady walking obliviously past Gunn with a basket of roses and chanting her rose hawking song.
Belle Decanto was played by Canadian actor Jesslyn Fax. She was Miss Hearing Aid, an elderly sculptor in Rear Window.
Herman was played by character actor Vito Scotti who was usually typecast as heavily accented Italians but was known as a man with a thousand faces. But the thick spectacled character he created for Herman was very similar to the one of the sleazy pawnshop owner named Geta that he played on Mike Hammer.
The flower lady was played by 97-year-old Adeline De Walt Reynolds who was born during the Civil War and remembers the soldiers coming home in the aftermath. She survived the San Francisco earthquake to raise four children without her husband who’d died in the disaster. At the age of 64 she became the oldest freshman ever to enter the University of California and got her BA six years later. It wasn’t until the age of 79 that she started acting though her husband had been a juggler in Vaudeville.
Jeannie the dance student was played by Shari Robinson who started out as a child actor.
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