Before The Selma March Massacre There Was B. Bumble & The Stingers And... Tchaikovosky

With apologies to Ken-- and in recognition of all the work he's done to make sure everyone at DWT knows everything there is to know about The Nutcracker-- I wanted to mention something not many people do remember about the score to that 1892 ballet. First though, by way of a little refresher, this is a performance by the Cologne New Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Volker Hartung, filmed in Hamburg, February 1, 2009.



Officially Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite op.71a, it is better known in America as the March of the Toy Soldiers. And there was a 1962 version, "Nut Rocker," by Los Angeles-based session musicians calling themselves B. Bumble & The Stingers (which included the great drummer Earl Palmer whose work you might recognize from albums by Neil Young, Frank Sinatra, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, Sam Cooke, the Beach Boys, Bobby Darin, Tim Buckley and dozens of others). The single went to #23 in the U.S. and #1 in the U.K. Emerson, Lake and Palmer recorded a somewhat overblown version a decade later in 1972, although here they are, in all their glory, live in Switzerland in 1970, doing the song after their first album was released:



In between B. Bumble & The Stingers' version and Emerson, Lake and Palmer's cover, a different march was gripping Americans-- 3 marches that attempted to go from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in March 1965. The ferocity of the police brutality against the peaceful, non-violent marchers by the racist and fascist beasts led to a national feeling of disgust towards the vicious thugs still dominating The South and, soon after, to the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1965, apparently not something LBJ was eager to get behind. Listen to him and Alabama's sick, racist governor, George Wallace, discussing the march on the phone:



I was a college freshman during this period and the impact on my soul was tremendous and existential. I still can't not cry when I watch depictions of that march. Everyone I know who has seen Selma is raving about it:




By the way, Louisiana's racist Republican congressman, Steve Scalise, Boehner's Majority Whip, is not accused of forgetting whether or not he spoke at a gay rights convention or of wandering into a conclave advocating economic justice for all Americans. David Duke, whose organization Scalise addressed, was a well-known Republican politician who ran for statewide and local office and served as the state Rep for the Metairie area, near where Scalise lived, an area he later served in the state legislature himself. While there, Duke distinguished himself by espousing neo-Nazi ideology on the floor of the legislature and selling copies of Mein Kampf in the state Capitol. There is no one in Louisiana who didn't know this at the time. And no one who didn't know Duke was the Grand Wizard of the KKK or what the KKK was advocating for blacks, Latinos and Jews. It was on TV, radio and on the front pages of the newspapers. Today, the third-ranking Republican in Congress, Scalise doesn't have what it takes to admit he was wrong and promise to mend his racist ways.

Boehner solemnly accepts Scalise's excuse that he thought he was addressing a bedsheet manufacturers' convention