Popular Culture (“Music”) 20110401. “Pat” Boone

Last week a commentator put the bug in my ear that I do not ALWAYS have to write about subjects that I like very much.  I have done it before, but usually in connexion with other topics.  This installment is different.

This one is concerned with Pat Boone, one of the most insipid and untalented “artists” ever to plague us with his presence.  He was a creation of his time, and although he could sing, sort of, was and still is, in my opinion, more of a curious relic of desegregation.

Please come with us on a very curious journey that still does not very well explain how a relatively talentless individual has continued to be in the spotlight since before I was born, and I am not that young.  Please enter here.

Charles Eugene Boone, born 19340601, now 76 years old, is still with us to annoy us.  He, although born in Florida, claims to be a direct descendant of Daniel Boone, yes, that one, not Fess Parker.  Here is a quote from him from the ultra right show from the Christian Broadcasting Network, Pat Robertson’s notorious for truth distortion, The 700 Club.

I have, but I know I have inherited some of the DNA of my great, great, great grandfather, Daniel Boone.

Let us do some maths here.  A generation is generally defined as a 30 year span, give or take, in a family’s heritage.  Great, great, great, grandfather then implies four generations, or around 120 years, give or take.  Taking 1934, the year of his birth, and subtracting 120 years comes to 1812.  Daniel Boone died, at the age of 85 (a very long life for the time) 18200926.  So it is POSSIBLE that a 77 year old man could have had an offspring at that time, but I find it unlikely.  Also, there is no record of Daniel Boone having children at this time in his life, and also no record of him ever being in Florida.

Thus, it is obvious that “Pat” Boone’s first name is made up, just as I suspect his “heritage” is.  I believe this man to be fundamentally a fake, at least as far as his real first name and his heritage goes.  His family moved to Kentucky when he was 2 years old, around 1936.  As far as I have been able to tell, that was his first contact with Kentucky and the Daniel Boone tradition (which is very fluid, and lost in the fog of history).

He pretty much grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, which is a very beautiful city.  I used to drive through it often, and compliment the excellent design of their interstate and feeder highways.  I have never been stalled there except for twice, once with a construction delay, and another time because of an accident.  Those highways are well marked, and the electronic signs give excellent information for those of us driving through.

In any event, “Pat” Boone went to high school at the pubic David Lipscomb High School, and to college at the private David Lipscomb College, also in Nashville.  Hmmm, just who is this David Lipscomb?  Well, he was a fundamentalist preacher, and also a pacifist and, according to some folks, an anarchist.  That does not jibe with “Pat’s” extremely conservative leanings now.  I can not say what the college advocated at the time, but the founder even advocated not to vote because of religious concerns.

Let us move on a bit, because trying to unscrew Charles’ (I refuse to use the name “Pat” any more unless there is evidence that he legally changed his name) past is difficult.  There are too many contradictions.  By the way, he is an Ivy League graduate, from Columbia in 1958, the year after I was born.  He was graduated magna cum laude from there in a really technical, and highly respected curriculum:  General Studies.  How can one even get a degree in General Studies?  The Geek could be graduated in that curriculum in about ten seconds, also magna cum laude and with oak clusters and laurel leaves.  What is it with this guy?  Oh, before I forget, he is a member of the Kappa Alpha fraternity, a racist one that admires Robert E. Lee in its spiritual source of chivalry.  Getting the picture about Charles now?

Well, before that, he started recording “music”.  Here is one of his first faux hits, from 1954 on Republic Records, welcomed by the frightened white folks who thought that Fats Domino might be a threat to little white girls.  Yes, I am using racist terms, but that was an extremely racist time, and that was the mindset of many, many people, especially folks from the southern United States.  He did not write this song.

How about the real deal?  By the way, Antoine is still with us, only 9 years younger than my dad was.  You tell me which version is better.

That was not all.  Charles made his fortune by demelanating black music to make it more acceptable to white record listeners, who had much more disposable income at the time, and so could buy many more records.  I would be interested in seeing the royalty payments as well.

I just came on a piece of his, in color, that has a very interesting gesture that comes in at 1:39.  Unfortunately, the embed code is blocked, but here is the link.  It his cover of Tutti Frutti, the Little Richard hit.  Is this just a coincidence, or is this a Nazi salute?  You decide.  He did not write this song.

How about a better version?  Even recorded when Little Richard was much older, this 1995 version still has much more feeling than Charles’ cover did in the 1950s.

He also covered another Penniman hit, Long Tall Sally.  His version, although competent from the standpoint of his singing, is completely without feeling or, as we would say now, soul.  He did not write this song.

Once again, please compare it with Little Richard’s version.  You tell me which one has more feeling in it.

Here are some other songs of his that charted.  Don’t Forbid Me was #1 on Billboard in 1957 for some strange reason.  It comes over with as much feelings as his covers do.  He did not write it.

His next #1 is sort of his signature song, Love Letters in the Sand.  It spent five weeks at #1.  He did not write it, since it was written in 1931!

Why anyone liked it is beyond me.  However, taste has little logic about it.

He last charted #1 in June of 1961 with Moody River.  He did not write it.  It is just about as insipid as his other works.

Charles has always worn his cross on his sleeve and has also been extremely active in conservative politics.  One cause that he strongly supported was the war in Veit Nam, perhaps because by the time that it really accelerated he way way too old for the draft.  He supported Reagan for Governor and President, and was also an ardent supporter of W. and the Gulf War, going so far as to question the patriotism of those opposed.  That is a pretty far cry from being brought up in a church that urged its members not to get politically involved, as far as urging them not to vote!

I was living in the Bluegrass region in Kentucky in 2007 when I actually got a robocall that he recorded for Ernie Fletcher, but I hung up on it before I listened to it all.  I now wish that I had listened, because only during the research phase for this piece did I realize that he was using homophobia as the pitch, saying that Steve Beshear would turn Kentucky into another San Francisco by supporting every homosexual cause.

He is a regular contributor to World Net Daily, a vile rag.  One of his editorials compares progressives to horrible disease, calling us “…black, filthy cells.”  This sort of emphasizes my mention of the Nazi salute, the only musical reference above that had the embed code disabled, but I did provide the link.  If you did not look, go back and see it.

In 1997, Charles underwent a bizarre transformation into a tight leather and sunglasses wearing heavy metal “artist”.  The reason is still obscure, and the results are horrible.  Here is a smattering of some of the work from his record, No More Mr. Nice Guy.  I do not know what to think of it.

The result was it got him thrown off Trinity Broadcasting Network, and he had to go hat in hand to the executives with his minister to get back into good graces.  He said that this was just a parody of himself, all in fun.  Right.

Charles has never been a stranger to pitching commercial products.  As far back as the late 1950s he was a pitchman for Chevrolet, and GM even sponsored his TeeVee show, The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom.  That has removed a bit of the shine from my 1967 Camaro, sadly.

In the late 1970s he was pitching for a product called Acne-Statin, an acne remedy, obviously.  Of course, he was pimping out his kids for the adverts (daughter Debby in particular).  When the Federal Trade Commission shut down the adverts for false claims, he finally agreed to be held personally liable for a small fraction of any monetary claims against the company that manufactured the product.  He also indicated that the was essentially shocked, SHOCKED! that the company pulled him into making the adverts without scientific evidence that the product acutally worked.  Right.

Even today, he is pitching things.  Now, what would you imagine that a die hard conservative might advertise?  If you guessed that he has followed the lead of the convicted felon G. Gordon Liddy and said gold, you would be correct.

He is pitching for Swiss America Trading Corporation, a gold seller that also has employed Dr. Michael Wiener (aka Michael Savage, the horribly hateful radio talk person), who acutally holds an earned Ph.D. in a technical subject.  Here are a couple of his adverts:

Since none of the stills or vidoes seem to be newer than five years or so (although one of the gold adverts was running as lately as yesterday on The 700 Club), here is a more recent picture of him:

If you get the idea that I do not like Charles Eugene Boone very much, you would be correct.  I believe that he was always a sham, and never had any real talent, but rather was a relatively good looking young white man that could sing a little and was non threatening to the public.  This is not just my thesis, as he put it in his own words:

I have no special or extraordinary talent; it’s just that I’ve had the right breaks at the right time.

How true.  If you disagree, please let us discuss it in a civil manner.  I also welcome any and all other comments.

Warmest regards,

Doc