Ringo Rocks Durham

Ringo Rocks Durham With A Little Help From His Friends. On Sunday, July 11, 2010, I found myself alone in the company of several thousand fans in the company of Mr. Richard Starkey, the former drummer of Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. You might know him as Ringo Starr, the drummer of The Beatles. The new Durham Performing Arts Center beside the new Durham Bulls Baseball Stadium was the site of the concert. This time last year I found myself in the baseball stadium listening to Willie Nelson, John Mellencamp, and Bob Dylan outdoors. I call this my annual July visit with 1960s icons tour. Ringo and his All Star Band have been touring in eleven different versions since 1989. The 2010 group includes Ringo Starr, Rick Derringer, Richard Page of Mr. Mister, Edgar Winter, Gary Wright, Wally Palmar of The Romantics and on drums Gregg Bissonette.

Set List From July 11, 2010
It Don't Come Easy (Ringo Starr)
Honey Don't (Ringo Starr)
Choose Love (Ringo Starr)
Hang On Sloopy (Rick Derringer)
Free Ride (Edgar Winter)
Talking In Your Sleep (Wally Palmar)
I Wanna Be Your Man (Ringo Starr)
Dream Weaver (Gary Wright)
Kyrie (Richard Page)
The Other Side of Liverpool (Starr)
Yellow Submarine (Ringo Starr)
Frankenstein [Edgar Winter]
Peace Dream (Ringo Starr)
Back Off Boogaloo (Ringo Starr)
What I Like About You ( Wally Palmar)
Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo/Eruption (Derringer)
Boys (Ringo Starr)
Love Is Alive (Gary Wright)
Broken Wings (Richard Page)
Photograph (Ringo Starr)
Act Naturally (Ringo Starr)
With a Little Help From My Friends/Give Peace a Chance (Ringo Starr)

What surprised me about this show that I went too almost as a lark as how tight a band these guys were and how they played as a team showing the same enthusiasm for the other guys music as they did for their own. The energy level was high considering the age of the musicians. Ringo just turned 70 and was/is the oldest Beatle, then John, Paul, and George in age. During the show the crowd spontaneously sang Happy Birthday to Ringo, who quipped he was still looking for the present. He interacted with the crowd often making jokes about few CDs his new Y-Not album had sold doing a head count of the audience with copies.

I learned that Hang On Sloopy was the state Rock and Roll Song for the state of Ohio, but I did not realize that Rick Derringer sang it. He was a great guitar player including an almost perfect rendition of Van Halen’s Eruption at the end of his own Rock and Roll Hoochie Koo. Edgar Winter, who I listened to as a teenager, was also an amazing musician going from sax, to drums, to keyboards and that was just on Frankenstein. His song Autumn was one of my favorite ballads from the 1970s. Palmar had high energy and probably the weakest musician in this band playing rhythm guitar, but he kept everyone out of their seats singing two of The Romantics big hits with the audience yelling “Hey” on almost every line of What I Like About You. Richard Page held down bass duties and delivered two strong vocals on Mr. Mister songs Kyrie and Broken Wings that were hits in the mid-1980s.

Gary Wright sang a remarkable version of Dream Weaver that allowed most to sit down along with his Love Is Alive, but that was not because he was not good, just perfect timing in a show that most people stood for two hours. Wright’s voice was strong and he told the story that he played on George Harrison’s first solo album All Things Must Pass along with Ringo and that he went with George to India. Harrison gave Wright a copy of a book about Indian Philosophy and that there was a passage about weaving of dreams that led to Wright’s most popular song.

Ringo joked that, “George Harrison never gave me a damn book.” Implying his song writing might have been stronger. The fact is that two of Starr’s most popular songs Photograph and It Don’t Come Easy were co-written with Harrison. It makes one wonder that if this song writing duo had worked together more what might have happened. While they would never be Lennon-McCartney, they did make some beautiful music together.

Of course, the reason for the show sold out show was Ringo. He did Boys, which he noted he did with Rory Storm and the Hurricanes before joining that other band. He never once mentioned Beatles in the show or Paul McCartney. His later solo work mostly about Peace and Love, where repeats of the 1960s mantra of All You Need Is Love and even mentioned John Lennon in a song about Imagining a Peace Dream. While the naïve worldview is a bit outdated in the cynical times we live, there is no doubt that Ringo still believes it.

There were songs that you might have wanted from Ringo especially more from his wildly popular 1973 Ringo Album or Octopus’s Garden. When I was learning to play the guitar about 1973 after spending all summer in Theodore Guynn’s tobacco field making enough money to buy an FG-75 Yamaha acoustic, my teacher Sam Dobyns and I learned most of the songs from Ringo as they were not very difficult to follow the chords and gave us common ground to play together.

It is not every day you get to spend time with a living Beatle and these guys were very good and very professional, who enjoyed each other’s company and the energy from the crowd. It is not every show that you hear a former Beatle sing Carl Perkin’s Honey Don’t, which The Beatles covered or Buck Owens’s Act Naturally. Starr loved the former Hee Haw star and all musicians of Ringo’s age loved Carl Perkins. Starr brought the house down when he sang Yellow Submarine and I Wanna Be Your Man, but a more fitting finale for the show could not have been that With A Little Help From My Friends, the Lennon-McCartney song penned for Starr’s baritone from Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Raleigh News and Observer Story
http://blogs.newsobserver.com/beat/ringo-plays-durham-with-a-little-help-from-his-friends#storylink=misearch

Photos from the concert
http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/07/11/577083/first-look-ringo-starr-071110.html

Durham Herald Sun Story
http://www.heraldsun.com/view/full_story/8728546/article-Ringo-rocks-DPAC-stage--excited-crowd?instance=homesecondleft

Paul McCartney showed up for Ringo’s Birthday Concert at Radio City in New York
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/emily-singer/ringo-starr-and-his-all-s_b_640302.html

Jeb Visits GrahamFest

Christmas in July came to me this past weekend at GrahamFest 2010 in Major David Graham’s home in Wythe County, Virginia. For the second year in a row I took my J. E. B. Stuart photo exhibit to the mansion once visited by James Ewell Brown Stuart and set up in the Christmas Room. J. E. B. Stuart visited the home just before his fourteenth birthday walking through snow up to his knees. This year performers included Jeanette and Buddy Williams among others. I was happy to see Tracey Puckett Stump and her historically named sons along with Denise Coalson, who told me that she and her sister Deb Goodrich found the Graham Mansion over two decades ago. Denise wanted me to make sure we called Deb in Kansas to tell her we were there. I visited the house searching for everywhere Stuart visited over two decades ago myself. In this year, I celebrate the twentieth anniversary of raising money to save Stuart’s Birthplace. Thanks to Josiah Weaver and Mary Lin Brewer for having me again. This is a truly an interesting home with the history and a ghost investigation by the Virginia Paranormal Society.

To Alexander Stuart Brown

Draper’s Valley, Virginia
January 17, 1847


It is now dear cousin almost a month since I wrote to you last and I resume my seat hoping that you will—

View this not with a scornful eye
But pass its imperfections by

Although I have but little new to write yet I hope that I will have something that will interest you.

I was disappointed in getting a horse here. So I set out on foot on Tuesday morning for Uncle Brown’s I crossed the mountain and went up the back road by Graham’s, where I dined upon quite a fine dinner, and then set out on my journey the snow being about half leg deep and I tell you that I had a tough time of it, for I had to break the road nearly all the way.

I got to Cobbler Springs about sundown where I found Cousins T. and F., also Miss Mary McKee and Miss Maria S. Crockett who was as fat and pretty as ever. I had the pleasure of riding home with her next morning and in the conversation I brought up your name, and I talked about a good many different things concerning you and found them to be o. k. but away with this trash.

When I got there I found that I could not get a horse (I mean at Uncle Brown’s) until he arrived home which he did not until Thursday night following. I thought it was not worth my while to go to Patrick County until Spring at which time I intend to go or burst a gut.

I stayed there enjoying myself most remarkably well, until Tuesday making a stay of just two weeks when accompanied with Miss Maria Young I came down to the Valley where I have been ever since jogging away at old Caesar

I suppose you’ve heard of the wedding etc. The Colonel has gone with a carriage to Roanoke after his children. Things are going on about as usual. I received a letter from Sister Columbia the other day. They were all well and she requested me to send her love to you when I wrote to you. My school will be out the last of March. I want to go home then and stay until May and then go to Mr. Buckingham.

Yours,
J. E. B. Stuart

J. E. B. Stuart Papers, Virginia Historical Society.