Colours of the Rising Sun -- Thought i would do a post on the rising sun and its different colours after i took a few bright red sunrise photos, the other day . I found it interesting how at different parts of the dawn you find a variation of colour. I was a little slow and it never dawned on me that it had to do with frequencies that were causing these variants. The old colours of the rainbow. Scattering is the name given to this phenomenon and because the colour red has the longest wavelength of
any visible light. The sun is red when it’s on the horizon, where its
extremely long path through the atmosphere blocks all other colours. The
short wavelength of blue and violet cause these molecules in the air
to scatter much more than other colors of the spectrum. When the path is long, all of the blue and
violet light scatters out of your line of sight so as the sun gets higher in the sky you see the progress from oranges to yellows and finally the blue. Once it reaches a certain height in the sky where it is at its closest point it continues all the way down, to the setting of the sun.
Sunrise the day before the Eclipse and Blood Moon Currimundi Lakes
Rising Sun -- Nature and the rising sun had to be so awe inspiring to humans in ancient times. The huge
advances in science over the last couple of hundred years mean we are constantly exposed to new research on
natures workings including celestial bodies. We are thus no longer astonished upon hearing about a
new star or galaxy being discovered, where as back in the dark ages they would have
looked into the sky and been amazed at objects such as stars, planets, the moon, the sun, comets and meteorites . While
events like the recent eclipse and blood moon people would have stood
dumbfounded at the forces of nature. Now days it just passes as another
day. The sun was considered the “Saviour of the World,” as it
rose and brought light and life to the planet. It was revered for
causing seeds to burst and thus giving its life for plants to grow. Ra
the Sun God was also known by different names representing the various
positions of the sun in the sky. In Egyptian worship, Horus is the
rising sun, Ra is the noon sun and then Osiris is god of the dead the
dying or setting sun. Horus is not only the sun but also the North Pole star, and his twin
brother adversary, Set, represents not only darkness but also the South
Pole star.
Moments before the Sun Rise
Sun Rose and Sun Flower --
Sun rose, also called Rock Rose are a low-growing flowering plant
with the flowers resembling single roses. They are useful in rock
gardens and wild gardens . They are of the Helianthemum genus being half
hardy to hardy perennials and have a shrubby nature. These plants were
one of my mum's favourites and her gardens were always full of them between
the garden ornaments of Snow White and her dwarfs or around the mermaid
and pond you would always find the Sun Rose. In mum's garden, mainly
along the fence line you would also find the Sunflower with its display of
positive phototropism bending towards the sun. Light response in plants
is phototropism, which involves growth towards or away from a light
source. A flower which reflects so many of the sun’s positive
characteristics, it isn’t surprising that people enjoy having Sunflowers
in their garden .Sunflowers originated in the Americas in 1,000 B.C.
and have been sourced for their seeds, as well as oils used for cooking and skin emollients for a long time.
House of the Rising Sun -- The earliest recorded version of this song was by Clarence Ashley in 1932 called
“Rising Sun Blues”. Country singer, Roy Acuff, recorded it as “The
Rising Sun” in 1938. It would later be associated with Eric Burden and the Animals in the 1960's. The 1962 version by Bob Dylan is believed to be the one they first heard and they started playing it on the Chuck Berry tour in 1964 at Manchester. The crowd took to it so strongly they knew that they had to record it and the rest is history. I suppose the song had come back home as the British melody had been brought over to America by British settlers a hundred or more years before with the words obviously being altered as New Orleans was the den of iniquity in the American South.
Bob Dylan House of the Rising Sun 1962
Currimundi Lake at Dawn
Caloundra at Dawn
Point Cartwright at around 7.30am on a Winters Morning
William Shakespeare --I may never have been a big Shakespeare fan but never doubted his impact on the English speaking world and the world of entertainment. It is everywhere you look and as a child I was often listening to my mum do a bit of Macbeth or Hamlet. My mum had fond memories of her performances in the youth stage shows in her home country, of England, as a teenager . She would often reminisce over photographs of herself in the fifties. Then went on as chief organizer and instructor of youth drama groups in her adopted town of Rockhampton, in the seventies.
We know what we are, but know not what we may be.
William Shakespeare also known as the Bard of Avon was a poet, playwright and actor. He lived between 1564 and 1616 and married Anne Hathaway at the age of 18 they had three children together. He would retire from London stages to his home at Stratford on Avon in 1613. Some of his famous works are Othello, Hamlet,King Lear, Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.
The better part of valor is discretion
All that glistens is not gold.
Nothing will come of nothing.
The course of true love never did run smooth.
World of the Dragonfly
Shakespeare's influence on the music world can be found through the lyrics of many songwriters with his phrases used in verses of popular songs. Australian song writer Paul Kelly is one who has loved Shakespeare from his school years. two years ago on the 400 years anniversary of Shakespeare's death ,Kelly released a mini-album interpreting the playwright’s sonnets. Paul Kelly said, "He’s my favourite writer by a long streak. In high school we studied Macbeth and it grabbed my attention straight away. It’s a good play for teenagers: death, blood, sex and betrayal, a lot of it set at night. It’s a world of extremes.”
Are You Lonesome Tonight -- The worlds a stage and we all must play a part.
‘All the world ‘s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.’
Singer William Shakespeare-- On the other side of the world in the land down under a singer took the playwrights name for his stage name. John Stanley Cave was a son of a Sydney
greengrocer and sang in suburban pubs and clubs for $30 a night until
writer/producers Harry Vanda and George Young, discovered him. They wrote
two songs for him in 1974 and at the age of 26 he had two number one
hits on the Australian charts with My Little Angel and Can't Stop Myself
from Loving You. Just one year later his career was shattered after he
was convicted of carnal knowledge with a 15-year-old fan. He was an
only child and both of his parents had died. Shakespeare's life went
down the path of depression and alcoholism and in the '90s, he was
destitute and living out of his Mini Minor. By 2000 he was living in the
ticket booth of a sports oval opposite the St George Leagues Club in
Kogarah. Then in 2010 while living in public housing the ex glam rocker
of the seventies, passed on. Sad story and something I have an opinion on. I'm not condoning the carnal knowledge but this man probably regretted that fateful day, all his life and we were not there to know how the incident occurred. He was a musician surrounded by young girl fans and its been said this girl looked a lot older. No one is the same, and we all have different life experiences.
William Shakespeare
Cant Stop Myself From Loving You
Shakespeare,Bacon and Marlowe -- There are many tales and stories around Shakespeare and who really was the author of his works. Maybe Francis Bacon or Christopher Marlowe most likely Shakespeare himself. History may provide good material for drama, but it will need some mythology attached, if its to stay in the imagination of a modern audience. The question of who created the 37 plays and 154 poems credited to William Shakespeare has sparked extensive debates and will continue to do so . The modern conspiracy theory has its beginnings in the early twentieth century and a mention of them is made in the 1909 edition of The American Historical Review but it was the Kennedy Assassination in the 1960's, where they escalated. Some are layered with flaws while many have part truths but then there is the possibility, that time, may reveal a mystery.
Today we are taking a look at Universities their history,songs,traditions and famous residents.
OxfordUniversity -- is a unique
and historic institution and is the oldest university in the English speaking world. Teaching existed at Oxford in some form in
1096 and then during the 12th century when well respected teachers began
to
lecture there and students came to live and study in Oxford, it grew quickly. The University’s first
library was built in approximately 1320 in the University Church of St
Mary the Virgin, in a room which still exists as a vestry and a meeting
room for the church.
The
Bodleian Library was built and opened in 1488 is one of the oldest libraries in Europe.Then built alongside the kitchens in the 1520s,was the Great Hall and it has been in almost constant use since the sixteenth century. This is where J.K.Rowling's, Harry Potter's school, Hogwarts, is set and if you look up at the stainglass windows in the hall you will see the face of a girl, her name, "Alice Liddell".
One of Oxfords most famous residents and
Maths tutors was Lewis Carroll / Charles Dodgson who taught at the Christ Church College
in Oxford. "No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise". It was
in 1862 down the river Isis he first told a young girl," Alice Liddell"
about the Adventures of Alice. Which had a whole maze of characters from
white rabbits,madhatters to a Walrus and from these characters so many
classic songs and stories have evolved. My own personal favourites were
Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee.
White Rabbit Jefferson Airplane
Live Woodstock 1969
Cambridge University was set up
after an ugly dispute at Oxford which saw a number of students, setting
up their own learning institution, in 1209, that institution was Cambridge . It is the second oldest university in the English speaking
world. In 1231 a charter from King Henry III granted it the right to control its own members and then a bull in 1233 from Pope Gregory IX gave graduates from Cambridge the right to teach everywhere in the Christian world. The papal bull actually refers to a seal. lol! The Catholic Churches seal of authentication of a document. The University has been the
centre for political and religious controversy throughout the centuries. The university also operates eight cultural and scientific museums.
Its most famous resident and teacher of mathematics was scientist, "Sir Isaac Newton". The story goes in 1666 he was sitting beneath an apple tree at Trinity College when one dropped and landed on his head and his gravity theory was born. It is most likely it was at his mothers home in Cambridge where this occurred and the apple tree was the Flower of Kent variety which is a green cooking apple not the red one as portrayed through history. The apple tree at the University today is a grafted cutting from the original tree from his mothers home which was blown over in a storm in the 1800's. Newton is ranked as arguably the greatest scientist of all with his theories on gravity, light and frequencies.
University of Notre Dame is located in the US state of
Indiana. It was established with the aim of being one of America’s great
Catholic
universities. Notre Dame attracts over 1,100 students from nearly 90
countries worldwide. Founded in 1842 by Reverend Edward F. Sorin, a priest of the French missionary order known as the Congregation of the Holy Cross. Father Sorin named his school in honor of Our Lady, in his native tongue. The Rev. Michael J. Shea and his brother, John F. Shea wrote the original lyrics to Notre Dames fight song or victory march and it was copyrighted in 1928 . In 1961 South Melbourne Football Club,now the Sydney Swans an Australian rules football team in the Australian Football League , gained copyright to adapt the Victory March into their own club song, "Cheer, Cheer the Red and the White,"
Victory March the fight song for the University of Notre Dame.
The Ivy League-- Harvard University ;Yale University ; Princeton University ;Columbia University ;Brown University ;Dartmouth College;University of Pennsylvania; Cornell University
A planting of an Ivy originated in 1850 at Harvard and
gradually was taken up by Yale,Pennsylania and Princeton.The roman
numeral IV is often used for Ivy because of the four original Unis,
Yale,Harvard,Princeton and Columbia who met up in 1876. The Ivy League term was first used back in 1935 in the Christian Science
Monitor. The league was
formed in 1936 to preserve the ideals of athletics. It wasnt until 1954
that an agreement was drawn up to include all sports. The Ivy League represents the eight major universities in the USA. They have a selective admission process of the social elite or academic excellence . They were established in 1954 with the headquarters being at Princeton University in New Jersey. Princeton has won the best Uni award for 11 of the past 18 years.
University of Texas -- On September 15, 1883, the University of Texas at Austin opened with one building, eight professors and 221 students . We are proud, ambitious and determined to change the world .Spirit and pride run deep at The University of Texas at Austin, and never is that more evident than on Longhorn game day. The year was 1955 and Harley Clark, head cheerleader at the time introduced the hook em horns gesture as the official hand sign for the University of Texas, to be used whenever and wherever Longhorns gather. At games it is often used in conjunction with thethe school spirit song"The Eyes of Texas". Which is set to the tune of "
I've Been Working On the Railroad. " In 1902 student Lewis Johnson
played tuba and was the
manager for just about every musical performance on campus.
While he wasn't a composer himself, Johnson was determined to create a
song for The University of Texas. That song was The Eyes of Texas.
Corna in Italy or the Karana Mudra in Buddhism and Hinduism this is used as a symbol to ward off or prevent evil or negative spirits. In the 70's it became popular with rock bands as a symbol for rock'n'roll. Ronnie James Dio of Black Sabbath used it as did many heavy metal bands it was also used on the cover of the Beatles Yellow Submarine Album with John Lennon making the sign over Paul McCartneys head.
When we look at meanings of certain signs, songs, symbols it makes me think of Lewis Carroll and Alice. The Oxford maths teacher who loved mathematical puzzles.
“If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?” Lewis Carroll
The religious gospel music that was developed by American slaves
in the 19th century cotton field churches was the first step on the
road to rock’n’roll and of
all the music genres that came together to create rock’n’roll, gospel
was by far the most significant. . Plantation owners were reluctant to allow their slaves to play
African instruments or to sing songs from their homeland. It was in
the churches that the slaves felt safe to sing their own songs. Much of the musical heritage
that had been brought over from Africa was lost but the slaves developed
new songs based on Christian topics but incorporating African vocal and
rhythmic influences. After the end of the American Civil War, in 1865,
the slaves were freed they gained access to western
instruments such as the guitar and piano, using them to great effect in
the development of gospel music and its journey towards
rock’n’roll. Then by the end of the 19th century white
audiences were starting to experience the music through Minstrel Shows
and vaudeville.
Gospel with Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Mahalia Jackson
Sister Rosetta Tharpe -- March 20, 1915 to October 9, 1973 was an American singer, songwriter, guitarist, and recording artist. As a pioneer of mid-20th-century music, she attained popularity in the 1930s and 1940s with her gospel recordings with her unique mixture of spiritual lyrics and rhythmic accompaniment that was a precursor of rock and roll. She was the first great recording star of gospel music and among the first gospel musicians to appeal to rhythm-and-blues and rock-and-roll audiences, later being referred to as "the original soul sister" and "the Godmother of rock and roll".
Sister Rosetta Tharpe Up Above My Head
Mahalia Jackson --
October 26, 1911 to January 27, 1972 was an American gospel singer.
Possessing a powerful voice, she was referred to as "The Queen of
Gospel". "I sing God's music because it makes me feel free", Jackson
once said about her choice of gospel, adding, "It gives me hope. With
the blues, when you finish, you still have the blues."
Crying in the Chapel Mahalia Jackson
Blues/Clarksdale and Juke Joints
Blues music and its poetry, span the globe, but its birthplace is rooted amid
sharecroppers, juke joints and shacks, in the Mississippi Delta. The Delta blues is one of the earliest styles of blues music. Mississippi Delta, is a region of the United States that
stretches from north to south between Memphis, Tennessee, and Vicksburg,
Mississippi, and from east to west between the Yazoo River and the
Mississippi River. Taking a route through Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana we find the origins of juke joints. The community rooms that were
occasionally built on plantations to provide a place for the slaves to
socialize. The most influential aspect of juke joints was definitely the music. The music of today has many different influences, but the legacy of the juke joint is quite clear in rock'n'roll. They were often referred to as the dens of devil’s music. Originally, the music of juke joints relied on two instruments. The fiddle and the banjo. Later the dominant instruments became the Guitar and harmonica .
Junior Parker -- or Herman Parker March 27, 1932 to November 18, 1971 was a blues singer and musician. He
is best remembered for his unique voice, and his song 'Mystery Train' . Herman better known as Little grew up in
Clarksdale, Mississippi during the 1930s. After working with Howlin'
Wolf's band he formed his own group, the Blues Flames in 1952.
John Lee
Hooker -- It is believed that he was born in Tutwiler, Mississippi, in Tallahatchie County, although some sources say his birthplace was near Clarksdale, in Coahoma County. He was the youngest of the 11 children of William Hooker born 1871, died after 1923, a sharecropper and Baptist preacher, and Minnie Ramsey born 1880. John Lee Hooker August 22, 1912 – June 21, 2001 was an American blues singer, songwriter, and guitarist. The son of a sharecropper, he rose to prominence performing an electric guitar-style adaptation of Delta blues. Hooker often incorporated other elements, including talking blues and early North Mississippi Hill country blues. He developed his own driving-rhythm boogie style, distinct from the 1930s–1940s piano-derived boogie-woogie.
Muddy Waters -- Born in McKinley Morganfield on April 4, 1915, in Issaquena County, Mississippi. When Waters was just 3 years old, his mother, Bertha Jones, died, and he was subsequently sent to Clarksdale to live with his maternal grandmother, Delia Jones. Waters grew up immersed in the Delta blues In 1943, he moved to Chicago and began playing in clubs. A record deal followed, and hits like "I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man" and "Rollin' Stone" made him an iconic Chicago blues man.
Sam Cooke -- Born January 22, 1931, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, to a Baptist minister and his wife, Cooke’s early musical development took place in the church. Like other early figures in what would eventually be called “soul” music, Cooke began his professional career singing gospel. Sam Cooke sang with the gospel group the Soul Stirrers before going on to land huge hits like "You Send Me," "Wonderful World," "Chain Gang" and "Twistin' the Night Away." Forging a link between soul and pop, he had a diverse repertoire that attracted both black and white audiences, and started his own record label and publishing company. Cooke died on December 11, 1964. When in response to a reported shooting, officers of the Los Angeles Police Department were dispatched to the Hacienda Motel, where they found Sam Cooke dead on the office floor, shot three times in the chest by the motel’s manager, Bertha Franklin. The authorities ruled Cooke’s death a case of justifiable homicide, based on the testimony of Ms. Franklin, who claimed that Cooke had threatened her life after attempting to rape a young woman with whom he had earlier checked in.
Ike Turner -- R&B legend Ike Turner was born on November 5, 1931, in Clarksdale, Mississippi, and grew up playing the blues. In 1956, he met a teenager and singer named Anna Mae Bullock. He married her and helped create her stage persona, Tina Turner. The two became the Ike & Tina Turner Revue and created several R&B hits, including "I Idolize You," "It's Going to Work Out Fine" and "Poor Fool." The duo's cover of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary" earned them their first and only Grammy Award together in 1971. Their last hit together was "Nutbush City Limits," written by Tina and released in 1973. Turner died of a cocaine overdose on December 12, 2007, in San Marcos, California.
Rocket 88 Ike Turner
Country / Rockabilly and the
Answer Songs
In the late 1940's , American radio stations began to play blues and gospel music which inspired young white working class musicians in areas where there was a large African/American population. The young artists started mixing the sound with the country music style they were familiar with, like Western Swing,Hillbilly , Bluegrass, and Honky Tonk. It was originally labelled Country and Western Rhythm and Blues and then later Rockabilly.
It was in 1954 when Elvis Presley and the Blue Moon Boys started touring the southern states .bringing their style of Rockabilly which inspired even more artists like Buddy Holly, Marty Robbins,Brenda Lee and Wanda Jackson to turn to this new sound. The boys may not have been the originators of this genre of music but they certainly got many artists hooked with their sound. Scotty Moores, Electric Guitar , Bill Blacks slap back Bass and Elvis on rhythm guitar.
Hound Dog and the Answer Song
The concept became widespread in blues
and R&B recorded music in the 1930s through 1950s. Answer songs were
also extremely popular in country music in the 1950s and 1960s, most
often as female responses to an original hit by a male artist.
In 1952 saw the original release of Big Mama Thornton's, Hound Dog on Peacock Records which was written by Leiber and Stoller. One of the most prolific songwriting teams of the fifties rock era. It reached number 1 in 1953, and there were six answer songs in response. The most successful of these was "Bear Cat", by Rufus Thomas which
reached number 3 and "Mr Hound Dog Man" by Roy Brown. "Bear Cat", released on Sam Phillips Sun label caused him plenty of headaches legally, with a successful copyright lawsuit of $35,000 and by the end of 1955, Sam was in a lot of financial trouble and this is believed to be the main reason, Elvis Presley's recording contract was sold to RCA. I find it quite ironic Presley's, recording, of "Hound Dog" in 1956 went on to become the biggest selling hit of his career and reached number one on country,pop, rhythm and blues charts across the country.
It is one of the most famous anecdotes in the history of science. The young Isaac Newton is sitting in his garden, when an apple falls on his head and in a stroke of brilliant insight, he suddenly comes up with his theory of gravity. It was 1666, and the plague had closed many public buildings and places. Newton was obsessed by the orbit of the Moon around the Earth, and eventually reasoned that the influence of gravity must extend over vast distances. After seeing how apples always fall straight to the ground, he spent several years working on the mathematics showing that the force of gravity decreased as the inverse square of the distance. His thoughts ? There must be a drawing power in matter. And the sum of the drawing power in the matter of the Earth must be in the Earth's centre, not in any side of the Earth". Therefore does this apple fall perpendicularly or towards the centre? If matter thus draws matter; it must be proportion of its quantity. Therefore the apple draws the Earth, as well as the Earth draws the apple. It also had a resonance with the Biblical account of the tree of knowledge, and Newton was known to have religious views.
Apple Computer
Founders Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak created Apple Computer on April 1 1976 and incorporated the company on January 3 1977 in Cupertino, California. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak had been friends for some time, having met in 1971, through their mutual friend, Bill Fernandez. The Apple Lisa was a personal computer designed at Apple Computer, Inc. during the early 1980s. Officially, “Lisa” stood for “Local Integrated Software Architecture”, but it was also the name of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' daughter.Development of the Lisa began in 1978 and it underwent many changes during the development period before shipping at the very high price of US$9,995 with a 5 MB hard drive.
Their First Logo 1977
Newtons Circle of Colour
This circular diagram became the model for many color systems of the 18th and 19th centuries. Claude Boutet’s painter’s circle of 1708 was probably the first to be based on Newton’s circle. Our modern understanding of light and color begins with Isaac Newton 1642-1726 and a series of experiments that he publishes in 1672. He is the first to understand the rainbow when he refracts white light with a prism, resolving it into its component colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and violet. In the late 1660s, Newton starts experimenting with his ’celebrated phenomenon of colors.’ At the time, people thought that color was a mixture of light and darkness, and that prisms colored light. Newton set up a prism near his window, and projected a beautiful spectrum 22 feet onto the far wall. Further, to prove that the prism was not coloring the light, he refracted the light back together. Artists were fascinated by Newton’s clear demonstration that light alone was responsible for color. His most useful idea for artists was his conceptual arrangement of colors around the circumference of a circle , which allowed the painters’ primaries red, yellow, blue to be arranged opposite their complementary colors ,as a way of denoting that each complementary would enhance the other’s effect through optical contrast.
Colours in White Light and Newtons Disc
Colours of the Rainbow -- All colours bounce off at 40 to 42 degrees. Unique frequencies, make up more colors in a rainbow than there are stars in the Universe or atoms in your body, but that goes far beyond what we can perceive. Your imperfect eye can probably only discern about a million distinct colors when you view a rainbow, or anything else, for that matter. It’s only light ranging from about 400 nanometers to a little over 700 nanometers that provides us with the light visible to our human eyes.
Sound Waves -- White noise, for example, contains all the audible frequencies, just like white light contains all the frequencies in the visible range. In musical sound waves, the frequencies are spaced at intervals that we find pleasing to the ear, creating a harmonic structure that gives a sound its unique tone quality, or timbre. The noises we hear every day, boots stomping across the floor, a car honking outside, the jingling of keys are made up of sporadic wave forms, a random distribution of frequency and amplitude. The other colors are similar to white noise, but with more energy concentrated at either the high or low end of the sound spectrum, which subtly changes the nature of the signal. Pink noise, for example, is like white noise with the bass cranked up. In recent years, pink noise has become the darling of the noise spectrum, dethroning white as the in-vogue option on sound generators for sleep or concentration.The pink noise pattern has been found in most genres of music. If white is all frequencies at once, black is the color of silence.
What Color is a Mirror
Trivia
Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon
Aubrey Powell -- He was born on 23 September 1946, co-founded the album cover design company Hipgnosis with Storm Thorgerson in 1967.The company ran successfully for 15 years until 1982. He was nominated for five Grammy Awards.
The story of where the album design came from by Aubrey Powell -- "I was looking through an old French book of early color photography
from the 50s, and in this book was a photo of a prism on a piece of
sheet music and sunlight coming in through the glass window. It was
creating this rainbow effect. Storm said, “This is interesting. It sums
up Pink Floyd. I’ve got it. We’ll do a triangle with a prism shape coming
through it as a graphic, not as a photograph."
When all the world is a
hopeless jumble And the raindrops tumble all around Heaven opens a magic
lane When all the clouds darken up the skyway There's a rainbow highway
to be found Leading from your windowpane To a place behind the sun Just
a step beyond the rain.
Rubin Hurricane Carter's book, The 16th Round was published in 1974. Carter who had been in and out of jail all his life had in 1964 finally got a chance to fight for the middleweight title losing the fight to Joey Giardello. The book however was written about his fight for justice after being charged for a triple murder in 1966. A murder he said he did not commit. At the time it made an impact on quite a few people of prominence with one of them being boxer Mohammad Ali and another, in musician Bob Dylan, who decided to visit Rubin in jail. Bob Dylan wrote and recorded the Hurricane in July 1975 . Dylan had to alter some lyrics as the retrial case was still being heard and was worried about mentioning names of the star witness's which could lead to court actions. Dylan used a considerable amount of poetic licence in the song but it had the desired effect and got peoples attention. Released on Dylan's 1976 album Desire. Carter was eventually tried and convicted twice for the murder in the Lafeyette Bar in 1966. Once in 1967 and again in the retrial in 1976 but in 1985 the second conviction was finally overturned and he was freed.
Hurricane Bob Dylan
Rocky and Sylvestor Stallone
Living in a one bedroom apartment in 1975, broke and needing some inspiration. Stallone decided to visit the library and spent most of the day reading Edgar Allen Poe .
Then a couple of days later he viewed the Mohammad Ali V Chuck Wepner fight on TV . This became the inspiration for the script of Rocky and even though later denying this, after Wepner took out a lawsuit, over the script . Stallone settled out of court. Wepner was a huge underdog in the fight and knocked Ali down in the ninth round but with only nine seconds left of the fifteen round event, Wepnar himself was knocked to the canvas unable to get to his feet.
Ali vs Wepnar Final Round
Stallone was so inspired by the fight that he sat down for three days straight and completed a movie script. Shortly after he was pulled in by his agency for a small part and he decide to offer the script to them and get their views on it. They offered him 25,000 for the script alone, but he would'nt take the deal unless he was able to play the role of Rocky. They eventually gave in to Stallone and gave him a million dollar budget to make it . It was basically filmed with a hand held camera for many of the scenes to keep the budget down. It ended up costing less than a million and earning over 200 million dollars.
Rocky Theme Songs
Gonna Fly Now was Bill Conti's theme song for Rocky. He had written it and taken it to his friend, Carol Connors and asked her what she thought as he wanted to include some words with the music but could'nt come up with any suitable. The story goes like this, Carol was in the shower when Gonna Fly Now came into her head . That evening she called Bill who immediately liked the words and that is history. The song had thirty words in total when finished. Trivia -- Carol Conners was the lead singer for the Teddy Bears who had the hit song To Know Him Is To Love Him.
Eye of the Tiger was the theme song for the Rocky III movie which interestingly included a scene where Rocky got thrown out of the ring by a wrestler Hulk Hogan . After Wepner's fight with Ali his career headed downhill and in 1976 Wepner ended up in the ring with Andre the Giant where he was thrown out of the ring. I dont think this is coincidental . Wepner retired from boxing in 1978
Born Cassius Clay in Louisville, Kentucky,on January 17th 1942. His first boxing bout was in 1954 which he won in a split decision . He won three Louisville Golden Gloves titles before winning the National Golden Gloves in 1959. The following year he became an Olympic gold medalist. Then in 1964 he won the world heavyweight boxing title for the first time .It was after this fight that he converted to Islam and then in 1967, in the middle of the Vietnam conflict he was called up for military service. Ali refused to be enlisted so was stripped of his title and had a battle to keep himself out of jail. Finally in the seventies he got the opportunity to reclaim the title .Eventually becoming the first person to hold it three times. Recording wins in famed bouts against Frazier and Foreman. He was diagnosed with Parkinsons in 1984 after which Ali devoted much of his time to philanthropy and in 2005 he was given the Presidential Medal of Freedom. He died on June 3rd 2016 in Phoenix Arizona.
Ali Quotes
I'm so fast that last night .I turned off the light switch in my hotel room and was in bed before the room was dark.
I've seen George Foreman shadow box and the shadow won.
At home I'm a humble guy, but i dont want the world to know. Humble people ,I've found don't get very far.
I said I was the greatest , I never said I was the smartest.
Don't wait for the world to recognize your greatness,live it and let the world catch up to you.
I am the greatest . I said that before I even knew I was.
Inside the ring or out , aint nothing wrong with going down. Its staying down thats wrong.
Mohammad Ali and Sam Cooke recording The Gangs All Here
said Ali "captured the imagination and support of the entire dark world". Lawrence Guyot Civil Rights Organiser said"He was this beautifully arrogant young man. Who made us proud to be us and proud to fight for our rights".
