It's Good To Be King

Yes, kind of (Tom) Petty, which gives all the "St. Louis Blues," if that's Handy. Plus the usual hot cartoons.

Greg Mitchell is the author of more than a dozen books and now writer/director of three award-winning films aired via PBS, including “Atomic Cover-up” and “Memorial Day Massacre.” Now Watch trailer for acclaimed 2025 film “The Atomic Bowl.” Before all that, he was a longtime editor of the legendary Crawdaddy. At Blue Sky and Twitter: as @gregmitch. You can still subscribe to this newsletter for FREE—so see new links to read about/order his books at bottom of this newsletter.

A variety of things for you today, with the usual cartoons down below.

Have posted official video for this before, but in light of Trump’s assertion this week, thought it appropriate for today, and now in this live version: “It’s Good To Be King,” Tom Petty.

Or maybe a 2025 updating from Jesse Duquette.

Then there’s my friend Ricky Riccardi, the Louis Armstrong scholar with a new book, who only recognizes one King….King Oliver.

Now, if you want to talk about a true, enduring classic: this year marks the 100th anniversary of one of the great recordings of all-time, Bessie Smith with a young, little known Louis Armstrong, on hit version of W.C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.” The song itself is in every music hall of fame out there, and Satchmo’s own version three years later also is one of the records of the century (I happen to own an original).

Here is that Bessie/Satch version:

Less known, another from same year for the same pair with the suggestive title, “You’ve Been a Good Old Wagon Daddy (But You Done Broke Down).”

And, new to me, incredible appearance by Handy, the “Father of the Blues,” on the early Ed Sullivan Show, 1949.

Next, my wife pointed me to this, knowing we remain deeply interested in Germany, where our daughter and family lived for several years and we visited often in researching my 2016 book “The Tunnels.” This comedian/satirist Jan Böhmermann is always tremendous but his eight-minute darkly humorous video warning on current Nazi threat there (seemingly with some support from Trump, Musk and Vance) is chilling.

BTW, love Stephen Colbert this week on Musk: "sociopathic tech doofus." Today’s IPSOS/Reuters poll: Trump Job Approval 44%, Disapprove 51%.

Vlad Tidings

Steve Brodner:

Ann Telnaes, to mark McConnell announcing he will retire, revived this from a few years back:

Some of Greg Mitchell’s books, you might order one or more to help sustain this FREE newsletter (links to Amazon but most also available elsewhere), in no particular order.

>The best-selling “The Tunnels: Escapes Under the Berlin Wall—and the Historic Films JFK Tried to Kill” (Crown, 2016).

>Award winning “The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood—and America—Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (The New Press, 2020).

>Another award winner (and considered a “classic” by many election nerds and others), “The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair’s Race for Governor of California and the Birth of Media Politics” (Random House, 1992, and later editions).

>”So Wrong for So Long: How the Press, the Pundits—and the President—Failed on Iraq” (Union Square Press, 2008), with a preface by Bruce Springsteen, Forword by Joe Galloway).

>”Tricky Dick and The Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas, Sexual Politics and the Red Scare” (Random House, 1998), a New York Times Notable Book.

“Vonnegut & Me,” an inexpensive (some would say cheap) little ebook recalling my interviews with the author and humorist in the 1970s, including a much-anthologized profile of the author by one Kilgore Trout.

>Best-seller “Hiroshima in America: Fifty Years of Denial,” with Robert Jay Lifton (Putnam’s, 1995).

>”Atomic Cover-up: Two U.S. Soldiers, Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and the Greatest Movie Never Made” (Sinclair Books, several updated editions), inspired my award-winning film of the same name.

>”Memorial Day Massacre: Workers Die, Film Buried” (Sinclair Books, 2024), companion to my PBS film on the 1937 police murder of striking steel workers and activists in Chicago.

>”Who Owns Death? Capital Punishment and the American Conscience,” with Robert Jay Lifton (Morrow, 1999).