The Year Nothing Worth Remembering Happened

To hear the liberals talk, 1951 was a totally boring year, with the kids of the era interested in nothing of any importance, not even rioting against the Korean War. Yet things were stirring. 1951 was the year that the greatest actor of the last 50 years of the decade, one Marlon Brando, made his lightning charged screen debut in Streetcar Named Desire. Then there was the case of a small Catholic university in San Franciso (USF Dons) that beat the shit out of all the Big Boys who would play them (Stanford, CAL, and USC refused to play them), had a 9-0 season, and was invited to a major New Years Day bowl game an appearance that would preserve the football program at USF. The entire team from ULTRA RIGHT WING roaring boring 50s unanimously declined the invitation because their black players were to be denied equal living and eating privileges but instead would be forced to the Jim Crow rules that the South enforced. The team had nine future All Pros and featured two of the best players ever, Ollie Matson and Gino Marchetti (and and and) but the fact that they refused to play a major bowl game over nation wide racism is conveniently overlooked by establishment liberals today. BTW five of the players went on to be named All Pro when they moved to the NFL.

But today the most remembered personage of the 1951 era was the music duo of Les Paul and Mary Ford. Their magical entrance came aboard the first multiple overdub of guitar and song, a technique that wasn't repeated until the mid 60s. Les Paul was a well known super guitarist at the time but it was his incomparable expertise as arranger and pioneer into the electronic future of the rock era that was so far ahead of the technology available at the time that it wasn't til the mid-sixties that groups like the Beatles began to use it and became the staple technique in the recording business ever since. Paul died last week at the age of 94 but his musical pioneering will never be forgotten. His recording of How High the Moon with wife Mary Ford is so fresh it sounds like it was made yesterday. Enjoy.