By Louis A. Zona
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – If you don’t know the name Buddy Rich or never heard of Lou Gehrig or Alfred Hitchcock, then both you and I just might have a pop culture deficiency (you for not knowing who Lou Gehrig is and me for choosing Buddy Rich, who just might have been the greatest drummer in history).
If I create another such pop culture test, I will include artist Andy Warhol, singer Tony Bennett, and Barney Fife, who was a character from the old “Mayberry, R.F.D.” sitcom.
And while I’m on a roll, I’d throw in the classic book and film “Gone with the Wind.”
What? You never heard of Tim Conway, who was a famous Ohio born and raised comedic genius?
Another great Ohioan who helped define the cowboy Western was Roy Rogers (who unfortunately became better known for his fried chicken restaurants).
America’s gift to the world is our popular culture, which includes films, music, musical theater, television shows and radio. When I think of radio as a popular pop art form, my mind goes back to Arthur Godfrey, who set the standard for music and talk with his daily show.
Today, one would have to include the imaginative host Howard Stern, who has set the standard for innovative talk programming.
Focusing on radio, I would have to say that it remains the very best medium for sports, especially baseball. Each Major League and Minor League franchise has a team of outstanding game describers who bring the ball games to life.
When I was a kid, I would take my transistor radio to bed with me and listen to Pittsburgh Pirates broadcaster Bob Prince call the games on the West Coast. Prince would do more than describe the game, he was colorful and humorous, especially when the game was not exciting – as in a rain delay.
He would tell stories about such things as when he jumped from a fifth-floor hotel balcony into a swimming pool on a dare. He let us listeners know that he was on a champion swim team at the University of Pittsburgh in his youth. If he were upset at the shenanigans of a player from the opposing team, he’d call that player “a big donkey.”
Prince brought so much color in his description of the game. He once said of a hard throwing pitcher, “he could throw a strawberry through a locomotive.”
The magic of radio was certainly made visible in the years of programs presented by the late Arthur Godfrey.
I remember that he once told his audience that the old method of talking on the radio was to speak into the microphone as if thousands are listening, but his philosophy was to speak as if he had a single listener.
No discussion of pop culture would be complete without mentioning fashion, which like painting and sculpture changes with the times.
I mentioned at the beginning of this column that America exports its pop culture to the world. I was once having lunch in a small café in Tokyo with the Ohio Arts Council. On every wall of the café were photos of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean and Buddy Holly, and music by the Beach Boys and the Everly Brothers was being played.
I was interested in the fact that Japanese television consisted almost entirely of American game shows, situation comedies and such programs as “Highway Patrol,” “The Lone Ranger” and even “The Andy Griffith Show.”
The classic film that epitomizes America’s pop culture has to be “American Graffiti.” Director George Lucas and Producer Francis Ford Coppola had a brilliant hand or two in its creation.
The film takes place in the 1950s with all of the trappings of life back then from souped up automobiles to eating at a malt shop with servers on roller skates. Rock music of the day served as the soundtrack.
Even the amazing voice of the renowned disc jockey Wolfman Jack was in the film.
Just as Rockefeller Center in New York became a primary structure for the presentation of art deco design, the popular culture in that same city is seen in the visual art of pop artist Red Grooms with his Ruckus Manhattan construction.
I might add that the former Isaly’s building in Youngstown offers another source for the study of pop culture in America. The Mahoning Avenue building is pop personified. The pop art and op art movements emerged in the 1960s, and critics began to use “pop and op” as a catch-all description of the art of the day. “Pop and op” was even put on a bumper sticker to show how hip the driver was!