TCB is a 1968 teevee special produced by Motown in association with the guys who made Laugh In, George Schlatter and Ed Friendly. TCB was a then popular acronym standing for Taking Care of Business.
3 thoughts on “Sunday Morning Video: TCB”
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Because I watched some of TCB (Thank you! I had forgotten about it!) and it ended with The Impossible Dream, and because the date of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination is approaching, I want to leave a very abbreviated version of a confluence of events, for me, about that date and that song. Being from New Orleans, I think you’ll appreciate the situation described.
I’m from BIloxi. In June of 1968, I was with a hundred or more other 16- and 17-year-old Mississippi ‘future leaders’ of the state at Magnolia Boys State outside of Jackson on a small college campus. The June 6th early morning outdoor roll call of participants took a very unexpected turn. One of the adult leaders announced that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. After about two seconds of stunned silence, a huge majority of assembled male teenage, well, monsters spontaneously erupted into an extremely sustained cheering, ‘rebel’ yelling, yeehawing, screaming for joy. I thought it would never end. I’d never been so angry in my entire life. Finally the eruption died down, and no adult or anyone else said anything about the sado-hedonistic blood-slander spectacle.
I had to do something. That night would be the closing ceremony for that year’s Boys State. It would be in an auditorium. I had my idea and made my plan with the assistance of a young adult camp counselor whom I’d hoped would be sympathetic. Evening came, a piano was rolled out onto the auditorium stage. A different young adult Boys State Counselor sat down at the piano bench. I walked out to the naked microphone onstage. Somehow the first counselor had located the sheet music that day in Jackson and arranged for the piano and the pianist. That alone seemed miraculous and emphasized the importance to me that this needed to be a moment to remember.
The pianist began to play Impossible Dream, and I sang it with all the righteous anger I’d felt that morning, and that I still feel in 2018 when I think about that sad morning in June 1968. When the song ended, I left the stage and felt like I’d done my small part to make note of the great loss the world was experiencing and had chastised the racist perfidy that had erupted that morning from the direct descendants of Mississippi lynch culture.
Thanks for sharing that story. Wow.
You’re very welcome. Glad to share it, especially with you folks. A very surrealistic day, and ever since, having witnessed the veil pulled back so suddenly and clearly, and permanently.
The Trump rallies carry the exact same strident hatred and warped sense of malicious overentitlement, and they violently embody their spite and the overt paranoia that the overentitlement could disappear – their worst nightmare. Every one of those reprobates at Boys State were and at the Trump rallies are afraid of healthy competition.
I’ve reliably enjoyed First Draft since having begun reading it frequently the last year or so. Born in New Orleans, raised in its orbit, having relatives there and having lived there myself, your writings, styles, flavors and humor are comforting (and fun and funny!) and help keep the homesickness in the tolerable range here in Austin where I’ve lived the last three decades-plus. And your blog title is my favorite.