RIP Davy Jones
February 29, 2012
Just heard the sad news that Davy Jones of the Monkees has passed away at the age of 66. It was odd because I was listening to one of his songs with the Monkees - "Early Morning Blues And Greens," from the Headquarters album - when I got the news. The Monkees was my favorite rock group when I was a kid; I'm one of those first generation fans who can remeber (albeit just barely) when the group was still recording and the TV series was just wrapping up its original run. The Monkees were my introduction to that type of music and paved the way for my discovery of the Beatles and others of the period. (Remember, I was a little kid at the time.) To be honest Davy wasn't my favorite member of the group - I was a Michael Nesmith man pretty much from the beginning - but that said Davy had lead vocal on a number of my favorite Monkees songs... particularly "Daydream Believer," written by John Stewart of my OTHER favorite music group, The Kingston Trio. Stewart and Jones are both gone now; it's nice to think of them singing together somewhere over on the Other Side.
It's funny to think about the cultural impact created by this group that was so smugly dismissed by the critics of the day; for a time their actually outsold the Beatles, and Davy Jones is the only actor i know of who can boast of having co-starred with both The Brady Bunch and Scooby-Doo and the Gang. Jimi Hendrix was the opening act for the Monkees on one of their concert tours, and Davy is the reason another singer from England gained fame under the name David Bowie. (Bowie's real name is David Jones but he changed it to avoid confusion with the Monkees member.) And interestingly enough, prior to his involvement with the Monkees project, he appeared with the Broadway cast ofOliver! on The Ed Sullivan Show on the very same night in 1964 that the Beatles made their first appearance.
Even now that I'm pushing 50 I still prefer the music of the Monkees to that of so many other rock groups. Time has claimed another icon from my youth. Cheer up, Sleepy Jean...
Posted by John Allen Small. Posted In : Pop Culture
John A. Small is an award-winning newspaper journalist, columnist and broadcaster whose work has been honored by the Oklahoma Press Association, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press, the National Newspaper Association, and the Oklahoma Education Association. He and his wife Melissa were married in 1986; they have two sons, Joshua Orrin (born 1991) and William Ian (born 1996).
Mr. Small is the News Editor and columnist for the Johnston County Capital-Democrat, a weekly newspaper headquartered in Tishomingo, OK. He obtained his nickname, "Bard of the Lesser Boulevards," from a journalism colleague - the late Phil Byrum - in recognition of the success of his popular newspaper column, "Small Talk." (In addition to the many awards the column itself has received over the years, a radio version of "Small Talk" earned an award for "Best Small Market Commentary" from the Society of Professional Journalists in 1998.)
John was born in Oklahoma City in 1963; lived in the Bradley-Bourbonnais-Kankakee area of Illinois for most of the next 28 years (with brief sojourns in Texas and Athens, Greece, thrown in to break up the monotony); then returned to his native state in 1991, where he currently resides in the Tishomingo/Ravia area. He graduated from Bradley-Bourbonnais Community High School in 1981, and received his bachelor's degree in journalism from Olivet Nazarene University in Bourbonnais in 1991. The years between high school and college were a period frought with numerous exploits and misadventures, some of which have become the stuff of legend; nobody was hurt along the way, however, which should count for something.
In addition to his professional career as a journalist he has published two short story collections: "Days Gone By: Legends And Tales Of Sipokni West" (2007), a collection of western stories; and "Something In The Air" (2011), a more eclectic collection. He was also a contributor to the 2005 Locus Award-nominated science fiction anthology "Myths For The Modern Age: Philip Jose Farmer's Wold Newton Universe," edited by Win Scott Eckert. In additon he has written a stage play and a self-published cookbook; served as project editor for a book about the JFK assassination entitled "The Men On The Sixth Floor"; and has either published or posted on the Internet a number of essays, stories and poems.
He has also won writing awards from the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the National Library of Poetry. He is a past president of the Johnston County Chamber of Commerce in Tishomingo; was a charter member and past president of the Johnston County Reading Council, the local literacy advocacy and "friends of the library" organization; served as Johnston County's first-ever Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator in 1994-95; served two terms as chairman of the Johnston County (OK) Democratic Party; and has taught journalism classes for local Boy Scout Merit Badge Fairs. He is a member of the New Wold Newton Meteorics Society.
