Supreme Sunday

From the Broadway musical Pippin, I Guess I'll Miss The Man was recorded and released as a single by The Supremes, from their album The Supremes Produced and Arranged by Jimmy Webb. It didn't make a lot of noise at the time it came out, barely climbing into the Billboard Hot 100. Since then it has become an audience favorite. The track is now wildly popular with fans everywhere and clips of the group performing it are always in demand on You Tube.

The pairing of The Supremes with Jimmy Webb for an album was a departure for them and for Motown. Webb had been making hits for artists like Glenn Campbell (Wichita Lineman, By The Time I Get To Phoenix) for a few years by the time Motown tapped him to produce an LP for their biggest female group. Packed with songs that were reflective of the period, the album failed to attract much attention. Audiences of the era roundly passed on it. Yet, as if often the case, time has been good to this collection of songs and today it is considered a classic; one of The Supremes' best recordings of their career.

In a clip from Soul Train, The Supremes performed the song for an adoring audience. The slow groove of its romantic feel really hit home. It still sounds great today too. One of The Supremes most effective performances, I Guess I'll Miss The Man is a gem from time gone by.

This Day in History: December 26

1620 - The Pilgrim Fathers landed at New Plymouth, MA, to found Plymouth Colony, with John Carver as Governor.

1776 - The British suffered a major defeat in the Battle of Trenton during the American Revolutionary War.

1865 - The coffee percolator was patented by James H. Mason.

1871 - The "Gods Grown Old" was performed for the first time. It ran for 64 shows.

1898 - Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium.

1908 - Texan boxer "Galveston Jack" Johnson knocked out Tommy Burns in Sydney, Australia, to become the first black boxer to win the world heavyweight title.

1917 - During World War I, the U.S. government took over operation of the nation's railroads.

1921 - The Catholic Irish Free State became a self-governing dominion of Great Britain.

1927 - The East-West Shrine football game featured numbers on both the front and back of players’ jerseys.

1941 - Winston Churchill became the first British prime minister to address a joint meeting of the U.S. Congress.

1943 - The German battlecruiser Scharnhorst was sunk in the North Sea, during the Battle of North Cape.

1944 - Tennessee Williams' play "The Glass Menagerie" was first performed publicly, at the Civic Theatre in Chicago, IL.

1947 - Heavy snow blanketed the Northeast United States, burying New York City under 25.8 inches of snow in 16 hours. The severe weather was blamed for about 80 deaths.

1953 - "Big Sister" was heard for the last time on CBS Radio. The show ran for 17 years.

1954 - "The Shadow" aired on radio for the last time.

1956 - Fidel Castro attempted a secret landing in Cuba to overthrow the Batista regime. All but 11 of his supporters were killed.

1959 - The first charity walk took place, along Icknield Way, in aid of the World Refugee Fund.

1974 - Comedian Jack Benny died at age 80.

1982 - The Man of the Year in "TIME" magazine was a computer. It was the first time a non-human received the honors.

1986 - Doug Jarvis, age 31, set a National Hockey League (NHL) record as he skated in his 916th consecutive game. Jarvis eventually set the individual record for most consecutive games played with 964.

1986 - "Search for Tomorrow" was seen for the last time on CBS-TV. The show had been on the air for 35-years.

1990 - Garry Kasparov beat Anatoly Karpov to retain the chess championship.

1991 - The Soviet Union's parliament formally voted the country out of existence.

1995 - Israel turned dozens of West Bank villages over to the Palestinian Authority.

1996 - Six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey was found beaten and strangled in the basement of her family's home in Boulder, CO.

1998 - Iraq announced that it would fire on U.S. and British warplanes that patrol the skies over northern and southern Iraq.

1999 - Alfonso Portillo, a populist lawyer, won Guatemala's first peacetime presidential elections in 40 years.

2000 - Michael McDermott, age 42, opened fire at his place of employment killing seven people. McDermott had no criminal history.

2002 - The first cloned human baby was born. The announcement was made the December 27 by Clonaid.

2004 - Under the Indian Ocean, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake sent 500-mph waves across the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal. The tsunami killed at least 283,000 people in a dozen countries, including Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Sumatra, Thailand and India.

Sunday's Flashback

Written by The Bee Gees, Islands In The Stream is a song that was originally intended for Diana Ross. For whatever reason, Ross passed on it and the track eventually wound up with Kenny Rogers. Kenny loved it and asked Dolly Parton to duet with him when he recorded it. The rest, as they say, is history.

Kenny and Dolly are two of the biggest stars that country music has ever produced. Their appeal and charisma were too much to keep them on the C&W charts, and they both crossed over to the pop market with ease, scoring huge hits on the Billboard Hot 100 with songs like Lady and Nine to Five respectively. Dolly had also become a movie star of the highest echelon. This pairing of Kenny and Dolly on a superior track like Islands In The Stream made for a dream team.

This is a song that caught on with audiences like mad. It went to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was one of the biggest hits of 1983. People still love to hear this one. It makes you feel good. Whenever that groove gets going, you just can't be still and you smile like crazy. Kenny and Dolly really turned it on and twenty-seven years later the shine is as bright as ever.

Thought for Today

"There's nothing sadder in this world than to awake Christmas morning and not be a child." - Erma Bombeck