Pat and the big 90

Wednesday, December 2nd, Alley Pat will turn 90. That's n-i-n-e-t-y years old.

That's 1919 to 2009... what a ride.

I'm happy to report that Pat is recovering nicely from his mild stroke. I went to visit him this past Friday. He's out of the care center at home at his daughter-in-law's. His voice is stronger but he has to walk carefully till his balance gets better.

One of his old Morehouse pals, a retired dentist from Birmingham named George, stopped by the same day. He has known Pat since 1943, and Pat's memories of those long ago days are quite sharp. And his short term memory is improving each day, and this is normal in this sort of healing process. It was fun to watch these two spry codgers cutting each other up.

Debra, Pat's daughter-in-law, says they don't have anything planned to commemorate this great day just yet, but that they would like to have some sort of public event early next year perhaps. I told her that I - and all of his fans - would be at her side to help in any way possible.

What you can do is send Pat birthday wishes the old fashioned way, to this old-school analog address:

James "Alley Pat" Patrick
1740 Joseph E Boone Blvd

Atlanta GA 30314

Or just leave a comment to this blog post with your name and I will be sure to get the message to Pat for you.

Poster Competion Winner Announced

So I promised a poster competition bake off - my poster with my pedestrian photoshop skills, vs. Darryl Vance's poster that came in the mail last week.




To make Darry'ls work look even better, lets briefly revisit the one I made, right-cheer on the left. Looks cluttered but still has that indie feel. The kids love the indie feel.











By comparison... how about this??




OK, the phone lines are closed, we have a winner. Thanks Darryl. Fantastic type choices, design choices, wonderful layout... it is as if you do this for a living. Now with this film on a strict zero dollar budget, (minus $500 in film festival entry fees the last few months, ouch) where am I gonna find a way to print color posters for free??

Your suggestions (and money) dear readers are welcome!

Honorable Andrew Young and... Pink Hair Curlers??

Clip number two features the Honorable Andrew Young, former Atlanta Mayor and former US Ambassador. I had been working on this film for years and wondering when would I really ever have enough material to make the story work. When I finally got Pat and Andy on tape I said OK, done.





Ambassador Young in person is wise and warm, with a slight mischievous streak that never comes across in TV interviews. For the interviews taped in 2008 at Crawford Post Production - where I've worked for 24 years now - he was often quite funny, and I'm happy he let his hair down while the cameras rolled.

The second part of the clip has audio from some of the earliest Alley Pat cassette tapes, and was recorded by Mike Cooper a decade or more earlier than many of my later tapes. So Pat's voice is slightly younger and higher pitched here. The WERD graphic in the background is from an old Broadcasting Magazine Yearbook from the collection of longtime DJ and broadcast historian (and friend since high school) Brock Whaley.

Here's another clip:




Now we are getting into the psychology of Pat's benign insult humor... how people expect it from him and he happily obliges. The business in this flower shop ad - where he observes that funerals and weddings are synonymous - is a good example of how his old shows were just relentlessly whacked-out.

For ALLEY PAT: THE MUSIC IS RECORDED I needed to put some strong and funny stuff up front, because a lot of these film festival panels have ten dozen long films to wade through, and you gotta hook them fast. Or so I imagine.

Luckily I have about 20 hours of old Alley Pat recordings, so it was no problem to find the 40 minutes worth of "strong and funny" to fill the film. I could really do another documentary, a Part II, with what's on the cutting room floor. And no, I am not.

Creeping up in the background is a breezy bass & xylophone track by the Modern Jazz Quartet... a track I like so much it ended up in the film repeatedly.

Check back often, more clips coming.