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December 8, 2020 6:55 pm  #1


Remembering Chuck Yeager

I know - "What does Chuck Yeager have to do with music?!  Bear with me.  Way back when, in the Pleistocene Period, not long after TV started, the TVs signed off, unlike today when everything is on 24/7.  As the channels signed off, the stations played a "patriotic" video.  Included in the catalog of patriotic videos were The Star-Spangled Banner, the United States national anthem, AND the poem, entitled High Flight.  The video included recitation of  the poem, accompanied by music orchestration with jet fighters performing acrobatic stunts much like the US Navy Blue Angels the US Air Force Thunderbirds.  Since I lived in Detroit, one of our few TV stations at that time included CKLW out of Windsor, Ontario.  In the vagueries of my feeble mind, I remember that, CKLW too, aired High Flight with the Canadian natronal anthem, O Canada, and jet fighters.  High Flight was composed by an American who joined the RCAF, became a pilot, later to be commissioned as a Pilot Officer.  He was killed, at the very young age of 19, in a mid-air collision while flying a Spitfire in England in 1941.  He had written a poem, ntitle High Flight, which he shared with his Mother.  The poem became the official poem of the RCAF and the RAF and has to be recited from memory by 4th-Year cadets of the US Force Academy. 
When I think of Chuck Yeager and his record-breaking test pilot experiences, I connect him with those acrobatic videos of jet fighters with the orchestration and the recitation of that poem.  RIP Chuck Yeager and Fly High!!!
 

 

December 8, 2020 9:57 pm  #2


Re: Remembering Chuck Yeager

a few years after breakiing the sound barrier, yeager came to charleston and flew a fighter jet underneath the south side bridge. later, our airport (crw) was renamed in his honor.

steve earle's latest album, released in may, "ghosts of west virginia" contains a fine song in tribute to him, titled "fastest man alive".

 

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