Bill flicked on the tape of the White House Christmas Concert again, looking unusually serious and respectful.

Fred Waring introduced to the Nixons and the White House his 'kids', as he called them: "Ray Schroeder," he said, "with us thirty-six years. Tommy Cullen, thirty-three years." Then he did his ‘girls', tripping over names and holding the mike away to turn and yell, "Demonstration!" at Betty Ann.

Back on mike he said, "And at the Cordovox here," he turned toward her as she hugged her instrument and gymnastically punched stop after stop like a four-armed Kali, "which is a combination of the accordion and, ah, the electronic organ, Betty Ann... ah," he had to think, "McCall... Blackburn." It sounded too polite; and he was trying a little too hard to seem showbiz-like pleased with the sound of it. "She got the name ‘Blackburn’  last night in my home in Shawnee."

Just a simple, down-home, Pennsylvania nuptial, everyone at the White House was to be deluded into imagining.

"And this is her honeymoon! Betty Ann McCall!!!"

Betty Ann beamed, drawing applause and wine-tinged suggestive whistles, since she was now understood to be on her ‘honeymoon’, obviously, and looked to be only fifteen.

Fred went at her with a mock-patronizing tone: "I think you ought to work... just a little on your honeymoon. Will ya ‘demonstrate’ this instrument?" He turned to the audience. "It's a remarkable thing, really, it has over a thousand different sound effects, and we'll give you seven or eight hundred in just about a minute."

"Ha ha," the audience responded dutifully to the Sunday School vaudeville.

Betty Ann wailed with her own vocal apparatus, a high-pitched virginal tone, a childish wail unlike anything she did in real life: "The celeste!" she wailed at the audience to be heard above noise and be thought cutesy.

She whipped off a loud 'Rockabye Baby' on the instrument's celeste stop, flouncing around in her red Christmas gown like a honeymooning stage novice Minnesota teen queen.

Fred explained it all while she played: "The 'celeste'. That's a 'celeste'. Hey, no lullabyes!"

No sense putting the audience to sleep any more than it was already.

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7d

(continuation of letter wired by Fred Waring to the President the night before Waring's 1972 Christmas Concert at the White House:)

P.P.P.P.S.  F'r God sakes, Dick, you're scaring the hell out of me. What's so funny? Settle down. Clean up that presidential act of yours! You're sounding more and more like a nut case! If somebody gets hold of a tape with a dictated letter on it like the crazy goddam letter you sent me, we'll all be in hot water fishing in the Bermuda Triangle whistling Dixie on a leaky raft applauded by sharks!

Betty Ann used the same virginal twang, seeming not at all the same mature person as any one of her homespun living room interview personas. "The glockenspiel!" she whined.

Fred's tone was droll and teasing: "'Glockenspiel'," he mocked and even flirted.

An effervescent, tinkly-bell vivace, "Three Blind Mice," came scampering out of the speakers.

"OK," said Fred.

She dragged out her moment of stardom on Three Blind Mice like an impish teen.

"OK!! OK!!"

She gave in to old sexy Daddy and quit the noise, then said cutely: "Cla-arinet!"

Fred mocked her with a disparaging paternal tone, "'Clarinet'!"

She reconstructed a full German oom-pah biergarten dance band, including an electronic clarinet sound which throated a German polka melody.

"Wonnerful wonnerful. Come on...'

The ‘Demonstration’ was a standard Waring road show stunt-and-gag, a splashy show-off of the queen bee with the king of instruments. And everyone at the White House, tuxedoed and not, snarfed it up, whooping and hollering throughout, at lovely teenage-y Betty Ann: on her fanstastic shimmy-shucking HONEYMOON.

It was an act meant to suggest a father-daughter, not a son-mother, familiarity, and that psychoanalytic wrinkle was not lost on young Dr. Lorenzo.

Maybe THIS explained their intensely magical and magnetic relationship. Father and daughter!

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7d, cont’d

(Mr. Waring’s Dec. 15 1972 wire to the President, cont’d)

What's so funny about that, Dick? I'm saying this for Ike's sake, not to mention the Republicans who gave their left nuts to win you this election! LIKE ME! YOU’RE THE REASON MY SHAWNEE INN IS BANKRUPT, BY THE WAY! If you don't settle down, bankers won't pay attention to me and I'll lose the goddam Inn! If you can't play the tambourine you're not a musician! You owe it to Ike, a man's man, a president's president, to settle down, Dick. If you can't lead a band of people properly you shouldn't be president of the band of people! Ike would have taken that transcription tape from your hand, snapped it in half with one hand and stuck it in your left shirt pocket. And I'll let you guess where I would stick it!

"Strings!" whined Betty Ann.

Fred was skeptical. "'Strings'?"

Betty Ann played a stringy Strauss waltz that wouldn't stop.

"Next. Next. NEXT!!"

She stopped. "OKAY!!" she shrieked with cute complaint. "Trom-bo-one!"

Daddy Fred patronized this silly orphan upstart. "'Trombone'!"

Now it was a sleazy two-step, with big drunken baritone brass trombone s-LL-liii-i-i-ide.

Fred said, "I play better," and looked at Dick Nixon: "Let that be a lesson to you."

Dick may have gotten the poke, but no one else did.

And she kept going, one octave higher, a longer higher trombone s-l-iiiiiii-i-i-ide!

"All right all right!"

She kept up the girlish sass. "Piccolo!"

Fred was equal to it, a sarcastic parent or older boyfriend or something. "'Pick-colo'!"

She dashed off a ‘Dixie’ riff with a sprightly marching bass beat and a piccolo solo, all of this on just one instrument, the Cordovox, recreating the national anthem of the Confederacy with real flare and authenticity, full loud brass band and snare drums and all.

"That's f'r y'all from the nether regions, down there."

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7d, cont'd.

Look at this, Dick! I found a quote to share with Your Highness:

“So, in this, my last good night to you as your President, I thank you for the many opportunities you have given me for public service in war and peace. I trust that in that service you find some things worthy; as for the rest of it, I KNOW YOU WILL FIND WAYS TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE IN THE FUTURE.”¹

I capitalize these last words, Sir Richard Nixon, because I have always known since I first heard those words, that Ike was talking to YOU that farewell night.

"Flutes!"  It was still that high, girlish, Minnesota accordion queen teen voice.

Fred clowned boredom: "'Flutes'."

The lowest octaves were played, and then a facile upward glissando, all on the accordion-organ's flute stop.

"That's the bass 'flute', Fred said.

She did the same glistening gliding stunt an octave up.

"Second bass," he said.

Next octave up.

"Third bass," he explained.

Higher still.

"Shortstop."

She hit the highest imaginable raspy little last conceivable flute note.

"Pitcher!"

The 1972 audience, probably because they were in the Christmas spirit, allowed this corny Sunday School Circuit vaudeville almost as much as half a laugh, which was pretty good for a bad showbiz night.

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7d, cont'd.:

We both know that Ike was talking STRAIGHT to you that night, Dick. Good God, you've needed a vacation for a year! Give the human race a break and take up golf like a man. Come to the Inn after the concert. Get away from Queen Patty, if you don't mind. I know the Weather Man personally up here. When he hears you're coming he'll keep the course dry. Have a little fun on me. Ike loved my course.

Oh Great President, save the world by playing Shawnee and settling down. Get in the flow like we do here, Mr. P.

"Quint!" she squealed.

Fred mimicked a high-pitched "Quint!"

Betty Ann did some very Chinese-y music.

"Oh-oh! One fingy, two dnotes! Choh-Pee-Keeng!" said Fred.

Scattered cackling came from certain persons quite distinctly.

"Familiar music, huh?"²

Given permission, seemingly, they guffawed at the great dignified diplomat to China, Henry Kissinger, and his re-dick-ulous sidekick, Richard Nixon.

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7d, cont'd.:

Now Mister Nixon, I've had enough of this stuff about Bill and Patty. I’m not going to have my President turning green with jealousy on the White House stage. You can't win every goddam tee and romance. Other twerps get theirs, too.

Now sit down, I am going to be serious with you, Dick Nixon. Don't quote me, but there are better things to do than save face. Like admitting you're alone and bankrupt. Or mad at God or the Democrats or Her Highness, Queen Patty.

Betty Ann was still girlish. "Sustain!" She did a 'Look, Ma, no hands', waving at the crowd with both hands while her note sounded on, interminably.

"'Sustain'," Fred went on. "One note and it continues. If you have an itch, it's very convenient."

She scratched her monkey honeymooning self with both hands while the note still sounded on.

"Wow," she added.

Fred: "'Wow'!"

But she meant it literally, and did a Wah-wah ooh, wah-wah ooh, wah-wah electronic sound.

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7d, cont'd.:

You don't sound good on tape, Dick. Why should I do a concert for you anyway?

You know, and I mean this. Don't quote me, but sometimes you should just forgive. This happened at the damn wedding today. Bill Blackburn ruffled me, and Virginia said it was my ego that wouldn't forget about it. I've fired my fool ego but it won't quit working for me. I'm still the same brat Bill confronted at the telethon. Sounds like he provoked your ego there too. He's good at it.

Blackburn is harmless, but your ego is another story, Richard Milhouse Nixon. It could destroy the world. Don't be an ass like yours truly. Don’t hold on when you should let go. My oldest son says Bob Dylan sang a clever thing, "Even the President of the United States must sometimes stand nekkit!"

"Remember," Fred Waring preached to his Christmasy Concert audience at the White House: "This is an accordion!" He sounded priestly or preacherly with his booming yet sedate voice: "Put them all together and we have the mighty Lowry organ."

Betty Ann found the stop on her electronic instrument that produced an all-out open diapason, a real honest-to-God church organ, and sounded the last line of:

A Migh-tee Fo-or-tress I-is.. Our.. GAAAHOD

The audience, which, after all, may have dwindled, gave it fair applause.

Fred said, "The President would like to lead you all in singing, 'The Battle Hymn'."

Scattered guffaws greeted another un-Christmasy program event, and Nixon laughed awkwardly.

Fred Waring looked at the President. "It's uh, 'Glory, Glory, Hallelujah, his Truth is Marching On’. We'll do the verse and then," he addressed the audience, "he'll conduct you."

Nixon whispered a desperate "Noh – ! "

The audience yielded up giggles and guffaws against their will. It was an embarrassing and enlivening event, to see the President of the United States so vulnerable, upstaged, and even toyed with by his people.

Fred said to the President of the United States and to all of those present, "Eisenhower used to." And he meant it, too. Dick Nixon was barely a man.

But adroitly Fred met Mamie's glance, turned and immediately conducted. And he left Dick Nixon back at the White House, hersheying in his tux pants.

And The Pennsylvanians, as entertainment and edification for the President of the United States of America and his Christmas guests, fervently, sensitively, began the most famed of all Waring showstoppers, Roy Ringwald’s stupendiferous arrangement of the Battle Hymn of the Republic, starting from the unforgettable Ringwald trumpet fanfare, then the words:

Mine eyes have seen the glo-ry...

Of the com-ing of the Lord;...³

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7d, cont'd.:

Oh, Dick, and one more thing. A quote from The Guru aimed straight at you....

“...There's so much craziness, and you can just fall right into it. You can see practically that it's like a blender. You're blending something, and all of a sudden you drop a little piece of onion in there and it goes — prrrt! – there's nothing left of it. And you can just see how easy it is to drop into the craziness of the world.”⁴ 

He is tram-pling out the vin-tage...

White House Secret Service File

on

William S. Blackburn

CLASSIFIED:  PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Exhibit #7d, cont'd.:

You know, Dick, I got this quote mentioning my own invention, the Waring Blendor, in my Gatehouse mailbox tonight, a minute ago. It came from a fan who apologized for being 'rude' at the wedding today. I served him champagne. And he told me a story I didn't like. Was he rude? Fred Waring didn't want to handle his comment, that's who was rude. But do you think mister American music could admit that then?

Do you know, Dick, if you don't learn something quick from those Chinese Buddhists about suppressing egomania, your egomania, mine, the Republican Party's, the country's egomania, all of the Christian churches' egomania, and our own crazy white race's, too, Damn it, there won't be a world left to fight over... or sing about!   F

Where the grapes of wrath are stored...

Bill was reminded of a story. "You know, I talked to Dick Nixon on the phone when Fred was ill."

¹  Eisenhower, Dwight D., "Farewell Address".  Department of State Bulletin, February 6, 1961.  In Annals of America, Vol. 18, p. 4.

²  A reference to their trips made to Communist China to persuade that country (successfully) to come closer to the West, first a trip by Secretary of State Kissinger, and then one by President Nixon himself, opening up the door to that country from the West, after thirty years of nerve-wracking tension and separation, caused by Chairman Mao's totalitarian Communist Revolution and the USA's usual condemning reaction to anything and everything communist and/or totalitarian.

³  ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’: poem by Julia Ward Howe. This old Methodist camp meeting rouser by Steffe originally had different words. Howe changed them. The famous Waring musical arrangement was by Roy Ringwald.

⁴  The Living Master: quotes from Guru Maharaj Ji, Denver: Divine Light Mission, Inc., 1978., p. 98.