Johnny Paycheck - 9-9

The American Treasure Tour blog strives to shock and surprise at every turn, which is why we are deviating from our now-familiar format of focusing on our substantial collection of movie posters for a little while.  Instead, we are going to concentrate on our even-more-substantial collection of ... record albums!  Yes, the old 33-1/3" records that dominated the music scene for decades and that many young folk (dare I call them hoodlums and nogoodniks?  Nah!!!) don't even know exist.

The first record we will highlight is that of Donald Eugene Lytle, more familiarly known as Johnny Paycheck:

Lytle began singing country music very young, and was participating in talent shows by the age of nine.  His first pseudonym was that of Donny Young, but in 1964, he legally changed his name to Johnny Paycheck, and it was as Paycheck that he reached the pinnacle of his success, reaching the top ten in Billboard and country music popularity in the late-60s and the 1970s.  He ran into trouble with the law in 1985, after injuring a man by shooting him in a bar in Ohio, and was sentenced to seven years in jail, of which he served twenty-two months before being pardoned by the governor.  Upon his release, he returned to recording music, but failing health because of complications associated with drug and alcohol abuse, as well as emphysema and asthma, led to his untimely death at the age of 64.

It is said that Donald Lytle adopted the name Johnny Paycheck because he was inspired by two other performers.  One had been a heavyweight boxing champion.  Who was the other?

a)  Billy Unemployment

b)  Johnny Cash

c)  Eddie Money

d)  George Washington

e)  Johnny Unitas

Answer Below

Today in History

Taking advantage of the population surge inspired by the Gold Rush of 1848 and 1849, California was officially granted statehood on September 9th, 1850.  When Mexico ceded California to the United States at the end of the Mexican-American War, they did not realize the massive quantity of gold that existed in the land when they signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which made it possible for the Americans to claim the gold without greater struggle.

Sutter's Mill, located in Coloma, California, is where gold was first discovered on January 24, 1848, by James Marshall of New Jersey.

In 1926, the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) was established on this day by the Radio Corporation of America (RCA), initially as a radio channel, then as what is now the longest-running television station in the United States.

Births

Alf Landon entered the world as a natural-born American citizen in the year 1887 on this date.  Growing up in Indiana, he moved with his family to Kansas as a teenager and stayed there the rest of his career, excepting an interruption during World War I to serve in a detail dealing in chemical warfare.  

Landon amassed his fortune in the Kansas petroleum industry, then turned his sites to politics.  He became Governor of Kansas, then, in 1936, ran as a liberal Republican against the incumbent, Franklin D. Roosevelt.  He was defeated in a landslide, then retired from politics and concentrated on petroleum for the remainder of his career.  He died in his hundredth year.

Colonel Harland David Sanders was born today in 1890, in a shack located outside of Henryville, Indiana.  After misadventures that included the falsification of information to enlist in the army at age fifteen, and later being abandoned by his wife, Sanders moved to Corbin, Kentucky, where in 1930 he opened a service station that offered fried chicken.  His chicken became increasingly popular, and he worked for twenty-two years to brand his product until the first Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise opened.  Although ownership of KFC has changed hands many times since then, the image of Colonel Sanders is still familiar to many lovers of fried chicken.

Quote:

There's no reason to be the richest man in the cemetery.  You can't do any business from there.  -- Colonel Sanders

Answer:  b)