Tag: music

A Tear for Nancy Bea Hefley (5-0)

Nancy in her element at Dodger Stadium (Photo by Michael Owen Baker/LA Daily News, File)

Despite a sweep of the seriously impressive Tigers, I am left with a profoundly heavy heart after Stephen Nelson announced on the broadcast that one of my earliest musical heroes (and longtime facebook friends) — Nancy Bea Hefley— had passed away at 89.

For a lonely kid who found company in listening to music for as long as I can remember, it makes perfect sense to me that most of my earliest recollections of Dodger stadium are musical— and for the first 23 years of my fandom, it was Nancy Bea behind the keys deftly spinning her melodies into our memories, summer after summer.

To hear the organ come to life at Dodger stadium is to be connected to a musical tradition that spans generations, and indeed, coasts: Ebbets Field organist Gladys Goodding holds the distinction of being the very first professional baseball organist.

Gladys Goodding behind the keys at Ebbets field, c. 1953. Image via Lelands auctions.

Gladys’ 15 year tenure with the (then Brooklyn) Dodgers from 1942 until the team left for Los Angeles in 1957 paved the way for other professional musicians — including other women like Helen Dell, and indeed Nancy herself— to succeed in making music for the Dodgers at the big league level.

Nancy’s 27 years of keyboard wizardry under bright Hollywood lights (starting with the magical ’88 season) set a new standard for Dodger organists not only in terms of career length, but also for musicality (she had perfect pitch, and estimated her own repertoire at over 2000 songs committed to memory) and for her positivity (she notoriously struggled with what to play when the Dodgers struggled).

In her capacity as Dodgers organist, and from the notoriety this afforded her, Nancy Bea played for presidents, contributed to film soundtracks, and delighted countless millions of fans— but above and beyond her musical and career bonafides, I will always remember her for her kindness (she accepted my friend request after all), her rapport with Vinny (they maintained a friendship after she retired in 2015 and he passed in 2019), and her dedication to family: her Facebook output was an engine of love, support, and pride for her large and devoted family.

Thank you, Nancy, for the memories and the music — some of which you can enjoy below.

Nancy with her successor, current Dodgers and LA Kings organist Dieter Ruehle (via Dieter Ruehle)

All-Time Dodger Records Vol. I: “dodger blue” — Kendrick Lamar

In the wake of Super Halftime Show LIX, it felt like the right time to debut a segment that’ll unite my twin passions of Dodger Baseball and virtually all things music. In other words, it’s time for Dodger bass lines — and some gah gah gah gah.

All-Time Dodger Records will usually be a deep-dive into my collection of Dodger themed records; but every so often a song on an otherwise not-Dodger themed record will stop us dead in our tracks and demand our attention. Enter: Kendrick’s most recent ode to Los Angeles, dodger blue.

While ‘GNX’ will justifiably be remembered as Kendrick’s victory lap for The Beef™, the timing of the album drop (and the name-checking of Dodger Blue) made it feel like a victory lap for Kenny’s beloved and newly-minted champion Dodgers, too — especially after the team used They Not Like Us as their quasi-official anthem en route to their first full-season ring since 1988.

Although it lacks the venom and vitriol of the more robustly beefy dishes on Kendrick’s menu of this era, dodger blue is a more sophisticated, subtle attack— but make no mistake, behind the lush orchestration and angelic supporting vocals, the beef’s still well and truly simmering.

Instead of the full frenzied boil found elsewhere on ‘GNX’ and the singles that preceded it, Kendrick’s lyrics luxuriate here amidst a heady broth of shimmering 90s R&B textures and choral elements to create a borderline symphonic interlude that allows him to reflect on his own Angeleno bonafides while further chipping away at Drake’s big label appropriation of a laundry list of other cities’ scenes, starting right here in our own backyard.

“Don’t say you hate LA when you don’t travel past the 10…”

Can you think of a more honest line ever written about our city (besides “I love LA”)?

As someone who spent 10+ years living on the East Coast to start my career, I can’t tell you how many times I had to defend “The LAnd” from ornery New Yorkers disparaging it despite not really knowing it, having spent the majority of their trips in one of the city’s many insular bubbles (Santa Monica, where you at?) instead of branching out.

Here, though, the outsider is a Torontonian “pretender” who outwardly wraps himself in Hollywood’s finest trappings; more Erewhon less Vons, all-access, and all excess without the street cred to back it up. Subtle, but savage; don’t take it personal!

Final scoreline?

Dodger Blue — Kendrick Lamar
Lyrics: Home Run
Music: Home Run
Cover Art: Home Run
Dodgerness: Walk. He gets on base with the namecheck in the title, but a few more Dodger references in the track would have taken this whole thing to another level.

3–3, 3HR, 3RBI, BB; 1.000/1.000/4.000

An elite showing by any metric.