The Band – "Look Out Cleveland" (1969)

Look out, Cleveland

Storm is comin’ through

And it’s runnin’ right up on you

A number of very accomplished people have graduated from my alma mater, Rice University.  But the late Dr. Frank Ryan – who was not only a star NFL quarterback but also a world-class mathematician and computer scientist – was in a league of his own.

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After graduating from Rice with a mathematics degree in 1958, Ryan was drafted by the Los Angeles Rams.  During the next several years, Ryan split his time between quarterbacking in the NFL and doing the work required to earn his master's and doctorate degrees.  

He was awarded his Rice Ph.D. six months after leading the Cleveland Browns to their 1964 NFL championship.  (His dissertation was titled “A Characterization of the Set of Asymptotic Values of a Function Holomorphic in the Unit Disc.”  If you have any idea what that means, maybe you can explain it to me.). 

Ryan then joined the faculty of Case Western Reserve University, where he taught advanced mathematics electives at the same time he was quarterbacking the Browns. 

You read that correctly: Ryan was a star NFL quarterback and a mathematics professor simultaneously.  

Professor Ryan in the classroom

Here’s what a former student of his wrote about Ryan:

Ryan was not only a professor at Case Western Reserve, where I was an undergraduate in the ’60’s, but he was at the same time the starting quarterback for the Cleveland Browns.  The starting quarterback for a NFL football team, and a professor with a full teaching load.  

During the football season he taught his class early in the week, and then on Sundays he was behind the center taking the ball. Handing it off, throwing passes, and getting sacked – like any other quarterback in the league.  He was one of the best quarterbacks of his day, and had great successes.  For example, he appeared in three straight Pro Bowls.

I still remember listening to him explain a fine point in complex analysis on Tuesday, and then watching him on TV getting tackled on Sunday.  It was hard to believe, even though I knew it was the same person, the player being taken hard to the ground was my professor.  The player being tackled knew how to throw a perfect spiral 40 yards, and also could go to the board and prove Picard’s Little Theorem.  Amazing. . . .

I still recall wincing when he got sacked during one tough game. Then, a few days later I saw him in class, with his arm in a sling . . . . Sling or not we pushed on, deeper into the beautiful structure of complex analysis.

I think it’s safe to say that there will never again be a star professional athlete who is simultaneously a full-time college professor.

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Ryan was an NFL quarterback for 13 seasons and a three-time Pro Bowl selection.  He led the Cleveland Browns to their last NFL Championship, and compiled a 48-17-1 (.727) record in the five seasons in the 1960s when he was the starting signal-caller for that team.  

During that same five-year time span, no NFL quarterback – not Johnny Unitas, not Sonny Jurgensen, not Don Meredith, not Fran Tarkenton – threw more touchdown passes.

Frank Ryan on the cover of Sports Illustrated

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After leaving the Case Western Reserve mathematics faculty, Ryan became the Director of Information Services for the U.S. House of Representatives, where he supervised a staff of 225 and was primarily responsible for the creation of an electronic voting system for the House.  

After a decade as Yale’s athletic director – he was a lecturer in mathematics at Yale as well – Ryan returned to Rice, where he not only taught mathematics and computer science but also served as the school’s vice president for external affairs.  During his tenure in that post, annual giving to Rice increased some 50 percent.

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Frank Ryan was 87 when he died from Alzheimer's disease this past New Year’s Day – exactly 65 years after throwing a touchdown in the Cotton Bowl matchup between Rice and Navy.  

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) may have played a role in the progression of Ryan’s disease.  Later in life, Ryan spoke out about the risks of concussion and other injury risks associated with football.  He donated his brain to the Boston University CTE Center, which is studying the effects of repetitive brain trauma on the human nervous system.

Like other prominent athletes, Ryan received many fan letters and autograph requests.  “He appreciated his fans enormously, and he kept every fan letter that he received,” according to a statement issued by his family after his death.  “Frank fulfilled each and every autograph request that was sent to him, until he became physically unable to do so.”

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“Look Out Cleveland” was released on the Band’s eponymous second album in 1969.

You’re probably assuming that the song refers to the large Ohio city located on the shore of Lake Erie, but my theory is that is it’s about Cleveland, Texas.

That Cleveland is located just northeast of Houston – the home of Rice University – and the lines that follow the ones quoted at the beginning of this post mention Houston:

Look out, Houston

There’ll be thunder on the hill

But for purposes of this post, let’s say that the song is about Cleveland, Ohio and Houston, Texas – the two cities where Frank Ryan distinguished himself on the football field and in the classroom.

Click here to listen to “Look Out Cleveland.”

Click here to buy the record from Amazon. 

Andrea True Connection -- "More, More, More" (1976)

But if you want to know how I really feel

Get the cameras rollin'

Get the action goin'

Andrea True (who was born Andrea Marie Truden) was a porn star who later became a disco singer.

Andrea was born in 1943 in Nashville.  She attended Saint Cecilia Academy, a tony all-girls Catholic high school, then moved to New York City in hopes of becoming a movie star.

Andrea True

Andrea landed a few minor roles in mainstream movies – for example, she was an extra in The Way We Were – but eventually accepted an invitation to star in adult movies.  She eventually starred in more than fifty hardcore porn films.

Andrea True's porn oeuvre included Double Header, Doctor Feelgood, The Wetter the Better, and – this is one I really want to see – Sexual Freedom in the Ozarks.

Andrea also appeared in Deep Throat, Part II – the R-rated sequel to the most famous and widely-viewed adult film of all time.  In her 1980 autobiography, the late Linda Lovelace – the star of Deep Throat – describes Andrea as "much too smart to be doing what she did for a living," and tells how she tried to organize porn stars into a union.

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In the mid-seventies, while at the height of her porn career, Andrea was hired to do commercials for a real estate company in Jamaica.  While she was there, the country was plunged into a political crisis, and she was unable to leave until things were sorted out.

So she asked songwriter and record producer Gregg Diamond to come to Jamaica and produce a track for her.  The result of their collaboration was "More, More, More," which climbed all the way to #4 on the Billboard "Hot 100."

Andrea True eventually recorded three albums.  The first one was moderately successful, but the next two were flops.  After her third album failed to sell, she returned to doing porn.  But she was a bit long in the tooth by then – she was almost 40 – and her comeback attempt was unsuccessful.  

Andrea then developed a goiter on her vocal cords, which prevented her from making a singing comeback as well.  She eventually moved to south Florida, where she worked as a drug counselor and gave psychic readings.  

In 1999, the Canadian group Len released "Steal My Sunshine," which sampled "More, More, More."  Click here to read the previous 2 or 3 lines, which featured "Steal My Sunshine."

"Steal My Sunshine" was released on Len's
You Can't Stop the Bum Rush album

The success of "Steal My Sunshine" resulted in royalties and publicity for Andrea True.  She also appeared in the 2005 documentary, Inside Deep Throat, which examined the impact of that famous adult film on American society.  

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I was a senior at Rice University in Houston when Deep Throat was released.  I didn't have to go to my neighborhood porn theater and pay to see that movie.  Instead, I got to view it for free in my "Sociology of Mass Media" class.   

The local prosecuting attorney filed an obscenity complaint against the theater that was showing the movie in Houston, and my sociology professor – the late Chad Gordon – was hired to be an expert witness for the defense.  So he had our class watch the movie one day and fill out questionnaires about what we thought about it.  (You can best believe no one skipped class that day.)  

Professor Gordon testified that our answers to those questionnaires showed that Deep Throat was not obscene in the eyes of local college students, whose opinions on that topic should count just as much as the opinions of the little old ladies who attended the local Baptist churches.

I don't know how much our professor's testimony had to do with it, but the obscenity prosecution ended up in a hung jury.  The same thing happened when the prosecutor decided to retry the case.  After the second hung jury, the prosecutor gave up, making Houston and all of Harris County, Texas, safe for fans of adult films.  

Click here to read Texas Monthly's account of the Deep Throat obscenity prosecution.

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Professor Gordon died in 2007.  Here's an excerpt from a Rice University student newspaper story about him:

Former sociology department chair Chad Gordon, who was with the sociology department since its inception in the 1970s, passed away in late May after fighting cancer. . . . He was an assistant professor of sociology at Harvard before he came to Rice in 1970.

Sociology professor William Martin said Gordon was well-known for his courses on human sexuality and television called “Sex with Chad” and “TV with Chad,” respectively.

“[He taught] courses that were quite popular and a little different from the other offerings in our department,” Martin said.

Gordon had a creative teaching style and would take students to cemeteries and funeral home museums when he taught a course on death, Martin said.  He said Gordon also integrated progressive media into his course about television, often using TV clips, which were not considered a teaching tool at the time he began teaching it.

Sewall Hall, home of Rice's
Sociology Department

Martin said the last course Gordon taught on death and dying resonated on a very personal level.

“He taught his death and dying course when he was quite aware, and his students were aware, that he had a fatal disease,” Martin said.  “He was very candid about that, and I’m sure that was significant for the students as well.”

Gordon was also known for the band he formed during his early years at Rice and his strikingly colored motorcycle that he could be seen driving around the campus, Martin said.  Additionally, Gordon was known for the pool parties he threw at his house, and for being a “free spirit.”  He loved spicy food, and his friends would engage in contests with him to see who could eat the greatest amount of spicy food in one sitting, Martin said.

He said Gordon was a compassionate man who had a lasting impact on each student.

“[Gordon] seemed always to be in a good mood,” Martin said. “He always had a twinkle in his eye.”

The late Chad Gordon

As for Andrea True, she died of heart failure at a Kingston, New York, hospital in 2011.  She was 68 years old.

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Click here to listen to "More, More, More."

Click here to buy the song from Amazon.