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'By Ella Fitzgerald’s 18th birthday on April 25th, 1935, drummer/bandleader Chick Webb had already given the teenage singer a life-changing gift. She’d been scraping by on her own in Harlem, even after winning first prize at the Apollo Theater’s Amateur Contest in November 1934. A few months later, Webb was finally convinced to listen to her sing, urged on by a couple of his sidemen. In early March 1935, Webb gave Ella her first “live” tryout with his band, playing for a fraternity dance at Yale University. A couple of weeks later, he hired her after a longer tryout at his orchestra’s home base, the Savoy Ballroom.'
Personally, I know I did write the lyrics to those songs because I know what color 'violent green' is.
I became intrigued by a Rolling Stone Magazine story about Dan Rather being assaulted by two people one of whom demanded from him 'What's the frequency, Kenneth ?'
I tried to figure out what the assailant might be like or if he was crazy.
At the time (~1984/85) I was doing work study for the Berkshire Community College Activities & Recreation Department, and when I got the job I had to sign a paper that stated whatever works I created while working there, the publishing rights would go to the college.
I couldn't quite get what the assailant was thinking at the time and I felt like maybe he was like the Mad Hatter.
My first attempt at the poem was word salad 'Butterfly teacup cup two for tea.' I remember thinking that sounded too childish.
It was when I worked on the poem later in my hut in the median strip of Gandy Blvd in St Pete that I fleshed out the poem. 'Violent green' is ultra violent green because I used to wear fluorescent green t shirts. I spent 2 weeks trying to find the color chartreuse in thesauruses, which I couldn't remember at the time, but I knew the word existed.
I changed it to ultraviolet green and that didn't look right and since I was still angry at my hometown I changed it to ultra-violent green. Hit the sweet spot for me.
What was even more satisfying was after the song became popular we found out who the assailant probably was. William Tager.
He believed TVs were beaming signals into his brain and he wanted to know the frequency so he could block them.
Curiously I found out in the 1990s TVs beamed electrons from a cathode ray tube though a screen painted with phosphorous and other chemicals to produce color TV colors and the electrons kept going through the front of the screen into whatever was facing them.
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