by Peter Cates

Dionne Warwick

Scepter records was the label that released albums by the very gifted singer Dionne Warwick. Back in 1968 the first record I ever bought of her was a 45 that I was able to special order from a vendor who set up a consignment rack at the Cates Country Store. Through him, I acquired LPs by Eydie Gorme, Richard Harris, Sergio Mendes, Glenn Yarborough, etc., all within quarter mile walking distance of home and may have been the most frequent customer of discs benefitting Uncle Ben Cates’s cash register.

A month previously, I had seen the movie Valley of the Dolls, a very compelling depiction of Hollywood and its pill culture, based on the novel by Jacqueline Susann and starring Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke and Sharon Tate (Tate and several others would be murdered in the summer of 1969 by members of the Manson gang during a home invasion when she was hosting a social gathering at the house she lived in with her husband Roman Polanski, he not being home that evening).

The movie ended with the gorgeous theme from Valley of the Dolls composed by Dory and Andre Previn and sung by Miss Warwick which was contained on that above-mentioned Scepter 45, along with side 2’s I Say a Little Prayer, a Hal David/Burt Bacharach megahit.

Scepter started a budget classical label Mace records and, as a teenager, I won a free LP from the company for answering questions about composers correctly. That record had the title Unforgettable Folk Music from Germany, most of that music being quite forgettable.

Mace also released several very good LPs – beautifully played Trios for Clarinet and other instruments by Beethoven and Brahms, a wondrously performed Mozart K. 334 String Divertimento and sets of Brahms, Bruckner and Mahler Symphonies that listed fake names but were still satisfying interpretations.

The label had a musicologist Hope Sheridan who very concisely put her finger on why my personal desert island composer Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) achieved the greatness he did in her jacket notes for a recording of the Piano Quartet in G minor, Opus 25, completed when Brahms was only 28:

“A bounding muscular vigor, melodic exuberance, and headlong brilliance characterize this youthful work. This early quartet, in fact, is filled with all the trademarks which later were to identify the bulk of Brahms’s music. For the 28-year-old composer, it was almost a declaration of self. The quartet begins with declamations of a lovesick young romantic, passes through the catalyst of self-analysis, and ends with a declaration of gypsy abandon – specifically, Brahms own decision to lead the life of a ‘gypsy,’ to renounce the bourgeois fetters of a middle-class existence and to follow his muse wherever it might lead him.”

The recording alluded to above was released, not on Mace which frequently used Sheridan’s writing, but on Vox/Turnabout in 1965 and featured pianist Georges Szolchany with three members of the Hungarian Quartet, a group that taught and performed 14 summers between 1960 and 1974 at our own Colby College. And the interpretation conveyed this music’s vigor, exuberance and brilliance in a stunning manner.

Recordings of the same composer’s 4th Symphony proliferate here at the house. A 1941 78 set of five 12-inch shellac discs feature the wired up, very inspired genius Music Director Serge Koussevitzky (1874-1951) conducting the Boston Symphony which he led for 25 brilliant years from 1924 to 1949. The manner in which he nagged, snapped and screamed at the 105 musicians in rehearsals is rumored to have caused 106 ulcers, one man developing two of them.

But the Victor Red Seal records Koussevitzky left posterity were of a consistently sublime quality. He conducted the Brahms 4th with a combination of thick, yet eloquent sonority from the strings, clear as a bell detail from the woodwinds, powerful brass and percussion while the phrasing sometimes verged on the stodgy yet never went overboard.

A couple of other recommendations are the 1927 Beethoven Pastoral and the 1935 Sibelius Second Symphony.

This conductor mentored Leonard Bernstein, but disapproved of Bernstein writing Broadway musicals.

by Peter Cates

The Five Scamps

The Five Scamps, The Fishing Song; and Good Lover Blues. Columbia 30168, ten-inch 78, recorded 1949.

The Five Scamps were an African American group of singers and instrumentalists who began performing informally in a WPA work camp in 1936 but then the story ends there until 1946, when their professional career started taking off in Kansas City, Missouri, and extended to California and a contract with Columbia Records in 1948.

The Fishing Song is a hilarious, slightly risqué number while Good Lover Blues is a most captivating example of early rhythm and blues.

By 1950, after recording eight titles, Columbia terminated their contract due to a lack of sales but the group would earn a decent living as a night club act in Kansas City, with some changes of personnel until the early 2000s when they called it quits due to old age.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

In an 1837 entry in his ever-fascinating American Note-Books, Nathaniel Hawthorne writes the following during his visits with friends in Central Maine:

“On the road from Hallowell to Augusta we saw little booths, in two places, erected on the roadside, where boys offered beer, apples, etc., for sale. We passed an Irishwoman with a child in her arms, and a heavy bundle, and afterwards an Irishman with a light bundle, sitting by the highway. They were husband and wife; and B__ says that an Irishman and his wife, on their journeys, do not usually walk side by side, but that the man gives the woman the heaviest burden to carry, and walks on lightly ahead!”

These patriarchal and lazy attitudes of so many husbands expecting their wives to be beasts of burden during the good old days of 150 to 200 years ago were recounted in anecdotes by my own relatives, nowadays in blessed eternity, about how some of our ancestors treated their spouses.

I am also now curious as to whether Hawthorne visited East Vassalboro and South China during his travels around Augusta and the Kennebec River, and what he would have seen along the China Lake stagecoach roads.

Special Ops

I have recently started watching season one of Special Ops: The Lioness, a very suspenseful new series based on the increased recruitment of women in secret intelligence operations in the Middle East and elsewhere starting around 2003.

The only familiar face here is the very good Nicole Kidman as a CIA boss but the rest of the cast also does superb work.

Kudos to the on-location cinematography along Chesapeake Bay Bridge and elsewhere.

Raymond Dixon

Raymond Dixon – Underneath the Stars; Alice Green and Harry Macdonough – Shadowland. Victor 17946, ten-inch acoustic shellac disc, recorded January 4, 1916.

Raymond Dixon, Harry Macdonough and Alice Green were pseudonyms used by tenors Lambert Murphy (1885-1954) and John Scantlebury Macdonald (1871-1931) and soprano Olive Kline (1887-1976) while the two songs fall into the long forgotten category; and they are im­mensely charming ones which have held up through several recent playings of this record.

Murphy’s voice had an appealingly effusive quality which suited the expressed romantic sentiments of the nocturnal Underneath the Stars.

Shadowland was more upbeat but evoked similar emotions aroused during a nighttime stroll with one’s significant other. The lean tart vocalism of Macdonald’s reedy tenor blended well with Kline’s consistently exquisite high notes.

Olive Kline’s 1929 electrically recorded rendition of Ethelbert Nevin’s Mighty Lak A Rose remains one of my favorite vocal records of all time since I first heard it more than 10 years ago and I own the original 78 and an Amazon cd special transfer.

Graham Greene

Graham Greene in his 1969 Collected Essays described “Beatrix Potter’s style” as having “a selective realism, which takes emotion for granted and puts aside love and death with a gentle detachment.” That “gentle detachment” is evoked in the manner in which Peter Rabbit’s mother sweetly reminds Peter and his siblings of steering clear of the McGregor garden – “Your father had an accident there; he was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.”

My first encounter at the age of six with Peter Rabbit’s foolhardiness was through a five-inch yellow plastic 78 Golden Record in which Peter was depicted being shot at, sound effects and all, by the evil Mr. McGregor’s shotgun. For several years in my mind, the name McGregor equalled those of Hitler, Stalin and Dillinger in the ominous realm.

Greene also provided a telling quote from what he considered to be one of her masterpieces, The Roly-Poly Pudding in which rats in the attic have captured Tom Kitten:

– “Anna Maria,” said the old man rat (whose name was Samuel Whiskers), “Anna Maria, make me a kitten dumpling roly-poly pudding for my dinner. “
– “It requires dough and a pat of butter, and a rolling pin,” said Anna Maria, considering Tom Kitten with her head on one side.
– “No,” said Samuel Whiskers, “Make it properly, Anna Maria, with breadcrumbs.”

by Peter Cates

Ken Marvin

A ten-inch 78 (Mercury 6373) features two country and western songs – (A Heartsick Soldier on) Heartbreak Ridge; and Missing in Action; both sides focused on a soldier fighting in Korea and the horrors of separation from home, wife and family amidst the noise of exploding shells.

The listed singer Ken Marvin was a stage name for Lloyd George (1924-1991) who had originally been part of a popular 1940s country music duo, Lonzo and Oscar, who achieved extra fame and fortune for their 1947 hit record, I’m My Own Grandpa.

While George had a decent singing voice, the songs were of average quality; the record attracted me as yet another document of the perpetually fascinating 1950s both in the United States and abroad.

Patti Page and Frankie Laine

Mercury Records began its operations in 1945 in Chicago and had signed up such artists as Patti Page, and Frankie Laine by 1950 . Page’s hits The Tennessee Waltz and How Much is that Doggie in the Window and Laine’s Mule Train were among the several dozen dusty old 78s gifted me by my maternal step-grandfather who retrieved them from a jukebox in the diner run by him and my grandmother back during the 1940s.

Unlike RCA Victor, Columbia and Decca which spent vast amounts of money promoting their records via the radio disc jockeys, Mercury used the less expensive juke boxes.

By 1948, Mercury’s New York City headquarters had work tables occupied by four key record producers – Mitch Miller for pop music, John Hammond for folk and blues, Norman Granz for jazz and David Hall for classical (Hall would, a few decades later, settle permanently in Castine).

John Hammond

In 1929 at the age of 19, John Hammond worked briefly for the Portland Evening News under then-editor Ernest Gruening.

Both Hammond and Gruening shared a passion for social justice.

Within a few years, Gruening moved to the Alaskan Territory, served as governor and, after Alaska became a state in 1959, was elected U.S. Senator. As a Democrat, he was one of two Senators who voted against the 1965 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and vociferously opposed United States involvement in Vietnam.

Columbo

I recently rewatched for the third time what might be my favorite Columbo episode, the pilot March 1, 1971, Ransom for a Dead Man. And with all due respect to the supporting cast, I was enthralled from beginning to end by the most continually captivating collaboration of Peter Falk as the bumbling and never to be underestimated lieutenant, and Lee Grant as the charmingly amoral murderess Leslie Williams.

This pilot may have been what convinced NBC executives to bankroll season one of the series.

 

 

 

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by Peter Cates

Barbra Streisand

Although there was a time when I was quite enthralled by certain Barbra Streisand albums, such as 1969’s What About Today; the early 70s Stoney End, and Barbra Joan Streisand (especially Michel Legrand’s The Summer Knows from the movie Summer of ’42); and 1975’s Classical Barbra, I have not found her artistry wearing well. A cassette I recently reheard, Memories (Columbia TCT 37678), is a best of grab bag anthology of sorts with the overbearing The Way We Were, the grating Enough is Enough duet with the late Donna Summer etc., but her renditions of Memory from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats and the deeply stirring You Don’t Bring Me Flowers duet with Neil Diamond still raise goosebumps.

Betsy Graves

From the anthology Maine Speaks, Past the Shallows is a short story by Orono native Betsy Graves dealing with the beginning of a week’s vacation at the family cottage on a lake accessible only by boat. The story has two teenage boys, their sister, mother and grandparents.

It depicts the mixed blessings inevitably found in such gatherings. Young Imogene is relishing”the gentle motion of the water lapping against the sides of the wharf ” upon which she is reclining, “the sun on her face…cool June day, school out…lazy and content as a sleepy cat.”

But a mean-spirited boozy grandfather wreaks havoc at lunch with everybody, especially Imogene’s brother Buddy whom the old man has singled out . The all around nastiness and the two following days of unending rain lead to a much earlier departure.

Then a beautifully written couple of sentences bring respite to both Imogene and Buddy:

“On the calm flat water in the middle of the lake, Imo saw two loons swimming, hardly moving. They spoke to each other in long, mourning cries with a rippling sound like laughter at the end.”

Lucille Ball / Desi Arnaz

Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s Desilu Productions launched a comedy series, Angel, in 1960 that only lasted one year. It depicted the life of a newly-married couple, the wife being a Parisian whose language barrier and inability to understand American customs lands her in difficulty.

The one-liners were lame in the second episode I sampled, Voting Can Be Fun, which originally aired October 13, 1960, but it interested me because of the guest appearance of Joseph Kearns (1907-1962), then best known as Mister Wilson, on Dennis the Menace, and whose role as the slightly cantankerous city clerk lent a humorous edge otherwise lacking.

In addition, fist fights break out at a voting station between men on opposing sides of the issues. No need to mention possible relevance to this November’s upcoming election!

The episode is on YouTube.

Connie Francis

Connie Francis’s singing could be a bit syrupy during her peak years but, when I first watched her on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand singing Who’s Sorry Now, I was smitten by her heartfelt beauty and charisma. An MGM 45 of When the Boy in your Arms is the Boy in your Heart, and Baby’s First Christmas, as arranged and conducted by the very gifted Don Costa, is an example of how two basically mediocre songs can be transformed into decent performances.

Who’s Sorry Now was also performed in 1950’s Three Little Words, which just happened to have also been produced by MGM, was a biopic of songwriters Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby, and starred Fred Astaire and Red Skelton. In addition, Kalmar and Ruby composed the Betty Boop classic I Wanna Be Loved By You.

Eugene Ormandy

An early 1930s Victor Red Seal 78 set of five 12-inch discs features music of Johann Strauss Junior (1825-1899) as performed very spiritedly by Eugene Ormandy leading the Minne­apolis Sym­phony (nowadays referred to as the Minne­sota Orch­estra) and includes the Blue Danube, Tales from the Vienna Woods, Accelera­tion Waltz, and the Overtures to the composer’s operettas, Die Fledermaus (The Bat) and the Gypsy Baron.

Ormandy was music director for roughly five years and recorded extensively for Victor before heading to Philadelphia in 1936 to lead its Orchestra for 44 very successful years. Most of Ormandy’s recordings can be accessed via YouTube.

 

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by Peter Cates

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) spent a number of years as a boy in Raymond, Maine, with an uncle, Dr. Richard Manning, who built a huge mansion with lavishly expensive wallpaper, fireplaces and Belgian glass windows – local natives referred to it as “Mannning’s Folly.” It was later used as a church and tavern and is now listed as a historic site and tourist attraction.

During later years when Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, (where his classmates included former President Franklin Pierce and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), he often visited his uncle.

However, even though Hawthorne graduated with the class of 1825, he had a very jaundiced view of his time as a college student, as revealed in an 1850s letter to Richard Henry Stoddard:

“I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.”

In his American Note-Books for July 5th, 1837, during a visit to Maine, Hawthorne describes looking out the window at the Kennebec River:

“Then there is a sound of the wind among the trees round the house; and, when that is silent, the calm, full, distant voice becomes audible. Looking downward thither, I see the rush of the current, and mark the different eddies, with here and there white specks or streaks of foam; and often a log comes floating on, glistening in the sun, as it rolls over among the eddies, having voyaged, for aught I know, hundreds of miles from the wild upper sources of the river, passing down, down, between lines of forest, and sometimes a rough clearing, till here it floats by cultivated banks, and will soon pass by the village. Sometimes a long raft of boards comes along, requiring the nicest skill in navigating it through the narrow passage left by the mill-dam. Chaises and wagons occasionally go over the road, the riders all giving a passing glance at the dam, or perhaps alighting to examine it more fully, and at last departing with ominous shakes of the head as to the result of the enterprise.”

For me, Hawthorne had a phenomenal gift of drawing the reader into any scene he was describing out of direct experience or as a result of being transformed into his novels such as, for example, the Scarlet Letter, and the Blithedale Romance, as well as such short stories as Young Goodman Brown, The Minister’s Black Veil, Feathertop, etc.

Sergio Mendes

On September 6, pianist/orchestra leader Sergio Mendes passed away at the age of 83 due to several months of the ill-effects of Covid. Back in 1970 when I was attending the University of Southern Maine at Gorham, a friend in the dormitory room next to mine in Anderson Hall introduced me to his Brazil 66 albums; I began buying my own copies, enjoying Mendes’s immensely charming soft pop/jazz/Bossa Nova arrangements and particularly relishing the lead vocalists Lani Hall and Karen Philipp.

Herb Alpert

One 1968 LP Fool on the Hill, released on Herb Alpert’s A&M label, has remained on my frequent play list. The renditions of the title song – itself superior to the Beatles own performance in my opinion; the slowly paced lyrical love ballad Canto Triste sung exquisitely by Lani Hall (She later married Herb Alpert); and the infectiously upbeat Upa Neguinho leave the album’s remaining seven very good songs in the shade.

The entire album is accessible on YouTube.

Bernard Haitink

In January, 1905, Czarist troops fired on peaceful demonstrators in front of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, killing over 400. In 1957, Dimitri Shosta­kovich’s 11th Sym­phony in remembrance of that tragedy was premiered in Moscow.

It has been recorded with distinction by a number of conductors, one of them being the late Bernard Haitink (1929-2021) on a Decca/London 1985 release still in print and accessible also on YouTube. The Symphony has four movements of searing eloquent beauty and savage power.

 

 

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