by Peter Cates

Arlo Guthrie

During my senior year at Kent’s Hill boarding school the spring of 1969, I lived in Wesleyan Hall dormitory and was acquainted with a fellow whose father was a wholesale record distributor.

He provided me with five LPs for sale at $2 each and gave me several days to audition them.

They were as follows:

Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant devoted an entire side one to his satirical account of an environmental incident which, for purposes of space, will not be recounted here, while the flip side had five songs of very minor charm.

His father was folk singer Woody Guthrie whose most famous song was This Land Is Your Land.

It was also the basis for a movie.

In recent years, Guthrie announced that he was retiring, at 74, from performing and touring, aptly stating that it was time to hang up the “Gone fishing” sign.

He also scored a hit with the beautiful Steve Goodman folk ballad The City of New Orleans 50 years ago.

Rod McKuen

The second LP was one by singer/poet songwriter Rod McKuen (1933-2015) whose recordings and books sold hundreds of millions of copies. His singing was not exactly beautiful after he all but des­troyed his vocal chords as a much younger man working in night clubs.

His most famous songs are Seasons in the Sun which was a hit for the Kingston Trio; Love’s Been Good to Me covered by Frank Sinatra who devoted his LP, A Man Alone, to McKuen; and the English lyrics for Jacques Brel’s If You Go Away.

I am particularly fond of If You Go Away while my father enjoyed Stanyan Street. Glenn Yarborough of the Limelighters devoted several albums to McKuen .

McKuen lived in a large Spanish-style house on Southern California’s Pacific coast and owned a humongous record collection.

Burt Bacharach

Number three was the original Broadway cast recording of Burt Bacharach’s Promises Promises. Jerry Ohrbach and Jill O’Hara did top notch starring and singing roles, Ohrbach with She Likes Basketball, A Fact Can Be a Beautiful Thing and the title song which was a megahit for Dionne Warwick while Jill O’Hara’s Knowing When to Leave was and remains to this day a show stopper.

Bacharach recently celebrated his 94th birthday.

Ray Coniff

The 4th album was one of the Ray Conniff (1916-2002) Singers performing mid ‘60s hits such as My Cup Runneth Over and Winchester Cathedral.

Conniff was one of the finest jazz trombonists during the ‘30s and ‘40s and can be heard in quite a number of old recordings of small combos from those years, especially with clarinetist Artie Shaw.

During the 1950s, Conniff worked side by side with Mitch Miller at Columbia records producing numerous discs by such singers as Tony Bennett, Marty Robbins, and Johnny Mathis.

Along about then, he formed the Ray Conniff Singers as a means of providing sophisticated easy listening albums for its huge market, as did Andre Kostelanetz, Percy Faith, Paul Weston, Nelson Riddle, Hugo Winterhalter, etcs.

And he utilized a number of the same men who were part of Mitch’s Sing Along Gang because every one of them could sight read music.

Mary Hopkins

The last album was a solo LP featuring the wonderful Mary Hopkin singing her classic Those Were the Days and covers of other vintage hits-examples being Ray Noble’s Love is the Sweetest Thing, Inch Worm and There’s No Business Like Show Business. It was released on the Beatles’ own label, Apple records. She is still living at 74.

My friend was one happy camper when I handed him a $10 bill.

 

 

 

 

by Peter Cates

Frances Alda

Born in New Zealand, soprano Frances Alda (1879-1952) became a big star at the Metropolitan Opera in NYC, recorded a batch of Victor acoustic discs including duets with Enrico Caruso (1873-1921) and was married to Met manager Gatti-Casazza for several years.

A two sided , ten inch Victrola (527) features her very sweet singing of two longtime favorite selections, the native American love song, By the Waters of Minnetonka and the spiritual Deep River.

Both sides can be heard via Google.

Beatrice Harrison

A blue label ten inch Victor from 1924 (45072) features English cellist Beatrice Harrison (1892-1965) playing two charming pieces, David Popper’s Spanish dance To My Guitar and Nicolai Rimsky Korsakov’s Slumber Song from the opera May Night.

Harrison came from an incredibly talented musical family; one sister being a pianist, the other a violinist.

Beatrice attracted the attention of elite musical figures in English society- composers Sir Edward Elgar, Frederick Delius and Arnold Bax, each of whom composed works with her in mind; and conductors Sir Henry Wood, Sir Thomas Beecham (he called Harrison “That talented English lady”) and Sir Adrian Boult.

She recorded Elgar’s Cello Concerto in 1920 and 1928 with the composer conducting and did concerts with Sir Henry Wood several times at the Queen’s Hall in London, including the night before it was destroyed by the Luftwaffe.

Many of her recordings can also be heard via the internet.

Victor Herbert

Another blue label Victor record, 45170, has the composer/conductor/cellist Victor Herbert (1856-1924) leading Victor Herbert’s Orchestra in Charles Wakefield Cadman’s At Dawning and Poupee Valsante’s The Waltzing Doll. The ensemble consisted of very gifted musicians who gave beautiful performances on a sizable number of very fragile shellacs under Maestro Herbert.

In 1924, he died suddenly of a heart attack while at the doctor’s office.

Radiex was one of several dime store record labels which sold for a quarter per disc. A 1926 78 release contained a Great American Songbook classic staple, the Harbach/Hammerstein /Jerome Kern “Who” and the obscure but nicely composed “I’m Glad You’re Happy Again” sung the pseudonymous Mister X, whom research has determined to be any one of several singers.

 

 

 

 

by Peter Cates

Prague Spring Festival

Since 1946, the Prague Spring Festival has been a renowned annual gathering of top notch classical artists in the Czech Re­public. The An­dante label re­leased a nicely packaged set of four CDs and a hardcover book consisting of broadcasts from 1947 to 1968 featuring 11 great conductors with the extraordinarily accomplished Czech Philharmonic. I offer one anecdote of a fascinating guest Maestro and, due to space, brief comments on the others:

A 1957 Tchaikovsky 4th Symphony had the longtime conductor of the Leningrad Philharmonic, Yevgeni Mravinsky (1903-1988), delivering an especially riveting performance of what has become my favorite symphony by this composer, even more than his Pathetique or 6th.

YouTubes of Mravinsky reveal a poker-faced gentleman using the tiniest hand and finger gestures while drawing the most exciting playing. Just about every other conductor in the profession admired him.

Mravinsky also had the ability to make a piece always sound fresh, no matter how many times he had conducted it before. One player told of participating in 113 performances of the Tchaikovsky 5th under Mravinsky and each one was different from the others in some special way.

Mravinsky also had the longest tenure of any conductor, serving over 50 years as music director in Leningrad, before it changed back to being the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic after the early ‘90s collapse of the Soviet Union.

Leopold Stokowski (1882-1977) collaborated with pianist Lev Oborin (1908-1974) in a dazzling 1961 Rachmaninoff 3rd Piano Concerto. The charismatic Stokowski contrasted vividly with the jovially obese and bespectacled Oborin, who partnered in concerts and recordings with violinist David Oistrakh (1907-1974).

Longtime Boston Symphony Maestro Charles Munch (1891-1968) conducted a powerful rendition in 1967 of the captivating 6th Sym­phony of Czech com­poser Bohuslav Martinu, which Munch recorded ten years earlier in Boston for RCA Victor.

Munch preferred minimal rehearsals so as to give the players and himself greater reserves of energy and excitement during the concert itself. His YouTube videos reveal a man who could dance and jump like his younger colleague Leonard Bernstein.

The remaining conductors:

Igor Markevitch (1912-1983) with a blazing 1959 Stravinsky Rite of Spring and who was married to an heiress whose family made millions in the French perfume industry.

The irascible perfectionist George Szell (1897-1970), of Cleveland Orchestra fame, in a gripping Beethoven Coriolan Overture also from 1959. Somebody once commented that Szell was his own worst enemy to which Metropolitan Opera general manager Rudolf Bing retorted, “Not while I’m alive!”

Next, my personal favorite of the Maestros assembled here as one to collect recordings of, Belgium born Andre Cluytens (1905-1967) spent most of his adult years in Paris. He was a radical contrast to Szell, being a very kind man whose death from lung cancer because of his chain smoking saddened so many friends.

He was also incredibly brilliant at drawing exquisite performances and a 1955 Berlioz Symphonie Fantastique is one of five he left us, and all of them on my shelves.

Former Czech Philharmonic Music Director Vaclav Talich (1883-1961) recorded some fine 78 sets of Dvorak and Smetana that were released by Victor Red Seal here in the U.S. and conducts a lovely 1954 performance of Dvorak’s tone poem The Wood Dove.

He was wrongfully thrown into jail just after World War II for so-called “unpatriotic conduct” during the Nazi occupation but was released and exonerated by former Czech President Benes.

Another former CPO Music Director Karel Ancerl (1908-1973) conducts the 1968 very ravishing Smetana piece From Bohemia’s Meadows and Forests.

Ancerl was an emaciated Holocaust survivor when the camps were liberated. Not long after this 1968 concert, he and his wife and children emigrated to Toronto, Canada, just as the Russian tanks were rolling into Czechoslovakia.

Russian conductor Kirill Kondrashin (1914-1981) collaborated with pianist Sviatoslav Richter (1914-1998) in an elegant 1950 Mozart 20th Piano Concerto, although interestingly Richter detested most of Mozart’s music while much preferring the music of his teacher Franz Josef Haydn.

Kondrashin defected to the west during the late 1970s and was forging a wonderful relationship with the Concertgebouw Orchestra of Amsterdam but tragically died of a sudden heart attack on his 67th birthday just after conducting a concert with them.

The most well known Russian violinist David Oistrakh (1908-1974) delivered a powerful 1947 Prokofiev 1st Violin Concerto with Rafael Kubelik (1914-1996) conducting. Kubelik first conducted the Czech Philharmonic at the age of 19. Later he would be music director of the Chicago Symphony, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra of Munich.

by Peter Cates

Peter Falk

Peter Falk will always be best-remembered as the cigar burning homicide detective Lt. Columbo and rightfully so. His characterization of a man whose persona was that of a socially awkward bungler who was so easily distracted by the most insipidly trivial, useless pieces of information and yet would fool murderers time and again into thinking they would never get caught with his standard “Oh, I apologize for bothering you but just one more question!”

I have been watching the several available episodes on Amazon Prime, starting with season 2 and its very impressive guest star murderers row line-up:

John Cassavetes as a conductor who disposes of his pianist girlfriend after she’s pressuring him to divorce his wife. Cassavetes and Falk were very close friends who collaborated on several films, one of which was the harrowingly powerful 1974 A Woman Under the Influence, which Cassavetes directed and Falk played the emotionally insensitive construction worker and husband of a woman on the brink of a nervous breakdown (Cassavetes’s wife Gena Rowlands gave an award-winning performance as the main character).

Ray Milland as a murderous uncle who sends his spoiled brat of a nephew to his eternal reward.

Leonard Nimoy as a surgeon who commits three murders in violation of his Hippocratic oath.

English actor Lawrence Harvey as a world class chess champion who murders a rival he perceives as a threat to his world class status and which was one of Harvey’s last roles a year before his death as the age of 45, in 1973.

Martin Landau as twin brothers who electrocute a rich uncle in his bathtub with a blender. This episode also featured the positively brilliant actress Jeannette Nolan as the uncle’s perfectionist housekeeper.

Vera Miles as an entrepreneur in the cosmetics business who cracks a former boyfriend, portrayed by Martin Sheen, on the skull when he refuses to hand over an anti-aging formula he stole from her.

One most memorable episode featured the wonderful Anne Baxter as the murderess who ignites the gasoline explosion of an automobile being driven by a man who gossips too much. Her portrayal of the murderess ended up being a tearfully sympathetic one.

My first experience of Peter Falk’s acting was in 1962 when he appeared as a killer on the short lived TV series The Aquanuts, starring Ron Ely and Jeremy Slate. Falk conveyed very low key ominous presence vividly.

by Peter Cates

Back during the last century old days of my adolescent youth, I was quite enamored by the Mercury dollar cut out LPs of the Chad Mitchell Trio that I bought at downtown Waterville Center’s Department Store. The group’s brand of folk music making thrilled me- their sing­ing of such classics as You Were On My Mind, The Last Thing On My Mind, 4 Strong Winds, I Can’t Help But Wonder Where I’m Bound, etc. In addition the impeccable artistry of backup guitarist Paul Prestopino and the precision honed arrangements of Milt Okun contributed to the pleasure of these records.

Seeking similar splendors, I bought my first album of the much more well known Kingston Trio, Close Up, which I believe was the first to feature John Stewart (1939-2008), who replaced the departing Dave Guard in 1961. Guard, along with Nick Reynolds and Bob Shane, formed the group in 1957 and hit the charts with Tom Dooley.

Stewart had already gotten experience with the less successful but musically gifted Cumberland 3, which recorded an album devoted to songs of the Civil War. He was a gifted songwriter, guitarist, and vocalist- meaning outstanding interpreter of his songs, since his singing was not especially beautiful- ; and he would assume most of the duties as Master of Ceremonies during the Trio’s concerts, being very quick on his feet with witty repartee.

The early ‘60s folk music boom soon busted with the on­slaught of the Beach Boys, Beatles, Rolling Stones and their contemporaries but the Trio continued performing and recording as long as feasibly possible, finally calling it quits in 1967.

Meanwhile John Stewart accumulated a significant body of work and recorded his first of just over 60 al­bums in 1968, the exquisite Signals Through the Glass with his then-girlfriend and later wife, Buffy Ford. The album was a stunning example of great 20th century American music and on the same scale as the music of Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Stephen Sondheim, Rodgers and Hammerstein, Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, just to name a few examples

Parallels in art and literature would be painters Winslow Homer, Grant Wood, Edward Hopper and Andrew Wyeth, the poets Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg and the novelists Willa Cather, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway.

The song titles on that first album included Nebraska Widow, July You’re a Woman, Mr. Lincoln’s Train and Muddy Truckee River.

I recently listened to three of his albums: Lonesome Picker Rides Again, from 1971; 1992’s Bullets in the Hour Glass; and the 2006 The Day the River Sang.

Lonesome Picker had the wistful Just an Old Love Song; the very delectable celebration of village life, Bolinas, with its lovely strings and English horn; the most famous song Stewart ever wrote and a megahit for the Monkees and Anne Murray, Daydream Believer; and, since horses and horse races were subjects dear to Stewart’s heart (his father was a horse trainer), side two’s concluding Wild Horse Road, and All the Brave Horses.

Bullets in the Hour Glass was considered a rather desultory bad day for the singer by one otherwise loyal fan but I found only one dud, a monolog entitled Bad Rats. The River, Dealing with the Night, a very eloquent The Wheel Within the Clay, Women (with backup vocals by Rosanne Cash) and The Man Who Would Be King (it with Paul Stookey of Peter, Paul and Mary fame as backup) are first class. By this time, Stewart’s vocal chords were a bit more frayed than during the ‘60s and ‘70s but the solid beauty of the material was still in ample evidence.

In addition, there was a more frequent utilization of New Age synthesizer effects, as opposed to the straight folk rock of the 70s, yet used with taste and intelligence.

The Day the River Sang was a top notch Last Hurrah. While Stewart’s own singing had deteriorated even more in any semblance of beauty, the total quality control of material and arrangements prevailed. The choice Baby It’s You, East of Denver, the title song, Sister Mercy and Midnight Train warrant very close attention.

I attended two concerts of the singer, one in 2001 at the Town Crier Club in Pawling , New York, a village distinguished by the presence of headquarters for Norman Vincent Peale’s Guideposts publication and a separate set of buildings for the Jehovah’s Witnesses; and the second in 2006 at the Augusta St. Mark’s Episcopalian Church just off of Lithgow Street.

He put on great shows both times.

Sadly by 2007, Stewart’s health, which had been problematical for a few years, was showing signs of Alzheimer’s and he died in early 2008 at the age of 68.