by Peter Cates

Joyce Butler

In an 1995 textbook anthology, Maine, the Pine Tree State from Prehistory to the Present, the late Kennebunk historian Joyce Butler provided an essay on family and community life from 1783 to 1861.

A few items:

Saco was originally Pepperelborough, “a rough lumbering town.”

The missionary Paul Coffin considered Union “a place for young men to make themselves.”

A tradesman in Falmouth bought 7,800 acres between the Saco and Ossipee Rivers in 1787 for under a thousand dollars, a purchase that later became the town of Hiram.

Dancing, Blind Man’s Bluff, and backgammon were some of the social activities enjoyed by the wealthy classes in Portland.

A 15 year old teenager from Denmark, Rufus Porter, walked the 106 mile round trip to Portland to seek his fortune.

Richard Wagner

Parsifal was Richard Wagner’s last opera and given its world premiere in 1882 at Bayreuth, the opera house in Germany that was built to the composer’s specifications and to this day is a mecca for opera lovers.

It has a plot centered on a mythical King Arthurish knight, Parsifal, and his search for the holy grail (During the 1970s, Monty Python did its own version of this holy grail search, resulting in a very hilarious film.) and runs five hours, quite a lengthy evening.

The opera has provoked extreme reactions in its history – composers Gustav Mahler and Claude Debussy found it the greatest experience of their life while Igor Stravinsky and novelist Mark Twain detested it.

I myself enjoy the music in this opera and have not bothered to follow the story line, being of the belief that appreciation of the music should come before trying to figure out the plot and its characters. When the music is firmly in the listener’s mind and heart, then further study is fruitful.

During the last month, I listened to three different recordings of Parsifal, each of them of exceptional merit. The first one is from 1950, and features Vittorio Gui conducting an Italian language production at La Scala in Milan with tenor Africo Baldelli in the title role and the legendary soprano Maria Callas as the significant woman Kundry.

The second set, from 1973, presents Sir Georg Solti leading the Vienna Philharmonic with Rene Kollo as Parsifal and Christa Ludwig as Kundry. #3 from 1981 has Herbert von Karajan directing the Berlin Philharmonic, Peter Hofmann’s Parsifal and Dunja Vejzovic’s Kundry.

Good news for thrifty listeners- all three recordings can be heard on YouTube.

Al Hibbler

Jazz singer Al Hibbler (1915-2001) recorded a 1954 ten inch lp of six selections for Columbia Records House Party series with Duke Ellington and his orchestra and gave performances to be savored slowly; they included two Great American Songbook classics, Don’t Get Around Much Anymore and The World Is Waiting for the Sunrise, which was frequently heard during the dark days of World War II.

Nancy Wilson

Nancy Wilson (1937-2018) appeared on a memorable 1970 episode of Hawaii Five-O, Trouble in Mind, as a nightclub singer with addiction problems. Even in that role, she conveyed wonderful stage presence singing with a small combo.

A 1991 Co­lumbia cassette, With My Lover Beside Me, is an album of songs by lyricist Johnny Mercer and singer/composer Barry Manilow. As with her numerous other albums, this one comes highly recommended.

by Peter Cates

Dylan and Vee

At a 2013 concert in St. Paul, Minnesota, Bob Dylan paid tribute to Bobby Vee (1943-2016), who was in the audience. Dylan played piano as part of Vee’s backup band for two gigs in 1959 and the two singers had remained friends and performed together on occasion over subsequent decades.

Dylan, who had performed with so many legends in concerts, described Vee as “the most beautiful person I’ve ever been on the stage with.”

One could point out a world of difference between Bobby Vee’s Rubber Ball and Bob Dylan’s Mister Tambourine Man; it would also be a waste of time and space. Instead one admires the tribute from one American music statesman to another.

The interest in Bobby Vee came after recently listening to a Liberty seven-inch 45 record of two of Vee’s megahits back in the very early ‘60s when he and two other Bobbys, Rydell and Vinton, were bombarding the Billboards and airwaves.

The songs, Run to Him; and Walkin’ with My Angel, were written by Gerry Goffin and his ex-wife Carole King, they being famous for But Will You Love Me Tomorrow. And both songs were given superb production work by the Liberty records founder Snuff Garrett (He signed to the label singer Julie London and Alvin and the Chipmunks) with some of the finest session players in the business and the Johnny Mann Singers doing backup.

Even more impressive was Vee’s singing with a beautifully projected vocal register, clear articulation, characterful phrasing and vibrant warmth. Not only did I listen to my very good copy of the 45 but also to the remastered sound, derived from the original source material during later decades, to be heard on YouTube which had outstanding sound lacking in the old 45s.

I also listened to Youtubes of Vee’s very captivating hits, Rubber Ball, and the classic The Night Has a Thousand Eyes and several others that weren’t quite as good as material but were still given top notch arrangements.

At the 2013 concert, Bob Dylan sang an early hit of Bobby Vee, Suzie Baby, and it can be heard on YouTube, along with Vee’s original recording. I actually liked Vee’s better. Dylan’s own singing at the age of 72 just wasn’t what it used to be but it was an important historical moment.

The two singers did critique each other’s musicianship in a pithy manner:

Dylan – Vee “had a metallic, edgy tone to his voice and it was as musical as a silver bell.”

Vee- Dylan “played pretty good in the key of C.”

Bobby Vee died in 2016 at the age of 73 from Alzheimer’s which he had been suffering from for several years. His wife died the previous year from a kidney ailment.

Lorin Maazel

Conductor Lorin Maazel (1930-2015), for good or bad, has been one of the most fascinating individuals who ever directed a symphony orchestra. He succeeded George Szell (1897-1970) as music director of the Cleveland Orchestra in 1971, staying ten years before becoming director of the Vienna State Opera and, as far as I am concerned, successfully followed perfectionist Szell’s very hard act.

In 1976, Maazel and the Clevelanders recorded a set of the Brahms 4 Symphonies, Haydn Variations and Tragic and Academic Festival Overtures. It was reviewed in high fidelity along with another set of the Symphonies and 2 Overtures but lacking the Haydn Variations that was released the same year and featured Eugen Jochum (1902-1987) leading the London Philharmonic.

Both sets were trashed by the record critic whose ears, as far as I was concerned, were screwed on wrong. I own shelves of different Brahms Symphonies and I have found that both Maazel and Jochum conducted very exciting performances that brought out the balance of rip-roaring romantic emotions in Johannes Brahms’s own psyche and the sternly crafted architecture that this composer imposed, based on his admiration of the 18th century examples of Bach, Handel and Haydn.

The sets remain among my favorites. Both Jochum and Maazel conveyed a love of this composer’s inspired music but brought a differently personalized individuality to the performances, unlike some conductors of recent years who copy cat each other with dull performances and wouldn’t let themselves go emotionally if their lives depended on it.

There are, however, some annoying quirks in Maazel’s conducting of these pieces – a ridiculously fast tempo in the last movement of the 1st Symphony, some limp phrasing in the first movement of the 2nd movement that drags it out and, at odd moments, a ho-hum manner with phrasing and detail.

But these annoying moments are few. All in all, a set worth seeking out for the curious listener.

During Maazel’s Cleveland years, he recorded prize-winning sets of Prokofiev’s complete Romeo and Juliet ballet and Gershwin’s complete Porgy and Bess, along with a really good Beethoven 9 Symphonies that was pretty well ignored by the critics.

by Peter Cates

Anna Maria Alberghetti

Still living at 87, Italian soprano Anna Maria Alberghetti gave her first concert as a child prodigy singer at the age of six years old with an orchestra of 100 musicians on the Greek island of Rhodes, achieved fame in the 1960 Broadway musical Carnival and appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show more than 50 times.

Her 1960 album, Songs by Anna Maria Alberghetti (Mercury Wing MGW 12135), contains a mix of opera, operetta, Broadway musical and Great American Songbook selections. Her voice is quite lovely in its technique but her singing tends to be a bit syrupy. However, there are two songs that stand out – It’s a Most Unusual Day (its phrase “a feeling of spring in the air ” might have resonated with citizens of the Pine Tree State during the recent mid-winter thaw of five days) and the especially wistful Darling, Come Back to Me.

Miss Alberghetti came from a very musically talented family. Two brothers were conductors, one of them leading the orchestra on this record, one sister a pianist and the other also a soprano while their father was a tenor who switched to baritone.

Sylvester Pollet

Sylvester Pollet (1939-2007) wrote in the Maine Speaks anthology of growing up in Woodstock, New York, and keeping notes on every bird he encountered at the birdfeeder.

His Poem for Saint Francis celebrates one such winged creature:

“At 10 below
thinking to help the birds survive
we increase the dole of seeds-
look out to see a fat jay
pinned by a hawk.

“In this cold even death moves slowly
there is time for much crying
and flapping of wings
but the hawk holds
and things calm down again.

“The woods are silent:
two movements only-
the hawk’s beak to the jay’s breast,
and the bits of fluff
blown over snow crust.

“We have helped a hawk survive.”

Pollet wrote elsewhere that the hawk depicted here was female and sharp-shinned.

Melodiya

The Russian record label Melodiya released a pile of LPs some 40 years ago featuring historic recordings of pianists.

One title, Composers Play, has Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915), Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943), Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951), Bela Bartok (1881-1945), Karol Szymanowski (1882-1937), and Serge Prokofiev (1891-1953) spotlights each of the six gentlemen performing their own compositions, and with exceptional musicianship. Pieces include Bartok’s Evening in Transylvania, Prokofiev’s Tales of the Old Grandmother and a Rachmaninoff Polka.

by Peter Cates

John Dos Passos

Novelist John Dos Passos (1896-1970) was most famed for U.S.A., a trilogy of 3 novels- The 42nd Parallel, 1919 and The Big Money– all of which were published between 1930 and 1936, years of the “Great” Depression and the resulting misery and turbulence .

Dos Passos was a very committed progressive until the mid-30s Spanish Civil War between General Franco’s fascists and the Loyalists who wanted a socialist government. When the Soviet Union sent soldiers and supplies to help the Loyalists against Franco who had the support of Hitler and Mussolini, Stalin’s agents were murdering fellow Loyalists, including a close friend of Dos Passos.

The author became disillusioned with progressivism and became a staunch conservative who was later a loyal supporter of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon.

From the beginning, his novels mixed fiction with historical vignettes and were written in an impressionistic manner where the rules of English grammar and sentence structure were often disregarded. Also, he would show a certain bias in depicting the struggles of social justice versus the selfish rich.

A 1961 novel Midcentury has a similar narrative pattern but the bias has changed to a more conservative one as seen in the following passage in which the labor unions have their own thugs and workers are getting very little for their membership dollars while Union leaders own Cadillacs (as in Jimmy Hoffa and the Teamsters) :

“Denial of the working man’s most elementary rights, the underworld’s encroachment on the world of daily bread, slugging, shootings, embezzlement, thievery, gangups between employers and business agents, the shakedown, the syndicate, oppression, sabotage, terror.

” ‘Instead of serving the members of the unions, you are serving a national dictatorship, ‘ Senator McClellan told a restaurant workers’ organizer. ‘Captive members have no control, no authority, no contract, no entry to the union’s affairs. They are virtually captives. They have to do what they are told if they want to work.’ ”

For what it’s worth, Dos Passos’s technique of writing remains an inspiration to novelists whose world views are radically different from his, quite the tribute to his style and originality.

Edward Stettinius

FDR’s Secretary of State Edward Stettinius (1900-1949) accompanied Roosevelt to Yalta in February , 1945, for meetings with Churchill and Stalin. In 1946, he had personality conflicts with Truman and resigned.

In a book of memoirs on the Yalta Conference, Roosevelt and the Russians, which was published in 1950, a year after Stettinius died suddenly from a heart attack, he describes Stalin’s equally evil Security Chief Beria (1899-1953):

“I had been informed that he was one of the strong men in the Politburo, and he impressed me that evening as being hard, forceful, and extremely alert.”

Edith Mathis

A 1966 LP (Seraphim 60015) features soprano Edith Mathis, still living at 85, singing nine very beautiful German songs by George Frederick Handel (1685-1759) who is best known for his oratorio Messiah. She is accompanied by a very accomplished group of musicians on the recorder, flute, oboe, bassoon, violin, viol da gamba and harpsichord.

Victor Herbert

RCA Victor’s 1960 album, The Music of Victor Herbert (1856-1924) presents a dozen of his operetta songs which were rightfully popular more than 100 years ago and are still heard from time to time. They include March of the Toys from Babes in Toyland, Ah Sweet Mystery of Life which was a megahit 78 for Jeannette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy and In Old New York.

British arranger George Melachrino and his orchestra gave performances which conveyed the music’s melodic simplicity without the syrup so often heard on way too many occasions.

Herbert was also a cellist and Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony.

Scandal

I recently started bingeing on Scandal, starring Kerry Washington, Katie Lowes, Darby Stanchfield, Guillermo Diaz, Tony Goldwyn and others who give fine performances in a series that depicts a crisis management law firm in the nation’s capital. Beginning in 2012, the show ran for seven seasons . Thus far, season one’s first four episodes have left me eager for more.

The 1934 black and white Anne of Green Gables had fine performances from 16-year-old Dawn Evelyn Paris (1918-1993) who later took the name of Anne Shirley as her own after portraying the main character; Helen Westley as Anne’s gruff but good-hearted guardian Merilla; O.P. Heggie as Merilla’s kindly brother Matthew; and Sara Hadon as a nosy neighbor, the typecast kind of personality she was quite gifted at during Hollywood’s golden years.

by Peter Cates

Roger Boyle

For some years, I have found that the only criticism worth reading, whether books, music, etc., is that which has a passion for the subject, and a sense that the writing is a means of putting one’s thoughts in order while bringing the reader along in this journey.

In his endlessly rereadable Collected Essays, Graham Greene achieved this consistently. Among his interests were the English playwrights from after Shakespeare to the 18th century. One essay, An Unheroic Dramatist, is a 1937 book review of The Dramatic Works of Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, edited by William Smith Clark.

Looking up Boyle (1621-1679) on Wiki, I find out he was an Irish Protestant landowner, soldier, historian and poet. He was ferociously anti-Catholic and sided with the English against the Irish Catholics and other independents. And he blew the way the wind blew. He supported the rule of King Charles the First (1600-1649) before that monarch was overthrown and beheaded in the Tower of London, then aligned himself with the King’s adversary Oliver Cromwell after the latter took power and, after Cromwell’s death in 1659, made the leap to safety in supporting King Charles the Second who came back to the throne after being in exile.

I offer the opening paragraph of Greene’s book review for an assessment of Boyle’s merits as a writer and playwright:

“Roger Boyle, Earl of Orrery, is one of the great bores of literature, and it can hardly have been a labour of love for Mr. Clark to edit for the first time eight ponderous heroic plays, hardly lightened by two attempts at comedy. Yet all admirers of the period will be grateful: there is a peculiar satisfaction in seeing one more gap in Restoration scholarship filled with such immense efficiency: no crack between the bricks. …They will read with gorged satisfaction that one of these plays, The Tragedy of Zoroastes, has never before been printed that Orrery’s first play, The Generall, had been previously printed only in a private edition of eighty copies. Another great booming bogus piece, The Tragedy of King Saul, is added to the Orrery Canon for the first time. All this, with the really magnificent notes on Restoration [term for the 1660s monarchy of Charles the Second] stage-craft, is a not unworthy harvest of eight years labour.”

This is a very good example of Greene’s razor sharp clarity with words, his passion for this period of literature, his occasional willingness to be bored and his finely tuned ability at separating the wheat from the chaff.

Forgettable songs

A 1910 acoustically recorded 10 inch shellac record, Columbia A897, contains two glaringly awful old-fashioned deservedly forgettable songs:

Side A – Any Little Girl, That’s A Nice Little Girl, Is The Right Little Girl For Me, as sung by then 18-year-old Walter Van Brunt (1892-1971).

Side B – I’ve Got The Time; I’ve Got The Place, But It’s Hard To Find The Girl, as vocalized by Henry Burr, the frequently used recording name for Harry McClaskey (1882-1941).

Deservedly forgettable but a historically fascinating record of sheer idiocy in Tin Pan Alley songwriting before World War I erupted.

How to Get Away With Murder

Last night I watched the first episode of an ABC series, How To Get Away With Murder, which ran for six seasons beginning in 2014. The opening episode was sporadic in its interest but actress Viola Davis as the main character, a law professor at a prestigious university somewhere in Philadelphia, was well worth watching.

 

 

 

 

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