by  Peter Cates

Brook Benton and Dinah Washington

Baby; I Do; Mercury- 71565, seven-inch vinyl 45, recorded 1959.

Singer Dinah Washington (1924-1963) landed a contract with Mercury records in 1946 and performed songs from a variety of genres including jazz, blues, R&B, novelties, covers, etc., amassing a sizable pile of disks for the label.

Meanwhile, the much younger, less experienced Brook Benton (1931-1988) had been signed and was making headway with his own brand of pop, when a lyricist Clyde Otis got the idea of bringing the two together for the recording of a song he had written, Baby.

Due to the dissimilarly strong personalities of both singers, a firestorm of sorts ensued. But some kind of deal was hashed out and the two would record Baby and eventually three others before Washington walked out of one of their studio session.

Baby was a mega hit; the spirited but contrived aura of sexual tension between the two, as they sang, worked its musical and monetary magic and the performance was a classic R&B romp, still deserving of hearing 57 years later.

Schubert

Trout Quintet – Members of the Budapest String Quartet with pianist Mieczyslaw Horszowski and bassist George Moleux; Columbia ML 4317, 12-inch mono vinyl lp, recorded 1950.

This music has a bubbly, lovable charm and is the best piece with which to start listening to chamber music, its 4th movement being based on one of the composer’s songs, Die Forelle, or the Trout. It received its first performance in the living room of a wealthy music lover. Also to be noted, Schubert wrote all of the individual parts of each of the five instruments before putting everything together.

The players give a very spirited performance, still available in different venues on the internet.

Martinu

Violin Concerto No. 2, with violinist Bruno Belcik and Vaclav Neumann conducting the Prague Symphony; Piano Concerto No. 3, with pianist Josef Palenicek and Karel Ancerl conducting the Czech Philharmonic; Artia ALS 7205, 12-inch stereo vinyl LP, recorded mid-to-late ‘50s.

Bohuslav Martinu (1890-1959) was a Czech-born composer who produced 400 works in the various genres- symphonic, chamber, opera, etc. He confounded so many critics by this productivity because he also maintained a consistent level of high quality, due to regular efficient yet exacting work habits.

Because he lived several years in France, Switzerland and the U.S., his music has an array of qualities – a tight sense of structure; a powerful aura of drama and surging emotion; the infectious rhythms of jazz and Stravinsky; the charm of native slavic folk music; and the exotic, colorful sonorities of such composers as Bartok, Janacek, Roussel and other 20th century figures. But, most importantly, it has a vibrant individuality that gives his writing such staying power after listening to, and living with it for a while.

Both works here demand committed listening before their veiled beauties reveal themselves and the performances are top notch. Only vinyl LPs are available on Amazon of this coupling, starting at $7.50.

A couple of tidbits. When Martinu was a child, his father was the sexton of a church and the family was allowed to live in the tower apartment; being very sickly, the boy was frequently carried up the 143 steps to the family quarters by his father or older sister.

In 1946, while teaching at the Boston Symphony’s summer home in Tanglewood, Martinu was given a magnificent rooftop bedroom at a local estate. One night while walking on the veranda, he fell through a gap in the railing and sustained a fractured skull and concussion. The recuperation period took three to four years during which he gave up all composing. The Wiki bio provides other interesting details of a rich full life for any curious reader.

by  Peter Cates

An excursion to Orono.

On October 29, I made an otherwise rare as hen’s teeth, overnight trip to the U. of Maine’s Minsky Hall to hear a concert by the University Orchestra under its music director, Ana­tole Wieck. The program began with a fanfare performed from the back of the hall by the orchestra’s brass section, who then joined their colleagues for the music of Cesar Franck (1822-1890), Modeste Moussorgsky (1839-1881), and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791).

Franck’s Symphony in D is a piece that listeners either love, as I do, or detest. It was among the handful of compositions that have continued to be performed and recorded with great frequency, they being the Symphonic Variations for Piano and Orchestra; the orchestral tone poems Psyche and Eros, and Chasseur Maudit; and Prelude, Chorale and Fugue for solo piano. Only the first and third movements were performed because the second had a lot of notes for the harp, which the orchestra lacks (A pianist seated behind the orchestra very skillfully simulated the sound of a harp in its shorter passages, located in the concluding movement and the Moussorgsky Night on Bald Mountain coming afterwards.).

The evening being October 29, Bald Mountain was a most apropo display piece. Its wild dance of demons, goblins and all other Stephen Kingish apparitions that go bump in the night, followed by early morning church bells halting and sending these furies back to where they came from, should be remembered by fans of Disney’s Fantasia. At least this performance utilized the conclusion of Moussorgsky, posthumously edited by his friend, Rimsky-Korsakov, instead of the Schubert Ave Maria that Leopold Stokowski tackily tacked on in the film.

Mozart’s very lovely Concerto for Four Hands, K. 365, received a bracing performance from Gena Raps and her colleague, Kenneth Cooper. Ms. Raps presently teaches at New York City’s Mannes School, part of the New School; has participated at a summer music festival in Winter Harbor; recorded for Naxos, Arabesque and other labels; and studied, performed and recorded with the late, great Artur Balsam. Mr. Cooper is a noted harpsichordist, as well as pianist, who has recorded for more labels than one could shake a stick at; and a noted writer, scholar, editor and gifted re-constructionist, who recently completed a Debussy Sonata, left unfinished at the composer’s death in 1918 and due for recording.

The Orchestra played with roaring enthusiasm and eloquence, coloristic detail and nuance and are a credit to the university. The 160-mile round trip through rain and sunshine; the interesting drive through such previously unseen towns as Veazie, Old Town and Milford, where I stayed in a comfortable kitchenette at the Milford Motel on the River; the partying students engulfing the streets with boisterous, smiling good cheer; and the two fire salami sandwiches I bought at Ledbetter’s – easily the best sandwich I have tasted in years from anywhere, added up to a very good weekend.

by Katie Ouilette

WALLS, have I goofed? Yes, I know, faithful readers, that November 24 is Thanksgiving Day and our, also, very faithful circulation folks will be sharing that very special day with their families. In fact, since we will be celebrating Thanksgiving Day, what better time to thank everyone involved with getting The Town Line to each faithful reader.

And WALLS, you found a special bit of history for our faithful readers! You found two articles that were printed in the ‘long ago’ Skowhegan Somerset Reporter, dated Thursday, December 8, 1988!

One of the columns was written by our U.S. Senator George Mitchell. It surely would be appropriate to let our faithful readers know that Senator Mitchell was born, grew up on Front Street, in Waterville, and attended Colby College, but, especially, since we have just lived through a long and what seemed like it-would-never-end election, you certainly have chosen Senator Mitchelll’s perfect heading which was “Impact of Election Has Yet to be Felt.” That was written in 1988 and that still stands true, faithful readers.

Just below Senator Mitchell’s ‘Guest Column’ is a ‘Letter to the Editor’ about Lydia Child. Yes, you are wondering ‘who’? Well, certainly, you have sung Over the River and Through the Woods, around Thanksgiving time and when you were a very young student in school. Well, this letter was written by ‘someone you still read, but in The Town Line.’

Katie writes that when she and her late husband, Joe Denis (also a Colby grad and from Waterville, and Joe’s Grammy and Grampy Denis lived next door to the Mitchell family), moved to Sudbury, Massachusetts, they were house hunting with their Realtor. In the process, they passed a large Colonial, which the realtor pointed out as the Child’s house. Lydia must have written the song and poem as she remembered her Thanksgiving as a child.

Lydia’s grandmother lived in Concord, Massachusetts, and, sure enough, just passed the Child’s house was a road and a four-arch bridge which led to Grandma’s and Over the River and Through the Woods, on that special day, dinner was waiting and Lydia closed the song with “Hoorah for the pumpkin pie!”

WALLS is sorry, folks. Way back in 1988 and before, folks in Norridgewock thought that Lydia must have been writing about the

Kennebec River, in Maine, but not so! In fact, people tried and tried to figure how the Kennebec River could have been ‘the river’ and which road could have played out in Lydia’s memory. What’s more, Lydia’s family made the trip to her grandmother’s house by horse and sleigh!

Oh, WALLS, aren’t you glad that the Childs moved to Norridgewock and you could tell folks to be happy with song?
Well, the Denis family took the trip from Waverly to Concord every year for three years. Yes, singing the song! Why? Because that made the Thanksgiving ‘carol’ more meaningful as we drove to our own grandma’s house in Skowhegan.

Now, we sing the song that Lydia Child wrote as we sit around grandson Leigh and granddaughter Samantha Paine’s table for Thanksgiving dinner in Canaan. All the while, great-grandchildren Reese and Owen are trying to learn a bit of local history in song.