by Peter Cates

Sir Arthur Bryant

English historian Sir Arthur Bryant (1899-1985) was a principal of the Cambridge School of Arts, Crafts and Technology from 1923 to 1926 and raised its student body from 300 to 2,000.

His books were admired by former Prime Ministers Winston Churchill, Harold Wilson, Margaret Thatcher and others and became best sellers because of their narrative readability. The Age of Elegance: 1812-1822, from 1950, has a notable example of Bryant’s gift for entertaining vignettes in his sketch of Napoleon Bonaparte’s Foreign Minister, former Priest and notorious sleazeball Charles Talleyrand (1754-1838):

“Few people liked Talleyrand. Napoleon once described him as filth in silk stockings. He was the most consistent crook of his age. For a quarter of a century, through storm and terror , he had lived, survived, and triumphed by his wits. There were few crimes, including incest, of which he was not believed guilty. No one who saw his dirty, crafty, powdered face, with its half-closed eyes, villainous mouth, and slobbering, darting tongue, was left in any doubt as to the manner of man he was.”

He also described the French people of Napoleon’s time as “half monkey and half tiger.”

Unfortunately, Bryant was a Nazi sympathizer and wrote an introduction to a 1939 English translation of Mein Kampff in which he praised Adolf Hitler’s leadership qualities.

James Maguire

James Maguire’s 2006 Impresario is a biography of the most successful TV variety show host in American history, Ed Sullivan (1901-1974), whose program was seen every Sunday night from 1948 to 1971.

The guests who achieved the highest ratings for the Ed Sullivan Show were – who else? – Elvis Presley on September 9, and October 28, 1956, and the Beatles on February 9, 1964. With respect to Elvis’s gyrating hips, Maguire writes, “While his records flew off the shelves, letters of protest poured into newspapers and television stations across the country.”

The Bookshop

A 2024 history The Bookshop has chapters on several bookstores and the ups and downs of the business in competition with the insidious Jeff Bezos and his Amazon.

One chapter is on New York City’s Strand Bookstore which occupies all four sides of a block. Its founder Benjamin Bass was arrested in 1939 for selling 150 stolen copies of a law book but claimed he was innocent. After a friend testified on his behalf, the judge dismissed the case.

Bass confided to the friend as they left the courtroom, “After you finished talking, I had almost convinced myself that I hadn’t known that those were stolen.”

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Offenbach: Apache Dance; Serradell La Golondrina. Nathaniel Shilkret conducting the Victor Salon Orchestra. Victor 21055, ten inch 78, recorded 1926-27.

Shilkret’s dozens of charming shellacs which ranged from classical composers to dance music include this early example of crossover music – the Apache Dance by French composer Jacques Offenbach and side two’s very popular Mexican love song La Golondrina.

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Rossini/Respighi: La Boutique Fantasque; Ibert: Divertissement; and Piston: The Incredible Flutist. Arthur Fiedler conducting the Boston Pops. RCA Victor Red Seal LM-2084, 12-inch LP, recorded 1956.

The three compositions here are examples of classical music not taking itself so seriously. Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936) was best known for the Pines of Rome, Fountains of Rome and Roman Festivals which are massive monumental orchestral showpiece demanding more than 100 musicians.

La Boutique Fantasque is a collection of Rossini’s miniatures which Respighi orchestrated with exquisite results.

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Jacques Ibert (1890-1962) composed the witty Divertissement as incidental music for a French play during the 1920s. Since then it’s stood on its own as a boisterous romp for Orchestra and makes fun of Mendelssohn’s Wedding March.

Born in Rockland, Maine, Walter Piston (1894-1976) composed the Incredible Flutist in 1938, its world premiere conducted by Arthur Fiedler at a Pops concert that year.

Fiedler recorded the piece not long after its world premiere on Victor 78s and redid it in 1956. The score depicts a nighttime invasion of a quiet village by a traveling circus.

Piston’s grandfather Antonio Pistone emigrated from Genoa, Italy, to Maine and changed his name to Anthony Piston.

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Bruch: Violin Concerto #1 – Yehudi Menuhin, violin, with Pierre Monteux conducting the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra. Victor Red Seal DM-1023, three 12-inch 78s, recorded 1945.

German composer Max Bruch (1838-1920) was best known for his Scottish Fantasy for violin and orchestra; the Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra and this very beautiful 1st Violin Concerto. In their 1945 collaboration, England’s Yehudi Menuhin and Hancock Maine’s summer resident Pierre Monteux achieved a very powerful and rapturous performance in which one truly sensed the violinist and Maestro in full accord with each other.

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A 1941 movie, The Devil and Daniel Webster, has Walter Huston (1883-1950) portraying Old Scratch himself offering an impoverished New Hampshire farmer, Jaber Stone, seven years of good luck for his soul. When the seven years are running out, Stone runs to Daniel Webster to plead his case.

James Craig (1912-1985) did good work as Stone, Edward Arnold (1890-1956) was a decently eloquent Daniel Webster, while Walter Huston almost stole the show with his extraordinarily built up characterization of Scratch from the folksy stranger chewing on a carrot through the laughing reminder to Stone that payment is due soon and in a split second changing the laughing smile to a stone cold frown via which he intends to collect.

A couple of items relating to the original 1936 short story by Stephen Vincent Benet (1898-1943):

The story mentions that Webster wrestles every morning with his ram Goliath. At the end of the story after Webster rescues Stone from having to pay his debt, Old Scratch was never seen again in New Hampshire. Not so sure about Massachusetts.

by Peter Cates

Andy Williams

Andy Williams: Hopeless; The Peking Theme (So Little Time). Columbia 4-42784, seven inch 45 disc, recorded 1963.

My first exposure to Andy Williams (1927-2012) came from his late ‘50s Cadence 45, The Hawaiian Wedding Song, a tune that my eight-year-old ears enjoyed a lot – however, during those years, Pat Boone was still my favorite singer.

In 1963, Williams’s two deservedly successful Columbia LPs, Moon River; and Days of Wine and Roses were released and gifted to me, respectively, by my maternal grandparents and Mom. Both title songs were composed by the superb team of Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini, the rest of the albums consisting of Great American Songbook standards – Can’t Get Used to Losing You, Maria, The Second Time Around, It’s a Most Unusual Day, Exactly Like You, It Might as Well Be Spring, etc.

The arrangements of Robert Mersey (1917-1994) were wondrously typical of those he did for albums of teen idol Bobby Vinton (who just celebrated his 90th birthday this past April 16 and is most remembered for Roses are Red, My Love; and She Wore Blue Velvet ); and jazz singer Mel Torme’s That’s Life.

Like Perry Como, Al Martino, Jerry Vale, Ed Ames, Jack Jones, Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme, Andy Williams personified the easy listening style of singing that peaked during the Eisenhower and Kennedy years and he succeeded because he was dang good. The above two selections are forgettable yet charming trifles and are superbly rendered by the Williams/Mercey team; I am now quite curious about the film 55 Days at Peking mentioned as the source for side two’s So Little Time.

During the early ‘80s, Williams did a live outdoor holiday special in New York City in which he is directed to the passenger seat of a motorcycle, its driver being then-NYC Mayor Ed Koch.

Winifred Atwell

Winifred Atwell, pianist, with Frank Chacksfield and his Orchestra – The Black Mask Waltz; and Song of the Sea (Cancion del Mar). London 1544, ten-inch 78 disc, recorded mid-1950s.

When it came to post World War II easy listening, the Brits more than held their own. The Decca/London label signed up some of the best pop orchestra arrangers including Mantovani, Stanley Black, the Canadian Robert Farnon and Frank Chacksfield, who scored his own megahit with the very atmospheric 1953 Ebb Tide.

The above 78 features Chacksfield’s very tastefully lush and evocative collaborations with pianist Winifred Atwell (1910-1983), a native of Trinidad who performed classical and semi-classical selections but achieved even greater fame with honky tonk, ragtime and boogie woogie records that were hits during the ‘50s.

The Black Mask Waltz and Song of the Sea, with its slightly tangoish dance rhythms, are very engaging examples of orchestral easy listening bordering on semi-classical.

Miss Atwell recorded the Grieg Piano Concerto in 1954 that can be heard on YouTube.

Shostakovich

In the 1943 edition of the Music Lover’s Handbook, there is an essay on Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony by a Russian musicologist Grigori Schneerson (1901-1982). Bearing in mind that this Symphony was completed in 1937 when Stalin’s reign of terror was reaching frightening heights with mass arrests, bogus trials and summary executions, the Symphony met with acclaim and most likely saved Shostakovich’s life (an opera, Lady Macbeth, had Stalin leaving the theater in a rage during its premiere in 1934.)

Schneerson wrote:

“In the Western World, the object of the avant-garde is presumably the overthrow of old artistic foundations, the breaking-out in ‘new paths,’ however meaningless and at any cost. For us in the Soviet [Union], however, the avant-garde is held to express progressive ideas only when it talks to the people in a new, powerful, and intelligible language. The demands of the wide masses of people, their artistic tastes, grow from day to day. The ‘advanced’ composer is therefore one who plunges into the social currents swirling around him, and with his creative work serves the progress of humankind. “

This is the kind of gibberish that Stalin’s hacks were spinning constantly in the name of the “wide masses of people…humankind”. 1943 was also the year that FDR, Churchill and Stalin met at Tehran in Iran to form an alignment of forces against Hitler and Mussolini, a “friendship” that lasted until around 1946 when Stalin began double-crossing the U.S. on everything he agreed to at Tehran, Yalta, in February, 1945 and Potsdam in 1946. Thus this essay may have been published in 1943 without any vetting because of this new Soviet/American relationship.

For all the circumstances surrounding the Shostakovich 5th, it remains a 20th century masterpiece with several fabulous recordings from such conductors as Dimitri Mitropoulos, Leonard Bernstein, Yevgeni Mravinsky, Semyon Bychkov and several others, also accessible on YouTube.

Department Q

A newly-streamed Netflix series of nine episodes already available for viewing, Department Q, is highly recommended for its suspense, intelligently scripted dialog, phenomenal acting and captivating sub-plots. More in a later column as I have only reached episode 4.

Perry Mason novel

In the Foreword to a 1969 Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Fabulous Fake, author Erle Stanley Gardner mentions a noted forensics investigator in California and inserts a quote from him:

“This is the space age, but crime-fighting has not kept pace with other scientific developments since World War II. Any time the American people are ready to give the problem sufficient attention and priority, we can raise the present ‘solved’ and ‘conviction’ rates from maybe 10 percent to 90 percent. When it becomes unprofitable for a criminal to commit a crime, he’s going to think twice or three times about doing it. When he knows the odds are nine to one that he’s going to get caught and going to jail, crime will lose a lot of its appeal. But until that happens, why shouldn’t people continue to commit crimes? It’s quite a profitable trade!”

During the subsequent 1970s in cities all across the U.S., the crime rate skyrocketed. By the 21st century, forensics had advanced, not to mention DNA, and increased the conviction rates but there are still dozens of unsolved cold cases.

Meanwhile the Perry Mason novels are very entertaining, along with the nine seasons of the CBS television series starring Raymond Burr.

by Peter Cates

These were our songs

These Were Our Songs – The Early ‘30s; Reader’s Digest KRB 187/A2, released 1989.

This cassette contains beautifully done transfers from 28 vintage 78 sides, recorded on the Victor label during the early 1930s of classics from the Great American Songbook.

Its contents –

Maurice Chevalier, Mimi; and Walkin’ My Baby Back Home.
Bing Crosby– Where the Blue of the Night Meets the Gold of the Day; Sweet and Lovely; and I Surrender, Dear.
Fred Astaire, Night and Day.
Paul Whiteman – Willow Weep for Me.
Jeannette MacDonald – One Hour with You; and Beyond the Blue Horizon.
Russ Columbo – All of Me; and I Don’t Know Why.
The Mills Brothers – Tiger Rag.
Cab Calloway – Minnie the Moocher.
Wayne King – Star Dust; and Dream a Little Dream of Me.
Fred Waring – Dancing in the Dark; I Found a Million-Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store); and Little White Lies.
University of Maine’s own Rudy Vallee – Would You Like to Take a Walk?
Ted Black – Love Letters in the Sand.
Harry Richman – On the Sunny Side of the Street.
The High Hatters – Get Happy.
Duke Ellington – Three Little Words.
Leo Reisman – Paradise; Sing Something Simple; Body and Soul; and Happy Days are Here Again.
A majestic lament concluding Side 2, Ben Bernie – It’s a Lonesome Old Town (When You’re Not Around).

Tape 2 is listed on the container, indicating that this was part of a set titled These Were Our Songs, and is the only one I own. Having previously written of the joys still to be found listening to scratchy old 78s, I also own hundreds of such discs including the fragile dusty black label Victors of other selections by several of the artists listed here – Leo Reisman, Duke Ellington, the High Hatters, Fred Waring, Jeannette MacDonald with and without Nelson Eddy (on both the Victor black label and Red Seals) and huge piles of Paul Whiteman.

And each performance here is a gem in the best old-fashioned sense of the word.

Russ Columbo was achieving much success with his films, radio shows and records and was an influence on the singing of Bing Crosby and Perry Como when, during a September, 1934, visit to a friend’s house in Los Angeles, the two men were examining an antique pistol. It accidentally fired a bullet which ricocheted off the wall and hit Columbo in the eye. He was rushed to a nearby hospital where surgeons tried unsuccessfully to remove the bullet and died six hours later. He was only 26.

Astor Piazzolla

Astor Piazzolla – Maria de Buenos Aires; Gidon Kremer with small ensemble of singers and instrumentalists. Teldec 3984-20632-2, recorded 1998, two cds.

Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992) brought the tango rhythms, along with elements of jazz and classical music, into this 1968 operetta of just over 90 minutes and a quite exhilarating listening experience. In addition to a quartet of strings, a percussionist, a flutist and a pianist, the music requires a chorus of about 15 and 3 soloists. Finally the central instrument is the bandoneon, which looks like a concertina, sounds like a combination of pump organ, harmonica and accordion, the results being quite beautiful, and always associated with tango dance music.

A few different performances of the operetta exist on YouTube.

Hans Swarowsky

Mahler 3rd Symphony – Hans Swarowsky conducting the Berlin Radio Symphony, January 21, 1963, broadcast.

Austrian conductor Hans Swarowsky (1899-1975) was more well known as the teacher of conductors Zubin Mehta and Claudio Abbado but did record a large number of composers including Gustav Mahler.

Mahler’s 3rd is the longest of his Nine Symphonies, at just over 85 minutes.

This burnt CD set, courtesy of a friend, has Swarowsky conducting a very spirited performance of its six movements; during his career, Swarowsky was unfairly dismissed as average or worse by critics who ranted that the Maestro should confine himself to the classroom.

I own numerous LPs of Swarowsky conducting Brahms, Bruckner, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, Wagner etc., and found them very enjoyable on their own terms.

A bonus on this set is Swarowsky collaborating in a 1956 Vienna State Opera Orchestra recording with pianist Eduard Mrazek in a very engaging Brahms 2nd Piano Concerto.

Stan Kenton

Stan Kenton – Dynaflow; Tortillas and Beans; Capitol F1535, recorded 1951.

I have always enjoyed Stan Kenton’s records featuring his wild big band arrangements with irregular rhythms and festive brass sonorities. These two sides feature a feisty ins­trumental Dyna­flow and Tortillas and Beans, a tongue in cheek vocal duet by Eddie Gomez and Ray Wetzel, who composed both selections.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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by Peter Cates

Maria Duenas

Lalo: Symphonie Espagnole – violinist Maria Duenas with Mihhail Gerts conducting the Estonian National Orchestra, 2019 concert video on YouTube.

Spanish violinist Maria Duenas, now 22, has already landed a recording contract with Deutsche Grammophon and won several first prizes at violin competitions around the world since the age of 17. She has cited her favorite violinists, Jascha Heifetz, Yehudi Menuhin and David Oistrakh, as the inspiration for developing her own style expressing concern about too many other violinists sounding too much alike, a sentiment I agree with.

Some time ago, I viewed a YouTube of her performing Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto and found it engaging enough to sit through the entire performance yet not particularly moving.

Still, for some mysterious reason, I got curious enough to view this performance of the Symphonie Espagnole by French composer Edouard Lalo (1823-1892) as this very captivating showpiece has grown on me more and more in recent years. (When Tchaikovsky got access to the manuscript in 1878 and played through it on the piano, he was inspired enough to compose his own Violin Concerto.).

Again and most unfortunately Duenas’s playing of this piece did not leave me wanting more. She phrased the notes and bars nicely enough (She omitted movements three and four of a five movement piece; the jump from the jubilant opening two movements to the jubilant Finale without the contrasting calm lyricism of three and four was jarring) and conveyed endearing stage presence but the overall interpretation didn’t take fire.

A plus here, however, was watching the focused musicians who gave their all, unlike so many players in more well known orchestras who seem to be merely going through the motions in the umpteenth performance of a given piece. The Estonian National Orchestra is another example of the excitement and commitment to be seen among the symphony orchestras now gaining fame in the post Iron Curtain eastern Europe, others being the Radio Orchestras of Bucharest, Ljubljana, Bratislava etc.

As for Miss Duenas, I feel that, because of her expressed commitment to developing her own style, she may remain a violinist worth watching.

My favorite recordings of the Lalo Symphonie Espagnole are the two collaborations of Isaac Stern with Eugene Ormandy and the Philadelphia Orchestra on Columbia Masterworks LPs from 1955 and 1965 and presumably available also on YouTube. Stern is not otherwise among my top five or even ten favorite violinists but he really had this music thoroughly nailed down while Ormandy was always a masterful accompanist in Concertos.

Both of the above LPs also contain eloquent performances of the Bruch Violin Concerto.

Kansas City Confidential

A most entertaining 1952 Film Noir classic, imbued with 1950s time warp atmosphere, intelligence, lack of predictability and fascinating character development is Kansas City Confi­dential starring John Payne as the protagonist and Jack Elam and Lee Van Cleef as two armored truck robbers. All three actors did superb work in their roles and conveyed formidable presence.

Casino Dance Orchestra

Casino Dance Orchestra – Wonderful One; Good-Night. Perfect 14117, ten-inch 78, recorded circa 1923-24.

The Casino Dance Orchestra was a pseudonym for several dance orchestras making records during the 1920s. Whoever the musicians on this shellac were, they were very gifted ones.

The two selections – the particularly exquisite Wonderful One composed by the well-known dance band leader Paul Whiteman and his chief arranger Ferde Grofe, most renowned for his own Grand Canyon Suite; and the throwaway yet charming Good-Night on side two – were given performances in which the saxophones, trombones and muted trumpets blended beautifully while the banjo and piano provided pulsating rhythms.

One of the best discs to be heard from the dime store Perfect label.

by Peter Cates

Edith Wharton

A paragraph from chapter one of the 1920 classic novel The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (1862-1937), depicts the late arrival at the opera of a rich, spoiled central character, Newland Archer:

“When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven, alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs. Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New York was a metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was ‘not the thing’ to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not ‘the thing’ played a part as important in Newland Archer’s New York as the inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his forefathers thousands of years ago.”

Wharton so powerfully dramatized these “totem terrors” in the “high society” of this novel and in the life of a farmer in the bleak rural Massachusetts of the shorter novelette Ethan Frome.

Benjamin Britten

Benjamin Britten: Albert Herring (1947 comic opera); vocalists Christopher Gillette, Josephine Barstow, Felicity Palmer, Robert Lloyd, Gerald Finley etc.; Steuart Bedford conducting the Northern Sinfonia. Collins Classics 70422, recorded August 11-15, 1996, two compact discs.

English composer Benjamin Britten scored this opera in 1946; its plot is based on a short story by Guy de Maupassant in which villagers celebrate its annual May Day by awarding a cash prize to a village maiden who has remained modest and virtuous in her demeanor and reputation.

The problem is that no worthy candidate is to be found among the young women that particular year so the committee chooses an eligible young store clerk Albert Herring as their honoree for his decorum and moral purity.

Britten’s music has a light-hearted charm and poignance while the performance and recording are splendid. For beginners, though, I would recommend the composer’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra, a beautifully colorful showpiece which displays every instrument in the solo virtuoso spotlight; the four sections of strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion; and at the beginning and end, the full orchestra in all its glory. As a basis for development, Britten chose a passage from English composer Henry Purcell (1659-1695) and worked it with phenomenal imagination.

Afterwards, the listener could move on to the very atmospheric Four Sea Interludes from his opera masterpiece Peter Grimes and then his eloquent War Requiem.

Britten was also a very gifted conductor and left recordings of each work.

Finally I have recordings of Britten conducting Mozart’s Piano Concertos 20 and 27 with Sir Clifford Curzon, Schumann’s Scenes from Faust, Haydn’s 95th Symphony and the Mahler 4th.

Unfortunately, on a personal note, Britten had a tendency to abruptly cut off friendships of long standing due to some real or imagined slight and those former friends were referred to as “Britten’s corpses.”

Will Trent

I have been enjoying the first season of ABC’s series Will Trent which has a detective who has the brilliance of Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot but who is dyslexic.

Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine – The Day Isn’t Long Enough; Isle of Capri – Harry Zeller conducting with pianist Carl Fischer. Mercury 5685, recorded June, 1951, seven inch 45.

In the Beginning; Old Shoes – Paul Weston conducting. Columbia 4-40878, recorded November, 1954, seven inch 45.

For me, the greatest strength of Frankie Laine (1913-2007) was his ability to sing in the style of the great blues vocalists, such as Jimmy Rushing, Billie Holiday, Eddy Howard and Johnny Mercer, whatever the musical category of the particular song- gospel, folk, jazz, pop.

Francesco Paolo LoVecchio was born in Chicago’s Little Italy to Sicilian parents. The family had connections to organized crime, his father serving as Al Capone’s barber while his grandfather was murdered by rival gangsters.

Francesco changed his name to Frankie Laine when he got a job in 1938 as vocalist with a New York City radio station. He numbered Caruso, Bessie Smith and Al Jolson among his favorite singers.

By 1949, when his own records for Mercury (Mitch Miller signed Laine to the label) were best sellers, Jolson (1886-1950), already a fan, told Laine that he would be putting all the other singers out of business.
Both 45s are classy examples of Frankie Laine’s phrasing, timing, delivery and ability to communicate beauty and inner meaning to the listener.

With respect to Laine’s Columbia recordings, when Mitch Miller moved to that label, he took Laine with him.

I interviewed Mitch at Houston’s Lancaster Hotel in 1992 where he told me of his parents’s belief that “You’re not a success unless you bring other people along with you.” He lived by that principle with the success he brought as a producer to such pop artists as Frankie Laine, Tony Bennett, Patti Page, Doris Day, Vic Damone, Guy Mitchell, Percy Faith, the Four Lads, the Brothers Four, Jerry Vale and Johnny Mathis.