by Peter Cates

To continue from last week – after landing a job at Jordan Marsh’s record department in its Annex, I initially shared an apartment with a woman friend in Somerville, a working class street within easy walking distance of Cambridge’s Central and Harvard Squares. My share of the rent was $70 a month with utilities included and I would give her the cash for the landlord. Arriving in mid-July, I remember it being a ferociously hot summer but the two story building of four apartments was on a very shady street.

The other three units were occupied by Greek-American family members. The matriarch had the other apartment on the first floor while her two sons and their families were upstairs.

The family owned a trash collecting business with two trucks in operation. I remember one brother having a son accompanying him while the other spoke of preferring to be alone in the cab during those long runs.

During one muggy evening, one of the brothers gave me a quick inside glimpse of his mother’s apartment in which her air conditioner was kept at very Alaskan temperatures.

On quiet evenings, I heard Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde playing from the second story apartment across the street and soon made the acquaintance of that neighbor. He owned 10 different recordings of that work alone and not more than 90 or 100 other records, preferring to keep his life simple – a most intriguing principle which I have never followed when it comes to records.

He also had a good sense of humor and owned what he considered a party record for friends to listen to with laughter. It was an LP transfer of a 1942 Berlin radio broadcast of excerpts from Bizet’s Carmen sung in very exaggerated German instead of the original French. One thought of how Hermann Goering would have sounded singing the Toreador Song.

The woman I shared the apartment with was originally from Amherst, had attended U-Mass, worked as a nurse’s assistant at Massachusetts General and had a boyfriend living in Providence, Rhode Island who’d alternate weekends with her in visiting. At that time, my record player had crapped out so they graciously gave me permission to use their stereo system when they were out for the evening.

Working in the JM record department, I encountered an extensively heavenly selection of records that small Maine stores never matched and was buying two or three albums a week on my weekly salary of $70.

I remember after my first pay day purchasing the Bruckner Fourth and Seventh Symphonies, a total of three LPs at $4.88 each and not feeling the least guilt at such self-centered extravagance. The performances were conducted by the gifted Dutch Maestro Bernard Haitink (1929-2021) with the Amsterdam Concertgebouw Orchestra on the Philips label which was then arguably considered the finest for its imported pressings from Holland – their earlier American pressings were considered horribly noisy by the at-times lunatic sound nuts (I could care less about recorded sound and found those domestic pressings fine. I also benefited when sound aficionados would sell me their own classical copies dirt cheap.).

Quite often on my days off, I would explore the surrounding neighborhoods.

More next week!

by Peter Cates

The Kids from Spain

Los Chavales de Espana (The Kids from Spain)- International Favorites; RCA Victor LPM-3119, ten-inch LP, recorded 1953.

Los Chavales de Espana

Los Chavales was a performing group of 11 very gifted men from Barcelona, Spain, each of whom sang and played four or five instruments. Originally formed in 1940, they spent their first five years performing in Spain and Portugal until the end of World War II. Later successful bookings in pre-Castro Cuba, Mexico, Peru and Venezuela would lead to extended engagements in 1952 at New York City’s Waldorf Astoria, Washington D.C., Chicago, St. Louis and Dallas, and appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Their fluency in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Russian, Gypsy and other musical dialects, along with their staged dance routines, were skillfully executed with precision.

The eight musical selections on this ten-inch LP are vibrant examples of 1940s – ‘50s Hispanic night club music of a more graceful quality than those of the more rambunctious groups led by Desi Arnaz and Perez Prado from the same era and include such titles My Darling; You Are Meant for Me; and Whispering Serenade.

YouTube has examples of their work.

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A quote from the first page of Stephen King’s 2001 Dreamcatcher– “To say that Beaver’s marriage didn’t work would be like saying that the launch of the Challenger space shuttle went a little bit wrong.”

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James Cagney

James Cagney

Legendary actor James Cagney, like other Hollywood legends such as Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy and Bette Davis – who resided in Maine’s posh Cape Elizabeth for ten years – could be depended upon to deliver charismatic performances in any film with their name attached. One particularly outstanding classic was Cagney’s starring role as the psychopath gangster Cody Jarrett in 1949’s White Heat.

According to Cagney biographer John McCabe, the circumstances under which the film was made occurred when the actor struck a new deal with Warner Brothers after being away for several years – a requirement of just one film per year, the freedom to pursue other projects on the studio lot with the Cagney Productions that he owned with his brother William and a minimum of $250,000 per picture.

White Heat was an attractive script because of its commercial potential and its special challenges for Cagney. He had done gangster roles before during the 1930s with great success but he saw in Cody Jarrett’s character a truly despicable quality that intrigued him.

Cagney rose to the occasion with a performance that not only conveyed Cody’s depths of savagery but also creating sympathy for him. The gangster has a sense of humor, he is loyal to the members of his gang as they are loyal to him and he is very close to his domineering mother.

The supporting cast of British actress Margaret Wycherley as Cody’s mother, Virginia Mayo as his girlfriend, Fred Clark and Steve Cochran as two of Cody’s partners in crime, and Edmund O’Brien as an undercover detective contributed superlative work.

Cagney himself was gratified by the commercial and critical success of White Heat but refused to watch it in later years.

by Peter Cates

Benno Moiseiwitsch

Weber: Invitation to the Dance. Benno Moiseivitch, pianist. Victor Red Seal 18050, 12- inch 78.

Benno Moiseiwitsch

Moisevitch had a very playful type of piano artistry and joy in the pieces he chose to perform. The Weber Invitation has always been loved for its graceful opening depiction of somebody being asked to danced and then the jubilant dizzying waltz itself. Whether in this solo piano original scoring of Carl Maria von Weber or the brilliant orchestration of the genius father of 19th century romanticism, Hector Berlioz, it has a timeless beauty and charm. BTW, a good orchestral performance is the one of the quick tempered genius Maestro Arturo Toscanini and his finely honed NBC Symphony of the late ‘40s into the early ‘50s, also recorded by Victor Red Seal.

A number of other good piano versions include ones of Artur Schnabel and Leon Fleisher along with the Berlioz transcription conducted by Fritz Reiner and Eugene Ormandy.

Invitation to the Dance is also considered the first piece intended by its composer to be listened to, rather than for dancing.

During the 1940s, Benny Goodman based the theme of his radio broadcast series on this music.

Moriz Rosenthal

Chopin Preludes, Waltzes, etc. Pianist Moriz Rosenthal. Victor Red Seal M-338, four twelve-inch 78s .

Pianist Rosenthal had a nasty streak of sarcasm in his personality but his performances of selected Waltzes and Preludes from the unsurpassed poet of the piano Frederic Chopin, like those of such keyboard wonders as Arthur Rubinstein, Alexander Brailowsky, Ivan Moravec, Alfred Cortot and Maria Joao Pires, convey the unearthly range of emotion- joy, sorrow, melancholy, whimsicality etc. – that Chopin communicated through his one chosen instrument.

Castine Maine’s record critic David Hall (1916-2012) commented in one of his 4 Record Book volumes that, in order to get a true picture of Chopin’s genius, one needed to listen to every single one of his piano pieces, even the trivial ones. I agree that it is a worthwhile goal, although I have never had the stamina for the listening sieges he did (In a private 1985 interview at his house in Wilton, Connecticut, just before he sold it to move permanently to his summer place in Castine, he told me of doing weekly six-hour binges on Sunday of recordings for his reviews because he was otherwise working six days a week as Curator of the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archive of Recorded Sound at NYC’S Lincoln Center before his retirement the year of our visit.).

My all time favorite Chopin works however remain the 24 Preludes and 2nd Piano Concerto.

Anne Sophie-Mutter

Vivaldi 4 Seasons and Tartini’s Devil’s Trill Sonata. Anne-Sophie Mutter, violinist and conductor of the Trondheim Soloists. Recorded 1999. Deutsche Grammophon 2894632592, compact disc.

Anne Sophie-Mutter collaborated with Maestro Herbert von Karajan (1908-1988) and the Berlin Philharmonic on a very good record of the Mozart Violin Concertos 3 and 5 , also on Deutsche Grammophon, back in 1977 when she was only 14 years old. And her playing was not merely that of a child prodigy flash in the pan but of a mature artist and musician, that record still making for worthwhile listening. Finally, to me personally, anything conducted by Karajan is worth hearing and owning.

The above 1999 CD has Anne-Sophie both playing and conducting six string instrumentalists and a harpsichordist in truly galvanizing performances of Antonio Vivaldi’s most well-known composition and the fiendishly difficult, aptly named Devil’s Trill Sonata of Giuseppe Tartini.

From 2002 to 2006, Mutter was the fifth wife of the late Andre Previn (1929-2019).

Pablo Casals

Conversations with Casals, by J. Ma. Corredor, translated from the French by Andre Mangeot. Published 1956 by Dutton Paperbacks.

Cellist Pablo Casals (1876-1973) married his third wife Marta Martinez in 1957 when he was 80, she 20. To those who commented about the age discrepancy, he replied, “I look at it like this. If she dies, she dies.”

He made numerous records as both cellist and conductor between the acoustic early 1900s and just a couple of years before his death in 1973 at the age of 97, setting new standards for the cello as a solo instrument. His most well known recordings include the 1930s Bach Cello Suites and Dvorak Cello Concerto, itself done with the Czech Philharmonic led by George Szell, in Prague, in 1937, just before the Nazi takeover. I also own a really good World War I acoustic Columbia shellac of him playing Camille Saint-Saens The Swan from Carnival of the Animals and several very early 1950s Columbia Masterworks LPs of him conducting music of Bach that were recorded at his summer music festivals in the mountain villages of Prades and Perpignan.

Casals appeared in a 1958 documentary film Windjammer depicting the voyage of a sailboat in its voyage from Oslo, Norway, to various ports including Portsmouth, New Hampshire. For a number of years during the 78s era, he was part of an all star trio recording chamber music of Beethoven, Schubert etc., with violinist Jacques Thibaud (1880-1953, who perished in a plane crash) and the phenomenal legendary French pianist Alfred Cortot (1878-1962).
Casals was involved in later years with the Puerto Rico and Marlboro Vermont summer music festivals.

In Conversations, author and long time friend Corredor talks with Casals about composers, performance and life experiences. One question is as follows:

“I read somewhere that when you first went to America, some impresarios were rather shocked to see a young performer nearly bald, for it was very much the fashion for musical virtuosos to wear long hair in those days!”

Casals: “Yes, one of these impresarios actually told me that he would raise my fee considerably if I agreed to wear a wig during the concerts. ”

A rumor spread during those youthful years that some impresario publicly announced that Casals was prematurely bald because he gave a lock of hair as a souvenir to all of his girlfriends attending the concerts.

by Peter Cates

Kenneth Roberts

Kenneth Roberts

Kennebunk’s Kenneth Roberts (1885-1957) wrote the historical novel Boon Island in 1956. Boon Island is a ledge 300 by 700 feet in the Atlantic Ocean, 14 miles south of Kennebunkport and, since 1811, has the tallest lighthouse in New England.

The novel is based on the December 1710, shipwreck of the Nottingham from Greenwich, England, when it was blinded during a northeaster after 137 days at sea, and the crew’s struggle for survival against the ravages of the freezing sub zero temperatures, no food and its own dog eat dog human nature impulses.

The first person narrator Miles provided one telling description:

“I hoped that when the northeaster blew itself out, the sea would grow calm, but it didn’t. When the wind swung, it backed into the northwest and west, meaning that bad weather had only temporarily abated. We were free of driving snow and rain, but breakers still roared deafeningly on the north and west. They pounded less on the south and east, but still they pounded, throwing off manes of white foam. The wind seemed colder than on the night we were wrecked.”

Another Roberts novel Northwest Passage was made into a truly classic 1940 film starring Spencer Tracy, Robert Young and Walter Brennan.

Roberts also was known for his activities on behalf of dowsing. Finally, during his writing career, he wore out several copies of Roget’s Thesaurus.

Best book of heroes

A 1958 anthology Good Housekeeping’s Best Book of Heroes and Heroines has chapters from books of such authors as Carl Sandburg (Lincoln), Dorothy Canfield Fisher (Paul Revere), and Helen Keller (autobiography).

The selections that interested me the most were those on how Daniel Boone (1734 – 1820) outsmarted the Shawnees while in their captivity; and how Walter Reed (1851-1902) figured out that yellow fever was caused by mosquitoes, not through contact with victims of the fever.

Will and Ariel Durant

Will and Ariel Durant’s 11 volume The Story of Civilization has sold millions of sets through its introductory offerings to members joining Book of the Month Club. The books lend themselves best to browsing due to the 800 or more pages in each volume yet are written in a very interesting narrative style leading to compulsive reading .

The fifth volume, The Renaissance, tells of the number of good hospitals in Italy, starting with one opened in Siena in 1305 and “famous for its size and services.” Milan and Venice soon followed with highly competitive ones; Florence had 35 hospitals during the 1400s. Most all of them were models of architecture and adorned with art on their walls. Generous support came from the public and private benefactors within the ranks of both the church and nobility.

When Martin Luther visited Italy in 1511, he happily noted “the excellent food and drink, careful attendants, and learned physicians…beds and bedding are clean.”

by Peter Cates

John Dos Passos

Celebrating Independence Day, I found the following paragraph in the first chapter of the 42nd Parallel, a 1937 novel by John Dos Passos (1896-1970):

“U.S.A. is the slice of a continent. U.S.A. is a group of holding companies, some aggregations of trade unions, a set of laws bound in calf, a radio network, a chain of moving picture theatres, a column of stock-quotations rubbed out and written in by a Western Union boy on a blackboard, a public library full of old newspapers and dogeared history books with protests scrawled on the margins in pencil. U.S.A. is a set of bigmouthed officials with too many bank accounts. U.S.A. is a lot of men buried in their uniforms in Arlington Cemetery. U.S.A. is the letters at the end of an address when you are away from home. But mostly U.S.A. is the speech of the people.”

Dos Passos had a unique gift for combining actual slices of history, similar to news reels, with his fictitious characters in his various novels. He was a committed socialist during his younger years but then switched to a conservative world view after a friend of his was cold-bloodedly murdered by Stalin’s assassins during the Spanish Civil War.

Duster

Episode 7 of the current season of the Max TV series Duster, in its recreation of the 1970s, has a depiction of the reclusive multi-millionaire Howard Hughes (1905-1976) who has paid a million dollars for the tape of former President Richard Nixon (1913-1994) authorizing the 1972 Watergate burglary of the Democratic headquarters. While the depiction of the transaction is fictitious, other aspects in the episode are historically correct – those being Hughes depicted as delusional, totally unkempt with long hair and beard and yet a germaphobe who insists that all guests wash their hands at least four times.

Not depicted was Hughes lashing out at former Maine Senator Owen Brewster (1888-1961) during a 1947 Congressional hearing when the Senator tried to unsuccessfully back him into a corner.

Very highly recommended for its intelligent scripting and credible character development.

Giulio Setti

Saint-Saens: Samson and Delilah – Dawn now Heralds the Day (L’Aube qui Blanchit); Gounod: Romeo et Juliette-Prologue. Giulio Setti conducting the Metro­politan Opera Chorus and Orchestra, Victrola Red Seal 4152, ten-inch 78, recorded between late ‘20s and early ‘30s.

Giulio Setti (1869-1938) worked in opera houses in Italy, Egypt, Germany and Argentina before arriving at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1908 as a gifted chorus master.

The above 78 showcases his ability to draw very eloquent ensemble music making on both excerpts. In 1935, Setti returned to Italy.

Eddie Fisher

Eddie Fisher – Lady of Spain; and Outside of Heaven. RCA Victor 20-4953, ten-inch 78, recorded 1952.

Eddie Fisher

Eddie Fisher (1928-2010) was a typically 1950s heartthrob singer of novelty pop songs such as Dungaree Doll, and the above Lady of Spain, which scored big time on the top 40. The pulsating plush arrangements of Hugo Winter­halter (1909-1973) helped immensely with Fisher’s musical success.

Fisher was first married to singer/actress Debbie Reynolds before leaving her to marry Elizabeth Taylor, who in turn would leave him to marry Richard Burton. His career started to tank during the 1960s while his and Reynolds’s daughter, actress Carrie Fisher refused to speak to her father for over 30 years.

In his autobiography, Fisher pays tribute to his Music Director Hugo Winterhalter and tells sadly of the older man losing his will to live after his son Hugo Junior is killed in 1969 while serving in Vietnam. He also collaborated during the less commercially successful ‘60s in a musically very good album for RCA Victor with the phenomenal arranger Nelson Riddle.

Jimmy Dorsey

Jimmy Dorsey

Jimmy Dorsey – Charley, My Boy; and Johnson Rag. Columbia 38649, ten-inch 78, recorded 1949.

In 1949, clarinettist Jimmy Dorsey (1904-1957) assembled a very good group of studio musicians, including Jack Teagarden’s younger brother Charlie on trumpet and pianist Dick Cary, and recorded several captivating Dixieland tunes for Columbia which were quite the contrast to his earlier Decca discs of mostly lyrical and sometimes bland music from the Big Band years (Younger brother Tommy’s records for Victor with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Jo Stafford , Buddy Rich and others were much more musically interesting.).