REVIEW POTPOURRI: Franz Liszt

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Franz Liszt

One of the very first classical records to give pleasure to me during seventh grade was a 12-inch 78 (Columbia Masterworks 12437) of the Second Hungarian Rhapsody, by Franz Liszt (1811-1886), as performed by Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985) with the Phildelphia Orchestra and recorded April 18, 1946.

Franz Liszt

Lasting just under 10 minutes, the piece is divided into two parts, the first being a slowly paced and haunting atmospheric scoring for strings while the second accelerates into an explosively jubilant dance for full orchestra. Ormandy, being justly renowned for bringing the rich string sound, that his predecessor Leopold Stokowski (1882-1975) had already achieved there, to an even greater sustained level, conducted a very exciting performance which can be heard on YouTube.

Ormandy would later re-record the Rhapsody but this earlier one still stands out.

Ormandy also recorded the Liszt tone poem Les Preludes at least twice. Again a 78 set is my favorite for its extra adrenaline and was released on Victor , M-453. It is a very colorful show piece in which Philadelphia’s strings, woodwinds, brass and percussion display their virtuosity (In 1943, Ormandy and the Orchestra would record for Columbia for 25 years before returning to RCA Victor in 1968.).

Liszt composed two Piano Concertos and the Totentanz also for piano and orchestra. In 1960, Ormandy collaborated with pianist Philippe Entremont, himself still living at 90. Ormandy has also left a recording of another Liszt tone poem, Mephisto Waltz.

During his youth, Liszt himself was a legendary virtuoso touring Europe with mobs of screaming women fans; in 1837, he was involved in an affair with Countess Marie D’Agoult and she gave birth to a daughter Cosima who would later marry composer Richard Wagner (1813-1883).

Eugene Ormandy

While still living the flamboyant life of a touring celebrity, Liszt, according to the writer Samuel Chotzinoff, “made the quixotic decision to quit the concert stage and accept the post of musical director in the small town of Weimar [Germany], at a salary of a thousand dollars a year, there to devote his time to composing, conducting and teaching the piano without pay.”

For the remaining 38 years of his life, Franz Liszt was unstintingly generous with his time and money to the mentoring of younger composers and musicians. He would eventually practice a religious asceticism, dressed in a priestly cassock and becoming the Abbe Liszt.

Other very good interpreters of Liszt’s music include pianists Artur Rubinstein, Alfred Brendel, Van Cliburn, Sviatoslav Richter, Lazar Berman, George Bolet, Claudio Arrau, Annie Fischer, Walter Gieseking, and Martha Argerich; and conductors Leonard Bernstein, Fritz Reiner, Herbert von Karajan, Selmar Meyrowitz, Alceo Galliera, Antal Dorati, Jascha Horenstein, Sir Thomas Beecham, Anatole Fistoulari and Sir Georg Solti, etc.

A story is told of Schumann and Brahms visiting Liszt, of Liszt playing his own Piano Sonata for the two guests and of Brahms falling asleep. Liszt was not happy.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Nathaniel Hawthorne

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) spent a number of years as a boy in Raymond, Maine, with an uncle, Dr. Richard Manning, who built a huge mansion with lavishly expensive wallpaper, fireplaces and Belgian glass windows – local natives referred to it as “Mannning’s Folly.” It was later used as a church and tavern and is now listed as a historic site and tourist attraction.

During later years when Hawthorne attended Bowdoin College, in Brunswick, (where his classmates included former President Franklin Pierce and poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow), he often visited his uncle.

However, even though Hawthorne graduated with the class of 1825, he had a very jaundiced view of his time as a college student, as revealed in an 1850s letter to Richard Henry Stoddard:

“I was educated (as the phrase is) at Bowdoin College. I was an idle student, negligent of college rules and the Procrustean details of academic life, rather choosing to nurse my own fancies than to dig into Greek roots and be numbered among the learned Thebans.”

In his American Note-Books for July 5th, 1837, during a visit to Maine, Hawthorne describes looking out the window at the Kennebec River:

“Then there is a sound of the wind among the trees round the house; and, when that is silent, the calm, full, distant voice becomes audible. Looking downward thither, I see the rush of the current, and mark the different eddies, with here and there white specks or streaks of foam; and often a log comes floating on, glistening in the sun, as it rolls over among the eddies, having voyaged, for aught I know, hundreds of miles from the wild upper sources of the river, passing down, down, between lines of forest, and sometimes a rough clearing, till here it floats by cultivated banks, and will soon pass by the village. Sometimes a long raft of boards comes along, requiring the nicest skill in navigating it through the narrow passage left by the mill-dam. Chaises and wagons occasionally go over the road, the riders all giving a passing glance at the dam, or perhaps alighting to examine it more fully, and at last departing with ominous shakes of the head as to the result of the enterprise.”

For me, Hawthorne had a phenomenal gift of drawing the reader into any scene he was describing out of direct experience or as a result of being transformed into his novels such as, for example, the Scarlet Letter, and the Blithedale Romance, as well as such short stories as Young Goodman Brown, The Minister’s Black Veil, Feathertop, etc.

Sergio Mendes

Sergio Mendes

On September 6, pianist/orchestra leader Sergio Mendes passed away at the age of 83 due to several months of the ill-effects of Covid. Back in 1970 when I was attending the University of Southern Maine at Gorham, a friend in the dormitory room next to mine in Anderson Hall introduced me to his Brazil 66 albums; I began buying my own copies, enjoying Mendes’s immensely charming soft pop/jazz/Bossa Nova arrangements and particularly relishing the lead vocalists Lani Hall and Karen Philipp.

Herb Alpert

Herb Alpert

One 1968 LP Fool on the Hill, released on Herb Alpert’s A&M label, has remained on my frequent play list. The renditions of the title song – itself superior to the Beatles own performance in my opinion; the slowly paced lyrical love ballad Canto Triste sung exquisitely by Lani Hall (She later married Herb Alpert); and the infectiously upbeat Upa Neguinho leave the album’s remaining seven very good songs in the shade.

The entire album is accessible on YouTube.

Bernard Haitink

Bernard Haitink

In January, 1905, Czarist troops fired on peaceful demonstrators in front of the Winter Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, killing over 400. In 1957, Dimitri Shosta­kovich’s 11th Sym­phony in remembrance of that tragedy was premiered in Moscow.

It has been recorded with distinction by a number of conductors, one of them being the late Bernard Haitink (1929-2021) on a Decca/London 1985 release still in print and accessible also on YouTube. The Symphony has four movements of searing eloquent beauty and savage power.

 

 

.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Conductor: George Szell

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

George Szell

George Szell

Bizet’s opera Carmen was considered one worthy of meticulous study for aspiring conductors by the perfectionist Maestro George Szell (1897-1970) who held dictatorial Music Directorship of the Cleve­land Or­chestra from 1946 until his death from bone cancer.

I own a shelf of different sets of Carmen as sung by such grand prima donnas as Rise Stevens, Maria Callas, Marilyn Horne, Tatiana Troyanos and Angela Gheorghiu, etc. When Miss Horne did Carmen at the Metropolitan Opera, her co-star James McCracken as Don Jose wanted to use a real dagger instead of a rubber one for authenticity and was the kind of singer/actor who’d become totally consumed in the character.

She stated that no way in H___ was she getting on stage with him.

Another set for recent listening is an early ‘60s London Records album of three LPs and a libretto conducted by the late Thomas Schippers with Geneva’s Suisse Romande Orchestra, soprano Regina Resnik in the title role, tenor Mario del Monaco as Don Jose, soprano Joan Sutherland as Micaela and baritone Tom Krause as the bullfighter Escamillo, his own Toreador Song frequently used in TV commercials. It is a very good recording.

The arguably most famous Aria is Carmen’s own Habanera, which soprano Emma Calve (1858-1935) recorded on an acoustic 12-inch one-sided Victor Red Seal shellac and one well worth hearing via YouTube, despite the primitive fidelity of 120 years ago because of Calve’s own hypnotically sultry delivery and beautiful voice. Resnik was similarly splendid, as was Rise Stevens, Callas, Horne, Troyanos and others previously mentioned.

In the story, Carmen is employed in a Spanish cigar factory and deliberately attracts a number of men with her flirtatious ways, two of them being Don Jose with his own deadly posessive jealousy and Escamillo. Meanwhile, a wonderfully loyal girlfriend of Don Jose from back home, Micaela, arrives to plead with Don Jose to renew their commitment but he is too idiotically smitten with Carmen. Two exquisite Arias in the opera are sung by Micaela.

A popular one from Don Jose is the Flower Song.

An addendum – because of George Szell’s sarcastic personality, he was often referred to as his own worst enemy, to which former Met Opera manager Rudolf Bing retorted, “Not while I’m alive.”

While on the subject of Szell, he recorded Gustav Mahler’s 4th Symphony in 1964 with the Cleveland Orchestra . I have worn out a few copies of the record since purchasing the first one during the summer of 1966. It is a record I have played for several friends over the decades who were not fans of classical music previously. The experience had them changing their minds.

The Symphony is that beautiful and has been recorded with distinction a number of times but Szell, who was very selective with Mahler’s music had a high regard for the 4th Symphony and gave of himself totally to realizing every expressive detail. The 4th Symphony movement is sung by a soprano and ends on a quiet heavenly note. Szell had the phenomenal Judith Raskin as his soloist. It can also be heard via YouTube.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Clark Gable, William F. Buckley Jr. & Alma Gluck

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Clark Gable

Clark Gable

Clark Gable (1901-1960) might not have achieved the same level of greatness as, for example, Sir Lawrence Olivier, Rod Steiger, George C. Scott and, among the living, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emma Thompson and Kenneth Branaugh, when it came to getting inside the skin of a range of different characters; but he had an on-screen charisma in his portrayal of the same charming, arrogant character in every film I ever saw of his.

They include Call of the Wild with Loretta Young, Soldier of Fortune with Susan Hayward, Teacher’s Pet with Doris Day, Command Decision with Van Johnson and last, but far from least, Gone with the Wind with Sir Lawrence Olivier’s then-wife Vivian Leigh; I had my first viewing of it at the long gone Winslow Drive-In during the summer of 1961.

His first appearance in the now legendary role of Rhett Butler is at the foot of the long staircase at the Tara plantation. He’s staring up at Vivian’s Scarlet O’Hara and this first eye contact sows some very turbulent seeds of ballistic romance.

One critic referred to Gable’s presence as brutally masculine. He was a man among men and hunted and fished. Yet he was also a voracious reader, had a huge library of books and absolutely did not want his men friends knowing about this hobby.

Gable was married five times, including a much publicized second one to actress Carole Lombard, who perished in a 1942 plane crash in Nevada.

He died in November 1960, at the age of 59, after suffering two heart attacks over a ten-day period. His widow was pregnant with his only biological son John Clark Gable, born four months later. Gable also fathered a daughter in 1935 during a brief affair with actress Loretta Young while filming Call of the Wild.

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr.

A 1988 biography, William F. Buckley Jr. Patron Saint of the Conservatives, by John B. Judis, proved a fascinating book to browse in. Buckley (1925-2008) brought a wit and intellectual brilliance to conservative thinking via the weekly magazine he founded in 1955, National Review, and his television show Firing Line. His nice guy debating skills both thrilled and terrified those on the other side of a given issue.

In 1965, Buckley ran as an independent in a three-way race against Democrat contender Abe Beame and Republican winner John Lindsay. Buckley wrote the following sardonic quote about Lindsay:

“For some people, politics is the ultimate concern. Of them, it can be said that they are serious about politics, in the sense in which Mr. John Lindsay is serious about politics. He is as serious about politics as, for instance, a flagpole-sitter is serious about flagpoles. Politics sustains Mr. Lindsay, even as the flagpole sustains the flagpole-sitter. Others care less for politics than for the end of politics. We climb flagpoles, but only in order to look at the horizon.”

Alma Gluck

Alma Gluck

A 12-inch acoustic shellac disc (Victrola Red Seal 88434) from 1914 features soprano Alma Gluck (1884-1938) in a collaboration with her husband, violinist Efrem Zimbalist (1889-1985), and pianist Eugene Lutsky performing Braga’s Angel’s Serenade, a frequently recorded concert piece during the World War I years. Gluck had one of the most beautiful voices of that era and sang a wide range of music including opera, hymns and folk songs.

They were the parents of actor Efrem Zimbalist Jr. and the grandparents of actress Stephanie Zimbalist.

This very fine record can be heard via YouTube.

 

 

 

.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Perry Como & Pablo de Sarasate

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Perry Como

Perry Como

Perry Como – That Christmas Feeling; Winter Wonderland. Recorded August 8, 1946. RCA Victor 20-1968, ten-inch 78 disc.

I might be jumping the gun here seasonally speaking but I found the key words of That Christmas Feeling most apt in the 78 years and 10 days since this record was released in 1946 – “What a blessed place this world would be/If we had that Christmas feeling all year.” – especially with the constant cycles of anger, selfishness and greed roaring throughout the country these days.

And Perry Como was the kind of vocal artist who could convey such words and notes so persuasively not only with this song but such ones as May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You, Bless this House, When Someone Cares, etc. that were recorded during the ‘50s – the kinds of seemingly sentimental fluff that other lesser talents botched. He made singing seem so easy with his casual relaxed style.

That casual relaxed style disguised the sometimes two to three hours he would spend laboring over a song, trying out different keys and blendings with the best arrangers in the profession – Russ Case on this session and others of the mid-’40s (Case recorded some classy mood music instrumentals for MGM records during the same decade into the ‘50s); RCA’s head pop arranger Hugo Winterhalter; Como’s longtime conductor for his recordings and TV shows, Mitchell Ayres, until he resigned to become music director for the 1960s variety show, The Hollywood Palace; and finally Nick Perito, who would arrange and conduct for Como until his last Christmas special in Dublin in 1994.

Side 2’s Winter Wonderland has a swinging Big Band style with the saxophones and brass and a backup vocal group.

Wikipedia mentions that Sinatra would ask Como to fill in for him at the sold out Paramount theater concerts with the swooning bobby soxers.

Pablo de Sarasate

Pablo de Sarasate

Sarasate: Zapateado – Jan Kubelik, violinist; Victor Red Seal 74255, recorded 1911, a twelve-inch one-sided acoustically recorded shellac disc.

Pablo de Sarasate was a Spanish violinist and composer of show pieces for his chosen instrument. Violinists who have recorded his pieces range from Jascha Heifetz to Itzhak Perlman; Czech violinist Jan Kubelik (1880-1940) gave a performance of the composer’s Zapateado that combined the required lightning speed bowing and plucking with a breathtaking range of dynamics other fiddlers didn’t always match and an expressive beauty and depth that made this disc one splendid listening experience for its four minute duration, despite the limited fidelity of 113 years ago.

Kubelik’s son Rafael (1914-1996) was a superb conductor who served as music director of the Czech Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Royal Opera House at Covent Garden and the Bavarian Radio Orchestra.

The Como and Kubelik recordings can be heard via YouTube and other sources.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Conductors: Charles Munch, Walter Bruno, Pierre Monteux

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Charles Munch, Walter Bruno, Pierre Monteux

Charles Munch

Continuing with my on-going fascination with the great conductors of the past, I encountered a group photo of Charles Munch (1891-1968), Bruno Walter (1876-1962), and Pierre Monteux (1875-1964), who established the still existing Domaine School in Hancock for conducting students just over 80 years ago. The occasion for this get together at Carnegie Hall’s green room was all three maestros conducting the NBC Symphony in a 1958 memorial concert for its former music director Arturo Toscanini (1867-1957), each of them featured in one piece.

Youtubes of each of the three conductors guesting with the NBC include a very good late ‘30s Mahler 1st Symphony, with Walter ; a 1953 Beethoven 7th with Monteux; and a Ravel Le Tombeau de Couperin with Munch also from 1953, along with several others.

The NBC Symphony was created as a radio orchestra in order to lure Toscanini back to the United States from his native Italy where he was living since resigning as music director of the New York Philharmonic in 1936 after seven brilliant years there. The NBC broadcasts have never been surpassed for long-term popularity.

However, by 1954, Toscanini, although still in good shape, was pressured to resign and his last three years would see a decline in health.

According to Monteux’s daughter, Toscanini and her father admired each other’s art; while Walter and Toscanini had been friends for decades, the older man once stated that “whenever Walter conducts a piece, he melts all over the place.” Munch appeared several times with NBC at Toscanini’s invitation.

Walter Bruno

I recently listened to a Columbia Masterworks cassette, MYT 38473, of Bruno Walter conducting the Columbia Symphony Orchestra in Mozart’s Linz and Prague Symphonies. This orchestra was a studio group assembled around 1959 to 1960 and consisting of Los Angeles Philharmonic musicians when Walter was living out his remaining years in Beverly Hills.

The Linz, #36 among the 41, is a sweetly melodic and graceful work suited nicely to Walter’s “melting” music making; the more perky Prague, #38, receives a decent performance but lacks the perky excitement of a 1960 London Symphony recording conducted by Peter Maag. Still, this is a very enjoyable pair of performances that have worn well.

A highly recommended performance from Pierre Monteux is a Brahms Second Symphony, the first of four different recordings, in which he led the San Francisco Symphony in a 1945 Victor Red Seal recording. This symphony has a sunny outdoorsy quality and Monteux drew out its beauties with a very exquisitely phrased spontaneity.

Pierre Monteux

A favorite Munch recording from the mid-’60s is a Nonesuch LP featuring two different Iberias, the first by French composer Claude Debussy (1862-1918) and the second by a native of Spain’s Catalonia, Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909). Munch conducted the Debussy Iberia with a special flair for its pulsating rhythms and colorful instrumental effects and achieved a similar magic with Albeniz . As far as I know, Albeniz and Ernesto Halffter are the only two Spanish composers Munch ever conducted.

The album jacket mentions that Albeniz composed his Iberia in Paris whereas Debussy only spent a few hours in Spain to witness a bullfight, but the Spanish composer Manuel de Falla adored Debussy’s Iberia because its music evoked the Spain he knew so well.

I own many Toscanini recordings of outstanding merit and one I have returned to often during the last 40 years is a 1947 broadcast of French composer Hector Berlioz’s complete Romeo and Juliet Symphony which RCA Victor Red Seal first issued in 1967 and, as far as I know, still available on CD and accessible on YouTube.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Eli Oberstein

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Eli Oberstein

Eli Oberstein

Recording producer Eli Oberstein (1901-1960) was mentioned some months ago in a column about early 78 and LP budget labels. Oberstein had worked for Victor during the 1930s and helped start its 35 cent Bluebird label with country music artists and then bandleaders Glenn Miller and Artie Shaw, which was hugely successful when 78s cost a dollar or more.

Unfortunately, he was fired for some shady business dealings, and began his own company, United States Record Corporation, in 1939, which had various inexpensive subsidiary labels such as Varsity.

A year later, the company went bankrupt. In 1948, he revived the Varsity label and began issuing LPs at el cheapo prices. The source material was often pirated from other labels and the artists listed were more often than not pseudonyms.

Lately, I have listened several times to a ten-inch LP from the label (Varsity LP 27) released in 1951. The music consists of George Bizet’s L’Arlesienne Suite #1 and Ambrose Thomas’s Mignon Overture.

Despite the very scratchy surface noise of my well worn copy and the primitive fidelity of the record itself, I enjoy it immensely. The Bizet music is equal in vibrantly colorful and beguiling sonorities and rhythms to the composer’s masterpiece opera Carmen while the Thomas Overture is a graceful and melodic piece more often performed by itself while the opera Mignon is rarely staged these days.

The listed National Opera Orchestra is non-existent; the unknown conductor and musicians played with tremendous power and beauty.

Gospel Greats

A 1987 cassette (Deluxe DLX-7791), 24 Gospel Greats, features George Jones (1931-2013) singing a generous selection of sacred tunes with his uniquely individualistic honky tonk vocalism that was exemplified in such secular country classics as the 1959 White Lightning.

They include I’ll Fly Away, Leaning on the Everlasting Arms (a favorite of the murderous preacher portrayed so well by Robert Mitchum in 1955’s The Night of the Hunter), The Old Rugged Cross and a large number of unfamiliar songs.

Penguin Dictionary

The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations has one from the long forgotten Samuel Smiles (1812-1904)- “We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”

Bob Cummings

Bob Cummings

The late ‘50s comedy show Love That Bob, starred Bob Cummings (1910-1990) as a photographer who is also an insatiable ladies man and who is being constantly haranged by his widowed sister to settle down. He also doubles as the photographer’s grandfather who is also a ravenous flirt.

The hilarious comic situations and delivery make it one of the half dozen most incredibly entertaining comedy shows in TV history.

 

 

 

.

REVIEW POTPOURRI – Poet: Roberta Chester

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Roberta Chester

Still living in her 80s, poet Roberta Chester has written articles for different newspapers in Maine and taught English at UMO, College of the Atlantic and in Israel.

With respect to the Pine Tree State, she wrote the following in the 1989 Maine Speaks anthology:

“Now that I live in Maine, the intense beauty of the Maine landscape has been a constant inspiration. I can’t think of a better place to be a poet than Maine, where each of the seasons arrives with so much passion that all of our senses are awakened. If we’re poets we have to respond.”

One poem of Ms. Chester that is included in the above-mentioned anthology, Succoth (Bangor 1982), alludes to an episode of antisemitism, although where and when remains unclear.

But first a little context.

Succoth is a harvest holiday celebration directly following Rosh Hashanah and the Yom Kippur day of fasting in an outdoor hut in which people are feasting and living. The shofar or ram’s horn is blown to announce beginning of the fast on Yom Kippur in which sins are atoned and resolutions made with hope that each individual remains in the Book of Life for the coming year.

The shul is another name for synagogue.

Now the poem:

“After the last blast of the shofar
and the hard fast, the promises
and prayers for a good year,
it takes us by surprise
when we are in the season
of apples and honey cakes
and wine, when we eat in huts
open as birds to the stars,

it takes us by surprise
to see a swastika
drawn on the wall of the shul,
painted red and razor sharp
the women whisper,
there can be no mistake.
They know the sign.

It makes me think
we have been found out
although we’ve been here
for years, our candles shining
at the windows, the smell of challah,
the bittersweet sounds of Shabbas songs
escaping from out the windows and doors
and into the streets between the bridge
and the old brick church.

It takes us by surprise
and yet the trouble is so old
it echoes in my blood
with the sound of my grandfather
climbing the stairs of a building
on the lower east side
and pressed against the wall
by someone with a knife
who held the blade
against his neck and said,
‘Swear, swear you are not a Jew,
and I will let you free!’

And from my grandfather who refused
just as they were both surprised
by an angel in disguise who opened a door
in that long, dark hall,
I learned never to be too much in love
with a roof over my head,
that houses are made of sticks and glass,
that they break like the works of our hands,
and that we should be ready to fly
up into the night with parcels and children
and scrolls under our arms
on the back of the wind.”

Disney anthology

In 1976, Ronco released an LP anthology, The Greatest Hits of Walt Disney, featuring 24 original soundtrack recordings and also including song lyrics and eight cutouts of Disney characters (Ronco R-2100). Like other anthologies from the label, it was heavily promoted on television. The selections include Bare Necessities, Whistle While You Work, A Spoonful of Sugar, Ballad of Davy Crockett, Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo, etc.

Humphrey Bogart

Humphrey Bogart

I recently rewatched for the 50th time the classic Humphrey Bogart 1946 film classic The Big Sleep via a nicely mastered DVD. Bogart as detective Philip Marlowe, his fourth and last wife Lauren Bacall as the “spoiled, exacting, ruthless Vivian Sternwood who falls in love with Marlowe and, among the distinguished cast, cowboy star Bob Steele and character actor Trevor Bardette, as two cold-blooded killers contributed vividly to its infinitely rewatchable qualities, with Henry Hawks directing and Mississippi novelist William Faulkner providing the script.

 

 

 

.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Editor Clifton Fadiman

Clifton Fadiman

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Clifton Fadiman

In his 1941 anthology Reading I’ve Liked, editor Clifton Fadiman (1904-1999) wrote why he felt that so many children’s books are terrible:

“The trouble with these juveniles is that their authors are greatly interested in children and not at all interested in themselves.”

Having enjoyed many of the Golden Books, basal readers, etc., between six and nine years old, I was particularly fascinated by picture storybooks depicting life on a farm with a variety of two- and four-legged creatures and vividly remember one such book from second grade entitled Farm for Sale – it dealt with a married couple fed up with city life who take a ride in the country, find a ready-made farm, purchase it and live happily ever after. The drawings of the animals, pond, pasture and the farmhouse, especially after nightfall, drew me into its spell and fed into this three-year enthrallment with farms in the Vassalboro of my childhood.

And I never stopped to notice whether these authors were interested in me or themselves.

Until sixth grade, the only other reading that interested me were books and magazines where the pictures outnumbered the words.

Such examples were a Classics Illustrated edition of Gene Stratton Porter’s Pollyanna with illustrations from the 1960 Walt Disney production starring Hayley Mills, Jane Wyman, Adolf Menjou, Agnes Moorehead, etc.; A Pictorial History of the American Presidents by John and Alice Durant; and issues of Life, Look, TV Guide and American Heritage magazines.

During sixth grade, my first novel without any pictures was Penny Nichols and the Knob Hill Mystery, which I read twice. But I don’t remember its author. And, again, I never noticed whether the authors were interested in children or in themselves, my only concern being to continue reading the books and magazines.

During seventh and eighth grade, I gradually discovered the joys of collecting books through the Scholastic Book Club and local outlets such as Waterville’s long gone Farrow’s Bookstore, later renamed Canaan House at Main and Temple Streets and devoured George Orwell’s Animal Farm, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, numerous Hardy Boys mysteries, Horatio Alger rags to riches novels and Reader’s Digest magazines and condensed books.

Now 60 years later (with a few thousand titles too numerous to mention during the intervening decades), I am reading Alfred Kazin’s Journals , Henry James’s The Spoils of Poynton, Joseph Conrad’s Letters and Michael Korda’s biography of Eisenhower while dipping into numerous other volumes.

Collecting both books and records have become lifelong addictive hobbies impossible to break. And, with reference to Fadiman’s comment, I still could care less whether the authors are interested in us adult children or in themselves, only that they are interesting.

For what it’s worth, I did slog through Fadiman’s anthology of more than 900 pages from April 22, 2000, to August 11, 2002, and its mix of classic writers with long forgotten ones, along with Editor Fadiman’s comments, proved a very interesting, at times long-winded, experience, along with at least five or six other books I had going at the same time.

The classic writers included Thomas Mann, W. Somerset Maugham, John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, James Thurber, Maine’s own Sarah Orne Jewett, and E.B. White.

Fadiman himself was a judge for more than 50 years for the Book of the Month Club, reviewed books for such publications as the New Yorker, was the host of Information Please on radio and later television, and edited several additional anthologies, including The Lifetime Reading Plan.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: Richard Himber

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

Richard Himber

Richard Himber

A two LP set, Richard Himber and his Ritz-Carlton Hotel Orchestra Featuring Joey Nash (RCA Bluebird, AXM-5520, released 1975) contains 32 recordings from the 1934-35 years of 78s that were originally released on the ten-inch discs of that decade by RCA Victor’s subsidiary 35 cent Bluebird label.

Prior to the establishment of this Orchestra, Richard Himber (1899-1966) had been a violinist for Sophie Tucker’s hotel jazz band and then in charge of bookings for Rudy Vallee (whose own megahit of the 1920s, Stein Song, helped put his alma mater, the University of Maine/Orono, on the nationwide map).

Joey Nash (?-2000) was Himber’s lead singer from 1933 to 1935. Himber also hired such musicians as Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Bunny Berrigan for the Ritz engagements.

The records feature some very beautifully arranged performances in which sophisticated rhythms are blended with sweet melodic textures and solo instrumental details from the harp, strings, woodwinds, etc. Joey Nash had a consistently appealing tenor voice and knew how to put a song across. Himber’s Orchestra was basically hired by hotel management to play music for its patrons to dance to but many of them preferred to simply listen.

Some very fascinating liner notes were provided for the 1975 re-issue by Joey Nash on the trials and tribulations that he observed and personally experienced before the Orchestra hit paydirt.

A few details:

– Himber was a bit of a con man promoting pipe dreams of stardom, classy hotel bookings and nightly radio broadcasts nationwide , meanwhile paying nothing.
– Its first broadcasts from the Essex House had the players housed in a rancid basement storage room for old hotel furnishings and assorted trash.
– A saxophone player busted Himber’s nose in a moment of arrogance.
– Other musicians received summons for alimony.
– One violinist brought his German shepherd to work where it chewed up a songbook and howled on a nationwide duet with the clarinettist.
– A musician was attacked by the angry father of his pregnant girlfriend.
– When the Ritz broadcasts became a success, the orchestra was earning $4,000 weekly.

Among the Great American Songbook classics on the album are Stars Fell on Alabama, Tea for Two, What a Difference a Day Made, Avalon and Winter Wonderland.

In later years, Himber had a traveling band giving free outdoor concerts on a flatbed truck and got sponsorship from Pepsi Cola. During one of these concerts in 1966, he collapsed from a heart attack and died a few hours later at the age of 67.

Himber once stated, “Remember that vanity rules the world.”

The above recordings can be heard via YouTube.