by Peter Cates

Sarah Orne Jewett

South Berwick native Sarah Orne Jewett (1849-1909) advised younger writers to “Write about what you know!”

Aroostook County native Helen Hamlin (1917-2004) once commented on the fascination of one’s childhood for so many:

“It is only natural that a person’s childhood environment should always remain the most glamorous and most interesting phase of one’s life, and I am no exception. Growing up in a town like Fort Kent, with a generous dose of Grandpa’s rich woods lore of old Aroostook, and in a mixed French and English household, has done more than just build a collection of reminiscences. It has left a distinct love and admiration for a land, and no other place can ever seem as attractive.”

Have Gun Will Travel

Many episodes of Richard Boone’s TV series Have Gun Will Travel, which ran for six seasons from 1957 to 1963, can be accessed via YouTube; a season 6 episode, The Fifth Bullet, has Boone’s character, a well-read gunfighter named Paladin giving a man just released from prison some safe passage back home to his wife and their young son (For reasons not totally clear, five outlaws have contracts to kill him.).

Guest star Ben Johnson conveyed a most vivid presence as the man eager to be reunited with his wife and son. He did memorable acting in the movies Mighty Joe Young with Terry Moore, Shane with Alan Ladd and Van Heflin, and the Last Picture Show with Cybill Shepherd and Ellen Burstyn.

Martha Scott

One very heartfelt movie on a wonderful teacher is the 1941 Cheers for Miss Bishop, starring Martha Scott (1912-2003), with a superlative supporting cast that included Marsha Hunt (who passed away last year at the age of 104.), William Gargan, Sidney Blackmer, Edmund Gwenn, John Hamilton (perhaps best known as the Daily Planet editor Perry White on the 1950s Adventures of Superman), Pierre Watkin (who portrayed Perry White for the Superman late ‘40s movie serials starring Kirk Allyn) and Mary Anderson.

Gerry Mulligan

In 1955, baritone saxist Gerry Mulligan assembled a sextet that included Zoot Sims on tenor sax, drummer Dave Bailey, trumpeter Jon Eard­ley, trombonist Bob Brook­meyer and bassist Peck Morrison on the Mercury Emarcy jazz LP simply titled Presenting the Gerry Mulligan Sextet.

According to the liner notes, Mulligan’s greatest fear was “musical stagnation and boredom.” Thus, after completing a very successful concert tour with his acclaimed quartet, he disbanded it and chilled out for six months to figure out what was next.

This LP of eight selections has some very eloquent musicianship ; the six participants were reported as being very pleased with the results.

Of the then-very young musicians, only Dave Bailey is still living at the very young age of 97.

In 1968, Gerry Mulligan collaborated with pianist Dave Brubeck in the Columbia LP, Brubeck-Mulligan Compadres, also featuring eight selections and recorded live in Mexico.

Before the comments on the album, a personal memory – during the summer of 1965, I attended New England Music Camp, in Sidney, along the fabulous Messalonskee Lake and had as a fellow camper Chris Brubeck.

One afternoon, he comes into the bunkhouse with a sly grin and states, “Peter, my father’s here.”

I replied, “Bulls..t he is, Brubeck!”

Within less than half a second walks the great man. And a truly down to earth gentleman.

The above album came as a result of Brubeck assembling another quartet (the famous one from the 1950s into early ‘60s had been disbanded in 1967) for a concert tour of four cities in Mexico arranged by promoter George Wein. The new quartet had Brubeck, Mulligan, Alan Dawson on drums and bass player Jack Six.

One of the concerts was held in a bullring.

All in all, a good record.

Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli

Italian pianist Arturo Benedetti Michelan­geli (1920-1995), much like fellow virtuoso Vladimir Horowitz, not only had a superhuman technique with the keyboard but could also be quite eccentric and reclusive and was prone to depression.

Unlike Horowitz, Michelangeli could play the same composition twice over a period of months and both performances would have the same exact timing.

After winning first prize at a competition in Geneva, Switzerland, Benito Mussolini gave the pianist a full time Professorship at a Conservatory in Bologna.

Michelangeli made very few studio recordings but his live concerts have been released on numerous LPs and CDs. One such LP has him performing the Beethoven 12th Piano Sonata, better known as the Funeral March Sonata, and Schubert’s A minor Sonata, one of 22 magnificent ones that poured out of this composer along with over 600 songs, nine symphonies, numerous chamber music works and other pieces before he died at the young age of 31. The pianist performed both Sonatas with a cutting edge combination of dexterity and vibrant beauty.

Michelangeli had all 22 Sonatas of Schubert committed to memory.

by Peter Cates

Maine Novelist Ruth Moore

Maine novelist Ruth Moore (1903-1989) was born on Gott’s Island, spent several years as an adult out of state, and published the very successful novel Spoonhandle in 1946, which was adapted for the 1948 movie Deep Waters; the money enabled her to move back to Maine for the rest of her life.

During the 1930s, Moore was active in the NAACP , having begun working as a researcher. In 1930, she traveled to the Deep South where her investigation led to the release of two African-American men who had been falsely accused of murder.

A very powerful opening in Moore’s 1943 novel The Weir which takes place on one of the outlying islands along the Maine coast resonates on a universal level with any of us who sat through long years of school in quiet desperation:

“Sayl Comey went to school every day, but it seemed to him that things got worse instead of better. He couldn’t get used to the routine, and he couldn’t see any sense in what went on. In class he presented a face of bleak and absolute boredom.”

A writer well worth checking out.

The Adventures of Superman

My favorite childhood TV show was The Adventures of Superman, starring George Reeves (1914-1959). One particular episode started the 1953 season, 5 Minutes to Doom, which guest starred Dabbs Greer (1917-2007) as an innocent man wrongly sentenced to the electric chair. The depiction of the chair itself has stayed in my memory for decades, it was so well filmed.

Arvo Volmer

Now 60, the quite gifted Estonian conductor Arvo Volmer recorded the 7 Symphonies, Finlandia, Valse Triste and Violin Concerto (with soloist Adele Anthony), of Finnish composer Jean Sibelius between 2007 and 2010 with the Adelaide Symphony of Australia for the ABC Classics label on 4 CDs; while these performances don’t have the craggy power of other conductors (Sibelius used the entire string/woodwind/brass/percussion apparatus of the modern orchestra to evoke the rocky ocean landscape, fields, woodlands and hills that are so similar to our own Maine), they do have a lot of poetry and are quite effective on their own terms.

For anyone new to classical music, I recommend sampling any of the many YouTubes of Sibelius’s music, especially the stirring patriotic Finlandia, the rhythmically gripping Violin Concerto, the powerful 1st and 2nd Symphonies with their rich outpourings of gorgeous, brilliantly sustained melody and the haunting mystery of Valse Triste and the otherworldly Swan of Tuonela.

Country Music Anthologies

During the early 1980s, Time Life Records marketed a series of LP anthologies devoted to country music artists and sold them by mail and through supermarkets.

They included Hank Williams, Chet Atkins, George Jones (of course), Johnny Cash, Elvis, Barbara Mandrell, Tammy Wynette, etc.

I recently listened to the one devoted to Waylon Jennings (1937-2002) which contains nine selections drawn from his albums for RCA Victor and include Brown Eyed Handsome Man, MacArthur Park, Ladies Love Outlaws and Love of the Common People.

The man knew how to communicate a song in an impressive manner.

by Peter Cates

Ray Charles

My first experience of Ray Charles (1930-2004) was as a kid in the early ‘60s watching Dick Clark’s American Bandstand in which the singer made an appearance singing his megahit Georgia on My Mind. I remember being struck by his combination of calm stage presence with consummate timing and delivery.

An ABC/Paramount 45 record from 1963 contains two really good examples of his rhythm and blues artistry:

No Letter Today, in which the singer is dubbed in a duet with himself, and backed by “his orchestra” conducted by the exceptionally gifted jazz arranger Gerald Wilson.

Take These Chains From My Heart, in which the singer is joined by the Jack Halloran Singers and arranged and conducted by Marty Paich.

Both sides were produced by Sid Feller and released in 1963 as also part of the album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, an album that broke the barrier between soul and country and western music. And both sides can be heard via YouTube.

A personal note: my grandmother Annabelle Cates (1888-1974) received a Christmas present of a two-LP set featuring the hits of Ray Charles and, despite her otherwise old-fashioned taste in music, enjoyed this album, in particular Hit the Road, Jack.

Jazz singer Anita O’Day (1919-2006) recorded two staples at a 1947 jam session- Sometimes I’m Happy and – that were released on a ten-inch 78 record on the Signature label. Among the vocalists who learned their craft with the big bands during the World War II 1940s that included Sinatra with Tommy Dorsey, Peggy Lee with Benny Goodman, etcs. Anita O’Day had a uniquely charming way with rhythm, melody, phrasing and timing and both sides can also be heard on YouTube.

101 Strings

101 Strings was the creation of businessman D.L. Miller, of Pennsylvania, who recruited this number of players from such orchestras as the Hamburg Philharmonic and arranged for recording sessions that started in the late 1950s and resulted in a sizable number of very inexpensively priced LPs on his Somerset/Stereo Fidelity label.

The albums included hit songs of the era, Gypsy tunes, opera arias, folk songs from countries around the world, Christmas carols, hymns and Broadway and film selections.

The arrangements were skillfully done, making for very pleasant listening. One such album was A Cruise to the Rivieras-Spain, France and Italy and consisted of the following titles: La Mer, Flamenco Fantasy, Estrellita, A Night on the Riviera, Monaco, Sunday in Genoa, and a medley of Santa Lucia, Funiculi Funicula and Sorento. This album is also available for listening on YouTube.

by Peter Cates

Adam Had Four Sons

Amazon Prime has a large array of vintage films that I have been lately bingeing on and I recently viewed a few choice ones:

1941’s Adam Had Four Sons starred Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982), Warner Baxter (1888-1951), Fay Wray (1907-2004), Richard Denning (1914-1998), and Susan Hayward (1917-1975).

The story begins during the early 1900s and ends just after the end of World War I, depicting the lives of a wealthy stockbroker Adam Stoddard (portrayed with professionally honed suavity by Warner Baxter), his ailing and very nurturing wife (Fay Wray, best known as the young woman in a night dress being carried by King Kong in his hand as he clambers up the Empire State Building in the 1933 film classic), and their four sons from when they are young boys to full adulthood and military service in 1917-18 France.

Richard Denning, who was perhaps best known for the 1950s TV show Michael Shayne, portrayed the eldest son Jack with commendable skill; fans of Jack Lord’s Hawaii Five-O may remember his calming authoritative presence as the governor for the first few seasons.

A central presence was Ingrid Bergmann as the governess. She was captivating but I found her much more so with Humphrey Bogart in the following year’s Casablanca and in 1947’s Bells of Saint Mary’s with Bing Crosby.

The venomous character in the film was the gold digger Hester who charms one of the younger brothers into marrying her and then starts playing everyone else against each other.

A commendably entertaining love story/soap opera combination.

My Foolish Heart

1949’s My Foolish Heart has Susan Hayward portraying a much more sympathetic woman struggling with alcoholism and an unhappy marriage; we find out why with flashbacks to when she falls in love with a young officer before he goes off to World War II (and featuring the consistently reliable Dana Andrews, 1912-1992). I used to find Hayward’s characters much too abrasive but here she completely drew me into the story. Critics trashed it but the public loved it. Highly recommended.

Behind Green Lights

Two suspenseful film noirs – 1946’s Behind Green Lights is an engaging account of the chaotic activities inside a big city police station among the front desk cops, the detectives, the newspaper reporters, the morgue attendants and the ordinary citizens who drop in voluntarily or under involuntary duress.

The plot begins thickening when a driverless car jumps up on the sidewalk with a dead body inside.

William Gargan (1905-1979) portrays the police commissioner in charge of the investigation and the interrogation of a lady who was last seen in the victim’s apartment before he was thrown in the car (the lady was very convincingly and compassionately portrayed by Carole Landis (1919-1948) who very sadly committed suicide two years after the film’s release at the age of 29 by overdosing on barbiturates.)

Gargan had a successful career in movies and television until 1958 when, as a chain smoker, he contracted lung cancer and had his larynx removed; afterwards he had to speak into a voice box and became celebrated as a zealous campaigner against the perils of cigarettes for the remaining 20 years of his life.

Please Murder Me

1956’s Please Murder Me has Raymond Burr (1917-1993) as a defense attorney with a different name from the one he portrayed for nine years on CBS’s Perry Mason beginning in 1957 , only a year after this film’s release.

He defends a woman who has been charged with murdering her husband and, convinced of her innocence, gets her acquitted, only to find out she’s guilty. The client’s manipulative malevolence was very persuasively conveyed by the brilliant young Angela Lansbury (1927-2022).

 

 

 

 

by Peter Cates

Elisabeth Ogilvie

The consistently intriguing Maine Speaks anthology contains a short story, Scobie, by Elisabeth Ogilvie (1917-2006), which was first published in the August, 1951, issue of Woman’s Day magazine.

The story is set in a fishing village along the Maine coast and is recounted from the point of view of a first person unnamed narrator who is living presently in the early 1950s and, in visiting with a childhood friend, Rhoda, is recalling memories of those 1920s or ’30s yesteryears when the village only had “a general store, a filling station, a sardine factory, a fish-and-lobster buyer, and a fifteen-room hotel that catered for three summer months to artists and elderly people….” and in particular of an eccentric named Scobie who lived for a year on the very edge of the village in a “pinkie” or discarded boat with his well-trained pet baby pig, Barnaby.

The story has a very commendably achieved sense of time and place in its details of local color but the main plot in its depiction of the girls interactions with Scobie when they visited him a few times (and without their parents’ permission) was unfortunately a bit wooden and desultory.

Still, one paragraph stood out in its vividness, when the narrator is describing her father’s job as a warden of the village “fisheries”:

“At the far curve of the harbor, away from the sardine factory and the big wharves, there was a regular settlement of lobstermen, who preferred to live in sight of the harbor and the moorings rather than in the town. Their houses, with neat white clapboards or silvery shingles, were sheltered by the spruce woods behind; the grassy ground sloped down to the shore, where their boats were hauled up for painting; and their traps were stacked against wildrose bushes and blackberry vines. My father spent a lot of time over there.”

The potential for further reader interest in the lives of these inhabitants in a separate universe from the other villagers may have been a lost opportunity.

Ogilvie was a Massachusetts native but, in 1944, she moved into a 33-acre farm, on Gay’s Island, in Cushing, where she died from a stroke in 2006. She published more than 40 novels, mostly based on life in the islands along the Maine coast; along with an autobiography.

Rachmaninoff

April 1 was the 150th birthday anniversary of composer Sergei Rachmaninoff (1873-1943). YouTube contains a highly recommended recording of his ever justly popular 2nd Piano Concerto, which he composed in 1901, after recovering from a deep depression through the help of hypnosis from a Doctor Dahl. The performance is a 1960 Columbia Masterworks collaboration between pianist Philippe Entremont and the late Leonard Bernstein, with the New York Philharmonic.

It was the first LP I ever owned of the work and its power and poetry had a uniquely gripping eloquence of its own. The second movement was slowly paced and milked for maximum sentiment while the concluding 3rd movement was paced with lightning speed until the magnificent concluding three minutes when, with slower tempos, the music exploded with beauty.