10-02: Hazel Scott / Charles Mingus / Max Roach 1955 - Bola de Nieve 1950 - Violin Concertos Mendelssohn | Bruch 1 + Scottish Fantasy / Chung 1972 - Gene Autry 16 Country Classics

1559 – Jacquet de Mantua (French composer & cathedral music director, active in Italy)
1629 – Antonio Cifra (Italian composer & church music director)
1823 – Daniel Steibelt (German pianist & composer, active in France, England & Russia)
1842 – José Mariano Elízaga (Mexican composer, court music director, music theorist, pianist, organist, teacher & music publisher)
1915 – Russell Alexander (American composer, vaudeville entertainer & circus band euphonium soloist)
1920 – Max Bruch (German composer & conductor)
1943 – Robert Nathaniel Dett (Canadian composer, pianist, organist & choir director, active also in the United States)
1960 – Jaroslav Doubrava (Czech composer, painter & teacher)
1970 – Bo Linde (Swedish composer & conductor)
1971 – Bola de Nieve [Ignacio Jacinto Villa] (Cuban cabaret singer, pianist & songwriter)
1981 – Hazel Scott (Trinidadian-born jazz & classical pianist, singer & actress)
1983 – Gerald Strang (Canadian composer, teacher & author)
1996 – Frida Knight (English musicologist, author, pianist, violinist & socialist activist)
1998 – Gene Autry (American country singer, guitarist, actor, & entrepreneur)
2001 – Franz Biebl (German composer, "Ave Maria")
2007 – Tawn Mastrey (American hard rock disc jockey & music video producer, Hair Nation, Absolutely Live High Voltage)
2008 – Rob Guest (English-born New Zealander/Australian musical theater performer & television host)

October 2 saw the passing of two particularly famous musical notables: Gene Autry, everyone's favorite singing cowboy, both on the phonograph and on the Silver Screen; and Max Bruch, who with his three violin concertos and Scottish Fantasia was one of the 19th century's most prolific contributors to the standard repertoire of concerted works for the violin. Another one of Bruch's most famous works is his Kol Nidrei for cello and orchestra, based on Hebrew themes. When the Nazis came to power and started banning public performances of works by Jewish composers, Bruch was one of the composers they targeted. Just one little problem: Bruch wasn't Jewish! In fact, there's no evidence of him having had any ancestors who were Jewish either. The Nazis merely assumed he was because of his Hebrew-themed and Hebrew-titled work. Clearly they were living by their usual maxim, "When in doubt, err on the side of extreme ignorance and stupidity."

We also remember two great Caribbean pianist-vocalists: Trinidadian jazz musician and actress Hazel Scott - like Mary Lou Williams, one of those all-too-rare lights in the "man's world" of instrumental jazz - and Cuban cabaret entertainer Ignacio Jacinto Villa, who went by the nickname of Bola de Nieve ("Snowball") because of his round head, and who was one of the gay men lucky enough to escape persecution under the Castro regime, thanks only to the great respect his pure talent afforded him.

Two musicians who are less well-known than they once were, but who have interesting stories to tell. Canadian-born composer, keyboardist & choirmaster Robert Nathaniel Dett was, in the 1920s, the first black student ever to complete the five-year course of study at Oberlin Conservatory. In 1929, he traveled to Paris to study with... guess who? That's right... like Virgil Thomson and Roy Harris, from the past two days' posts, Dett was also a pupil of Nadia Boulanger at Fontainebleu. Then in 1932, he received his Masters degree from Eastman. Dett went on to have some considerable critical and public successes, most notably with the premiere in 1937 of his oratorio The Ordering of Moses by the Cincinnati Symphony under Eugene Goosens, at a festival where the chorus numbered 350. His last duties took him to Europe, contributing to the war effort as a choral advisor to the USO. He died of a heart attack there in 1943.

The German Daniel Steibelt was also a composer and pianist. His reputation hasn't held up quite as well as Dett's, however. His studies began with Johann Kirnberger, who himself had been a pupil of J. S. Bach. After Steibelt's father forced him to join the Prussian army, he soon deserted and became an itinerant musician, finally dividing most of his time between Paris and London, where his abilities as both a pianist and a composer gained recognition. In 1799, Steibelt embarked on a tour of German and Austria. It was when he arrived in Vienna in May 1800 that Steibelt made the unfortunate mistake of challenging Ludwig van Beethoven, 5 years his junior at the age of 29, to a trial of improvisational skill at the home of Count van Fries. Beethoven prevailed handily in the duel, delivering his coup de grâce with a lengthy improvisation on a theme from one of Steibelt's own works - which he read after turning the sheet music upside down on the music rack!

Steibelt cancelled the remainder of his tour after this public humiliation, but he went on to enjoy further success in his musical career, finally ending up comfortably in St. Petersburg, in the service of Tsar Alexander I as director of Russia's Royal Opera. Steibelt's last public success as piano soloist came in 1820, with the premiere of his own Concerto No. 8, which is remarkable as the first piano concerto ever written to feature a choral finale, and which predates Beethoven's Ninth Symphony - the first symphony to feature a choral finale - by four years (although with the composition of his concerto, Steibelt was quite likely influenced by Beethoven's one-movement Choral Fantasy for piano, orchestra, and chorus, which had appeared 12 years earlier). Later piano concerti to feature choral parts include the rarely-heard Concerto No. 6 (1858) by Henri Hertz, and the Piano Concerto of Ferrucio Busoni (1904).

Well, you have to give Daniel Steibelt some credit for trying, don't you? By 1800, Beethoven's reputation had certainly preceded him. But, it's like the late Jim Croce used to sing: "You don't tug on Superman's cape, you don't spit into the wind, you don't pull the mask off the old Lone Ranger, and for God's sake, you don't challenge the most famous composer and pianist in history to a cutting contest!" I'm pretty sure that's how that song goes.

10-01: Buffalo Springfield Huntington Beach 1967 - John Blow Venus & Adonis Jacobs 1999 - Booker T & the MG's Greatist Hits 1970 - Roy Harris Symphony 3 : Koussevitsky 1939 | Hanson 1955 + Hanson Symphony 4

1602 – Hernando de Cabezón (Spanish organist & composer)
1609 – Giammatteo [Gian Matteo] Asola (Italian composer, priest & music director)
1708 – John Blow (English composer, organist & choirmaster
1770 – Louis-Gabriel Guillemain (French composer & violinist)
1876 – Henri Jérôme Bertini (English-born French composer & pianist)
1912 – Mary Frances Allitsen (English composer)
1920 – Vladimir Rebikov [Влади́мир Ре́биков] (Russian composer & pianist)
1927 – Wilhelm Harteveld (Swedish composer & musicologist)
1964 – Ernst Toch (Austrian concert & film composer & author, active in France, England & the United States)
1970 – Petar Konjović [Петар Коњовић] (Serbian composer & conductor)
1970 – Hans Poser (German composer, pianist & teacher)
1975 – Al Jackson, Jr. (American R&B & funk drummer, producer & songwriter, Booker T. & the MG's)
1979 – Roy Harris (American composer)
1994 – Scott Dunbar (American blues singer & guitarist)
1996 – Joonas Kokkonen (Finnish composer)
1998 – Pauline Julien (Canadian pop singer, songwriter, actress, feminist activist & Quebec sovereigntist)
1999 – Lena Zavaroni (Scottish singer, child star & television host)
2000 – Robert Allen (American pop pianist & songwriter)
2004 – Bruce Palmer (Canadian rock bass guitarist, Buffalo Springfield)
2007 – Ronnie Hazlehurst (English television theme-song composer & conductor)
2008 – Nick Reynolds (American folk singer, tenor guitarist, drummer & songwriter, The Kingston Trio)

Well... I was wondering if I would ever get through the month of September. But here we are, finally, at October... now that November is just around the corner! I wonder if any of you out there truly appreciate what a burden I've imposed on myself with this montrosity of a weblog. But, it's a labor of love... so I can't complain... (he says while complaining...)

There are two quite-obscure musicians by the name of Scott Dunbar. One of them, pictured below, is still alive. He's a 20-something (or perhaps 30-something - it's not so easy to tell with that layer of dirt covering him) busker from Canada, who lives and works on the streets of Montreal. Yes, a busker... a street musician.

He bills himself as a "one-man band," but he isn't quite the elaborately instrument-encumbered, perambulating specimen that term generally evokes.

However, he does sing and play some pretty mean accordion, guitar, broiler pan, and suitcase kick-drum.

The other Scott Dunbar was a fisherman, tour guide, and country blues singer and guitarist, who was born in Mississippi in 1904. That's him in the collage, between Roy Harris and Joonas Kokkonen. I just want to be sure you Quebecers out there realize that "one-man-band" Scott Dunbar is still alive and still out there, waiting for your loonies and toonies... so give generously... give 'til it hurts! So, maybe this guy can get a hot meal... and maybe even a bar of soap. Et tandis que j'ai l'attention de vous Québécoises, mes condoléances au sujet de Pauline Julien aussi bien.

There are just too many of these musicians to talk about today. Some fascinating Brits... John Blow, who wrote what's considered the first opera in English (although he called it a "masque"), Venus & Adonis... a fine 19th- and early 20th-century composer by the name of Mary Frances Allitsen... Scottish child star Lena Zavaroni, whose life was cut short by the terrible affliction of anorexia nervosa... and Ronnie Hazlehurst, who wrote the theme and incidental music for such television comedies as Are You Being Served?, The Last of the Summer Wine, The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, To The Manor Born, and Yes Minister. I'd never seen a photo of Ronnie Hazlehurst before, and somehow he looks exactly like his music made me imagine he would.

I've already mentioned Joonas Kokkonen and Roy Harris. Kokkonen is certainly one of the very most important Finnish composers after Jean Sibelius. Interestingly enough, Sibelius is a meaningful point of departure for Harris, as well. This is because Harris's most famous work, his 3rd Symphony (1939), is in a single continuous multi-sectional movement, just as Sibelius's 7th and final symphony (1924) had been.

The 1st Symphony (1936) of another great American composer, Samuel Barber, had similarly taken the one-movement plan of the Sibelius 7th as its formal model. But with his 3rd, Harris hit upon something so potent and powerful, many people soon began referring to it as "The Great American Symphony" (just as the world of literature had its contenders for "The Great American Novel.")

Some explanation is in order. In the first two decades of the 20th century, American composers (with the exception of a few isolated geniuses, most notably Charles Ives) were still basically mimicking their European counterparts. Many of them were writing good, solid music, but most of it didn't sound particularly "American," and in fact most people weren't exactly sure what "sounding American" would or should mean. Then, after the Great War ended, things began to change. A new generation of American composers was coming of age, and its members would be the first to truly put homegrown American concert music on the map, to answer the question of what "American" sounded like, and to inform the world that America too had great, original composers who were the equal of the best that Europe had to offer.

Ironically, it was through studying in Europe that many of these young Americans began to make their mark. A major catalyst in the movement was Nadia Boulanger, who was appointed in 1921 to the faculty of the Conservatoire Américain, a summer school at Fontainebleau Palace in Paris. Beginning with Aaron Copland, a long string of American composers went to Paris to study counterpoint, harmony, and composition with Boulanger. The many other Americans who studied with Boulanger at Fontainebleu over the years included Walter Piston, Louise Talma, Quincy Jones, Donald Byrd, Joe Raposo, Ned Rorem, David Diamond, Marc Blitzstein, Leonard Bernstein, Philip Glass, Elliott Carter, Donald Grantham, Virgil Thomson (whom we remembered only just yesterday), and yes, Roy Harris. Thomson once quipped that every town in America had a five-and-dime and a Boulanger pupil.

Under Boulanger, an emphasis was placed on the study of Renaissance and Baroque music, while at the same time the various rhythmic and harmonic innovations of Igor Stravinsky, in particular, were presented as examples of the best that new music had to offer. Boulanger also encouraged her American students to find inspiration in the emerging jazz and blues of their own country. Composers, above all, were encouraged to discover and explore their own personal artistic voice.

Where I'm headed with this is that the writing, in particular, of symphonies by American composers was a phenomenon peculiar to the 1930s and 40s, one that was associated largely with Boulanger's students, and their students. In the Europe of the time, the writing of symphonies had fallen somewhat out of fashion: Europeans had been writing symphonies for almost 200 years, and after the mammoth and definitive statements by Bruckner and Mahler, many composers considered it to be somewhat of a worn-out genre. But for Americans, it was on the contrary quite natural that through the writing of the symphony - which had been associated since at least as early as 1800 with the very most serious and weighty statements a composer could make using the orchestra as medium - that they would announce that they were here, and that they had finally come into their own on the world stage.

And so finally that brings us to Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3, composed in 1938 and '39. When it appeared, critics recognized it almost immediately as one of the definitive statements in the genre yet by an American, one that packed an extraordinary emotional punch and rigourous heft into its 20-minute duration. More than anything else, this was music that sounded quintessentially American... one could not possibly mistake it for the work of a composer from any other nation. Harris's very personal and frankly virile style (a style whose influence can be clearly heard in the music of his student, William Schuman) encapsulated perfectly the so-called "rugged individualism" of American life, and the hardship and wide-open spaces of the prairie. Moreover, it did so while avoiding almost all of the jejune jazziness and cornball cowboyisms to which Copland's music of this same period is sometimes prone. Instead, what one found were lushly textured harmonies, long, rough-hewn melodic lines, powerful orchestration, and an arresting sense of the dramatic.

And so, why the Sibelius 7th? Why did that particular work inspire not only the Harris 3rd, but the Barber 1st as well, during this period when American composers were asserting their relevance? Well, in the context of what I've already told you, that should be plain. With his 7th and last symphony, Sibelius officially brought the great Romantic symphonic tradition to a close - that symphony, really and truly, is where it ends. By taking it as their formal starting place, Barber and Harris were saying, "WE now claim this tradition. WE pick up where it left off. The European symphonic tradition - now a global symphonic tradition - continues."

Roy Harris's Symphony No. 3 is in five continuous sections, marked Tragic, Lyrical, Pastoral, Fugue - Dramatic, and Dramatic-Tragic. The symphony was premiered in 1939 by Serge Koussevitzky and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, who made its premier recording for Victor that same year.

Read more...

09-30: Bob Dylan Desire 1976 - Aaron-Carl Crucified XDB Remixes | LWB Podcast 48 - Francesco Durante Lamentations - Virgil Thomson 3 Pictures | 5 Blake Songs Ormandy - Les Paul & Mary Ford 16 Most Requested

1612 – Ercole Bottrigari (Italian scholar, mathematician, poet, music theorist, architect & composer)
1712 – Johann Michael Zacher (Austrian church & court composer & music director)
1716 – Heinrich Georg Neuss (German theologian & composer)
1755 – Francesco Durante (Italian composer)
1803 – Charles Broche (French organist & composer)
1819 – Nicolas Rozé (French music librarian, music theorist, music director & composer)
1884 – Louis Lacombe (French pianist & composer)
1904 – Sigurd Lie (Norwegian composer & pianist)
1940 – Walter Kollo (German theatrical & song composer, conductor & music publisher)
1963 – Arnold Foster (English conductor, choir director, composer, arranger & teacher)
1976 – Louis Fourestier (French conductor, composer & teacher, winner Prix de Rome 1925)
1977 – Mary Ford (American pop singer & guitarist, wife & performing partner of Les Paul)
1983 – Freddy Martin (American jazz tenor saxophonist & bandleader)
1989 – Virgil Thomson (American composer & music critic)
1991 – Toma Zdravković [Тома Здравковић] (Serbian folk singer & poet)
2004 – Jacques Levy (American songwriter, theatrical director & clinical psychologist)
2010 – Aaron-Carl [Ragland] (American electronic dance musician)

Well, you know what they say. "When it rains, it pours." Do you know what that saying means, all of you out there for whom English is a second language? Well, I'll tell you. It means that our product tends to clump together when it's very humid outside, so we add an absorbent anti-caking agent to it, such as magnesium carbonate, in order to ensure that it is free-flowing during such weather conditions. Pretty interesting, huh? Aren't you glad you've got me around to teach you about the idiomatic use of the English language?

Well, I'm sitting here trying to decide whether there's anything much I want to say about today's poopers. You know, I really don't think so. I think everything you'd really want to know is either in the links above, or in your "supplemental" reading below. Enjoy!!  :>

09-29: Cheb Hasni Best Of 2005 - Tcherepnin Piano Concertos 2 & 4 Ogawa 2003 - Jan Werner Singer of Songs 2003

1902 – Iosif Ivanovici (Romanian military bandleader & composer, "Waves of the Danube")
1903 – Marie Geistinger (Austrian actress & operetta soprano)
1915 – Luther Orlando Emerson (American musician, composer & music publisher)
1915 – Rudi Stephan (German composer, killed in WWI)
1958 – Aare Merikanto (Finnish composer)
1964 – Sir George Dyson (English composer & organist)
1977 – Alexander Tcherepnin (Russian-born composer, conductor & pianist, active in France, China & the United States)
1989 – Georges Ulmer [Jørgen Frederik Ulmer] (Danish-born French composer, librettist, actor & singer)
1991 – Zapata Jaw [Nelson Renfrum] (Surinamese drummer, composer & poet)
1994 – Cheb Hasni [الشاب حسني] (Algerian raï singer & songwriter)
1995 – Seger Ellis (American jazz pianist, singer, composer & actor)
2006 – Jan Werner [Danielsen] (Norwegian pop & classical singer)

Okay, look, people. I'm not going to yank your chain. This is not exactly the most star-studded edition of YiDM we've ever had. But what are you going to do about it? People poop whenever they poop. Don't blame me... blame the Fates, or whatever Supreme Being you wish to. I don't blame anyone or anything. I just shrug my shoulders and say, "Oh, well, that's just the way it is."

Of course it's not as if people usually get a choice about when they die. Cheb Hasni, Algerian folk singer in the raï idiom (follow the link up there to find out more), was getting death threats from Islamist extremist nutjobs as soon as he became famous. They especially hated that he sang about such horrible, evil, unspeakable, taboo subjects as DIVORCE and ALCOHOL... ~~~oh, the humanity!!!~~~ In 1994, they finally got him. He was the first raï singer to be assassinated thus. I don't know how many there have been since then.

Look, I tell you what... if you are reading this, from anywhere in the world, and are a religious fundamentalist extremist from ANY religion - the sort that would harm or even kill another person because you don't like what that persons sings about - I have a few words for you. Scratch that. I have just two words for you: FUCK YOU. You are an idiot. Your entire belief system is a piece of shit, and so are you. You don't belong in civilized society; you belong in a rubber room, where the intelligent, reasonable people of this planet can be protected from your sorry, brainwashed ass. YOU'RE WELCOME! Yes, that's right. You're very welcome! I've done you such a FAVOR by informing you of what a sack of crap you are, that you should be thanking me. Because you're so stupid, you don't even deserve to know what a sack of crap you are. No problem! Any time! That is all! :D

Well, I feel a lot better... (Read more below)

09-28: Miles Davis Live in Europe 1967 3 Discs + DVD - Ruja ( Prog-Rock Estonia ) 1982 - Marx Brothers Original Voice Tracks 1969 - Music School Mokranjac ( Folk Music Serbia )

1649 – Ottavio Vernizzi (Italian organist & composer)
1757 – Andrea Zani (Italian violinist & composer)
1852 – Johann Friedrich Schwencke (German organist, clarinettist, composer & arranger)
1903 – Jesús de Monasterio (Spanish composer & violinist)
1914 – Stevan Stojanović Mokranjac [Стеван Стојановић Мокрањац] (Serbian composer, conductor, teacher & folklorist)
1922 – Andrejs Jurjāns (Latvian composer & folklorist)
1939 – Felicjan Szopski (Polish composer, pianist, teacher & music critic)
1947 – Francisco Santiago (Filipino composer, "Father of Kundiman Art Song")
1952 – Paul Hastings Allen (American composer)
1957 – Luis Cluzeau Mortet (Uruguayan composer, violinist, violist, pianist, choir director & teacher)
1964 – Harpo Marx (American comedian, actor & harpist)
1966 – Lucky Millinder (American jazz & R&B bandleader)
1972 – Maurice Thiriet (French composer of concert & film music)
1991 – Miles Davis (American jazz trumpeter & composer)
1993 – Fraser MacPherson (Canadian jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, flutist, pianist)
1994 – Urmas Alender (Estonian rock singer, Ruja, Propeller, Andromeeda)
1996 – Bob Gibson (American folk singer, songwriter, guitarist & banjoist)
2010 – Dolores Wilson (American operatic coloratura soprano)

Just looking at my post from last night... oh, dear... please remind me to avoid drinking & blogging in the future...

Well, it's another international soundfest today, with some of the most important composers and folklorists from Serbia, Latvia, the Philippines, and Uruguay, one of Estonia's most famous rock singers (Latvia and Estonia - how exciting to have the Baltic region so well represented), and the man who was not only a very talented harpist, but by all accounts one of the funniest people to ever appear in movies - a pretty amazing feat when you consider he was able to do it without uttering a single word.

And I'd love to say something about all of them, but let's talk about Miles Davis. What does one say about Miles? Well, there are the obvious things. He's one of the most famous figures in the entire history of jazz, and one of the most highly-regarded among both fans and critics of that music. He led not just one, but two of the greatest quintets in jazz - that they're referred to as "The First Great Quintet" and "The Second Great Quintet" ought to tell you something all by itself. And he introduced the world to another one of jazz history's most famous figures, John Coltrane.

He was not always the friendliest person in the world, and was certainly not very accessible to his many admirers. He had his substance-abuse demons, which is hardly remarkable for a jazz or rock musician. Among the all-time greats of jazz trumpet, only the tragically short-lived Clifford Brown seems to have been truly free of such issues; it's said that he hardly touched even alcohol.

As far as trumpet-playing goes, Davis was the very antithesis of the musician who wowed you with his technical prowess, his flash, or his ability to make the dogs howl with his piercingly high notes. Oh, he could play those high notes when he wanted to. But his style seemed to be marked more by what he didn't play than by what he did, a stylistic feature Davis himself credited to the influence of the spacious yet virtuosic playing of pianist Ahmad Jamal. What you really notice about Miles' trumpeting, more than anything else, is the pure corporeal sound of it - the remarkable variety of grunts and growls and groans and moans and whispers and shouts (it is, above all, an extremely vocal sound) he could coax from that horn, with just his lips, his valving fingers, and the judicious use of his Harmon mute. To the connoisseur of music, that, of course, is technical bravura to the max; for, like the ability to play so many notes in such a short span of time, the ownership of such a staggering timbral palette could come about only through sheer know-how and a great deal of practice.

But here's what I think the takeaway from Miles should be: Take any other jazz musician - let's go with trumpeters to make things otherwise the same. Louis Armstrong? The single greatest trumpeter in the New Orleans/Dixieland style. Bunny Berigan? One of the greats of the Big Band/swing era. Dizzy Gillespie and Fats Navarro? Players who started out in swing but helped invent the new "Modern Jazz" (what we now call "bebop"), along other with other shining stars such as Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Charlie Christian, and Kenny Clarke. Chet Baker? A bop player who's most associated with the West Coast/cool jazz side of things. Blue Mitchell? Great hard bop player. Don Cherry? One of the foremost players of free and avant-garde jazz from the late 50s onward.

But Miles? When he started out playing as a kid (the upper-middle-class son of a dentist from a suburb north of St. Louis), everybody was still playing swing music. Then, when bebop came around in the early-to-mid 40s, he learned how to play that; when he landed in New York in 1945, he took the town by storm, quickly becoming one of the city's hottest young players, and cutting some of his earliest records with Charlie Parker himself.

Then in 1949 is when things really started to move for Miles. The project which later became marketed as The Birth of the Cool was for all intents and purposes just that (notwithstanding some slightly earlier efforts by Lennie Tristano and his disciples). Then in the mid-50s, when there was a backlash against the cerebral, "white" sound of cool jazz, Miles became, with his First Great Quintet, one of the major players in the funkier, more gospel- and Latin-tinged sub-genre known as hard bop. Then in 1959, that year during which so much that was new in jazz appeared, Miles pioneered, along with a superb one-off band that included Coltrane and Bill Evans, modal jazz (essentially, playing over scales instead of chord changes) on Kind of Blue, considered by many to be the finest jazz album ever recorded.

By the mid-1960s, Davis was the dean of avant-garde jazz with the Second Great Quintet, although he never quite went so far as the free jazz that Ornette Coleman had pioneered, and that First Quintet alumnus Coltrane was then exploring ever-more deeply. Miles was a tad bit late to the fusion game, but with 1970's Bitches Brew, he produced, along with the studio wizardry of Teo Macero, one of its few true masterpieces. Within just months, he was touching upon the jazz-funk with which Second Quintet alumnus Herbie Hancock would make his mark as a bandleader.

So, you see... with Miles Davis, you can't say he was "this" or "that" kind of jazz musician. That's because from the late 1940s onward, he was at or near the forefront of practically every single new development that occurred in jazz - whatever he did, he did either before anyone else did it, or better than anyone else did it, or both.

Well, that's Miles Davis... or at least how I see him. Now all that's left for you to do is read more below...

Austin Beefcake - Godz of Rock Edition

This one's for all of you out there who've been clamouring for pics of my boyfriends, after my recent post about them. Just take a deep breath and cool your jets, people. There's plenty of this hot Central Texas rock-hard man-love to go around for everybody...

09-27: Metallica Cliff's Last Show Stockholm 1986 - McCartney & Wings Fort Worth 1976 - Walter Trampler : Hindemith | Reger - Rory Storm & the Hurricanes Complete 1963-64

1614 – Felice Anerio (Italian composer, singer, priest & choirmaster, Papal royal chapel)
1919 – Adelina Patti (Italian lyric coloratura soprano)
1921 – Engelbert Humperdinck (German opera composer, Hänsel und Gretel)
1935 – Alan Gray (English organist & composer)
1956 – Gerald Finzi (English composer)
1965 – Harry Reser (American jazz banjoist & bandleader)
1972 – Rory Storm (English skiffle singer & songwriter, the Hurricanes)
1979 – Jimmy McCullough (Scottish rock & pop guitarist, bass guitarist & singer, Wings)
1986 – Cliff Burton (American metal bass guitarist & songwriter, Metallica)
1995 – Christopher Shaw (English composer, pianist & music critic)
1997 – Walter Trampler (German-born American violist)
2007 – Dale Houston (American rock & pop singer, Dale & Grace)
2008 – Mahendra Kapoor (Indian playback singer)
2011 – Johnny "Country" Mathis (American country singer & songwriter)
 
Hello. I have been chosen to lighten Pictagoras's load on Yesterday in Dead Musicians. Think of me as a substitute teacher. That doesn't mean you can run around the room groping people like the Marx Brothers, but then again you're probably sitting in your underwear alone eating cereal; ergo, no one to grope. Well, let's start with Adelina Patti.

She was a well-received 19th century opera singer, whom Guiseppe Verdi called perhaps the finest singer who had ever lived and a “stupendous artist.” Well, there are no tape recorders in the distant past, so Verdi doesn't have a historical pool of, say, Baroque singers to compare her to. That being said, she was supposed to have had quite a voice. She made over 30 recordings, so it's possible to hear her for yourself. She even spoke beyond the grave on a New Year's Eve message intended for her husband to play after she was gone.

The critics of her time agree with Verdi. She came from a long line of operatic singers. Her parents were a tenor and a soprano; I'll let you figure out which parent was which. Adelina was born in Madrid, but her family moved to New York City soon after. She grew up in the Bronx. But back to her voice.

She had a unique, warm tone with equalized registers, and a range that extended from C4 to F6. According to the modern day oracle Wikipedia, during the 1860's, “she had a sweet, high-lying voice of birdlike purity and remarkable flexibility.” Wow. Also her lower notes gained fullness with age.

The definitive anecdote regarding Adelina Patti concerns the time she pulled a "Rasputin" when singing for Abraham Lincoln and family. Her performance moved them to tears, which wasn't difficult since the President and First Lady had just lost their son Willie to typhoid fever. It didn't help that the song was Payne's “Home Sweet Home.” After this event the song became associated with Adelina. In her time, no one else could sing it better. But in her autumn years she started to play it safe. Easy thing to do as we grow older. 

She once sang an aria by Rossini, “Una voce poco fa” from The Barber of Seville, in the composer's presence. It's not necessary to mention that this was a big deal. Bigger than auditioning for Simon Cowell. The problem was that many embellishments had been made to the vocal part (by Strakosch, Patti's mentor and brother-in-law) in order to suit her voice. Rossini asked whose composition it was. After he learned it was his, he hit the roof, insisting that it was not his and was fit for pigs, in less words.

As a testament to her fame, Adelina Patti is mentioned in contemporary literary works such as Oscar Wilde's A Picture of Dorian Grey, Émile Zola's Nana, and The Village in the Treetops by Jules Verne.

Composer Engelbert Humperdinck has a funny name. Why a pop singer born "Arnold George Dorsey" would choose it on purpose is a bit mysterious. Humperdinck is best known for Hänsel und Gretel, a children's opera that started out as an accompaniment for a puppet show his nieces were giving. The acorn grew, and in 1891 he began working on the orchestration. Richard Strauss called the opera “a masterpiece of the highest quality... all of it original, new, and so authentically German.” Humperdinck suffered a heart attack while watching a performance of Weber's Der Freischütz - in a production which was the first effort as a stage director by his son, Wolfram Humperdinck. Engelbert died of a second heart attack soon after. Our parents have such subtle ways of critiquing our work.

Gerald Finzi was a composer of many songs and other vocal works; some of them, such as Dies Natalis (1946) and Farewell to Arms (1944), feature an orchestral accompaniment. Finzi was a fairly conservative composer, and his music doesn't sting your eardrums too much. However, his extra-musical interests were a tad bizarre, in a quirky, Chekhovian kind of way. (That's to say that a character could be fleshed out dramatically by adding some of Finzi's interests to the story.) He was an apple grower. In fact, he saved several apple varieties from extinction. He was also into English literature, poetry, and philosophy. He collected over 3000 volumes, some of them rarer that my Mode edition 1 John Cage LP. That is to say, pretty rare. He died from shingles, which was related to Hodgkins Disease, a day after the first performance of his Cello Concerto had been given on the radio.

Well, this is interesting. We have a musician who played with one Beatle before he was a Beatle, and another who played with a different Beatle after he was a Beatle.

Rory Storm was born with a stutter, played skiffle, and preferred to run home after his concerts. He was devilishly handsome, as his picture will attest. What is skiffle? In a nutshell, it's old-timey music played on homemade instruments. Skiffle had a resurgence in Britain around the time Rory came of age. There were an estimated 30–50,000 skiffle groups in Britain in the 1950s. 

Rory's best-known band was Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. Their drummer was a soon-to-be-famous Ringo Starr. Ringo was ambivalent about music then, but Rory convinced him to quit his job and focus on music by giving him “Starr Time,” a solo spot. And reminding him that chicks dig musicians. 

Rory changed his name legally (his birth name was Alan Caldwell) and changed the name of his house to Stormsville. He was known for swanky clothes and cars, was once caught writing “I love Rory” on the railway walls in Bootle, Merseyside, and used a pet monkey as his mascot. Other feats to go along with his image include diving off a swimming board after a song in one of his shows; playing a whole concert wearing a hood after being told about a boil on his face; and using a torch to light the stage one night when the concert lights weren't working. 

After the Hurricanes, Rory worked as a disc jockey and lived with his mother. His death was caused by a combination of alcohol and sleeping pills, but it was deemed accidental and not a suicide. However, his mother may have in fact killed herself after discovering his body, although this was never proven. 

Jimmy McCullough, guitarist for Paul McCartney's band Wings, also played in Thunderclap Newman, One in a Million, and Stone the Crows. But none of those gave him the kind of fame dreams are made of - the kind that working with an ex-Beatle can give. He started with blues-rock band Stone the Crows when, in a morbid twist of fate, their guitarist Les Harvey was electrocuted onstage. McCullough joined STC as Harvey's replacement in June 1972. The project was short-lived, and Stone the Crows disbanded less than a year later. But the position gave him enough mojo to land a gig in Wings. His debut track was “Junior's Farm.” The two Wings albums he played on are Venus and Mars and Wings at the Speed of Sound. Neither have been reissued on vinyl yet (first thing that I checked), but Paul has quite a few solo albums available on wax. After Wings, Jimmy joined the reformed Small Faces and played on their album 78 in the Shade. The last song McCullough recorded before he died was with The Dukes - “Heartbreaker,” which appeared on their only album.

“Bass solo. Take one.” Those are the opening lines to Cliff Burton's bass solo, “Pulling Teeth” which is perhaps the greatest metal bass solo ever recorded in the studio. Well, it's the only metal bass solo recorded in the studio I can think of, but still that doesn't change anything. Cliff is one of the greatest heavy metal bassists of all time. I think most headbangers would agree. He recorded three albums with Metallica: Kill 'Em All, Ride the Lightning, and Master of Puppets. All three are available on a nicely pressed/remastered Mobile Fidelity reissue. I own them on 45 rpm and the sound is mind-blowing! Master of Puppets is generally regarded as the best metal album in history. Can't argue with tradition; but it was an argument when the album came out. They lost the best hard rock/heavy metal album of that year to Jethro Tull's Crest of a Knave. While many metalheads still are scratching their matted hair over that one, I myself like both albums.

Have you seen The Seventh Seal? I can't manage to sit though it, but there is a very famous scene where the protagonist plays chess with Death. One night, 25 years ago, Cliff Burton and Kirk Hammet, Metallica's lead guitarist, were fighting over the comfortable bunk bed on their tour bus. They drew cards and Burton won with the Ace of Spades. But soon after, the bus skidded off the road, destroying both the bunk bed and its inhabitant, but leaving Kirk relatively unscathed. Fortune has a dark symmetry. What was that Blake quote about a tiger?

Walter Trampler was a German violist and viola teacher. He began music studies when he was six. He was the violist for the Strub String Quartet, and recorded with them in its second incarnation in the 30s. He emigrated to the United States in 1939, and enlisted in the army during World War II. Trampler was a founding member of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, and was violist for the Yale Quartet. He loved all types of classical music, including baroque and contemporary music. The avant-garde composer Luciano Berio tailored a composition for him. (Mode records has a nice Berio CD box set containing his complete Sequenzas.) 

Mahendra Kapoor was in Indian playback singer. Playback singing is a convention of the Bollywood musical genre, in which a singer is prerecorded for use in movies. (The actor or actress who is "singing" the song in the movie is of course almost always a different person from the real singer.) Kapoor sang over 25,000 songs, and he was most famous for patriotic songs. Trained by the legendary Mohd. Rafi, he was the first Indian playback singer to record in English. For his debut recording, he was singing “Adha Hai Chandrama,” with Asha Bhonsle in the recording booth with him. Due to some technical problem, the music director couldn't hear Kapoor's voice, so he entered the booth and asked why Kapoor wasn't singing. Then Asha explained that he was singing brilliantly. The problem was fixed, and Kapoor had a career because of it. Kapoor also got a chance to record a duet with Mohd. Rafi, his idol and guru. The song was "Kaisi Haseen Aaj Baharon Ki Raat" from the 1967 film Aadmi. The song had originally been recorded as a duet with Rafi and Talat Mehmood, but Manoj Kumar, one of the leading stars in the film, refused for Talat's voice to be used for him. So, the song was re-recorded with Kapoor replacing Talat. It is a unique song, with Talat and Rafi in the original version, and Kapoor and Rafi in the movie version. Also, the movie version is the only duet recorded by these two legends of playback singing.

Johnny “Country” Mathis has no relation to the other Johnny Mathis. “Country” hailed from Texas and learned guitar playing in his father's church. He picked cotton to make ends meet. He played in the duo “Jimmy and Johnny”, and had a Top 10 hit with “If You Don't Someone Else Will.” He wrote over 500 songs, many of which were sung by the likes of George Jones, Tammy Wynette, Johnny Paycheck, Charlie Pride, Johnny Horton, Ray Price, Jimmy Dean, George Hamilton IV, Freddy Fender, Melba Montgomery, Webb Pierce, The Whites, Carl Smith, Bobby Helms, and Elvis Costello. 

He was part of the Louisiana Hayride, a radio and television country music show broadcast from the Shreveport Municipal Memorial Auditorium in Shreveport, Louisiana. While the Grand Old Opry was big stuff even then, the Hayride was the place to go to find virtual unknowns. It made some big careers, including that of Mathis.

One day Johnny had an epiphany while driving down a Texas road. At that moment he devoted his life to Jesus Christ. He then wrote, “I'm Gonna Thank You Jesus.” Mathis abandoned country music and became a gospel singer. So I guess at that point he became Johnny "Gospel" Mathis. Mathis died of a stroke one day before his 81st birthday. 

Well, that's yesterday.

A Little (Semi)Autobiographical (Re)Creative Writing for Your Extreme (Dis)Pleasure

And so there we all were. And the bands were playing, and just about everybody who'd been anybody was there, except for a lot of the people who you were glad weren't there to spoil the fun. And the place looked a lot like the real Cavity had looked, I think (not that I can really remember, because the place itself had been so memorably unmemorable), except that Staryn had gussied it up and made the place look great, had put up all kinds of photos from back in the day of some of the greats, and the near-greats, and the not-so-greats, and people you weren't sure who the fuck they were. Jimmy Bradshaw was in a lot of them. He was one of the greats, he was one of the few who couldn't make it that night, and he was one of the boys I'd always loved. He was such a mensch, such a funny guy, such a hot dude, and still was. Jimmy was married now, to this real hot redhead named Sara, I think. It's the same girl Nathan dated for a while way back in the day, the girl he wrote "Red Snapper" about.

And the real conversation piece in all the artwork was this big 3-by-5-foot backlit transparency of one particular photo that was hung up high on a wall near the door where everybody could see it. It was a photo of the thankfully late GG Allin from the time he played the Cavity, down among the crowd with his hands behind him, almost looking like he was handcuffed (the police did drag him away eventually, like they did most times he played anywhere), but he was really taking a poop in his own hands so he could christen the audience with it, just because he was GG Allin and that was the sort of thing GG Allin did. And there on the far left in that photo was Grant Dorian, maybe 22 years old at the time, yelling joyfully with his fist in the air, you couldn't miss him if you tried. Heck, the kid on the far right in the photo couldn't miss him. Grant was there that night, of course. He was still drumming in bands, although the Rockbusters didn't play those anniversary shows, I think because Dicko couldn't make it down from New York.

I was in such a genial and carefree mood, I was telling everybody I'd ever had the hots for how much I'd always loved them, how much I'd always wanted to jump their bones, and giving 'em all big hugs. And I was talking to Dave Hermann, who was another one of the greats of course, heck the Cavity had been his club, and Dave still looked like Zappa and he probably will forever, and I was telling Dave how much I'd always loved Staryn.

"You know he likes girls, right?"

"Yeah."

Of course I knew that. I didn't care. Staryn was such a beautiful guy. Tall and rugged, though, like most of the guys I'd always had crushes on. You'd never say Jimmy or Brent was a beauty, exactly. They were all tall and handsome, but Staryn was an angel, and he had such a sweet way about him. Everybody loved Staryn.

"I dunno, man," I continued. "Say you and Staryn were shipwrecked on a desert island, just the two of you. You'd spend a few days sending up flares and cracking open coconuts, and then Staryn would start looking at you out of the corner of his eye and saying to himself, 'Hm, Dave.' And that would be it."

Dave laughed. The band started playing a new song.

"And he'd make you his little bitch, which would be pretty easy, because he's bigger and stronger than you. And you wouldn't be all that happy about it at first, but then one day, after you'd both long given up on being rescued, he'd be in the middle of plowing you and you'd look up at him and that face and think 'Hm, Staryn... I guess I could o' done worse...' and then he'd sense the tender feelings washing over you and start plowing you even harder."

Dave laughed hard. We both laughed hard.

The bands kept playing. It was getting towards the end of the night. I wandered around the place, went up to the stage to get a closer look at what the bass player was doing. I ended up back at the table where Dave was selling the t-shirts he'd made especially for the shows. On the back of them it said "20 YEARS LET'S BE FRIENDS." Dave had his own silk-screen shop, he did some fine work. T-shirts, stickers, you name it. And then Staryn came up and starting talking to us. And everybody was having a good time. And finally I gave Staryn a big hug, and he hugged me back, and I told him to stay beautiful. And he smiled.

And the band kept playing...