Larry Kart

Believe it or not, I think I was at that gig -- just happened to be in town. My reaction at the time was the same as Chuck's now; musically (and of course in human terms) it was a slow-motion train wreck. Vocalist Lodi Carr BTW was looking after pianist Chris Anderson at the time (and Hank to some extent, too, IIRC). She had her hands full. I think that she tried to take care of Chris until the very end. Kind of a Polly Podewell figure (a probably obscure Chicago reference -- Podewell was a good-looking [if you liked her type] Chicago-based, blonde-haired singer of about my age or maybe a little younger [i'd guess she was in her late 30s or early 40s in the 1980s] who became intensely but seemingly maternally attached to Woody Herman when [or perhaps shortly before] Woody's life went all to hell financially, physically, and otherwise in the '80s and who stepped in to take care of him until the end under often harrowing circumstances. I'm not sure how the original connection between them was made; perhaps Polly sang with the band for a time.) Here's Polly in 1995: http://www.amazon.com/Dont-You-Know-I-Care/dp/B000001UR1

Got this currently o.o.p. set: http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-Complete-Piano-Sonatas-Box/dp/B0001Z4PUK/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_t some three years ago and am very taken with it. Don't recall what led me to it; though I did know Lucchesini for his recordings of works by Berio, I wouldn't think that in itself would be reason enough. Whatever, he's very good. They're live performances, too, FWIW, with quiet audiences.

That's William Schiopffe.

Check out the Pre-Stonewall first graf of this Seymour Krim VV piece: http://www.facebook.com/chrisaschneider#!/photo.php?fbid=431858644354&set=a.98940674354.90321.614794354&pid=5174357&id=614794354 And the last graf has its moments too, especially Krim's final sentence. Larry, The link requires a log-in and I may be the last person on earth who's not on Facebook. Which piece (date) is it? I'll look it up. I've got three of Krim's collection -- what a fascinating writer! Sorry -- it's Dec. 15, 1960, a review of a performance of Sartre's "No Exit."

Check out the Pre-Stonewall first graf of this Seymour Krim VV piece: http://www.facebook.com/chrisaschneider#!/photo.php?fbid=431858644354&set=a.98940674354.90321.614794354&pid=5174357&id=614794354 And the last graf has its moments too, especially Krim's final sentence.

Don Redman's "Chant of the Weed" sounds pretty eerie.

Marc Myers' article, linked to above, says that these new Masterworks remasterings are much inferior to those of the King reissues.

Dave Kehr BTW, "Night of the Hunter" destroys me every time, in part because I was lucky enough to see it for the first time at age 13 when it came out in 1955, in an utter state of innocence that movies were "art." In fact that might be a good idea for a thread -- movies we saw and were moved by when we were in a state of relative or total innocence. Another one that got to me that way for sure was Anthony Mann's "Men In War," with Robert Ryan and Aldo Ray. Great movie, but it also was just what was showing at the local theater that week. "Psycho," by contrast -- though it scared the wits out of me -- was something one knew beforehand was supposed to be big deal, though thanks be I had no idea what it was about. Another one like "Men in War" was Sam Fuller's "The Steel Helmet." Shook me to the core, and not until decades had passed did I know I'd had one of them "art" experiences. And as for "Ma and Pa Kettle Down on the Farm"...

Yes, Mitchum (at the right age) would have been much more like my mind's-eye view of Marlowe than Bogart was, but Mitchum by 1978 was at least two decades too old to play the role, and Bogart's "Big Sleep" was the work of a great director, Howard Hawks, while Mitchum's was directed by a hack, Michael Winner.

Sampled a bit of this; he's talented, reminds me some of Al Jarreau. He's the son of bassist Milton Suggs, who worked with Mary Lou Wiliams.

The best "snow Western" IMO is Andre De Toth's "Day of the Outlaw," with Robert Ryan and Burl Ives: http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/harsh-master/Content?oid=894500 P.S. FWIW, the real authors of "The Night of the Hunter" are Davis Grubb (who wrote the novel) and director Charles Laughton. James Agee's script (I say this based on information from the best film critic I know) was virtually non-existent; Agee was too far gone on drink to produce much of anything. What was printed as Agee's script was what Laughton came up with, adhering closely to Grubb's novel.

He has good taste in influences (Byard, Muhal, Andrew Hill), and I was kind of on board until his blues album from a few years back with that cheesy guitarist, "Same Mother." Yeesh.

So that was Kenton's problem?

Wow, didn't know anything about her, very interesting! Thanks for the photo. One heck of a life (and a pretty darn good person, too, judging by her book and other things): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slim_Keith

on an episode of "Thriller": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8pXe9E2JbI&feature=player_embedded And they talk about "Mad Men" -- this is what that era really was like.

And dig this. Gloria Stuart, the old lady from "Titanic," died today at age 100. This how she looked in her heyday: http://www.fanpix.net/picture-gallery/483/1733483-gloria-stuart-picture.htm That's one of the most awesome pieces of cheesecake I've ever seen.

Slim Keith in 1945: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3460/3715678061_e3120b5cb7_z.jpg%3Fzz%3D1&imgrefurl=http://www.flickr.com/photos/likeabalalaika/3715678061/&usg=__YZLVD5ac56bkLBdiUoxWPjNMCnw=&h=640&w=447&sz=151&hl=en&start=0&zoom=1&tbnid=VDp9rhDLk2mrNM:&tbnh=143&tbnw=100&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dslim%2Bkeith%2Bphotos%26um%3D1%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DX%26biw%3D971%26bih%3D830%26tbs%3Disch:1&um=1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=600&vpy=478&dur=372&hovh=199&hovw=139&tx=81&ty=255&ei=FwOhTMirBcmonQeR49GVDQ&oei=FwOhTMirBcmonQeR49GVDQ&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=23&ved=1t:429,r:21,s:0

I've seen both versions. The first one was fascinating to see, but I think you're right about the familiar second version being better. Which reminds me -- in several ways, the most "perfect" movie I know is "To Have and Have Not," directed by Hawks and with Bogart and Bacall (and Walter Brennan, who is just great in his role, and Hoagy Carmichael). Bogart and Bacall were falling in love in real life, and it's so obvious and in the best way -- the screen seems to glow. Interesting too that Hawks' then wife, Slim Keith, did so much to shape the young Bacall of that film in her own "man's woman" image. Her autobiography "Slim: Memoirs of a Rich and Imperfect Life" is worth tracking down, an entertaining, enlightening book. She was one of the great (though unconsummated) loves of Ernest Hemingway's life.

Thanks for the detective work.

The best Wynton on record I've heard came early on -- Chico Freeman's "Destiny's Dance" and the portion of the Conrad Silvert Tribute concert where he's paired with Wayne Shorter et al.

Don't think your opinion would be shared by many! The Bogart/Bacall version is one of the greatest movies ever made. The Mitchum version is not bad but not a patch on the original (including the acting). Agree the Bogart/Bacall version is better but its script does not make much sense. A priceless movie in any case! No script of the "The Big Sleep" could make that much sense plot-wise because Chandler's novel famously does not. The particular anomaly is, Who killed the chauffeur of Bacall's nymphomanic sister and why? Chandler was asked that question during the making of the film (I think by director Howard Hawks and Bogart), and he had no answer, saying "Damned if I know." I would assume that Hawks wisely realized that it hardly mattered. BTW the original problem perhaps arose for reasons similar to those that were in play with "Farewell, My Lovely," which Chandler assembled out of several separate and previously published novellas. As it happens, the places where the separate plots are welded together in FML are among the most effective and "poetic" passages in that book IMO. As far as I know, "The Big Sleep" did not have that novella-first history (at least not anything that Chandler completed and previously published), but such rhythms of plotting and joining plots together may have been habitual for him, and sometimes, as in "The Big Sleep," there were loose ends. In any case, with Chandler mood is 98 percent of it. My memory of the Mitchum FML was that it was pretty bad. By then Mitchum's face had essentially collapsed, as had (so it seemed) his spirit. Sarah Miles did have a nice broad turn as Jessie Florian, but even if one leaves Mitchum's performance aside, the whole film lacked conviction, perhaps because it was conceived and played as a period piece.

Great news

The Wonderful Country: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053453/fullcredits#writers An excellent western, with Julie London and a superb score by Alex North.

Mark -- If the actual sonic nature of Wynton's writing here were not so dismal (in my view, as well as that of Carnivore and some others who have heard the work and posted here), then the fact that Wynton himself did not orchestrate the piece might not seem potentially notable. At least two possibly inter-related things are at issue here: the quality of Wynton's inspiration when he has pen in hand (also horn in hand, for my tastes, especially in recent years) and his craft knowledge/competence as a composer. If I may quote anonymously from a veteran jazz composer/arranger's recent personal communication to me (not to settle this issue but to at least indicate how many such people in the field feel): "Wynton is totally untrained as a composer. His charts for "Blood on the Fields" were his first-ever big-band charts; I have a copy of one of his score pages, and it looks like a 16-year-old's first chart--and sounded like it. "Never in jazz (and perhaps in Western music) history has an artist received so many major opportunities and produced so little of value. "'Swing Symphony,' my ass. Wynton ... epitomizes what Miles Davis once termed 'hip cornball.'" As for the question of classical, jazz, and Broadway composers whose works have been orchestrated by others, I've recently gone onto this extensively in the aftermath of the Swing Symphony on the Jazz West Coast list. It doesn't seem that complicated a question, just a matter of various circumstances. Borodin was cited by one poster there, Delius by another, but both those men were orchestrators of great talent, even genius in Delius's case. Some of Borodin's works (e.g. "Prince Igor") were orchestrated by Glauzanov and Rimsky-Korsakov because Borodin left them in an incomplete and chaotic state; in other cases, they made suggestions as to scoring (e.g. giving the main tune in the first symphony to cellos rather than English horn) that are now commonly regarded as inferior to Borodin's orginal inspiration. Much of Delius's late work was dictated to and orchestrated by Eric Fenby (in the Delius manner, insofar as that was possible) because Delius was suffering from terminal syphilis. As far as I know, Wynton is in good health. In the world of Broadway and film scoring, composers often expect others to orchestrate their work because of time pressure and the rapidly shifting demands of stage and film production. Some theater and film composers (say, Irving Berlin) couldn't have produced an effective orchestral score if they had all the time in the world; many certainly could but don't (say, John Williams) for the reasons cited above. As for Mingus (and you also could have mentioned the likelihood that Bob Hammer played a major role in orchestrating and formally shaping "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady"); in Mingus's case I think it was not so much lack of orchestral knowledge and imagination (the latter he had in abundance) but actual scoring experience; Jimmy Knepper is on record as saying that some of Mingus's trombone parts were impossible to play as written. A further key factor was Mingus' temperament; on many occasions when deadlines drew near, he was in such a state of emotional turmoil that there just wasn't time for him to do the necessary work of orchestration, even if he had been up to it otherwise. BTW, the idea that orchestration was not a matter of importance for Brahms, or that he even lacked competence in that realm, is an old one but quite mistaken IMO. The "colors" of Brahms's music were not those of, say, Berlioz or Ravel or Richard Strauss, but they were in virtually every case the only colors imaginable and were carefully weighed by the composer.

Yes, I did it in my book. Even so, I was surprised that the old-timey sections of Wynton's piece were so rickety-tick. Whiteman's orchestra may not have swung that overtly, but at its best it certainly glided, and recordings such as "Dardanella," "Changes," and "From Monday On" et al. are handsome, subtle things.