A Stanley Dance look-alike?

[Christiern]

This is here because I don't see it as a political statement, just a non-political obsevation. Look at this man, does he not bear a striking resemblance to the late Stanley Dance?

Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, the new

chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial.

Edited September 20, 2006 by Christiern

[Larry Kart]

Yes indeed.

[Dan Gould]

Maybe someone should ask him how he feels about those darn boppers.

[mgraham333]

[Randy Twizzle]

Dance is on the right, the guy in the middle is Baron Timme Rosenkrantz.

[Christiern]

Thank you, Twizzle, I was wondering why a photo of my fomer friend and roommate, Timme, got into this thread!

...and is that not Leonard Feather on the left?

Edited September 20, 2006 by Christiern

[Chuck Nessa]

Thank you, Twizzle, I was wondering why a photo of my fomer friend and roommate, Timme, got into this thread!

...and is that not Leonard Feather on the left?

Not Feather. The nose is the first clue. I think that guy played banjo in Deliverance.

FWIW, I think the judge looks kinda' like a young Rich Seidel.

[Randy Twizzle]

According to the website where I found the picture, the man on the left is unidentified.

[Chuck Nessa]

According to the website where I found the picture, the man on the left is unidentified.

Sometimes I know "unidentified" but not this time.

[Christiern]

Well, if there's one thing Leonard never was, its unidentified.

He saw to that!

[Larry Kart]

Speaking of Dance, who contributed a great deal to the music and also was in my experience a very nice man, I just ran across a rather startling quote from him in a letter he wrote to Down Beat in 1940, about Benny Goodman's "contemptible" hiring of Cootie Williams away from Ellington: "...I have no doubt that in comparison with the Duke, Mr. Goodman's band will continue to sound like a bunch of tired businessmen and usurers seeking recreation the the music." Usurers?

[Chuck Nessa]

[Spontooneous]

An anti-Semitic code word?

[Chuck Nessa]

An anti-Semitic code word?

[Larry Kart]

An anti-Semitic code word?

That's how I took it, because while Benny the bandleader could be said to be literally a business man, his being a "usurer" (and the rest of the band, too?) as well as a musician can only be figurative, and usury (lending money at exorbitant rates) was perhaps the chief crime or sin, actual and symbolic, with which Jews traditionally were tagged in anti-Semitic lore. Stanley certainly was angry there; the full quote is: "I find Goodman's actions [in hiring Cootie Williams away from Ellington] as contemptible as his clarinet playing. Evidently the 'King of Swing' has no artistic conscience whatsoever. However, I have no doubt that in comparison with the Duke, Mr. Goodman's band will continue to sound like a bunch of tired business men and usurers seeking recreation the the music. The trouble with jazz today is that there are more business men than musicians engaged in it."

[Larry Kart]

That should be "...seeking recreation in the music."

[Larry Kart]

As for what Stanley could have been thinking there, I know that he very much disliked what he thought Goodman's music was and what he thought it represented -- slick white commercial swing unfairly edging out/feeding on the superior, genuine black music of Ellington, Basie et al. -- and then this was 1940, at the end of decade in which it was not uncommon at various times, both on the Left and on the Right, to link Jews and rampant commercialism. (I'd assume that Stanley was on the Left in the '30s; maybe Chris can enlighten me there.)

[AllenLowe]

Hath not a Benny eyes? Hath not Benny hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer, as Duke Ellington is? If you prick him (the prick), does Benny not bleed? if you tickle Benny, does he not laugh? if you poison Benny (and many people have wanted to), does he not die? And if he hireth Cootie Williams, does the band not swingeth a little more?

Edited September 21, 2006 by AllenLowe

[mgraham333]

Thank you, Twizzle, I was wondering why a photo of my fomer friend and roommate, Timme, got into this thread!

...and is that not Leonard Feather on the left?

You have failed me for the last time, Google image search.

[BruceH]

Speaking of Dance, who contributed a great deal to the music and also was in my experience a very nice man, I just ran across a rather startling quote from him in a letter he wrote to Down Beat in 1940, about Benny Goodman's "contemptible" hiring of Cootie Williams away from Ellington: "...I have no doubt that in comparison with the Duke, Mr. Goodman's band will continue to sound like a bunch of tired businessmen and usurers seeking recreation the the music." Usurers?

Maybe he meant "insurers"...that they played like insurance salesmen. (Not that that makes any sense, but at least it's not antisemitic.)

[BruceH]

This is here because I don't see it as a political statement, just a non-political obsevation. Look at this man, does he not bear a striking resemblance to the late Stanley Dance?

Judge Mohammed Oreibi al-Khalifa, the new

chief judge in Saddam Hussein's genocide trial.

Has anyone felt him out on the subject of Ellinton?