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Mix CD: "The Best of Paul McCartney: The Solo Years-1997-2013"

September 22, 2014, 9:30 am
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Promo poster for Paul's album "Flaming Pie," 1997.


Paul McCartney, 2009.

Paul performing with Ringo in 2014.
As I said in my previous post, Paul McCartney’s solo work since 1980 hasn’t been collected in a greatest hits compilation. So I made my own 2 disc set of my favorite Paul McCartney songs. Volume 1 covered the years 1980 to 1993, and Volume 2 covers 1997 to 2013. In my opinion, Paul McCartney has produced consistently excellent work since 1997’s “Flaming Pie.” He continues to write really great songs, and he keeps exploring new ground as a musician. While in concert Paul plays a lot of Beatles tunes, he’s never let the baggage of being a Beatle weigh down his solo career. He’s not one to dwell on the past, and I think this has helped him in his career. He’s never been afraid of taking risks, from putting his wife in his band to releasing albums of ambient music under the pseudonym “The Fireman.” The 2 disc set that I’ve made certainly doesn’t cover all aspects of McCartney’s music since 1980, as he’s also written an oratorio, various classical pieces, and a score for a ballet. 

Here are the songs I chose for the second disc of “The Best of Paul McCartney: The Solo Years,” covering 1997 to 2013.

1. Flaming Pie
2. The Song We Were Singing
3. The World Tonight
4. Calico Skies
5. No Other Baby
6. Try Not To Cry
7. Lonely Road
8. Driving Rain
9. Your Loving Flame
10. Vanilla Sky
11. Fine Line
12. English Tea
13. Riding to Vanity Fair
14. Promise to You Girl
15. Dance Tonight
16. Ever Present Past
17. Mr. Bellamy
18. Sing the Changes
19. Highway
20. My Valentine
21. Save Us
22. Everybody Out There
23. I Can Bet

Some comments about the songs:

“Flaming Pie,” from “Flaming Pie,” 1997: While “Flowers in the Dirt” and “Off the Ground” got a lot of press at the time for being “comeback” albums for McCartney, I think time has shown that “Flaming Pie” is a much stronger album. In between the release of “Off the Ground” in 1993 and “Flaming Pie” in 1997, McCartney spent a lot of time on The Beatles’ “Anthology” series, and he credited working on the “new” Beatles songs for “Anthology” with jump-starting his own creativity. The title song is a stomping rocker, with a great piano part. It features surrealistic lyrics from McCartney, and the title came from a piece that John Lennon wrote for Mersey Beat about the origin of The Beatles’ name. 

“The Song We Were Singing,” from “Flaming Pie,” 1997: A gentle song about Paul’s relationship with John Lennon, as Paul sings about the different things they would talk about, but how “we always came back to the song we were singing.” The lyrics sound very 1960’s, as Paul sings, “Take a sip/see the world through a glass/and speculate about the cosmic solution.”

“The World Tonight,” from “Flaming Pie,” 1997: This song has a sense of mystery about it, as we never find out exactly who the narrator of the song is addressing, and what their relationship is to the narrator. No matter, it’s a catchy song that was the first single from “Flaming Pie.” 

“Calico Skies,” from “Flaming Pie,” 1997: A beautiful acoustic song, produced by George Martin. Paul sings “I’ll hold you for as long as you like/I’ll hold you for the rest of my life.” 

“No Other Baby,” from “Run Devil Run,” 1999: After Linda McCartney died of breast cancer in April of 1998, Paul went into seclusion for a while. When he returned to making music, he made an album of old rock and roll songs from the 1950’s, which would become “Run Devil Run.” It’s an excellent album full of obscure songs like “No Other Baby,” which was a B-side for the group The Vipers. While the Vipers’ original was a rather brisk skiffle tune, Paul’s cover is slower and moodier, with great yearning vocals.

“Try Not to Cry,” from “Run Devil Run,” 1999: Even though “Run Devil Run” is a covers album, Paul ended up writing 3 new songs for the album. “Try Not to Cry” is very simple, but amazingly catchy. The chorus is just “Try, try, try/I try not to cry, cry, cry/cry over you/over you.” But it’ll stay in your head for days.

“Lonely Road,” from “Driving Rain,” 2001: Paul’s 2001 album “Driving Rain” is a favorite of mine. I think it has a lot of great songs on it, but it proved to be Paul’s least successful studio album in the UK, peaking at number 46. “Lonely Road” is the first song on the album, and it starts with a lovely bass intro. I’ve always wondered if this song was unconsciously about Linda, as the first verse is: “I tried to get over you/I tried to find something new/but all I could ever do/was fill my time/with thoughts of you.” Paul’s rocking vocal is terrific. 

“Driving Rain,” from “Driving Rain,” 2001: Another effortlessly catchy tune from Macca. The hook is: “1,2,3,4,5, let’s go for a drive/6,7,8,9,10, let’s go there and back again.” Why is that so catchy? Paul’s gift for melody is amazing. I remember reading a description of Paul that said, “He can write a hit song as easily as most people cross the street.” Yup. 

“Your Loving Flame,” from “Driving Rain,” 2001: A lovely piano ballad.

“Vanilla Sky,” from “Vanilla Sky Soundtrack,” 2001: Paul was nominated for an Oscar and a Golden Globe for this song, from the Tom Cruise movie. The song itself is light as a feather, and it sounds like the kind of confection that Paul can whip up in just minutes. “Oh, you need a song for a movie? Called Vanilla Sky? Okay, got it!”

“Fine Line,” from “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” 2005: For his next album, 2005’s “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” Paul worked with producer Nigel Godrich, best known for producing Radiohead. Paul played nearly all of the instruments on the album himself, and it’s a very strong piece of work. “Fine Line” is the first song on the album, and it was the lead single. It really should have been a bigger hit. The song is dominated by Paul’s pounding piano. Paul plays all of the instruments on it, except for the strings, and the music video imagines a band made up of many Paul McCartneys, sort of similar to his video for “Coming Up.” 

“English Tea,” from “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” 2005: One of my favorite Paul songs. In “English Tea” Paul sends up his own image as a creator of silly songs as he sings, “Would you care to sit with me/for a cup of English tea/very twee/very me.” It’s a simple song, but very catchy and delightful. Paul’s always had a spirit of fun about him, from songs like “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,”  “Monkberry Moon Delight,” “Silly Love Songs,” “The Pound is Sinking,” and “English Tea.” I really like that Paul isn’t afraid to indulge his more whimsical side. 

“Riding to Vanity Fair,” from “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” 2005: Wonderful song with an incessant, melancholy melody and great lyrics. Although this song pre-dates Paul’s divorce from his second wife Heather Mills, it’s hard not to wonder if this song was about her. Sample verse: “The definition of friendship/apparently ought to be/showing support for the/one that you love/and I was open to friendship/but you didn’t seem to have any to spare/while you were riding to vanity fair.” 

“Promise to You Girl,” from “Chaos and Creation in the Backyard,” 2005: Paul puts several pieces together and comes up with this catchy piece of pop. It starts out slow, with Paul playing the piano and singing, “Looking through the backyard of my life/time to sweep the fallen leaves away.” Then it sounds very Beatle-y as Paul sings, “Like the sun that rises every day/we can chase the dark clouds from the sky.” And then the piano starts pounding and it turns into an up tempo tune, all in the first 30 seconds. 

“Dance Tonight,” from “Memory Almost Full,” 2007: “Memory Almost Full,” Paul’s 2007 release, was another excellent album with strong songs. Like “Fine Line” before it, “Dance Tonight” is a catchy earworm of a song that should have been a huge hit. Paul plays all of the instruments on “Dance Tonight.”

“Ever Present Past,” from “Memory Almost Full,” 2007: This song is about time moving too fast, as Paul sings, “Searching for the time that has gone so fast/the time that I thought would last/my ever present past.” It’s a nice exploration of our relationship to our own past.

“Mr. Bellamy,” from “Memory Almost Full,” 2007: This might seem to be a left-field choice, but I really like this song. It starts with horns before a jagged piano part comes in and Paul starts singing. “Mr. Bellamy” has two voices, one is Mr. Bellamy, who sings, “I’m not coming down/no matter what you do/I like it up here/without you.” The other voice is Mr. Bellamy’s would-be rescuers, who sing, “All right Mr. Bellamy/we’ll have you down soon.” It’s an interesting song.

“Sing the Changes,” from “Electric Arguments,” 2008: McCartney has recorded three albums with the producer Youth under the pseudonym “The Fireman.” The first two, “Strawberries Oceans Ships Forest,” from 1993, and “Rushes,” from 1998, were ambient electronic albums. “Electric Arguments,” the third Fireman album, is more similar to McCartney’s rock records, as they have more conventional song structures and feature Paul singing lead vocals. The rule that McCartney and Youth made for the songs on “Electric Arguments” was that each song had to be finished the same day it was started. So the album was recorded over 13 days, spread over the course of a year. “Electric Arguments” is a superb album that shows Paul’s relentless creative drive. “Sing the Changes” is an exuberant song about the power of music.

“Highway,” from “Electric Arguments,” 2008: A catchy groover that tells the tale of a girl “Running through the nighttime/and looking like a wreck/got too many highlights/and a love bite on her neck.” 

“My Valentine,” from “Kisses on the Bottom,” 2012: For his 2012 album of standards, “Kisses on the Bottom,” Macca thankfully chose rather obscure songs to set it apart from all the other “veteran rock star sings old standards” albums of late. True to form, Paul couldn’t help but write two new songs for the album. One of them is “My Valentine,” a lovely ballad that he wrote for his third wife, Nancy Shevell. “My Valentine” has been regularly performed by Paul in concert since 2012. 

“Save Us,” from “New,” 2013: Paul’s most recent album, the simply titled “New,” is another excellent record full of good songs. “Save Us” is the first track on the album, and it’s a brisk rocker. 

“Everybody Out There,” from “New,” 2013: This is another upbeat song, as Paul exhorts listeners to “Do some good before you say goodbye.” 

“I Can Bet,” from “New,” 2013: Paul gets slinky on this funky one, as he sings “I’ll look you straight in the eye and pull you to me/what I’m gonna do next I’ll leave entirely to your imagination.” It’s pretty amazing that 50 years after The Beatles released “Please Please Me” Paul McCartney is still making great music.
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Derek Jeter and Keith Olbermann

September 25, 2014, 10:10 pm
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Derek Jeter, wearing a Derek Jeter patch, 2014.

Two days ago Keith Olbermann went on a rant on his TV show about how Derek Jeter is overrated, and that he’s sick of all the hype surrounding Jeter’s impending retirement. While I agree with Olbermann that Jeter is overrated, the rant that he went on was annoying and over the top. Olbermann didn’t give Jeter any credit for being a great player, which annoyed me. He called Jeter “excellent,” but that’s it. I think it’s completely logical to think these two things:

1. Derek Jeter is a great baseball player
2. Derek Jeter is also overrated

I should say that I’m not a Yankees fan. I’m a Twins fan, and I hate how the Yankees have crushed us in the playoffs in 2003, 2004, 2009, and 2010. That being said, I admire and respect Derek Jeter. He plays the game hard, all the time. He’s the kind of player you’d love to have on your team, and the kind of player you hate playing against. 

So what does Olbermann have against Jeter? Well, first Olbermann criticizes Jorge Posada for saying that Jeter is the greatest Yankee of all time. Come on, what do you think Posada is going to say? Jorge Posada played with Derek Jeter for 17 years. Jorge Posada did not play with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, or Mickey Mantle. Jorge Posada is not a baseball historian. He’s not going to say, “Well, actually, if you look at OPS+ and WAR, no one has ever come close to surpassing Babe Ruth as the greatest Yankee of all time.” His purpose, at that press conference, is to say something nice about Derek Jeter. Of course people who really know the history of the game know that Derek Jeter isn’t the greatest Yankee ever. 

Yes, Derek Jeter is overrated as a player. Yes, the year-long celebration of him and how wonderful he is has become a little grating. But what Olbermann didn’t say is that there are reasons why Derek Jeter is overrated:

1. Jeter has played his entire career for the New York Yankees, which means that he plays for the most famous baseball team in the world. Just because of that fact, he’s going to get more media attention than, say, Paul Konerko, who has played almost his whole career for the White Sox, and who is also retiring at the end of this season.

      2. Jeter has played almost an entire season’s worth of post-season games. 158, to be exact. Even if you’re a casual baseball fan who only plays attention in October, Derek Jeter is someone you are very familiar with. Jeter also comes through during the playoffs. His regular season slash line is .309/.377/.439. His postseason slash line is .308/.374/.465. Derek Jeter consistently comes up big when the game is on the line, as he showed tonight when he got the game-winning hit in his final home game at Yankee Stadium.
      
      3. Derek Jeter is very media friendly. He’s movie-star handsome. He has a knack for always saying the right thing. He comes off as a smart, well-spoken guy. He’s always been a class act. And he just seems like a really nice guy. (In contrast to A-Rod, who always says the wrong thing at the wrong time and comes off as a jerk.)

For those reasons, it’s inevitable that Derek Jeter is going to get a lot of media attention and press coverage and be much more famous than other baseball players. It isn’t so much that Derek Jeter is overrated; it’s that he’s overexposed. 

To further criticize Jeter, Olbermann picks the stat, “Best WAR per season as a Yankee,” which is slightly misleading, since Jeter played more seasons for the Yankees than anyone else on the list. Jeter has played for 20 seasons, but since Olbermann is only counting full seasons, we’ll disregard the 1995 and 2013 seasons for Jeter, putting him at 18 full seasons, and an average of 3.8 WAR per season. I’m not sure where Olbermann is getting his numbers from. I’ve used baseball-reference.com for my WAR stats. According to baseball-reference, Jeter has 71.7 WAR for his career. If we take away 1995 and 2013, his partial seasons, he has 72.7 WAR, which would be an average of 4.04 WAR per season, which is higher than the 3.8 figure Olbermann has. So how does Jeter compare to those other Yankees that Olbermann mentions?

Graig Nettles averaged 4.0 WAR a year as a Yankee, but he also played for the Yankees for just 11 seasons, rather than Jeter’s 18. Nettles also played for the Yankees during the peak of his career, which helps his WAR as a Yankee. If you look at Nettles’ whole career,  he had 68 WAR over 22 years, which averages out to 3.09 WAR per year, quite a bit lower than Jeter’s 3.8. 

Red Ruffing pitched for the Yankees for 15 years, so the 7 years he played for the Red Sox at the beginning of his career, when he was a crappy pitcher with an ERA+ of 92, don’t count. It’s also silly to compare pitching WAR to hitting WAR anyway.

Willie Randolph’s name is spelled wrong in the graphic on Olbermann’s show. He played 13 years for the Yankees, so we’re not counting the last 4 years of his career. When you average out Randolph’s WAR for his entire career, it’s 3.64 per season, which is lower than Jeter’s 3.8.

Mike Mussina played for the Yankees for 8 years. He has more WAR than Jeter, but he’s also a pitcher so the comparison is silly anyway.

Thurman Munson played for 11 years. He died in a plane crash at the age of 32, so we don’t know what kind of numbers he would have put up in the decline phase of his career. He’s not a great comparison to Jeter.

A-Rod has been a Yankee for 10 years. Yes, he has more WAR than Jeter. He’s also a steroid user.

Joe DiMaggio only played for 13 years, because he missed 3 full seasons due to World War II. Babe Ruth played 15 years for the Yankees. Lou Gehrig played for 17 years, although 3 of those are partial seasons, putting him at 14 full seasons. Mickey Mantle played 18 years, the same number as Jeter when we take away his partial seasons. Mantle is the only player on the list who has played as many seasons with the Yankees as Jeter. These comparisons are inexact, and invariably unfair to Jeter, because you’re comparing his entire career to people who played many fewer seasons for the Yankees. Baseball-reference ranks Jeter 5th in WAR for the Yankees, behind Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, and DiMaggio, and I think that’s a better display of where Jeter ranks among the all-time Yankees.

I do agree with Olbermann that Jeter has stunk this year. His stats show that he really did make the right decision to retire. And he probably should have said, “Move me down in the batting order.” However, Joe Girardi probably didn’t want to be in the middle of the inevitable media firestorm that would have occurred had Jeter been moved down in the batting order. 

Yes, the modern merchandising of baseball has made Jeter’s final season a crass marketing juggernaut. But because we knew early in the season that 2014 would be Derek Jeter’s last year, fans got a chance to show their appreciation for him, knowing it would be the final time he played in their city. Sports fans don’t often have a chance to say goodbye so publicly to athletes. Most of them just fade away. Many great players and Hall of Famers did not get the season-long sendoff that Jeter did. To give just a few examples, Jim Palmer was released by the Orioles in May, 1984. Steve Carlton was released by the Twins in April, 1988. Mike Schmidt abruptly retired in May, 1989. Ken Griffey abruptly retired in June, 2010. Pete Rose just stopped putting himself in the lineup after August 17, 1986. Fans didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to these great players. So it’s pretty cool that Derek Jeter got to have a final lap. I’ll admit, when the All-Star Game came to Target Field this year, I was proud to stand up and cheer for Jeter as he exited the game. I was applauding Jeter for his whole career, and the excellence he’s embodied throughout 20 years in the majors. I was applauding his ability to rack up more than 3,400 hits, good for 6th on the all-time list. I was applauding his uncanny ability to make the big play when it needed to be made. I’m glad I got a chance to say goodbye to a truly great player.
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Movie Review: Stanley Kramer's On the Beach, starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire, and Anthony Perkins (1959)

September 26, 2014, 1:03 pm
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Gregory Peck, looking dashing in uniform as Dwight Towers in On the Beach, 1959.


Anthony Perkins, Gregory Peck, and nuclear scientist Fred Astaire.

The Coca-Cola bottle sending the Morse code signals in On the Beach.

A lighter moment on the set with Fred Astaire, Ava Gardner, Gregory Peck, and producer/director Stanley Kramer.

Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner, 1959.
Stanley Kramer’s 1959 film On the Beach was one of the first Hollywood movies to take a serious look at the dangers of nuclear warfare. Based on the 1957 novel by Nevil Shute, On the Beach takes place in the then-future of 1964, after a nuclear war has destroyed nearly all of the life on the planet. Radioactive fallout is slowly spreading south, and On the Beach follows a group of people in Australia, which is the only place in the world that is still inhabited by humans. 

Gregory Peck plays Dwight Towers, the captain the Sawfish, an American nuclear submarine. The Sawfish survived the war and heads to Australia. Towers’ liaison with the Australian Navy is Peter Holmes, played by Anthony Perkins. Holmes has a wife and baby, and he struggles with the realization that they will all soon die. His wife is in denial about their situation, and doesn’t want to discuss it. Holmes introduces Towers to several of his friends, including the alcoholic Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner) and the alcoholic scientist Julian Osborn (Fred Astaire). Towers has a wife and two children in the United States, and although he knows it is highly likely that they are dead, he still talks about them in the present tense. Towers and Moria start spending more time together, and eventually their relationship becomes romantic. 

Meanwhile, naval communications in Australia are picking up Morse code signals from San Diego. The signals are gibberish, but on the possibility that it could be a survivor, they dispatch the Sawfish to check it out. But on their way to San Diego, the Sawfish heads as far north as possible to see if radioactive levels have dropped. Julian Osborn goes along on the trip as the head scientist, and he confirms that radioactive levels are still very high. I was surprised at how little of the movie took place on the submarine. I thought most of the movie would be focused on their journey northward and then to San Diego, but they get to Alaska in about two minutes. The Sawfish stops by San Francisco on their way to San Diego, and one of the most moving moments in the film is the montage of crew members looking through the periscope at a totally uninhabited city. One crewman from the Sawfish, Ralph Swain,is from San Francisco, and he leaves the submarine to return to his home. An oddly moving moment is the conversation that Towers and Swain have the next morning as the Sawfish prepares to depart. Towers is speaking over the loudspeaker of the submarine, so all we see is Swain sitting on shore talking to a submarine periscope. It’s funny and sad at the same time, a moment that seems so surreal, yet the emotion is heightened as we know that Swain’s conversation with Towers will be the last contact he has with another human being before he dies from fallout. 

The Sawfish tracks the Morse code signal to a refinery in San Diego. One of the crew is sent ashore to investigate and find the signal. He finds that the signal is coming from a Coca-Cola bottle that has fallen and gotten stuck in a window shade. As the breeze moves the window shade, the bottle strikes the telegraph keys, sending the nonsense gibberish messages. The last hope for any survivors has been dashed. 

The submarine returns to Australia and the men wait out their inevitable fate. Osborn has always had a passion for cars, so he enters a car race and wins. It’s the most suicidal car race ever seen on film, as drivers deliberately crash their cars to avoid a painful death from nuclear fallout. The government is handing out suicide pills, and Holmes and his wife finally have a realistic conversation about how they will euthanize their baby before killing themselves. Osborn commits suicide by carbon monoxide poisoning, sitting at the wheel of the race car he loved. Towers and Moira know that they have little time left. The remaining crew of the Sawfish vote to head back to the United States, even though they know they will die before they make it home. Towers commands the ship on its final voyage, and Moira watches from a hill as Towers and the Sawfish depart. 

On the Beach is a bleak film. There is no glimmer of hope for mankind, no way out of the terrible situation the characters find themselves in. One of the questions the movie asks is: how would you spend your last days on earth? Personally, I would rather be in the arms of Ava Gardner than on a doomed submarine. But that’s just me.

All of the performances in On the Beach are excellent. Gregory Peck is perfectly cast as the stoic Dwight Towers, who never panics in the face of a terrible future. If I were on a submarine as the world was ending, there’s really no one I’d rather have be in charge than Gregory Peck. Ava Gardner is very well cast as the alcoholic Moira, who sees in Peck a final chance at some happy moments. While it might seem unbelievable that Dwight and Moira would embark on a romantic relationship, the fact that they are played by the superbly handsome Greg Peck and the delectable Ava Gardner makes it seem obvious why they would like each other. On the Beach was Peck and Gardner’s third and final movie together. They also co-starred in The Great Sinner in 1949 and The Snows of Kilimanjaro in 1952. Peck and Gardner have an obvious chemistry in their scenes together. 

Anthony Perkins is touching as the officer with a wife and a young baby. A baby is always a symbol of hope for the future, but in On the Beach we know that there will be no future for this baby. Perkins brings his all-American boy next door charm to the role, and he’s very convincing in the part. A year after On the Beach, Perkins would star as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho,which forever changed his on screen image. Hitchcock saw that Perkins’s off-kilter charm just needed a slight twist to seem super creepy. Although Psycho was a highlight of Anthony Perkins’s movie career, it also typecast him as a bad guy.

On the Beach is a rare non-musical film role for Fred Astaire. He does a good job as the morose scientist, even though his toupee is distractingly awful. Astaire looks so much older in On the Beach than he did in Silk Stockings and Funny Face, both released just two years before On the Beach. The character that Astaire plays was written as a much younger man in his 20’s in the novel. That makes a little more sense given his love of race cars. But Astaire brings touching moments to the part. When Perkins is worried about his wife and baby, Astaire says “At least you have someone to worry about.” 

One thing I didn’t understand about the movie is what nationality is everyone supposed to be? Peck is obviously an American, but what about the characters that Perkins, Astaire, and Gardner play? Are they all supposed to be Australians? Thankfully no one attempts an accent, although Astaire does pronounce some words very strangely, as though he suddenly remembered his character wasn’t American. 

Stanley Kramer does a good job of directing On the Beach, and I liked his use of titled camera angles to emphasize the surreal circumstances the characters find themselves in. There’s ambiguity in On the Beach, as we never learn how the nuclear war started, or which side dropped the first bomb. Ultimately, that’s irrelevant to the story, which was Kramer’s point-every side loses in a nuclear war. Kramer was most famous for serious films that dealt with important topics of the day. His credits as a producer include Death of a Salesman, High Noon, The Wild One, and The Caine Mutiny. As a director, his most famous films are The Defiant Ones, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, Ship of Fools, and Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner. The least successful aspect of On the Beach was the ridiculously repetitive score by Ernest Gold, which will make you really sick of “Waltzing Matilda” by the time you get half an hour into the movie. Oddly enough, Gold won a Golden Globe for his score for On the Beach, and the score was also nominated for an Oscar. Gold would win the Oscar the following year for his score for Exodus. Trivia note: Gold was married to Marni Nixon, who famously dubbed many female stars’ singing voices, including Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady, and Natalie Wood in West Side Story.

On the Beach is an excellent movie from an era in which the threat of nuclear destruction was at its highest, and I strongly recommend it.
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Book Review: Baseball's Best Kept Secret, and Life Is a Hit; Don't Strike Out, by Al Oliver

October 2, 2014, 2:07 am
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Life Is a Hit; Don't Strike Out, by Al Oliver, 2014.


Baseball's Best Kept Secret, by Al Oliver and Andrew O'Toole, 1997.

A handsome head shot of Al with the Pirates. This photo makes it look like he records for Motown Records in the off-season.

Al Oliver enjoyed some of his best seasons with the Texas Rangers, hitting .319 for them over 4 seasons. And yes, his necklace says "Scoop." That's his nickname because he was so good at scooping up low throws to first base.

Al's 1983 Topps card, after winning the 1982 NL batting title with the Montreal Expos.
Al Oliver was one of baseball’s most dangerous hitters in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Oliver was a 7-time All-Star, a 3 time Silver Slugger award winner, and the 1982 National League batting champion. During Oliver’s career from 1968 to 1985, only Pete Rose and Rod Carew had more hits than he did. Oliver finished his career with 2,743 hits and a .303 lifetime batting average. So why was he dumped from the Hall of Fame ballot after failing to win 5% of the vote in his first year on the ballot? Good question. I think Al Oliver deserves to be in the Hall of Fame, and I think he’s one of the most underrated players in recent baseball history. 

Al Oliver just published an autobiography in September called Life Is a Hit; Don’t Strike Out: The Al Oliver Story. Oliver published an earlier autobiography in 1997 called Baseball’s Best Kept Secret: Al Oliver and His Time in Baseball, written with co-author Andrew O’Toole. Both books shed light on the man off of the baseball diamond. Baseball’s Best Kept Secret is the better book, as Oliver goes into much more detail about his playing career. If you’re reading Life Is a Hit without having read Baseball’s Best Kept Secret, you will be missing a lot of information. Unfortunately, just reading the books will be more work than it should be, as it is painfully obvious that neither book was professionally proof-read. Grammatical errors abound, and co-author Andrew O'Toole has an interesting interpretation of correct comma usage. That being said, if you can overlook the sloppy mistakes, the books offer a look at an interesting athlete. 

One thing that makes Baseball's Best Kept Secret interesting is that Oliver and O'Toole include other voices in the book-there are interviews with Oliver's teammates, sportswriters who covered the teams he played for, and excerpts from contemporary news articles about him. Not all of these other voices are complimentary to Oliver, and some of them quite pointedly criticize him. I applaud Al Oliver for including these other voices, and for not just creating an echo chamber of "Al Oliver should be a Hall of Famer." Oliver does the same thing in Life Is a Hit, sometimes enlisting some of the very same people quoted in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret. The problem is that most of the voices in Life Is a Hit do blur together, as they repeat the same thing: “Al Oliver should be a Hall of Famer.” Oh well, I can’t blame Oliver for wanting to be in the Hall.

Oliver grew up in Portsmouth, Ohio, where he played baseball and basketball against another future All-Star, Larry Hisle. Oliver dealt with tragedy early on, as his mother died of a heart attack when he was 13, and his father died on the same day that Oliver was called up to the major leagues. Oliver makes it clear in both books that his parents’ influence on him made him the man he was.

Signed by the Pittsburgh Pirates out of high school in 1964, Oliver quickly moved up the minor league ranks to earn a September call up in 1968. Oliver would never return to the minor leagues. A superbly gifted line drive hitter, Oliver could hit the ball hard to all fields. Oliver was a first baseman in high school and the minor leagues, but with the Pirates he alternated between first base and the outfield. In 1971, Oliver played a majority of his games in center field, where he was flanked by Hall of Famers Willie Stargell in left field and Roberto Clemente in right field. The outfield of Stargell, Oliver, and Clemente generated a lot of offense for the Pirates that year, as they beat the Orioles in the World Series. Late in the 1971 season, Oliver made history as he was part of the first all African-American and Latin starting lineup. Oliver blossomed as a hitter as the 1970’s went on, and beginning in 1972, he batted .300 or more in 11 of the last 14 years of his career. Traded to the Texas Rangers after the 1977 season, Oliver thrived in the hot Texas summers, batting .319 over 4 years with the Rangers. He had one of his finest seasons at the plate in 1980, getting over 200 hits for the first time in his career, and also hitting 19 home runs, which helped him finish the season with 117 RBI. During spring training in 1982, Oliver was traded to the Montreal Expos. He responded with his best season, as he led the NL in hits, doubles, RBI, batting average, and total bases. Oliver hit .331, the highest average of his career, and he finished in 3rd place in the MVP voting. During his last two years in baseball, 1984 and 1985, Oliver bounced from team to team, as he spent time with the Giants, Phillies, Dodgers, and Blue Jays. He was one of many veteran players who were not offered a contract for the 1986 season because of collusion among baseball’s owners. 

The collusion scandal started because baseball’s owners were annoyed at the high salaries free agency had brought. They retaliated by illegally colluding with each other to not offer contracts to free agents and to coordinate their offers to free agents in an attempt to keep salaries down. Two of the most famous cases of collusion were against Tim Raines and Andre Dawson, both of the Montreal Expos. After the 1986 season, Dawson and Raines were not offered contracts by any teams, despite the fact that they were two of the best players in baseball. Raines had just won a batting title, and yet he received no offers until the Expos finally re-signed him on May 1st, a month into the 1987 season. When no one offered Dawson a contract, he and his agent wrote a blank check to the Chicago Cubs and told them Dawson would play for them for any amount they would offer. Dawson ended up being the NL MVP in 1987 for the Cubs. 

Throughout his career, Al Oliver was regarded by the press as an overly confident braggart. Al's response to that was his great quote: "There's no such thing as bragging. You're either lying or telling the truth." Oliver always felt he was telling the truth about his abilities on the baseball diamond, even when that truth was predicting every day that he would get 4 or 5 hits. In his two books, Oliver shows us where that self-confidence and relentlessly positive attitude came from. Al Oliver was an African-American man who was raised by his parents to be very proud to be an African-American. When Oliver came to the major leagues in 1968, this was a rarity in the pro sports world. Oliver was not a militant, but as far as major league baseball was concerned, he might as well have been leading protest marches in the outfield. Oliver and other outspoken African-American baseball players of the 1970’s like Dick Allen, Reggie Jackson, and Oliver's teammate Dock Ellis would feel the brunt of white baseball writers' casual racism. 

One of the key passages in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret is a conversation that Oliver had early in his career with Roberto Clemente about the press. Oliver quotes Clemente saying to him, “They did it to me at the start of my career; the writers will give you a personality that they perceive.” (p.72) Baseball writers had decided early on in Clemente’s career that he was a hypochondriac who didn’t always give 100%. That label would dog Clemente his entire career. Likewise, Oliver was portrayed as arrogant, when he thought he was simply expressing confidence in his abilities. In both books, Oliver comes off as an affable, likeable man who was a quiet leader on his teams through his positive attitude and his generosity towards his fellow players.

Oliver was one of baseball’s steadiest hitters during his career, and he put up some really great numbers. Baseball’s Best Kept Secret lists where Oliver ranks in several categories during his career from 1968-1985. But since Oliver only played in 4 games in 1968 and collected just 1 hit, it’s a little more fair to Oliver to look at his stats from 1969-1985. 

Most Hits 1969-1985:
Pete Rose-3,095
Rod Carew-2,777
Al Oliver-2,742

Most Doubles 1969-1985:
Pete Rose-553
Al Oliver-529

Most RBIs 1969-1985:
Reggie Jackson-1,521
Tony Perez-1,342
Al Oliver-1,326
Johnny Bench-1,288

That’s very impressive company to keep. And while some might disregard those stats as just being cherry-picked to highlight Oliver’s career, the fact that the time span of those stats is 17 seasons makes the point that over 17 seasons Al Oliver was one of the best hitters in baseball. 

The Veterans' Committee for the Hall of Fame has put Oliver on their ballot in the past, and he deserves to be considered for election to the Hall of Fame. Oliver had a very similar career to another one of my favorite overlooked players, Vada Pinson. I’ve written about Pinson before, and I was excited to read in Baseball’s Best Kept Secret that Pinson was one of Oliver’s favorite players when he was growing up. For whatever reason, neither Oliver nor Pinson drew much support from the sportswriters who vote for the Hall of Fame. Oliver dropped off the ballot in his first year, and Pinson’s vote total never exceeded 16%, far short of the 75% of the vote needed for induction. Oliver and Pinson had similar skills; they were both hitters who slashed line drives all over the field and didn’t walk or strike out much. Because they didn’t walk much, their Hall of Fame candidacies have never gained much traction with the sabermetric writers. On the flip side, Pinson and Oliver have not had a lot of support from old school baseball writers either. There aren’t many people making the case for them, which is hurting future consideration of their candidacies. As the cases of Bert Blyleven and Jack Morris have shown, having a debate about a player’s stats is a vital part of getting into the Hall of Fame. While Blyleven is now in the Hall, and Morris fell just short, both players gained tons of votes because writers debated about them for years, even though their numbers hadn’t changed. But because no sabermetric writers are pushing for Pinson and Oliver based on recently developed stats like WAR and VORP, and no old school scribes are banging out stories about what great clutch hitters they were, they remain two of the best players not in the Hall of Fame.
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Leading Men 2: Further Thoughts on Kirk Douglas, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, and Gregory Peck

October 4, 2014, 9:37 am
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Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, 1957.



Kirk and Burt in Tough Guys, their final film together, 1986.

Kirk Douglas consoles Robert Mitchum about the missing end of his tie in 1947's Out Of the Past.

Three big stars, one lousy movie. Kirk Douglas, Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark in The Way West, 1967.

Robert Mitchum sings to Loretta Young as William Holden sulks in the background. Rachel and the Stranger, 1948. Having Robert Mitchum play a charming stranger must have seemed like typecasting even then.


Robert Mitchum shows off his physiqueas Gregory Peck looks unimpressed in 1962's Cape Fear.
Earlier this year, I wrote an essay about five of my favorite actors from the 1940’s and 1950’s, Kirk Douglas, William Holden, Burt Lancaster, Robert Mitchum, and Gregory Peck. As I said in my previous essay, I’ve always grouped these five actors together, as they were all of the same generation and were some of the most successful actors of that generation. In this sequel to that essay, I’ll discuss the movies those five actors made with each other. 

Kirk Douglas and Burt Lancaster are the two actors of the five who are most closely linked, as they starred in five movies together, I Walk Alone, Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, The Devil’s Disciple, Seven Days in May, and Tough Guys. They also both appeared in Victory at Entebbe, a made for TV movie in which they don’t have any scenes together, and they also both had cameo parts in The List of Adrian Messenger, but didn’t appear together. Douglas and Lancaster had lots of chemistry together on screen, and they obviously enjoyed working together. I’ve previously reviewed The Devil’s Disciple, Seven Days in May, and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral on this blog. I would recommend Gunfight at the O.K. Corral and Seven Days in May as their best films together. If you want to see Burt and Kirk as buddies, watch Gunfight. If you want to see them as rivals, watch Seven Days in May. I Walk Alone isn’t a very successful movie. It’s a film noir that captures both actors very early on in their careers. Lancaster plays an ex-con, who is suspicious of everyone, including his former partner in crime Douglas. Lancaster overreacts to everything that happens. If Douglas offers him a cup of coffee, Lancaster’s character is liable to jump and say, “What’s the big idea? You think I like coffee? I don’t!” It gets annoying to watch. Douglas is excellent as a slimy gangster/nightclub owner. Tough Guys was written especially for Kirk and Burt, and the script is a knowing parody of their screen personas. It’s a little bit silly, as it was made in 1986, and it tries a little too hard to show that these old guys are still tough. But it’s nice that they got to make one final picture with each other as a capstone to their careers together. 

While Douglas and Lancaster may not have been best friends in real life, they had a respect for each other that lasted even longer than the nearly 40 years in between their first movie and their last. Douglas said of his relationship with Lancaster, “Some people think we’re the closest buddies. We’re not, though I think we have a wonderful friendship. Sometimes I don’t see Burt for a year or two, but he’s there if I need him and I’m here if he needs me. We have a respect for each other that we don’t voice.” (Against Type: The Biography of Burt Lancaster, by Gary Fishgall, p.368) At a tribute to Douglas in 1987, Lancaster teased his friend, saying, “Kirk would be the first person to tell you he’s a difficult man. And I would be the second.” (The Ragman’s Son, by Kirk Douglas, p.247) 

Both Douglas and Lancaster came from background of extreme poverty, Lancaster growing up in East Harlem, and Douglas in upstate New York. They both made their film debuts in 1946, and became some of the first actors to start their own independent film production companies. Both men had a reputation for voicing their strong opinions on film sets, and I have no doubt that there were some heated discussions on the five film sets they shared.

Tony Curtis acted in highly successful films opposite both men, as he made The Vikings and Spartacus with Kirk Douglas, and Trapeze and Sweet Smell of Success with Burt Lancaster. Curtis had this to say about the difference in their personalities: “On the floor, in the work, Kirk was a killer, much more than Burt. He would take no prisoners. If it {the camera shot} was over Kirk’s shoulder on me, by the time the shot was over, it was over my shoulder on Kirk.” (Burt Lancaster: An American Life, by Kate Buford, p.165) 

Kirk Douglas made two movies twenty years apart with Robert Mitchum. Their first movie together was the excellent film noir Out of the Past, from 1947. In his autobiography, Douglas wrote about Mitchum, “I don’t remember much about him, except that his stories about being a hobo kept changing every time he told them.” (Douglas, p.123) Both young actors were eager to upstage the other. During one scene, Douglas flipped a coin as he talked. Mitchum’s eyes focused on the coin, just as the audience would. Douglas then had to find some other way to steal attention from Mitchum. Both Mitchum and Douglas gave great performances in Out Of the Past. Their second movie together, The Way West, from 1967, was a turgid story about the Oregon Trail. It was adapted from a novel by A.B. Guthrie, Jr., which had won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1950. On the screen, it’s a dull attempt at an epic, despite also starring another big male star from the post-war era, Richard Widmark. The movie also features Sally Field in one of her first roles. The Way West draws on the differences in screen personas between the sleepy and relaxed Mitchum and the tense and electric Douglas. Mitchum appears to literally sleepwalk through his part, while Douglas chews all the scenery he can. 

Robert Mitchum starred in movies with Douglas, Peck, and Holden. Mitchum’s one movie with William Holden, Rachel and the Stranger, was a Western made in 1948, as Mitchum was enjoying his first flush of fame and Holden was trying to recapture the forward momentum of his career. 1948 was also the year that Mitchum was busted for marijuana possession, and eventually he served a little more than a month in jail. The unperturbed Mitchum quipped that jail was “Like Palm Springs, but without the riff-raff.” Mitchum had the better part in Rachel and the Stranger, as he plays a friend of Holden’s who stays with him and his wife, played by Loretta Young. Mitchum gets to be mysterious and flirty, two things he did very well, while Holden gets to be boring and upstanding. Loretta Young thought that Holden was nervous at competing with Mitchum, and he probably was. At the time, Mitchum’s career was doing very well, while Holden’s was in the same holding pattern he had been stuck in for years. It no doubt irked Holden to be working with a more successful young male actor. But the funniest story from the making of Rachel and the Stranger is about Loretta Young’s on-set habits. Young was a notorious prude, very religious and very upstanding, even though she had secretly had an out of wedlock daughter with Clark Gable in the 1930’s. (Young’s cover story was that she had “adopted” the girl.) Young had a “swear jar” on the set of all of her movies. Every time someone on the crew swore, they would put in a nickel for “hell,” a dime for “damn,” and so on. This drove Robert Mitchum nuts, and one day, feeling extremely frustrated, he put a large bill in the jar and let forth with a torrent of profanity. I can only imagine the look on Loretta Young’s face. 

Mitchum’s film with Gregory Peck, Cape Fear, from 1962, offered Mitchum a fantastic part as the criminal who blames lawyer Peck for his going to jail. When Mitchum gets out of jail, he systematically taunts and harasses Peck’s family. It’s one of Mitchum’s best roles, and he oozes menace. Mitchum’s sexy but intimidating physical presence was used very well. Peck is also superb in his role, as he finds himself having to stoop to Mitchum’s level to stop the threat to his family. Peck and Mitchum got along well during filming, even though during the climactic fight scene Peck accidentally hit Mitchum in the jaw. Mitchum said he was sore for three days afterwards. Peck and Mitchum also appeared in cameo roles in Martin Scorsese’s vastly inferior 1991 remake of Cape Fear, which replaces the unseen malevolence of the original with over the top ultraviolence. 

Unfortunately, Burt Lancaster and William Holden never worked together in a movie. I think it would have been great fun to see these two superbly athletic actors in the same film. But they did think highly of each other. They were both nominated for the Best Actor Oscar in 1953, Lancaster for From Here to Eternity, and Holden for Stalag 17. Holden won the Oscar. Holden said to journalist Bob Thomas, “I really thought Burt would win…I honestly believed that Burt did the best acting of the year, and I told him so when I saw him.” (Golden Boy: The Untold Story of William Holden, by Bob Thomas, p.94) Lancaster sent Holden a telegram after Holden won that read: “Never had a doubt about the outcome for a moment.” (Fishgall, p.125)

Deborah Kerr starred in films with all five actors. I don’t know if she’s the only actor or actress to appear with all five, but she’s certainly the most famous. She must have gotten along well with some of them, as she worked with Lancaster three times, and starred opposite Mitchum four times.

Here’s my “best of” list for these five actors:

Aged the best: Gregory Peck. His hair turned gray, but that's about the only way he aged.

Aged the worst: Robert Mitchum. Mitchum actually aged really well until about 60 or 65, but then all of a sudden he just looked super old.

Best album: Robert Mitchum, “Calypso Is Like So,” 1957. It’s just as amazing as you would think a Robert Mitchum calypso album would be.  

Runner-up: “William Holden Presents a Musical Touch of Far Away Places,” 1959. Holden doesn’t sing or play any instruments; he just “presented” the music and wrote the liner notes.

Best single: Robert Mitchum, “The Ballad of Thunder Road,” 1958. Mitchum starred in, produced, and co-wrote the screenplay for the classic 1958 movie Thunder Road. He also co-wrote the theme song for it, which he sings in his wonderful deep voice.

Most intense: Kirk Douglas

Most laid-back: Robert Mitchum

Best hair: Burt Lancaster, in The Crimson Pirate.

Best chin: Kirk Douglas. I’ve read somewhere that early in his career a studio wanted Douglas to have his signature dimpled chin filled in. It’s probably the same studio who complained about Gregory Peck’s ears being different sizes. 

Most literate: Kirk Douglas, who has written several autobiographies and novels. He’s the only one of the 5 actors to write a book.

Most underappreciated: Robert Mitchum, with a total of 0 Best Actor Oscar nominations. (He was nominated once for Best Supporting Actor for The Story of G.I. Joe in 1945.)

Most traveled: William Holden, who supposedly accepted some movies just to travel to new countries. That’s really the only reasonable explanation for him making The World of Suzie Wong. Entranced by Africa, Holden started a wildlife preserve in Kenya.

Least Picky: Robert Mitchum, whose IMDB filmography lists 135 credits. Even not counting his bit appearances early in his career, he made the most movies by far.

Most Picky: Gregory Peck, who has “only” 58 credits on IMDB. In looking at Peck’s filmography I was really surprised at how few movies he made after 1970. For the record, Holden has 77 credits, Lancaster 89, and Douglas has 92.

Favorite Kirk Douglas performance: As Vincent Van Gogh in Lust For Life.

Favorite William Holden performance: Tie between Sunset Boulevard and Picnic.

Favorite Burt Lancaster performance: Elmer Gantry.

Favorite Robert Mitchum performance: As the charming/creepy preacher in The Night of the Hunter.

Favorite Gregory Peck performance: It’s obvious, but he was perfect in To Kill a Mockingbird.
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Book Review: How Music Works, by David Byrne (2012)

October 7, 2014, 2:14 pm
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How Music Works, by David Byrne, 2012.


David Byrne. He looks like he's about to go for a bike ride.
Duke Ellington once said that there are only two types of music: good and bad. I love that quote, and I’m pretty sure that musical omnivore David Byrne would agree with it. Byrne’s 2012 book How Music Works examines many different aspects of music, from a history of how music has been recorded to the financial breakdown of the expenses of recording Byrne’s 2004 solo album “Grown Backwards.” I’m a big fan of Byrne’s music, so I was very interested to read How Music Works. 

How Music Works is a very good and interesting book, but it’s not always a successful one, as it is feels like two different books in one. For me, the most successful chapters were the ones in the middle of the book that were informed by Byrne’s own life experiences in music. The least interesting chapters were at the beginning and end, where Byrne is writing about general theories. Those chapters felt very impersonal; a lot of it is Byrne recapping other people’s research about music. Byrne is a smart guy, he has done his homework and he breaks down complex theories into clear prose. Byrne discusses how music has powerful effects on people, but he never gives us any personal examples. I’m sure there are pieces of music that have deeply moved him, but we don’t get to hear about them. I think these chapters would have been stronger if Byrne had made them more personal.

How Music Works is not an autobiography or a memoir. While Byrne does go into some personal details about his solo career and the records he made as part of Talking Heads, don’t expect any dirt to be dished. Byrne discusses how during the making of Talking Heads’ classic 1980 album “Remain In Light,” the band recorded all of the music first, and then he went off alone to write the lyrics for those songs, which were overdubbed later. It’s a fascinating way to work, and Byrne goes into some detail about the sessions for “Remain In Light.” Then he writes, “We did another record, ‘Speaking In Tongues,’ that continued with this idea of using improvised initial riffs and gibberish vocals as a guide for lyric writing. That record turned out to be the most commercially successful so far.” That’s all you get about “Speaking In Tongues.”  He doesn’t even mention that the title “Speaking In Tongues” came from his method of singing gibberish until the final words were written. Oh well. We do learn that Byrne was very disappointed with the way the first Talking Heads album turned out. He writes, “When we eventually made our first proper record, ‘Talking Heads: 77,’ it was by and large a miserable experience. Nothing really sounded like it did in our heads, or like we were used to hearing ourselves on stage.” 

After the middle three chapters of the book, which I found to be fascinating, I found the last three chapters of How Music Works to be pretty dull. I can understand how people might feel the opposite, as they might not be too intrigued by how much money Byrne made from “Grown Backwards.” But I find that kind of thing fascinating, and I enjoy reading about the finances of the music world. Back to the last three chapters that I didn’t care for. Chapter 8, “How to Make a Scene,” is basically about the New York music scene around the nightclub/bar CBGB’s in the 1970’s. Byrne spells out things necessary to support musical creativity in an area, like low rent, free admission for other musicians, and that you should be able to ignore the band that’s playing. Well, okay. But people can and do create music everywhere, no matter if the place they’re in is supporting a scene or not. 

Chapter 9, “Amateurs!” really annoyed me. In the chapter, Byrne criticizes art museums for organizing exhibitions that are popular. I’m not sure what offense he takes at this. Byrne makes it clear that he doesn’t like museums telling people what is great art and what is not. Fine, but part of the museum’s job is to preserve the art that they have and to exhibit it so people can see it. The reason museums organize “blockbuster” exhibitions is to get people who wouldn’t ordinarily go to a museum in the door. There’s nothing wrong with that. I’m a firm believer that everyone, rich or poor, needs exposure to the arts. It doesn’t matter what art they like, or how they interpret the art. But I do believe that if people are exposed to the arts, they will find art that they like, which is a very good thing. Art, be it paintings, sculptures, music, movies, or books, enriches our lives. Art takes us on voyages to places that we might not otherwise visit. If believing those things makes me an elitist, well, so be it. 

Byrne resents the fact that rich people have valued classical music over other forms of music. Sure, valuing one form of music over another might be silly. For whatever reason, classical music does have a cultural cache that other forms of music simply don’t have. What Byrne seems to miss in this chapter is that innumerable museums and cultural institutions in the United States owe their very existence to rich people. Ever heard of the Carnegie Libraries? Those were all started by a rich guy. Byrne seems annoyed that orchestras get funding from state governments, while other forms of music aren’t funded as much, if at all. The reason that orchestras are supported by tax dollars is that they need to be. Pop music isn’t usually supported by tax dollars because pop music supports itself. Katy Perry doesn’t need state funding, the Minnesota Orchestra does. I think that some people take a great deal of civic pride in the cultural institutions of their city and state. I know I certainly do. When you live in the Midwest, you sometimes need to remind people on both coasts that yes, we do have culture here in fly-over land. I’m extremely proud of the cultural institutions of Minnesota, as they are a big part of what makes Minnesota a great place to live.

Byrne writes in chapter 9 that “There are some classical works that I do genuinely enjoy, but I never got Bach, Mozart, or Beethoven-and I don’t feel any worse for it.” Part of me wants to say, “Really? Beethoven’s 9thdoes nothing for you? The Magic Flute is just meh?” I could go on, but I won’t. I do feel that this quote reveals some of Byrne’s agenda for the chapter. Yeah, if you don’t “get” three of the greatest classical composers ever, you’re probably not going to be a big fan of all the philanthropy that supports classical music. 

Chapter 10, “Harmonia Mundi,” attempts to answer the question, why do we need music? Byrne cites lots of sources, but doesn’t add anything from his own experience to help answer the question. Which is fine, but the chapter just dragged for me.

Despite my criticisms of some of Byrne’s arguments, I would highly recommend How Music Works to fans of any type of music. As I said before, Byrne is a very smart man who writes very well about music.
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Movie Review: A Life of Her Own, starring Lana Turner and Ray Milland (1950)

October 12, 2014, 11:20 am
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Ray Milland and Lana Turner in A Life of Her Own, 1950.


Lana Turner and Ray Milland make a handsome couple in A Life of Her Own, 1950.

Lana Turner, in costume for a modeling scene as Lily James in A Life of Her Own, 1950.
The 1950 film A Life of Her Own, starring Lana Turner and Ray Milland, is a fascinating look at the life of a woman who becomes a successful model. Directed by George Cukor, A Life of Her Own features an excellent performance from star Lana Turner, who showed that there was more depth to her than just her beauty. Turner plays Lily James, a girl from Kansas who takes the train to the big city (New York City) to try and become a model. Lily is willing to work hard, and she sees the dangers inherent in her profession right away when she meets Mary (Ann Dvorak) who was a very successful model and is now trying to re-start her career. Mary’s desperation is palpable as she tries to get another assignment from Tom Caraway (Tom Ewell) who runs a modeling agency. Mary takes Lily under her wing, and they go out to dinner with Mary’s seedy friend Lee (Barry Sullivan) and kindly Jim (Louis Calhern). Lily resists Lee’s advances and sees Mary home when it becomes obvious she’s had too much to drink. Lily leaves Mary at her apartment, and Lily learns the next day that Mary committed suicide by jumping out of her window. 

Lily focuses on her work and quickly becomes a top model, as she is beautiful and professional. Through Jim she meets Steve Harleigh (Ray Milland) who lives in Montana and owns a copper mine. They meet awkwardly, as Lily wakes up from taking a nap at Jim’s apartment and sees that Steve has been watching her sleep. (Which is kinda creepy.) They don’t seem to like each other at first, but they see more of each other and affection between them grows, even though Steve is married. Steve goes back to Montana and his mine, and he tells Jim to buy Lily some jewelry. Lily is not impressed with the jewelry and quickly figures out that Jim bought it for Steve and refuses it, saying she won’t be bought off. When Steve returns to New York on business, he and Lily begin an affair, and he pays for her new apartment. We learn that Steve’s wife Nora (Margaret Phillips) is in a wheelchair because of injuries suffered in a car crash. When Nora comes to New York to celebrate Steve’s birthday, Steve spends his birthday with Nora before sneaking out to the party that Lily is throwing for him. He finds the party to be full of people he doesn’t know, and he finds Lily tipsily dancing with another man. (Lily’s dance partner is played by the famous choreographer Hermes Pan, who choreographed all of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers movies.) Lily resolves to go to Nora and tell her all about her affair with Steve. When Lily goes to visit Nora with Jim, they find Nora lying on the floor, as she has been trying to learn how to walk with crutches. Lily feels ashamed, and in her conversation with Nora she realizes that Nora is a good person, and that she really needs Steve. She doesn’t tell Nora about the affair, and as she waits for the elevator, she runs into Steve and tells him their affair is over. Lily says to him, “I can’t live without you, but I’m going to.” Lily then finds the unsavory Lee hanging out in the lobby of her apartment, and he taunts her, telling her how she’s been ruined. Lily walks to Mary’s old apartment building and has fleeting thoughts of suicide as she stares up at the building. But she decisively turns around and walks away, determined to find happiness on her own.

A Life of Her Own is an excellent movie, and it features a fine performance from Lana Turner. It’s not too much of a stretch to see A Life of Her Own as an allegory about the Hollywood studio system and how it chewed up the young women who endured it, just as the modeling industry consumes Mary in the movie. As a veteran of the studio system from the time she was 16 years old, it’s obvious that Lana Turner knew exactly how to play the role of Lily. 

In her autobiography, Turner doesn’t show much affection for A Life of Her Own, but I would guess that she identified with Lily’s struggles to succeed in the difficult world of modeling. At the beginning of the movie, Lily says to Tom Caraway, “I want to be somebody, not just anybody, and all I have is myself and how I look. I’ll work hard because it means a lot to me.” Turner could easily be talking about herself. Towards the end of the movie Lily is talking to Jim about men and she says, “I’ve had men buzzing around me since I was 14, and I didn’t want it that way. I never wanted it that way.” I can imagine that Lana Turner would have felt the same way that Lily did.

A Life of Her Own was something of a comeback for Lana Turner, because when the movie was released in September of 1950, she hadn’t been seen on screen in almost two years, not since The Three Musketeers came out in October, 1948. Turner was suspended by MGM during part of that hiatus, and she also took a long honeymoon with her third husband, millionaire Bob Topping, who was an heir of a tin-plate magnate. Bob’s brother Dan Topping owned the New York Yankees from 1945 until 1964. Both Topping brothers were married many times, and Dan was married to the figure skater Sonja Henie from 1940-1946. Oddly enough, the actress Arline Judge married both Dan and Bob Topping. She was divorced from Bob just days before he married Lana Turner. Sadly, 1949 was a difficult year for Turner, as she gave birth to a stillborn baby boy. 

As detailed in Lana: The Memories, The Myths, The Movies, written by Turner’s daughter Cheryl Crane, A Life of Her Own had a long journey to the screen. The movie was loosely based on The Abiding Vision, a short story by Rebecca West. MGM’s first treatment of the story was rejected by the censors in 1936, as the treatment of adultery was deemed too sympathetic. The censors worried that there was “no proportionate punishment of the transgressors.” (Crane, p.303) The Production Code Administration finally approved the script for filming in late 1949, but the original ending had Turner’s character Lily committing suicide, which was apparently deemed a suitable punishment for her adulterous behavior. When the movie was shown to test audiences, they hated the ending. The ending was then re-shot so that Lily survived, which I think is a much better resolution to the story. I also liked that the ending leaves Lily on her own, to make her own way in the world. She’s a strong female character, and I think she will succeed. If the movie were re-made now, Lily would probably be paired off with Jim at the end, rather than be allowed to find her own path.

Cheryl Crane writes that many different actors were considered for the role of Steve Harleigh, “among them Cary Grant, Howard Keel, James Mason, and Robert Ryan. I would have voted for James Mason. Mother was embarrassed when she had to get his autograph for me.” (Crane, p.303) I think that Cheryl Crane had good taste, and I agree with her that James Mason would have been excellent in the part. However, MGM cast Wendell Corey as Steve Harleigh. Turner didn’t think Corey was right for the part, but grudgingly accepted the studio’s decision. On the first day of filming, Turner’s costumes were still not ready, so there was a delay as the costume department worked to pin her dress so it would look okay for the camera. Turner wrote in her autobiography, “As I left the trailer I heard Corey say, as though talking to someone nearby, ‘It’s interesting, you know. The wonderful Barbara Stanwyck never keeps us waiting. Not even for one minute.’ When I whirled around I saw that he was alone. He was talking to me, or rather, he had timed the remark for my benefit.” (Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth, by Lana Turner, p.127-8.) Because it was widely assumed around Hollywood that Turner had an affair with Stanwyck’s husband Robert Taylor, Turner took Corey’s odd remark as an insult to her and made MGM fire Corey. He was replaced with Ray Milland, who took home a huge salary of $175,000 for his part, as he knew the studio was in a bind. When the producers asked Turner what she thought of Ray Milland, she said, “He’d be great. You should have hired him in the first place.” (Turner, p.129) I think Milland was perfect for the part, and I can’t imagine Wendell Corey in the role at all. With his more ordinary looks, Corey might be a more believable copper mine owner than Ray Milland, but Corey had none of the suave charm that Milland had. The difference between the two actors is that Wendell Corey was a character actor, and Ray Milland was a handsome leading man. Ray Milland reminds me a lot of Jimmy Stewart. They both had a similar build-tall and lanky, and their eyes and noses are quite similar. 

All of the supporting performances in A Life of Her Own are excellent. Ann Dvorak is great as Mary, the veteran model. I loved Dvorak’s voice; it’s so natural and modern sounding. She and Turner don’t have that “movie actress” voice that so many actresses from that era had that now sounds so unnatural to our ears. Be on the lookout for Jean Hagen, most famous as Lina Lamont in Singin’ In the Rain, in a small part as Maggie, the model who brings her son to the modeling agency at the beginning of the movie. Hagen also gets some screen time during the raucous party at Lily’s apartment, which features some wonderful tracking shots that really immerse you in the party. A Life of Her Own was produced by a man with the unlikely name of Voldemar Vetluguin, a Russian whose only other producing credit was East Side, West Side, from 1949. 

I would highly recommend A Life of Her Own to fans of Lana Turner, as she looks gorgeous and gives a terrific performance.
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Movie Review: The Last Tycoon, starring Robert De Niro, directed by Elia Kazan, based on the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1976)

October 13, 2014, 11:30 pm
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Some of the cast of The Last Tycoon. From left to right: Tony Curtis, Leslie Curtis (Tony's real-life wife playing his movie wife), Ray Milland, Robert De Niro, Jeanne Moreau, Robert Mitchum, and Theresa Russell.


Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson size each other up in The Last Tycoon, 1976. This is before they play ping pong.

Robert De Niro, generating zero chemistry with co-star Ingrid Boulting in The Last Tycoon, 1976.
Director Elia Kazan’s last movie was his 1976 adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s unfinished novel The Last Tycoon, starring Robert De Niro, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter. The movie is proof that all the talent in the world can still produce a bad movie.

There are so many things wrong with The Last Tycoon that it’s hard to know where to start. Perhaps making a movie of an unfinished novel was not a good idea. I haven’t read Fitzgerald’s The Last Tycoon, also known as The Love of the Last Tycoon, so I don’t know how faithful the movie is to his writing, but it sure feels like it was based on an unfinished novel. The Last Tycoon is set in Hollywood in the late 1930’s, and the titular character is Monroe Stahr, who is the head of a film studio. (Stahr was loosely based on real-life movie mogul Irving Thalberg.) The film follows him as he works on movies and seeks out a beautiful young woman who reminds him of his dead movie star wife. 

Unfortunately, Robert De Niro is miscast as Stahr. Monroe Stahr is a boring character, and it’s a disservice to cast one of the silver screen’s most exciting performers in that role. Stahr was too much of a blank slate for me to ever feel invested in his emotions. There’s no dramatic tension to the movie, and whatever lingering tension there was comes to a screeching halt during the way too long love scenes between De Niro and Ingrid Boulting, as the girl who reminds Stahr of his dead wife. The scenes between Boulting and De Niro are just not that interesting, and they don’t have any chemistry together. Theresa Russell plays the other main female character, and while Boulting and Russell are both very beautiful to look at, they are not very good actresses. On a positive note, I did love Stahr's beautiful red Packard convertible.

Kazan seemed determined to include every famous person he could find in the cast, which makes watching The Last Tycoon slightly more interesting. The supporting cast includes Tony Curtis, Robert Mitchum, Ray Milland, Dana Andrews, Jeanne Moreau, Donald Pleasence, John Carradine, Jeff Corey, Anjelica Huston, Peter Strauss, and, oh yeah, Jack Nicholson. Yes, Jack Nicholson and Robert De Niro made a movie together in 1976. Unfortunately, it was this turkey.

I couldn’t figure out the tone that The Last Tycoon was going for. There are times when it seems to want to be a comedy. On their first date, Stahr takes Boulting’s character to see a trained seal at a restaurant. Am I supposed to laugh at De Niro’s interactions with the seal and his trainer? Is the scene where a movie editor dies during a screening supposed to be humorously ironic? I have no idea. I blame Harold Pinter for this. 

Another weird moment is when we see the movie-within-a-movie that Tony Curtis and Jeanne Moreau have been working on. It’s very obviously a pastiche of Casablanca, as Curtis plays the piano and bids Moreau adieu. She even sings part of the song he’s playing. It’s almost high camp, but not quite. I really think it’s supposed to be serious. Also, Casablanca wasn’t released until 1942, which is several years after the time period of The Last Tycoon. Curtis also has a scene where he confides to Stahr that he can’t get it up anymore, but he knows that Stahr will have a solution for his problem. I don’t remember what the hell Stahr tells him, but it works for Curtis. Of the random celebrity cameos, Robert Mitchum gets the most to do as another powerful producer at the studio. It is fun to watch Mitchum and De Niro together, as they both played the same role in the two different versions of Cape Fear. Hell, it’s always fun to watch Robert Mitchum. Ray Milland doesn’t have much to do other than hang out with Robert Mitchum and look like a more bald version of Jimmy Stewart. Dana Andrews has a couple of scenes as a beleaguered director whom Stahr releases from a movie. Despite his real-life battle with alcoholism, which he overcame in the late 1960’s, Andrews looks super handsome and not much different from his heyday as a leading man in the 1940’s. 

So, what about Jack Nicholson? Does he swoop in to save the movie from terminal boredom? Does he demand to order toast from the studio commissary? Isn’t it super exciting that The Last Tycoon pairs up two of the greatest actors of the 1970’s? Well, even the scenes between De Niro and Nicholson are dull. Their characters are adversaries, as Nicholson plays a Communist who wants to unionize the screenwriters at De Niro’s studio. Both Nicholson and De Niro seem to be operating at half-speed during their first scene together. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is super boring. And I don’t know if Nicholson is trying to do an accent or what-his character is from Tennessee-but he doesn’t have his usual Jack Nicholson vocal cadences. It’s terribly frustrating to watch two exciting, dynamic actors play boring people. In their other two scenes together De Niro totally overacts Stahr’s drunkenness, as he challenges Nicholson’s character to a game of ping pong. Yep, De Niro and Nicholson face off in a movie over a fucking game of ping pong. Opportunity wasted!

The last scene of The Last Tycoon, where De Niro/Stahr breaks the fourth wall and looks directly at the camera as he tells a story about watching a girl burn a pair of gloves-a story we’ve already heard once before in the movie-is a real “what the fuck?” moment. 

The Last Tycoon was an unfortunate waste of talent, and a sad ending to the great directing career of Elia Kazan.
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Concert Review: Sondre Lerche and TEEN at the Turf Club

October 18, 2014, 12:12 pm
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Sondre Lerche at the Turf Club, October 17, 2014. (Photo by Pondie Nicholson Taylor.)


TEEN at the Turf Club, October 17, 2014. (Photo by Pondie Nicholson Taylor.)
Last night I finally got to see one of my favorite artists live, as Sondre Lerche played the Turf Club in Saint Paul. I know that Lerche has played the Twin Cities before, but for whatever reason I’ve always missed him. I almost missed him this time too, as it was only because my wife was listening to 89.3 The Current and caught an interview with him that I knew he was in town. My wife came home and said to me, “Guess who we’re going to see in concert tonight?” “I don’t know, who?” “Sondre Lerche!” “Awesome!” If you’re not familiar with Sondre Lerche, he’s a Norwegian-born singer/songwriter who released his first album in 2001, at the age of 19. Lerche has been very prolific since then, as his discography includes 7 studio albums, 1 live album, and 1 movie soundtrack. Lerche has crafted a diverse discography, and my iTunes music library insists that his albums are classified under “jazz” (“Duper Sessions”) “alternative” (“Faces Down” and “Two-Way Monologue”) “country” (“Heartbeat Radio”) “rock” (“Phantom Punch”) “indie rock” (“Please”) and “pop” (“Sondre Lerche”). While that might sound confusing, if you like melodic pop/rock songs with strong hooks, you will probably like Sondre Lerche.

As a live performer, Lerche has a charisma that hooks the audience in. You can tell he loves performing live and enjoys interacting with the audience. He encouraged the audience to sing along on a couple of songs. (Not as cheesy as it sounds, trust me.) He often stares intensely out into the audience with his blue eyes. Lerche is an excellent guitar player, and he performed with just bassist Chris Holm and drummer Dave Heilman. Live, his music was heavier than it is on his records, which surprised me a bit. On his records, Lerche’s songs sometimes seem lighter than air, with his catchy melodies and high tenor voice, and that works very well. But live his songs had more grit in them. One of the highlights of the show was Lerche performing the excellent “My Hands Are Shaking” solo, and he walked away from the microphone, letting us hear his pure voice unamplified. Lerche played a lot of songs from his new album, “Please,” which was released in September. “Please” chronicles a difficult time in Lerche’s life, as he divorced from his wife in 2013. I haven’t listened to “Please” yet, as I didn’t even know Lerche had a new album until yesterday, but the songs were very strong in concert, packing a muscular punch. Personally, I do wish Lerche had sung more songs from “Duper Sessions” and “Phantom Punch,” which are my two favorite albums of his. (I applauded loudly when Lerche asked the audience if people liked “Phantom Punch.”) Lerche is an intense performer, and he leaves it all out there on the stage. He’s also a very nice guy, as my wife and I got to meet him after the show and I got my new copy of “Please” signed. 

The all-female group TEEN opened the show for Lerche, and they also sang backing vocals on several of Lerche’s songs. Three of the four members of TEEN are sisters, lead singer and guitarist Teeny Lieberson, keyboardist Lizzie Lieberson, and drummer Katherine Lieberson. (The only non-Lieberson in the band is bassist Boshra AlSaadi.) TEEN brought a fresh sound and plenty of energy to the stage. Teeny is a very expressive vocalist and on stage performer, and their songs mix melodic pop with heavy guitars. I expect to be hearing more from TEEN in the future. One of the funnier moments of the show was when Teeny asked the audience, “What’s the difference between Saint Paul and Minneapolis?” That’s a question that is far too complex to be answered in a shout to the stage. “Minneapolis thinks it’s really cool, and Saint Paul just doesn’t care!” “In Minneapolis there’s stuff to do after 9 PM!” “Saint Paul is older!” 

Unfortunately, because some people in this world are just jerks, TEEN had much of their equipment stolen at a recent gig in San Francisco. They are raising money to help replace what was stolen, and you can donate to them here:

http://www.pledgemusic.com/projects/teen

I’m very happy that I finally was able to see Sondre Lerche in concert. The concert was full of good music and good vibes, and with the combination of Sondre Lerche and TEEN fans got to see two acts who truly enjoy performing live.
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Movie Review: Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter, and Richard Widmark in Yellow Sky (1948)

October 24, 2014, 1:41 am
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Spanish language poster for Yellow Sky, or Cielo Amarillo, 1948. The poster artist even got Richard Widmark's smirk right.


Gregory Peck in Yellow Sky, 1948. Still handsome, even with a scruffy beard.

Anne Baxter and Gregory Peck in Yellow Sky, 1948. He shaved his beard to impress her. He's really hoping she doesn't punch him in the face again.

Richard Widmark practicing his smirk. He's flanked by Harry Morgan on the left and Robert Arthur on the right.
Yellow Sky, released in 1948, is a fascinating and unusual western. Directed by William A. Wellman, Yellow Sky stars Gregory Peck, Anne Baxter, and Richard Widmark. Wellman directed many well-known movies, including the very first Oscar winner for Best Picture, Wings. Among Wellman’s other famous movies are The Public Enemy, with James Cagney, the original 1937 version of A Star is Born, the 1939 remake of Beau Geste, with Gary Cooper, Ray Milland, and a very young Robert Preston, and The High and the Mighty, with John Wayne. 

Peck stars as “Stretch,” the leader of a gang of outlaws. His gang includes Richard Widmark, John Russell, and a very young Harry Morgan. After robbing a bank, the gang crosses a large salt flat. Desperate for water, they come across an abandoned town whose only inhabitants are a young woman called Mike, (Anne Baxter) and her grandfather, played by James Barton. Mike is hostile to the gang and just wants them to leave. But members of the gang think that she and her grandfather are hiding a cache of gold. 

I’ll leave the plot summary there, so as not to reveal all of the twists and turns the movie takes. I had never heard of Yellow Sky until recently, when it came up as I was searching my DVR for movies starring Gregory Peck. I read the plot summary, which reads something like, “A gang of outlaws come upon a ghost town and its only inhabitant.” I said to myself, “That sounds so weird, I need to see this movie.” I’m very glad I did, as Yellow Sky is an excellent film. The cinematography is great, and there are a lot of very well-composed shots. Many of the camera angles and shadows make it feel a lot like a film noir. There’s even a moment when we see a POV shot through the barrel of Mike’s rifle, which looks just like the famous opening sequence from the James Bond movies, 14 years before there were any Bond movies. One of the coolest parts of Yellow Sky is that we don’t even get to see the climactic shoot-out. We just see the flashes of gunfire and have to wait until Mike runs in to see who, if anyone, is left standing.

The cast is superb, and the characters are well-drawn, as all of the members of the gang have distinct personalities. John Russell is very good as “Lengthy,” and he has an interesting moment at the beginning of the film as he stares at a drawing of a busty woman on a horse. You can tell from the snide comment he makes and his intense glare that he only thinks of women as objects, which becomes more clear when we see his interactions with Mike. With his long hair and mustache, Russell would have no trouble fitting in as a 2014 hipster. Anne Baxter, perhaps best known for playing Eve in All About Eve, is very well cast as the tough girl Mike. (Her real name is Constance Mae.) Although Baxter was slight in stature, she carries herself with the confidence and steely courage the character requires. She even decks Peck when he gets fresh with her. I haven’t seen Anne Baxter is very many movies, but she was stunningly beautiful in Yellow Sky. A really cool fact that I learned about Anne Baxter is that her grandfather was Frank Lloyd Wright. I wonder if she got a family discount on Wright-designed houses? I also learned that I’ve seen Anne Baxter’s grave, without knowing it. She’s buried in the small churchyard across the highway from Wright’s home and studio Taliesin in Spring Green, Wisconsin. Richard Widmark had made his movie debut just the year before in Kiss of Death, in which he played a maniacal bad guy, for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. Yellow Sky was just his fourth movie, and although he was getting typecast, it shows how good Widmark was at playing a jerk. His smirky grin lets you know that his character “Dude” is not to be trusted. Yellow Sky was a rare turn as a bad guy for Gregory Peck, although it quickly becomes clear that even though his character Stretch is an outlaw, there are other members of his gang who are worse people. (Like Dude.) Peck plays his part well as the confident leader of the gang. Which makes me wonder, did Gregory Peck ever play a self-doubting character? Greg Peck always knows what to do. He wouldn’t have made a very good Hamlet. Also, let me just say for the record, holy shit Gregory Peck was handsome. I mean, there’s handsome and then there’s Gregory Peck handsome, which is like the ne plus ultra of handsome. Richard Widmark looks like he could be someone you might know in real life. He looks like a normal guy. But you don’t know anyone in real life who looks like Gregory Peck. Gregory Peck looks like a movie star. 

If you’re looking for a western with interesting, well-drawn characters, go see Yellow Sky.
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Moive Review: Dean Martin, Kim Novak, and Ray Walston in Billy Wilder's Kiss Me, Stupid (1964)

October 24, 2014, 6:27 pm
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Dean Martin and Kim Novak in Kiss Me, Stupid, 1964. There's no symbolism in that really long chianti bottle Dean is holding. Sometimes a really long chianti bottle is just a really long chianti bottle.


Dean and Kim tidy up. Hey, Dean, do you have a permit for those guns?

Ray Walston as Orville Spooner in Kiss Me, Stupid.

Kim Novak and director Billy Wilder on the set of Kiss Me, Stupid, 1964.

A rare color photo of Kim Novak in the dress that she wears when she's pretending to be Zelda.
Billy Wilder’s trashy 1964 sex comedy Kiss Me, Stupid, was a film that shocked many moviegoers at the time with its raunchy subject matter. The plot is that popular singer Dino (Dean Martin) is driving from Las Vegas to Los Angeles when he stops in Climax, Nevada. (This movie is not subtle.) Gas station owner Barney Millsap (the very funny Cliff Osmond) sees in Dino his chance at fame and fortune. Barney writes songs with Orville J. Spooner, (the excellent Ray Walston) a piano teacher who lives across the street. Barney sabotages Dino’s car, forcing him to stay as a guest of Spooner’s so they will have a chance to pawn their songs to him. Dino is looking for action in Climax, as he tells Spooner that if he doesn’t have a woman every night he gets painful headaches. (John F. Kennedy once said much the same thing to British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan: “If I don’t have a woman for three days, I get terrible headaches.”) Spooner is married to the beautiful Zelda (the beautiful Felicia Farr) but he is terribly jealous of her. Zelda reveals that she’s always had a crush on Dino-she saw him driving through town, but doesn’t know he’s currently napping in their guest bedroom. So Barney concocts the ridiculous idea that Spooner should get into a fight with Zelda so she goes back to her parents, and then pick up a trollop from the Belly Button, the local roadhouse, and pass her off as Zelda. Oh, and let Dino sleep with her so he doesn’t get a headache and buys some of their songs. What could go wrong with a plan like that? 

Of course, plenty goes wrong with the plan, as Barney picks up a beautiful cocktail waitress with a heart of gold, Polly the Pistol (the delicious Kim Novak). Polly actually likes Orville, and she gets to fulfill a fantasy by acting like a wife, instead of a girl with a dubious reputation. And once Polly meets Dino she is repulsed by his smooth charm and fast moves. The irony of the movie is that when it comes time for Orville to step aside and let Dino get his action with Polly, he fights for Polly’s honor and throws Dino out of his house, thus losing his chance at selling any songs. But Orville gets to enjoy Polly for a night, as they retire to the bedroom. Meanwhile, Zelda returned home, and Barney, who is spying on the action from the porch, tells her not to go into the house. But he left out some crucial information, so she doesn’t know he’s trying to sell songs to Dino, she just thinks he’s having a great time with Polly. So of course Zelda goes to the Belly Button and gets drunk, whereupon the owner deposits her in Polly’s trailer. And where does Dino go once Orville throws him out? The Belly Button, natch. But Dino is unimpressed by the girls on duty and asks the bartender where the hottest girl is. He directs Dino to Polly’s trailer. Dino finds Zelda there and assumes she’s Polly. Zelda, although star struck by Dino, quickly figures out that he’s a jerk. When she finds out he’s not going to buy any of Orville’s songs, she uses reverse psychology, telling him that the song isn’t right for him anyway, and saying what great things Bobby Darin, Jack Jones, or Robert Goulet could do with it. Zelda and Dino spend the night in Polly’s trailer, and he leaves without a headache the next morning. But everything ends happily, as Zelda gives the $500 that Dino gave her to Polly, so Polly can buy a car and find happiness outside of Climax. Dino sings Orville and Barney’s song “Sophia” on his latest TV special, and Orville and Zelda are happily reunited, although Orville doesn’t understand what has happened. 

Kiss Me, Stupid is, well, a stupid movie. At 126 minutes, it’s far too long, and it takes way too much time to get to the setup. Too much screen time is spent on Orville’s jealousy at the beginning of the movie. If you get bored during this part of the movie, look for Mel Blanc, voice of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig, among many others, as a dentist. Also, look for John Fiedler, the voice of Piglet, as a minister trying to get the Belly Button to close down. There’s also a super long and only sort of funny sequence where Orville is trying to pick a fight with Zelda, but she deflects everything he says. It’s kind of funny, but Orville is also an overly jealous jerk. If you see Kiss Me, Stupid, you’d better be well-versed in the pop culture of the mid-1960’s; otherwise there will be many jokes that will go over your head. Two of my favorite jokes were lines spoken by Polly. Orville tells her that she’ll flip over who the third person at dinner will be, and that he’s “very exciting.” She asks, “Who is it, Richard Burton?” When Orville reveals that it’s Dino, she isn’t excited and says, “I like Andy Williams better.” Those jokes cracked me up, but I realize they might not be that funny to other people.

The casting of Kiss Me, Stupid was quite excellent. Dean Martin was superb as Dino and I like that he was fine playing a parody version of himself as a total jerk. Dean Martin wasn’t a saint, but from what I’ve heard and read about him, he sounds like a genuinely nice guy. I know a guy who played softball with my Dad who was an extra in the movie Airport, and he told me that when he broke the rules for extras and went up to Dean to shake his hand, Dean took off the glove he was wearing before shaking hands. That’s always stuck with me as a classy thing to do. The role of Dino must have been written especially for Martin, and the line between real life and the movies is blurred as the beginning of the movie is just Martin’s usual nightclub act, filmed for the movie cameras as Dino’s act. Martin’s jokes at the beginning will be familiar to anyone who has heard recordings of his live act. One joke is about Bing Crosby, as Dino says, “Bing’s always so cool. That’s because he has $21 million dollars. On him.” The movie doesn’t include this line that would have fit with the smutty tone of the movie, but in live performance Martin would preface that joke by saying, “I ran into Bing and I said, ‘Hiya Bing, what’s up?’ He said, ‘Not much.’ Oh, you think that’s funny now, wait till you get home it’ll be hilarious!” The car that Dino drives is Martin’s own Dual Ghia, and when Barney talks about Dino’s hit songs, he’s naming Dean Martin’s hit songs. Martin was an extremely gifted comedian, and he makes the most of this part. My only complaint in that someone in wardrobe should have told Martin to unbutton the shirt he wears in the second half of the movie, as he almost always has it buttoned up all the way. Also, the boxy plaid jacket he wears over that shirt doesn’t do much for him. When he takes the jacket off, you can see what good shape he was in. Dean Martin was just awesome, and he had such a great voice. When Dino sings “Sophia” to Zelda just before they have sex in Polly’s trailer, his voice sounds so good. In order to get approval from the Motion Picture Production Code, an additional scene was filmed which shows Dino being bothered by a back problem as he is about to seduce Zelda, and it’s implied they don’t have sex. That footage was shown when Kiss Me, Stupidwas originally released in the United States, but it’s since been replaced by the original cut of the scene, which fades out with Dino and Zelda in an embrace. 

Peter Sellers was originally cast as Orville Spooner, and he filmed for several weeks before he had a series of heart attacks, which very nearly killed him. Sellers was actually pronounced clinically dead in the hospital, but doctors were able to revive him. While on the set, Sellers clashed with director Billy Wilder. Sellers was replaced by Ray Walston, and shooting had to start over. No footage of Sellers as Orville seems to have survived. It would be interesting to see what Sellers’ interpretation of the role would have been. As much as I like Peter Sellers, and as funny as he was, I think that Ray Walston was better in the part than Sellers would have been. I know that might sound like heresy, but I think Walston was a better fit for Orville. Walston was such a normal, ordinary-looking guy that there’s a huge contrast between him and Dino, which the script needs in order for the movie to be funny. Peter Sellers always wanted to be a leading man, and he might have played the role more over the top in order to compete more with Dean Martin. You can argue that Walston played the role over the top, but it’s also written over the top. Ray Walston is really the star of Kiss Me, Stupid, as he has much more screen time than Martin or Kim Novak, and he does a great job. 

Kim Novak is one of my favorite actresses. I find a lot of movie actresses to be very pretty and beautiful, but there aren’t a lot of actresses that I find truly sexy. But I find Kim Novak extremely sexy. I’m not sure exactly what it is about her. I guess part of it, besides her obvious physical beauty, is that she feels more like a real person than say Marilyn Monroe, who always seemed to be obscuring herself behind the persona she created. I will always adore Kim Novak, despite the fact that she’s obviously had some bad plastic surgery work done. It surprises me that she’s had work done, because she always seemed to remove herself from Hollywood and the nonsense that sometimes surrounds movies. Novak is both beautiful and sexy as Polly, but I’m a little surprised that she took the part. Novak was a gifted actress, and I think she tried hard to be seen as more than just a pretty face. Which begs the question, why did she take a part that objectified her so much? As funny as Kiss Me, Stupid is, it’s a little uncomfortable to watch the way in which Novak’s body is exploited for laughs. Dean Martin’s character paws Polly as often as he can, and as much as a 1964 movie will allow him to do. In the parlance of 2014, Dino commits a lot of acts of microaggression towards Polly. Actually, it’s more like acts of macroaggression, as he literally can’t keep his hands off of her. Since Polly finds Dino so objectionable, and it’s clear that he just sees her as an object and not as a person, it’s not fun to watch her get felt up. 

Felicia Farr was well-cast as Zelda, who is pretty much the perfect wife and is really not deserving of Orville’s crazy jealousy. In real life, Farr was married to Jack Lemmon from 1962 until his death in 2001. According to IMDB and Wikipedia, Lemmon, a favorite of Billy Wilder’s, was offered the role of Orville Spooner, but had to decline due to other commitments. 

There are some other interesting facts about Kiss Me, Stupid. The movie was rated a “C” for “condemned” by the Catholic Legion of Decency, which meant that you would have to say a lot of Hail Marys and Our Fathers in order to cleanse yourself of the sin of having watched Dean Martin feel up Kim Novak. The songs that Barney and Orville write in the movie are actually by George and Ira Gershwin, incredibly enough. Wilder was a friend of Ira’s, and asked him if he would write some songs for the movie. Ira said yes and wrote lyrics for melody fragments that George had written but never used. The songs are quite witty, as “I’m a Poached Egg” features classic Ira Gershwin wordplay. 

If you’re in the mood for a 1960’s sex comedy, or are a fan of any of the lead actors, you should give Kiss Me, Stupid a try. Just don’t expect to be intellectually challenged.
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The Music of Miles Davis and Hank Mobley, Part 1: "Someday My Prince Will Come" (1961)

October 28, 2014, 6:58 am
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Miles Davis's lovely wife, Frances Taylor, on the cover of his "Someday My Prince Will Come" album, 1961.


Miles Davis, 1961.

Miles Davis playing with his Harmon mute, 1961.

Tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, circa 1960.
Miles Davis was a jazz player of supreme innovation throughout his long musical career. I’ve previously written a short essay about his landmark 1959 album “Kind of Blue,” and another essay that’s an overview of his music in the 1950’s and 1960’s. For a brief period of time in 1961 one of my favorite jazz artists, tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley, worked with Miles Davis. Mobley only recorded once with Davis in the studio, producing the excellent 1961 album “Someday My Prince Will Come,” but Mobley is also featured on Davis’s live albums “In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk,” and “Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall.” I decided to write about these albums because they tend to be overlooked in comparison with the more famous groups that Davis led before 1961, and from 1964-68. 

Hank Mobley is most well-known for the many classic hard bop albums he made for Blue Note Records from 1955-1970. While he didn’t get that much recognition during his lifetime, Mobley’s posthumous reputation has soared and he is now seen as one of the key hard bop players of his era. Mobley started out recording with Horace Silver and Art Blakey in the Jazz Messengers in the mid 1950’s. When he left the group to record on his own he made a number of excellent albums for Blue Note. Among his most famous albums are “Peckin’ Time,” “Soul Station,” “Roll Call,” “Workout,” “No Room For Squares,” and “The Turnaround!” Mobley’s playing had an open, clear tone, and he was described by jazz critic Leonard Feather as the “middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone,” which meant that his sound was not as heavy as that of Sonny Rollins or John Coltrane, but not as light as Stan Getz. Mobley’s sound was always very pretty and melodic. 

Mobley came to Davis during a transition period for the trumpeter. Davis had led a jazz sextet supergroup in 1958 with John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb in his band. This was the group that would go on to record “Kind of Blue.” However, by the time of the “Kind of Blue” sessions in March and April of 1959, the group had already broken up, with Evans leaving the band in November, 1958. Wynton Kelly took Evans’s place and plays on “Freddie Freeloader” on “Kind of Blue.” Evans returned for the “Kind of Blue” sessions, but it was clear that he was not going to rejoin the group permanently. Evans, Adderley, and Coltrane all wanted to lead their own groups, and Adderley was the next to leave, in September, 1959. Coltrane stuck with Miles until April of 1960, after finishing a European tour with the group. It was on this tour that Davis bought Coltrane a soprano saxophone, which Coltrane would use to great effect on his recording of “My Favorite Things,” among other songs. According to Davis’s autobiography, Coltrane tried to quit the band before the European tour, and suggested Wayne Shorter as his replacement. But Davis prevailed upon Coltrane to finish the tour before he left. When the tour was over, Davis contacted Shorter about joining his group, but Shorter was already playing with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Shorter would eventually join Davis’s group in 1964, joining Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Tony Williams to form Miles’s “Second Classic Quintet.” Sonny Stitt, who played both tenor and alto saxophones, took Coltrane's place. There are some bootleg live recordings of Stitt with Miles, but they never recorded in the studio together. Davis’s autobiography says that Stitt left the group in early 1961, but a timeline of Davis’s groups included in the liner notes of the “Miles Davis and John Coltrane: The Complete Columbia Recordings” box set says that Mobley joined the group on December 26, 1960. 

When Miles Davis entered Columbia’s studios in March, 1961 to record “Someday My Prince Will Come,” his small-group follow up to “Kind of Blue,” his band was Mobley on tenor saxophone, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. The album was recorded over three days. On the first day of sessions, March 7th, the songs “Pfrancing” and “Drad Dog” were recorded. Both tunes were written by Miles. At the next sessions, held on March 20th and 21st, John Coltrane sat in with the band and soloed on “Someday My Prince Will Come” and “Teo,” making these the final recordings in his collaboration with Miles Davis. Another Davis original titled “Blues No.2” was also recorded at these sessions, but it wasn’t released until 1979, when it appeared on the “Circle in the Round” compilation album. 

Here are my thoughts on the songs on “Someday My Prince Will Come”:

“Someday My Prince Will Come”: A popular song from the Disney movie Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, “Someday My Prince Will Come” became popular as a jazz tune after Dave Brubeck included it on his 1957 album “Dave Digs Disney,” which was entirely comprised of songs from Disney movies. Miles’s former pianist Bill Evans also included the song on his 1960 album “Portrait in Jazz.” The song begins with Chambers strumming a repeated note on his bass, and Cobb softly tapping a cymbal before Wynton Kelly starts playing some pretty chords. Then Miles comes in with the melody, playing with his Harmon mute, which gave his playing on ballads such a unique tone. Miles solos first, sticking fairly close to the melody line, and then giving way to Mobley. Once Mobley enters, Cobb switches from brushes to sticks, giving the music slightly more drive. Mobley’s solo is gentle and pretty, and Kelly takes the next solo. Then, at about 5:20 into the song, Miles comes back and states the melody again, which might make you think the song is winding down. But it isn’t, as John Coltrane’s unmistakable sound fills the speakers. At times during his solo Coltrane plays a lot of notes, similar to his earlier “sheets of sound” playing style. Coltrane’s solo takes the song to a different level. Miles then comes back and states the theme for a third time. Kelly then solos again briefly, and returns the song to the sound it had at the beginning, with Chambers playing the same repeated note and Cobb tapping a cymbal. Interestingly enough, later in 1961 Wynton Kelly would record his own album titled “Someday My Prince Will Come,” with Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb supporting him. According to Bob Blumenthal’s liner notes for the Miles and Coltrane box set, Coltrane had never played “Prince” before, and was reading the chord changes off a sheet of paper.

“Old Folks”: Not to be confused with the Stephen Foster song “Old Folks at Home,” this song dates from the late 1930’s. But while the lyric is a maudlin tale of an old man, Miles makes the song an expression of yearning through his gorgeous playing. Mobley’s solo is also lovely, as he caresses the ballad for all it’s worth. Kelly sprinkles some lovely trills into his brief solo. 

“Pfrancing”: Finger snaps start this tune off, as Kelly states the brief theme, which is then echoed in a different octave, as though Kelly is answering himself. Davis then plays the theme, and Mobley provides the response. Davis then holds the last note of the phrase for about 10 seconds and exits, allowing Kelly to take a brief bluesy solo. Miles re-enters for his solo, which is full of bluesy smears. Kelly then gets a longer solo, which is somewhat reminiscent of his work on “Freddie Freeloader.” Mobley is in familiar territory here, and he turns in a nice solo. Chambers then gets a bass solo which never bores, and shows why he was one of the greatest bass players of the 1950’s and 1960’s. Kelly then gets a chance to solo again before Miles and Mobley restate the theme. “Pfrancing” was written for Miles’s first wife, Frances Taylor, whose lovely picture adorns the cover of the album. When “Pfrancing” was performed live at the Blackhawk it was retitled “No Blues,” and it remained a constant in Davis’s concert repertoire until the end of the 1960’s. 

“Drad Dog”: I had no idea where the name for this song came from until I read an Ira Gitler piece where he wrote that it’s named after Columbia Records president Goddard Lieberson, as “Drad Dog” is Goddard backwards. Ah, it all makes sense now. It’s a slow ballad with Miles’s muted trumpet giving the song a late-night feel. “Drad Dog” is a pretty song, with lovely solos by Davis, Mobley, and Kelly. Wynton Kelly was just smooth as hell. 

“Teo”: This song is named after Davis’s longtime Columbia Records producer Teo Macero, who would later prove to be an important partner during Miles’s electric period as he and Davis edited long jam sessions into albums. I always love it when Davis’s albums featuring him talking after a take-he’s usually saying something to Teo. At the end of “Gingerbread Boy” on “Miles Smiles,” he says “Teo, play that. Teo, Teo, Teo, Teo play that.” I think Davis just really liked the name Teo. Oddly enough, when “Teo” was played live at the Blackhawk in April of 1961, it was retitled “Neo.” “Teo” starts off with only Chambers playing, and then Cobb and Kelly join in, giving the song its Latin feel. Miles comes in and gives the song a mysterious, haunting quality. Miles hits a really high note around the 2:35 mark, and his solo is excellent, changing character several times. Coltrane solos and Mobley lays out. “Teo” is right in Coltrane’s modal wheelhouse, and he unleashes a powerful and yearning solo. “Teo” is a highlight of the album, and a fitting close to the Davis and Coltrane partnership. The liner notes say that a version of “Teo” was attempted with Mobley on tenor, but a full take was never recorded. 

“I Thought About You”: This beautiful ballad was written by Johnny Mercer and Jimmy Van Heusen, and it has been recorded by many singers and jazz musicians. Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra both included it on their seminal 1956 albums “Lady Sings the Blues” and “Songs for Swingin’ Lovers!” Miles plays the tune with his Harmon mute, and the result is one of his most exquisite ballad performances ever. Mobley contributes a lovely, lightly swinging solo. 

Bonus tracks:

“Blues No. 2”: This song, a Davis original, sees Miles reunited with former drummer Philly Joe Jones, who played in his “First Classic Quintet” from 1955-58 and was replaced by Jimmy Cobb. It’s a straight ahead swinger, with Miles stating the theme right away. You can hear how the band plays a little differently as Jones adds little kickers during Davis’s solo. Jones was one of the hardest swinging drummers of the time, and he gets to play a couple of tasty little solo breaks as he and Miles engage in a back and forth dialogue. Mobley creates a groovy solo, repeating a little phrase several times near the end. Miles then comes back in, playing higher than usual, and Jones gets another little solo. This must have been a fun tune for everyone to jam on.

“Someday My Prince Will Come”: This is an alternate take with only Mobley on tenor sax. The song starts much the same way as the master take, with Chambers repeating a single note before Kelly and Cobb come in. Davis’s solo has some similar ideas as the master take, so it seems clear that he knew what he wanted to do with the song. Like the master take, Cobb switches from brushes to sticks as Mobley takes his solo. The length of this alternate take is about the same length as the master before Coltrane comes in, about 5:30. It’s interesting to hear this alternate take, as it doesn’t quite lift off the same way as the take with Coltrane does. 

 “Someday My Prince Will Come” is an excellent album, full of great playing from all of the contributors, but I feel like it’s one of the few Miles Davis albums that kind of slips through the cracks. It’s one of only two pre-1981 Miles Davis Columbia albums not included in full on a box set. The two Coltrane tracks are on the Miles and Coltrane box set, but the full album isn’t. The other album that doesn’t appear in full on a box set is 1968’s “Filles de Kilimanjaro,” whose tracks are split between the “Miles Davis Quintet 1965-1968” set and “The Complete In a Silent Way Sessions.” That means that you could buy all of the box sets of Davis’s work that Columbia has issued and you would thus own all of the studio albums he recorded for the label from 1955-1975, except for “Someday My Prince Will Come.” It’s something of a neglected stepchild. 

Two of the songs on “Someday My Prince Will Come” entered Davis’s concert repertoire. “Pfrancing,” which became “No Blues,” was played regularly by Davis until at least 1967. “No Blues” is played three times on the “Live in Europe 1967: The Bootleg Series Volume 1” 3-CD set, and it even appears once on the “Live in Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Volume 2” concerts from 1969. “I Thought About You” also entered Miles’s songbook, and there are several live versions of the song from 1963-65. “Teo,” also known as “Neo,” doesn’t appear on any live albums after 1961, and neither does “Someday My Prince Will Come.” “Old Folks” and “Drad Dog” never seem to have made it to the concert stage-there aren’t any live recordings of these songs, at least nothing that’s been released officially. 

The cover of “Someday My Prince Will Come” is very striking, as it features a picture of the beautiful Frances Taylor, Miles’s wife at the time. It’s a very sexy album cover, as you can see just a little bit of her strapless dress. Davis had been upset about the original cover of his 1957 album “Miles Ahead,” which featured a white model on a boat. Davis supposedly said to Columbia record producer George Avakian, “Why’d you put that white bitch on there?” Davis writes in his autobiography, “It was on ‘Someday My Prince Will Come’ that I started demanding that Columbia use black women on my album covers…I mean, it was my album and I was Frances’s prince, and ‘Pfrancing’ on that album was written for her. Next I got rid of all them stupid liner notes, which I had been trying to do for a long time. See, I never thought there was nothing nobody could say about an album of mine. I just want everyone to listen to the music, and make up their own minds. I never did like no one writing about what I played on an album, trying to explain what I was trying to do. The music speaks for itself.” (Miles: The Autobiography, by Miles Davis with Quincy Troupe, p.252) So I realize that Miles Davis probably wouldn’t like my essay which is all about his music, but oh well. Such are the perils of being a critic. 

Hank Mobley had a heavy burden to carry on the album, as to the record-buying public he wasn’t replacing Sonny Stitt, he was replacing John Coltrane. Those are pretty big shoes to fill. While Mobley was a great player, he wasn’t the innovator that Coltrane was. It’s not really fair to compare Mobley to Coltrane, as Coltrane was one of the most influential players in the history of jazz music. Mobley's style was not as radical as Coltrane's. Mobley was a smooth player. I don’t mean that in a bad way, he just didn't have the rough edges that Coltrane did. If Miles wanted another Coltrane in his band, then he would inevitably be disappointed with Mobley. So why did Davis have Coltrane sit in on two of the songs on “Someday”? Was it a kind gesture to an old colleague, or was he already less than satisfied with Mobley’s playing?

Davis makes it clear that he wasn’t working well with Mobley in his autobiography. Davis writes about driving out to San Francisco for the dates at the Blackhawk in April 1961: “…the music was starting to bore me because I didn’t like what Hank Mobley was playing in the band…Playing with Hank just wasn’t fun for me; he didn’t stimulate my imagination.” (Miles: The Autobiography, p.252) This begs the question: why did Miles Davis hire Hank Mobley? Mobley was a part of some important projects with Davis, the first small group album after “Kind of Blue,” Miles's first live recordings to be issued by Columbia, and the Carnegie Hall concert. There must have been a reason Miles hired him, but he doesn't say what it is in his autobiography. To my ears, Mobley’s playing with Davis is not that different from his playing on his own albums of the time. So the question is, if Miles liked Mobley’s solo work, why didn’t he like what Hank was playing in his group? Or, if Miles didn’t care for Mobley’s solo work, why did he hire him? I wonder if Wynton Kelly and Paul Chambers recommended Mobley to Davis, as they had worked with Mobley on his two classic 1960 Blue Note albums, “Soul Station” and “Roll Call.” That’s my guess, that Davis needed a tenor saxophone, Kelly and Chambers recommended Mobley, and Mobley was available and said yes. 

In the next post, I’ll take a look at the “In Person: Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk” 4-CD box set.
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The Music of Miles Davis and Hank Mobley, Part 2: "In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk" (1961)

October 30, 2014, 7:22 am
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Cover for the 4-CD box set of the complete concerts at the Blackhawk. That's Miles Davis's wife Frances on the left.


Amazing picture of the Blackhawk jazz club in April, 1961. It's a parking lot now.

The really cool cover for the 1988 CD reissue of "Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk."

Miles Davis at the Blackhawk, 1961.
In re-listening to some of my Miles Davis albums, I decided that I wanted to write about his 1961 group that included the great tenor sax player Hank Mobley. In my last post I reviewed Miles Davis’s only studio sessions with Hank Mobley, which resulted in Davis’s 1961 album “Someday My Prince Will Come.” In this post I’ll take a look at Davis’s second project with Hank Mobley, the live albums “In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk.” These were Davis’s first live albums to be released by Columbia. His 1958 sextet had also been recorded live, but those performances weren’t issued until 1963 and 1973. “In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk” was expanded in 2003 to a 4-CD set including all of the music that was taped by Columbia on April 21st and 22nd, 1961. It’s a terrific set and I would recommend it to any fan of Davis’s work. Davis’s rhythm section was one of the greatest in all of jazz history. Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers, and Jimmy Cobb could cook, and there’s ample proof of that on these albums.

The Blackhawk was a famous jazz club in San Francisco, and although it was only open from 1949 to 1963, many of the most famous names in jazz played there in the 1950’s. California native Dave Brubeck was a Blackhawk regular, and Cal Tjader, Thelonious Monk, and Ahmad Jamal all recorded live albums there. Ralph J. Gleason’s wonderful liner notes to “At the Blackhawk” give us a good sense of what the scene at the Blackhawk was like. 

Rather than go through all of the songs the group played one by one, I’ll give an overview of each set.

Friday night, Set 1:
The band is exuberant, outgoing, expressive, hard-driving, and swinging. There’s great playing by all members, and this set shows what a tight band they were. This version of Sonny Rollins’s “Oleo” makes the original sound stately by comparison. There’s also a 17-minute version of “No Blues,” aka “Pfrancing,” which is the longest song the group played either night. Miles’s solo on “No Blues” is more punchy and extroverted than usual. There’s also a lovely bowed bass solo by Paul Chambers. 

Friday night, Set 2:
This was the longest set played either night. I love the way Miles plays on “Neo.” The Latin feel of the song seems to bring out different shades of his playing. He should have kept “Neo” in his concert repertoire. A lovely version of “I Thought About You” is the first ballad of the evening, and features an excellent Miles solo. “Walkin’” swings hard, and Mobley does great work on this tune, which also features another nice arco bass solo by Chambers. “Love, I’ve Found You” is performed by Kelly, Chambers, and Cobb as a trio. 

Friday night, Set 3:
A slightly more laid back set, featuring one of my favorite Miles Davis ballads, “Fran Dance.” On “If I Were a Bell” Kelly plays the same “Big Ben” intro from Davis’s 1956 version of the song with Red Garland on piano. Both “On Green Dolphin Street” and “If I Were a Bell” feature outstanding work from Wynton Kelly. Kelly was an excellent pianist who always sounded effortless and graceful no matter if he was creating beautiful solos or comping behind Miles or Mobley. 

Saturday night, Set 1:
A short set, but it features an excellent solo by Hank Mobley on “If I Were a Bell,” and a terrific version of “So What” that is played at a much faster tempo than the studio version. Miles’s solo on “So What” is blazing. 

Saturday night, Set 2:
As on Friday night, those lucky patrons who saw the second set got to hear a lot of music. There are excellent versions of “On Green Dolphin Street,” which has a great bass solo from Paul Chambers, and a terrific solo from Miles on “Walkin’” where he holds some really long notes. There’s also a slightly sloppy version of “Round Midnight.” 

Saturday night, Set 3:
The third set features a really nice version of “Autumn Leaves,” which is incomplete because the tapes weren’t rolling when Miles and the group took the stage, so the beginning of the song is missing. There’s another great version of “Neo,” featuring two solos from Miles, and some great Wynton Kelly piano playing on “Bye Bye (Theme)” and “Love, I’ve Found You.”

Saturday night, Set 4:
The evening comes to a close with the lovely ballad “I Thought About You,” a great version of “Someday My Prince Will Come,” and the trio of Kelly, Chambers, and Cobb playing “Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise.” “Prince” and “Softly” both feature excellent playing from Kelly.
“In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk” shows a great band at the peak of their powers. Even though Miles wasn’t digging what Hank Mobley was playing, you can’t tell from these recordings. Both Davis and Mobley offer excellent solos throughout the two nights captured on disc. And Kelly, Chambers, and Cobb display their tightness after two years of playing together. 

By 1961, Davis’s on stage behavior rankled some jazz purists. Miles was famous for playing with his back to the audience, for leaving the bandstand when his other musicians were soloing, and for never introducing songs or making small talk. He was there to play, and that’s all you were going to get. Davis tells a story in his autobiography about his mother talking to him around this time about his on stage behavior.

“My mother said to me, ‘Miles, you could at least smile for the audience when they’re clapping so hard for you. They’re clapping because they love you, love what you are playing because it’s beautiful.’ I said, ‘What do you want me to be, an Uncle Tom?’ She looked at me real hard for a minute and then she said, ‘If I ever hear about you tomming, I’ll come and kill you myself.’” (Miles, p.255) 

That anecdote shows where some of Miles’s pride came from. While now Miles’s behavior on stage wouldn’t be much remarked upon, at the time I think some people thought that he should be like Louis Armstrong and Dizzy Gillespie, two famously outgoing African-American jazz trumpeters. But that simply wasn’t Miles’s style. I don’t think that he ever thought he was being rude on stage, I think he was just being himself. 

Davis’s next album was recorded live at Carnegie Hall in May, just a month after the Blackhawk sets. The Carnegie Hall concert would pair him with the Gil Evans Orchestra, and would mark the first time he had ever recorded live with an orchestra. It would prove to be Mobley’s final recording with Davis, and I’ll take a closer look at the Carnegie Hall concert in my next post.
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The Music of Miles Davis and Hank Mobley, Part 3: "Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall" (1961)

November 1, 2014, 1:27 pm
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"Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall" album cover, 1961.


Hank Mobley and Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall, May 19, 1961.
In my last two posts I’ve examined the music that Miles Davis recorded in 1961, when tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley was part of his group. The other posts covered the studio album “Someday My Prince Will Come,”and the live album “In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk.”This post will examine the two-disc live album “Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall,” which was recorded on May 19, 1961, and was Mobley’s last recording with Miles Davis. The Carnegie Hall concert also featured the Gil Evans Orchestra, and it was the first time that Davis had ever performed live with an orchestra. Just like on the previous two albums, Davis’s group was comprised of Mobley on tenor sax, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. 

The songs on “Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall” are:

“So What”: The opening song is the only song on which both the orchestra and the quintet play, albeit briefly, as the orchestra plays the intro to “So What” that Bill Evans and Paul Chambers played on “Kind of Blue.” Unfortunately the orchestra totally blows the last note they play as the quintet takes over the song. Miles jabs like a prizefighter on his exuberant solo, and he hits some very high notes. Mobley begins his solo off-mike, but he quickly steps into the spotlight. Mobley delivers a typical melodic solo, despite a couple of reed squeaks. Wynton Kelly’s solo is as smooth as glass. 

“Spring is Here”: I have a confession to make: I don’t really like Miles Davis’s albums with Gil Evans. The music is pleasant, but it doesn’t make a lasting impression on me. I know, I know, I’ll give back my “jazz fan” membership card. “Spring is Here,” by Rodgers and Hart, was a new chart that was written specially for this concert, and it doesn’t appear on any of Davis’s studio albums. Bob Blumenthal makes the point in his liner notes for the CD that Bill Evans had recorded “Spring is Here” on his 1960 album “Portrait in Jazz,” and that Gil Evans’s arrangement pays homage to Bill Evans’s version of the song. You can tell when Miles hits high notes on this song that the sound quality of these recordings is less than perfect, as the notes sound shrill.

“Teo”: This song, named after Davis’s Columbia Records producer Teo Macero, was introduced on the “Someday My Prince Will Come” album. When it was recorded live at the Blackhawk, the title changed to “Neo,” for unknown reasons, and now at Carnegie Hall it’s back to “Teo.” The song has a Latin feel to it, and Miles plays a wonderfully exciting solo. He hits the highest notes I’ve ever heard him hit around 2:30 into the song. An excellent version of an underrated song. 

“Walkin’”: Miles is once again aggressive on this tune, firing off flurries of notes during his solo. Mobley’s solo is very good, as the hard bop sound of the tune compliments his style well. Kelly’s solo swings like crazy, and we also get an arco bass solo from Paul Chambers. 

“The Meaning of the Blues/Lament”: Two songs from “Miles Ahead.” Miles’s playing is excellent on these songs; although once again his high notes sound shrill, thanks to either Carnegie Hall or Columbia’s recording equipment. Honestly, the sound quality of the albums recorded at the Blackhawk is much better than the Carnegie Hall concert. 

“New Rhumba”: Another song from “Miles Ahead,” “New Rhumba” was a song written and recorded by pianist Ahmad Jamal. Jamal was one of Davis’s key influences during the 1950’s. Davis once said, “I live until Ahmad Jamal makes another record.” Davis liked Jamal so much that he had Red Garland record trio versions of “Ahmad’s Blues,” which Jamal wrote, and “Billy Boy,” an old song that Jamal re-arranged, for Davis’s albums that Miles doesn’t even play on. “Ahmad’s Blues” is on the “Workin’” album and “Billy Boy” is on “Milestones.” “New Rhumba” is one of my favorite songs from “Miles Ahead” because I really like Ahmad Jamal’s style.

“Someday My Prince Will Come”: A very short version of the title song from Miles’s new album, which wouldn’t be released until December, 1961. For whatever reason, Miles didn’t keep the song in his playbook, and this is the last live version he recorded of it. Mobley doesn’t solo on this short version.

“Oleo”: As at the Blackhawk, this Sonny Rollins song is played at a much faster tempo than the original. This version features an excellent solo from Mobley.

“No Blues”: Known as “Pfrancing” on the “Someday My Prince Will Come” album, this song retains the new title it gained during the Blackhawk sessions. Miles plays a very bluesy solo. Wynton Kelly’s solo is sparkling and sprightly.

“I Thought About You”: One of my favorite Miles Davis ballads. Davis plays a hauntingly beautiful solo on this song, which was a concert favorite of his. 

“En Aranjuez Con Tu Amor” (adagio from “Concierto De Aranjuez”): The first song from “Sketches of Spain,” it was bold and gutsy for Miles to try playing this live, as the recording on “Sketches of Spain” had to be spliced together from many different sessions. It’s a beautiful piece of music, and performed very well by Davis and the orchestra. 

“Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall” is a fascinating look at a very historic night of music. It’s the last recording that Hank Mobley made as a part of Davis’s group. Mobley left the group later in 1961 and resumed his solo career, making more superb hard bop albums for Blue Note. As noted in the post about “Someday My Prince Will Come,” Davis didn’t really care for Mobley’s playing. For whatever reason, Miles didn’t think their styles fit together very well, although I would say that all of the music they made together is excellent. Miles Davis had a number of health problems in 1962 and his only recording sessions that year were for the unsatisfying “Quiet Nights” album that would be his last album-length collaboration with Gil Evans. In early 1963, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb left Davis to form their own group. They went on to record several albums together, and backed Wes Montgomery on an amazing 1965 live date released as “Smokin’ at the Half Note.” Davis wouldn’t record with a small group again until the sessions for “Seven Steps to Heaven” in April and May of 1963. By that time, his group featured all of his “Second Classic Quintet” except for tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, who wouldn’t join the group until 1964.
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Book Review: Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth, by Lana Turner (1982)

November 2, 2014, 5:22 pm
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Book cover of Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth, by Lana Turner, 1982.


The beautiful and glamorous Lana Turner at the peak of her beauty.

Another glamorous still of the lovely Lana.

Lana making her dramatic entrance in The Postman Always Rings Twice, 1946. It's no wonder that John Garfield was willing to kill for her. 
Lana Turner was one of the biggest movie stars in the 1940’s and 1950’s and also one of the most beautiful and glamorous. Turner was well known for her stunning beauty, and also for her dramatic personal life. She was married 8 times to 7 different men. None of her marriages lasted longer than 5 years. Turner chronicled her extraordinary life in her 1982 autobiography Lana: The Lady, The Legend, The Truth. The book actually started as a biography of Turner by movie critic Hollis Alpert, but once he interviewed her for the book, it slowly turned into her autobiography, which explains why Alpert’s name is listed as one of the copyright holders.

Lana the book is an interesting look at the woman behind the image. However, the book is not without its faults. The ending of the book is oddly rushed, as the last 11 years that the book covers, from 1971-1982, take up only the last 15 pages. Granted, those are not the most fascinating years of Lana Turner’s life and career, but it felt like she suddenly ran out of time and rushed the ending. And suddenly, in the last four pages of the book, Turner has a religious awakening. This seemingly life-changing moment is catalogued without much detail. 

The real focus of Lana is on her husbands, and not her movies. Unfortunately for fans of old Hollywood, there’s not much behind the scenes information on any of Turner’s movies. We learn that Clark Gable, her most frequent co-star, was nice to her, but she only saw him socially once. There’s a lot that Turner doesn’t tell us, which holds back Lana from being a classic Hollywood autobiography. Who were Turner’s good girl friends who she socialized with? What leading men did she like playing opposite? We never find out because Turner simply doesn’t tell us. It’s too bad there isn’t more focus on her acting and her movies, because Lana Turner had true acting talent, and she was much more than just a pretty face. 

Turner had an unfortunate penchant for marrying men who were bad for her, and the catalogue of failed marriages eventually becomes numbing. It also begs the question, why did she marry so many men who were not suited for her? Turner attempts to answer the question, but doesn’t come up with a very satisfactory answer. Turner wrote:

“With the exception of dear Fred May, who is still my good friend, all my husbands have taken, and I was always giving. Why? Well, I was always a giver, even as a little girl. If I had candy and you had none, I’d give you half of mine….But that’s an easy answer, one I’ve used all my life. Now I see that somewhere there was a pattern, something in me that made me choose takers, over and over again. Surely I should have learned that, when respect goes out the door, love flies out the window. So why did I lose respect again and again? I honestly don’t know. Once would have been enough for some people.” (Lana, p.249) 

My own guess is that Turner must have had low self-confidence when it came to her relationships with men. Turner once said, “My plan was to have one husband and seven children but it turned out the other way.” She got off to a bad start at age 19 by eloping with big band-leader Artie Shaw to Las Vegas on their very first date! Shaw proved to be selfish and mean, and the marriage soon collapsed. Husband number 2 was Steve Crane, who eventually became a successful restaurant owner. Turner and Crane married twice because when they first got married Crane wasn’t divorced from his first wife. Oops! Crane fathered Turner’s only child, her daughter Cheryl Crane. Steve Crane inspired perhaps my favorite line in the book. While Turner was pregnant, he bought a tiny lion cub as a pet. Why, I don’t know. Turner writes, “With a baby coming, having a lion around the house seemed too risky to me.” (Lana, p.73) Good call Lana! 

In between husbands 2 and 3 Turner had a passionate affair with matinee idol Tyrone Power, who Turner describes as her true love. But Power was in the process of getting divorced from his first wife, and when she got pregnant with his child they weren’t able to marry. Turner writes about wanting to go away and have the baby in secret and then claim she adopted it. But she dismisses it as a foolish idea, even though it’s exactly what Loretta Young did when she got pregnant with Clark Gable’s baby. Young’s career survived unblemished. Power left for a press junket in Europe, leaving the ball in Turner’s court about whether to keep the child or not, saying it wasn’t his decision to make. Power contacted Turner via shortwave radio during his trip and she told him “I found the house today,” which was their secret code that meant she decided to have an abortion. When Power returned to the United States, he had fallen in love with actress Linda Christian, who would become his second wife. 

Husband number 3 was millionaire Bob Topping, who had a drinking problem and spent too much money. When Topping proposed to her, Turner told him “You know I don’t love you.” (Lana, p.109) Which is a good sign that you shouldn’t marry someone. But she eventually said yes. Turner makes it sound as though she wanted someone who would take care of her monetary needs, but did she really want to quit making movies and become a lady of leisure? She never answers definitively. Depressed and despondent over the failure of her marriage to Topping, Turner attempted suicide in late 1951, taking an overdose of sleeping pills and slashing her wrist. Her manager Ben Cole saved her by breaking down her bathroom door. The incident was covered up, and the official story was that Turner had slipped in the bathroom and broken the glass of her shower door, thus injuring her wrist. Husband number 4 was actor Lex Barker, most famous for playing Tarzan. According to Turner’s daughter Cheryl Crane, Barker sexually abused Crane, and once she told her mother about the abuse, she promptly left Barker. Turner doesn’t mention this in her autobiography.

In between husbands 4 and 5 was the most notorious relationship of Turner’s life, her year-long affair with minor mobster Johnny Stompanato, a former bodyguard for gangster Mickey Cohen. He introduced himself to her as “John Steele,” and had no inkling of his ties to gangsters until much later in their relationship. Stompanato was relentless in his pursuit of Turner, obsessively sending her flowers and trying to get her to go out on a date with him. Turner had a queasy feeling from the beginning about him, but unfortunately she finally went out with him. He quickly proved to be abusive and controlling. Once Turner learned of his connections to the underworld, she feared the bad publicity that would result if it became known that she was dating him. Ironically, Turner’s nightmares of bad publicity would come true, but not in any way she could have imagined. Turner wanted to end her relationship with Stompanato, but she proved unable to get rid of him. In the midst of this crisis, Turner was nominated for Best Actress for her role in Peyton Place. After the Oscar ceremony on March 26, 1958, when Turner came home to Stompanato that night, he went into a violent rage and brutally beat her, slapping her and punching her repeatedly. Turner wrote, “There were welts all over my face and neck, and the beginnings of what would be terrible bruises.” (Lana, p.194) Just a week later, on April 4th, Turner and Stompanato had another loud argument and he was threatening her again. Turner’s daughter Cheryl was listening to their argument, and entered the room. Holding a kitchen knife, she stabbed Stompanato in the stomach, killing him. The incident was a huge Hollywood scandal, and Turner saw her private life splashed all over the front pages. Cheryl’s stabbing of Stompanato was ruled a justifiable homicide, and she was spared having to go to jail. Luckily for Turner, the scandal didn’t ruin her movie career, as Peyton Place’s box office totals were probably helped by all of the press coverage.

Husband number 5 was Fred May, who sounds like he was a really nice guy. He’s the only one of Turner’s ex-husbands that she remained close friends with, and Turner admits in the book that maybe she shouldn’t have divorced him. Husband number 6 was Robert Eaton, who misused lot of Turner’s money and threw extravagant parties when she was out of the country. Her final husband was nightclub hypnotist Ronald Pellar, also known as Ronald Dante. He allegedly stole a lot of money and jewelry from Turner. Turner declared herself finished with men at that point and never married again. I guess she knew that once she had basically married Gob Bluth, Will Arnett’s character from “Arrested Development,” she probably shouldn’t get married again. 

To her credit, Lana Turner was a survivor. She made it through 7 failed marriages, 2 abortions, 3 stillbirths, and she still kept going. That takes guts, and you have to respect someone who has been through all that.
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Book Review: In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson (2011)

November 6, 2014, 6:35 am
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Cover of In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson, 2011.


Erik Larson, author of The Devil in the White City and In the Garden of Beasts.
Berlin. The name of the city conjures up numerous visions-the decadent nightlife of the Weimar Republic, immortalized in Christopher Isherwood’s The Berlin Stories, the bombed-out ruins of Hitler’s bunker, the drab gray concrete of communist East Berlin and the infamous Berlin Wall. Erik Larson’s excellent 2011 book In the Garden of Beasts gives us a riveting account of Berlin at the very start of Hitler’s rule. The main character of In the Garden of Beasts is William E. Dodd, the ambassador of the United States to Germany from 1933-1937. 

Dodd was an odd choice for ambassador, as he was a history professor at the University of Chicago. He had become a good friend of Woodrow Wilson’s during Wilson’s successful run for President in 1912, and he later wrote a biography of Wilson. Dodd was not well suited to the job of ambassador. He didn’t enjoy the social obligations that were a large part of being an ambassador, and he doesn’t seem to have gotten along well with anyone on his staff. Because he wasn’t independently wealthy, Dodd didn’t fit in with the other U.S. diplomats, and many of his colleagues undermined him in their letters and reports. 

When Dodd arrived in Germany in July of 1933, Hitler was Chancellor, but he was not yet the all-powerful dictator he would later become. At that time Paul von Hindenburg, the elderly President of Germany, still had the power and authority to remove Hitler as Chancellor and declare martial law. But it was obvious to Dodd and other foreign observers that the Nazis were the dominant faction in Germany. 

In the beginning of his service in Berlin, Dodd did not see the danger that the Nazis represented, and like many other observers thought that either Hitler’s government would quickly collapse, or that the Nazis would eventually moderate their extreme views. Obviously, as we know all too well, neither of those things happened.

In the Garden of Beasts focuses on Dodd’s changing attitude as he sees more of the brutality of the Nazis’ rule, and he gradually understands that Hitler is not a man who can be dealt with rationally. The book also deals with Dodd’s family, who accompanied him to Germany. Specifically, it focuses on his spirited daughter Martha, who was 24 when the Dodds arrived in Berlin. Martha was quickly entranced by the Nazis, as she only saw what she interpreted as good things, like a renewed sense of national pride in Germany. Martha attracted many suitors, and she had a close relationship with Rudolf Diels, who was then the head of the Gestapo. While she was in Berlin, Martha also fell in love with Boris Winogradov, a Russian who was a member of the NKVD, the precursor to the KGB. Martha only needed to sleep with a member of Stasi, the brutal East German secret police, to complete her trifecta of notorious authoritarian secret police forces. 

The climax of In the Garden of Beasts is Hitler’s June 1934 purge of the SA, the brown-shirted “Storm Troopers” led by Ernst Röhm, who had been a long-time ally of Hitler’s. Röhm’s brown shirts tended to be a rowdy bunch who were likely to randomly beat up American citizens for not giving the Hitler salute during parades. (This behavior, and the German police’s reluctance to punish the SA members, led to many headaches for Ambassador Dodd.) Hitler was facing pressure from President Hindenburg to reign in the excesses of the SA, or else Hindenburg would strip Hitler of his title and declare martial law. Röhm was at the same time pressuring Hitler to let him take control of the German army. Hitler’s purge of the SA, known as the “Night of the Long Knives,” led to the murder of many key SA leaders, including Röhm. The official Nazi story was that Röhm was trying to overthrow Hitler, which was untrue. Hitler claimed that the purge was necessary to protect Germany from traitors. In purging the SA, Hitler satisfied Hindenburg, and at the same time did away with a key rival within his own party. When Hindenburg died in August of 1934, Hitler persuaded his cabinet to pass a law merging the offices of President and Chancellor, and thus when Hindenburg died, the last real threat to Hitler’s power died too. Hitler and the Nazi party now had total control of Germany. 

Larson is able to craft a non-fiction book that also has a fast-paced narrative, which is a difficult feat to pull off. He creates vivid portraits of the many fascinating and bizarre characters that populated the early days of the Third Reich. I have only two criticisms of In the Garden of Beasts. One is that, like Larson’s previous book The Devil in the White City, In the Garden of Beasts doesn’t have a separate picture section. Larson paints such great portraits of Berlin and the people who inhabited the city at the time that I wanted to see more pictures of what these people looked like. My other criticism is that Larson skates over the fact that Martha Dodd was a spy for the Soviet Union after she returned to the United States in 1937. She and her second husband Alfred Stern were indicted on charges of espionage in 1957, and they fled the United States and never returned. Larson does not say that Dodd was indicted on charges of espionage; he merely writes “as pressure from federal authorities increased, they moved again…” (In the Garden of Beasts, p.361) But that omission doesn’t detract from the many pleasures that In the Garden of Beasts provides the reader. I learned a lot more about a fascinating time in world history, a brief window in which Adolf Hitler might easily have been removed from power, which would have changed much of the history of the 20thcentury. 
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"For Your Pleasure," an Essay on Roxy Music

November 15, 2014, 10:25 pm
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All the iconic album covers of Roxy Music, not in chronological order.

Roxy Music, 1972. Top row: Bryan Ferry, Graham Simpson, Andy Mackay. Bottom row: Phil Manzanera, Brian Eno, Paul Thompson.

Roxy Music, 2000's. Left to right, Phil Manzanera, Bryan Ferry, and Andy Mackay.
I’ve known about the British band Roxy Music for a long time, probably since my infatuation with David Bowie began around 2000, but it wasn’t until ten years later that I started seriously listening to their music. I quickly became a big fan of their unique style. 

Earlier this month, Roxy Music’s lead guitarist Phil Manzanera told Rolling Stone that the group has broken up, which seems like a rather belated announcement for a group that hasn’t released a new studio album since 1982. But Roxy Music did re-form in 2001 and has toured off and on since then, although their last live appearance was in 2011. So what legacy does Roxy Music leave behind? Between 1972 and 1982 they released 8 studio albums that trace the evolution of the band from glam rock and experimental art rock to smooth, slick dance grooves. 

Roxy Music started out as an arty glam rock band, releasing their debut album in June of 1972, the same summer that David Bowie finally broke big in the UK with the single “Starman” and the “Ziggy Stardust” album. Similar to Bowie, Roxy Music looked like they had been beamed down to Earth from some other planet. Lead singer Bryan Ferry’s unique croon was paired with Phil Manzanera’s scorching lead guitar, Andy Mackay’s saxophone and oboe contributions, Paul Thompson’s thumping drums, and Brian Eno’s electronic experimentations on synthesizer to give Roxy Music an unmistakable sound. Their debut album is astonishing. With Roxy Music there were no half measures, no hesitation, no finding your voice. The group seemed to emerge from the womb fully formed. 

Early Roxy Music songs were definitely a bit weird. “Re-Make/Re-Model,” the first song on their first album, had a cryptic backing chorus of “CPL 593H,” which was apparently the license plate number belonging to an attractive woman that Bryan Ferry saw. (The song actually makes a lot more sense viewed through the lens of a failed flirtation.) One of their most famous songs, “In Every Dream Home a Heartache” is about a blow-up doll that Bryan Ferry gets a little too attached to. Ferry doesn’t so much sing the lyrics as recite them, like a bizarre prose poem. 

One might think that Roxy lost some of their thirst for experimentation once Brian Eno left the group in 1973, after their second album “For Your Pleasure.” But Roxy continued to expand their sonic palette, as Ferry wrote songs like “Bitter-Sweet,” which sounds like a lost song from “Cabaret.” Roxy Music turned out three excellent albums in a row without Eno, “Stranded,” “Country Life,” and “Siren.” Oddly enough, Eno has said that his favorite Roxy Music album is “Stranded,” the first album the group made without him. The lead single from 1975’s “Siren” album was the insanely catchy “Love is the Drug,” which proved to be Roxy’s only US Top 40 single. Ferry had written catchy songs before, but “Love is the Drug” paired a funky bass line with a killer chorus that made it an easier song to follow than, say, “Mother of Pearl.” 

After the 1976 live album “Viva!” Roxy Music went on hiatus. I’m not entirely sure why they decided to take a break. Part of the reason might have been for Bryan Ferry to focus on his burgeoning solo career. Ferry had released his first solo album “These Foolish Things,” an eclectic collection of cover versions, in October of 1973, just a month before the Roxy Music album “Stranded” came out. Ferry released a staggering total of 10 studio albums between 1972 and 1978, 5 with Roxy Music, and 5 solo. 

Roxy Music reconvened in late 1978 to begin recording “Manifesto,” issued in 1979. “Manifesto” is really a transition album. There are still some rough edges, but it’s definitely a little smoother than their previous albums. The song “Angel Eyes” highlights this. The album version of the song is rougher and rockier, but the single version is smoother and more polished, a hint of the new direction that Roxy would be moving in. The hit single “Dance Away” was also a smoother piece of great pop than they had previously put out. 

The group’s next album, 1980’s “Flesh and Blood” shows the new, smoother Roxy Music in full flower. Personally, it’s my own favorite Roxy Music album, as I can’t resist the slinky tunes like “Oh Yeah,” “Same Old Scene,” “My Only Love,” and “Over You.” Roxy Music followed up “Flesh and Blood” with another supremely smooth album, 1982’s sublime “Avalon.” It’s a perfect pop album. And then suddenly they were gone, breaking up after finishing the “Avalon” tour in 1983.

What made Roxy Music such an interesting band? It’s the yearning passion that typifies their songs, Ferry’s romantic and expressive vocals, the excellent arrangements that seemed to fit each song perfectly, and their stylistic range. It’s kind of weird for a band to go from “Do the Strand” to “Avalon,” but Roxy Music did it, and both songs are great in their own way. 

Visual style was always a large part of the Roxy Music mystique. Bryan Ferry is not only one of rock’s great singers; he’s also one of the most stylish rock stars. Roxy Music was also famous for their sleek and sexy album covers-the most famous of which, 1974’s “Country Life,” was heavily censored in the U.S. The original cover showed two beautiful women clad only in see-through lingerie. The U.S. cover omitted the women and instead featured a close up of the trees they were posing in front of!

Roxy Music never achieved as much success in the US as they did in the UK. Stateside, their highest charting album was “Manifesto,” peaking at #23, and their biggest hit single was “Love is the Drug,” which hit #30. In the UK, all 8 of their studio albums peaked in the Top 10. In all, they had 11 Top 10 albums and 4 that made it to number 1. On the UK singles chart, they had 10 Top 10 singles, and 1 number 1, a cover of John Lennon’s “Jealous Guy” that was released in early 1981 as a tribute to Lennon. 

Whether you enjoy smooth pop tunes crooned by an effortlessly cool singer, or spiky arty songs filled with references to visual art, you’ll find something to enjoy in the albums of Roxy Music.
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Book Review: Once Upon a Secret, by Mimi Alford (2012)

November 18, 2014, 1:24 pm
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The cover of Once Upon a Secret, by Mimi Alford, 2012.


Mimi Beardsley, circa 1962. She was an intern in the White House press office during the summer of 1962, and worked at the White House again during the summer of 1963.

President John F. Kennedy. He wouldn't have been smiling if he had ever had to field questions from the press about his extramarital affairs.
John F. Kennedy once said that the reason we read biographies is to answer the question, “What was he like?” That’s certainly the reason that Kennedy still intrigues people more than 50 years after his tragic death. Personally, I find JFK to be one of the most interesting Presidents, so I was fascinated by Mimi Alford’s excellent 2012 book, Once Upon a Secret: My Affair with President John F. Kennedy and its Aftermath. Alford, then known by her maiden name as Mimi Beardsley, was a 19-year-old college student and intern in the White House press office during the summer of 1962. On her fourth day on the job, presidential aide Dave Powers invited her to go swimming in the White House pool during lunch. She said yes, and joining her for the swim were two White House secretaries and the President. At the end of the day, Powers invited Beardsley to a party for new White House staffers. She accepted, and once again, President Kennedy was there. Later that evening he took her on a tour of the private residence and had sex with Alford in First Lady Jackie Kennedy’s bedroom. Mimi Beardsley lost her virginity in 1962. To John F. Kennedy. While he was President. In the White House. Wow, now that’s a story.

Kennedy seduced many women, both before and throughout his Presidency. He once said to British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan, “I wonder how it is for you, Harold? If I don’t have a woman for three days, I get terrible headaches.” (President Kennedy: Profile of Power, by Richard Reeves, p.290) Despite his charm and good looks, Kennedy wasn’t known to be a great lover. Actress Angie Dickinson was rumored to have had a relationship with JFK, and this quote has often been attributed to her: “Sleeping with the President was the greatest 20 seconds of my life.” That pretty much sums up John F. Kennedy’s attitude towards sex. It was definitely all about his pleasure, not hers. Beardsley writes that her first sexual experience with Kennedy was brief, but later on she writes “As time went by, he was also more attentive, more gentlemanly than he had been in our first encounter…Our sexual relationship was varied and fun.” (Alford, p.65) 

Kennedy saw Beardsley regularly for the rest of the summer of 1962, and their sexual relationship continued. Kennedy even continued seeing Beardsley after she went back to college in the fall, using a fake name to place phone calls to her dorm, and arranging for her to make weekend trips back to the White House. Beardsley was even in the White House during one of the most tense days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in October, 1962. The reason that Beardsley was able to sleep over at the White House so often was that Jackie Kennedy was hardly ever at the White House, which is ironic, since one of the most famous things that Jackie Kennedy did as First Lady was to oversee a remodeling of the White House. But Jackie hated politics, and wanted to ride horses in the country, so she spent most of her time at Glen Ora, the Kennedys’ house in rural Virginia. 

Beardsley also traveled with the President, making several trips as a part of the President’s entourage. I was surprised as I read the book by how much time Beardsley spent with Kennedy. She spent many, many hours in his company during 1962 and 1963, which made me wonder, how deep was their relationship? What would Kennedy have said about their relationship, how would he have defined it? I don’t think that he was in love with her, but he was obviously drawn to her, and there must have been a reason other than sex that he spent so much time with her. For her the relationship was something like a schoolgirl crush, but what was the relationship like for him? Kennedy obviously enjoyed Beardsley’s company; otherwise he wouldn’t have gone to such great lengths to keep seeing her. 

Beardsley continued working in the White House during the summer of 1963, even as she got engaged to Tony Fahnestock, a college student at Williams. Beardsley knew that she would eventually quit working at the White House and stop seeing President Kennedy. The last time she saw Kennedy was at the Carlyle Hotel in New York City on Friday, November 15, 1963. Kennedy gave her $300 and told her to buy something nice, as his wedding present to her. Kennedy told Beardsley, “I wish you were coming with me to Texas. I’ll call you when I get back.” (Alford, p.127) A week later Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas.

The second half of Once Upon a Secret deals with how the secret that Alford kept for so long affected her relationships in her life. She told her fiancé Tony about her affair with JFK on the night of November 22, 1963, as they were watching television coverage in the aftermath of Kennedy’s assassination. Tony took the news poorly and made Mimi promise that she would never tell anyone, ever. Their marriage eventually crumbled, and they divorced. Alford writes very well about her struggles on her journey to becoming a woman who is happy with herself and who can love someone on her own terms. She has been happily married to Dick Alford since 2005. Her secret relationship with JFK remained something that she had only shared with a few people until May of 2003. There was a reference to Alford in an oral history that Robert Dallek quoted in his acclaimed biography of JFK, An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963, although she wasn’t named. But soon the press figured out her identity, and reporters were stalking her. Alford made a brief statement confirming her relationship with JFK, but didn’t give any interviews to the press. 

Once Upon a Secret is an excellent book, and I applaud Alford for telling the truth, even when it’s difficult. Her book sheds new light on John F. Kennedy, and he comes off as a very flawed human, but still likeable.
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Book Review: It's Even Worse Than It Looks, by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein (2012)

November 25, 2014, 11:02 am
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Paperback cover of It's Even Worse Than It Looks, by Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein, 2012.

Why is Congress so gridlocked? Why can’t anything get done in Washington D.C.? Political scientists Thomas E. Mann and Norman J. Ornstein attempt to answer those questions, and others, in their excellent 2012 book It’s Even Worse Than It Looks: How the American Constitutional System Collided with the New Politics of Extremism. Mann and Ornstein are both non-partisan political analysts, so they don’t have a partisan axe to grind, but they do place much of the blame squarely on a Republican party that has moved much farther to the right, and has refused to work with President Obama at all. 

In the Introduction, Mann and Ornstein write:

“One of the two major parties, the Republican Party, has become an insurgent outlier-ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence, and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.” (Mann and Ornstein, p.xxiv) 

I think Mann and Ornstein have hit the nail on the head. I’m a liberal Democrat, so I have my own biases, but from where I stand, it’s not that the Democrats are getting any more liberal, it’s that the Republicans have taken a sharp turn to the right. Liberal and moderate Republicans are an endangered species, if not outright extinct. Nelson Rockefeller, who was something of an outsider in the Republican Party during his own lifetime, wouldn’t be able to find a place inside the Republican Party in 2014. Republicans have demanded a stifling orthodoxy of all their members, and the insurgent Tea Partiers have made sure that anyone not toeing the line will see a primary challenge from the far right. 

Republicans have made it very clear from day one of Obama’s Presidency that they were just waiting out the clock, and wouldn’t lift a finger to help him. This has hurt our country, as the Republican party has not offered any ideas of its own, but just turned into an obstructionist faction. Of course, it’s natural for the party opposing the President to not just roll over and give the President what he wants, but Republicans have taken obstructionism to a whole new level. The Republican party of 2014 doesn’t have an agenda beyond just opposing Obama’s policies. What do they stand for? It’s a question the party has to ask itself. If they keep only appealing to old, rich, straight white men, they won’t win any more Presidential elections.  

Part of the problem with gridlock in Congress is that our political system is designed to be hard to change. It’s meant to be difficult for a simple majority to completely override the minority party. And while that might be a good thing in the long run, it also means that it’s extremely difficult to get anything done in the short term.

Mann and Ornstein also discuss other problems facing contemporary politics, like the proliferation of Super PACs and unregulated money that has poured into the political system since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010. Stephen Colbert has often highlighted the absurdity of the rules surrounding Super PACs by forming his own Super PAC in 2011, “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow.” Colbert deftly showed how much of the money going to Super PACs is untraceable, and how the contributors’ identities remain secret. 

Fortunately, lest you get too depressed by Mann and Ornstein’s compendium of the political madness of the 2010’s, the authors also have a long section of the book in which they propose solutions to some of these maladies. Some of their solutions are modernizing voter registration to increase turnout, which Republicans have been overwhelmingly against, making Election Day a holiday, and making voting compulsory. They also mention doing away with mid-term elections, which would be a great idea, as turnout in the 2014 mid-terms was a pitiful 36.4%, the lowest since 1942. Changing to open primaries would be a great idea to get candidates for office that are more moderate, since they would have to appeal to more people than just the base of their own party. Another solution Mann and Ornstein suggest is limiting the number of filibusters in the Senate, which would greatly increase the amount of floor time available for debate. 

It’s Even Worse Than It Looks is an excellent look at the politics of today, and I would recommend it to anyone wondering why Congress is so ineffective.
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Concert Review: Nick Lowe, Los Straitjackets, and The Cactus Blossoms at First Avenue

December 5, 2014, 9:34 pm
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Nick Lowe, frolicking in the snow and being left-handed. (Left-handed people are the best. Nick Lowe, David Bowie, Paul McCartney, David Byrne and Philip Roth are all left-handed. I rest my case.)


Album cover of Nick Lowe's "Quality Street," 2013.

The Cactus Blossoms
Nick Lowe, one of my favorite artists, came to the Twin Cities again this week as he performed at First Avenue on Tuesday with Los Straitjackets backing him. Veteran British rocker Ian McLagan was due to open the show, but sadly he passed away on Tuesday after suffering a stroke on Monday. I was looking forward to seeing McLagan, who was the keyboard player with the Small Faces and the Faces. Local duo The Cactus Blossoms filled in for McLagan on the bill, and they did a great job. The Cactus Blossoms are two brothers, Jack Torrey and Page Burkum, who specialize in Western swing, and their voices combine just as beautifully as the Everly Brothers. Torrey and Burkum performed as a duo, with just their acoustic guitars, and that worked very well for their sound. One of the highlights of their set was a lovely cover of the Beatles’ “This Boy.” 

Lowe took the stage alone and sang the first few songs of his set solo, which always highlights what a great guitar player he is, and how good his songs are. Lowe spoke a little about McLagan’s tragic passing and that he would have wanted the show to carry on. As Nick played “7 Nights to Rock,” Los Straitjackets came onto the stage to accompany him. Los Straitjackets proved to be an inspired choice to back Lowe, as their 1960’s surf/garage rock style worked very well on rockers like “Ragin’ Eyes” and “Half a Boy and Half a Man.” Los Straitjackets also brought a palpable energy to the stage, and when Lowe left the stage for a break they entertained with instrumental versions of “Sleigh Ride,” “Bus Stop,” “Linus and Lucy,” and Lowe’s own “I Love the Sound of Breaking Glass.” 

Although the tour’s official title is the “Quality Holiday Revue,” taking its title from Lowe’s 2013 Christmas CD “Quality Street,” Nick only sang four holiday songs. But I don’t think the audience minded. Lowe sang a lot of his best-known songs, but the set list also featured songs I haven’t heard him sing live before, like “The Rose of England” and “Half a Boy and Half a Man.” Lowe brought his customary energy and good humor to the stage, and the highlights of the concert for me were a lovely solo version of “Heart,” the slyly humorous “Christmas at the Airport,” and two great tracks from Nick’s 2007 album “At My Age,” “Not Too Long Ago,” and “Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day.” Lowe closed the evening by singing a beautiful solo version of Elvis Costello’s “Alison,” a song that Nick originally produced for Costello’s debut 1977 album, “My Aim Is True.” Lowe’s soulful voice and spare guitar worked well to bring out all of the emotion in Costello’s song. 

Here’s the set list for the songs that Nick Lowe sang:

Solo:
The Rose of England
Heart
Long Limbed Girl
A Dollar Short of Happy
7 Nights to Rock
With Los Straitjackets:
Only a Fool Breaks His Own Heart
Ragin’ Eyes
Christmas at the Airport
Not Too Long Ago
Sensitive Man
Somebody Cares For Me
North Pole Express
Half a Boy and Half a Man
Cruel to be Kind
Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
I Wish It Could be Christmas Everyday
I Knew the Bride (When She Used to Rock and Roll)
Encore:
Tokyo Bay
(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding?
Second encore:
Alison-solo
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