Caitlin Tully

Saturday night we went downtown to see the symphony. Somehow I got hold of cheap 3rd row seats for 5 performances this year (I'm thinking they mixed me up with someone else!) This has been a real blessing - a chance to watch the performers up close and pick up on the body language and sometimes the real emotional response of the players to the music itself. I've seen a violinist break down in tears after a recital of Strauss's
last songs (the modern one), laughter at humorous passages, the vocal humming and growling of a guest pianist, the looks that said "I wonder what's to eat when this is over?", "My shoes are too tight", as well looks of transport out of this world...
I didn't know the details of Saturday's program until I sat down. The 2nd of the 3 offerings was to be Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2. featuring an 18 year old violinist as guest soloist.

The symphony players tuned up, adjusted and settled in their seats.
Out walks a slender girl with light auburn red hair and a coppery red strapless gown who smiled and took a deep bow before beginning. With no music in front of her she closed her eyes and swept herself, and everyone, into the music. Her face had a kind of Irish babyfat look but with fine features nevertheless - with a little exagerration she could have been tweaked into a Tim Burton version of a Dr. Seuss story - but what struck me was the asymmetrical furrows of concentration that would breeze across her, as if she was being possessed by some ancient soul or, at least, the vestigial memory of one of her teachers.
I'm no judge of classical violinists but her tone just sang and she just breezed through intricate, modern chromatic passages that i imagined 10 years of confinement to a Tibetan monastery couldn't achieve. The looks on the faces of the symphony members seemed to confirm that my dazzlement wasn't entirely bumpkin.

After the show I looked up everything I could find about Caitlin Tully. She was not, as we had thought likely, born to musician parents. Her folks noticed her unusually strong attraction to the sound of the violin before she was three. Well-meaning, they bought her a keyboard and she got mad. When they got her violin next Christmas she was in joy and began lessons - eventually leading to lessons with Itzhak Perlman, public performance at 10, and its been steadily upward from there.
I was relieved to hear that she has understanding, non-interfering parents and a wide range of interests beyond the violin. She enjoys composing - working on a children's opera for which she composed the libretto and designed the clothing - studying languages, competing in 10k races, paragliding, and unicycle riding.

Yehudi Menuhin, famous violinist and child prodigy himself, said of Caitlin "She plays with more integrity than any young violinist I have heard."

Meanwhile - I sez to my 53 year old self - I want to get some practice in...

Kaleidoscope's Taxim

While corresponding with my guitarist/percussionist friend Matt about improvisation in Arabic music - the word "taqsim" came up which is roughly equivalent to "improvisation" as in jazz. However ( as mentioned in the article "Arabic Concepts For Improvisation , By: Daniel Schnee, Canadian Musician, 07089635, Nov/Dec2005, Vol. 27, Issue 6)
it differs from "traditional" jazz forms in that "An Arabic taqsim is organized on the inverse concept. There is no fixed rhythmic form in bar scheme, time signature, or pulse. Because of this, it may seem that a taqsim sounds kind of random or formless, without what we would call 'direction' in the West." It actually has a definite direction, similar to the ragas in Indian music where certain notes and sequences are emphasized and expounded on to it give each piece its unique flavor.

When I read "taqsim" a bulb was lit and I was somersaulted back to the late 60's and "Taxim" a lengthy instrumental tune played by Kaleidoscope - just your typical underground, eclectic/ethno-jug-blues-psychedelic string band based out of LA..
"Taxim" starts slow and meditatively with Solomon Feldthouse on saz and Lindley on harp-guitar and builds steadily almost from formlessness to form.

Jimmy Page was very impressed by them. He'd heard them at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco back when he was with the Yardbirds. His quote;“They’re my favorite band of all time—my ideal band.” came at time when he was looking to incorporate some of the Middle Eastern and Celtic influences he was picking up from Davy Graham and Bert Jansch - touched upon in his instrumental feature back then "White Summer".

In the 70's after the demise of Kaleidoscope I was unknowingly blown away by the performances of Solomon Feldthouse - both in Santa Cruz and at the Novato Renaissance faire where he played with a gypsy style/flamenco dance and music troupe and later a belly dance troupe. He was calling himself Sulyman and I thought he was some kind of wild gypsy living in the hills - until somebody mentioned that he'd been in Kaleidoscope. Turns out he was born in Idaho but moved to Izmit, Turkey when he was 10 “I started playing while I was over there…Greek, Turkish and Persian music, ‘coz that’s what I heard every day. My mama used to like to go to Istanbul on the weekends sometimes…She ran into this gal from Spain that worked there [the singer Pepita Lerma] who was half gypsy, from Madrid…She gave my mother some records to give to me and I went berserk. We went to visit her in Madrid and she bought me my first guitar and showed me some of the stuff…I got a terminal disease from that.” He returned to the U.S. after 6 years and eventually began gigging in solo folk flamenco and belly dance situations.

David Lindley - another multi-instrumentalist who continuously grows and explores and has gained notoriety playing with Jackson Browne and countless others.
I don't know much about the rest of the guys except that they too came various backgrounds with a tilt towards jazz and bluegrass. There has been a recent reunion minus Lindley.


The basic line-up for the Beacon From Mars lp that contains Taxim gives you an idea of their sound:
David Lindley- banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, harp-guitar and 7-string banjo
Solomon Feldthouse- saz bouzoukee, dobro, vina, doumbeg, dulcimer, fiddle and 12 string guitar
Fenrus Epp (AKA Chester Crill)- violin, viola, bass, piano, organ and harmonica
Chris Darrow- banjo, mandolin, fiddle, autoharp, harmonica and clarinet
John Vidican- percussion

some related links to check out: a site dedicated to Kaleidoscope;http://www.pulsatingdream.com/index.html
http://www.sirocco-music.com/ - Solomon's longtime band in the Santa Cruz area
http://www.hamzaeldin.com/ - The site of Hamza El Din, my favorite Middle Eastern style instrumentalist. Traditional roots, creative outcome. An inspiration to me since his Vanguard records in the late 60's and in live performance.

Poems in the Lestorian Mode

Dexter Gordon grew up in Los Angeles and recalled young hipsters in the '30s on the street corner laying down rhymes to the tenor saxophone solos that Lester Young spun out for the Basie band.
The Beat writers and poets yet to come also dug Lester; Allen Ginsberg, speaking about his poem "Howl", said, "I depended on the word 'who' to keep the beat, a base to keep measure, return to and take off again onto another streak of invention..." (blowing, jazzlike) "Lester Young, actually is what i was thinking about...'Howl' is all 'Lester Leaps In'. And I got that from Kerouac."

When off-duty from his gig as poet of the tenor saxophone, Lester Young himself spoke, if he spoke at all, in phrases, metaphors, of is own invention -'takes' or improvisations riffed off the changes life handed him. Lester's poetic language was like a code, sometimes a playful way to conceal his true thoughts from the "unhip" but often a total puzzlement to his fellow musicians.
The pianist Jimmy Rowles, who composed the lovely jazz standard "The Peacocks", played with Lester for a few years and recalled, "You had to break that code to understand him. it was like memorizing a dictionary, and I think it took me about three months."

The keys on the piano or horn were "people", "left people" the fingers of pianist's left hand. The bridge of a tune "George Washington". If Lester was on the bandstand and wanted the bass player to take a solo
he would look over at him and say, "Put me in the basement". Drummer Roy Haynes was asked by Lester to join his band; "He didn't just come out and say 'Do you want to join my band?', Instead he said, 'Do you have eyes for the slave?'."
If Prez liked or was digging something he'd say "eyes!" and in some cases "bulging eyes!" or "Catalina eyes!" or "no eyes" if he didn't. If he was happy to see someone it was "bells!". "How are your feelings?" was a greeting - not a tough one...A new girlfriend was "a new hat" - then there were variations; "mexican hat dance", "skull-cap", and "homburg". A particularly good-looking woman was a "pound-cake". "Bing and Bob" (ala Crosby and Hope) were the police.
If there was an unpleasant person on the scene, rather than use "m-fer" Lester would say "Tommy Tucker is here" or another word similar in rhyme. Someone that would be a bringdown was "Von Hangman".
He'd punctuate his phrases with some Slim Gaillard jive like "oodastadis", "vout" and "oreeney". Something inordinately expensive was "chandelier". I picture Lester, at the counter of today's corporate coffeehouse with his long braided hair under the porkpie hat, all in black, and spats purchasing a latte and muffin;
"That will be 8 dollars,sir"
"Chandelier!"

His longtime fave drummer Jo Jones has this memory; "I saw Lester across the street in New York one day with one of his children - very young, you know. So i crossed over and asked him how he was doing. Now what he wanted to tell me was that he didn't mind if the child wet itself, but he didn't want to clean up any shit. So what he said was, 'I don't mind the waterfall, but I can't take the mustard!:

Thirty-some years ago listening to an early Billie Holiday/Teddy Wilson record in the dark, I heard a horn come in during the break of "Sun Showers" - it was the coolest/warmest swingingest little 8 bar phrase in a sound so voice-like and direct-it was like a being from out-of-this-world world that just materialized, drawn to the euphoric smoke-cloud of the session to give everybody just a taste enough...it was Lester and it was just a taste enough for me vow to learn the tenor sax one day if only to play something just close to a few notes of of what I'd heard.

Lester Young discography:
note: Anything before 1945 is Lester at his peak. The irony is that as Lester's health problems began to severely effect his playing (beginning after his return from the army in the 40's) he finally was able to make recordings under his own name. The upshot of this is that the novice listener comes across these later recordings more readily and assumes - scratching his head - that this is the Lester Young that inspired Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Miles Davis etc... Not so, his early work was what turned the direction of jazz around, although once in awhile a gem that echoed the facile brilliance of the early days pops up in the later years.
the good stuff....
Easy Does It: 1936-1940 (a lot of his solos with Basie and some great samll group sessions)
The Lester Young Story (box set from the UK)- a great well-rounded set.
The Keynote Sessions
Alladin Sessions (from 1942 and 1945)
Spirituals to Swing; Carnegie Hall 1938
(my favorite Lester is in relaxed, groovin' small group sessions and this set features some fantastic quartet/quintet numbers with Lester and Charlie Christian)

Best books:
A Lester Young Reader - edited by Lewis Porter
You Just Fight For Your Life - Frank Buchmann-Moller

Born To Kvetch

"If the Stones's '(I Can't Get No)Satisfaction' had been written in Yiddish, it would have been called '(I Love to Keep Telling You that I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Because Telling You that I'm Not Satisfied Is All That Can Satsify Me)." - Michael Wex Born To Kvetch

I grew up in West Los Angeles with close friends of Jewish heritage. Though their families were far from orthodox, there was enough Yiddish bandied about I could return from a pal's house and realize what a tsuris I'd gotten my self into at school, bemoan the mishuganeh drivers on Santa Monica Blvd., and say "oy gevolt!" when i hit a baseball through a parked car window.
I was particularly taken by the Jewish-Hungarian dishes, served with selzer water, of my friend's mother and grandmother and how my sanity was questioned when I wouldn't go beyond three helpings.
In my teens I had a Jewish girlfriend - if I'd been fluent with Yiddish, here I would've answered my friends "Iz zi sheyn? is she beautiful? Mayne sonim zoln zayn azoy miyes My enemies should be as ugly (as she is beautiful)" I went to her house for the first time and recalled not a word from her mom but in a flash an unforgettable warm plate of kasha was put before me - nothing like the pseudo-macrobiotic stuff i'd been making that my friends lovingly referred to as "gruel".

Born to Kvetch - Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods is one of the few books i've recently been unable to put down. Admittedly, it helps if the reader is a bit of a language nut, but there are some laugh-out-loud moments throughout. Interspersed with Talmudic interpretation and syntactical gymnastics, Wex cites incidents of Yiddish phrases in Three Stooges movies, comparisons with Twilight Zone episodes, analogies to songs by ? And the Mysterians, and Albert King.

In a nutshell the "kvetch" is portrayed not just as a complaint but as a kind of pre-emptive strike against those forces of evil and mischief that would love to pounce upon compliments or other admissions of joy and acceptance. Thus, the tradition of breaking glasses at the start of a wedding - those spirits that would seek to ruin the joyous occasion are somehow appeased by these acts of symbolic destruction. As with the phrase I mentioned earlier, complimenting the beauty of the woman is not enough when the praise can double as a curse against one's enemies.
I enjoy the way Wex seems to reach out personally to the reader, suggesting that if the going gets rough, skip ahead to another chapter. I followed his advice and relished the delicious lists of Yiddish curses, ie.;

You should lose all of your teeth but one, so that you can have a toothache

Doctors should have need of you

Your brain should dry up

May you have a calamity in your flanks

A maniac should be crossed off the register of madmen and you should be inscribed in his place

Hours of fun, this. If you happen upon this wonderful book, Mazl Tov!

Van Lingle Mungo, Mr. Frishberg, Anita O'Day

Van Lingle Mungo was a fireballing, fiery-tempered, pitcher for those perennial losers of 1930's, the Brooklyn Dodgers. He also has the oddball distinction of being the subject of a jazz bossa nova composition with music and lyrics by Dave Frishberg.
The verses of "Van Lingle Mungo" are made up entirely of baseball players names, ie.

"Whitey Kurowski,
Max Lanier,
Eddie Waitkus,
Johnny VanDerMeer,
Bob Estallela,
....VAN LINGLE MUNGO"

and so forth.

To quote Frishberg, who was interviewed by the Baseball Almanac; "The only other guy from the song I ever met was Mungo himself, who arrived from Pageland, South Carolina, to be on the Dick Cavett show and listen to me sing the song. This was 1969, when Cavett had a nightly show in New York. Backstage, Mungo asked me when he would see some remuneration for the song. When he heard my explanation about how there was unlikely to be any remuneration for anyone connected with the song, least of all him, he was genuinely downcast. 'But it's my name,' he said. I told him, 'The only way you can get even is to go home and write a song called Dave Frishberg.' He laughed, and when we said goodbye he said , 'I'm gonna do it! I'm gonna do it!' If he did it, The Baseball Almanac doesn't mention it."

Frishberg wrote some well-known jazz comically-tinged lyric gems such as "My Attorney Bernie" and "Peel Me Grape". "Peel Me Grape" has gained recent notoriety due to Diana Krall's version - but, with all due respect to Diana, Anita O'Day's version back in 1958 is the tops.
Anita is one of my favorite female jazz singers - she hasn't the range and finesse of Sarah Vaughan, or smoothness of Ella Fitzgerald but she's swings like crazy and has a sass,(without cliched "sexiness") exuberance, instrumentalist's sensibility, and nuance of emotion that at times surpasses the greats. You can get a taste of her live in the classic movie "Jazz On a Summer's Day", filmed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. She comes out in her signature black dress, wide-brimmed black hat and gloves and lays it down. Anita led a tough life, recently chronicled in her autobiography "High times, Hard Times" - co-authored by George Eels.

Hazel Wands, Wells, Wise Fish and Other Irish Fancies

Here's the famous W.B.Yeats poem "Song of the Wandering Aengus";



I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

This is the only poem I ever voluntarily memorized. It rolls nicely off the tongue and is a great bit of a story as well.
The Irish - Scots and Welsh just as much - were particularly enamoured of hazel trees. Hazel wood was sacred to poets and forbidden to burn in any hearth. The nuts of the hazel tree were considered to store great wisdom. Oftimes a sacred well or pool was ringed with hazel trees. When the nuts from the trees would fall into the waters below to be gobbled up by the fish (salmon or trout) those fish would be endowed with great wisdom. In Ireland, spots on these fish are indicative of the amount of "wise hazelnuts" swallowed by them. According to the oldest legends, both the goddesses Sinann and Boand broke taboo and obtained wisdom from these waters and fish but paid the price of drowning from the waters therein. These waters overflowed to become the two great rivers of Ireland; the Shannon (Sinann) and the Boyne (Boand).

Over in merrie England hazel woods became synonymous (likely an Anglo-saxon term of derision towards the native Celts and their fanciful beliefs) with "idle fantasy". In Chaucer's poem Troilus and Crysede there are a few phrases like "Ye haselwodes shaken!" meaning, perhaps "What a miracle you're coming up with!" and "Thou sitest on hasel bou," meaning "you talk idly". (this from a fascinating article by Martin Puhvel of McGill University).

Singers from the folk world have been fond of the poem. My favorite musical versions of the
"Song of the Wandering Aengus" are Donovan's on HMS Donovan and Jolie Holland's on Catalpa

D'Gary and the Lemur

Tonight at the library where I work in Phoenix I went down on my break and checked out (for the umpty-umpth time) the first recording of the Madagascarian guitarist D'Gary. By some cosmic collision (if only in my own billiard-busting skull) at the end of the worknight, a co-worker from telephone reference came down the stairs asking me if i heard anything about a lemur loose in the building. In the gathering of those leaving the building I picked up bits and pieces and the logical conclusion was that it was some sort of desert ring-tail cat and not a Madagascar Lemur gone for a stroll in the park, taking a detour through the open door of the library....

From a small village in Madagascar, D'Gary has evolved an intricate, flowing finger-picked acoustic guitar style that is out of this world. The fact that Malagasy people are largely of a mix of African and Indonesian origins hints at the unusual chemistry of these sounds - obviously inspired by western recordings as well.
D'Gary has adapted to guitar melodic lines that roll with ease off of native instruments of his people; the valiha - a tubular harp, the marovany - a box zither, and, among others, the kabosy - which combines characterists of the mandolin, guitar and dulcimer.

A little about Madagascar from the liner notes of this record:
"80% of the plants and animals of Madagascar are endemic, they exist only there. In terms of biodiversity it is one of the richest lands on the planet. This is due, perhaps to the island's early separation from the mainland some 160 million years ago and to the fact that Madagascar was one of the last places on Earth to be settled by humans (around the 7th century AD).

The record is called "Malagasy Guitar: D'Gary: Music from Madagascar" and is available from Shanachie records. It was produced by Henry Kaiser and David Lindley -innovative and diverse guitarists in their own right - in 1991.

Lost photos of the Titanic

I was out in front of a bookstore one night talking with a friend while leafing through a coffee-table photo book of the Titanic in the sale bins. A young woman overheard our conversation and told us that her great-uncle had been on the Titanic; he was traveling alone - I believe she said he was a Basque from Spain - and met his death in the icy sea that night, April 15, 1912, at 2:20 am, along with 1500 others. I can't help but hope that he at least made some friends on board or somehow made peace with his fate.

I always wondered if any photos were taken on board those last days that have yet to be found. I don't mean the famous last photos taken from her final departing point in Queenstown, Ireland; I mean photos - or film - taken during the voyage by either survivors that remained unspoken of and in the family's possession, or some film that went down with the ship and might be recovered intact.
There were some photographic plates found in the wreckage but all material was obliterated.
Incredibly, when the Lusitania (sunk 1915) was salvaged in 1982, a reel of film called Carpets of Baghdad was found and sections of it were restored and viewable. Is it possible something of this sort survived on the Titanic?
There happened to be a well-known cinematographer aboard the Titanic, William Harbeck. He was noted for his documentary filming of the days folowing the San Francisco Earthquake among others. There is some speculation that he was invited to take footage aboard the ship and it seems definitive that he intended at least to film the arrival in New York; employing a smaller boat to view it before docking.
There is a mystery surrounding his relationship with a young French woman, Mademoiselle Henriette Yrois. Although Harbeck was married it seems likely that Yrois may have traveled with Harbeck as his wife (as younger unattached females were likely to be chaperoned in those times). One of the survivivors recalled:
"In the opposite corner are the young American kinematograph photographer and his young wife, evidently French, very fond of playing patience, which she is doing now, while he sits back in his chair watching the game and interposing from time to time with suggestions. I did not see them again."

We will never know the truth of it as both Harbeck and Henriette perished in the sinking. Harbeck's body was found, apparently clutching a bag that belonged to Mlle. Yrois. Her body was never recovered.

A great site for information and discussion about the Titanic: intelligent contributions from writers, naval experts etc., extensive biographical articles about most of the passengers and crew;
www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

Traversata

I lived in Santa Cruz for about 6 years in the 70's; a middle California coastal town of rolling hillsides and inlets, whose overcast mornings only a hardcore surfer or devoted brussels sprout farmer could love. Formerly a turn-of-the century boardwalk resort it was still a tourist getaway with the San Lorenzo River flowing down from the redwoods into town winding along the (then) funky remnants of the beach hotels, victorian houses, and emptying beneath an old roller coaster into the Monterey Bay. During my stay, the place was saturated with students, foodstamp-funded street-people, retired hippies, crackpots, writers, a gamelan orchestra, bright orange banana slugs, laidback dreamers, idealists, feminists, LA escapees, former mental patients on the street directing invisible traffic, and an older layer of fishermen, loggers, and ordinary cranky oldtimers who'd seen it all and had enough. Oh yeah, and a great crepe place whose memory still sets me to slobber.
I spent way too much time in Cafe Pergolesi (lost to the earthquake of 1989), hanging out and listening to some great live traditional musicians in league with the espresso steam bursts. There were Irish bands, uillean pipers, and an old saw-player in a black bowler hat and suspenders who had been a Wobblie back in 1919 named Tom Scribner.
In particular, there was an older Italian gentleman who played traditional mandolin accompanied by his long-haired son (?) on guitar. After I left town, for years I tried to recapture that particular sound, looking for a good recording of Italian music on mandolin but I usually came up with some kind of over-orchestrated schlock-fest or something vocally dominated.
...and now at last!

Traversata: Italian Music In America is a collaborative musical effort by Carlo Aonzo, David Grisman, and Beppe Gambetta featuring exclusively mandolin, mandola, and harp-guitar. Sto da favola!
Traversata comes from the Italian term for "ocean crossing" used at the turn of the 20th century when immigration and travel to and fro in search of opportunity was at its peak.
.
The record is a mix of trad, popular, and classic Italian and Italian-American music that was either composed for, or is ideally suited to, mandolin, mandola, or harp-guitar. Besides works by virtuoso native Italians who visited America, there is (my personal favorite) the lovely "Oh Mio Babbino Caro" from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi that seems to have been created for this version. Another favorite is the Godfather's Waltz that Nino Rota composed for the famed film. The version is pared down from the original orchestration to the absolute, haunting essentials.
The cd is supplemented with evocative pictures and well-researched liner notes describing the music, the composers all of whom had a simultaneous link to America and Italy.

highly recommended!

Nino Rota

I was watching Fellini's Le Notti Di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) many years back and marvelling at the "color" in the musical soundtrack. There was a haunting melody in particular that might have been straight from the shores of Sicily or Calabria: it had a touch of an Arabic scale, echoes of Scheherezade - minor-sounding but with a twist of ginger that rescued it from somberness, wistful without sentimentality. Aside from this tune there were other odd musical turns; a bit of mambo, jazz, circus, and operatic overture all of which enhanced the tragi-comic, bittersweet tone of the movie.
Though Fellini's movies have been a hit-or-miss affair for me, my favorites like Amarcord, Cabiria, The White Sheik, and La Strada were very much enhanced by the musical scores. After finding out that these films were all scored by Nino Rota, I was all a-fire and off on an information/recording rampage - got hold of a cd "Omaggio a Fellini" which is a collection of themes composed by Rota for Fellini during his career as the maestro's musical-director-in-residence from 1952 to 1979. This record has been a popular food-prep, party, what-have-you "background" cd in our household for years - i'm sure the Italian-circus-sophisticated/numbskull mix has been "harmonious" with the environs.

Rota is more famously known here in the States as the composer of the Godfather soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola. At least one of the melodies has passed into a popular kitsch theme when gangsters are referenced but, even the most jaded of listeners has got admit (i chance it) that this is a gorgeous melody nevertheless. The same could be said for Rota's soundtrack to Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. The Love Theme has gained elevator music status, and yet, listening to the original Rota orchestral version....a palms up, eyes heavenward, shrug is all I can come up with. What can I say, the guy's a genius. If you're in doubt, forget the Love Theme and check out "A Renaissance Timepiece" from the same score. Beautiful! THATS what i'm talkin about!
Rota was, aside from a composer for film, a prodigious serious composer of operas ballets and instrumental works. He was born in 1911 in Milan and was a child prodigy, studying piano, and soon composing at the age of 8 as well as conducting soon after! He studied renaissance music in depth and it is a thread throughout his film scores.
As described in a bio; "Well acquainted with new musical developments from his youth (during which he enjoyed a long personal friendship with Stravinksy), Rota followed a quite different path in his own music, retaining the supremacy of melody, a tonality free of harmonic complexity, established patterns of rhythm and form, and a concept of music as spontaneous, direct expression." His lifelong passion seemingly knew no bounds and his death in 1979 has been attributed to 20 hour workdays.

Aside from Fellini, Zeffirelli, and Coppola, Rota was the author of scores for Visconti's The Leopard and even Lina Wertmuller's Love and Anarchy.
Coincidentally, yesterday I was in a to-remain-anonymous "restaurant" having a bite of the unmentionable while I poured, Italian dictionary in hand, over some Italian text about Rota that I'd copied from a website about him. After finishing, I got into the car and turned on NPR and lo 'n behold the very first thing I hear is (it's a Radio 360 interview with award-winning film composer Rachel Portman) an interviewer asking, "Are there any scores that you particularly look to as the 'Gold Standard' for film music?"
answer from Portman "I'd have to say Nino Rota's music for the Godfather....it's music that stands on its own, really not 'background music' at all".
...please maestro, cue the Twilight Zone theme!

a brief Nino Rota discography:

Omaggio : A Homage to Federico Fellini (actual excerpts from the movies)
Film Music of Nino Rota - piano arrangements by Rota of much of his film music
The Essential Nino Rota Film Music Collection - performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
Amarcord Nino Rota - a collection Rota's themes from Fellini movies played by a variety of stellar jazz musicians. The most effective and evocative of Rota's spirit are the solo or near-solo performances by pianist Jaki Byard and vibist Dave Samuels

...and last but not least, a great record called;
Traversata - featuring mandolins of Carlo Aonzo and David Grisman with harp-guitar by Beppe Gambetta. It contains one not-to-be-missed piece of Rota's, The Godfather's Waltz....more on this later

Tales of The Rube

Davy Jones was one of many old-time ballplayers interviewed by Lawrence Ritter in the 60's (for his marvelous oral history book, The Glory of Their Times) about their lives in turn-o-the-century baseball;

"Oh. the game was very different in my day from what it's like today. I don't mean just that the fences were further back and the ball was deader and things like that. I mean it was more fun to play ball then. The players were more colorful, you know, drawn from every walk of life, and the whole thing was sort of chaotic most of the time, not highly organized in every detail like it is nowadays.
Back at the turn of the century, you know, we didn't have the mass communication and mass transportation that exist nowadays. We didn't have as much schooling either. As a result, people were more unique then, more different from each other."

George Edward "Rube" Waddell was unarguably one of the top 5 pitchers who ever lived, leading the American League in strikeouts 6 YEARS IN A ROW between 1902 and 1908 (349 in 1904 which stood as the record until Koufax broke it in 1965), with an incredulous lifetime ERA of 2.16! Now keeping in mind the 20 million dollar salary of today's superstar Alex Rodriguez; Rube's top salary was about $2500 and in consideration of Rube's "odd" behavior and unpredictable attendance to scheduled pitching stints with the Philadelphia Athletics, his manager, the venerable Connie Mack, took it upon himself to distribute Rube's salary to him in one dollar increments.

Hall of famer and contemporary of the Rube, Sam Crawford, puts it like this:
"How good he'd have been if he'd taken baseball seriously is hard to imagine. Like I say, it was always just a game with Rube. He played 'cause he had fun playing, but as far as he was concerned it was all the same whether he was playing in the Big Leagues or with a bunch of kids in a sandlot."
Rube was more than once delayed in making his appearance to the mound because he was found in a marbles match with kids under the grandstand.
For weeks at a time, Rube might be out fishing, tending saloon (Rube certainly wouldn't neglect to serve himself), appearing in vaudeville skits, subduing villains on the theatrical stage, or wrestling alligators.

Rube was a Big Kid (in marquee-sized capitals) who managed to blaze his way to glory with a hopping fastball, and an unhittable curveball that apparently could only be caught by one catcher, Rube's partner in crime, Ossie Schreckengost - "Schreck". Alas, even Schreck had to draw the line somewhere with Rube. He approached Connie Mack and demanded that if he were to room with Rube there had to be a clause written his contract that the flakey inhabitant of the upper bunk would not be permitted to eat Animal Crackers in bed. And so it came to pass...
Rube chased after women, entering into marriages with a meteoric zest and exiting that institution just as quickly. Whether animal crackers entered the picture...only the Sphinx knows. We know he was once brought to trial for heaving a flat-iron at his in-laws. (hmmmm...)

Sam Crawford shares an "opposing player" memory of Rube:
"The main thing you had to watch out for was not to get him mad. If things were going smoothly and everyone was happy, Rube would be happy too, and he'd just go along, sort of half-pitching. Just fooling around, lackadaisical, you know. But if you got him mad he'd really bear down, and then you wouldn't have a chance. Not a chance."
"Hughie Jennings, our manager in Detroit, used to go to the dime store and buy little toys, like rubber snakes or a Jack-in-the Box. He'd get in the first base coach's box and set them down on the grass and yell, 'Hey, Rube, look.' Rube would look over at the jack-in-the-box and grin, real slow-like, you know. yeah we'd do everything to get him in a good mood and to distract him from his pitching."


Waddell was particularly fond of fire engines and fires. He would leave a game midway, dashing out of the dugout and out of the park in pursuit of a fire engine.
Connie Mack related this to the Saturday Evening Post in 1936:
"I had to keep an eye on him to keep him from joining up with the fire department in any town we happened to be playing in. He always wore a red undershirt, so that when the firebell rang he could pull off his coat, thus exposing his crimson credentials, and gallop off to the blaze, where he would try to direct operations by ringing commands, whether anyone obeyed them or not." There were times though, when Rube would throw Mack a curveball in the dissapearance arena.
"Another time when he was missing during a train trip, he returned to us as the drum major of a band marching up the main street, a look of ineffable bliss on his face. He(then in the heat of glory?)posed in a show window as an automoton."

Rube was never one to shirk from danger and sincerely meant well despite neglecting such formalities as "credentials". Again, from Connie Mack's reminiscence: "Danny Hoffman always gave the Rube credit for saving his life. ...Tannehill threw a ball that hit Danny on the temple, and he fell to the ground like a pole-axed steer. Someone went for an ambulance, and the players crowded around in aimless bewilderment. Somebody said that Danny might not live until the doctor got there. Pushing everybody to one side, (Waddell) placed Danny over his shoulder and actually ran across the field. And Danny was no lightweight, and was unconscious to boot.
The Rube found a carriage outside, commandeered it with ferocious threats to the driver, and rushed Danny to a hospital. The Rube sat by Danny's bedside the greater part of the night, still in his uniform holding ice to Danny's head to ease his suffering."

After a decade in the majors, alcoholism and erratic behaviour drove Rube out of the league. He met his end in 1913, falling ill to pneumonia contracted from volunteer work piling sandbags in an icy river that threatened a Texas community with a disastrous flood.
Shortly before his death some ballplayers located him in the sanatorium where he was a patient. Barely recognizable and thin as a rail, Rube told them,"I'll be over there tomorrow to show you guys how to run. I've got my weight down to fighting trim."
Ossie Schreck saw to the epitaph on his headstone: "Rube Waddell had only one priority, to have a good time."

Ulysses Pub NYC 2004

Yours truly emerging from the Irish pub in NYC near Wall St. where I saw on Karan Casey on my birthday, March 14. Also saw the amazing Irish band Lunasa there a few days before.
The Ulysses pub lies on the corner of Pearl and Stone Street in Lower Manhattan. Stone Street, narrow and cobblestoned as per old Amsterdam or Napoli, was said to be the first paved street (1658 by the Dutch) when it was known as Hoogh Straet - high Street. Although the cobblestone that lines the ground now is a modern "recapturing" of the original and oft filled with bustling Wall Street types, in a quiet moment you can gaze out down the lane and imagine, at least a glimpse of, what once was.

Paul Desmond and Audrey Hepburn

Though bookish and somewhat nebbish-like in appearance Desmond was a great lover of women and they in return flocked to him in droves. His famous quote - "Sometimes I get the feeling that there are orgies going on all over New York City, and somebody says, `Let's call Desmond,' and somebody else says, 'Why bother? He's probably home reading the Encyclopedia Britannica."
In the thorough and absorbing bio "Take Five: the Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond" by Doug Ramsey there is a great story related by some of Desmond's friends about his unrequited passion for Audrey Hepburn.

While he was in New York, Paul would steal away from the club where he played just to catch a glimpse of Audrey coming out the stage door of the theatre where she performed. He'd stand across the street smoking his cigarette, but could never bring himself to approach her. He did go home and write an instrumental called "Audrey". It has a lovely late hours-minor sounding melody that gives way to a light-hearted ce'st la vie major blues in the conclusion.
Desmond and Audrey never met.
Desmond died in 1977 at 52 of lung cancer "In a business where booze and drugs abound, his drinking was legendary, but it was three packs a day that caught up with him in May of that year. Much to his own amusement his liver was fine, "Pristine, one of the great livers of our time. Awash in Dewars and full of health." (from Paul Caulfield's Pure Desmond website).
Meanwhile, Audrey Hepburn, who went to her grave without knowing "Audrey" was written for her, told friends that Desmond's piece was her favorite and that she loved to listen to it through her headphones it while she tended her garden.

Like many would-be card-carrying jazz hipsters I somewhat avoided Paul Desmond when I first took jazz seriously - the association of him with the Brubeck group smacked of commercialism, and all the great geniuses of jazz - Charlie Parker for example - seemed to get short shrift in the public eye because of the success of Take Five. I've since realized that Desmond was up there among the geniuses (ironically Parker named him as his favorite alto player) and what superficially seemed soft and overly intellectual in his playing belied an intensity, and "human" quality much like a great conversation; whether flippant, profound, or tender and intimate.

I've only had 2 memorable compliments about my own tenor-playing; one guy came up when i played on the street and said i sounded like Gene Ammons and another told me i sounded like Paul Desmond playing tenor. Both are major idols of mine, but I'm totally, laughably, unworthy of either compliment (someday, maybe before i die)...but i will say this about the Desmond compliment: I think it was more about the glasses.

recommended cd listenings Desmond-wise:
all his records with guitarist Jim Hall, especially -

Take Ten
Easy Living
Samba Antigua

and the records with the later quartet -
Paul Desmond Quartet Live
Like Someone In Love

my favorite desmond renderings, Alone Together, A Ship With No Sails, The night has A Thousand Eyes, Samba de Orfeu, Audrey, Bewitched, Song to a Seagull....

Lefty O'Doul story

Some friends, well-intentioned, have asked me for the reason behind my use of Lefty O'Doul as a personal e-mail moniker...

Lefty O'Doul's baseball fame is based on three distinct achievements;

* his tremendous hitting record (lifetime batting average of .349 which is only fourth behind Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Joe Jackson - he also is tied for the National single season record for hits , 254 in 1929)
* Lefty almost singlehandedly organized Japanese baseball in the 1930's and fostered goodwill between the Japanese and Americans after war through his dedication to Japanese baseball and respect for Japanese culture.
* His achievements as a manager in Pacific Coast League. Most notably with the San Francisco Seals where he mentored Joe DiMaggio before he arrived on the Yankees.

Outside of baseball Lefty cut quite a figure in the city of San Francisco, where he was oft seen in his green suit (for good luck) and Cadillac.
Francis Joseph O'Doul born in SF on Mar. 4th 1897 (A few weeks after another San Francisco native, the beautiful silent film star Alma Rubens - if there are any early cinema buffs still reading!).
Lefty's legacy to SF lives on at his "Lefty O'Douls" pub on 333 Geary St.near Powell where you can get a hefty plate of corned beef cabbage and good beer.

"Some ballplayers say that he had the perfect swing, and that includes the great Ted Williams. An interview with Williams in the November 14, 1994 Sporting News describes the young Ted Williams sneaking a look into the field and watching the "most perfect swing" of Lefty O'Doul. "A kid copies what is good. And if he's never seen it, he'll never know. I remember the first time I saw Lefty O'Doul, and he was as far away as those palms. And I saw the guy come to bat in batting practice. I was looking through a knothole, and I said, 'Geez, does that guy look good!' And it was Lefty O'Doul, one of the greatest hitters ever." Lefty O'Doul was an inspiration to many."

Lefty started his hitting career in the major leagues late in life. He started out as a pitcher with the Yankees in 1919 but threw out his arm and went down to the minors. To survive he worked on his already natural hitting and running ability and resurfaced in the majors as an outfielder (albeit a lousy fielder with no arm left!) at age 31 with the NY Giants in 1928. The Giants traded him to the Phillies the next year where he batted .398 to lead the league : he also had a record-setting with 254 hits and 32 home runs. Still, Lefty's age and lackluster fielding gave him only a few yrs remaining in the pros. He was traded to Brooklyn and won his second batting title with them in 1932 (thus the "32" in my email!). He ended his his career back with the Giants in 33-34 and made to the '33 World Series as well.

A note about the O'Doul name -

"His name is certainly famous, firstly because of his own career, but now also because of a non-alcoholic beer sold by Anheuser Busch, O'Doul's.

Another incident helped to make the O'Doul name famous [1]. When Hollywood made the movie Pride of the Yankees, starring Gary Cooper, they hired Lefty O'Doul as an uncredited consultant to coach Cooper in the fine points of batting. The movie, considered one of the finest baseball movies ever made, doesn't have much to do with baseball but it includes a humorful reference to Lefty by the scriptwriters, in tribute. In the movie, Lou Gehrig is skulking about his girl friend's house, and is accosted by Officer O'Doul, a stereotypical Irish police officer. This famous scene helped popularize the "Irish" name of O'Doul. It is not, it seems, Irish.

Lefty's last name O'Doul was fabricated by his father, whose real name was Doul. His father was trying to impress his mother's family, who were Irish and supposedly wouldn't have understood her dating anybody but Irish [1]. A check of the Irish registry show no names of O'Doul. In fact, there are very few in the entire United States of America. However, when Anheuser Busch tested names for their non-alcoholic beer, they found a strong identification with "O'Doul's," and so named it [2]. Such is luck, but not, in this case, the luck of the Irish."

Lefty went over to Japan in the early 30's on a barnstorm tour with American All Star players, including Babe Ruth.

Here's a little from Lefty's interview in "The Glory of Their Times" (the greatest baseball book ever written!) about Lefty's experience in Japan:

"I kept going back and finally went to work organizing a professional set-up, like we have here. I'm the one who named the Tokyo Giants...."

"See, I like people who you're not wasting your time trying to help. Teaching Americans and teaching Japanese is just like the difference between night and day. The American kid, he knows more than the coach. But not the Japanese kid. They want to learn. They don't think they know everything. Entirely opposite psychology.

"Take when we blow an automobile horn. We want the pedestrian to get out of the way, right? Horn blows: Get out of the way. We're coming through. Honk, honk: Get out of the way. Well when they blow the horn they're telling the pedestrian it's OK: we see you. Horn blows: we see you. Honk-honk: we see you. So, when the horn blows they don't jump or anything. They know they won't get hit...Just the opposite from us."

At age 59 lefty was managing a PCL team out of Vancouver and put himself in the game to pinch-hit. "..I hit a ball between the outfielders and staggered all the wayaround to third."

"A triple. Fifty-nine years old. How about that!" Right there - forty years too late - I learned the secret of successful hitting. It consists of two things. the first is clean living, and the second is to bat against a pitcher who's laughing so hard he can hardly throw the ball."

Francis Joseph O'Doul 1897-1969 ..may he rest in peace!

Siloette

While being walked by my black labrador Lulu one day down a nearby by alleyway, out back of the local pawnshop, i came upon an unexpectedly beautiful image spray-painted on a wall. It was like stumbling through the jungle and finding Angkor Wat or finding Venus De Milo in a rubbish heap.
The signature said "Siloette"
Quite independently, a week later I bumped into my friend Bruce, who has a photographic, elephant-to the hundredth-squared memory for numbers, people, and all things metropolitan; he mentioned Siloette as a creative "spraypaint" artist, with a website, no less! (siloette.com - check it out!)

I would describe the main body of her work as Alphonse Mucha-meets-Anime-in a bed of contemporary graffiti - often depicting enigmatic, "sullen" (here i use the artist's words), sensuous young women with somewhat Puerto Rican features.
Found out that Siloette has been around the world from Japan to Paris spraypainting and illustrating on and in various media. Shucks, here was her work in my very own neighborhood alley!
Months later, on another dog-walk I chanced upon Siloette herself putting the finishing touches on a new painting. She was very affable and not at all the unapproachable artiste. Her partner "Mac" was also there (a great artist in his own right) - Siloette said the Renaissance primer-green skin tones she oft uses were inspired by him.
...and to think, the fate of this stuff is to be sprayed over, sometimes after a few months, to make room for something new. Part of the charm I suppose....

Out of Nowhere, Warne Marsh

Warne Marsh (1927-1987)was one of the greatest unsung heroes of the jazz saxophone world. You can listen to 50 of of the top-selling or top listened-to jazz players today and you won't find anyone remotely similar to Warne. The common reaction of well-rounded musicians listening to him for the first is a kind of "Wow!" and then, almost simultaneously, a head-scratching "What the hell is he doing?".
What little I can make out is that Warne's improvised horn lines are a kind of continuous melodic thread that is growing out of itself, constantly shifting accents akin to waves breaking over rocks - something almost 'selfless' and naturally happening; not a series of cliched licks, patterns, or arpeggios, piled upon each other as is the norm.
Warne, along with Lee Konitz, was a disciple of the blind pianist Lennie Tristano who nurtured a deep appreciation of Lester Young, Charlie Parker, and Bela Bartok in his students. I had some guitar lessons with a student of Warne's in Santa Cruz and saxophone lessons from a student of his here in Phoenix - both spoke with reverence of his approach to learning standards, ie. singing the bassline of the tune first to learn it and so forth.
Of course Warne was never anywhere close to commercial success - he worked for many years cleaning swimming pools, or teaching. He would occasionally play at the Village Vanguard in New York and was very much appreciated in Denmark and England (so, what else is new?).
quote from Safford Chamberlain;
My favorite Warne Marsh story, included in my book,
"An Unsung Cat", is this: a student, Claude Alexander,
asked Warne if he had ever tried LSD. Warne said he
had. "How did you like it," asked Claude. "It makes
the notes too far apart," answered Warne.
Finally, for all of you film history fans out there, all -32 of you, Warne's aunt was Mae Marsh - the silent film heroine who starred in D.W.Griffith's major epics.

Recommended Warne Marsh cd listening:
Music for Prancing (Check out Playa Del Rey, Ad Libido)
Here's a Good One For You
Duos with Red Mitchell
or, way back in 1949,
tunes like Warne's composition "Marshmallow" with the Tristano Quintet

Brooklyn Bridge Ghosts

Heard that the famous poet Hart Crane was composing his "To Brooklyn Bridge" while living in a room in Brooklyn overlooking the bridge itself in clear view. Only after he'd composed it did he learn that Washington Roebling, who, after his father, was Chief Engineer during construction of the bridge for decades, had lived in, and watched from the same window of, the very same room. Roebling was nearly paralyzed in 1879 from decompression bends while working on the bridge and his wife Emily took on the supervison while he remained in the room for four years, finally witnessing it's completion - from the window - in 1883.

the last three verses of Crane's poem:

Again the traffic lights that skim thy swift
Unfractioned idiom, immaculate sigh of stars,
Beading thy path--condense eternity:
And we have seen night lifted in thine arms.

Under thy shadow by the piers I waited;
Only in darkness is thy shadow clear.
The City's fiery parcels all undone,
Already snow submerges an iron year . . .

O Sleepless as the river under thee,
Vaulting the sea, the prairies' dreaming sod,
Unto us lowliest sometime sweep, descend
And of the curveship lend a myth to God.

-- Hart Crane

Berenice Abbott NYC: narrow passage through door of Twilight

Usually museums are a little too much for me. If it's a great show it's too much to take on in an atmosphere that can be somehow stifling, like sneaking up on a butterfly while wearing a spacesuit.
My best strategy is to find one compelling item or work of art - and there usually is just one in particular - and just quietly take that one in, leaving and returning and just let it seep in.

Tonight at the Phoenix Art Museum it was a photograph by Berenice Abbott; New York At Night 1934.

I found out the story behind this picture later:
She was said to go about getting the perfect photo "almost as if a trap had been set".
She wanted to get a night shot in Manhattan from high on up, looking down at the criss crossing streetlines and traffic and the buildings illuminated with office lights. It needed to be just light enough to get a clear view of the building forms but with the lights on - in those days a lot of the offices closed down early and turned off their lights.
Berenice (beautiful name)"calculated that in order to get a dramatic night shot with all the lights on she would need to expose the film in her camera for 15 minutes.
The only night in the year that it would be dark enough before 5pm to create the contrast between the building lights and the night sky is the shortest day of the year December 20". Winter solstice.
With no wind that night to blur the film, and permission of the landlord to use a high up window the film Berenice captured the perfect shot...
Sunset December 20, 1934.http://www.artnet.com/artwork/424351831/berenice-abbott-new-york-at-night.html

New Orleans via Canary Islands

NPR had a feature recently about the "Islenos", descendants of Spanish-speaking Canary Islanders who settled in New Orleans around 1770. Their community and culture has survived to this day, up to the recent disaster; which is particularly devastating to them. Of the 70,000 people in new Orleans' Parish of St. Bernard 2/3rds are of Isleno descent.
The Islenos were brought over en masse by the Spanish to settle southern Louisiana; acting as a buffer against the encroaching British and they've remained ever since as a close-knit community.

An interesting bit about the Canary islanders. The indigenous inhabitants (who later mixed with Spanish settlers and others) were called Guanches and their origins are mysterious. Quite a number of them were blond haired and blue-eyed which is now thought to indicate an ancient connection to the light-complected Berbers living in the mountainous regions of Morocco and North Africa. They appear to have been there for thousands of years. When the Spanish arrived there in the late Middle Ages they found the Guanches dressed in goat-skin or grass skirts wielding Stone Age weapons and living in caves in the mountains. Each island - there were 7 - seemed to have differing traditions.
Odd facts about the Guanches -
-they mummified their dead
- A Mauretanian king traveled there around 25 bc. landing on one of the seemingly uninhabited islands. He claimed that there were ruins of a civilization plainly visible.
- When the Spanish arrived the Guanches had no boats which would indicate they were either brought by others or boatbuilding knowledge had dissapeared.

No, i'm not gonna get all "Atlantean" on y'all. Regular old-time stone age humans were much more capable than we used to think....still the mystery lingers.

Van Morrison Contractual Obligation Cd

Apparently, just previous to recording Astral Weeks Van Morrison was under contractual obligation to record some songs for his former record company. My friend Bill forwarded me a site with downloads of these songs. Sounds like Van just picked up the guitar and created some "Contractual Obligations" on the spot. The results are hilarious. Check out "Ringworm" and "Have a Danish"

http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2005/09/van_morrisons_c.html

The irony is, I love Van's voice and delivery so much i'd rather hear one of these
choice "nuggets" than 90% of what I hear on pop radio.