Saturday, October 30, 2010
UPDATE:
HERE'S THE 10/30/10 WSJ REVIEW OF SAM IRVIN'S NEW KAY THOMPSON BIO. AND NEXT WEDNESDAY (11/3) IRVIN WILL BE HOSTING A BOOK READING & SIGNING AT L.A.'S BOOK SOUP AT 7 PM. HOPEFULLY A FEW MORE WILL TURN OUT THAN DID AT MY SIGNING THERE EARLIER THIS YEAR (TALK ABOUT PLAYING THE HOUSE!). BE THERE OR BE SQUARE OR YOU CAN BE BOTH @ 8818 W. SUNSET BL, WEST HOLLYWOOD
Michael Dees !
Last Saturday at L.A. Jazz Institute's Sinatra Fest. With Frankie Capp's Juggernaut. After a half-hour's worth of this vocal wonderfulness, I was a total wreck. That's me shouting out the Lord's name in vain at the conclusion. (Pardon my crummy Nano vid; just listen to the audio!)
Click on image twice fo full screen
Click on image twice fo full screen
photo: James Harrod
Tokorode: Thanks for all your kind words re: my A Fine Romance: My Lifelong Affair with Jazz Singing and Singers
Sunday, October 24, 2010
New Sue Raney Website
I was happy to be able to assist Ms. Raney in getting her new official website on-line. I worked with my friend Jeremy, the web master, for several weeks in getting things just right. I wanted it up and running in time for Raney’s Oct 23rd appearance at the L.A. Jazz Institute Sinatra fest, A Swingin‘ Affair. We made it just under the wire, with only a couple of hours to spare. As for the LAJI Saturday evening event, which operated as a tribute to Nelson Riddle, the enthusiastic full house reacted as if they didn’t quite know what had hit them. It’s not often these economically distressed days that one gets to witness a singer pulling all the stops out in front of a forty-piece orchestra replete with a twenty-member string section. Maybe Streisand, and that’s probably it. I didn’t ask Raney, but it’s doubtful that even she, veteran performer that Sue is, has often had the chance to participate in such a Herculean undertaking. Maybe with a handful of “Pops” orchestras, and that‘s it. Most of her repertoire last Saturday consisted of Nelson Riddle’s arrangements from her first Capitol Records album, When Your Lover Has Gone.
It wasn’t just Raney’s “perfect” (as one attendee later described it) performance that stood out, but, instead, the entire evening, which also included fine, young Brit singer Gary Williams and the glorious sound of the Nelson Riddle Orchestra conducted by son Christopher Riddle. It took real pro’s to achieve such near-perfect results with only two hours of rehearsal for a performance also lasting. . .two hours! In the near future, I’ll be posting photos of the occasion, and perhaps even an audio or video clip or three. And commentary on some of the rest of LAJI fest. Update: These just in, taken by my friend Ruriko. That's Christopher Riddle to Sue's right in photo one and in photo three.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Friday, October 15, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Re-Pagination
This video that I created for the late Page Cavanaugh's 85th birthday party a few years back is still available on youtube, but for some unknown reason, it no longer shows up in their search engine. Sooooo, for what it's worth. . .
Click image twice to display full screen.
Click image twice to display full screen.
Saturday, October 09, 2010
"My Lee Wiley"
On the occcasion of the singer's 102nd birthday. Reposted from two years ago. Pts 1-5. Translated by J., narrated by Westbrook Van Voorhis. Originally broadcast on Japanese TV a decade-and-a-half (or-so) ago.Click on image twice for full screen.
Wednesday, October 06, 2010
Happy Birthday, Demas!
REPOSTED FROM 2005
Today would have been the 107th birthday of my dear friend, jazz trumpeter Demas Dean. When I first met him in the mid-1980s, Demas lived in L.A.'s mid-Wilshire area in a pleasant, neat, well-kept one-room apartment. The walls of his abode were an arresting photographic who's who of black entertainment; with many of the photos having been personally inscribed to him from: Maxine Sullivan, Billie Holiday, Valaida Snow and Elisabeth Welch, et al.
Of all his professional accomplishments, the one he liked most to talk about were the recording sessions he did with Bessie Smith; the first on February 9, 1928 with a second one almost two weeks later on February 21, for a total of six sides: "Thinking Blues," Pickpocket Blues," "I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama," "Standin' in the Rain Blues," "It Won't Be You," and "I'm a Cheater." Here is a little of what he told me about the experience:
" I had never heard Bessie Smith. I had only heard of her up until the time I recorded with her. I was so surprised when I finally heard her in the studio. She was so far above all the other blues singers I'd heard up until then---and that includes Lucille Hegamin whose band I was in one time and who probably was just as well known as Bessie in those days.
"You just couldn't stop listening to Bessie and looking at her when she sang. She was a large, attractive, brown-skinned woman, with very good legs. Later on I heard stories about how difficult she was, but I found her very relaxed, very sedate. As long as you were no problem to her, she was no problem to you."
The quote is taken from a never-completed film documentary I was working on about Demas in 1988. Looking back to the Spring of that year, there's little doubt that Demas knew, as his weight begin to plummet vertiginously, that he was dying and not just sick. Then one day I received an emergency call from his nurse asking me to drive him from his home to the hospital. The Demas I saw then was clearly quite ill but still chipper. After a few hours at the facility, I brought him home, and that was the last I ever saw him.
I later learned that that night, instead of his near-pabulum diet, Demas had ordered a fried chicken meal from a takeout restaurant. The next evening, unquestionably still in his right mind, he upped the ante even more by demanding and devouring the best barbecue dinner that money could have delivered to one's home. Demas then went to bed and died a few hours later on May 30, 1990. When people get very very old they sometimes become strangely unafraid of death. I would suppose that such fearlessness must have always been the case with the highly evolved Demas, but---as evidenced by his final dietary daring----it was truer of him than ever in his last days. Death by barbecue.
Not a day goes by. . ..
_____________
Here's part of that video I shot of Demas in 1988 not long before he died.
CLICK IMAGE TWICE FOR FULL PICTURE
Today would have been the 107th birthday of my dear friend, jazz trumpeter Demas Dean. When I first met him in the mid-1980s, Demas lived in L.A.'s mid-Wilshire area in a pleasant, neat, well-kept one-room apartment. The walls of his abode were an arresting photographic who's who of black entertainment; with many of the photos having been personally inscribed to him from: Maxine Sullivan, Billie Holiday, Valaida Snow and Elisabeth Welch, et al.
Of all his professional accomplishments, the one he liked most to talk about were the recording sessions he did with Bessie Smith; the first on February 9, 1928 with a second one almost two weeks later on February 21, for a total of six sides: "Thinking Blues," Pickpocket Blues," "I Used to Be Your Sweet Mama," "Standin' in the Rain Blues," "It Won't Be You," and "I'm a Cheater." Here is a little of what he told me about the experience:
" I had never heard Bessie Smith. I had only heard of her up until the time I recorded with her. I was so surprised when I finally heard her in the studio. She was so far above all the other blues singers I'd heard up until then---and that includes Lucille Hegamin whose band I was in one time and who probably was just as well known as Bessie in those days.
"You just couldn't stop listening to Bessie and looking at her when she sang. She was a large, attractive, brown-skinned woman, with very good legs. Later on I heard stories about how difficult she was, but I found her very relaxed, very sedate. As long as you were no problem to her, she was no problem to you."
The quote is taken from a never-completed film documentary I was working on about Demas in 1988. Looking back to the Spring of that year, there's little doubt that Demas knew, as his weight begin to plummet vertiginously, that he was dying and not just sick. Then one day I received an emergency call from his nurse asking me to drive him from his home to the hospital. The Demas I saw then was clearly quite ill but still chipper. After a few hours at the facility, I brought him home, and that was the last I ever saw him.
I later learned that that night, instead of his near-pabulum diet, Demas had ordered a fried chicken meal from a takeout restaurant. The next evening, unquestionably still in his right mind, he upped the ante even more by demanding and devouring the best barbecue dinner that money could have delivered to one's home. Demas then went to bed and died a few hours later on May 30, 1990. When people get very very old they sometimes become strangely unafraid of death. I would suppose that such fearlessness must have always been the case with the highly evolved Demas, but---as evidenced by his final dietary daring----it was truer of him than ever in his last days. Death by barbecue.
Not a day goes by. . ..
_____________
Here's part of that video I shot of Demas in 1988 not long before he died.
CLICK IMAGE TWICE FOR FULL PICTURE
Saturday, October 02, 2010
Friday, October 01, 2010
It's Ann Richards' (October 1, 1935 - April 1, 1982) birthday
Reposted from 2008
Jazz singer Ann Richards' Playboy magazine photo shoot, June 1961
______________
The following is excerpted from a post of a few years ago by Noel Wedder on a Kenton net list:
"It [the photo spread] also severed his relationship with Hugh Hefner. Stan was appalled that Hefner hadn't extended him the courtesy of telling him in advance [Kenton's wife] Ann had posed nude for the magazine. The first we knew about it was when one of the guys picked up a copy of Playboy while we were touring. Try as we might we couldn't keep it away from Stan. The jig was up when Charles Suter [sic], then editor of Downbeat, confronted Stan in Chicago and asked about the layout and why Stan hadn't put a stop to it. 'What layout?,' Stan asked perplexed. Suter then gave him a copy of the magazine open to Ann's spread. Stan glanced quickly at the photos, closed the magazine, handed it back to Suter and walked away seething. Later that night Stan indicated Suter had been elevated to his shit list. He felt, and rightly so, Suter had overstepped the bounds of propriety by shoving the magazine in his face. 'Friends just don't do that to friends,' he bellowed."
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