New from SSJ Records in October

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Final version of notes for upcoming Jane Harvey October 21, 2009 issue on SSJ Records:

"This album is Atlantic's Record's 1988 The Other Side of Sondheim, by Jane Harvey, as it was originally envisioned. The recording took place in New York City with the Mike Renzi Trio, but was overdubbed by the Ray Ellis Orchestra in Los Angeles by the label. To release this authentic version has long been Jane's dream.

Jane Harvey was born Phyllis Taff in Jersey City, NJ. In the mid-1940s, she auditioned and got a job at Cafe Society, owned by Barney Josephson. Know as "Phyllis" or "Taffy" growing up, she changed her name to Jane Harvey in honor of Barney's favorite scotch, Harvey's.

Hearing Jane in the club in 1944, John Hammond was so impressed that he did not miss the chance to bring Benny Goodman to the spot. Jane immediately became Goodman's band singer and made several recordings with the outfit.

In 1945, she sang at the Blue Angel with the legendary Ellis Larkins at the piano. [Then] Latin bandleader Desi Arnaz heard her there in 1946 and asked her to go to the west coast to appear on the Bob Hope radio show. How could she refuse?

In Los Angeles, Jane appeared on the Hope show four times, sang at Ciro's longer than initially contracted, and signed with both RCA and 20th Century-Fox.

As time went on, her singing career took a back seat to marriage, motherhood and other interests.

Jane fell in love with the music of Stephen Sondheim and held a tribute to him in a jazz vein at Freddy's in NYC in 1986. Her concerts were so sensational that Sondheim himself showed up one night. She had never met him before, but after the show Sondheim was very compimentary and they talked and exchanged ideas. That night was the inspiration for this album."
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Aside from being available in its original small group format for the first time, two other things differentiate this version from its original release: the addition of four never released tracks AND a new 2009 recording by Jane of "Send In the Clowns" to replace the original one that she feels was sonically inferior. Her voice sounds unchanged on this, her first recording in more than two decades.

Although I had no participation in this particular SSJ Records release, nevertheless its issue resulted in my fortuitously having lunch with Jane Harvey twice over the past few weeks. I came away from both occasions with the sense that she is --- as they say ---one really one sharp cookie. It feels/seems to me as though she has never forgotten anything she ever once learned, experienced or knew.

It turns out that she and I are both major fans of James Gavin's recent bio of Lena Horne, Stormy Weather. So much so that she has been going around to stores requesting they display the book prominently. . .if it is not being done so already. In passing, I said to Jane over coffee, "It is not so much a biography as it is an adventure novel." That is to say, put the book in the hands of just about any halfway literate person and it becomes a real page turner. The trick, of course, is how to direct their maws to it in the first place.

For the record, Jane IS NOT retired. She is still very much interested in performing. Something quite wonderful in that regard might happen very soon. Stay tuned and when and if it comes to pass, you'll "hear" about it right here. 10/11/09 Update here.

Back to the Ballroom - Buddy Tate & Richie Kamuca "Live"

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My liner notes for the forthcoming (November 2009) SSJ Records (Japan) release Back to the Ballroom : SSJ Records XQAM1611

The tapes for this recording were virtually forgotten for forty years until a chance meeting resulted in their finally being brought to light. And now, with the release of this remarkable CD, what went down musically that night at a North Hollywood, CA jazz club [Donte's] four decades ago can, for the first time, finally be heard.

This historic 1970 coming together of Bop’s Richie Kamuca and Swing Era veteran Buddy Tate (Count Basie) turns out to be an intergenerational jazz summit meeting of the first order. Definitely not laid-back, cerebral sounds typical of West Coast jazz, but, rather, scorching tenor playing more along the lines of Dexter Gordon and Wardell Gray’s 1947 “The Hunt.” Or Ellington‘s ‘56 “Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue.“ It’s the kind of playing that one might have heard in the late ‘40s and 1950s at one of the many U.S. ballrooms that specialized in hot, late night jam sessions. In other words, “cool school” jazz circling back to its raucous pre-bop beginnings. ---Bill Reed

Here's a taste. The other players on the date are: Mundell Lowe, either Monty Budwig (poss.)or Leroy Vinnegar (poss.), and Jake Hanna

For information regarding advance orders, contact Eastwind Import:

1. BROADWAY

2. MACK THE KNIFE

3. YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT LOVE IS

4. JUMPIN' AT THE WOODSIDE

5. MARIANNE

6. MY FUNNY VALENTINE

7. JUMPIN' WITH SYMPHONY SID

Scribble, scribble, scribble eh, drchilledair?

My new collection Vera Hruba. . .WHO?: is now available for downloading at Scribd.com. Here are the table of contents and the introduction.


INTRODUCTION. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3
Two Print Premieres
Chapter 1. The Good Girl: Lucille Bremer and the
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .Golden Age of MGM. . . . . .5
Chapter 2. Joe Louis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

Funny Folk
Chapter 3. Spike Jones: The Prince of Parody . . . . . . 83
Chapter 4. Lord Buckley: Lord of the Hepcats. . . . . . 97
Chapter 5. Sally Marr. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .. . . . . . .. .. 113

The Music Men
Chapter 6. Walter Shenson and the Beatles. . . . . . . . . 126
Chapter 7 Sam Phillips . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Chapter 8. Tommy and Al . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Chaper 9. Alan Livingston . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Chapter 10. Joel Dorn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168
About the author . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .184

INTRODUCTION

Initially, "The Good Girl: Lucille Bremer and the Golden Age of MGM,” was intended to be one chapter in a volume about Hollywood movie moguls and their alleged (in some instances) mistresses that my good friend and constant traveling companion, David Ehrenstein and I were planning to write. Other chapters would have been devoted the likes of Darryl F. Zanuck, who made a veritable cottage industry of starlet-mistresses and, perhaps, William Randolph Hearst and Marion Davies. (Although that one has probably been anthologized, analyzed and, retrospected to death enough already!)

But the linchpin of the book would have been the rather well-known affair between Herbert J. Yates, head of Republic Pictures and Consolidated Film Laboratories, and former Czech figure skater, turned actress (of sorts) Vera Hruba Ralston). It is somewhat amusing and ironic that Orson Welles' Citizen Kane, which was supposed to be a film à clef of Davies and Hearst was much closer to the saga of Yates and Ralston. For while hardly anyone ever questioned the acting abilities of Davies, in Welles' masterpiece, Kane's opera singer, “Susan Alexander” was endlessly derided, much like Ralston, for the questionable talent that they brought, respectively, to the opera stage and the movie screen.

At the beginning of Yates and Ralston's affair, he was already married. Eventually, he divorced his first wife for Ralston, and the two lived happily ever after. . .or at least until his death in 1966. This, despite the fact the twenty-six mostly expensive and mostly flops the actress made for Yates played a major part in the eventual demise of Republic in 1958.

Why this whiplash inducing digression right out of the Introductory starting gate?, you might well ask. Simply because, whenever David and I, in verbal pitches to agents and editors, got to the part about Ralston, invariably the response was, “Vera Hruba. . . WHO?” Ah, well, as the great Lenny Bruce once remarked of something or someone in one or another of his routines, “Ah, how quickly we forget!” For it seems as if it was only yesterday that V.H.R. was burning up the silver screen in her last Republic potboiler, 1958's The Notorious Mr. Monks (“A hapless hitchhiker takes a ride with a drunk driver who takes him to his house. There he meets the driver's wife [Ralston] and murder ensues. “) In other words, for purposes of David's and my book, any reference to the actress, who died in 2003, proved to be, as they say, just a skosh too hip for the house.

As far as potential editors and publishers were concerned, that also seemed to be the case with most of the other biographical personae contained herein. At one time,not so long ago, the three most famous “people” in the world were considered to Mickey Mouse, Albert Einstein, and Joe Louis (also profiled herein). But, alas, when it came to the latter, even his name drew mostly black stares from book pub types. Again. . .“Ah, how quickly we forget.” And, as for 1940s recording superstar, Spike Jones---also contained herein---fuhgedaboutit!

Regarding the other profiles contained herein, the two never-really-famous famous comedy figures, Marr and Buckley, along with the profiled quartet of behind-the-scenes producers, they were never exactly household names in the first place. So, finally, the title of this book might well have been Too Hip for the House? Or some such. But I finally settled on Vera Hruba. . . WHO? It has a nice ring about it, doncha think?

attn: Sinatra fans w/ disposable income

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Slightly before the Punic Wars, I was an editor for the program guide for an early form of subscription/pay television known as ON-TV . One of the productions we broadcast was the initial showing of Frank Sinatra's Concert for the Americas. For the cover of the guide we commissioned a portrait of Sinatra by artist Craig Nelson. But we had overlooked the fact that that particular cover had been contractually promised to, ulp, 80s Canadian soft-rocker Gino Vannelli, who also had a presentation on ON-TV that month. And so we had to scrap a Sinatra cover in favor of one devoted to His Hairyness. And as I recall, our contract with the artist specified that the Sinatra portrait had to be used as a cover or not at all. And so. . ..

Meanwhile I snatched up a whole bunch of offprints of the abandoned cover and, over the years, have given them to my Sinatra-fan friends. I think I am now down to one.