Porgy and Bess, So Many Jazz Adaptations

[Larry Kart]

Tony Scott's "Porgy and Bess" album has some moments, particularly from Ben Webster and Art Farmer IIRC.

[Mark Stryker]

No time for participating in a extended Gershwin discussion, but I will say I have seen the complete opera on stage three times -- the first when I was 13, at Indiana University in Bloomington, and the latter two in Detroit, produced by Michigan Opera Theatre. I have complicated feelings about the opera (natch) but I'm always glad to see it and it can be effective and emotionally satisfying with judicious musical cuts, a conductor who can keep it moving along, and a director and cast who can subtly but firmly overcome the stereotypes. Do I prefer the individual tunes to the whole opera? Sure, but I'm not sure what that proves. It still is true that certain songs in the opera are much more effective when sung within the context of the score -- particularly  "There's a Boat that's Leaving Soon for New York," "Bess, You Is My Woman Now," and "It Ain't Necessarily So." 

Edited August 2, 2021 by Mark Stryker

[ghost of miles]

5 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

Tony Scott's "Porgy and Bess" album has some moments, particularly from Ben Webster and Art Farmer IIRC.

Larry, I take it you're referring to the album that was released under Mundell Lowe's name?  That's a P & G jazz album favorite of mine as well.  (I *think* I included something from it in that Night Lights show, which dates all the way back to 2005 or 2006.)

[Larry Kart]

Sorry -- it is under Lowe's name.

[Teasing the Korean]

23 hours ago, JSngry said:

Well, let's fix that then!

https://youtu.be/YIdrZxaP-gE

or is this not the one you're talking about?

It is.  We tried to watch it last night, but it was too grainy and blurry to enjoy.  We liked it enough to give it another shot if a better print comes along.

Edited August 2, 2021 by Teasing the Korean

[JSngry]

4 hours ago, Mark Stryker said:

it can be effective and emotionally satisfying with judicious musical cuts, a conductor who can keep it moving along, and a director and cast who can subtly but firmly overcome the stereotypes. 

So...make it better than it actually is?

That's a very...market-conscious concept, creating an image and then altering the product to fit it.

[danasgoodstuff]

6 hours ago, JSngry said:

So...make it better than it actually is?

That's a very...market-conscious concept, creating an image and then altering the product to fit it.

People often edit Shakespeare when they perform the plays FFS, would you make the same comments (I can't call them arguments, 'cause they ain't) there?  Sure there's hype surrounding GERSHWIN, the brand; there's hype surrounding all product in a market economy.  Doesn't make the music George and Ira wrote together any more just hype than it does the GAS as a whole, the BEATLES. MILES DAVIS, or ELVIS (sorry 'bout the CAPS, just using them to indicate the brand rather than the real thing inside it).  If you want to give actual reasons why you prefer Harold Arlen or Richard Rogers, I'd love to hear them.  But you haven't.  What you've done here is just a petty screed.

[JSngry]

Oh my, touched a nerve have we?

Screed beginning;

I'll skip the argument and cut to the chase - here on the srill-earliy 21st Century, our "heritage" is being driven by commercial interests instead of evolving organically. Big Lies are the order of the day, everywhere.

As music and as culture, Porgy & Bess is either obsolete or it is rapidly becoming obsolete (yeah, you gotta work hard to overcome the troubling parts because they're hardwired in), so what's keeping it alive? Marketing, hype, fascination with ersatz blackness trying to be made "realer", a marketing of GERSHWIN AS HERO, it goes on 

It's not healthy, this hypelife-support system  Both Anthony Davis and Missy Mazzoli are writing better American operas for today, too bad (lol) they're not writing pop song psrudo-operas, maybe then the culture cpuld breathe it's own oxygen again 

But right now, between the combined powers of GAS Corporatestates and Terminal Boomer Narcissism, 20th Century is hellbent on sucking all the life out of us it can.

Tear down the walls so we can have a healthy examination dig of the city within.

;Screed ended

[Larry Kart]

"..both Anthony Davis and Missy Mazzoli are wrong better American operas for today." "Wrong better?" Typo?

[Dan Gould]

Gershwin needs to be cancelled, clearly.

Maybe we can test the theory of goose/gander with an all-white cast, but rapping the lyrics, a la Hamilton?

If Gershwin hadn't written "Summertime" we wouldn't have one of Gene Harris' greatest performances, so count me on his side in this.

(For the record, never seen any production of P&B only heard the hits.)

[Larry Kart]

The best opera for America today probably is "Gotterdammerung."

[HutchFan]

8 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

The best opera for America today probably is "Gotterdammerung."

Sad but true.

 

Edited August 3, 2021 by HutchFan

[JSngry]

38 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

"..both Anthony Davis and Missy Mazzoli are wrong better American operas for today." "Wrong better?" Typo?

indeed, should be "writing". Fixed in edit.

37 minutes ago, Dan Gould said:

Gershwin needs to be cancelled, clearly.

 

Oh lord no. Not cancelled. Just deflated to a more reality-based scale.

In other words, he will still be there. but his fat bald cigar smoking head will be one of many.

Somebody mentioned Arlen...yes, Arlen damn near always has better songs. As does Kern. As does Rogers/Hart, as does...a lot of otherss.

You want a big, easy-fit batch of superficial, go with Gershwin. Otherwise, there's more, and there's better.

On the whole, of course, which is why cancel is not even tangentally relevant here.

As for Hamilton...what I've seen of it is the natural byproduct of what happens when you let a mediocrity like Porgy & Bess become an "icon". Everybody starts thinking that THAT'S where the goal should be, and you get stuff like that.

Rerun culture. Yuck.

[Larry Kart]

47 minutes ago, JSngry said:

indeed, should be "writing". Fixed in edit.

Oh lord no. Not cancelled. Just deflated to a more reality-based scale.

In other words, he will still be there. but his fat bald cigar smoking head will be one of many.

Somebody mentioned Arlen...yes, Arlen damn near always has better songs. As does Kern. As does Rogers/Hart, as does...a lot of otherss.

You want a big, easy-fit batch of superficial, go with Gershwin. Otherwise, there's more, and there's better.

On the whole, of course, which is why cancel is not even tangentally relevant here.

As for Hamilton...what I've seen of it is the natural byproduct of what happens when you let a mediocrity like Porgy & Bess become an "icon". Everybody starts thinking that THAT'S where the goal should be, and you get stuff like that.

Rerun culture. Yuck.

 Seems to me that P&B has had a pretty good run compared to just about any piece of American musical culture of that vintage. One sign of its durability, I would say, is the non-superficial engagement with the material of the Miles-Gil Evans recording. If the material were a batch of superficial, I don't think the engagement on their part would have been what it was.

[JSngry]

Yeah, had a good run. And will keep on running, no doubt. It's Pavlovian behavior on all sides.

But why? Do we really need more versions of "Summertime"? At what point do they stop referring back to themselves? Will the time ever come again?

We've had GERSHWIN (and the GAS in general) shoved down our throats - consciously, as business moves - for so long that we as a culture reflexively look "there" for our "heritage". Well, ok. But I'm somebody (and I might well be alone, but I don't think I am) in finding that we've been there, done that, I'd like to clear the vision and see what else was, is there, and maybe can be there. Enough of this small set of monocultural domination of "our" heritage. "Our" is, in actuality, (or was...maybe now it is was, sadly) a big buttload full of stuff that doesn't involve GERSHWIN and all the other UPPERCAPS. there.

Rerun Culture. Brainwashing is what it is, and quite intentionally.

[danasgoodstuff]

OK, feeling a little less cranky this morning.  Sure P&B is problematic, certainly the GAS as it's generally (not) understood is more so.  The HYPE that puts these on a pedestal so their 'greatness' is taken as a given sucks the life out of them.  Gershwin and Elvis are examples of a bigger thing. Fixating on the hype surrounding them obscures the bigger thing.  Maybe the BIG LIE is our cultural heritage.  Our true manifest destiny.  And yet, 'mericans have done many wonderful things on this stolen land, and not just in music.  Dismissing Gershwin and/or Elvis as just hype does nothing to solve that conundrum.  It's a big country in a bigger world and our cultural heritage, fully understood, is far too big and messy a thing for most folk to grapple with.  It will no doubt continue to play out in ways none of us could predict.  Think I'll go listen to Mr. Bechet make an even better thing of "Summertime".

Edited August 3, 2021 by danasgoodstuff

[JSngry]

7 minutes ago, danasgoodstuff said:

Dismissing Gershwin and/or Elvis as just hype does nothing to solve that conundrum. 

NOT "just" hype. Just lamenting the inability/unwillingness to see what's there without the hype.

There are things there, just now whole-world-defining things, unless that's the world you want them to have, and by extension, for them to sell you.

Buyer beware!

[Larry Kart]

It would help, Jim -- help me at least -- if you would name some of "what else was, is there, and maybe can be there" and that has been ignored/elbowed aside while the GAS was "shoved down our throats." I'm not being snotty here, or I hope I'm not. I just want to know who/what you have in mind so I can think more about this.  

BTW, given your view that this throat-shoving process was (still is?) driven "consciously [by] business moves," how then do you account for the virtual disappearance of the GAS as a major economic force in the world of American popular music with the rise (more than a half century ago) of rock 'n' roll and all that has come after? Did the "business," this side of nostalgia mongering aimed at aging would-be elites, just decide to pitch its tents elsewhere?

[JSngry]

16 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

 

BTW, given your view that this throat-shoving process was (still is?) driven "consciously [by] business moves," how then do you account for the virtual disappearance of the GAS as a major economic force in the world of American popular music with the rise (more than a half century ago) of rock 'n' roll and all that has come after? Did the "business," this side of nostalgia mongering aimed at aging would-be elites, just decide to pitch its tents elsewhere?

Oh please. What aging Boomer doesn't do a standards album? What movie doesn't pull up a standard as a signifier of sophistication? 

It's everywhere, repurposed from a living music to a petrified commercial condiment.

Rerun culture.

21 minutes ago, Larry Kart said:

It would help, Jim -- help me at least -- if you would name some of "what else was, is there, and maybe can be there" and that has been ignored/elbowed aside while the GAS was "shoved down our throats." I'm not being snotty here, or I hope I'm not. I just want to know who/what you have in mind so I can think more about this.  

Radio, movies, and then TV did not reflect in any way the full palate of American culture. They didn't even try to. 

So...what else was? Plenty. What else is there? Everything else. What else can be there? Depends on where we think we are.

This isn't about "cancel". What's done is done, there it is. What it is about is erasing the lines that we assume we're naturally drawn by forces of nature. They weren't.

What good is it to hook a fish and then not reel it in? And what good is it to reel it in  and then not eat it...or at least use it as fertilizer?

[Larry Kart]

"Oh please. What aging Boomer doesn't do a standards album? What movie doesn't pull up a standard as a signifier of sophistication? 

"It's everywhere, repurposed from a living music to a petrified commercial condiment.

Rerun culture."

But that probably will be over soon enough, when the wheel turns on rerun culture, as such things always do.

And it's 'everywhere"?  Compared to what else that pervades our culture, musical or otherwise?

Watch out for the Liberty Mutual Emu.

 

 

[JSngry]

Just now, Larry Kart said:

 that probably will be over soon enough, when the wheel turns on rerun culture, as such things always do.

Wheels are not turning, they are grinding the trapped into the ground.

Narcissism is rerun culture distilled to it's essence.

[Larry Kart]

Right -- "Gotterdammerung."

[JSngry]

Or, if you want a new twist, spend some time with Tania.

[Larry Kart]

3 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Or, if you want a new twist, spend some time with Tania.

Tania?

[JSngry]

The Anthony Davis opera.