Teasing the Korean

I have some whacked out baroque jazz album he did for Philips. The 60s were such a great decade for these sorts of albums. RIP.

If you are familiar with the TV series, you'll love these: http://mattsoncreative.com/blog/2012/12/17/homeland-vintage-jazz-record-covers/

RIP. She did at least three jazz-tinged albums with Pete Rugolo for Mercury. At least one of them made it to CD. And her Christmas album has one of my all-time favorite record covers:

They are regularly on Amazon for as low as $33 bucks or so.

You obviously didn't read the whole post, not carefully, at least.

As opposed to mingling with disembodied fields of electrons on the interwebz?

I take very good care of my vinyl, but three sad mishaps occurred this holiday season. Never two without three. 1. We had a holiday party, and wine drinking and LP spinning went far into the evening. The last of the partygoers ended up in the record room and I was DJing. I had a bunch of Christmas LPs on display. Somehow my wife "broke" my only copy of Jo Stafford's "Ski Trails" on an original Columbia mono 6-eye. I'm not sure how she did this. She did not tell me until a couple of days later and said that she randomly filed it in the stacks because she thought I'd be mad. (I wasn't). In five years, I'll probably find it and possibly figure out how the hell it broke. I mean, is the cover torn in two? 2. We have a small sofa in the record room. It is a modern Euro design with a steel frame with leather slats that hold the cushions. Underneath are cases of 45s, but your beloved TTK neglected to file some recently spun holiday gems, so they were lying atop the cases, right underneath the leather slats. At the aforementioned holiday party, 3 people were sitting on the couch, and a screw holding the frame together came loose, and the folks on the sofa all sort of dropped down a few inches onto the records. When I inspected the 45s the next day, I found that the mishap had broken my very rare 45 of "Snowman Snowman Sweet Potato Nose" by the Jaynetts, their follow-up to "Sally Go Round the Roses," with the same backing track. 3. I had a New Year's Eve gig with my exotica combo and had wrapped an LP as a gift for my vibes player. It was an original pristine mono pressing of Jobim's "The Composer of Desifinado" LP on Verve. When we were loading up after the gig, he'd briefly laid it on the table closest by the staging area while we carried his vibes out to his car. When we came back, we found the wrapping paper crumpled and tossed into a corner and the LP was gone. There was a "to/from" sticker on the wrapping, so there should have been no confusion. I mean, how do you have your act together enough to go out on NYE and pay a cover charge, and then steal someone else's Christmas present? Who does this, I mean really! Luckily, all three are available on CD. So, fellow vinyl lovers, remember that accidents happen, and our vinyl, like life itself, is fragile. Also, alcohol played a role in at least two of these cases, if not three, so beware of mixing vinyl and alcohol, both literally and figuratively. Happy New Year!

A Euro label called Moochin About has put out two 5-CD box sets of classic jazz film scores titled Jazz on Film. Volume 1 includes the following: ‘A Streetcar Named Desire’ (Alex North); ‘Private Hell 36’ (Leith Stevens); ‘The Man with the Golden Arm’ (Elmer Bernstein); ‘Sweet Smell of Success’ (Elmer Bernstein/Chico Hamilton); ‘Touch of Evil’ (Henry Mancini); ‘Anatomy of A Murder’ (Duke Ellington); and ‘Odds Against Tomorrow’ (John Lewis) Volume 2 includes: ‘The Wild One’ (Leith Stevens/Shorty Rogers) ’Crime in the Streets’ (Franz Waxman) ’I Want to Live’ (Johnny Mandel) ’Les Tricheurs’ (Norman Granz’ JATP) ’Paris Blues’ (Duke Ellington) ’The Subterraneans’ (André Previn) ’Shadows’ (Charles Mingus) ’The Connection’ (Freddie Redd). I have almost everything on Volume 1 so I will probably skip that one, but Volume 2 is on my want list. The packaging is is very nice from what I gather. Anyone have these?

I like the early Afro-Cuban stuff, and also the early-mid-60s stuff with Lalo.

With atypical ensembles, sometimes orchestras program several similar pieces on the same bill, so the abbreviated orchestra plays throughout the concert, and the rest of the players get the weekend off.

I never cared for the Phil Spector version. Phil's approach seemed wrong for Tina, and Tina's voice seemed wrong for Phil. A true mismatch.

There are a number of labels now - Lalaland, Quartet, Beat, Intrada, Kritzerland, Film Score Monthly - that put out limited edition soundtracks. Some of these have never before been on LP or CD. If they have, they are often expanded, and sometimes contain both the film and album recordings. Screen Archives sells all of these. Some releases are sold out in just a few days.

Santa brought me this for Christmas. Lots of great music over the course of the series, and top composers of the period - George Duning, Jerry Fielding, Fred Steiner, etc. This will keep me busy for a while.

Bernard Herrmann - Psycho Bernard Herrmann used just strings for this score, as Hitchcock was trying to prove he could make a great film on TV budget. Herrmann also said he wanted to provide a "black and white" score for the film, as Hitchcock made the deliberate artistic choice to film it in B&W. What I particularly love about the score is the gradual shift from consonance to dissonance to mirror the deteriorating mental state of Norman Bates. There are a number of different recordings, including suites of varying lengths. The Salonen suite runs about 25 minutes and is a good recording and performance. Herrmann's own recordings tend to be a tad on the lethargic side. The McNeely album is the way to go if you want the whole score. The actual film tracks are lost and have never been released.

I bought a pristine copy for a dollar, and after a single spin, dragged it right back to the thrift store from whence it came.

I should add that the nature and style of the questions had a huge effect on the tone and quality of the interviews. Merv tended to ask obvious questions that were often constructed to elicit a "yes" or "no" answer, hardly the stuff of great conversation. Dick Cavett asked very thoughtful, probing questions. Carson was a very natural conversationalist. Tom Snyder was all over the map. He could come off as unintentionally comical, but occasionally asked the right questions, as with his Lennon interview.

Here's a quick rundown, from my perspective: You had Dick Cavett on the one side of the spectrum and Merv on the other. Dick Cavett's show had a decidedly pseudo-intellectual air, not unlike the Playboy interviews of that period. An entire show was often devoted to one or two guests. He would have guests like Gore Vidal, William F. Buckley, etc. On the other side of the spectrum, you had Merv, who was total schlock, but still managed to have guests such as Orson Welles, Andy Warhol and Brother Theodore. Between the two extremes, you had Tom Snyder, Mike Douglas and Johnny Carson. Snyder tried to shoot for a Cavett-esque approach and occasionally came close to achieving it. Douglas and Carson were more toward the entertainment side of the spectrum. Douglass occasionally ventured into Cavettesque territory.

That is a really great article.

I hate to say it, but Warners Brothers has undoubtedly warped my perception of these operas. Whichever version I'll end up watching, I will find myself waiting for Bugs and Elmer to show up, along with that ridiculous horse, and I will probably end up disappointed. I'll do my best, though, promise.

Thanks for the replies. I'll start with the Klemperer and then give the other a go. Something I indeed plan to do in this lifetime. I'm more likely to experience these on DVD than on recording though.

In the words of Mark Twain, Wagner's music isn't as bad as it sounds. I am not an opera fan, but love what little Wagner instrumental music I've been exposed to. Can anyone recommend a good comp or two that features reasonable samplings of his overtures and preludes? Looking for the better interpretations also. There are a bunch on Amazon but it's hard to know where to begin.

As I would imagine. Legrand's musical transformation from the 1950s to the the 1960s is fairly astonishing.

How is this album? I have lots of Legrand, but his 1950s orchestral albums tend to be a little on the sleepy side for me. His stuff from the 60s and 70s is almost always great, though.

Vibes and alto flute playing a unison line is one of the sensual sounds in all music.

Well, that's where I differentiate between Brazilian albums and international jet set albums. To achieve the latter, you really need participants from more than one continent to achieve those beautiful cultural disconnects that make the music so compelling. I can't imagine a world without bossa from France, Germany, or Italy.