GA Russell

Here in the US, I saw a few CD singles at Borders ten years ago. But I can't say that I've ever seen a store that carried CD singles the same way that record shops sold 45s forty and fifty years go.

George Shearing, disc 4

My reception of the Indy 500 today was unacceptable. The race was constantly interrupted with "no signal". It was a Durham station maybe 45 miles away. Maybe there was a storm between here and there, I don't know. But with reception like that, television would have never caught on.

After a slow news week, there are a couple of interesting items today. The first is that the Als have hired Joe Paopao as a consultant. That tells me that he will be waiting in the wings if their new head coach with no Canadian rules experience gets off to a slow start. http://www.globesports.com/servlet/story/R...tsFootball/home ***** The second item is about the NFL in Toronto. I don't need to go through all that you know about how 20,000 of the NFL "season" tickets have been allotted to Argo season ticket holders. The remaining NFL tickets will go into a lottery. Over 100,000 have applied for the lottery tickets. But since it didn't cost anything to apply for the lottery tickets, that 100,000 figure may not indicate the amount of interest in the tickets that the press would have you believe. It could be 100,000 people who have no interest in going to a Buffalo Bills game but who figured that a lot of other people would, so they applied (at no cost and no risk) hoping to flip the tickets at a profit. Well, the deadline for the 20,000 allotted to the Argos was yesterday. And the Argos sold only 14,000 season tickets. Now you know that not all of the Argos ticket holders are interested in the NFL games. And you also know that the NFL tickets are priced (averaging $150. each) to appeal to people for whom money is no object. That is to say, if a corporation wanted the NFL tickets, it would buy Argos tickets and be assured of getting good NFL seats. But the corporations didn't do that. So that makes me wonder what the market in Toronto will be for the Buffalo Bills games. http://slam.canoe.ca/Slam/Football/CFL/Tor...649471-sun.html

I read in the paper: a) The Best Buy unit will tell you what will be shown the next hour on the channel you are watching. The Radio Shack unit will do the same for the next 24 hours. b) Both cost $60.00.

Here's the Spectator's pre-season analysis of the Eskimos: http://www.thespec.com/Sports/article/372435 ***** Here's the Spectator's pre-season analysis of the Argos: http://www.thespec.com/Sports/article/373732

I got "58% (Dixie). Barely into the Dixie category". My parents were both from Boston, so I'm not surprised that my score was so low. But I was surprised by the number of my answers that were rated "Michigan/Great Lakes" beause I have never lived in that area. (I have a vague recollection of taking this quiz before, so forgive me if this has been posted here some time in the past.) http://www.angelfire.com/ak2/intelligencer...dixie_quiz.html

Happy Birthday David!

I don't think I have heard anything from him since Show Magazine in the mid-60s. He was famous mostly for blowing through his money. Here's his Washington Post obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,3985195.story Huntington Hartford II, 97; A & P heir spent his fortune on the arts By Adam Bernstein, The Washington Post May 20, 2008 Huntington Hartford II, heir to the A&P supermarket fortune whose quest to be taken seriously as a patron of the arts led him to bankroll a series of movies, plays, galleries and publications that ultimately drained his wealth, died Monday at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas. He was 97. No cause of death was reported. Money man Ranked among the world's richest people at one time, Hartford was once called by Architect Frank Lloyd Wright "the sort of man who will come up with an idea, pinch it in the fanny and run." He underwrote a series of failed enterprises, most of which resulted in spectacular losses. Among them were an artist's foundation and colony in Los Angeles, and the glossy magazine Show, a journal of art and culture. His Ocean Club resort on Paradise Island in the Bahamas suffered from the lack of a gambling license and went bust. Resorts International eventually bought him out for $1 million, a shell of his $30-million investment. His Gallery of Modern Art in New York City, featuring an Edward Durell Stone design, opened at 2 Columbus Circle in 1964 to risible reviews, both for its structure and offerings. He had promoted the museum as a bulwark against modernism in art, whether the paintings of Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning or the literature of William Faulkner and Tennessee Williams. He condemned the "vulgar" and "meaningless" extremes of modern abstract art, preferring what he called "realistic art" of an earlier period. His vocal antipathy to artists he disliked led to the resignation of all advisors to his self-titled foundation meant to aid composers, writers and fine artists. He appointed new advisors and bought large advertisements condemning "obscurity, confusion, immorality, violence" in contemporary painting. Meanwhile, with money never an object, he remained devoted to extracurricular pleasures, including the study of handwriting, petroleum extraction and the personal lives of showgirls. He once dated Marilyn Monroe and described her as "too pushy, like a high-class hooker." His excesses cost him financially and personally. He had unexpectedly ascetic habits in some areas of his life, such as a disinclination to drink alcohol. But his fourth marriage, in the 1970s, marked a turning point. According to a 2004 issue of Vanity Fair magazine, his last wife, a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., hairdresser a decade his junior, introduced Hartford to cocaine, amphetamines and Quaaludes. At least once he was hospitalized for an overdose. After his fourth marriage ended, Hartford spent his final years living quietly in the Bahamas, a much-reduced figure than how he presented himself in his prime. In his 1964 book "Art or Anarchy?," a polemic against modernism, he described championing traditional art against the prevailing trends. "I have always hated the goose step," he wrote. George Huntington Hartford II was born in New York on April 18, 1911, and never used the name George. He was the namesake of his grandfather, a Maine tea merchant who in 1869 founded the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Co. The company would become one of the storied American businesses, rivaling General Motors by the 1950s as a multibillion-dollar corporation. Hartford began reaping the financial benefits at age 6, when his grandfather died and left him with an annual income of $1.5 million. The family lived lavishly during the 1920s and '30s and owned a seaside estate in Newport, R.I. His father, an inventor, strayed from the family business and patented a shock absorber for cars. Hartford received an elite education, graduating from the private St. Paul's preparatory school in New Hampshire in 1930 and Harvard University in 1934. In college, he played on the tennis and squash teams. Subsequent years were spent enjoying his wealth, although he made periodic forays into employment. He spent six months as an A&P clerk, monitoring pound-cake sales until he was fired after walking off the job to catch a Harvard-Yale football game. He later became a reporter at the newspaper PM in New York, a job he acquired after investing $100,000 in the publication. His interest in boats was put to use during World War II, when he served in the Coast Guard and commanded a cargo vessel in the Pacific. After his discharge, he settled in Los Angeles, where he met Marjorie Steele, a 19-year-old cigarette girl who became his second wife. She reportedly was responsible for his interest in fine arts, resulting in the creation of an artists foundation and retreat. Meanwhile, he deepened his involvement in movie production, including the Abbott and Costello comedy "Africa Screams" (1949) and the feature anthology "Face to Face (1952), which starred his wife. He also funded Broadway productions, including his own short-lived 1958 adaptation of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" with Eric Portman as Rochester and Jan Brooks in the title role; movie star Errol Flynn briefly portrayed Rochester in a troubled pre-Broadway production. Hartford's traditional tastes were evident in a costly renovation of Hollywood's Vine Street Theatre in 1953, which became the Huntington Hartford Theater. He lured Helen Hayes to star in "What Every Woman Knows," a creaky J.M. Barrie drama she had starred in on screen 20 years earlier. (He also owned much of the land that is now Runyon Canyon Park in Los Angeles and lived for a time in the property's mansion. The estate's most famous resident was Flynn, who stayed for a time in the guest house, giving rise to the false perception that he actually owned the land. In 1984 the city bought the property for $5.16 million and it was turned into a park.) By the early 1960s, Hartford had accomplished few projects that amounted to anything. He devised an automatic parking garage system, chaired a shale-oil company and hoped to create a European-style cafe in New York's Central Park before parks commissioner Robert Moses axed the idea. Toward the end of his life, he told Vanity Fair that he had always been searching for ways "to create something beautiful. . . . I had a lot of money, and now I have enough." He is survived by two children.

Happy Birthday Chuck!

I accidentally stumbled upon my recording of King Korn tonight. It is on Paul Bley's Milestone Cd Circle, taken from the LP Paul Bley & Scorpio. I see that tonight is the first night of the band's American tour. Anybody planning to see them?

I'm very sorry to learn of the loss of your wife, Larry.

Thanks, Ag. I've been waiting for the Stacey Kent since it came out.

There seems to be two issues here. The first is the concept of the mental illness itself. The second is the sum of money the taxpayers have forked over. I wonder how that sum compares to the cost of homeschooling.

ECM is on a roll with classical pianists recording solo albums. Two weeks ago they released a very enjoyable album by Misha Alperin entitled Her First Dance. Alperin is occasionally accompanied by a violin, cello, french horn or flugelhorn, but for the most part this is a solo album. In the past I haven't bought into Stanley Crouch's argument that for a music to be jazz it must be based upon the blues. But I am starting to think that he may have a point. This album is categorized by the label as jazz, but I don't think that it would satisfy someone with a jazz jones. On the other hand, I really like it, particularly late in the evening as the day is winding down. There's not a bad track. Alperin is quite talented. I think that those of you who enjoy classical music would like this, as long as you don't expect jazz that swings.

I can top you in the clueless department, Larry! I didn't know it was her.

I have to disagree with the negative vibe this board has toward Charlie Byrd. I saw him in Pittsburgh in 1975 and really enjoyed him. Just about every song on Jazz Samba became a bossa nova standard. And they are all songs that I haven't gotten tired of, no matter how many different recordings of them I have. I play a lot of bossa nova during the warm weather months, and this one in particular gets a lot of play.

Looks like she's an Edmonton Eskimos fan!

Matt Dunigan will host a cooking show on the Food Network. http://www.thestar.com/Sports/Football/article/423907 ***** Mike Maurer has retired. http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news...c3-4a26b1cfc7f9 ***** The Spectator has begun a series of pre-season analyses. First up is the Saskatchewan Roughriders: http://www.thespec.com/Sports/article/369989

RIP. I have a Sue Raney album of Johnny Mandel music she did with Florence on the Discovery label. I'll have to dig it out and play it.

I saw her at the 1991 New Orleans Jazzfest. I would say that she had the crowd rockin' more than any other artist at the festival.

TTK, not so new. I got the Sergio Mendes entry from Your Music in November of 2006. I'd be interested in reading your reviews of what you picked up.

He was Phil Spector's engineer, so I guess he deserves much of the credit. Here's his LA Times obituary: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...0,2714664.story Larry Levine, 80; engineered record producer Phil Spector's 'Wall of Sound' in the 1960s By Richard Cromelin, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer May 13, 2008 Larry Levine, the recording engineer who helped translate the grandiose sonic vision of record producer Phil Spector into some of the biggest-selling and most influential recordings of the rock era, died Thursday, on his 80th birthday, at his home in Encino. The announcement by his wife, Lyn, gave no cause of death, but he had suffered from emphysema and heart ailments, his cousin Stan Ross said. If Spector was the visionary architect of the "Wall of Sound" that defined such 1960s hits as the Ronettes' "Be My Baby," the Crystals' "Da Doo Ron Ron" and the Righteous Brothers' "You've Lost That Lovin' Feeling," Levine was the nuts-and-bolts contractor charged with making it work. Inside the cramped Studio A of Gold Star Recording Studios at Santa Monica Boulevard and Vine Street in Hollywood, Levine applied his skill to capturing and shaping arrangements that often encompassed three or four guitars, several pianos, brass, percussion and other instruments, not to mention the vocals. "He made Phil Spector a genius by applying the simple logic of using echo chamber," Gold Star's co-owner Ross said Monday of Levine. "Phil had a tendency of overbooking the room, and there were more musicians than there should have been in the studio. "It began to saturate the walls, and you couldn't make it happen unless you get some separation, and the only way you could do that is by getting some echo and making the room sound larger. . . . "I showed him how you work this echo chamber thing and he got into it and sure enough it worked. . . . If Phil had gone into another place to do it, it would have been a normal record without any wall of sound. . . . It gave it dimension, it sounded like it was a football field." Born in New York on May 8, 1928, Levin grew up in Los Angeles. After serving in the Army during the Korean War, he learned the craft of recording from Ross, who had opened Gold Star with Dave Gold in the early 1950s. Though Levine might be most strongly associated with Spector, his distinctive resume also includes the early rock 'n' roll records of Eddie Cochran and those by the Beach Boys, Sonny and Cher, Wings, the Carpenters, Dr. John and Herb Alpert. Levine won a Grammy for best engineered recording for Alpert and the Tijuana Brass' 1965 hit "A Taste of Honey," and Alpert brought him to his A&M label to build and oversee an in-house recording studio modeled on Gold Star. "Larry was just the easiest guy in the world to get along with," said drummer Hal Blaine, who worked with Levine on the Spector, Tijuana Brass and other sessions. "It was just a delight working with Larry. He really enjoyed what he was doing." Besides his wife, Levine is survived by his sons Rick, Rob and Michael; four grandchildren; and sister, Joyce Black.

Tony, on your recommendtion I picked up Neighbourhood from BMG using one of Aggie's $2.79 codes. Haven't had a chance to play it yet. Speaking of Wasilewski, I hope that everyone has seen the thread on his latest, January. It's a winner!