ghost of miles

This week on Night Lights it’s “Detour Ahead: Mary Ann McCall.” Mary Ann McCall, whom Johnny Mandel once called “the greatest of all the big band singers,” is a secret heroine of American jazz vocal music. Little-known today, and not widely recorded during even the most active periods of her career, she has sometimes been compared to Billie Holiday and Anita O’Day for the soulful maturity of her late 1940s and 1950s work. (Musician and writer Loren Shoenberg describes her sound as “throaty and purposefully rough.”) Problems with addiction and a predilection for singing only jazz held McCall back as a marketplace force . We’ll hear a number of her recordings with the Woody Herman big band, including “Romance in the Dark” and “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good,” as well as small-group work with Phil Moore, Ralph Burns, and Charlie Ventura, and cuts from her late-1950s albums, including Detour to the Moon and Melancholy Baby. “Detour Ahead” airs Saturday, June 3 at 11:05 p.m. on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN. The program will be posted to the Night Lights archives Monday afternoon. Also this week, Night Lights makes its debut on Michigan’s Blue Lake Public Radio, where western Michigan listeners can hear it Sunday evenings at 10 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Next week: "The Lighthouse All-Stars."

Yeah, I've been on my bi-annual Barrett kick again lately, and I'm surprised, too... I think there's also a video for "Scarecrow" (which is an eerily prophetic Barrett song).

Man... Astronomy Domine live late 1966/early 1967? Wish I could've seen THAT incarnation of PF.

Barrett-era Pink Floyd videos: Arnold Layne See Emily Play

Concierto de Aranjuez?

One of my favorite Greene novels. I also particularly liked Monsignor Quixote. i am half way through. i read our man in havana last year. any recommendations for my next greene? In addition to MQ, I would recommend The Third Man (if you haven't seen the film), The Quiet American and maybe Doctor Fischer of Geneva or The Bomb Party (a late novel). (I don't remember too much about Doctor Fischer other than it seemed inspired by and perhaps a bit overwhelmed by Dr. Strangelove.) BRIGHTON ROCK, too. One I'd still like to read and haven't gotten around to yet is THE POWER & THE GLORY.

Yeah, that's a rather infamous quote. I mean, I love the culture of the 1930s popular front, but it did include some pretty condescending attitudes, as demonstrated above. The whole Marxist/CPUSA hate/love affair with jazz is something that might be worthy of a longish article by someone, at some point (might have been done already, for all I know). By the late 1930s they generally embraced swing with enthusiasm (pretty much sponsored From Spirituals to Swing via the New Masses), but early on jazz was dismissed as either decadent or bourgeois music.

Assuming New York holds onto their 6-0 lead (still in the top of the 9th--spankin' Detroit on the road!), Yanks and Bosox remain tied as of tomorrow's morning papers & June 1. Great summer in the making... Here's somebody else who thinks Clemens blew it by not going back to Boston:

I say we call in former BNBB member I'mtheBarnesandNobleCEO to moderate this discussion.

It's official: Clemens going to Houston

Nice extra-innings win for the Yanks last night in Detroit. Tied with Boston!

For Moonrise/Synthetic Joe, Top of the Hill/Puerto Rican Breakdown, and Just One of Those Things/Just Give Me a Man: piano-Jimmy Bunn alto sax-Edward Hale, Floyd Turnham tenor sax-Vernon Slater, Olis West baritone sax-Charles Waller For Yenta/Come Sunday, Love Me a Long, Long Time/I Don't Know What That Is, Groovin' High/I've Got a Right to Sing the Blues, You Better Change Your Way of Lovin'/Skip the Gutter, and I'll String Along With You/Ain't It a Drag: piano-Jimmy Bunn alto sax-Leo Trammel, Floyd Turnham tenor sax-Vernon Slater, Eddie Davis ( NOT Lockjaw) baritone sax-Maurice Simon All of those dates from 1945, according to Classics.

Hope to run into you at a show in Indy sometime.

What are the titles on the Gerald Wilson 78? I have the Classics CD, which contains most (if not all) of the Excelsior releases, and can list the personnel for you if you post the titles. Can tell you right now that Hobart Dotson and Snooky Young are probably in the trumpet section and that Melba Liston is on trombone.

Yep, another winner--have been playing cuts off it and will do a full-fledged feature on Afterglow very soon.

This program is now archived.

Happy b-day... and a certain singer coming your way later this week.

Showed up in the Yahoo! newsbox this a.m.:

Which makes this turn of events even more outrageous.

Thanks for posting this. I interviewed Richard a couple of times about Hoagy Carmichael and Indiana jazz, and he was also in the Bix documentary that I did; always quite generous with his time, and wonderful for getting across information in a compelling and well-edited, well-presented manner. Best wishes to him and I'll try to send a little help in the way of $$.

Add Clemens to the Bosox and I'm sure it's that much tougher for the Yanks to catch them. Happy at least to see Randy Johnson finally turn in a good start today; if Boston doesn't come back in their game, NY will be only half a game behind them.

Nelson Algren, CHICAGO: CITY ON THE MAKE. In some ways it's sort of a non-fiction historical epilogue to THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN ARM.

Have only listened to Disc 4 so far, and I can live with the audio quality just fine--it's Steve Allen's introduction and comments that drive me to the point of screaming excruciation. Or something like that.

This Memorial Day weekend on Night Lights we present a sequel to last May’s program, “Turn Out the Stars,” with more jazz elegies written or performed for musicians who passed away. This year’s broadcast includes Albert Ayler’s appearance at John Coltrane’s 1967 funeral, a teenaged Lee Morgan’s recording of “I Remember Clifford” (composed by Benny Golson for Clifford Brown) followed by Roy Campbell’s “I Remember Lee,” Jeanne Lee and Mal Waldron’s take on Charles Mingus’ “Goodbye Porkpie Hat,” and a previously-unknown Joe Zawinul composition that surfaced just in the past year—“Requiem for a Jazz Musician,” recorded by Cannonball Adderley in 1966. “Turn Out the Stars II” airs Saturday, May 27 at 11:05 p.m. EST on WFIU and at 9 p.m. Central Time on WNIN-Evansville. You can listen to the first “Turn Out the Stars” from May 28, 2005 in the Night Lights archives, where "Turn Out the Stars II" will be posted Tuesday afternoon. Next week: "Detour Ahead: Mary Ann McCall." Note to western Michigan listeners in the Lower Peninsula: beginning June 4, you can hear Night Lights every Sunday evening at 10 p.m. EST on Blue Lake Public Radio, immediately following Lazaro Vega's Sunday-night program. Have a great holiday weekend!

I subscribed to it as a kid from about 1975 to 1981 or so... the 1970s stuff holds up pretty well, too (not long ago I picked up MAD ABOUT THE SEVENTIES--and I think a lot of the original issues are boxed up at my dad's house). Always loved the movie and TV parodies--"Gall in the Family Fare," "Star Bores," "Jaw'd," etc. Sample dialogue from "Jaw'd": Mayor: I've called this meeting of you key townspeople because there is a silly rumor going around that an alleged shark has allegedly killed two alleged people! We will now have the Coroner's report! Er... where is the coroner? Sheriff: He's dead! Mayor: WHAT?! How did it happen? Sheriff: The alleged shark bit off his alleged head! Also his alleged arms and legs...