ghost of miles

His sound sure changed through the years, didn't it??? That's interesting, Berigan... I haven't heard any later Auld, though I now have quite a bit of 1940-51 material (and am considering picking up the CC 1951-1953 comp). I'll be curious to hear him when the DVD & st arrive... I saw this film many years ago, when I didn't even much care for jazz (gasp!). Will be great to watch it again now that I'm such a fanatic...

Bob Graettinger, baby!

I can't seem to get to it... none of my normal links work, and Google/Yahoo can't pull it up for me either.

Krin Gabbard has a 16-page essay on this movie in his book JAMMIN' AT THE MARGINS, a very good study of jazz in film. Evidently Scorsese was heavily influenced by a 40's noir flick The Man I Love, which was reissued on VHS in the early 1990s, but has yet to surface on DVD. (It involves a gangster's romantic pursuit of a torch singer.) Would be interesting to watch the films back-to-back. Picture of DeNiro on the cover of Newsweek when NEW YORK, NEW YORK came out in '77:

There are a lot of casual listeners out there who do not have the "disease" the way we do, and who just want 5, 10, 15, or 20 jazz CDs for their music libraries... Therefore something like a Burns compilation is right up their alley.

Cool! Steve does a great show.

Well... I had a bad feeling this might happen. I'm grateful that this material is coming out, but I was really, really hoping for a big-box treatment of Tyner's BN material. However, the pattern of RVG releases sort of foretold this. I'll definitely buy the Select, but with some disappointment. Better than ongoing OOP status...

Sad news--I've picked up JAZZ SOUL and the CDs w/Prez only in the last year. One of those lesser-known musicians who certainly contributed a lot to the music.

Griffin in Chicago

On the contrary,, I think he was one of those people who just couldn't face old age.. I think Randy T. agrees with you--his sarcasm is as dry as a fine wine (or something like that).

Yeah, JM, time for us to sit on the porch for a spell and sing an ol' Willard Robison tune to ourselves: Ev’ry one knows him as Old Folks, Like the seasons he’ll come and he’ll go Just as free as a bird, and as good as his word, That’s why ev’rybody loves him so. Always leavin’ his spoon in his coffee, Puts his napkin up under his chin. And that yellow cob pipe, it’s so mellow it’s ripe, But, you needn’t be ashamed of him. In the evening, after supper, what stories he would tell: How he held the speech at Gettysburg For Lincoln that day. I know that one so well. Don’t quite understand about Old Folks. Did he fight for the blue or the gray? For he’s so diplomatic and so democratic, We always let him have his way. We Always know where to find Old Folks, When there’s some little chore he can do At the old liv’ry stable, when ever he’s able, Pitchin’ the shoes with lawd knows who. Then he meets the late train at the station Sits and whittles when it’s overdue. While they’re sortin’ the mail, ev’ry night without fail He’s sneakin’ a little nip or two. Ev’ry Friday he’ll go fishin’ way down on Buzzards Lake. But he only hooks a perch or two. A whale got away, So we warm up the steak. Oh, some day there’ll be no more Old Folks. What a lonely old town this will be. Children’s voices at play, will be stilled for a day, The day that they take Old Folks away.

PHEW!!!!! Thanks, Deus and Patricia! I just ordered the DVD and the soundtrack--thinking about doing a program based around the movie. Did a check on the web--Georgie Auld plays an older bandleader (Frankie Harte) and Ralph Burns was indeed involved in arranging the score and writing some of the background music.

Kevin Spacey? Yeah, Cincotti had a role in Spacey's Darin flick.

It just posted!

Geoff Dyer's BUT BEAUTIFUL, which has been mentioned here and on the BNBB several times before.

CPUSA (the American Communist Party) was a very progressive force for civil rights in this country in the 1930s and 40s, at a time when even liberal groups were often wary of embracing civil-rights causes (somewhat akin to the dilemma that gays find themselves in today with the Democratic Party). The book STORIES OF SCOTTSBORO, for one example, touches on how CPUSA took up the plight of the Scottsboro defendants while the NAACP remained overly cautious and ambivalent. Given everything that the Party did to advance a civil-rights agenda, I, too, might have long remained loyal to communism if I'd grown up as a black man in this country in the first part of the 20th century. OTOH some black artists, such as Richard Wright, abandoned it relatively early on (Wright contributed an essay to the 1940 disillusionment-anthology THE GOD THAT FAILED.) In any case, I don't really see it as a blight upon Robeson's legacy.

As opposed to the "Bud Powell/Keith Jarrett School of Piano Singalong?"

The other day I was reading a biography of another musician, and Ellington's name came up in conjunction with a mid-1960s movie called ASSAULT ON A QUEEN, for which Ellington was said to have contributed the score. I vaguely remember seeing this film as a kid on "Picture for a Sunday Afternoon," or some such, but did Ellington actually pen new music for it? And if so, was it ever released on vinyl or CD?

Re-posting this here, just in case it got lost in "Misc. Music."--or perhaps I'm the only one who's interested! Ah, well, "0 replies" threads keep ya humble:

Saw this posted over at AAJ this a.m.:

Doesn't he actually hate jazz? I think I read that somewhere once... I really liked THE BIG NOWHERE and somewhat LA CONFIDENTIAL, but I started WHITE JAZZ three times before I was able to finish it... his post-LA CONF amphetamine style too often turns into "Jack be nimble..." or "See Spot run..." cadences. Thought he came back up to speed (so to speak) in AMERICAN TABLOID and then faltered again badly in COLD SIX THOUSAND. As memoirs go, MY DARK PLACES is a pretty good one, though, with some of his more annoying narrative tendencies held in check.

Brandon, Check out Larry Kart's piece on Kerouac in his new book. Although Kerouac used pseudonymns, the jazz musicians were often based directly on real-life figures. Been awhile since I read Ellroy's THE BIG NOWHERE, but some of the Central Ave L.A. musicians may have been mentioned in that one. Basie gets mentioned in the work of both David Goodis and Chester Himes... great topic. I've got a Night Lights program slated for this summer that deals with this very subject.

The Alarm? There's a band I haven't thought about (or heard) in many years (although they had some kind of comeback hit under another name not too long ago, didn't they?). People always slagged them off as U2-meets-the-Clash. I had their first EP and didn't mind DEDICATION, but lost track after that.

Great coincidence... I was just checking on the DVD availability of Scorsese's NEW YORK, NEW YORK, because I'd like to show a clip or two from it in my forthcoming big-band class; and, lo and behold, it just came out a week or two ago! New York, New York I know this film has a rap for being too lengthy, having a flimsy storyline, etc.; but it really is in some ways a very good representation of the big-band era (and it had significant help from Georgie Auld and Ralph Burns). The DVD is midprice--if you're at all a Scorsese and/or big-band fan, I'd definitely recommend checking it out.

Thanks for the tip, Daniel... I'll advise the webmaster to tweak that when I e-mail him later today. The playlist is already up on the WFIU site; everything came off the Mosaic, but in some instances I listed an individual CD if it is, or has recently been, in-print.