Adam

An example of life imitating sentimental and unbelievable art. They both treated Hamilton badly, BTW, which kind of bugs me. Yes, don't cry for Hamilton. Besides, the country we live in today is closer to his vision than it is to that of Adams or Jefferson. The three of them - can you imagine having a triumvorate of people that smart in politics today? Can you imagine having one person as smart as them in politics today? Hamilton also had the first political sex scandal of America while in office.

I've never heard of any of these people. What field of endeavor are they in?

The link is no good - no longer posted on You Tube due to a complaint from Viacom.

Why would he want to include a golf tournament as part of the jazz festival? Besides that, it would be nice to have a jazz festival named for a musician.

Yeah, Klezmatics

Sounds interesting to me. How are the other books mentioned in the review? Alec Wilder's "American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950" and Max Wilk's "They're Playing Our Song." http://www.latimes.com/features/book...me-middleright 'The House That George Built' by Wilfrid Sheed An affectionate celebration of the supremely talented American songwriters — Gershwin, Berlin, Porter, Arlen et al — who flourished in the first half of the 20th century. By Charles McNulty July 1, 2007 The House That George Built: With a Little Help From Irving, Cole, and a Crew of About Fifty Wilfrid Sheed Random House: 336 pp., $29.95 Every time you turn around these days, another golden age is being celebrated. Nostalgia gilds the past, bad hairdos and all, and the present, to which we are wedded for better or worse, never quite seems equal to the glorious times we keep compulsively half-remembering. Some sentimental journeys, however, are justified — even vital, if we're ever to benefit from traditions inarguably richer than our current efforts. Such is the case with the era celebrated in "The House That George Built," Wilfrid Sheed's bouncily written, impressionistic history of American songwriters from the first half of the 20th century. These are the composers, lyricists and composer-lyricists who found their sound in the Jazz Age and spread it from Tin Pan Alley and Broadway to Hollywood and the Hit Parade. Golden ages inevitably call for a bit of calendar fudging. History doesn't stop and start on a dime. Sheed's range of dates — "from the birth of radio circa 1922 until its death by TV and reruns in the mid-1940s" — serves to a certain extent as a narrative convenience, whose flexibility varies with the author's interest. Burton Lane and Cy Coleman are in; Leonard Bernstein and Kander & Ebb are out. And despite having made his name by the end of World War I, Jerome Kern gazes down from Sheed's "personal Mount Rushmore," a monumental gathering that also includes Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Cole Porter and Richard Rodgers. The rationale: Kern's quietly revolutionary, jazz-inflected score for "Show Boat" in 1927 puts him smack in the center of the groundswell. Glad to have all that settled. "The House That George Built," as the author himself points out straightaway, isn't a book for hairsplitting academics, though only the most dunderheaded PhDs would question Sheed's breadth of knowledge. A musicologist he admittedly is not, but he knows the tunes as well as any armchair expert, and he has interviewed a few of the songwriters he loves (as well as surviving friends and family members) and read the available criticism — notably Alec Wilder's "American Popular Song: The Great Innovators, 1900-1950" and Max Wilk's "They're Playing Our Song." He blends it all together with a literary sensibility that mixes biographical anecdote, cultural history and high-wattage moonbeams of critical insight that light up the old standards. If the discussion can at times seem as circuitous as the patter of a cabaret artist recapping the pedigrees of numbers before performing them, Sheed, a veteran novelist and wide-ranging critic, doesn't appear to worry one bit. As he puts it, "The proper medium for studying the American song is, after all, neither the lecture nor the library but the sing-along and the rap session, or as it used to be called, the bull session, with its overtones of the tall story and the overconfident assertion." The more distinct the personal character of the songwriter, the better Sheed's method works. Berlin and Gershwin, who are the bedrock of his study, spring to life in a way that less easily caricatured personalities, such as Rodgers and Kern, do not. But then, Sheed writes, "You can subtract any other great name from the story, and it would be basically the same story. Without Gershwin, or his godfather, Irving Berlin, it would be unrecognizably different." "Alexander's Ragtime Band," Berlin's unstoppable 1911 hit, though not technically ragtime, introduced a fascinating syncopated rhythm that would revolutionize pop. "Whatever he'd heard as a boy in Harlem was part of him now," Sheed writes, claiming that this Russian-born, New York-bred son of a cantor did more than anyone "to secure the beachheads of the dance floor and the music rack" with his "semi-black and faintly Jewish melodies." Not bad for an "unschooled immigrant kid" who, though no world-class piano player, was heralded as a genius even by as high-minded a musical theorist as Igor Stravinsky. Gershwin's breakthrough — if you had to pick one — was plausibly "The Man I Love," which Sheed says "cleared the way not only to George's own best, but to other people's best too, like 'My Funny Valentine' and 'Night and Day.' " The upshot of this 1924 song was "a single pipeline between Carnegie Hall and Broadway" — and ultimate proof that "sophistication sells." But it's the avuncular nature of Berlin and the genial genius of Gershwin that make the "House" of Sheed's title a home. Whether they were self-consciously part of a "movement" synthesizing jazz and classical music into a new form of pop is debatable, but Gershwin — sociable, gracious and competitive in all the right ways — was the de-facto leader in a musical constellation that demonstrated "a level of uncomplicated niceness unique among the arts." One towering figure who isn't portrayed with the same affectionate gusto is Porter, whose sexual orientation elicits a brusque session of old-school psychoanalysis. Sheed has tremendous respect for Porter's accomplishment (not for nothing is he given subtitle credit) but seems less taken by the scintillating public persona of a wealthy Indiana boy transformed into the epitome of the urban dandy. Still, there's no denying Porter's status as the toast of Broadway. Nor does Sheed — whose fandom is evident in his incessant reaching for superlatives — deny that the dapper Yalie who sought to write "Jewish songs" was, along with Berlin, one of our best "pure" songwriters — the sort whose output contemporary singers still love to sing. The secret? Porter and Berlin were their own perfect lyricists. Speaking of lyrics, if anyone should have a beef with Sheed, it's the wordsmiths who delivered them. In Sheed's universe, the eternal battle for glory waged by musical collaborators is unfailingly won by the composers; nearly all the book's chapters are devoted to them. As Sheed sees it, if it were not for George, "the odds seem good that Ira would have become an English teacher with a sideline in light verse and an unassuming wife to match." And while Porter's "chronically undervalued tunes" may not have come as easily to him as the alliterative dominoes "It's delightful, it's delicious, it's de-lovely," the music is what makes them memorable. Johnny Mercer, however, receives his due as an artist whose "lyrics [did] more than anyone's to split the difference between Tin Pan Alley and the Great American Outback, between Broadway and Hollywood." But how can you not love the guy who wrote the words for both "Any Place I Hang My Hat Is Home" and "That Old Black Magic"? The music, of course, was written by the great Harold Arlen, who is today perhaps best known for the songs he composed for "The Wizard of Oz." Yet his flowing stream of hits ("Stormy Weather," "It's Only a Paper Moon" and hundreds of others) precisely defines for Sheed what "the vague but necessary phrase 'jazz song' " means. If you're sure you know Arlen but can't quite call up the catalog, you'll probably have similar trouble with the composer to whom Sheed dedicates his book — Harry Warren, an astonishingly fecund genius who had two strikes against him in the pursuit of immortality. The first was his decision to change his name from something difficult to remember (Salvatore Guaragna) to something almost impossible not to forget. The second was that he wrote music mostly for Hollywood, where the pay was enviable but the fame tended to get lost in the roll of credits. One can argue with Sheed over facts and opinion, preferably with the stereo in the background. But anyone who has ever hummed "I Only Have Eyes for You" or one of the songs from "42nd Street" without wondering who conjured them into existence should be compelled to read his fine chapter on Warren. As for George, Irving, Cole and the rest of that timeless crew, Sheed's chummy book happily reconnects us with old acquaintances. charles.mcnulty@latimes.com Charles McNulty is The Times' theater critic.writers

Although it's hard to see what that series is doing on the History Channel. History Channel just wants to compete with Discovery now. And you can have a documentary series. There are lots of them. Or am I missing a joke?

yeah, I can't get that one to stay in bed.

Some say that the best version is still the original laser disc - especially those who don't like any of Ridley's Director's cuts.

I picked up this one recently on used LP. It's good fun. I think it's on my turntable right now; will go listen again.

Hey, tomorrow's my birthday too. Happy birthday! Heck, min e is today. What's with all the Geminis?

Yes, try Hard Talk and One-upmanship next.

All valid points back. Except "not particularly rare" still doesn't make it easy to find. But I still think they might be overridden by the fact that if no one can discuss the actual Album of the Week, then does it make for a very good AOTW? But feel free to ignore me, since I'm not a good participant in the AOTW discussions anyway. And you will probably get more discussion on Bobby Watson-era Jazz Messengers albums beyond this one.

I've never heard of it either. Might it be good to have an AOTW that people either have or can actually get?

Amazon seems to have one available as an import, vol. 2.

Wow, I'd really like to check those out!

I think you are misreading the image, and that Voldemort is doing something to Harry, and Harry is dealing with another distraction.

I just received an announcement of Horace's autobiography coming out on Univ of California press in paperback. Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty: The Autobiography of Horace Silver Horace Silver "Silver, now 78, has an astonishing recall of every musician he ever encountered, prompting plenty of anecdotes amid the solid self-insights."—Publishers Weekly Horace Silver is one of the last giants remaining from the incredible flowering and creative extension of bebop music that became known as "hard bop" in the 1950s. This freewheeling . . . For more information, click on Let's Get to the Nitty Gritty Subjects: Music; Jazz; Autobiographies and Biographies; American Studies Market: General Interest 978-0-520-25392-6, new paperback edition $16.95 New 2007 Title it says. Many more details here: http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10278.html

I think it's set up, almost clearly, that Snape will in the end aid Harry in killing Voldemort in a final confrontation. Snape had to kill Dumbledore which will allow him to be closer to Voldemort. And Dumbledore is dead, IMHO, except of course he is in the paintings in the master's office. Rowling has clearly set up the loss of every potential father figure for Harry, leaving Harry to do most of the hard work in #7 himself (or at least without the help of father figures with superior powers - Sirius, Dumbledore). I just don't knwo from whom to prebuy the book. Normally I would do Amazon, but when I think of all teh boxes that Amazon will use to ship out copies...

Already got my tickets. Finally able to go. Cantor first did these shows, much smaller affairs, pre-Playboy, at LA Filmforum in the 1970s.

up

Ditto. I imagine they are doing it as a limited edition because they think they will sell only about that many copies. Since I think they have lots of the usual suspects among the tunes, they are probably right. None of the song links worked for me from the site yet to confirm who the singers are. I think the site needs another day or two.

LA Times obit today: http://www.latimes.com/news/obituaries/la-...news-obituaries Nellie Lutcher, 94; jazz piano player, songwriter and R&B recording artist By Jocelyn Y. Stewart, Times Staff Writer June 12, 2007 At the age of 11, Nellie Lutcher was playing piano for Ma Rainey, the legendary blues singer. By the time Lutcher arrived in Los Angeles 12 years later, her impressive resume included gigs with the band of trumpeter Bunk Johnson. But at the Dunbar Hotel on Central Avenue, where Lutcher earned $2 a night performing in 1935, people wanted to hear more than her piano; they begged her to sing. Lutcher resisted, finally gave in and went on to make a string of hit records in the 1940s and '50s that won her acclaim for both her swinging piano and her playful vocals. Of the artist behind "He's a Real Gone Guy" and "Hurry On Down," the late jazz critic Leonard Feather once wrote: "Nellie Lutcher's name stands for much woman, much music and much heart." Lutcher died Friday from complications of old age at a nursing home in Los Angeles. She was believed to be 94, though some biographical accounts list her age as 91. Often described as a jazz singer, Lutcher's vocal and piano sound did not lend itself to easy classification. She belonged to a group of musicians whose recordings, one critic said, "were among the foundation stones of rock." Lutcher begged to differ. "I'm a little bit of jazz, a little rhythm and blues. I do pop things and I like ballads," she told the New Orleans Times-Picayune in 1993. "But I don't consider myself anything of rock. Whatever I did I made sure it was something I could restyle, because my whole thing was to give everything a creative, individual touch." Born in Lake Charles, La., on Oct. 15, 1912, Lutcher was one of 10 surviving children born to bass player Isaac Lutcher, who supported his family with a job at a packinghouse, and Susie Lutcher, who had aspired to be a pianist. Nellie Lutcher's brother Joe was a saxophonist who also had hit records in the 1940s. Lutcher began studying piano when she was 6 and played piano at her church in Lake Charles when she was 8. She moved to Los Angeles to hone her skills as a composer and arranger. But at the Dunbar Hotel, fans placed a glass on her piano to hold tips and filled it handsomely whenever she sang. "I didn't consider myself a vocalist; I called myself a song designer," she said, but fans thought otherwise. In the late 1940s, Lutcher was part of a group of African American women, including Hadda Brooks, Mabel Scott, and Paula Watson, who made names for themselves as pianist-singers, said Jim Dawson, author of several books on rock 'n' roll. "These were all very accomplished women," Dawson said. "But Nellie Lutcher was really the leader of the pack. She set the standard and she was the one having the big hits." As a writer Lutcher mastered the double entendre; there was a sly and clever element to her lyrics. She enjoyed her craft and infused performances with joy, said her son, Talmadge Lewis. "She was very comical," he said, "very lively, very bubbly, very expressive." Over the years, Lutcher's career blossomed. She played the Club Bali on the Sunset Strip and Club Royale at Florence Avenue and Broadway. A pivotal moment came in 1947, when Frank Bull, a deejay on radio station KFWB-AM, gave her a chance to perform live on a benefit show. Dave Dexter Jr. of Capitol Records heard her, and signed her. "She had eight top 10 R&B records between 1947 and 1950," said Tom Reed, author of "The Black Music History of Los Angeles — Its Roots." "She did it all. She was an entertainer, composer, arranger, writer, pianist, singer." Lutcher's fame extended across the continent at the height of her success. She was so beloved in England that police officers escorted her to her hotel after a performance to prevent fans from mobbing her. Lutcher recorded two duets with Nat King Cole, "Can I Come in for a Second?" and "For You, My Love," both in 1950. Two years later, she was the subject of an episode of "This Is Your Life" on television. But opportunities dried up with the emergence of rock 'n' roll, and difficult business experiences made her hesitant to record again. "Like a lot of other people, I was shortchanged regarding my royalties so I really have not had a desire to do any recording," she said in the Times-Picayune article. "For some reason I can't forget what happened." In the late 1980s through the 1990s she emerged from what she called semiretirement to perform at the Cinegrill in Hollywood. In 1992 music critic Don Heckman, writing in the Los Angeles Times, noted that Lutcher had lost "none of her exuberance, charm, enthusiasm and sheer, quirky musicality…. Her buoyant sense of swing and the joy which she invests [in] everything she sings, should be part of a required observation course for anyone hoping to become a musical performer." Her marriage to Leonel "Buddy" Lewis ended in divorce. In addition to her son, she is survived by a granddaughter, Kira Lewis, of Concord, Calif.; and a sister, Margie Lutcher Levy, of Los Angeles.

You can catch Nels Cline with both Wilco and Scott Amendola. It is, I think, quite a collection of bands. Better than Coachella this year, though with lots of overlapping.

Who is Steve Elkins? I'd be interested in screening this at Filmforum as part of a series of such films.