For years I listened, with pleasure, to Tom Foty's assured and appealing news anchoring, on CBS Radio.
Mr. Foty died on December 26th, at 77. He was last heard on the network December 21st.
His distinctive voice can be heard in the story, below, from Washington's WTOP Radio.
https://wtop.com/local/2023/12/longtime-cbs-anchor-tom-foty-dies-at-77/
As one who has come to miss his long-gone manual typewriters (and an IBM Selectric, sold, as I recall, in 2000), I was interested to read this December 7th story from The New York Times:
The story concerns an auction, taking place December 15th in Dallas, run by the company Heritage Auctions. It is a collection of 33 typewriters, owned by entrepreneur and civic leader (and a former president of the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners) Steve Soboroff. The collection includes typewriters once owned by Ernest Hemingway, Shirley Temple, Andy Rooney, Philip Roth, Jack London, Truman Capote, Greta Garbo, and Tennessee Williams.
In 2022 Mr. Soboroff donated six typewriters from his collection to the Smithsonian: typewriters of Joe DiMaggio, Maya Angelou, Elia Kazan, Orson Welles, Jerry Siegel (the co-creator of Superman), and John Lennon (who, one notes, died 43 years ago today).
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/07/style/ernest-hemingway-typewriter-auction.ht
Mr. Soboroff assembled much of his collection through auction purchases; some were bought from family members or friends of those who had owned the typewriters. The Times article includes the following:
Typewriters are imperfect little engraving machines, Mr. Soboroff likes to say, requiring more physical interaction than today’s laptops. Some exude a personality, a mechanical soul, like a vintage car or a maestro’s violin. The connection to their original owners adds to the mystique.
“They are really hard to find because some heirs don’t want to give them up,” Mr. Soboroff said. “They’ll sell the clothes, pictures. They won’t sell the typewriter.”
Here is a link to a press release about Mr. Soboroff's collection, on the Heritage Auctions website:
While having not (admittedly) been a great fan of Ronald Reagan and his presidency, I think Mr. Reagan deserves much credit for having nominated Sandra Day O'Connor--who died on Friday, at 93--to a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court.
The legacy of Justice O'Connor--the first woman to serve on the Court--is an honorable and admirable one.
Tuesday's memorial service for Rosalynn Carter--carried on television--was very moving.
Mrs. Carter was an extraordinary American--and an exceptional citizen of the world. She led a life of great service, and great purpose.
Tomorrow is--it feels startling to say this--the 60th anniversary of JFK's death.
Below is a photograph that my brother took the weekend of the assassination (though as the date at the top of the picture indicates, it was not developed until March of 1964).
The picture shows the screen of a black and white TV set our family had; the set was in a room off of our dining room. The image is of the President's casket, on Sunday, November 24th--I believe just after it had been placed on the bier, by the military service members who had carried the casket into the Rotunda of the Capitol building.
There is, to me, an eeriness to the photograph--maybe, in part, due to the darkness surrounding the television screen (a darkness, one could say, befitting the tragedy which had occurred two days before). Yet the photograph--showing the TV image, and the accompanying darkness--conveys, I think, a grim sort of beauty.
The following link is to an excellent piece from the website of The Atlantic, by staff writer Tom Nichols, titled "The Juvenile Viciousness of Campus Anti-Semitism." Its subtitle is: "Some of America's students are embracing an ancient evil."
https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2023/11/campus-anti-semitism-hamas-war/675991/
Mr. Nichols writes, for example, that at George Washington University,
activists projected pro-Hamas slogans on the sides of buildings, including “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a call for the eradication of Israel. Spare me the sophistry—most recently plumped by Representative Rashida Tlaib of Michigan—that “From the river to the sea” is merely an anodyne call for freedom and equal rights, or that it somehow can be detached from Hamas’s genocidal meaning...
Mr. Nichols writes:
Good for Harvard’s president, Claudine Gay, for denouncing this slogan (despite immediate campus backlash for doing so); better late than never. Some protesters insist—and many with undeniable honesty—that they are objecting only to Israeli policy. But even the sincerest among them often resort to the backbreaking mental gymnastics required to dismiss the obvious anti-Semitism that is woven into so many of these protests.
The link, below, is to a recording from January of 1950, by the Kay Kyser Orchestra.
The song, released on Columbia Records, is "Open Door, Open Arms." Its vocals are by Michael Douglas (known years later, when he hosted a television talk show, as Mike Douglas), and my mother, Sue Bennett.
When "Open Door, Open Arms" was recorded, Mr. Douglas was twenty-nine years old. My mother was twenty-one. At the time, they were both singing on Kay Kyser's weekly television show, on NBC.
Mr. Douglas sings for a little more than half of the recording; my mother then sings for the remainder of the song.
As I have noted previously, in this space, it was not uncommon, during this era, for popular songs to be recorded by multiple performers. Other versions of "Open Door, Open Arms" were, for example, released by The Andrews Sisters, with the Lee Gordon Singers (recorded in November 1949); by Jo Stafford and The Starlighters (recorded in December 1949); and by the country singer Cowboy Copas (recorded, as was the Kay Kyser version, in January of 1950).
Here is the Cowboy Copas recording of the song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSM5P_XSCWQ
In the above video, there are rotating (and repeating) still images; one of the images, of a newspaper's front page, concerns the death of Copas, in the crash of a small plane. The crash occurred in 1963, in a wooded area in Tennessee. All of those on the plane--Copas, singer Patsy Cline, singer Hawkshaw Hawkins, and pilot Randy Hughes--were killed. Randy Hughes was Patsy Cline's manager, and was Cowboy Copas's son-in-law.
Over the past days, contemplating Hamas's murderous, sadistic, gruesome attacks in Israel, I have thought of the group's reaction, in May of 2011, to the death of the mass murderer Osama bin Laden.
News reports at the time cited Ismail Haniyeh, who today is head of the Hamas Political Bureau; he has held this position since 2017.
One 2011 report said this:
Though he noted doctrinal differences between bin Laden's al Qaeda and Hamas, Haniyeh said: "We condemn the assassination and the killing of an Arab holy warrior. We ask God to offer him mercy with the true believers and the martyrs."
I've long been weary of hearing those who are imbued with a deep (and often obsessive) animus toward Israel--the hatred, for example, from conspiratorial sectors on the right (including neo-Nazis, and their like), and hatred from certain sectors on the left (often today, notably, coming from repugnant anti-Israel student groups on college campuses). I've been hearing versions of these anti-Israel voices, with profound dismay, for decades.
And so, one must make note of one's support--one's wholehearted support--for the people of Israel, during this terrible and perilous time.
On Saturday, one also must note, President Biden spoke (importantly, forcefully) in support of Israel's right of self-defense--following the thousands of rocket attacks, that day, from Hamas (and, evidently, from Islamic Jihad as well), and following the hundreds of murders (and the kidnappings) committed by Hamas gunmen during the group's invasion.
Mr. Biden said, in part:
Hamas terrorists crossing into Israel killing not only Israeli soldiers, but Israeli civilians in the street, in their homes. Innocent people murdered, wounded, entire families taken hostage by Hamas just days after Israel marked the holiest of days on the Jewish calendar. It’s unconscionable.
You know, when I spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu this morning, I told him the United States stands with the people of Israel in the face of these terrorist assaults. Israel has the right to defend itself and its people. Full stop.
There is never justification for terrorist attacks.
And my administration’s support for Israel’s security is rock solid and unwavering.
I am hopeful that the supremely talented (and extremely courageous) writer Salman Rushdie might be given this year's Nobel Prize in Literature.
The prize will be awarded on Thursday.
On Sunday's premiere of the new season of CBS's 60 Minutes, correspondent Scott Pelley spoke with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The interview (or, more precisely, interviews) took place in Ukraine, in advance of Mr. Zelenskyy's visit, this week, to the United States.
Mr. Zelenskyy remains a remarkable world figure. He is impressively determined, unusually smart, focused, eloquent, human.
Here is the link to the 60 Minutes segment:
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/zelenskyy-putin-world-war-iii-ukraine-russia-60-minutes/
Scott Pelley, one notes, is one of the great reporters and interviewers in CBS News's distinguished history. His piece on Sunday about President Zelenskyy was in keeping with his longtime commitment to presenting meaningful, intelligent, superb journalism.
I think, routinely, about the subject of memory, and the ways memory affects our lives.
I think often about childhood-related memories, in particular early childhood memories--those which we remember with clarity, or those which are vague, elusive, perhaps mysterious to us in their elusiveness.
I'm also intrigued by memories which can suddenly reappear, after many decades, seemingly unbidden.
Such as:
I was at my desk, a few months ago, making a list of things I had to get, during errands later on.
I stood up from the desk, and held the small piece of paper with the list on it. I remembered something I wanted to add to the list. I took a pen from the desk, and began jotting down the added item--holding the paper not against the desk, but in the palm of my hand.
From this insignificant gesture--from the motion of the pen bearing down on the paper in my palm--a memory, somewhat echo-like, came forth (something I am sure I had not thought of for decades).
It was a memory of my maternal grandfather--a man I loved dearly--who died in 1970. He was seventy-five, when he died. I was fourteen.
I remembered how my grandfather often did the same thing: made notes to himself, while standing up, holding a piece of paper in his hand. I remembered watching him jot things down that he wanted to remember, things he had to do.
More than fifty years after his death, it startled me, and moved me greatly, to recall (in an instant) this detail about him, a memory that had been lost to me for decades--revealed simply by the way one was standing, holding a pen, and writing a word or two on a slip of paper.
I've had the photograph, below, for a while. It is from November of 1952, and is of a weekly program on the DuMont Television Network, Trash or Treasure.
The program, an early-TV precursor to Antiques Roadshow (which began airing on PBS in 1997), featured appraiser Sigmund Rothschild.
Mr. Rothschild's appraisals had previously--in 1948 and 1949--been the focus of another show, on CBS-TV, called What's it Worth. (The show's host, during that time, was Gil Fates. Fates would later produce CBS's What's My Line?, beginning with its debut in 1950; he produced the show until its network run ended in 1967--and then produced, for a number of years, the syndicated versions which followed.)
Tim Brooks and Earle Marsh, in their Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows, 1946--Present (Ballantine Books, multiple editions), note that after What's it Worth, Mr. Rothschild was--from 1950 to 1952--a periodic guest on Kate Smith's daytime television show on NBC; his segments on Ms. Smith's show were called "Trash or Treasure."
Mr. Rothschild then brought his program--now also called Trash or Treasure--to the DuMont Network in October of 1952.
To the left of the above photograph is the show's announcer/host, broadcast veteran Nelson Case. He had for years been a network radio announcer (for such programs as The Lanny Ross Show, The Lowell Thomas Show, The Carnation Contented Hour, the NBC Symphony Orchestra program, and The Vaughn Monroe Show), and then began working in television. I don't know the identity of the man standing between Mr. Case and Mr. Rothschild in the photograph. Perhaps he was the owner of the item being handled by Mr. Rothschild--an item I am assuming was in some way related to, or possibly a part of, the lock mechanism at the front of the table (a lock, as indicated in the handwritten notes on the back of the photo, manufactured by the Yale & Towne Company).
Nelson Case appeared on Trash or Treasure from its DuMont debut in 1952 until March of 1953. When he left the show, his position was taken over by Bill Wendell.
The program (the title of which was changed, the month after Mr. Case's departure, to Treasure Hunt) aired until October of that year.
In 1952 and 1953, one also notes, Bill Wendell was the host of another DuMont program, Stage a Number. As Mr. Brooks and Mr. Marsh write, in their television encyclopedia: "This was one of many low-budget talent shows on TV during the early years. The acts presented [on the program] were young professionals, or aspiring professionals, who were introduced by a 'sponsor' and then 'staged their number' before a panel of show-business judges (producers, actors, etc.)." Mr. Brooks and Mr. Marsh write: "The acts tended to be theatrical, such as dramatic acting or ballet, with several appearances by the Nina Youshkevitch Ballet Workshop, among others."
In the mid-1950s, Mr. Wendell was the announcer for (and participated in sketches on) a morning TV show starring Ernie Kovacs, which aired on NBC. He was also part of another Ernie Kovacs program--the summer replacement, in 1956, for Sid Caesar's NBC show Caesar's Hour. Mr. Wendell became well-known, through the years, for the various game shows on which he served as announcer. He was also the announcer for the full run of David Letterman's late-night show on NBC (on which he occasionally also appeared in sketches), and remained with the program, for a couple of years, after the show moved to CBS.
(Above photograph: Nelson Case, at left; unidentified man, at center; Sigmund Rothschild, at right.)
(Update, 8/31/23: The Ernie Kovacs mid-1950s morning television show, referred to above, was not, as I had understood it, a local New York show; it was, in fact, a network program, on NBC. The post has been corrected.)
A favorite film has long been 1944's Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder, and starring Barbara Stanwyck, Fred MacMurray, and Edward G. Robinson.
The movie's script was written by Mr. Wilder and the novelist Raymond Chandler, and was based on the novel of the same name by James M. Cain.
I've seen Double Indemnity a number of times, yet never knew, until just recently, that Raymond Chandler appears in the film.
Mr. Chandler is seen in the movie for only a few seconds. He is seated outside the office of Barton Keyes, the insurance investigator played by Mr. Robinson. Walter Neff (Mr. MacMurray) sells policies for the same insurance agency, and leaves Keyes's office. Mr. Chandler is in a chair, holding a cigarette and reading a book, or perhaps a magazine. He looks up as Walter Neff passes by.
Here is the scene, from YouTube:
This particular feature, in the January issue, contains a page of script from a May 1938 radio broadcast of Your Hit Parade. The page shows, interestingly, the marks and symbols announcer André Baruch made on the script to guide, or perhaps reinforce, his reading of it during the program.
The Radiogram feature--which contains an explanatory guide to the markings Mr. Baruch made use of--was, Radiogram notes, adapted from a story in a 1938 issue of Radio Stars magazine.
The attention to detail, as indicated in the markings, is illuminating; the notes make clear how meticulously a network announcer such as Mr. Baruch approached his work, the care given to the words and phrasings. There are markings regarding particular emphases, pauses, changes in tone. One symbol means: "Long sentence. Take deep breath." Another indicates: "Drop inflection, as with comma."
During his lengthy, legendary career Mr. Baruch was the announcer for many network programs, in addition to radio's Hit Parade (including, on radio, The Shadow and The Kate Smith Show, and the television version of the Hit Parade). His announcing was invariably crisp, lively, authoritative; there was a feeling of elegance to it.
Mr. Baruch was married to singer Bea Wain, one of the best-known stars of the radio Hit Parade (and one of the most popular, and most admired, singers of the big band era). After World War Two, the couple hosted a music show on New York radio station WMCA; in the 1970s and 1980s they hosted other radio programs together, both music- and talk-oriented.
Mr. Baruch died in 1991, at age 83. Ms. Wain died in 2017, at age 100.
(Above images © Radiogram magazine and SPERDVAC, 2023)
On my list of books to read: novelist and short story writer Ann Beattie's new work, Onlookers.
It is described as being a book of linked short stories, which take place in Charlottesville, VA. The book, published by Scribner, was released on July 18th.
https://www.amazon.com/Onlookers-Stories-Ann-Beattie/dp/1668013657/
As I've mentioned previously, in this space, I lived in Charlottesville--a city for which I continue to feel great affection--from the spring of 1995 until the start of 2001.
The 2019 Revised Edition of my book about early television (the paperback version) is available at a discounted price at my website.
The list price of the book is $24.95. It can be purchased, at the site, for $17.95, which includes Media Mail shipping.
(Please note: shipping is to the United States only--and only to the lower forty-eight states. Please also note that there is no shipping on Saturdays.)
This is an advertisement, from an April 1951 program/playbill; the playbill was for a production at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
The ad, for Lucky Strike cigarettes, featured Dorothy Collins, who was, at the time, one of the stars of the Hit Parade television show on NBC.
In the ad, Ms. Collins is seen within a bull's-eye (resembling the center of a pack of Lucky Strikes). Each week, on Your Hit Parade, she appeared, famously, in a bull's-eye--in commercials (both singing and spoken) for Lucky Strike. The commercials aired near the beginning and end of each telecast.
In addition to her role as one of the starring singers on the TV show, Ms. Collins (as noted in the ad) came to be called "the sweetheart of Lucky Strike." The appellation was coined by writer and editor Clifton Fadiman, who was the host of the early TV program This Is Show Business--on which Ms. Collins's live Lucky Strike commercials were also featured.
In the program/playbill ad, above, Ms. Collins is seen emerging, somewhat, from the bull's-eye. On television, however, she remained within the border of the bull's-eye, as seen in the image below, from a 1951 Hit Parade broadcast. The image (in which Ms. Collins is holding a carton of Lucky Strikes) is from a video copy of a kinescope.
(Image of Dorothy Collins, from Your Hit Parade telecast, © Lost Gold Entertainment, Inc.)
The following includes links to two performances of "America the Beautiful." (I have featured the same links in two previous July 4th posts, in recent years.)
This is a photograph from a 1961 NBC television show, Five Star Jubilee.
Five Star Jubilee, a country music-oriented variety program, was telecast live from Springfield, Missouri, and had five rotating stars: Mr. Lanson, Tex Ritter, Rex Allen, Carl Smith, and Jimmy Wakely.
The program was a half-hour long, and aired Friday nights, from March to September of 1961. Originally, the show was seen from 8:00 to 8:30 p.m. Beginning in May, its start-time was moved to 8:30 p.m.
A press release accompanying the photograph concerned the May scheduling change--as well as the changing look of the program (at least for some viewers). It noted that the series, "now broadcast in black and white, joins NBC-TV's color lineup starting May 12."
(Photo © NBCUniversal Media, LLC)
https://www.amazon.com/Juneteenth-Annette-Gordon-Reed/dp/1631498835/
Ms. Gordon-Reed is perhaps best known for her 2008 book, The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. The book received the 2008 National Book Award for Nonfiction, and, in 2009, the Pulitzer Prize for History.
https://www.amazon.com/Hemingses-Monticello-American-Family-ebook/dp/B001FA0ONM/
I have written previously, in this space, about Mitchell Hadley's website "It's About TV" (https://www.itsabouttv.com/). It is through the website that I became aware of the author, and academic, Jodie Peeler.
Over time, Mitchell kept his readers updated about Dr. Peeler's biography-in-progress about the singular, much-admired television host Dave Garroway. Dr. Peeler, a Professor of Communications at Newberry College in South Carolina, has also written occasional guest essays for "It's About TV."
Her book about Mr. Garroway is now out; it was released May 1st.
Mr. Garroway was without question one of the most interesting, engaging personalities in American television history.
He was, of course, the original host of NBC's Today show (he was host from 1952 to 1961)--and also starred on the NBC variety programs Garroway at Large (1949-1951), and The Dave Garroway Show (1953-1954). From 1955 until 1958, he was host of the documentary series Wide Wide World, which aired Sunday afternoons on NBC. He was also known for his work in radio--such as, serving as one of the "Communicators" on the noted NBC radio show Monitor; he appeared on the program from the mid-1950s, when the show began airing, until 1961.
Mr. Garroway died in 1982 at age 69, from suicide.
Dr. Peeler's book (the first full-length biography of Mr. Garroway) is titled Peace: The Wide, Wide World of Dave Garroway, Television’s Original Master Communicator. It was written with Dave Garroway, Jr. (one of Mr. Garroway's three children), and Brandon Hollingsworth, and is published by Tyger River Books. I'm looking forward to reading it.
Here is a link to purchase the book:
Here, too, is a 2017 Mitchell Hadley interview with Jodie Peeler, about Mr. Garroway.
https://www.itsabouttv.com/2017/08/the-its-about-tv-interview-jodie-peeler.html
Lastly, this is the link to the Wikipedia page about Mr. Garroway:
Today is the seventy-ninth anniversary of D-Day--June 6, 1944.
And, Robert F. Kennedy died fifty-five years ago today--on June 6, 1968. He was forty-two.
Mr. Kennedy was shot not long after midnight, on June 5th, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles; he had just won the California Democratic presidential primary. He died twenty-five hours later.
The link below is to a 1953 recording of the song "Marriage Type Love," by Ted Straeter and His Orchestra.
The song was from the 1953 Broadway musical Me and Juliet. The play's songs were by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II.
Ted Straeter was a noted pianist, orchestra leader, and vocalist. He was also a director of vocal groups; in the late 1930s and early 1940s, his Ted Straeter Choir had been part of the cast of Kate Smith's radio show.
"Marriage Type Love" appeared on an MGM album featuring Mr. Straeter and his orchestra. The album included songs not only from Me and Juliet, but from the 1953 musical Can-Can; the songs for the latter show were by Cole Porter. Ted Straeter and my mother sang on the album, separately and together. They both sang on "Marriage Type Love."
Here is the song, which I like very much:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bN6Y4GuT__8
The album was recorded in June of 1953, in New York; both Me and Juliet and Can-Can had had their Broadway debuts the month before.
My mother, who had moved with my father to the Boston area at the start of 1953, was well into her first pregnancy at the time the recording was made; the following month she would give birth to my brother.
Ted Straeter's singing style was idiosyncratic--low-key, easygoing, somewhat intimate. It is, I think, a pleasing style, one which has its own particular elegance. (I am guessing some listeners might need to get acclimated to his vocal manner. I was one such listener; his singing, indeed, grew on me.) His piano playing, too, is distinctive, and impressive. One notes, in particular, his interlude--it has a lush sound--on "Marriage Type Love." He doesn't stay, precisely, with the timing of his orchestra, accompanying him. His playing in the interlude diverges, in a handful of instances; he alternately comes in a little early, or comes in a bit late. The style is appealing.
Mr. Straeter's best-known record was "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World." The song was written by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, for the 1935 Broadway show Jumbo. Mr. Straeter's version of the song was recorded in 1947 and released in 1948, and it became his theme song. He recorded the song again in 1951.
The link below is to the 1947/1948 version. Mr. Straeter plays the piano and sings; he is accompanied by the "Straeter Singers."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXOdX4kubvQ
Mr. Straeter died in 1963, following surgery. He was 49.
I read a lot of fiction--and am currently making my way through a novel by a very good writer. I confess, though, that I'm rather disappointed by the book.
Yet I plan to continue with it. I want to see where the book goes, want to know if my view of the novel will have changed, by the end of it.
I think about a particular insight from college, many years ago (the 1970s).
In a literature course, I was reading Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure. I remember that I was bored by the book.
Then, fairly suddenly--it might have been one hundred pages into the novel, perhaps one hundred and fifty pages--I was taken aback. The book had (for whatever reason, or reasons) come together for me; I felt (it was a somewhat out-of-the-blue sensation) that I was in fact not reading something boring, but remarkable.
This was a long time ago--I was a very young man when I read the novel--and I have no idea what I'd feel about the book today. (One's responses to works of literature can, of course, be altered, dramatically, with time. A book one felt to be astonishing at age twenty can feel, decades later, dreary. A book believed to be dreary in one's youth can, many years after the fact, appear beautiful, revelatory. Or, a work regarded as brilliant can, decades hence, still feel brilliant--though one may, perhaps, now apprehend its power and beauty in different ways. In none of these instances has the text of the book changed. But--I am indeed not alone in making this observation--one's life has no doubt changed, in varied and often meaningful ways...and so too, in many instances, will one's responses change to the nature, meaning, and feeling of a particular work.)
Today, I attempt to be as patient as possible with the books I read (particularly if I have faith in the writer, from previous encounters with the writer's work). Sometimes, I do give up; pressing on, with certain books, feels like too much of a burden, a waste of time.
Yet I do think, periodically, about the experience of reading Thomas Hardy's novel, in college. I believe a useful lesson--about possibilities--was provided: that what can appear at first, to you, to be unsatisfying, unappealing, dull, might, ultimately, turn out to be valuable, important, and (sometimes) electrifying.
(Since its posting, yesterday, the preceding has been somewhat edited.)
There are certain songs, during your life, that especially touch you, and stay with you. Harry Belafonte's recording of "Jamaica Farewell," from his 1956 album Calypso, is for me one such song. I have listened to it since childhood, and have never tired of hearing it.
The song itself--lyrically, musically--is lovely. Mr. Belafonte's singing, on the recording--which includes his double-tracking, during the choruses--is exceedingly beautiful; it is crystalline, assured, wistful, intimate.
The song's spare instrumentation is marvelous--in particular, the guitar-playing heard at the opening and conclusion of the record, and in the song's interludes; it is skillful, and soothing.
Here is a YouTube link to the recording:
In 1970 (at age fourteen), I saved the magazine advertisement, below, about the first Earth Day.
At some point, I attached the ad to the white paper visible behind it, in order--as I recall--to frame it.
Part of the ad is obviously missing; it got torn decades ago.
The title originally read: "April 22 is Earth Day. The beginning of the end of pollution."
The
ad was from the Environmental Action Coalition of New York. The
group (which was active for many years) was originally created to oversee New York City's 1970 Earth Day events.
Yesterday was the tenth anniversary of the 2013 Boston Marathon terror attacks.
The devastation was enormous, the attacks hideously cruel. There were three deaths, and hundreds of injuries. Seventeen of those injured lost limbs.
Those killed in the bombings were Martin Richard, age 8, from the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston; Krystle Campbell, 29, of Medford; and Lu Lingzi, 23, of China, a graduate student at Boston University. (Lu Lingzi has often been referred to as Lingzi Lu, in news stories.)
There was, too, the terrible related violence which took place days later.
There was the April 18th shooting death of M.I.T. police officer Sean Collier, 27.
And: the severe injury suffered by Boston officer Dennis Simmonds--from an explosive device thrown by one of the Tsarnaev brothers, during the April 19th firefight in nearby Watertown. He died a year later, at 28, as a result of the injury.
A Boston transit officer, Richard Donohue, was shot, near-fatally, during the Watertown battle. In 2015, local officials said that his injury, in the midst of the chaos that night, was likely from friendly fire. Officer Donohue returned to work in 2015, yet in 2016, at age 36, he retired, due to the continuing effects of his injury.
Here are two moving stories, from yesterday's Boston Globe, about two survivors of the bombings.
The first is about Jeff Bauman, who was 27 in 2013. He was grievously wounded by the first of the two explosions on Boylston Street.
The second story is about Jane Richard, 7 years old in 2013, who was injured terribly by the second bomb. Her brother Martin was killed. Her mother lost her vision in one eye; her father was wounded as well.
https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/04/13/sports/jeff-bauman-boston-marathon-bombing/
Here, too, is the first part of a lengthy Boston Globe article about the Richard family, published in April of 2014; there is a link, at the end, to the second part of the article:
https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/04/12/loss-and-love/a19pcWz6WF5nNozPPItwYI/story.html
Since the 1990s, my friend Morgan White, Jr. has been a popular talk host--in varying capacities--at the Boston radio station WBZ-AM. His weekly program, The Morgan Show, has aired, most recently, from 10 p.m. to midnight (Eastern time) on Saturdays.
Beginning this weekend, the show adds another hour: it will now be heard from 9 p.m. to midnight.
I was recently putting together a post about the subject of writing, and mathematics.
Last Friday (April 7th), before I was able to finish the post, The New York Times published an essay about the subject, by British mathematician Sarah Hart. (Dr. Hart's book, Once Upon a Prime, was published this week by Flatiron Books; its subtitle--The Wondrous Connections Between Mathematics and Literature--was also the title of the recent Times essay.)
https://www.amazon.com/Once-Upon-Prime-Connections-Mathematics/dp/1250850886/ref
My interest in writing about the subject was rooted in a couple of things I had recently read.
The first was an obituary, from The New York
Times online archive, of the novelist James M. Cain--who wrote such works as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934),
Double Indemnity (1936), and Mildred Pierce (1941). Mr. Cain died in 1977, at age 85.
The obituary was by the book critic John Leonard, and included the following, about Mr. Cain's writing style:
In his last years, Mr. Cain explained that it was "my algebra...moves...progressions. Suspense comes from making sure your algebra is right."
A few days after seeing this, I was looking at the Wikipedia page about the novelist Thomas Pynchon. The page included an excerpt of a New Yorker review of Mr. Pynchon's 1973 novel Gravity's Rainbow; the review was by the poet, and essayist, L.E. Sissman. Mr. Sissman wrote, of Mr. Pynchon: "He is almost a mathematician of prose, who calculates the least and the greatest stress each word and line, each pun and ambiguity, can bear, and applies his knowledge accordingly and virtually without lapses, though he takes many scary, bracing linguistic risks."
(I will note that I have not yet read Gravity's Rainbow--have wanted, though, to do so for years--yet its opening words ["A screaming comes across the sky."] constitute, I think--I am certainly not alone in believing this--one of fiction's great introductory sentences.)
After stumbling upon these references to math and writing. I looked online to see what else I might locate about the subject. I landed on a 2012 essay from The New Yorker, by writer Alexander Nazaryan, "Why Writers Should Learn Math."
Mr. Nazaryan wrote, in the piece:
Poets have been more conversant with mathematics than fiction writers, probably because they have to pay attention to the numerical qualities of words when working in meter, forced to consider the form and even physical shape of what they write, not just its meaning. Wordsworth praised “poetry and geometric truth” for “their high privilege of lasting life,” while Edna St. Vincent Millay remarked that “Euclid alone has looked on beauty bare.”
Fiction writers have rarely expressed such earnest appreciation for mathematical aesthetics. That’s a shame, because mathematical precision and imagination can be a salve to a literature that is drowning in vagueness of language and theme. “The laws of prose writing are as immutable as those of flight, of mathematics, of physics,” Ernest Hemingway wrote to Maxwell Perkins, in 1945. Even if Papa never had much formal training in mathematics, he understood it as a discipline in which problems are solved through a sort of plodding ingenuity. The very best passages of Hemingway have the mathematical complexity of a fractal: a seemingly simple formula that, in its recurrence, causes slight but crucial changes over time. Take, for example, the famous retreat from Caporetto in “A Farewell to Arms”:
When daylight came the storm was still blowing but the snow had stopped. It had melted as it fell on the wet ground and now it was raining again. There was another attack just after daylight but it was unsuccessful. We expected an attack all day but it did not come until the sun was going down. The bombardment started to the south below the long wooded ridge where the Austrian guns were concentrated. We expected a bombardment but it did not come. Guns were firing from the field behind the village and the shells, going away, had a comfortable sound.
Mr. Nazaryan continued:
The procession here has an algebraic deliberateness, but that simplicity gives way to a complexity of meaning. Hemingway starts with the material (snow, wet, daylight, sun) only to end with the unexpected and intimate “comfortable sound” of the receding Austrian guns... Everything in this passage is intentional, from the plain imagery to the heightening of narrative urgency that comes with the repetition of “we expected.”
In last week's New York Times essay, referred to above, mathematician Sarah Hart wrote this:
Good mathematics, like good writing, involves an inherent appreciation of structure, rhythm and pattern. That feeling we get when we read a great novel or a perfect sonnet — that here is a beautiful thing, with all the component parts fitting together perfectly in a harmonious whole — is the same feeling a mathematician experiences when reading a beautiful proof.
Dr. Hart also wrote:
Great literature and great mathematics satisfy the same deep yearning in us: for beauty, for truth, for understanding. As the pioneering Russian mathematician Sofia Kovalevskaya wrote: "It is impossible to be a mathematician without being a poet in [one's] soul … the poet must see what others do not see, must see more deeply …. And the mathematician must do the same.”
I have referred previously, in this space, to pianist Alan Logan.
His lengthy musical career included performing in the big band era, and in early television. Through the years he released many records, and performed at New York hotels, nightspots, and other venues.
He died in 2021, at age 97. Last Monday was the second anniversary of his death.
We first met, by telephone, when I interviewed him in the early 1980s; this was a few years after I had begun researching the period of early television. Alan and my mother, singer Sue Bennett, had performed together on a weeknight musical show on the DuMont Television Network, in 1949. I spoke with him, in the 1980s, about the program.
In 2002, I moved to northern New Jersey, to host a radio show. The town I moved to was about a half-hour from Alan's home. In the ensuing years we became good friends.
Over time, we had innumerable, very enjoyable conversations, often on the phone, about music. We talked about songs, composers, performers. We spoke in particular about the American songbook of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s, songs he had been playing for decades. He spoke often, too, of his affection for classical music.
Alan was born in 1923 in Brooklyn, and grew up there. He moved from New York to northern New Jersey in the early 1970s.
His given name was Abraham Login, and in the early years of his musical career, he used the name Abe Login, professionally.
For part of the 1940s, he had been the pianist with the Louis Prima orchestra, and then with Charlie Spivak's band.
Here is a recording of the song "Brooklyn Boogie," by Prima's band, and featuring Prima's vocal at the outset. The song, for which Alan was the pianist, was recorded in March of 1945.
https://soundcloud.com/user-615710337/louis-prima-orchestra-brooklyn-boogie-1945
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| Alan Logan, publicity photo, date unknown |
Here, too, is an excerpt from a radio broadcast of Prima's orchestra (circa 1944), in which the band plays the song "Together." The announcer, in his introduction, notes that the number "features the nimble fingers of Abe Login, at the piano."
The performance includes a fine piano solo (from 1:15 to 1:57):
https://soundcloud.com/user-615710337/the-song-together-by-the-louis-prima-orchestra-circa-1944
In late 1947 and early 1948, Alan released his own recordings,
on the National Records label; by this time (see the advertisement, below) he was using the name Alan Logan, as his stage name. In the spring of 1948, his
Alan Logan Quartet appeared on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts radio show. The Quartet won that evening's competition.
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| Billboard Magazine ad, National Records, 1948 |
The Trio became part of a program hosted by the longtime New York disc jockey Stan Shaw. The nighttime show, Record Rendezvous, aired on New York TV station WPIX.
In November of 1948, Stan Shaw joined New York's WABD-TV, the flagship station of the DuMont Network; his Stan Shaw Show was a weekday musical program, and featured the Logan Trio.
In January of 1949, The Stan Shaw Show broadened its reach, beyond WABD; it became a DuMont Network show.
My mother (known at the time as Sue Benjamin) joined the program the same month. She had come to the show at the suggestion of actress and singer Virginia Oswald; they had both been cast members of a Broadway musical revue, Small Wonder, which had closed that month. Ms. Oswald was appearing on Stan Shaw's TV show; she told my mother the show was looking for an additional singer. My mother auditioned for the program--by making an appearance on it--and then joined the show's cast, which also included the widely-known big band singer Jack Leonard. Mr. Leonard had gained great fame as a vocalist with Tommy Dorsey's orchestra; in 1937 he recorded one of the band's best-known records, "Marie." When Mr. Leonard later left the orchestra, he was replaced by Frank Sinatra.
In March of 1949, Stan Shaw's program went off the air. The Logan Trio, and my mother, as vocalist, were then featured on a new DuMont program, the dinnertime show Teen Time Tunes. (Despite the title, the program was not specifically geared to teenagers; the songs performed were by the likes of George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Rodgers & Hart, and Cole Porter.)
During one of my visits to Alan's house, perhaps a
decade ago, I took a picture of a photograph hanging in one of the rooms. It was a photo of Alan, his Trio, and my
mother, performing in 1949 on Teen Time Tunes. A few weeks after the show began airing,
my mother had turned twenty-one. Alan
was twenty-five.
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| Sue Benjamin & Al Chernet, DuMont Network |
The photograph was only the second I'd seen of the show; the other was the picture my mother had saved. The picture she had was only a partial view of the program: in it, she is seen singing near the Trio's guitarist, Al Chernet.
In Alan's picture, one sees all of the program's performers,
as well as the entirety of the show's set. (Though it is hard, really, to call it a set; it was a small, confined space, in a large room at the DuMont Network's headquarters in
Manhattan. There were additional such spaces,
in the room, for other programs on the network's schedule.)
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| DuMont Network photo, from collection of Alan Logan |
The photograph shows Alan, at the piano; bassist Sandy Block, next to the piano; guitarist Al Chernet; and my mother. One also sees a TV camera, and the cameraman operating it; there are two other technicians in the foreground; and a boom microphone is positioned above my mother, as she sings. The two pictures--the one my mother had, and Alan's--appear to have been taken the same day; my mother is wearing the same outfit in each.
After Teen Time Tunes left the air in July of 1949, the Logan Trio appeared on another DuMont program, a viewer participation/game show, Spin the Picture.
Through the years, Alan recorded for various record labels--MGM, RCA, Coral, and others. He performed at nightclubs, and at such venues as the popular New York restaurant "Sign of the Dove." He also had engagements at hotels (including the Cotillion Room of New York's Hotel Pierre, where he appeared frequently in the 1950s).
Here, from an extended-play MGM record he released in 1955, is the record's title song, "Caribbean Caprice."
https://archive.org/details/78_caribbean-caprice_alan-logan-stevens_gbia0022397a/Caribbean+Caprice
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| Alan Logan record cover, MGM, 1955 |
In 1971 he released a recording of the song "Yesterday I Heard the Rain," on RCA Records; the song's producer was Sandy Block, who had been the Logan Trio's bassist on Teen Time Tunes. "Yesterday I Heard the Rain" was played often on New York radio.
For many years, until 2007, his piano playing was featured at New York City's Harvard Club. He also appeared regularly at private events.
Alan was an exceptionally talented musician. He was also a very funny, kind, and always
interesting man. It was my very good
fortune to have been one of his friends.
The short work of fiction, at the link below, is by the writer Rivka Galchen. The story, "How I Became a Vet" (about a veterinarian), is from the March 13, 2023 issue of The New Yorker; it appeared on the magazine's website on March 6th.
I think it is beautifully written, and beautifully conceived.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/13/how-i-became-a-vet
Here, too, is an interview with Ms. Galchen, about the story:
https://www.newyorker.com/books/this-week-in-fiction/rivka-galchen-03-13-23
A good interview, with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy--conducted by Wolf Blitzer--aired on CNN this evening.
The interview was broadcast during the network's 9-10 p.m. (ET) program. The program has been without a permanent host since the December, 2021 departure of Chris Cuomo.
Vladimir Putin's murderous, catastrophic war against Ukraine has now lasted one year.
Putin, of course, did not get what he expected, in response to his merciless invasion.
What he got (in addition to solidarity with Ukraine, from much of the world) was the valiant, indefatigable leadership of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Ukraine's President--and the courage and resolve of the citizens Mr. Zelenskyy leads.
In previous posts, I have written about a significant change which took place in the late 1950s, regarding the cast of the NBC television program Your Hit Parade.
In January of 1957, one of the show's stars, singer Gisele MacKenzie, announced she would be leaving the program at the close of the 1956-1957 TV season.
A few weeks later, The New York Times reported that a new cast of starring singers would join the program, in the fall of 1957. The show's longtime vocalists, in addition to Gisele MacKenzie--Dorothy Collins, Snooky Lanson, and Russell Arms--were to be replaced, along with bandleader Raymond Scott.
In the fall, the four singers who assumed the starring roles on the program were Jill Corey, Tommy Leonetti, Virginia Gibson, and Alan Copeland. They sang on the show for the 1957-1958 season. (The show then left NBC for CBS; the new version of the program--which aired from the fall of 1958 to the spring of 1959--starred Dorothy Collins and singer Johnny Desmond.)
Virginia Gibson, one of the Hit Parade's 1957-1958 stars, died in 2013, at age 88. Tommy Leonetti died at age 50, in 1979. Jill Corey died at 85, in 2021. I recently learned that the surviving star from the 1957-1958 season, Alan Copeland, died this past December 28th, in California. He was 96.
Mr. Copeland was, for a number of years, a member of the noted vocal group The Modernaires; he sang with the group from the late 1940s until 1956, the year before he joined the Hit Parade. He rejoined The Modernaires in 1959, and performed with the group through the first few years of the 1960s.
In late 1949, while Copeland was part of The Modernaires, the group sang on a lovely version of the song "The Old Master Painter," accompanying Frank Sinatra.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLkKwEzmHZg
The song--as was common at the time--was also recorded, in late 1949, by a number of other singers and bands. In addition to Mr. Sinatra's record with the Modernaires (and with an orchestra led by Axel Stordahl), others who released "The Old Master Painter" included Phil Harris and his Orchestra, Bob Crosby and his Bob-Cats, and singers Richard Hayes, Dick Haymes, and Snooky Lanson; Peggy Lee and Mel Torme released a duet of the song. Snooky Lanson's version was performed with the orchestra of Beasley Smith, who was also one of the song's writers. Earlier in the 1940s, Mr. Lanson had been a vocalist with Ray Noble's orchestra; in mid-1950, a few months after his recording of "The Old Master Painter" was a hit on the popular music charts, he was hired for the radio and television versions of Your Hit Parade.
In 1954, Copeland was seen with The Modernaires in the film The Glenn Miller Story--singing "Chattanooga Choo Choo" with vocalist Frances Langford and Glenn Miller's Army Air Force Band.
From 1941 to 1942, The Modernaires--prior to Copeland's affiliation with the group--had
been a significant part of the Glenn Miller ensemble, singing on some of the orchestra's best-known
recordings--such as "Don't Sit Under the
Apple Tree (With Anyone Else but Me)," "Elmer's Tune," "Moonlight
Cocktail," "(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo," and "Chattanooga Choo Choo," In joining the Army, in 1942, Mr. Miller dissolved his civilian band, and later led the Army Air Force orchestra, at first stateside, and then overseas.
In a lobby card for The Glenn Miller Story, below, The Modernaires are gathered around a microphone; Copeland is to the immediate left of Frances Langford. The star of the film, James Stewart, is visible over Langford's left shoulder.
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| The Modernaires (with Alan Copeland) singing with Frances Langford |
The enjoyable, memorable scene with Frances Langford and The Modernaires took place at a (supposed) overseas airplane hangar, before an audience of troops during World War Two. (The scene was filmed at a Colorado Air Force base, and the audience, according to a memoir by Copeland, was made up of service members from the base.)
In the scene, Mr. Copeland exhibited, as a performer, an easygoing, friendly, and appealing style.
In addition to his work with The Modernaires and on the Hit Parade, Copeland was a successful musical arranger and composer; he also performed as a solo vocalist, and led his own vocal groups (which went by varying names, including, simply, The Alan Copeland Singers). During the 1960s, Copeland was the vocal arranger for (and his singers were cast members of) Red Skelton's TV program. Copeland released a number of records, by his singers; they were also featured on a 1966 album by Count Basie. Copeland won a Grammy Award for a 1968 recording, performed by his singers, in which two songs of the era were intertwined: The Beatles' "Norwegian Wood" and the theme, by Lalo Schifrin, from the television drama Mission: Impossible.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUV-WghBifc
In 2007, Copeland released the aforementioned memoir about his lengthy musical career, Jukebox Saturday Nights. It was published by BearManor Media (the publisher which brought out my own book about early television.)
I interviewed Mr. Copeland, about his career, and his book, for an online radio program I hosted from 2011 to 2014. He was a thoughtful and delightful guest, and it was a great pleasure speaking with him.
(Lobby card, above, from The Glenn Miller Story, 1954, © Universal Pictures)
