Overheard

By my son, in a computer lab:

"Our PowerPoint says a lot more than the other PowerPoints."

Related posts
The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint
PowerPoint and the war

All "Overheard" posts (via Pinboard)

(Thanks, Ben!)

Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash?

Yes, Louis Armstrong and Johnny Cash! They're performing "Blue Yodel No. 9," which Armstrong recorded with The Singing Brakeman, Jimmie Rodgers, and pianist Lil Hardin Armstrong, on July 16, 1930, in Los Angeles.

This recreation is from The Johnny Cash Show, first broadcast on October 28, 1970. According to Michael Minn's Louis Armstrong Discography, Armstrong's appearance on this show marked his return to the trumpet after a two-year health-related hiatus. Listen for the gently bouncing trumpet phrases from 4:43 to 4:47: that's the sound of a genius at work.

Blue Yodel No. 9 (YouTube)

Related posts
The day Louis Armstrong made noise
Invisible man: Louis Armstrong and the New York Times
Louis Armstrong, collagist
Louis Armstrong's advice

Invisible man: Louis Armstrong and the New York Times

Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he's made poetry out of being invisible. I think it must be because he's unaware that he is invisible.

Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)

For many people, Louis Armstrong (1901-1971) was and is nothing more than a genial entertainer: a smile, a handkerchief, and, from 1967 on, the singer of the sentimental anthem "What a Wonderful World." Armstrong's genius as an improviser, his technical ability as an instrumentalist, his wholly original singing (he's the most influential singer in American popular music), his capacity for reimagining popular songs (his 1931 "Stardust" might be the greatest example): all these elements of his musical and cultural accomplishment remain largely invisible. I credit Armstrong with much greater self-knowledge than Ellison's philosophizing narrator will begrudge, but there's no gainsaying his characterization of Louis Armstrong as an invisible man.

Just how invisible? I decided a couple of days ago to check the New York Times online archives for the newspaper's first reference to Louis Armstrong. I was astonished to find that it came on October 5, 1935, in the day's radio listings:

By 1935, Louis Armstrong had been making records for thirteen years. Between 1926 and 1928, he had led the small-group performances known as the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, regarded as among the greatest jazz recordings. (Try "Weather Bird" or "West End Blues.") Performing in the pit band for Hot Chocolates in 1929 in New York, Armstrong had stolen the show night after night with a performance of "Ain't Misbehavin'." In 1932 and 1933 he had toured Britain, Denmark, Norway, and Holland. The Danes had the intelligence to film him performing "Dinah," "I Cover the Waterfront," and "Tiger Rag," performances that remain dazzling in their elegance and intensity. The Times had taken note of none of it.

October 19, 1935: The Times column "Night Club Notes" notes that Armstrong is performing at Connie's Inn in midtown Manhattan.

January 18, 1936: "Night Club Notes" reports that "Louis Armstrong, of course, continues" at Connie's Inn.

September 5, 1937: Armstrong has suddenly become an oldster, a precursor of "Swing." In "Swing: What Is It?" Gama Gilbert reports that "Swingsters speak with reverent breath of Buddy Bolden, master trumpeter, of 'King' or 'Papa' Joe Oliver, who admitted to his band a youngster named Louis Armstrong, a devil on the 'hot horn.'"

March 25, 1938: A little item noting an engagement at Loew's State Theatre calls Armstrong "a disciple of swing music." Precursor, or disciple? Who's following whom?

November 3, 1940: Howard Taubman's review of Columbia jazz and blues re-releases ("Bessie Smith, Beiderbecke, Henderson and Armstrong in 'Classic' Albums") reinforces the sense of Armstrong as a musician whose time has passed. Here Armstrong is said to be one of the "outstanding names of the Twenties," names familiar to the "connoisseur of hot jazz from way back," as familiar as the names of "the current leaders in the field." Armstrong is "still laboring in the vineyard," not dead yet (unlike Beiderbecke and Smith).

October 26, 1941: The first Times article devoted to Louis Armstrong appears, "Trumpeter's Jubilee: Louis Armstrong Rounds Out Twenty-five Years as a Hot Jazz Wizard," by jazz writer Leonard Feather. The occasion was a never-to-be-realized Orson Welles documentary on Armstrong.

Writing a decade before Invisible Man, Feather understands that Armstrong's genius may be invisible to the reader: "The widespread lack of understanding, and frequent misconceptions, of Louis' real place in jazz," he says, "seem to indicate the need for a general recapitulation of his past achievement," a recapitulation that distinguishes public persona from more significant matters: "Armstrong has been a public figure in the United States as a showman-comedian, a movie and stage star, rather than as a great trumpet player and inspired singer." Recounting Armstrong's influence on trumpeters, other instrumentalists, and singers, Feather avows that "Armstrong is a creator of unparalleled originality." Did Feather know that no one had said such things in the New York Times before?

[June 11, 2010: Be sure to read the comments, which consider two more Times references to Armstrong: as "an unnamed member of the orchestra" (1929) and as "Lou Armstrong" (1932).]

Related posts
The day Louis Armstrong made noise
Louis Armstrong, collagist
Louis Armstrong's advice
"Self-Reliance" and jazz

Louis Armstrong in Denmark, 1933 (not 1934)
"I Cover the Waterfront," "Dinah," "Tiger Rag"

Overheard

From the world of "colledge," a partial conversation between two friends:

". . . got drunk."

"Open bar! How can you beat that?"

"Exactly!" [Laughs and thrusts clenched right hand in air.]

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All "Overheard" posts (via Pinboard)

"The Autumn of the Multitaskers"

From "The Autumn of the Multitaskers," an essay by novelist Walter Kirn in the November 2007 Atlantic:

"Where do you want to go today?" Microsoft asked us.

Now that I no longer confuse freedom with speed, convenience, and mobility, my answer would be: "Away. Just away. Someplace where I can think."

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Multitasking makes you stupid
Multitasking: "not paying attention"
On continuous partial attention

(Thanks to L. Lee Lowe, who pointed her readers to this essay.)

[Update, 1/22/08: The Atlantic has made its archives available to non-subscribers. Anyone may now read Kirn's essay online: The Autumn of the Multitaskers.]

Campaign e-mails (again)

I have greater and greater misgivings about the e-mails that Barack Obama's campaign is sending to supporters. The problems that I see in these messages suggest the difficulty of using a relatively new means of communication effectively. From October 18, a case in point:

Michael,

I'm leaving the Tonight Show studio and I wanted to share something.

Am I expected to believe that as Barack Obama is leaving a television studio, he has stopped to fire up a laptop and e-mail me? At 3:35 AM? Yes, this message was sent at 3:35 AM, when I suspect everyone involved in the taping had long since left the studio, Senator Obama included.

A first name followed by a comma is an at least semi-plausible greeting. Sometimes the beginning is a bit too brusque:

Michael --

Last night each of the presidential campaigns reported their third-quarter fundraising numbers.

Worse still, the Obama campaign continues to use "Hey" as a greeting. If anyone from Obama '08 is reading: "Hey" is a terrible way to address someone in an e-mail. "Hey" is what college students are told not to write when they e-mail their professors. What makes campaign strategists imagine that voters and potential contributors want to be addressed in this way?

The sign-offs can be brusque as well:

I need you to make a donation to close the gap:

https://donate.barackobama.com/closethegap

Barack

Not even a "Thanks"?

A stranger development is the use of supporters' names in follow-up messages. Thus I found a message in my inbox from Earnest Primous, "RE: Hillary's money." Earnest Primous, it turns out, is a retired postalworker who's contributed to the Obama campaign and is encouraging me to do likewise. If my son had not tipped me off, I would've deleted this message unopened as spam. The last thing most e-mail users want to do is open messages from unrecognized senders.

A further problem: the Obama campaign's use of follow-up e-mails creates some awkward complications. Consider this excerpt:

Obama is relying on you and me to make this happen. If I can give again, you can give too. Help Obama close the gap with Hillary so we can change politics:

https://donate.barackobama.com/closethegap

Thank you,

Earnest
Retired from Postal Service

----------Original message----------

From: Barack Obama
Subject: Hillary's money

Hey --

Last night each of the presidential campaigns reported their third-quarter fundraising numbers.

See what's happened? Mr. Primous, it would appear, is replying to the e-mail that I quoted at the beginning of this post. But that message addressed the recipient by name. Here it begins with "Hey." Mr. Primous' message is, of course, not a reply (in the e-mail sense) at all; it's an e-mail that quotes and makes generic some of the text of the previous Obama e-mail, with "Hey" replacing the previously personalized greeting.

I've telephoned the Obama campaign to voice three suggestions about e-mail strategy:

1. Use a consistent, recognizable sender name. "Obama '08" would be a good one.

2. Use a consistent, non-cryptic subject line. "A message from Obama '08" would be a good one.

3. Use a serious tone, neither falsely informal nor brusque.

The person I spoke with asked whether I realized that Earnest Primous is a real person (of course I did) and explained that the campaign was trying something new. But novelty in e-mailing is not a good strategy, not if one wants the recipient to open, read, and act. And the false informality of these e-mails is sadly at odds with the honest eloquence that draws people to the Obama campaign.

Related post
Campaign e-mail etiquette
Obama e-mail improvement

FreeRice

FreeRice is a novel humanitarian project: for every correct definition one chooses, a participating company donates ten grains of rice to the United Nations World Food Program.

(Thanks, Ben!)

Philip Kolb on Proust

Philip Kolb (1907-1992), professor of French at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, edited the 21-volume edition of Proust's correspondence. He was working on the final volume when he died. Kolb's answer to the question of how he could have spent his lifetime "working on a single man":

[T]he answer to the question is that, when the subject of one's inquiry is Proust, a lifetime would scarcely suffice to permit exploration in depth of the innumerable facets of his universe. Nothing could be more captivating than to explore the mind of such a genius — an intellect of such capacity, an artist of such prodigious sweep and power, whose ability to move us, to make us feel the beauties of nature, and the warmth of human affection was so great — or to observe how he reacted when confronted with current events, how he judged his contemporaries, how his own ideas evolved with the passage of time, or simply to observe what inspired him, how he created his characters and episodes. In editing the correspondence of such a man, one should, of course, bear in mind that so modest an endeavor cannot constitute one's sole aim, but rather it should be a means of attaining a deeper comprehension of the work of the creative artist. In Proust's case, his correspondence represents a special kind of work, since he never intended its publication. For the reader, it offers a means of gaining a better understanding of his mind, his character, and, consequently, his great work. And to the editor, delving into his writings has meant an unending enchantment, an enrichment, and a widening of horizons.

Philip Kolb, "The Making of a Proust Scholar," The American Scholar 53 (1984): 512-13

All Proust posts (via Pinboard)

Now a major American university

"In other news tonight, scandal at a major American university. . . ."

Katie Couric, doing her bit for academic inflation, as she segued to the scandal at Oral Roberts University.

Read ORU's internal report of kleptocrats amok:

Scandal Vulnerability Assessment (via CBS News)

The Wilhelm scream

"Wilhelm!"

"Yeah, I'll just fill my pipe." [Over-the-top scream follows.]

One scream on screen, from 1953 to 1999. The compilation is hilariously good.

Wilhelm: The Man and His Scream, compiled by Pablo Hidalgo (YouTube)
Does That Scream Sound Familiar? (ABC News)

(Thanks, Ben!)