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David Schubert, TR5-3718 Now with David and Judith Schubert’s 1940 census listing.

Technology, not always progess

Here’s a good post by Marco Arment on what it’s like to deposit checks — or is it “deposit” “checks”? — by iPhone. His conclusion: “Sometimes, new technology is not progress.” Which reminds me of something I’ve written in previous posts: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them.

Van Dyke Parks in St. Louis

Van Dyke Parks played last night at the Luminary Center for the Arts in St. Louis with bassist Jim Cooper and percussionist Don Heffington. The three made beautiful music together. Here’s a set list, all compositions by Parks except as noted:

Jump! : Opportunity for Two : Come Along : Orange Crate Art : Delta Queen Waltz (John Hartford) : Danza (Louis Moreau Gottschalk) : Cowboy : Wings of a Dove : Sail Away : The All Golden

While the program is much as it was when I heard Parks in 2010 playing with members of Clare and the Reasons, a piano-bass-drums setting brings out different elements in these pieces. The 2010 performance was an elegant adventure in chamber music. Last night’s performance, while just as artful, was more driving, even swinging. What astonishes me again is that Parks is able to suggest the complex orchestrations of his recordings with relatively minimal instrumentation. My best analogy: the Modern Jazz Quartet’s For Ellington (1988), which conjured up an orchestra with piano, vibes, bass, and drums.

I know of no analogy for the mix of anecdotes, asides, one-liners, historical excursus, and plainspoken wisdom that VDP dispenses from the stage. One sample: “We live in a dark age. Now is the time to be forthright and beautiful and strong.” The audience, young and old, was listening.

Opening for Parks: The Rats and People Motion Picture Orchestra, playing an original score to accompany the Buster Keaton film The Balloonatic (1923). They were a delight.

The Luminary Center for the Arts, housed in a former Roman Catholic convent, is a great space for art and music. Van Dyke invited Elaine and me up to the green room before the show, a room that looked as if it might have been a reading room or TV room in convent days. Van Dyke, Don, Elaine, and I sat at a small square table. Present at various points in the conversation: Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Elton John, Buster and Eleanor Keaton, John Steinbeck, and Gregg Toland, all sitting on the sofa with a sister or two.

Related posts
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (1)
Van Dyke Parks in Chicago (2)
All Van Dyke Parks posts

David Schubert, TR5-3718

This listing comes from the 1940 Brooklyn telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940. David Schubert (1913–1946) is a great modern American poet, though his work is still little known. William Carlos Williams: “To sit down for a little while and reread some of Schubert’s rare and poignant verse is like opening a window in a room that had become stuffy without one’s realizing it.” John Ashbery: “I myself value Schubert more than Pound or Eliot, and it’s a relief to have an authority of the stature of Williams to back me up.” I found my way to Schubert by chance in 1994 when I picked up a used copy of the 1983 Quarterly Review of Literature volume devoted to his work. I remembered his name from a passing reference in Ron Padgett’s Ted: A Personal Memoir of Ted Berrigan (1993): “[he] was especially pleased to see David Schubert’s work collected and reissued.”

How do I know that Schubert D is the poet? Judith Schubert Kranes, quoted in the QRL volume: “We moved to Brooklyn Heights, David found us a one-room apartment in a neighborhood where Hart Crane had lived, and where many writers and artists were finding a haven.” And John Ashbery: “During the 1930s, they lived in a picturesque garret in Brooklyn Heights overlooking New York Harbor.” Pierpont is directoryese for Pierrepont Street, a street in Brooklyn Heights, not very far from the Brooklyn Bridge. If Google Maps may be trusted, no. 6 is indeed picturesque, garret and all. You can click on the picture for a better look at the tiny window at the top of the building.

And here, as transcribed by Allison Power, are four Schubert samples.

April 8: The 1940 census confirms that David and Judith Schubert lived at 6 Pierrepont Street. He: “writer.” She: “teacher.”

[The Ashbery and Williams quotations are from Ashbery’s Charles Eliot Norton lecture on Schubert in Other Traditions (2000).]

Recently updated

Larry David’s notebook Now with a link to a new source for little brown notebooks.

Charles Reznikoff, CH3-0065

This listing for the poet Charles Reznikoff comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory. Yes, it’s the poet: Selected Letters of Charles Reznikoff, 1917–1976 (1997) includes several letters from 1939 and 1940 written from this West 24th Street address. By October 1940, Reznikoff had moved to West 18th Street.

A related post
Milk bottles (with a Reznikoff poem)

[Is anyone else playing? If so, whom have you found?]

John Hammond, GR7-7967

John Hammond (John Henry Hammond Jr. or John Henry Hammond II) was a critic and music producer who played a significant role in the careers of Count Basie, Charlie Christian, Bob Dylan, Benny Goodman, Billie Holiday, Pete Seeger, Bruce Springsteen, and many other musicians. From his 1977 autobiography John Hammond on Record: “Living on Sullivan Street I found myself in a circle of young people concerned with all sorts of causes, prepared to involve themselves at any risk.”

This listing comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

A related post
Demythifying John Hammond

Billie Holiday, ED4-4058

This listing comes from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940. Stuart Nicholson’s 1997 biography Billie Holiday confirms that Holiday and her mother Sadie lived for a time together at 286 West 142nd Street, in Apartment 2E.

Related posts
Billie Holiday, 1957
Portrait of Billie Holiday and Mister

Rudy Burckhardt and Edwin Denby, CH2-5097

The photographer Rudy Burckhardt and the dance critic and poet Edwin Denby moved into 145 W. 21st (a warehouse building) in 1935. Willem de Kooning lived nearby. Denby lived at this address until his death in 1983. These listings come from the 1940 Manhattan telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

Related reading and viewing
“[A]s Edwin Denby would / write” (on lines in a Frank O’Hara poem)
“The Climate of New York” (Burckhardt–Denby collaboration)
Feature: Edwin Denby (Jacket 21)

Helen Cornell, FL7-7653-J

Mrs. Helen S. Cornell: the mother of the artist Joseph Cornell. Cornell lived for most of his life at 37-08 Utopia Parkway in Flushing, Queens. This listing comes from the 1940 Queens telephone directory, available at Direct Me NYC 1940.

[If I had an address on Utopia Parkway, I wouldn’t move either. If I had a J at the end of my number, I would wonder what it meant.]