VDP on American Routes

Nick Spitzer’s radio program American Routes has two hours of and with Van Dyke Parks and Tom McDermott. Listen here: Creole Eyes and Classical Ears: Van Dyke Parks and Tom McDermott.

A Parks thought:

“I would prefer to have recognition in my lifetime. The hell with immortality. Who needs it? I don’t. I would love to have the riches that come or the sustenance that comes from an easy life in the arts. But that is not to be. And at the age of seventy-one, all I can say is, I’ve had enough, and I’m grateful, because enough to me is plenty to go on.”

Related reading
All OCA Van Dyke Parks posts (Pinboard)

[I always thought it was roots. Heard, not seen.]

“No Figures of Speech”

A student pointed out the words left behind on the blackboard: “No Figures of Speech.”

“Bullshit,” said I.

Mark Trail revised

[Mark Trail revised, April 25, 2014.]

I don’t plan to make a habit of revising Mark Trail strips, but then no one plans to acquire a habit.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[Context, if it’s not obvious, here.]

Mark Trail revised

Rushed by an bear, Mark Trail picks up a large branch and stuns the enraged creature. “It worked,” Mark tells himself. “The bear is stunned!” I couldn’t resist revising the aftermath.


[Mark Trail, April 24, 2014.]


[Mark Trail revised, April 24, 2014.]

Even Mark Trail deserves a break once in a while.

Related reading
All OCA Mark Trail posts (Pinboard)

[Those shoes.]

Happy Anniversary

[Louise and Jim Leddy, 1954.]

My parents are celebrating the sixtieth wedding anniversary today. What a great-looking couple, then and now.

I am now ten years older than my parents’ combined ages when they married. Younger readers, take caution: these things become inexpressibly strange to think about as you get older. Or at least they do for me.

Teachers and policemen

From the Naked City episode “A Horse Has a Big Head — Let Him Worry!” (November 21, 1962). Lieutenant Mike Parker (Horace McMahon) is speaking:

“Teachers and policemen — you don’t have much money, but on the other hand, you don’t have much fun.”

This episode must rank among the greatest Naked City episodes. Diahann Carroll’s performance as teacher Ruby Jay won her an Emmy. There’s an interview with her at the Archive of American Television’s Naked City page. Also in this episode: John Megna, who would soon appear as Dill in To Kill a Mockingbird. Two great actors.

Related reading
All OCA Naked City posts (Pinboard)

Literally

Literally is a Chrome browser extension that replaces literally with figuratively. Funny, yes. But a better choice when writing is to replace literally with nothing, nothing at all:

That meeting had me literally climbing the walls.
That meeting had me figuratively climbing the walls.
That meeting had me climbing the walls.

My friend Aldo Carrasco used literally with impunity. He must have gotten special permission. “Literally unbelievable” was a signature Aldo phrase.

[As you might imagine, the extension would turn this post into nonsense.]

Musicians and vocalists

From the introduction to a 60 Minutes segment on the Kinshasa Symphony: “We were surprised to find two hundred musicians and vocalists.” I know what that means: “We were surprised to find two hundred instrumentalists and singers.”

Musician can be a tricky word. The Oxford English Dictionary gives the meanings “a person talented in the art of music” and “a person who performs music, esp. on a musical instrument; a professional performer of music.” So the word does tilt in the direction of those who play instruments. But ask someone in music the innocent question “What do you play?” and a someone who sings may be slightly offended. “My voice is my instrument” might be the chilly response.

Vocalist makes me think of a guy or gal sitting on a bandstand circa 1940. That guy or gal was a singer, probably a fine musician. Vocalist seems especially odd when applied to classical music. Elly Ameling, Janet Baker, Beniamino Gigli: vocalists? No, singers. Or a soprano, a mezzo-soprano, and a tenor.

Applying the word musician to both instrumentalists and singers can be awkward: am I comfortable calling, say, Britney Spears, a musician? Yipes. But that’s where the word’s earlier meaning kicks in: “a person talented in the art of music.”

[The Kinshasa Symphony is the subject of a 2010 documentary. Its Netflix availability: “unknown.” About the “chilly response”: don’t ask me how I know that.]

Georges, Formby and Harrison

As you may already know, British Pathé has made an archive of 85,000 films available through YouTube. I’m not sure how I found my way to this one. From 1940, it’s George Formby singing one of his signature songs, “The Window Cleaner”:


Did you notice what was going on in the first two seconds? Those are the ukulele chords at the end of The Beatles’ “Free as a Bird,” played a half-step down. That tag also appears at the end of the Formby favorite “Mr. Wu’s a Window Cleaner Now” (in the proper key of D: B♭7, A7, D). I knew that the end of “Free as a Bird” was a tip of the hat to Formby, but I didn’t know that the hat fit so perfectly.

It’s not a Formby sample at the end of “Free as a Bird”; by all accounts, it’s another George, Harrison, Formby fan and devoted ukuleleist, who plays those chords. According to the George Formby Appreciation Society, the man on stage at the end of the “Free as a Bird” video is Formbyite Alan Randall.

And as every Beatles fan should already know, the voice at the end of “Free as a Bird” that sounds as if it’s saying “Made by John Lennon” is John’s voice in reverse, speaking the Formby catchphrase “Turned out nice again.” That phrase is the title of a Formby film. And “It’s Turned Out Nice Again” is a Formby song.

Here’s a page with a link to George Harrison playing and singing a Formby song. And here’s George at home, playing Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz’s “A Shine on Your Shoes,” ending with the tag. And here’s a clip of George and Jeff Lynne on banjo-ukes. The tag’s at 2:54.

I love the Internets.

[“Mr. Wu’s a Window Cleaner Now” is not nearly as offensive as I had feared. But proceed at your own risk. How do I know that the George-at-home clip is in fact George? The footage is included in an iPad app about his guitars. At iTunes, the clip is visible at the top of the Video Vault screenshot.]

“Pat talks to teenagers”

Three finds at a library book-sale: a selection of entries from Samuel Johnson’s A Dictionary of the English Language, a Webster’s Third New International with marbled edges, and Pat Boone’s 1958 book of advice ’Twixt Twelve and Twenty. “Pat talks to teenagers,” says the cover. From the chapter “April Love”:

Kissing for fun is like playing with a beautiful candle in a roomful of dynamite! And it’s like any other beautiful thing — when it ceases to be rare, it loses its value and much of its beauty. I really think it’s better to amuse ourselves in some other way. For your own future enjoyment I say go bowling, or to a basketball game, or watch a good TV program (like the Pat Boone Chevy show!), at least for a while.

I would like to imagine a lost original for ’Twixt Twelve and Twenty, the print equivalent of “Tutti Frutti”: Little Richard Talks to Teenagers. That would be quite a book.

“’Twixt Twelve and Twenty” is also a song. Alas, it can be taken as an argument for kissing: “Don’t they know love is ageless when it’s true?”

[Small-world department: In April 1959, Boone’s book was fourth on The New York Times list of nonfiction bestsellers. In first place: Alexander King’s Mine Enemy Grows Older. Who is Alexander King, you ask? This page by Margie King Barab explains.]