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Van Dyke Parks in The Honeymooners The episode with VDP as Tommy Manicotti is back online.

The GRamercy Five

I’m still listening my way through my dad’s CDs: Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Ivie Anderson, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire, Mildred Bailey, Count Basie, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Ruby Braff and Ellis Larkins, Clifford Brown, Dave Brubeck, Joe Bushkin, Hoagy Carmichael, Betty Carter, Ray Charles, Charlie Christian, Rosemary Clooney, Nat “King” Cole, John Coltrane, Bing Crosby, Miles Davis, Matt Dennis, Doris Day, Blossom Dearie, Paul Desmond, Tommy Dorsey, Billy Eckstine, Duke Ellington, Bill Evans, Gil Evans, Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Erroll Garner, Stan Getz, Dizzy Gillespie, Benny Goodman, Stéphane Grappelli, Bobby Hackett, Coleman Hawkins, Woody Herman, Earl Hines, Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Dick Hyman, Harry James, Hank Jones, Louis Jordan, Stan Kenton, Barney Kessel, Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, Peggy Lee, Mary Ann McCall, Susannah McCorkle, Dave McKenna, Ray McKinley, Marian McPartland, Johnny Mercer, Helen Merrill, Glenn Miller, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Thelonious Monk, Wes Montgomery, Gerry Mulligan, Red Norvo, Anita O’Day, Charlie Parker, Joe Pass, Art Pepper, Oscar Peterson, Bud Powell, Boyd Raeburn, Django Reinhardt, Marcus Roberts, Sonny Rollins, Jimmy Rushing, Catherine Russell, the Sauter-Finegan Orchestra.

And now, Artie Shaw, about fourteen hours of Artie Shaw. What a band. I had no idea. But also: what a small group, the Gramercy Five, its name inspired by Shaw’s telephone exchange. Here are two Gramercy Five sides:

“Special Delivery Stomp” (Artie Shaw). Recorded in Hollywood, September 3, 1940.

“My Blue Heaven” (Walter Donaldson–George A. Whiting). Recorded in Hollywood, December 5, 1940.

The links will take you to digitized 78s from the George Blood collection at Archive.org. (The RCA Bluebird Complete Gramercy Five Sessions presents the music with much cleaner sound.) On both sides: Artie Shaw, clarinet; Billy Butterfield, trumpet; Johnny Guarnieri, harpsichord; Al Hendrickson, electric guitar; Jud DeNaut, bass; Nick Fatool drums.

“Special Delivery Stomp” puts me in mind of Raymond Scott. On both recordings, the electric guitar and harpischord (which sounds at times almost like a pedal steel guitar) make me think of Western swing. Seventy-seven years after the fact, it’s amazing music. Ralph Waldo Emerson had the explanation, even if he didn’t get to hear the Gramercy Five: “This perpetual modernness is the measure of merit in every work of art.”

Artie Shaw was a curmudgeon’s curmudgeon. On the difference between Benny Goodman and himself: “I played music. Goodman played the clarinet.”

Also from my dad’s CDs
Mildred Bailey : Tony Bennett : Charlie Christian : Blossom Dearie : Duke Ellington : Coleman Hawkins : Billie Holiday : Louis Jordan : Charlie Parker : Jimmy Rushing

[Another ensemble whose name may have been inspired by an exchange name: the Stuyvesant Quartet.]

Recently updated

Close the door Now with a comment from Anton Schwartz noting the death of Alan Bleviss, whose voice is heard on the PSA.

LA to Vegas (all in the fambly)

LA to Vegas premieres tonight on Fox, 9:00 Eastern. Will Ferrell and Steve Levitan (Modern Family) are among those bringing the show to television. Good pedigree. And our son-in-law Seth is one of the show’s writers. Excellent pedigree. The trailer suggests that the series will be genuinely funny.

Our household will be watching. Go Seth!

Talking like a Raymond Chandler novel

[Zippy, January 2, 2018.]

Someone’s been reading Raymond Chandler.

The Big Sleep (1939): “The air was thick, wet, steamy and larded with the cloying smell of tropical orchids in bloom.”

Farewell My Lovely (1940): “Even on Central Avenue, not the quietest dressed street in the world, he looked about as inconspicuous as a tarantula on a slice of angel food.”

Raymond Chandler had strong responses to figures of speech. He famously faulted Ross Macdonald for describing a car as “acned with rust.”

Related reading
All OCA Zippy posts (Pinboard)

Peggy Cummins (1925–2017)

The actress Peggy Cummins has died at the age of ninety-two. She is best known for her performance as the sharpshooter-turned-criminal Annie Laurie Starr in the deliriously twisted Gun Crazy (dir. John H. Lewis, 1949).

Where to see Gun Crazy? Amazon is streaming it. Netflix finally has it as a DVD.

New Year’s Eve’s morning

A charming idea: the Orpheum Children’s Museum’s Noon Day Drop, a celebration of New Year’s Eve that began at 10:30 a.m. on December 31 and ended at 1:00 p.m. that same day, with party hats, crafts, and thousands of balloons dropping “at the strike of noon.” Here is an eyewitness report.

Our fambly has special affection for the Orpheum, which, as its name suggests, inhabits an old theater. A babysitter for our children worked at the museum for a while after college. Thus it was Heather’s Museum, or as Ben then pronounced it, Hevverd’s Muhceeum. Heather gave us a tour of the Orpheum many years ago, onto the stage and up to the projection booth.

A quick Google search suggests that a noon New Year’s party for children is a common practice, common enough to have a familiar name: Noon Year’s Eve. I still like the awkward David Foster Wallace-esque multiple possessive New Year’s Eve’s morning.

A related post
LADIES’ RETIRING ROOM (As seen in the Orpheum)

Isaac Barrow on bookishness

Isaac Barrow (1630–1677), mathematician and theologian, on learnedness, or what I’ll call bookishness:

It is a calling that fitteth a man for all conditions and fortunes; so that he can enjoy prosperity with moderation, and sustain adversity with comfort: he that loveth a book will never want a faithful friend, a wholesome counsellor, a cheerful companion, an effectual comforter.

I spotted an inscription with the final clause (“he that loveth”) high on a wall at the Chicago Cultural Center years ago and finally got around to looking up the source: a sermon entitled “Of Industry in Our Particular Calling, as Scholars,” found in The Works of Dr. Isaac Barrow, Volume Three, ed. T.S. Hughes (1831), available at Google Books.

[I’ve borrowed bookishness from George Steiner.]

Resolution

I’m thinking about resolution, as a frame of mind, as “determination; firmness or steadfastness of purpose; the possession of a resolute or unyielding cast of mind.”

Not “Drink more water,” though that’s probably always a good idea. Not “Binge more,” as heard on a T-Mobile commercial yesterday morning.

I’m determined to be resolute in 2018, to not yield to cultural or political despair, to maintain a sense of humor and irreverence as appropriate, to maintain a sense of reverence as appropriate, to speak up and out when the occasion calls for it, and to do what I can in my very limited sphere of influence to make a better world. How about you?

And with regard to American democracy, I’m thinking about another kind of resolution:

the subsiding or cessation of a pathological process, disease, symptom, etc.; spec . the termination of inflammation, esp. without suppuration or permanent damage to tissue.

See? Still a sense of humor and irreverence. Happy New Year.

[Definitions from the Oxford English Dictionary.]

New Year’s Eve 1917

[“Sober Celebration for War New Year: Drinking Parties of the Past Give Way to Seriously Patriotic Watch Meetings. Town Will Close at 1 A.M. Entertainments for Soldiers And Sailors — Churches and Y.M.C.A. Bid for Men in Service.” The New York Times, December 31, 1917.]

In 1917, as in 1916, Mayor John P. Mitchel was a party pooper, with closing time in New York City just an hour past midnight. The high and low temperatures for December 31, 1917, as recorded in Central Park: 6°, -7°. Really, who wants to be going to and coming from scenes of revelry in that kind of weather?

On December 31, 2017, another cold day, there are many factors that might drive one to “more sober considerations.” Or to less sober ones.

[Temperatures from the National Centers for Environmental Information.]