Today Charlie Parker would have turned 90. His birth date has been lodged in my head since 1980, when I listened to a live birthday tribute concert from the Chicago Jazz Festival on WBEZ-FM. It featured Dizzy Gillespie, James Moody, and other luminaries that I don't remember at the moment. Anyway, here's the Bird with big band recorded in March 1952, one of a handful of sessions he did in the studio with a big band, as opposed to small combo or strings.
Yes, it's that "Night and Day," featured on this very blog last night as performed by Earl Bostic. Both sides were recorded within, at most, 3 or 4 years of each other --- one being a dance tune for teen parties, the other being bop in a jazz/pop setting.
The CD compilation on which this tune appears, Charlie Parker Big Band, collects several sessions from the early 1950s. The bands are staffed by both veteran and rising stars of the era. This performance boasts a rhythm section with Oscar Peterson (p), Ray Brown (b), and Freddie Green (g). Another session features Charlie Mingus (b) and Max Roach (d), not to mention Miles Davis french horn blower Junior Collins (from Birth Of The Cool). A third session features Fifty50 hero Buddy Rich.
Strangely, this YouTube clip appears to come from one of the virtual radio stations --- "Jazz Nation Radio 108.5" --- embedded in the Grand Theft Auto video game. And judging from the YouTube comments, at least a few shorties think it's awesome.
Happy birthday, Yardbird.
Night And Day, Charlie Parker and big band (1952, from "Charlie Parker Big Band," track 6; Verve reissue of Mercury 11068), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.
I spotted this stately yet unassuming mansion this afternoon about 5 miles south of my comfort zone in southeastern Champaign County on the way to Douglas County. I snapped it on the way back into town, maybe about 5:30 p.m., as the sunlight was softening toward gold.
The architect should take a bow for exploiting this archetypal structural form of the rural midwest, penetrating walls and roof with the pairs of twin gables and enormous picture windows (another one on the southern elevation). The place must be full of light and elbow room, and I'd particularly enjoy seeing how the elongated, double-decker gables play out in the interior, function-wise. Hopefully, the designer paid attention to energy sustainability, too. I think this building is miles ahead of the generic, predesigned suburban-style houses with which everybody else feels it necessary to litter our rural roadsides. If I ever had to rebuild from scratch in town, I'd strongly consider using the design. It's aesthetically well matched to our region and, as an extra bonus, it would stir up the pod people in my neighborhood.
As a birthday indulgence to one Big Hussein Otis on this, his happiest day in the whole wide year, I present an encore performance by Earl Bostic. BHO says he really enjoyed Flamingo, which I embedded as part of this post a few weeks ago. So here's another Earl Jam with the same vibes-infused combo: a swinging up-tempo arrangement of the Cole Porter standard, "Night and Day."
Not my favorite recording of Earl playing this song, but a reasonable facsimile of it probably from several years later. Like you, I have no idea what was on the mind of "Dadreno" when he attached the awful, geezerly railroad slide show to this nice Bostic dance number. Probably ultra-lameness. Don't blame me. Or Big Otis. And especially, don't blame Earl Bostic.
Night and Day, Earl Bostic (1955, King 4765, b/w Embraceable You), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.
1511 --- the Portuguese conquer Malacca. That's right, you malaccas: Malacca!
1830 --- Tom Thumb, the prototype steam locomotive with the really cute name, is demonstrated to an investor group; it almost beat a horse-drawn railroad carriage in an impromptu race.
1990 --- Iraq annexes Kuwait... for a month or so.
I know, I know. Boring as hell, pretty much. But wait: I've discovered a new notable born on this very day in history. Year: 1917; world, say hello to The King --- Jack "King" Kirby, that is. Way to go --- much more impressive than Leo "Snooze" Tolstoy! (OMG --- JK!!!)
And at the very foundations of history, in 1949, a star is born:
Yogi: "Hey, Lady! Why the Beard?!?"
BO: "Ya dinna ken who I am?"
Yes, Big Hussein Otis, we do indeed ken who you am. Happy birthday, little fella.
There is, I assume, more much more trepidation than beauty experienced by denizens of the U.S. Atlantic and Gulf coastal lowlands during peak hurricane season. I think, without an ion of glee, that it may just be the price people pay to live a few miles from white sand beaches and rum shacks, gorge on fresh, affordable seafood at will, and escape the torment of long winters. There are also crosses to bear when emigrating to Champaign, Illinois. It's the nation's most mentally and morally conservative Big 10 university town. Our current alpha creatures are real estate people intent on digging out every last green space in the county to make room for unneeded new townhouses and strip malls in a moribund market. The downsides here are less dramatic than for coastal people, but I'd bet our list is much longer (and beyond the scope of this post).
But hurricane season here is outstanding. The careful observer living in the Corn Belt can often peg the beginning of hurricane season, in all its local splendor, to the week if not to the day. Two groups of people are most likely to take note: farmers (but not necessarily agri-businessmen riding in hermetically sealed, GPS-navigated combines the size of a Gothic cathedral) and road cyclists (bi-, not necessarily motor-).
One leading indicator conspicuous to both farmers and cyclists is the prevailing wind direction, which changes here somewhat abruptly from southwesterly to southeasterly and easterly. Another indicator, somewhat less consistent, is humidity, which drops significantly around the time prevailing wind directions change. The humidity drop happens to be convenient to grain farmers, who want to dry down the corn and beans as much as possible in the fields to promote cost-efficient harvesting and marketing. It's also convenient to cyclists, who appreciate hot sun combined with pleasant evaporative cooling effects. I'm certain these weather shifts are directly related to the overarching climate patterns that originate in the tropical mid-Atlantic at this time of the year, but I'm not a weatherman so I can't document that. It's a correlation observed across decades.
Our "twin cities" had a few previews of the change in wind early this month. But last week --- Wednesday, I think --- the area was abruptly overshadowed by an uncharacteristically gray, gloomy day. From the interior of an over-chilled government building, looking out any window, the vibe was late October or November (and even somewhat chilly outdoors after the "closing bell"). Sometime around that day, either the night before or after, about 1.6 inches of badly needed rain fell on the asparagus garden. Then, suddenly, meteorological glory. Bike riding patterns after work became almost exclusively outbound to the southeast, east, and even north once. The object is to ride into the draft on the way out, not on the way home while the sun is racing to auger into the west horizon. Fortuitously, due to seasonal characteristics related to Terra's orbit around the sun on an oblique axis, last 180 minutes of daylight every day for the past week-plus has fully qualified as the elusive Golden Hour that landscape photographers prize so highly. And, as if right on cue, in the Atlantic and near the Caribbean, a new crop of tropical depressions and storms began to sprout.
This is peak hurricane season in the Corn Belt: made for communing with the genial, sunny Midwestern elements in solitude. Perched on the saddle of a lightweight aluminum touring bike tanked up with water bottles; a power bar in the saddle pack; biosystems exerting straight ahead with the help of endorphins and Advil, to a soundtrack of the wind and other breathing; and a fully charged cell phone that one hopes will have signal were a tire to blow 5 miles south of Villa Grove.
It seems that over the past coupla weeks, the Yahoo mail spam filter has decided to capture all of the email notifications this blog sends to my personal account instead of sending them directly to me. At first I thought it only affected that guy with a 59 in his name, but its also getting longtime friend "Anonymous" and everybody else. I'll catch up with you all shortly. Please make a note of it.
As captured by Big Rock Head Friday evening through the southwest-facing pane of my bay-style picture window, a hummingbird briefly loitering near a feeder (not visible, stage left). I think it's an impressive shot considering that (1) BRH snapped it using the low-res camera in an iPhone 3G and (2) these shorties dart around like something out of Area 51, on crank. At this point my avian guides are failing me on identification. More research is needed.
Here's a Beach Boys production by the pensive and melancholy Brian Wilson at the height of his creative powers in 1966, as he was beginning to unravel:
Current references to Brian Wilson liken him to someone's crazy uncle, and I've read quotes attributed to him that seem to verify that. But in 1966, well established as the creative leader of THE pop group that defined, exemplified, and sanctified American youth hedonism for a short time before hippiedom emerged, Wilson was a highly sensitive and troubled soul. There are many accounts of the "battle of the bands" Wilson had with the Beatles across the sea at mid-decade --- not a hostile one --- with each group upping the ante of experimentation in response to a release by the other. This began with Brian's reaction to Rubber Soul, after a period of his own studio and lyrical experimentation. He both complimented the Beatles and tried to even top them in the studio with orchestrations, electronics, and even oddball instrumental voicings such as a boogie-inflected solo the lowest register of an accordion in I Know There's An Answer.
When listening to Pet Sounds as an adult I've always felt there was much more to Wilson's brooding instrumentations and lyrics than merely "youthful angst," as Wikipedia glibly calls it. He was not only haunted by the fleeting nature of love, which songs like Caroline, No deal with directly, but his use of psychedelic drugs seems to have helped to intensify his sense of alienation from much of humanity, including womankind and his bandmates. They lyrics of this song depict a very fragile, if self-centered, young man. The honesty and vulnerability of the lyric and performance, to my ears, raise it far above the maudlin result that this sort of creative outcrying often produces.
But listen to the music. Chances are you've never heard this song before because it never charted and you probably didn't own the album. The Beach Boys had become very uncool in a heartbeat by the end of 1967, being eclipsed by "heavy" acts like Hendrix and the Doors... and of course, The Beatles. By that point Wilson had lost creative and operational control of the group, and in my opinion almost all of the band's good work was now behind it.
If you hear some of the "genetic material" from Good Vibrations floating around in the gorgeous backgrounds of this number, it's because Brian was assembling this album concurrently with the orchestral and studio experiments that finally evolved into his signature trippy surfer "pocket symphony." (I believe that Wikipedia is incorrect, at least partially, about the sequence of Pet Sounds and Good Vibrations because there are dated rehearsal recordings that contradict that.)
Anyway, listen to the jangly rhythm sounds near the beginning of the cut; what instruments is he mixing down to get that effect, and how? Wilson was a master of audio synthesis, carefully blending and balancing unusual instrumental combinations on tape. Pianos, guitars, Farfisa organ, mallet percussion like the celeste, unified into a sound from which it is difficult to extract the individual components. Also, in this clip, don't miss the Theremin solo on the outchorus --- a poignant little line and, in my opinion, a much more memorable use of the instrument than on Good Vibrations. (Actually, I just read that it was an Electro-Theremin, inspired by the Theremin but different in terms of electronics and controls.)
You can read about Pet Sounds, Good Vibrations, and Wilson's ill-fated Smile album on Wikipedia, album jackets, and elsewhere, as well as their relation to Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band. Wilson got to feeling as if he were in a doomed race to the next big thing with the Beatles, in the process becoming frenetic, obsessive, frustrated, difficult, and withdrawn while producing tracks for the "failure" of an album that produced Heroes and Villains, Wild Honey, and Darlin'.
I intend to post more Beach Boys, particularly Brian Wilson, in the future. This is a band that is very easy for both self-conscious hipsters and discerning listeners to dismiss as simple, dated, and irrelevant. I disagree. I'm an admirer, and I have conjectured that had Wilson kept a level head on his shoulders and tamped down creative conflicts with other band members, the Beach Boys might have evolved into something very much along the lines of Pink Floyd. I hope to have several surprises in the foreseeable future.
Editor's note: due to the time stamp, this post qualifies for the category of Fifty50 After Hours, yet another copyrighted feature of this blog.
I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, Beach Boys (1966, from "Pet Sounds," Capitol Records), via YouTube, embedded for noncommercial critical discussion and educational purposes.
The lyrics are indicative of the motivating sensibility (so to speak) behind this copyrighted Fifty50 feature.
I think my first two Fish Frys featured Louis Jordan with his Tympany Five, but not this song. The reason, oddly enough, was that up until a few months ago no one had uploaded the original version of the it to YouTube. I say odd because this is one of Jordan's most well known and beloved hits. As with many of the most popular race music recordings, there appear to be a zillion versions out there --- some sounding similar to one another, and others from much later years sounding very different.
Such as this horrible thing, which was the only version available on YouTube when I launched this feature. The YouTube poster says this one is from 1958, and the special bonus lyrics in it refer to "bobby socks." Sheeeeit. One year earlier, Mercury Records assigned Quincy Jones to help re-energize Jordan's career as a rock performer, possibly because black rock pioneers like Chuck Berry and Little Richard were doing so well, chartwise. The result of that collaboration, which you can listen to here (but labeled with the wrong date), might not be bad in its own right if (1) you didn't know that it was being performed by a well known veteran jump R&B artist of the highest caliber, and (2) the lyrics weren't so obviously out of sync with the everyday world of the white teen audience the record was intended for. Not Jordan's fault. Maybe not even Jones' fault, although he obviously didn't know rock from shinola in 1956 - 57. Listen to that prominent roller rink organ trying to propel things along in the Mercury version. Sounds more like Henry Mancini than anything Alan Freed would be caught playing, even with a truckolad of payola. Jones, purely a jazzman and orchestrator up to that point, was just the wrong man for the job. And it also sounds like Jordan's heart wasn't really into the project anyway.
So listen to this one --- it's the big one with the bullet!
Saturday Night Fish Fry, Louis Jordan and His Tympany Five (1949, Decca 24725), via YouTube.
Addendum: the performance dates for this side are all over the place, and not even the discography at LouisJordan.com is definitive. Best guess is 1949, but my ear and gut tend to agree with the YouTuber who dates it at 1946. Maybe there was a second version in '49. Whatever, it's the classic performance. And if you ever want a fist in your eye, just mention... a Saturday Night Fish Fry!
Some 1970 big band soul jazz from the ubiquitous Quincy Jones:
I had the first pressing of this album, thanks to a tip from my high school pal, the late great Count. Being a fan of all things jazz-rock in the era of Chicago Transit Authority, BS&T, and Chase, this album puzzled me and still does. It's hard not to like the sound now, as an adult, but even back then I sensed something exploitative about the album that I didn't have the language to express. This is the music of Hugh Hefner and Playboy After Dark, marketed to youth at a time when hippie culture was being ravenously co-opted by establishment impresarios and entertainment moguls. The entire first side of the album on which Killer Joe appears is dedicated to Dead End and Walking In Space, "from the American Tribal Love-Rock Musical Hair" (speaking hip-sploitation).
Usually I despise the flute as a solo jazz instrument, but I make a provisional exception for certain muscular-sounding performances by people like Herbie Mann and Roland Kirk (and Jethro Tull's Ian Anderson, of course, although not a jazz musician). I forgive this performance because it was original and of the time. I also think the arrangement is marred by the dainty female chorus during the last half; they seem to festoon Quincy's wall of sound mostly as an audio version of Hef's mansion playmates --- mere decoration, pleasant or slightly creepy. Because of these details, both then and now I experience a mild embarrassment to admit that I enjoy this cut. And for that matter, I'd probably chat up Miss July 1970 if I ran into her at The Esquire this weekend (but she'd be lucky to snag me).
It may sound like I'm disparaging Jones a bit with these thoughts (which were pretty much unknown to me until I started typing), but no harm is intended. Quincy Jones is a monster in American musical history, and not only for his early associations with legends like Lionel Hampton, Ellington, Basie, Ray Charles, and a latter-career collaboration with Miles Davis (the trumpeter's last recording). He was behind the scenes literally everywhere as an arranger and producer, from an ill-fated 1950s effort to transform Louis Jordan into a rock star, to the top of the charts with Lesley Gore (It's My Party) and Michael Jackson (Thriller), a Sinatra collaboration, and a zillion movie soundtracks and TV show themes. His highly irritating, flute-featuring 1962 tune Soul Bossa Nova was even resurrected for the soundtrack of an Austin Powers movie and as the theme for the 1998 World Cup games. (I own it, regrettably.) Jones was responsible for any number of stinkers, but statistically that would be expected of someone involved in virtually every important aspect of postwar American jazz and pop music. The man knows how to arrange a chart exactly how it should sound, whether for good, or for... eev-ill.
Killer Joe, Quincy Jones (1970, from "Walking In Space," A&M Records)
Apropos of something: Killer Joe was composed by Benny Golson, whom we learned last week was influenced by our unlikely hero Earl Bostic.
The title of this post is one of the holiest shibboleths in the rhetorical arsenal of free-market capitalists. I never quite swallowed the associated line and sinker, and about 10 or 15 years ago I slowly started to disgorge the hook. With the stock market and worker productivity continually climbing to all-time highs, I said to myself, why do we so often have unacceptably high unemployment? And why are so many of the jobs that are available crapwork in the food and retail sectors that can't really support one householder, let alone a family? And furthermore, how can anyone claim that burgeoning corporations create jobs when every major acquisition or merger results in 10 or 20 percent of their combined workforces losing their jobs?
This recent Bob Herbert column from the Times is worth a careful read, especially, I think, to people who are confused about economics as reported by the corporate media. Herbert reports on comments by Boston economics professor Andrew sum:
The recession officially started in December 2007. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009, real aggregate output in the U.S., as measured by the gross domestic product, fell by about 2.5 percent. But employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent.
In many cases, bosses told panicked workers who were still on the job that they had to take pay cuts or cuts in hours, or both. And raises were out of the question. The staggering job losses and stagnant wages are central reasons why any real recovery has been so difficult.
“They threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output,” said Professor Sum. “Here’s what happened: At the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, you see corporate profits begin to really take off, and they grow by the time you get to the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion. And over that same time period, wage and salary payments go down by $122 billion.”
What that means, Herbert says, is this: "Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers." And I'll append Herbert by stating my opinion that small businesses (which officially includes companies employing up to 500 people) are every bit as dirty as transnational corporations. Many do it even in good times by keeping the majority of employees working 30 hours or less, so they aren't entitled to full benefits; and also by basically putting them on call instead of giving them a reliable schedule. Those practices are especially egregious in big box stores and restaurants, based on my conversations with people who work there.
"What a surprising development!" we who have jobs may say to ourselves, going straight for the humorous irony angle. But doesn't this information nevertheless make you wonder why this disconnect between worker productivity and full employment isn't reported nationally at least on a weekly basis by the "liberal media"?
The sure knowledge that businesses do not create jobs --- when it transmutes beyond the point between irony and dawning outrage --- leaves a question in its place to answer. If businesses don't create jobs, then what do they create? Answer: profits for executives, period. It has been moving in that direction for decades, and now we're there. Shit: businesses barely even make anything any more --- they sub that out to the Chinese and the Indians (who of course are rapidly learning to sub the making of stuff out to the Fourth World).
Roaring 20s President Calvin Coolidge is often erroneously quoted as having vacuously said "The business of America is business." Even if had said that, as dumb as it is, it might still be thought to convey a generic fact about American corporate and individual industry. Today, not even Silent Cal's alleged dumb remark can hold water. Because today, the business of American is multi-level marketing schemes. Just like Amway. (Don't call them "pyramid schemes" because you might hurt their feelings.)
Incidentally, here's what calvin-coolidge.org tells us that the 30th president really did say:
The quote is really: "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." However, Coolidge goes on to say that, "Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence."
And what are we to make of this statement by Herbert Hoover's predecessor:
We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.
The guy sounds like a fucking Obamunist to me! I say we dig him up and lynch him! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
RubberCrutch, 14-watt illuminatus and man about town, earns his living as a simple country editor, as if toiling on a chain gang beside Larry Fine, making little sentences out of big ones.
He has 30 years of professional experience in written and visual communications, including journalism, public relations, advertising, technical publishing, and photography. In connection with some of those roles he has won several unimportant awards.
[Editor's note: in archived Fifty50 posts, all references to one "StuporMundi" in fact pertain to our hero, RubberCrutch, unless otherwise noted. Thank you for your attention in this matter.]
It is the mission of this weblog to offer you, at least half the time, an assortment of essays and pictures pertaining to current events, aesthetic studies, psychological inquiries, and everyday tomfoolery, presented in a jocular setting that is suitable for Mom, Pop, Junior, and Sis, as long as Mom and Sis do not object to literature that sometimes contains words such as "asshole" and "fuck."
