“EVERY PERFORMANCE A NEW THRILL”

Absolutely right . . . when George Wettling was playing!  Here he is in 1939, moving the bulky assemblage that was Paul Whiteman’s Orchestra forward.  The ad is taken from eBay, our modern age’s equivalent of a museum-for-sale:

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COUNT BASIE RECOMMENDS (April 11, 1947)

This clipping comes from SONG HITS magazine — and thanks to “bunky’s pickle” (no kidding) on Flickr for making it available to us.  I’m amused by Basie’s apparent musical conservatism in 1947, but he was a gentle man who didn’t want to leave any one of his friends and peers off the list.

Do YOU have these records in your library?

EVERYBODY LOVES BENNY

That was the general mood of today’s hour-long conversation sponsored by the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.  “Memories of You,” which was a three-way chat among Martin E. Segal (now ninety-three and a Lincoln Center luminary, emeritus) and Phoebe Jacobs (now ninety, and a jazz / show business beacon) — moderated by George Boziwick.  Because both of the participants had known Benny Goodman (“Mr. Goodman” to Ms. Jacobs) as a friend and as a non-musical employer, there were no stories about the King of Swing being a difficult boss or a perfectionistic bandleader.  So we heard about Benny the pioneer against racism, the salmon-fisherman and sports enthusiast, the generous man who paid Teddy Wilson’s doctor bills and sent money to Wilson’s wife for a year after Teddy’s death, the fond parent (daughters Sophia and Benjie were in the audience, as was a youthful Goodman grandson, as was Mercedes Ellington), loving husband, a son devoted to his parents, a thoughtful brother. 

It was as if the afternoon had been arranged to get rid of those wicked stories about Benny’s inability to deal with people — especially his sidemen and women — decently.  And his famous obliviousness was only touched on once, in Phoebe’s story about Goodman’s having his fly open on the Dick Cavett Show.

But several things rescued the afternoon from amiable blandness.  One was watching Segal and Jacobs, people who won’t see ninety again, sharp, witty, and totally in command of their material and of the audience.  Enthusiastic, too, as Lorna Sass’s portrait of Phoebe in full flight proves:

And Martin Segal, sly rather than ebullient, kept on reminding me of someone.  This photo doesn’t entirely capture the resemblance, but it dawned on me that Segal looked a good deal like a shorter version of his friend Benny:

Finally, two other highlights — one before the conversation, one after.  When the Beloved and I sat down, an elegantly dressed woman in a dark paisley jacket chose to sit next to us and said that she had met Goodman at a Segal party (she had been Segal’s right-hand woman when he created the Film Society of Lincoln Center).  Sallie Blumenthal, for that is her name, had many charming stories — most of them about the actor Louis Calhern, a generous and gracious man.  We never got back to her Goodman story, but now I know that Calhern was a sweet man who remembered everyone he had ever met. 

After the conversation, we went to the third floor of the library to look at their Goodman memorabilia — a quite impressive collection of things that were almost all new to me: a Gil Evans chart for the song DELIA’S GONE, another, earlier chart with Mel Powell’s name penciled in; photos that I hadn’t seen — all curated by a quietly industrious young librarian whose first name is Jonathan (I apologize for not getting his full name). 

A pleasant afternoon, with all the usual (occasionally venomous and hilarious) Goodman gossip put to rest for a change.  Next week, slightly later in the afternoon, Goodman’s musical legacy — as opposed to his social one — will be celebrated and considered by a sextet of musicians who are unfamiliar to me.  But I’m sure they will swing: Goodman’s music is a powerful inspiration!

Photographs copyright 2009 by Lorna Sass.  All rights reserved. 

“HOT NUTS” (Get ‘Em While They’re Hot!)

One more example of the innocent-but-naughty ribaldry that made its way into American homes (or at least a lucky few households) in the Twenties by way of records and perhaps sheet music. 

True, this cheerful jazz group does slow down inexorably as the performance proceeds, but I would consider myself lucky to have the Eldorado Syncopators show up at my local bookstore.  (I would consider myself lucky to HAVE a local bookstore, but that lament is for another time and place.)  

This was recorded by SFRaeAnn on May 31, 2009, at North Light Books in Cotati, California.  And the hot heroes you see are Robert Young, saxes and vocal; Glenn Calkins, trombone and clarinet; Stan Greenberg, percussion; Steven Rose, sousaphone; Jim Young, tenor banjo; and Dave Frey, plectrum banjo.