A Christmas Cornucopia Part III: Holiday for Swing! By Seth MacFarlane, Arranged and Orchestrated by Joel McNeely

Before you protest, rest assured that Your Correspondent already knows.  Yes, Seth MacFarlane (born 1973) is an extremely low comedian, a vulgarian, politically incorrect and all the rest.  Check.

But … MacFarlane is also having a romance with the Great American Songbook, which he calls, in a most felicitous phrase, “orchestral jazz.”  I actually prefer the MacFarlanism, and will start using it myself.

He has previously released two albums of standards, doing his best to replicate the sound of Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), down to using the same, now-vintage microphone the older artist used.  With sprightly, energized arrangements by Joel McNeely (born 1959), these albums are, in a word, terrific.  (The spirit of homage is evident even on the album cover, which features a painted portrait of MacFarlane in the manner of many early 1960s Christmas swing albums.)

So, it was with a great deal of pleasure that I received a (very thoughtful!) early Christmas gift of his new holiday album, Holiday for Swing!  If you like Orchestral Jazz even a little bit, then this album is for you.  If you like holiday tunes with a touch of swing, this album is for you.  If you like singers who are clearly having fun, then this album is for you.  In short … get it already.

MacFarlane opens with Let It Snow!  This is a tuneful recording, but MacFarlane really hits his stride with the second number, Christmas Dreaming.  This song was only recorded by Sinatra and Harry Connick (that I’ve heard), but MacFarlane is better than either.  I have been humming this infectious tune for weeks, and it is now in my personal pantheon of Christmas classics.

MacFarlane returns to the seldom-heard with Little Jack Frost Get Lost (which I have only previously heard recorded by Bing Crosby) and Marshmallow World, which is also seldom released.  But are excellent – with MacFarlane having so much fun with the latter that we are happy just to listen to him.

His Baby, It’s Cold Outside is, frankly, openly sexy, and his Mele Kalikimaka (also only known to me through Crosby) is delightful.

There are several other numbers included (among them Moonlight in Vermont and The Christmas Song), and all work wonderfully well.

If you had told us that the recording of the season for us here at The Jade Sphinx would be by Seth MacFarlane, we would’ve signed you up for an extended stay in Bedlam.  But … Christmas is known for miracles, so we should expect the unexpected.  This is a great album and a worthy addition to pop Christmas standards. 

A special Christmas message tomorrow!

Christmas Comes to Loew’s Jersey City

Perhaps part of the reason there are so many bad films today is because we have so degraded the experience of going to the movies.  It’s important for everyone hustled into small, cramped theaters, looking at tiny screens, or gagging on trailers to remember that going to the movies was once serious business.

People dressed to go the movies.  Often, live performances would accompany a film, either with film stars making personal appearances or bandleaders playing before and after the show.  And because movies were so plentiful and affordable, people went all the time.  While these days barely 75 major films are released a year, in the 1930s and 1940s, some 500 films would be released.  Yes, that number was 500!

And movie-going was the great American secular religion.  It made gods out of names that still resonate mightily: John Wayne (1907-1979), Fred Astaire (1899-1987), Humphrey Bogart (1899-1957), Judy Garland (1922-1969), Bette Davis (1908-1989) and Greta Garbo (1905-1990), for example.  And, like most religions, it demanded the right ambiance for the sacrament to take place.  And that … led to the creation of Picture Palaces.

There are very few of them today, but movie theaters were often built along the lines of cathedrals.  They were filled with grand (or simply ornate) architecture, they were constructed on colossal scale and they were designed to be a sacred space.  Entering a Picture Palace of old was to enter another realm – where dreams came true, good triumphed over evil, and movies were worthwhile.

Most of these Picture Palaces did not survive the change in the movie business that started in the 1950s and lasted through the 1970s.  In the 50s, movies faced stiff competition from television, and as fewer movies were produced, more and more Picture Palaces found that the economics of supporting such a vast piece of real estate was no longer feasible.  Most went under the wrecking ball, to survive only in cherished memories, while some smaller movie houses were sub-divided into multiplexes. 

Fortunately for New York-area readers, one Picture Palace still remains, and is the focus of a volunteer-supported base of film and live-performance buffs.  The Loew’s Jersey City first opened in September 1929, one of five “Loew’s Wonder Theatres” that opened during 1929-1930.  At that time, Journal Square in Jersey City was a popular entertainment and shopping destination.  Loew’s Jersey City cost $2 million 1929 dollars to build – and ticket prices were first 35 cents. 

The initial plan for Loew’s was to run live theatre performance as well as films.  The stage of the theatre was equipped with a full counterweighted fly system with the 50'-0" wide screen rigged to be flown in and out. In front of the stage, a three segment orchestra pit was installed. One segment, on left side of the pit as viewed from the audience, contained the pipe organ console. The organ lift could rise independently and rotate. The remaining width of the orchestra pit could also rise, lifting the orchestra up to the stage level. The third segment was an integrated piano lift in the center of the orchestra lift that could either rise independently or with the orchestra lift.

Loew’s hit its nadir in the 1980s; the last first-run film to play there was Friday the 13^th Part VI: Jason Lives.  Plans were soon announced to demolish the building, but it subsequently sold to the city of Jersey City, after which volunteers began the restoration project.  The house had been broken into a multiplex, and volunteers restored mechanical systems while the Garden State Theatre Organ Society acquired a sister pipe organ to the match the original.

This wonderland echoes with memories.  I know people who were there for live performances of Frank Sinatra, Martin and Lewis, Abbot and Costello and Kirk Douglas.  I first went to Loew’s in the early 1990s for a screening of This Island Earth (1955).  Volunteers had just begun to reclaim this lost treasure, and the film was actually shown in the lobby.  Since then, the theatre auditorium proper has been largely restored, creating a premium theatre experience.  In the past few years, your correspondent has seen films as diverse as A Christmas Carol (1951), March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934), Pearl of Death (1944), Jason and the Argonauts (1963) – with Ray Harryhausen in attendance, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (1969), Psycho (1960) and many others.

This Christmas, the Friends of Loew’s (as the volunteers are called) have several special treats in store.  On Saturday, December 14, Santa Claus will appear in the lobby from Noon till 3:00 PM.  The visit with Santa is free, and digital photos are available for only $4.  Visitors who bring a new hat, scarf, pair of gloves or warm socks for the Winter Warmth Drive for the Homeless can have their picture for free.

That evening starting at 6:30, Loew’s hosts a concert and sing-along of popular holiday music, performed by Taresa Blunda, Howard Richman, the Choir of St. Dominic’s Academy and the Brass Ensemble of the JC Arts High School with Bernie Anderson at the Wonder Organ.  And that treat is followed by a screening of the original Miracle on 34^th Street, starring Edmund Gwenn, Maureen O’Hara and Natalie Wood.  Tickets for both the concert and film are only $14 for adults and $7 for children and seniors.

The Friends of Loew’s have been working for nearly two decades to both restore this theater to its former glory, and to establish it as a premiere revival house and performance space.  But they can’t do it alone.  Readers are encouraged to go to events held at Loew’s, or to provide support in terms of work or donations.  You can get more information at www.loewsjersey.org, or by calling (201) 798-6055.

For those of you who will be joining me on Saturday, Loew’s Jersey City is located at 54 Journal Square, Jersey City, right across from JFK Blvd and the PATH Station.

Merry Christmas!

An Evening With Celeste Holm

One month ago today we lost Celeste Holm (1917-2012), one of the few remaining figures from Hollywood’s Golden Age.  Of that august body, the only four survivors that come to mind are Olivia de Havillland (born 1916), Kirk Douglas (born 1916), Mickey Rooney (born 1920), and Shirley Temple (born 1928).  I’m sure it’s possible that, some 60 years hence, someone will write an appreciation of Ben Affleck while contemplating with nostalgia the Millennium Era of Hollywood, but I somehow doubt it.

It’s hard for people born into the era of movies like The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises and yet another version of Spider-Man, to remember (or understand) that films were once made by, and for, adults.  (And, seriously, does our culture really need a “realistic” Batman movie?  Isn’t the very phrase fairly insulting?  Could you imagine anyone with a straight face 40 or 50 years ago suggesting that adult audiences would greet the notion of a “dark” superhero film with anything other than blank incomprehension or withering disdain?  And isn’t this stuff supposed to be fun, anyway?  Please don’t get me wrong – I enjoy a Batman film as next as the next fellow, and was entertained by both the 1960s comedy series and the Tim Burton films.  But … have we degenerated so as a culture that the story of a millionaire dressed like a giant bat so he could punch a homicidal clown is now considered worthy of an “adult” take?)  In such an atmosphere, it’s somehow consoling to remember that films were once made by adults and not a culture of arrested adolescents.

Holm was a staple on Broadway and film for decades.  She won an Academy Award for her performance in Gentleman’s Agreement (1947), one of the first films to seriously address anti-Semitism, and was nominated for her performances in Come to the Stable (1949) and the classic All About Eve (1950).  On Broadway she originated the role of Ado Annie in Oklahoma!, and in 1991 I was lucky enough to see her as an aging actress in Paul Rudnick’s comedy about the ghost of John Barrymore, I Hate Hamlet. 

Holm had a very distinct screen persona.  Her somewhat plain, non-glamorous beauty hinted at an inner warmth, and her natural reserve suited her for roles as patrician or distant women.  Always more convincing as a socialite than a tart, Holm managed to bring an element of Yankee gentility to any endeavor.  To see two disparate sides of Holm, watch her nearly incandescent turn as a nun in Come to the Stable and then see her as chanteuse Flame O’Neill in the riotous comedy Champagne for Caesar (1950).  For a taste of her range, watch Holm cornered by the duplicitous Anne Baxter in All About Eve here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=987UWPKQVQA.

About 15 years ago I had the great pleasure to dine with Holm at the apartment of lyricist Fred Ebb  (1928-2004).  My friend, film scholar and writer Jim Nemeth, had “won” Holm for dinner at a charitable auction, and she regaled us for over four hours with stories alternately salty and scandalous.  For a woman so composed and serene onscreen, she could be quite surprising in the flesh.  (There is a reason it’s called “acting.”)  She spared nobody.

Asked about her Caesar co-star Vincent Price, Holm asked, “why would you want to know about him?  He couldn’t act.”  That was a comment not nearly as withering as her take on Stable costar Loretta Young, whom she called “a chocolate-covered black widow spider.”

About her Eve costars, she was equally brutal.  Hugh Marlowe was “dull,” and she had no comment on George Sanders, who she claimed only spoke to the director and never to the rest of the cast.  She called Baxter “ambitious,” and Bette Davis a word that rather rhymes with “ambitious.”

She had some genuinely nice things to say about her High Society (1956) co-star Frank Sinatra, but added, “you wouldn’t want to cross him.”  She dismissed Nicol Williamson (Barrymore in I Hate Hamlet) as a “drunk” and pronounced Julie Andrews (they worked together in television’s Cinderella) “cold.”  The biggest mistake of her career was not made by herself, but, rather, the producers of the film version of Oklahoma!, who did not ask her to reprise her stage role as Ado Annie.  Perhaps my favorite Holm-ism was her take on her fans:  “When someone tells me they like Gentlemen’s Agreement, I know they’re a West Side liberal.  When they mention Eve, I know they’re gay.”

It was, in short, an unforgettable evening.  Though I found the real Celeste Holm very different from the reel one, she was a woman who will be greatly missed.

Christmas Bells

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Christmas Bells is a magnificent poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) that has also been set to music to make for one of our most beautiful Christmas carols.  As with most art, the gestation period was not an easy one…

Longfellow was a celebrated American poet, nearly as famous today as he was in his own era.  Most of us can recite snippets of Longfellow without necessarily knowing who it is we quote – it was Longfellow who wrote Paul Revere’s Ride and The Song of Hiawatha, as well as Evangeline. 

Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine (then part of Massachusetts) and spent some time abroad before becoming a professor at his alma mater, Bowdoin.  He taught for several years before retiring in 1854 to focus on his poetry and translations (he is the first American to translate Dante’s Divine Comedy). 

Longfellow was married twice, his first wife dying in childbed and his second wife died tragically when her dress caught fire (a not-uncommon occurrence at that time). 

In March 1863, Longfellow’s oldest son, Charles Appleton Longfellow, left the house late at night and vanished.  It was not until weeks later that Longfellow received a letter explaining what had happened.  Charles ran off to join the Union army, then embroiled in the Civil War.  Charles initially reported to Captain W. H. McCartney, commanding Battery A of the 1st Massachusetts Artillery, to enlist. McCartney knew the family and wrote to Longfellow asking his advice.  Longfellow granted his permission and Charles served honorably, attaining the rank of lieutenant, before he was severely wounded in the Battle of New Hope Church during the Mind Run Campaign.

Charles was shot through the left shoulder, the bullet travelling around his back, nicking his spine and exiting through his right shoulder.  When Charles returned to Washington, D.C. to recover, Longfellow and his other son Ernest went there to take the boy back home.  They arrived back in Cambridge on December 8 (today marks the 147^th anniversary of this event) and Charles spent the next many months recovering.

On Christmas Day of that year, Longfellow wrote Christmas Bells:

    I HEARD the bells on Christmas Day
    Their old, familiar carols play,
        And wild and sweet
        The words repeat
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    And thought how, as the day had come,
    The belfries of all Christendom
        Had rolled along
        The unbroken song
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    Till ringing, singing on its way,
    The world revolved from night to day,
        A voice, a chime,
        A chant sublime
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    Then from each black, accursed mouth
    The cannon thundered in the South,
        And with the sound
        The carols drowned
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    It was as if an earthquake rent
    The hearth-stones of a continent,
        And made forlorn
        The households born
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!

    And in despair I bowed my head;
    "There is no peace on earth," I said;
        "For hate is strong,
        And mocks the song
    Of peace on earth, good-will to men!"

    Then pealed the bells more loud and deep:
    "God is not dead, nor doth He sleep;
        The Wrong shall fail,
        The Right prevail,
    With peace on earth, good-will to men."

The poem was first published in February 1865 in an edition of the popular magazine Our Young Folks.  It was first set to music in 1872 by John Baptiste Calkin, wedding the words to a melody he had written as early as 1848.

The Calkin rendition was extremely popular for a long while, but it was supplanted (to this listener, at least) by a melody written by Johnny Marks (1909-1985). The Marks version, often called I Heard The Bells on Christmas Day, has been recorded by such artists as Fred Waring, Kate Smith, Frank Sinatra and, most successfully, Bing Crosby.  In almost all recordings, verses Four and Five of the poem/carol are omitted.  If you can, track down the Crosby version on You Tube; it is a remarkable recording.

Charles Longfellow recovered, but never sufficiently to return to active military duty.  Using family money, he became a global traveler with a taste for the Far East.  He died of pneumonia in 1893 and the souvenirs of his travels are on view at Longfellow House in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

The Sinatra Paradox

We continue examining the voices that make up the Great American Songbook with a look at Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), the most polarizing figure of the classic American pop era.  Polarizing, I think, because more than any of the other figures we have looked at thus far, Sinatra’s persona is the one most imitated by his followers; indeed, there is an entire “Sinatra Way of Life” that inspired several generations.  Sinatra has had, for adults, much the same bad influence as the Beatles had on children.

However, it’s not for us to judge an artist’s work – and Sinatra was certainly an artist – by his personal life.  (Indeed, our canon of artistic heroes would indeed become a small one!)  And Sinatra’s iconic status is undeniable.  He was the last “superstar” of the Great American Songbook, and the last of his ilk to continue producing hit records after the advent of the rock era, when music descended into hopeless juvenilia.  Even for those for whom music begins and ends with the rock era, Sinatra is a presence to be reckoned with.

Sinatra began his singing career in the Big Band era, fronting for both Harry James and Tommy Dorsey.  He was often dubbed The Voice, and listening to his clear, clean and sweet tones, it is easy to see why.  His voice was certainly the most honeyed of his era, and listening to his late 1940s recordings of such songs as All or Nothing at All, There’s No Business Like Show Business and Why Was I Born, illustrates why legions of teenage girls (the Bobby Soxers) fell under his thrall.

However, the most fascinating thing about the voice of the early Sinatra is that its beauty is the only thing it has to commend it.  He was not a particularly affecting singer, and, unlike, say, Bing Crosby or Fred Astaire, he didn’t really connect with a song and what it meant.  He was all talent and no technique.

Sinatra found his incredible popularity begin to wane in the early 1950s.  He returned to the concert stage after a two year absence in Hartford in 1950, but his vocal chords hemorrhaged onstage at the Copacabana later that year.  It seemed as if his meteoric career was about to burn out.

Then something happened.  He landed a key supporting role in From Here to Eternity (1953) and won the Oscar.  His renewed popularity did much to renew his vitality, and he signed a contract with Capitol Records, where he worked with some of the industry’s finest musicians, including Billy May and Nelson Riddle (the two men most associated with the Sinatra Sound).

And it is here, really the second act of Sinatra’s career, that Sinatra the artist emerged and the paradox begins.  Paradox because after 1950, Sinatra’s voice was never the same – it has lost its beauty and sweetness; but, he also became a much better singer.

What Sinatra learned was what Astaire and Crosby had known instinctually – that phrasing, lyricism and telling the story of a song is the final piece of the puzzle in making a great singer.  It was during this period that some of his signature recordings – I’ve Got the World on a String, Love and Marriage, They Can’t Take That Away From Me, Three Coins in the Fountain, South of the Boarder, Hey Jealous Lover – were all recorded.  These were not simply songs knocked out after a few rehearsals, but deep and personal mediations on the narrative of each number, delivered in a style best matching the overarching story. 

Sinatra was able to maintain this winning streak – professionally and artistically – throughout the 1950s and 1960s, despite changing national tastes in music.  In the 1970s and 1980s, he recorded a string of epics or anthems (including the unfortunately ubiquitous My Way), and started his own record label, Reprise.  But the bloom had long since faded from the rose.

Frank Sinatra is a remarkable study for those interested in the history of American popular song – he was the greatest singer who ever lost his voice.

Tomorrow – Vince Giordano and the Nighthawks!

Bing Crosby

Any list of the most important 20^th Century artists would have to include Harry Lillis "Bing" Crosby (1903 – 1977) – and he would quite possibly be at the top of it.  Nor do I simply mean a list of great or influential recording artists, despite the fact that Crosby currently has over half a billion records in circulation.  No, it is because Crosby’s voice and demeanor helped define the American consciousness and identity; he personified an idealized American Everyman.  And when seriously assessing the importance of the Great American Songbook, it is impossible to overlook his Olympian presence.

In this post-rock age, Crosby is the ultimate forgotten man.  This is all the more incredible considering that he is the direct inspiration for artists as diverse as Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.  He is the popular singer with the most Academy Award wins and nominations (in fact, he is one of only four actors ever nominated twice for playing the same character).  Between 1927 and 1962 he scored 369 charted records under his own name -- yes, 369 charted records.  That record has never been beaten; indeed, no one has come close.  Even the most diverse musical performers are shy by more than 100:  Paul Whiteman (220), Frank Sinatra (209), Elvis Presley (149), Glen Miller (129), Nat “King” Cole (118), Louis Armstrong (85) and the Beatles (68).  In fact, Bing continued to have an average of 16 charted singles per year through 1950, peaking in 1939 with 27 (beaten by the Beatles in 1964, with 30), and never falling below double-digits until 1951, when he placed nine singles in the top 25. 

Crosby also perfected the template by which recording artists built larger and more multi-faceted careers.  It was Bing who first conquered recordings, then radio or television and then Hollywood.  This was the model followed by Sinatra in the 1940s, Presley in the 1950s and Barbra Streisand in the 1960s.  Though each of them was successful in these endeavors, no recording artist has matched Crosby’s long-term success and influence as an all-media star.

For those of us who are interested in statistics, Bing was:

• The first full-time vocalist ever signed to an orchestra
• The man with the most popular recording ever, White Christmas, the only single to make American pop charts 20 times
• The man who scored the most number one hits ever, 38, compared with 24 by the Beatles and 18 by Elvis Presley
• The only pre-1980 film star to rank as the number one box-office attraction five times (1944-48), and between 1934 and 1954 he scored in the Top Ten 15 times
• He was nominated for an Academy Award for best actor three times and won for Going My Way
• He financed and popularized the development of tape, revolutionizing the recording industry

But, finally, what does all of this mean?  Is popular success the definition of an artist?  Do record sales translate into aesthetic achievement?  Obviously not, for if that were the case then, good Lord, we would degrade the label artist by using it on the largely talent-free figures that swamp the post-rock scene.  (It is significant that the greatest talents of popular American musicians clustered in a period when music was written by and for adults, and not undulating children and adults unwilling to challenge themselves with melody, lyric, sentiment and sophistication.)

Bing was a great artist for a variety of reasons.  First and foremost, he had one of the most pitch-perfect voices during the golden era of the Great American Songbook.  More importantly, he was a terrific jazz singer, particularly in his 1930s recordings.  He was perhaps at his best in duos, and his duets with Connie Boswell, Louis Armstrong, Fred Astaire and Rosemary Clooney have a collaborative quality that these artists were never able to achieve with another partner. 

Bing was also the first artist to really make use of one of the most revolutionary musical tools – the microphone.   Bing knew that the microphone was a passport to intimacy, and he was perhaps the first great American popular singer who sang to his audience, rather than at them. 

Like most great artists, he was able to achieve a corpus of work that is both timeless and reflective of the time in which it was created.  Many Bing aficionados, like myself, prefer the Jazz era Crosby of the 1930s, while others find greatest satisfaction with the American troubadour Bing of the 1940s and 50s.  Bing managed to change with the times (until the advent of rock), finding the mode of delivery most resonant to people of three decades, and then defining it. 

As a screen actor, Bing had few peers.  His film work in pictures as diverse as Country Girl (1954), where he plays an alcoholic actor, and as a journalist in Little Boy Lost (1953) is remarkably adept.  His career as a musical comedy star is of a very high order, and is on view in films as different as Holiday Inn (1942), High Society (1956) and Anything Goes (1936).  He was also a gifted comedian; indeed, the most fascinating thing about the Bing Crosby/Bob Hope (1903-2003) dynamic in a series of seven Road pictures, is that they are cinema’s only evenly-matched duo.  Most comedy teams pair ‘funnyman’ and ‘straight man,’ but Hope and Crosby were never separated by this dynamic, as each were farceurs in their own way.  Thus, movie magic is made.

Crosby is the subject of an excellent biography by Gary Giddins, Bing Crosby: A Pocketful of Dreams-the Early Years, 1903-1940, published in 2001.  It is the first volume of a two-volume life, and is highly recommended to serious students of jazz, American music and the history of pop culture.

In the final analysis, we must rate Crosby as the consummate popular artist of the 20^th Century.  I believe his remarkable oeuvre lays in wait for future generations to rediscover, and when it comes, the Bing Crosby renaissance will be a formidable one.  One can only hope.

Tomorrow – Fred Astaire!