Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

Tony Bennett Crooner Legend Dies at 96

Tony Bennett, the crooner with a voice built to last, has died at the age of 96.

In a career spanning over 70 years, he made more than 150 recordings, leaving his indelible stamp on the Great American Songbook.

Bennett was the recipient of 20 Grammy Awards, the first two for his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco,” in 1962; the last was for his duet album with Lady Gaga, “Love for Sale,” bestowed only last year. In all, he sold over 60 million records.

Diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, Bennett would still snap to when it came time to perform. His final public appearance was at Radio City Music Hall two summers ago, with Gaga, with whom he formed an unlikely late-in-life partnership. They recorded in 2014 and 2021 and toured together in 2015.

With his chiseled features and sandpaper voice, Bennett possessed an unforced affability, and his appeal seems to have been universal.

It was Bob Hope who gave him the moniker by which he became so well known. Hope wanted him to open for him at the Paramount Theater. He didn’t like Bennett’s stage name, which was then Joe Bari, and he rejected his birth name, Anthony Benedetto, as being too long for the marquee. Hence, he was christened Tony Bennett.

Bennett mostly resisted trends and gimmickry, holding fast to the standards. The ‘70s were the nadir, as he foundered in the wake of rock ‘n’ roll, but he rebounded from a period of comparative neglect and drug addiction. In the 1980s, he rose like a phoenix and made the standards hip again.

Bennett served in the infantry during World War II, marched for civil rights in the 1960s, and sang for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton, Queen Elizabeth II, and Nelson Mandela.

The son of Italian immigrants, Bennett was an American success story. He brought joy to the world (with perhaps the exception of his ex-wives) with a life well-lived. R.I.P.

On Ed Sullivan

With Lady Gaga

I’ll Be Seeing You

July 21, 2023
King Arthur Movie Music on KWAX

This week on “Picture Perfect,” the Once and Future King of film music shows continues on KWAX, with selections from movies inspired by the legends of King Arthur.

The legends provide so much grist for “Prince Valiant” (1954), based on Hal Foster’s enduring comic strip, set in the days of Arthur, though Val himself is a Viking prince of the kingdom of Scandia. Janet Leigh plays Princess Aleta, James Mason the villainous Sir Brack, Victor McLaglen Val’s Viking pal Boltar, and Sterling Hayden a preposterous Gawain. For the title role, Robert Wagner dons the signature page-boy haircut. The score, by Franz Waxman, is every bit as vivid as the film’s Technicolor, and a clear prototype for the exuberant, leitmotif-driven music of John Williams.

“The Mists of Avalon” (2001), adapted from Marion Zimmer Bradley’s novel, takes the ingenious approach of retelling the Arthurian stories from the perspective of the oft-marginalized female characters. The revisionist approach breathes fresh life into the familiar tales, so that the book was greeted with critical and popular acclaim upon its release in 1983. A television miniseries, starring Julianna Margulies, Angelica Huston and Joan Allen, was produced for TNT, with music by Lee Holdridge.

“First Knight” (1995) features an unlikely cast of Sean Connery as Arthur, Richard Gere as Lancelot, and Julia Ormond as Guinevere. The film is unique, to my knowledge, in being based on the writings of medieval French poet Chrétien de Troyes, as opposed to the more frequently-employed source, Sir Thomas Malory.

The score is by Jerry Goldsmith. It was actually a bit of a rush job for Goldsmith, who stepped up at the very last minute to replace Maurice Jarre. Jarre had been approached to write music for what was originally a three-hour cut of the film. However, he only had four weeks in which to do so. Goldsmith, very well-known for his ability to write at white heat, was able to complete the score, and record the music in the allotted time.

“Knights of the Round Table” (1953) may lack the gravitas and grit of “Excalibur” – in my opinion, the most powerful of the Arthurian films – but it does sport some undeniably satisfying 1950s spectacle. The glossy and pat MGM production stars Robert Taylor as Lancelot, Ava Gardner as Guinevere, and Mel Ferrer as Arthur. The fine score is by Miklós Rózsa, from the height of his “historical epic” phase.

It’s more than just a knight at the movies. Polish up on music for the films of King Arthur, on “Picture Perfect,” now in syndication on KWAX, the radio station of the University of Oregon!

For streaming information, see below.

Keep in mind, KWAX is on the West Coast, so there’s a three-hour difference for the Trenton-Princeton area. Here are the respective air-times of my recorded shows (with East Coast conversions in parentheses):

PICTURE PERFECT, the movie music show – Friday on KWAX at 5:00 PACIFIC TIME (8:00 PM EDT)

THE LOST CHORD, unusual and neglected rep – Saturday on KWAX at 4:00 PACIFIC TIME (7:00 PM EDT)

Stream them here!

https://kwax.uoregon.edu/

July 21, 2023
Dr Goldfoot Bikini Machine Review

Approached in the right frame of mind (half asleep in the air conditioning on a Sunday afternoon), I suppose it’s an agreeable enough diversion from the summer heat. Not that it’s anywhere near as good as “Goliath and the Vampires,” mind you. (Both films achieved their greatest success in Italy.) And I probably wouldn’t recommend it for anyone born in the 21st century. But as a time capsule of another era, “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine” (1965) is a pretty good fit. Roy and I will be slathering on the suntan lotion for a heated discussion of this half-forgotten classic on the next “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.”

American International Pictures took elements from its two most lucrative cash cows – Frankie Avalon “Beach Party” movies and the Roger Corman Edgar Allan Poe cycle – added a dash of James Bond (without the dash), and whipped them into a frothy drive-in milkshake. At the cost of one million dollars, it was the most expensive A.I.P. film released up to that time. Vincent Price must have been looking for some extra cash to add another Rembrandt to his art collection.

The film was directed by Norman Taurog, very far away from his Academy Award, for “Skippy,” in 1931. By the 1950s and ‘60s, Taurog was churning out Jerry Lewis comedies and Elvis musicals. Art Clokey, of “Gumby” fame, designed the opening credits, and the title song is sung by the Supremes. Watch fast for cameos by “Beach Party” regulars Annette Funicello and Harvey Lembeck.

What could have made it better? If it were a musical, I guess. In a 1987 interview, Price lamented, “It could have been fun, but they cut all the music out.“

Nevertheless, Mike Myers must have loved it. It’s clearly one of the influences on the Austin Powers series. Yeah, baby!

We’ll be peering over our sunglasses and donning our curly-toed slippers for an examination of “Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine,” on next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. Shimmy along in the comments section, when we livestream on Facebook, YouTube, etc., this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!

https://www.facebook.com/roystiedyescificorner

The Vincent Price art collection… from Sears

The Vincent Price Museum

http://vincentpriceartmuseum.org/

“Vincent Price is an actor, no doubt about that…. But there can be and is doubt about whether he uses acting simply as a means of supporting his expensive habit – the habit of pursuing and collecting art treasures wherever he finds them.”

July 20, 2023
Louis Kentner Warsaw Concerto Star

When he was hired to play the piano in a World War II potboiler, he asked that he not receive credit, for fear that it would damage his integrity as a concert artist. But when the spin-off record sold millions, he wisely changed his tune.

Today is the birthday of Louis Kentner (1905-1987). The pianist went by several names. He was born Lajos Kentner to Hungarian parents in the present-day Czech Republic (then Austrian Silesia). Among his teachers at the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest were Arnold Székely (piano), Leó Weiner (chamber music) and Zoltán Kodály (composition). He began performing in public at the age of 15. Until 1931, he was known professionally as Ludwig Kentner. He settled in England in 1935 and became a naturalized citizen in 1946.

Kentner excelled in the works of Franz Liszt. He founded the British Liszt Society. The sprawling “Years of Pilgrimage” was among the works he tackled complete. He also gave radio broadcasts of the complete sonatas of Beethoven and Schubert, and Bach’s “The Well-Tempered Clavier.” He was the pianist of choice for Béla Bartók, who requested him as soloist for the Hungarian premiere of his Piano Concerto No. 2 and the first European performance of the Concerto No. 3. Later, Kentner gave the British premiere of Bartók’s Scherzo for Piano and Orchestra.

Also in England, he gave first performances of works by Sir Arthur Bliss, Sir Michael Tippett, and Sir William Walton (Walton’s Violin Sonata, played with his brother-in-law, the violinist Yehudi Menuhin).

Nothing he played, however, touched so many as Richard Addinsell’s “Warsaw Concerto,” which became world-famous following its use in the 1941 film “Dangerous Moonlight” (known in the U.S. by the more lurid title, “Suicide Squadron”). The piece, never heard complete in the film, took on a life of its own when arranged as a mini Rachmaninoff-style concerto by Addinsell’s frequent collaborator, Roy Douglas. The eight-minute playing time ensured that it would fit perfectly on two sides of a 78 rpm disc. Its sheet music sales went through the roof, and the “Warsaw Concerto” was a smash. It was not the first spin-off concerto from the movies, but it did spark an unlikely rage for concertos at the movies.

Kentner’s legacy has been tied very closely to my own radio work, since it is he who performs the theme to my weekly show, “The Lost Chord” (which is, for the record, the “Berceuse” from Kentner’s 1972 recording of the “Transcendental Etudes” of Sergei Lyapunov).

So it is with gratitude, as well as with admiration, that I offer this remembrance of Louis Kentner on his birthday!

Kentner’s recording of the “Warsaw Concerto”

“Berceuse” from Lyapunov’s “Transcendental Etudes” (theme music for “The Lost Chord”)

Bartók’s Piano Concerto No. 3

Video of Kentner performing Liszt’s “Years of Pilgrimage (Second Year: Italy)” complete

July 19, 2023
Journalism’s Decline & Language’s Future

Boy oh boy, the internet may be a great leveler, in terms of opening up the world to more voices, but my oh my, how journalistic standards have fallen.

How many barely literate articles have I tried to wade through in the past week? I don’t know if any of them would have earned a C had they been submitted to any of my high school English teachers. The quality of the movie criticism, similarly, has plummeted. There’s something to be said for pushing past the gatekeepers and making the world a more democratic place, but I have to tell you, I kind of miss the gatekeepers. At least the standards were higher.

On a related note, I notice an alarming trend, even among publishers (see the recent blowup about editing the works of Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie, Ian Fleming, and others, for perceived insensitivity issues, but also to bring the language “current”), to weed out obscure words, or words that have taken on other meanings in contemporary usage (gay and queer, for example). Are we to the point now where it’s felt to be necessary to weed-whack the English language so that even the most brutish among us can be trusted to understand what they are reading? Have people forgotten about the existence of dictionaries?

In the meantime, “words” like LOL and OMG (and even the heart symbol?) have found their way into the Oxford English Dictionary.
I wonder if anyone reads – or is capable of reading – Poe or Conan Doyle for pleasure anymore.

“But, in spite of these things, it was a gay and magnificent revel.”

― Edgar Allan Poe, “Masque of the Red Death”

“‘It was a confession,’ I ejaculated.”

― Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Red-Headed League”

Both bound to draw titters in the classroom. (Will I be misconstrued if I write titters?) But this in itself should be a learning opportunity.

Unfortunately, everyone is operating in such a climate of fear – fear of over-protective parents, fear of employers guided by zero-tolerance policies designed to head off the next controversy or frivolous lawsuit. Surely, Charles Dickens or Victor Hugo would have a field day with the abuse of “justice.”

How does anyone learn about anything if, as a society, it becomes the norm for us to obliterate anything that offends us, without a deeper understanding of what it is we are even reading? In winnowing the language down to a few thousand of the most frequently used words we sacrifice nuance and color. Many words may have similar or even the same meanings, but employing them in specific contexts lends richness and savor to well-written prose.

We should be able to use a word like “queer” without it stirring controversy in certain parts of the country. And at the risk of being accused of “othersidism,” we should also be able to confront what is now considered offensive language in a mature, enlightened manner. The past is the past. Learn from it, and try to do better.

As someone who cares deeply about literature and “culture,” I am tired of being squeezed between angry mobs on the so-called Left and Right. You want change? Do what you can to contribute to your own culture, in the present, but leave the past the hell alone.

Also, please write better.

July 18, 2023

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS