Classic Ross Amico

Tag: Philadelphia

  • Jerry Blavat Philly’s Geator Rocks On R.I.P.

    Jerry Blavat Philly’s Geator Rocks On R.I.P.

    Broadcast legend Jerry Blavat, the Geator with the Heater, the Boss with the Hot Sauce, is dead at 82. My roommate and I used to call in to Blavat’s request program in Philadelphia back in the mid-1980s. Already, he seemed as if he had been around forever, but of course he was only in his 40s. On one memorable occasion, we got into an on-air contest of matching Woody Allen character names with their respective movies. These were simpler times, before the very mention of Woody stirred controversy. Of course, the Geator himself was not without his complexities. The Boss was saucy to the end, with his annual oldies all-star concert at Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center pending. As Jerry proclaimed in the title of his autobiography, you only rock once. R.I.P.

    Obituary in The Philadelphia Inquirer

    https://www.inquirer.com/obituaries/jerry-blavat-dies-82-philadelphia-geator-with-the-heater-20230120.html

    Talking Sinatra, the mob, and music in Philadelphia Magazine

    https://www.phillymag.com/news/2020/04/04/jerry-blavat-interview/

    With my editor, Dan Aubrey, in the Princeton weekly U.S. 1

    https://www.communitynews.org/news/legendary-dj-jerry-blavat-still-spinning-at-80/article_cf5b452a-ba38-5e2d-a45d-a6401b71050d.html

    PHOTOS: (left) The Geator strikes a characteristic pose; and (top to bottom) spinning discs at his club, Memories; with James Brown; and on “The Monkees”

  • Philly Jazz Raymond Scott & John Williams’ Dad!

    I remember, when I was broadcasting overnight jazz in Philadelphia, I started off the new year once with this curio by Raymond Scott (at the link). That’s film composer John Williams’ dad on drums. Don’t be scared. It’s just the last of 2022!

  • Philadelphia Pops Loss

    Wow. As a rule, “pops” isn’t really my thing, but it was one more way to entertain the folks when they came to town, and they put on a good show. David Charles Abell is the current music director, but undoubtedly the orchestra will always be associated in most people’s memories with Peter Nero, who directed the ensemble for 35 years. At a point, Marvin Hamlisch had actually been signed, but he died before he could take over its leadership. My sympathy to the musicians, many of whom cobble together a living by playing in the city’s ballet and opera orchestras. This is yet another loss for Philadelphia.

  • Romeo Cascarino Lost American Composer

    Romeo Cascarino Lost American Composer

    O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Why does no one play your music?

    It is well-crafted. It has heart. It is full of beauty. All it lacks is exposure.

    This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” we salute Romeo Cascarino, in anticipation of the 100th anniversary of his birth on September 28, 1922.

    Cascarino grew up in an unforgiving neighborhood in South Philadelphia. With a name like Romeo, he had to learn how to use his fists! While navigating the School of Hard Knocks, he taught himself privately, gleaning the mechanics of music theory from books checked out of the Free Library of Philadelphia. He was discovered by composer Paul Nordoff, who recognized his genius, and the two formed a bond that was more like a friendship than master-disciple.

    For many years, Cascarino was a professor of composition at Combs College of Music. The recipient of two Guggenheim Fellowships, he labored at his magnum opus, the opera “William Penn,” for the better part of three decades. The work received its premiere at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music in 1982 to mark the 300th anniversary of the founding of the city.

    Metropolitan Opera singer bass-baritone John Cheek sang the title role, Cascarino’s wife, soprano Dolores Ferraro, created the part of Gulielma, Penn’s wife, and Christofer Macatsoris conducted the Philadelphia Singers and the Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia.

    Ferraro and arts writer Tom Di Nardo will join me to share their reminiscences and insights into Cascarino, the man and the composer, who died in 2002. I’ve assembled some of their remarks and punctuated the conversation with rare audio from the family archives, as well as studio recordings made by JoAnn Falletta and Sol Schoenbach, former principal bassoonist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

    A seductive, twilit beauty informs much of Cascarino’s output. If only he had completed “William Penn” 30 years earlier, it would now be regarded one of the great American operas of mid-century, spoken of in the same breath as Carlisle Floyd’s “Susanna” and Robert Ward’s “The Crucible.”

    I hope you’ll join us in “Remembering Romeo,” this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org

  • Philly Record Store Memories

    Philly Record Store Memories

    As someone who lived and purchased records in Philadelphia for some 32 years, I hope you will enjoy reading this as much as I did. Anyone else remember Simon Roberts, who held court in the basement of Nathan Muchnik’s? I was just thinking about him the other day, recollecting his withering putdown of “deranged Bruckner fanatics,” even though it must be decades since he uttered it. How wonderful record shopping in Philadelphia used to be. Thank you, Princeton Record Exchange, for keeping the spark alive!

    At the core of this blog post, at the first link, is a reminiscence by Mark Obert-Thorn. If you’re unfamiliar with him, look more closely at the credits of any vintage reissues in your collection. Philadelphia-born Obert-Thorn and Ward Marston have dominated the field of historical restoration for decades. I believe Obert-Thorn’s musings, reprinted here, originally ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer in 2016.

    https://digital.nepr.net/music/2016/08/05/shopping-for-classical-music-a-remembrance/

    More about Obert-Thorn

    https://www.naxos.com/historical/engineer_thorn.htm

    His colleague, Ward Marston

    https://www.naxos.com/historical/engineer_marston.htm

    With the impending close of F.Y.E., this elegy for Center City record stores also ran in the Inky in 2016. I believe Peter Dobrin means the Schwann Catalog, not Schaum. I’m linking to Yahoo News, because the article in its Inquirer incarnation is paywalled.

    https://news.yahoo.com/era-ends-last-center-city-120000315.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAABikwJRcqcCs-gn9RlrwCyTycUO20vdJn73UTAzuSYYzt-NTEgv1Vm215BIDdj5LO719-N_arZC67smrwjJ6wasInymoz8gqddSJhxBXPYLtg4tv2JGb71yc4V4m_vnpK-eVu4eEID5ruR6Kgcoy3jsImyIE3m0iBSZZdWXJULe9

    Personally, I found F.Y.E. a mite soulless. You had to brave whatever head-splitting commercial swill they were pumping into the cavernous primary sales floor in order to reach the classical oasis in the back (once it was ejected from upstairs to make way for DVDs). I did, however, meet Wolfgang Sawallisch there and hear a mini-Liszt recital performed by Lang Lang. Come to think of it, that may have been when the store, located at Broad & Chestnut, was still Tower Records. As it was, that Tower never filled the hole in my heart left by the Tower Records Classical Annex at 6th & South. When that store closed, part of me went with it.

    The line in Dobrin’s article that for me most resonates:

    “Back when music was harder to get, listeners valued it more. When you spent a lot of time hunting for something, you reveled in the triumph of finding it.”

    How many hours I spent on my back as a teenager, just listening to LPs and gazing at the cardboard sleeves, with their liner notes and eye-catching cover art. I learned as much about painting as I did about music back then, I think. When I only had a couple of crates of records, I knew every nuance, every crackle and pop so intimately. And intelligent classical music programming that honored the integrity of the music by broadcasting it in its entirely was available on the radio 24 hours a day. I miss those days so very, very much.

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