The Musician's Life May Not Be a Happy One

My friend Carlton who is light years ahead of me on the music front, offers some further thoughts on that last post --the one about Murray Perahia.

Two points, actually.  One, it's can't be just Murray that has this lonely, peripatetic life.  It must be all of them, always out on Friday and Saturday night (and others, if  they they are lucky)--how do they have any home life at all.  I'll bet he's onto something here.  He prompted me to remember that wonderful "memoir" that I posted on a while back, by Renée Fleming.  Quotes because, as I believe I said at the time, as a memoir it's an oddly private book, the work of (so it seems) a private woman--yet at the same time, a wonderful guide on how one builds a career.  For present purposes, the thing I recall is a certain sadness that seems to hang over the project, as if for all her achievement, she's dismayed to find that she is just not having as much fun as she mint be.   And while it's  not quite on point, I remember some stuff I read back in 2001 when the conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli died at the age of 54.  What sticks in my mind are the stories about how conductors in general have  tougher life than you might guess--in their case,  maybe too much partying, but also lots of stress.

And Carlton's second point.  He offers a general (I guess) rebuke for my suggestion that there's something special about Bach and the harpsichord.  Bach--more perhaps than anybody else--transcends any particular instrument: harpsichord maybe, but also piano (at least fortepiano), harp, guitar, string ensemble, whatever.

He's got me there.  My defense is the distortion of my own vision.  As I guess I've said before, I really hated the standard pop I heard all around me in high school. Which is to say, I didn't hear really good music until I got to college--I really didn't know it existed before.   Which is to say that when I first heard the Art of the Fugue I cried (literally) tears of joy.  And my benefactress was Wanda Landowska, on the harpsichord.  You've got to dance with the one that brung ya.  I have a set of the CDs under this roof today.

Carlton offered no quarrel to my suggestions of Perahia and Tureck, but he did offer another name, new to both of us here at Chez Buce. That would be Angela Hewett, and after a brief sampling, heading this way.   Here's a bit of Angela. Starting at 1:41, she explains her preference for piano in Bach performance, with illustrations from the Goldberg Variations:

What Does He Do when the Music Stops?

Mr. and  Mrs. Buce betook themselves down to the Mondavi Center down in Davis last night for an evening's listen to Murray Perahia at the piano.  It was rewarding enough in its own right but it was also the climactic point in a long story arc. Short version: Mrs. Buce has been stalking this guy for years and across continents like some sort of musical Maltese Falcon.  He eluded her a couple of times before but this time she got it.

Rewarding, I say, but I didn't always find myself keeping my mind on the music.  Sure, he was bravura enough, with a kind of precision that sometimes made you wonder if he was trying to torture the piano into playing like a harpsichord.  But I kept drifting off to the context.  Forty years, give or take, with some notable interludes for health issues (problems with a hand, ugh).  Forty years.  And I would guess, a good chunk, maybe most of it, on the road.  On the road meaning--well, what, exactly?  Three concerts a week?  Four?  More?  A different hotel room every night?   I assume he does not travel with an elaborate equipage.  But what, then?  Is he alone?  How does he fill the time?  My friend who writes mystery novels--he actually kind of likes the road, because he says he gets a lot of work done in hotel rooms. But all he needs is a yellow pad, which I assume the concierge will send up.  I've been in a lot of hotel rooms myself, but I never yet saw one that came equipped with a piano.  An electric keyboard, maybe?  Can that be enough?  And if he is alone and at loose ends all this time in strange hotel rooms--well, how does he keep from drinking?  Even if he doesn't drink, his mini-bar bill must be astronomic.

Oh, and a footnote?   What lunatic thought it right to embellish the stage with two enormous clusters of plant life?  I hope--I assume--they cleared it with the artiste first, but what of the audience, who are supposed to remain quiet and well-behaved?  I don't know, I suppose they might have been plastic.   No matter; every time I looked at them, my nose began to crinkle.

Fn.  Actually, Perahia occupies center stage for a culture clash at Chez Buce.  We are the proud owners of two versions of Bach's Goldberg Variations (actually, more than two, but two that count).  Mrs. B favors the Perahia; I pledge my fealty to Rosalyn Tureck.  Although at the end of the day, I still come back to the point that this stuff was written for harpsichord and harpsichord it should be.  So maybe Perahia was on the right track after all.

Here's Perahia with the final aria from the Goldberg:

And here's a bit  of Tureck:

"Oh Listen, They're Playing Our Song!"

Overheard at Chez Buce.  The subject was the music of our youth.

--You remember Ralph Flanagan?
--Who?
--Ralph Flanagan.  Big band.
--Never heard of him.
--Oh you remember.  He was big the year I was a senior in high school.
--I guess I was too young.
--Sammy Kaye, Blue Barron, Alvino Rey.
--Well I remember Sammy Kaye.
--Flanagan  has a Wiki page--oh wait:

As of August 19, 2010, Ralph Flanagan and his Orchestra were listed by EMI Music as a missing royaltor, which means that EMI have lost contact with the estate of Flanagan and his heirs and band members, and that royalty checks are being returned to the record company by the Post Office.

 Fame is fleeting.  Whereupon we cracked a bottle of bubbly and fired up a Nat King Cole CD.    Seemed to be some kind of bootleg from Mexico, with cha cha cha.

Footnote: why are so many of these big band guys from Ohio?  Flanagan was from Loraine.  Sammy Kaye was from Lakewood.    Blue Barron, Cleveland. Guy Lombardo came from London, Ontario, just across Lake Erie.   Alvino Rey was born in Oakland but the family moved back to Cleveland when he was two.  Evidently they wanted to guarantee him a career in big bands.

Another Casualty of Google: the Half-Forgotten Song

I've had one of those little threads of music in my mind for the past few days; the kind that can drive you nuts because you can't quite remember it and can't quite forget it either. The theme is gimme the old.   Gimme the old da da dee dada da.  Gimme the old--what?  Gimme a pigfoot and a bottle of beer?  Gimme that old-time religion?  Gimme shelter?  Gimme gimme gimme?  Nothing quite worked.

But Google "gimme the old" and the first hit, at least a few minutes ago as a "Keep Calm" Poster with the injunction "Keep Calm and Gimme the old Razzle Dazzle"  (Italics mine).

Oh, that's it: not give me but give them (or more colloquially, give 'em) the old  razzle dazzle:

So there you have it: not even a vagrant snatch of melody can evade the reach of Inspector Google.

L1037 and the Resiliency of a Great Tradition

We passed a pleasant evening last night in the company of Note by Note, Ben Niles' engaging documentary about the construction of "L1037," a Steinway concert grand. It's a lovely piece of work--the movie, but of course also the piano--not impaired by the fact that it's a giant infomercial for Steinway, because what does it matter whether Steinway gets an infomercial or not anyway?  As many have noted it is also an elegy--threnody?--to old-fashioned craft where guys (and yes, some women) get to do jobs they enjoy  for a decent piece of change.  The nearest comparison I can think of is those shots you get at the HD operas of backstage crews at the Met, although I suspect the Met crews get paid better, and that the Steinway crews exercise more skill.  

Our enjoyment was  not greatly dampened by the thought that the old family firm is just now being sold to an LBO house at a 33 percent premium over the recent trading price.  A spokesman for the buyer says  they are “not contemplating any changes to any of the manufacturing operations,” and one's natural first thought is: yeah, right.  The obvious path in a deal like this is to replace all the brass fittings with plastic and then trade off the brand name until it wears out at which time you throw it away.  But maybe not: Warren Buffett did business with Katherine Graham for a generation without ever trying to tell her how to run The Washington Post (and now that I think of it, the top guy at the shop that bought Steinway is also a director of the New York Times).  So we shall see.

Chez Buce is not favored with a Steinway, grand or otherwise, but we do have a lovely little Petrof upright; Mrs. Buce likes to tickle the ivories while I prepare dinner which is win-win as far as we're concerned. We bought it a few years back for about $6,000.  The tuner told us last week we could sell it for $26,000, which would make it the best investment we ever undertook.  But unlike the Steinways, we are not disposed to sell.

Seeing the Steinway show and eyeing our prized Petrof, I was prompted to do a bit of Googling. I learn that Petrof was a Bohemian who went down to Vienna to learn the piano trade, and built a firm which (so far as I can tell) remains in family hands today--a demographic not unlike Mrs. Buce's grandfather, although he never owned a piano company, or a piano.  And here's another fact that should have dawned on me before: evidently Petrof was confiscated by the Commies in 1948, returning to private (family) hands only after 1989.  I'd love to know more about that: were the Reds smart enough to realize that they had a golden goose, best left undisturbed?

But the history does offer a thread of consolation: if Petrof can survive the Soviet Minotaur, maybe Steinway can survive an Wall Street buyout.

Flash Music

So my cousin Dave shipped me this lovely bit of flash music from the Plaça de Sant Roc in Barcelona.  It's wonderful in its own right and it brought back happy memories of the day just a couple of years ago when Mrs. B and I trooped through the same square with a couple of adolescents: we elders had to yield up assorted articles of clothing so the nubile 18-year-old could pass the modesty and decency test for entry into the old church.

Mrs. B shipped Dave's clip off to the other adolescent who was with us in Barcelona; he graciously responded with a favorite of his own.  I  guess I have said before, I am totally in the tank for flash music, particularly flash opera.  Duly prompted I went looking for more exemplars to share back.

I did find some, but I also picked up a bit of unintended education.  Some takeaways: one, there are a lot of flash-whatevers: the number is growing, rapidly if perhaps not quite exponentially.  Two, they vary: some really wonderful, a few kind of bad and most--well, most pretty much you would expect "most" to be. And three, sad to say I think I can descry the viper of commercialism.  There seems to be an ad agency somewhere that can produce you a flash performance that looks just like Disney, or  maybe it is Disney (I choose not to link).

Another point, really a new-to-me insight: some  items lend themselves to flash better than others.  The "Ode to Joy," supra, works nicely.  It seems a particular favorite is Orff's Carmina Burana and I guess I can see why: big chorus, lots of noise and drama. Here's an  an appealing rendition, from the Westbahnhof in Vienna. Here's another, this from Indianapolis (seems de rigeur for the location shot to show the crowds going about their business all innocent before the music pops).

The opera standards are popular.  There's plenty of Mozart, including this from Aix.  Also Verdi; here's a bit from SFO under the name of "pop-up opera," which seems right for the occasion.  Carmen, of course; here's a gratifyingly underproduced version from the grand old Spanish city of, um, Edinburgh.  Here's another, this from Grenoble, mostly a one-person performance but I'd say the girl is good.

Indeed all good stuff, although for a real flash mob, I'd have to admit it is best to have something more, like, flash.  So it just may be the grand prize ought to go to this one from the Cape Cod Stop 'n Shop (and a tip o' the cornet mute to  my sister Sally, who sent it to me from next door in South Harwich).

Update:  And here is a more general introduction to flashmob culture.

Piaba

Well, if you recognize the word, you must be really old.  It was part of the culture of our youth, almost entirely as rendered by Harry Belafonte an exemplar of the domesticated calypso that made him so distinctive.  As in:

"The woman piaba and the man piaba
and the Ton Ton call baka lemon grass,
The lily root, gully root, belly root uhmm,
And the famous grandy scratch scratch.

Okay, so you thought you knew what "piaba" means, but are you sure?  Urban Dictionary for example--for which there is nothing too deeply immured in pond scum--Urban Dictionary (at least of this writing) offers  no help on the point.

Other sources, are beguiling, but baffling.  A Wiki dictionary says it's Spanish,a form of "piar," "to chirp" and just once in my life I would like to address somebody in the formal second person imperfect indicative,  "usted piaba,"  "you have chirped."

But wait folks, there's more: here's a Portuguese source which says (I think) tht it is a small fresh-water fish, not to be confused with a salt-water fish of the same name.  Also a river in Brazil.  Not sure whether it chirps.

All of which is entertaining, although it doesn't quite add up.    Chirp?  Fish?  River?  Piaba?  But wait, folks, it doesn't end there--turns out there's more again  A bit more Googling, built on patience and an excess of free time, and we get a whole new view of things.  We discover that it's not a verb, and not a fish.  It's a plant.  Here's a certain Chelsea Fung, self-identified as Guyanese but seconded to Toronto for a course in gender studies::

Woman-piaba (which is our vernacular name in Guyana), Hyptis pectinata (scientific name), is native to tropical America according to American sources, and native to West Africa according to African and Caribbean sources. Thus the origin of the plant is somewhat determined or claimed by the people who first ‘discovered’ its multiple medicinal and spiritual uses. Nevertheless, H pectinata is widely naturalized throughout the earth’s tropical zone. Woman-piaba belongs to the Lamiaceae family along with mint, lavender and basil.

Within the Caribbean, Brazil, tropical America and West Africa, woman-piaba is used for various medicinal and healing purposes. The Patamona Indians in Kamana, Guyana, boil the leaves and use the water for treating ‘bush yaws‘ or boil the whole plant and drink the water for tubercolosis. According to well-known Maroon herbalist in Jamaica, Ivelyn Harris, the Maroon cure for hot flashes is a piaba tea, which is used by many women in the Rio Grande Valley when they are going through menopause. In Mampong, Ghana, the leaf is ground to a paste and mixed with kaolin in water and taken three times daily for vomiting in pregnancy. These are amongst numerous other medicinal and healing uses, only few of which are disclosed. ...

The plant itself is gendered in the context of its uses and nomenclature used by Guyanese people, as the stalks that have the flowers and buds are used for varying symptoms or difficulties associated with menstruation, menopause and pregnancy, hence the reason for calling it ‘woman-piaba.‘ However, the stalks that have the broad, serrated leaves are used in decoctions such as aphrodisiacs for men, hence the name, ‘man-piaba‘. I initially thought that woman-piaba and man-piaba were two different plants. However, as Mr Tiwari, one of the elders I spoke with put it, they “are tubers of the same origin – man-piaba being ‘hard’ and woman-piaba being soft.

Well of course.  Stands to reason, wouldn't you say?  Now as to ton ton and grsndy scratch scratch...

Here's a Belafonte rendition,apparently from back when dinosaurs were young:

Needless to say, you can also get it as a telephone ringtone. Oh, and I guess I should have mentioned--it's also an acronym for Public Investors Arbitration Bsr Association.

An Odd Beethoven Moment

We indulged in what I''d count s one of the oddest Beethoven experiences of my life down at the Mondavi Center at Davis last night.  The subject was the violin concerto in D major, Op. 61.  The conductor was Herbert Blomstedt (with the San Francisco Symphony).  The soloist was Augustin Hadelich except that's the thing: the two (symphony and soloist) scarcely seemed to be in the same room together; you had to wonder if they had ever met.   Hadelich was technically dazzling although he played like a kid, younger than you might expect for his 28 years.  And maybe that's the thing; at 85, Blomstedt is more than three times the young fella's age, easily old enough to be his grandfather.  You had to wonder what it might be like if they teamed young Gustavo Dudamel (now 32, after what seems already to have been a long career) with a soloist of, say, 96.  It was fun to bask in the sound of the Stradivarius, though, although you did feel a twinge of pity for the poor Strad as the young man assaulted it with pizzicati in the Paganini encore.

For the second half, we had the orchestra minus soloist doing Nielsen's fifth.  It was all comfortably Nordic in a Strindbergian/Munchian/Kierkegaardian/Mankellian sort of way. You got the feeling that Blomstedt the Swede felt a lot more at home with his Danish neighbor.  It was entertaining to reflect that the murky Dane's day job was to conduct the band at the Tivoli Gardens.

More Crossover Klezmer

For no particular reason except that it's fun, here's a bit more on klezmer crossover.  Start here:

That's "Der Shtiller Bulgar," recorded at last year's blogapalooza in Palo Alto a concert of the Abe Schwartz Band in New York City in 1918, and if you hear the strains of the Benny Goodman orchestra here, you are not wrong. Trumpeter Ziggy Elman massaged it into "We Meet and the Angels Sing," made famous by Elman and later by Eydie Gorme (here's an Eydie rendition with some lovely nostalgia shots of old New York).

For comparison, take a listen to the first bars of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and tell me you can't hear the klezmer echoes:

Finally, for those who said it couldn't be done--klezmer bluegrass:

Clarinet Klezmer

My loyal commentators offer good-natured raillery on the topic of clarinet klezmer.  But it's no joke.  A well-sourced Wiki traces it back to the 19th-Century European roots, and finds echoes in Gershwin and Benny Goodman.  Here's Giora Feldman, who played clarinet klezmer in Spielberg's Schindler's List:

.  

But for something completely different, here's ukulele klezmer: 

Why the Clarinet?

We've taken in some lovely music on our NYC sojourn this week but perhaps the most accomplished performer was the clarinetist Narek Arutyunian in the Young Artist series ar the Morgan library.  He wriggles around like a teen-ager which he was until not long ago but he's got passion and brio and he is bound to sober up with age.  But t raises a question: who exactly, takes up the clarinet in a serious way?  I don't mean to disparage it--I grew up on Benny Goodman, Woody Herman and Artie Shaw. 

But I'd like to know more about the motivation.   Grant that it is possible to play it well, you still you'd have to agree that the clarinet, like its kissin' cousin the saxophone, is one of the easiest instruments to play badly--just the opposite of the oboe, say, or the French horn.  The kid who takes up the oboe is the clever loner who knows that with an oboe there won't be much competition and he'll get to go on all the trips.   The clarinetist is one of a multitude.  Does he start out telling himself that yes, I am one of a pack, but I will excel?  Or does he simply join the pack and then one day later wake up to the fact that he has real talent and can make something happen?

Personal afterthought. I took up the trumpet because I wanted to impress chicks.   I was terrible at the trumpet and not much better with the chicks.  Years later I realized I probably could have done okay with the bass, and still carried off all the chickwise action I could handle.  Autumnal wisdom.

New York Music

New York seems to be full of music tonight.  I assume the St. Patrick's day serenaders are in voice somewhere as the Irish release their pet snakes on the new world as vengeance for the potato.  But we were otherwise occupied; we took the subway from Murray Hill to Lincoln  Center, passing within earshot of  at least three buskers.   At Grand Central, there was a sort of Neo-Dixieland band with a strong beat, old guys who looked like they had been working together for years.  On the shuttle was a young guy unsubtle in his solicitation for money.  He said it was his first time; the guy next to me muttered "you're lying," and I think the guy next to me was right: the kid had pretty good R&B chops.  The woman across from me began to hum along and for a moment I thought I was watching the beginning of a flash mob, but no such luck.

At Times Square there was a steel drummer, loud enough to fill the  the tube up to 50th Street except he seemed to be suffering from some kind of mechanical function that was crimping his style.

All this was prep for the destination stop: Lincoln Center, to take in Alan Gilbert's presentation of the Bach's B Minor Mass.  This is one of those pieces of music that took the top of my head off when I first heard it in college--Hermann Scherchen, though I can't remember which orchestra (here is an old Scherchen although I don't think it is the one I remember--date is to late).  Anyway, imagine my surprise when I learned a couple of years later that it was a like, you know,  mass (I had grown up among Catholics but I never got the memo)

By his own account, Gilbert is trying to do something a little different with Bach these days--trying to move away from the austere, somewhat fussy "early music" purity that I grew up on (and loved, or love).  Gilbert has ideal equipment to work with: a fine orchestra and a first-class chorus, and for the Mass four topnotch soloists.  At the end, I'd have to say it didn't quite work: energetic and accessible but somewhat deficient in majesty and awe.  Call me a fogey but I like my Bach with majesty and awe.  Energy and accessibility we can leave to the buskers.

Of whom speaking, we saw four or five more on the trip  home, including a woman trying mightily to mount a disco act with two pre-schoolers.  At 10:30 at night.  Hope the kids had had naps.  Mama too.

Military Music

I seem to be absorbed these days in the topic of leadership, especially military leadership, especially the kind that goes pear-shaped.  I think I got entangled reading Jean Edward Smith's fine biography of Eisenhower, and trying to make sense of exactly what he did and how.  Then Tom Ricks' The Generals, which pursues the same topic in a larger arena.   Right now I'm wrapped up in Paul Kennedy's Engineers of Victory, about World War II from what you might call the level of "middle management."  It's superb and I hope to say more about it later.  Meanwhile, this is a fine time for a couple of my favorite stirring military anthems:

Afterthought:  yes, I first zeroed in on "Hitler" in its original avatar as the Colonel Bogey March, in David Lean's Bridge over the River Kwai, which used to be one of my favorite movies--until I realized it was about the Brits giving management advice to the Japanese, whereupon I lost all capacity to take it with a straight face.   You'll remember that in the movie, they whistle, all in tune and in time.  I think I read somewhere that they selected whistling instead of the more plausible verbal rendition because they didn't want to distract from the story.  Anyway, Be Happy In Your Work!

The Most Perfect Ever?

In an Opera News interview with Susan Graham, interviewer William R. Braun flatly declares Mozart's "Ch'io mi scordi di te?" to be "the single most perfect piece of music ever written."

Is it?  Youtube offers  number of exemplars.   Here's one from my sentimental favorite, Elizabeth Schwartzkopf:

another, this from Leontyne Price:

Braun also says that the piece is also "merciless in exposing the slightest flaw in vocal technique."   Wiki offers a helpful introduction.

Source: Braun, "Life, Continued," Opera News vol. 37, no. 6, December 2012 24-29, 29.

The Good Old Days Again: Music

Joel calls me out for calling the Golden Age music "trite."  He says: "The pop music of 1947-73 included Beatles, Rolling Stones and on and on IMHO not trite." Well, he's onto something here, but I won't go all the way. When I wrote "trite," I was really thinking about the 50s, maybe the late 40s.  Mainstream pop, Your Hit Parade, Gisele MacKenzie, Snooky Lanson.  Look, tastes differ but that stuff drove me wild, just a mind virus that took over potentially useful brain cells and stunned them into a kind of paralysis.   I had heard almost nothing of what we used to call "longhair" until I went off to college and I speak with perfect sincerity when I say I nearly cried tears of gratitude when I first heard some of the stuff that I came to like (came to like hell, it was love it first sight).  

I don't offer this as evidence of refined or superior taste, BTW.  In fact, quite the reverse: I think the problem was that I had (or have) an almost fatal vulnerability jingly tunes and doggerel verse and the first thing you know, the day is gone and I haven't thought a single thought worth remembering.  Guilty secret: for so many pop songs of the 50s, I can remember the silly parody better than the original ("you smile, your teeth fall out, your lips they taste like sauerkraut, it's tragic..."--you think I'm making this up? Go here).   Somebody, maybe Raymond Williams, speaks of a life spent "between activity and repose."  Boy do I get that one.

Anyway, moving forward to the 60s, I'll have to grant Joel the Beatles.  But I'll admit that my prejudices were so entrenched by the time they came along that it took my several years grasp just how good they really were: I do get it now, however belated.  The Rolling Stones--well you know, there is a whole torrent of contemporary music that I simply don't get.  Doesn't drive me nuts like Snooky Lanson (poor Snooky, I should quit picking on him).  But it doesn't really grab me either.  Never got Elvis. Never got the Rolling Stones.  Never got Dylan for the most part, the few funky numbers like "The Mighty Quinn" excite a certain sense of the absurd.    I did develop and retain an affection for a certain kind of faux folk: the Carter Family, Bill Monroe, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, Steeleye Span.  But the list does seem a tad interstitial, not exactly definitive of a culture.  Still, even as qualified, I'd have to say (concede?) that the 60s were a lot more interesting than the 50s, and that the 70s were in some ways actually kind of fun.  

Fun fact: I learn from Wiki that Snooky spent the last 20-30 years of his life as a Chrysler salesman back in Nashville.  Also per Wiki, "it is said that big band singer Snooky Lanson's weekly attempts to perform Elvis Presley's 'Hound Dog' hit in 1956 hastened the end of the series."

This just in: Joel emails "we disagree re the 50s."    Ah well, de gustibus.  I wonder where we stand on 1947?

Followup: I can't find "Hound Dog," but I do find this:

Oysters

Mavis asks:

Did you say [your mother] used to sing a song about oysters when you would ride in the car? Do you remember Father and Son in an Oyster Stew?

Did I mention that, really [yes you did--look here--ed.]?  The answer is "yes," she sang it to fend off mayhem in the back seat and I am surprised how shadowy is its web footprint.  I suppose it could have been an advertising jingle, though if so you think we might have heard more of it.  Anyway, she sang a lot of such songs: "The Moon Shines Tonight on Pretty Red Wing;" "My Girl's a Corker, She's a New Yorker."  Most of which you might call "rowdy college boy" songs, though I suspect she didn't know all that many rowdy college boys (I think she would have liked to, but they weren't on offer).  All with saucy subtexts which she was tactful enough not to inflict on her prepubescent audience.   Though I certainly heard them from her later: I think I have noted before that I never told her an ahem  indelicate story that she didn't know before I told it to her, and the proof was that she would interrupt with the punch line.

Lyrics to "Oyster Stew"are here.  Down-home "Red Wing" did not sound quite like the following, but it's close enough:

On This Day in History...

They just don't write good songs any more.  H/T Bruce Bartlett's Facebook page.

Satchmo Controls the Narrative

Andrew Gelman rubs his eyes in disbelief at the inglorious display of domestic disharmony between Louis Armstrong and his beloved Lucille.  "Did Louis Armstrong and his wife really have this conversation?" he asks.  "This is just too much!"

Well, you know now, I wasn't actually there, and it's a little hard to believe that any couple will actually record the vituperation they hurl at each other at five o'clock in the morning.  But it doesn't sound entirely out of character for Louis--recall that this is the guy who felt comfortable giving samples of his favorite laxative to members of the British Royal Family.  And it does recall my favorite Louis story which I overheard 30 years ago from the next table in an uncrowded Cincinnati hotel restaurant.  Reputedly this happened during one of those interminable road trips where Lucille managed while Louis entertained.  Evidently Lucille came home one night and found Louis in flagrante delicto* with a woman who was, well, not Lucille.  Lucille gazed wide-eyed.  Louis gazed wide-eyed.  Then he shouted:

 

"Lucille!  Lucille!  Get this woman offa me!"

Now there is a guy who knows how to control the narrative.

Gracie Field Sings the Bankruptcy Exemption Anthem

Earl Scruggs RIP

Cripple Creek, my favorite:

 
Afterthoughts: I'm feeling impelled to retell some Scruggs stories. I can't find my copy of the biography I read a while back (I hope I didn't send it to Goodwill), but let me wing it and hope I'm right: by my recollection, he was born dirt poor and then his father died. He learned to play the banjo before he could hold it; he put it on the floor and knelt beside it.

As an unknown young muscian, he once left the road to go back to the cotton mill because it paid better. As a struggling performer, he and the band would operate for days at a time out of the car, one driving while the others slept. Mrs. Buce asked, did they bring a change of underwear?

By all the evidence that I've seen, as modest, decent and unassuming a man as ever walked the earth. And a stupefying performer.