Jeff Danziger/New York Times News ServiceFriday, December 10, 2010
Thursday, December 09, 2010
Bob Dorough: In Appreciation Of The Best Jazz Musician You Never Heard Of
THE DF&C, BOB DOROUGH AND MEMy first face-to-face meeting with jazz legend Bob Dorough was in a booth at a greasy spoon near his home in northeastern Pennsylvania, and while we did eventually get around to talking music, the reason for the sitdown was that he had been good friends with a guy about whom I was writing a book.
The reason I was writing the book was that the guy, a popular bar owner and community do-gooder, had the misfortune of being hacked to death by an ax-wielding madman whom the police had never been particularly interested in finding -- and so didn't. This is because the guy was . . . well, from the wrong side of the tracks and hung out with low lifes like bikers and hippies and jazz musicians like Dorough. That's how the justice system works in those parts.
It's a testament to Dorough's good naturedness that he maintained the kind of grin that so many sweet eccentrics have through a couple cups of joe and some buttered toast although he obviously was uncomfortable discussing this unfortunate slicing and dicing.
And what I didn't know at the time was that my book -- The Bottom of the Fox: A True Story of Love, Devotion & Cold-Blooded Murder -- would touch him deeply, so deeply that he penned a song with an eponymous title that he debuted at a jazz festival in September and is recording for a forthcoming album.
It is a hallmark of Dorough's seven-decade career that many people have heard him but didn't know it.
Dorough, who turns a righteous 87 years old on December 12, a birthday that he shares with jazz vocalist greats Frank Sinatra and Joe Williams, may hold the world record for uncredited appearances on jazz albums, but is best unknown as a voice and primary composer of most of the songs used in "Schoolhouse Rock!," the popular series of educational animated shorts appearing on Saturday morning television in the 1970s and 1980s on ABC television affiliates.
Among Dorough's masterful compositions, which my then young kids and millions of others soaked up with sponge-like enthusiasm, were "My Hero, Zero," "Three Is a Magic Number" and my own fave, "Conjunction Junction."
Many jazz fans first heard Dorough in 1967 and of course didn't know it.
That was because producer Teo Macero never credited him as the piano player on Thelonious Monk's popular Monk album. Gary Giddins also notes in a wonderful Village Voice profile that Dorough's is the "high-pitched, nerdy male voice singing a 115-second panegyric, 'Nothing Like You,' backed by winds and bongos" on Miles Davis's Sorcerer.* * * * *While his piano chops are admirable, it is Dorough's nonpareil ability to interpret lyrics that are his trademark. This includes what is known as vocalese, the singing of lyrics written for melodies that were originally instrumental compositions, usually entirely in syllables. (Think Cab Calloway and Al Jarreau.)
Writing about Beginning To See the Light, Dorough's 1976 album, Giddins notes:
"Jazz musicians usually come a cropper when they try to get down with rock tunes; yet Dorough begins begins with 'Don't Think Twice, It's All Right' in a version I prefer to Dylan's. The rhythm is exactly right, but what locks it down for me is the way he phrases 'Don't think twice, baby, that's all right' -- the last three words emitted in a rapid bullfrog croak."
How Dorough became a headliner is a story in itself and one that befits an eccentric (he was a youthful 79 when we first spoke and still wore his gray hair in a ponytail.) In fact, somebody needs to write his biography (his wife Sally told me with a practiced roll of the yes that he claims that he'll get around to it), although a documentary film is in the works.
Dorough was born in Arkansas, grew up in Texas and played in an Army band during World War II, an experience that fortunately did not dull his enthusiasm for music. He moved to New York City around 1950 and was playing piano in a Times Square tap dance studio when he was introduced to Sugar Ray Robinson, for my money the greatest boxer of all time, who had temporarily left the ring and was putting together a song and dance revue. Dorough became the revue's music director and traveled with it throughout the U.S. and Europe.
Dorough left Robinson in Paris and lived there for two years, recording with singer Blossom Dearie, with whom he long collaborated, before moving to Los Angeles where he gigged around, including playing between sets for comedian Lenny Bruce. In 1956, he released his first album, Devil May Care, which included his signature song of the same name, as well as a version of "Yardbird Suite" with his own vocalese lyrics over the famous Charlie Parker song.
Miles Davis liked the album so much that he asked Dorough to write and record a Christmas song. The result was the downbeat "Blue Xmas," released in 1962 on Columbia's Jingle Bell Jazz compilation album. Dorough also laid down the voice track to "Nothing Like You," which it should be noted is one of the very few vocals on Davis's 100-plus albums.
He also has written for Mel Tormé and produced two albums for Spanky and Our Gang, adding jazz-influenced arrangements to their folky sound. Oh, and he has an organic farm in Arkansas.
Dorough, borrowing a line from the Beatles' "With a Little Help From My Friends," has said that his goal in life is "to sing you a song and have you not walk out on me," and in that he has succeeded extraordinarily well and with extraordinary good cheer.Photograph by Bud Nealy
Wednesday, December 08, 2010
The Tragedy Of Elizabeth Edwards
Pat Nixon was a hapless figure who predeceased her disgraced former president husband by less than a year. Joan Kennedy, who like the former first lady neither sought nor was particularly capable of the political role thrust on her, was driven to drink and eventually divorced Ted Kennedy.
But there may be no more tragic story of a politician's wife in recent years than that of Elizabeth Edwards, who died yesterday at age 61 after the cancer that had ravaged her body for over six years was no longer treatable.
Unlike Pat Nixon, Joan Kennedy and countless other politicians' spouses, Elizabeth Edwards didn't just encourage husband John Edwards' quest for the White House. She was the gasoline that fueled his ambitions, she contributed to her husband's phony public persona, and she opted for politics over family when it became obvious that he was having an affair with a campaign videographer and had fathered her child.
That Elizabeth Edwards chose to be complicitous in that open secret should not diminish our grief for a woman who was a loving mother to four children, one of whom was taken from her in a car crash, became a symbol of resilience and determination for cancer sufferers, and campaigned tirelessly for health-care reform. But as callous as it may be to some people, pretending that a complicity which defined the closing years of her life did not exist in looking back on that life would be irresponsible.
I cannot help but wonder if the pain Elizabeth Edwards felt as the last chapter of her life is written would not have been at least somewhat assuaged if she hadn't made so many bad choices.
Chief among those bad choices, of course, was opting for prestige and power over fidelity.
Tuesday, December 07, 2010
Washington's Marie Antoinette Moment
There is no more pungent example of the rot at the heart of American democracy than the charade playing out in Washington this week over extending Bush-era tax cuts. Long story short, beleaguered middle-class families and individuals will be denied continued tax relief unless the wealthiest Americans can still have their cake and eat it too.
And make no mistake, while Republicans have held hostage the tax-cut extension package and a vitally unemployment benefit extension provision appended to it, the Democrats also have been shamelessly stroking the tummies of the Mercedes and BMW crowd. How else to explain why they were unable to muster the 60 Senate votes that could have undercut a Republican filibuster on two votes, one that would have raised tax rates for couples making over $250,000 and individuals making $200,000, and another to end tax breaks on incomes exceeding $1 million.
There is an alternative -- letting tax cuts for all Americans expire in the service of long-term solvency, thereby indirectly protecting Social Security and Medicare.
But as sensible as this may be, even in the waning days of their congressional majority, the Democrats are nothing if not cowardly and rightly fear that the ceaseless Republican talking machine will make political hay out of this bit of common sense, as it surely will since the most likely outcome is a two-year tax-cut extension, which means the whole issue would have to be reprised on the eve of the 2012 elections.
Oh, and it also would help if Barack Obama reconnected with his testicles.
The Myth Of Tokyo Rose
The fires has not even been extinguished at Pearl Harbor some 69 years ago today when stories began circulating among U.S. troops of a woman they called "Tokyo Rose," a siren of the Pacific who called out to lonely servicemen in a sultry voice on Japanese radio stations, usually foretelling their demise.
Trouble is, there was no Tokyo Rose.Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish
Monday, December 06, 2010
This Just In: John F. Kennedy Is Still Alive (But In My Dreams, Not In Yours)
(PORTIONS ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN JANUARY 2009)I can remember some but by no means all of my dreams, which are seldom erotic, rarely nightmarish and more often than not mundane, frequently involving people and places that I have known, although thepeople are in places different than where I have known them, while the places are conglomerations of, say, a big old farmhouse where I once lived, a rustic high street bookshop in England and a coastal fishing village in Japan. These nocturnal journeys usually have soundtracks, sometimes music that I recently listened to with no apparent connection to the dream and seems to have been selected by some mad deejay. My dear departed parents make occasional cameo appearances in my dreams, less so my siblings and children, and only rarely the woman who has to put up with me as I toss and turn my way through these somnambulations, which I am able to interrupt to have a drink of water from a bedside glass or a shuffle off to the
loo for a piddle, and then continue. Oh, and I always dream in color.
Having gotten those preliminaries out of the way, I am happy to report that John F. Kennedy is still alive. Or at least he was in a dream of several parts and epic length I had the other night that was more unusual than usual for several reasons, including it being partially in the third person; that is, unlike my usual modus, I could occasionally see myself as opposed to being inside myself looking out onto the dreamscape.
This dream opened on a balcony above an old and rather ornate Olympic-sized indoor swimming pool, possibly at the New York Athletic Club on Central Park South where I played water polo as a young man before living in that farmhouse andvisiting that bookstore and fishing village. The occasion had the feel of a graduation or some other ceremony just ended. Everyone in the knot of a dozen or so people was dressed formally as would seem to befit such an occasion, and the center of attention was Mr. Kennedy, who by my reckoning is now a ripe 91 years old. He was shaking hands, back slapping and handing out really big Cuban cigars. I had several friends with me, but who they were was not revealed. There also were pair of elderly and diminutive identical twin butlers in evening coats and white gloves hovering nearby.
(I would like to pause for a moment to thank the folkswho do the lighting and cinematography for my dreams. The results are fabulous -- a texturally rich but slightly gauzy look reminiscent of a Baz Luhrmann movie.)
If you're wondering what John Kennedy would look like as a nonegenarian, the answer is an even puffier version of Teddy Kennedy, but with the same steely yet warm gaze and incredible greenish-gray eyes that met my baby blues when we shook hands on an airport tarmac a few weeks before the 1960 presidential election. (He was 44, I was 13.)
The dream Mr. Kennedy took my hand, his as firm as it had been at the airport, and introduced me to several of his companions with effusivepraise. Unfortunately, that part of the dream was interrupted by a water break, so I suppose I'll never know about what or why I was so great.
(If you, like me, think there may be a connection between spicy food and vivid dreaming, I would like to again pause to let you know that my pre-dream evening meal consisted of a bowl of pasta with a homemade clam sauce generously imbued with hot peppers. Ta-da!)
The over-the-pool formalities concluded and a big Cuban cigar tucked into a pocket of my waistcoat, we were escorted out a door by the bookend butlers onto an ivied university-like campus. Things get a little hazy here (it's a dream, okay?) but a door was opened to an outsized English estate car, possibly a custom Bentley, with wood side paneling and a cavernous back deck. I was beckoned inside.One of the butlers slipped behind the wheel, his bald head barely visible over the seatback, while his companion rode shotgun. Mr. Kennedy, his companions and my friends were nowhere to be seen. Sitting on the spacious back deck with legs crossed, as it was suggested that I also do, were several children that I didn't recall seeing at the pool and some older lasses whom I did. As noted, my dreams are seldom erotic, but I did eye one of the women with a lust that was not just in my heart.
"Off we go!" announced the butler driver as he hit the starter and the estate car charged out onto a wide boulevard under a full moon no doubt arranged by my dream lighting guy. Kaboom! We were suddenly riding very fast through New England farm country and the occasional picture-postcard town. At some point after a piddle break and brief announcement to my then stirring bed mate that I was having the mostamazing dream, it shifted into its final phase as the other butler declared "Here we go," or words to that effect. The estate car burst through a covered bridge, hurtled down a lane bordered by fieldstone fences and slowly lifted off, gaining altitude as I awoke.
Now here's where things get really interesting: The soundtrack to my dream was not something that I had recently heard, but rather something that I had wanted to hear and had left next to the stereo with that intention. Holy cripes! The very same music -- Santana's "Eternal Caravan Of Reincarnation/Waves Within" from the Caravanserai album -- came on the radio station that I was listening to as I wrote this the morning after. A marvelous piece of music but with no apparent connection to the dream. Natch.
If that wasn't a hoot, dig this: I decided to write out a draft of my dream as a textdocument before cutting and pasting it into this blog post. I have a blank document hanging around on the computer for such exercises and typically wipe this template clean after using it, but failed to do so last time. And so when I double-clicked on the template it came up with the text still intact from the last time. It was a quote from John-freaking-Kennedy that I had used after Barack Obama's victory in November. It goes like this:
"As we express our gratitude, we must never forget that the highest appreciation is not to utter words, but to live by them."
What does all of this mean? I really don't have a clue, but your thoughts are welcome.PAINTINGS BY KEVIN WRIGHT
Beautiful Photograph du Jour
WALKER (Highland Wildlife Park, Kingussie, Scotland)
Photograph by Jeff J. Mitchell/Getty Images
Hat tip to The Daily Dish
Saturday, December 04, 2010
Friday, December 03, 2010
Thursday, December 02, 2010
Wednesday, December 01, 2010
Palin & The Republican Party: In Which Cowardice Is The Better Part Of Virtue
No matter how you slice and dice the numbers, Sarah Palin will not be the next president of the United States and could not even get elected governor of Alaska, a job that she abandoned in mid-stream to get rich while still keeping an eye on Russia from her kitchen window.
Not despite but because of her consume-thin resume, Palin has become one of wealthier woman in the U.S. with an estimated $15 million annual income. This windfall, amassed without breaking a sweat, is from Fox News and reality show appearances, ghost-written books long on padding, obscenely high speaking fees on the rubber chicken circuit, and a potpourri of smarmy and insulting Twitter and FaceBook comments that reveal an overarching ignorance of the very things that presidents need to know.
But while all of this in fact qualifies Palin to become president in the eyes of the relatively small number of even Republicans who are thirsting for her to become their 2012 nominee, it is her chops as a man eater -- specifically the ability to cow what remains of the GOP establishment leadership -- that are greasing the skids for a presidential run.
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