I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in "Cheers & Jeers".
OK, you've been warned - here is this week's tomfoolery material that I posted.
CHEERS to Bill and Michael in PWM, our Laramie, Wyoming-based friend Irish Patti and ...... well, each of you at Cheers and Jeers. Have a fabulous weekend .... and week ahead.
ART NOTES— an exhibition entitled Murillo: From Heaven to Earth— fifty works by the Spanish Golden age painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo, and the largest gathering of his work in the US in twenty years — will open this Sunday at the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, Texas and run through January 29th.
HAIL and FAREWELL to two heroes of mine who died just a day apart (and were a year apart). One was John Stearns— a standout football player for the University of Colorado and star catcher for the NY Mets for some lean years of theirs (1974-1984) whose body was riddled with cancer, yet willed himself to attend the team’s Old Timers Day last month — who has died at age seventy-one.
The other was the long-time jazz host for radio station WGBH in Boston, Eric Jackson— whose slow, baritone voice explained the musical selections he just played (plus all the personnel) and was an MC at several concerts in greater Boston — who has died at the age of seventy-two.
THURSDAY's CHILD is named Chicken the Cat — who is such an anxiety-battling companion to an 11-year-old autistic boy, that she was named the winner of the Furr-ever Friends category at Britain’s National Cat Awards last month.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #1 is this essay by the Brookings Institution author Jonathan Rauch in The Atlantic— listing six steps that 45 and his team (openly) will follow if allowed back in power … using Viktor Orban as a role model.
MUSIC NOTES— this month sees the revival of the old rock music publication Creem magazine— which existed from 1969-1989, had such writers as Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Lisa Robinson, Cameron Crowe and Greil Marcus (and was the subject of a 2019 documentary) — now becoming a quarterly. Yet the founder’s son plans not to offer the magazine on newsstands or in bookstores, but only by subscription.
FRIDAY's CHILD is named Beau the Cat— a Colorado Springs kitteh who survived an apartment complex fire overnight, returned to this woman by firefighters.
YOUR WEEKEND READ #2 is this essay in Haaretz by Alon Pinkas, on one trait that the mainstream media in the US and Israel share: Both-sidesism.
BRAIN TEASER— try this Quiz of the Week's News from the BBC ...… and the usually easier, less UK-centered New York Times quiz.
OLDER-YOUNGER BROTHERS?— musician John Denver and TV host Rick Steves.
...... and finally, for a song of the week ...........................… last week saw the death of the film star Marsha Hunt — who has died at the age of one hundred and four. She had been the last surviving person in this 1943 photo of the stars of MGM— which included Jimmy Stewart, Lucille Ball, Katherine Hepburn, Gene Kelly and musician Tommy Dorsey. Another was Harry James…. universally acclaimed as one of the great trumpeters of the big band era and who made-it into the post-war era as a bandleader quite successfully. Yet he garnered some bad press from music critics and (via drinking and gambling) died nearly broke. Almost forty years later, his fascinating life deserves a second look.
Born in Albany, Georgia in 1916 to a traveling circus family, he learned trumpet to play in the circus band. In Beaumont, Texas, he won a statewide talent contest at age fourteen, leading him to turn professional (with local bands) and then hired by bandleader Ben Pollack when he was just nineteen. It didn’t take long for his talents to be recognized, and he was hired by Benny Goodman at age twenty.
With national exposure he became a recognized figure; even recording solo work on the side. He left to begin his own orchestra in 1939 at age twenty-three, beginning a 40+ year career as a bandleader. He was recognized for amazing talent (with Miles Davis noting in his autobiography of his admiration) with a fat tone, well-versed in the blues (having grown-up in Texas) and matinée idol looks.
That same year of 1939 he heard a then-unknown Frank Sinatra on a radio show, hiring him. But as his orchestra struggled, he was unable to match the more lucrative offer Tommy Dorsey was able to woo Sinatra away with by year’s end, and Harry James subsequently lost his Columbia contract.
Then in 1941, he made a change in approach: adding strings to his band and playing some more syrupy ballads (in addition to his more standard fare) with over-used vibrato. Along some noted singers (including Dick Haymes, Kitty Kallen and especially Helen Forrest) he hit the big time, with several Top Ten recordings. In 1943 he divorced his first wife to marry Betty Grable (who sang on one of his hits) and when Glenn Miller went into military service: he gave his radio show slot to Harry James (who was 4-F due to a bad back).
Even the end of WW-II where he (along with most big band leaders) had to downsize to a smaller group, he was still popular: appearing (as himself) in several MGM films and adopting a more blues-oriented music. In the 1950 film Young Man with a Horn— he played the trumpet (that Kirk Douglas portrayed on-screen) and that same year hit the Top Ten with Doris Day singing Would I Love You. Among the Great American Songbook classics he recorded were All or Nothing at All, One O’Clock Jump, I Cover the Waterfront and I Got it Bad (And That Ain’t Good).
His star began to fade in the rock & roll era, but had a 1957 album hit Wild About Harry and kept his band going for the rest of his life. Many music critics were disdainful at some of the more melodramatic tunes he recorded, with One (You Made Me Love You) leading the music historian Dan Morgenstern to declare it as “the record critics never forgave Harry James for recording”. After 1968 his band became more of a nostalgia act for his last fifteen years.
Harry James, for all of his success, could have had even more but for some poor business decisions, the late music critic Terry Teachout (a big fan) believed. He saw himself as a bandleader too much at the expense of his (still) formidable trumpet playing and relied too much on the matinée idol aura of his youth, failing to modernize … which led to lack of knowledge by baby boomers of his soloing abilities. And he clung to playing in ballrooms and casinos, not trying to ingratiate himself with modern audiences.
All reviewers noted his own personal demons: raised in a traveling family without love, he was an immature soul embarrassed by his lack of education. He was cruel to his three wives and cold towards his children. A chain smoker, womanizer, heavy drinker and a high-stakes gambler: he was nearly broke at his death from lymphatic cancer at age sixty-seven in 1983 (where Frank Sinatra gave the eulogy, saying Harry was his big break). Helen Forrest said that only the bandstand was where he felt safe, and another singer (Marion Morgan) thought Harry James:
"Gave all his warmth and love through his trumpet. There just wasn't much left."
His legacy is safe, though: he appeared in ten feature films (often as himself) and from 1939-1953 had seventy Billboard charted hits (the Rolling Stones have had fifty-six, by contrast). There are numerous compilation albums, a 1999 biography and there is a ghost band with his name performing to this day, nearly forty years after his death.
What to choose? One instrumental he wrote, Trumpet Blues from the 1944 film Bathing Beauty, starring Red Skelton, Basil Rathbone and Esther Williams.
And from the same film: I Cried for You with vocals from Helen Forrest.