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Tulsa TV Memories GroupBlog 220 TTM main | What's new on TTM? | GB Archive
http://www.rewindplay.com/airmenofnote/sounds/sounds.htm
Yes, you can listen to approx. 35 complete recordings spanning over 45 years.
You can download CD quality for a donation.
Help - I am told that there is a MP3 site out there for the USAF Jazz Band
with a special musical section of like 30 years of recordings or about 150
jazz number performances. This was the band Glenn Miller started. Talking
to friends at VA Tech about Stan Kenton - is how I first heard of it. You
can listen for free (a cut at a time) or for a $20 donation - download this
collection to your PC or iPod. Only VIPs and members of Congress can get
CDs. There are a bazillion USAF sites I have found. Anyone know about this?
Vic was honored as a Tulsa Radio Icon by the Tulsa Press Club in 2004. He was part of a talented group at KRMG in the 60s and 70s. He was also an announcer for the annual free Starlight concerts that have been held since the 1950s. Here's the 1983 program. That year, Steve Wilkerson and his wife Andrea Baker (mentioned earlier in this GB) were headliners. Jack Moore of KVOO-AM (who passed away in 2003) ran the sound. Ken Downing was missed. The late John Rigney was there, too.
"By mourning tongues
A veteran of KTUL in the 50s, then KOME and KRMG, then had his own ad agency. Never had the pleasure of knowing the man, but he had a fine set of pipes. Can't find my collected Auden at the moment, but Auden's words, more or less, about the death of Yeats, seem apropos: "The news of his death was kept from his poems." Would that it were, the news of Vic's death could be kept from his voice.> Vic Bastien, whose rich, instantly identifiable voice was broadcast over Tulsa airwaves for more than 40 years, died Friday. He was 76. No services are planned.
The 9th Annual Tulsa Overground Film and Music Festival is on this weekend, Sept 8-10. 80 short films, 15 bands, plus free beer for 21+. At the Tulsa Performing Arts Center, Cain's Ballroom and one night at the Admiral Twin! "Who Killed the Electric Car?" is playing at the Circle Cinema 9/8-14 (extended run). Both noted on the Bulletin Board.
If you happen to be in Hollywood this weekend, see the
World 3D Film Expo at the Egyptian
Theater, Sept 8-13. The 1969 X-rated 3D movie "The
Stewardesses" (oft-mentioned on this site) is showing. The
trailer is work-safe,
unless you have the volume high enough to broadcast some brief off-camera
huffing and puffing. It's pretty silly.
Jackie Coogan [Uncle Fester] was once married to Betty Grable. Carolyn Jones [Morticia Addams] was once married to Aaron Spelling. Blossom Rock [Grandmama] was the older sister of Jeanette MacDonald.
I found this information, and more at:
FindADeath.com.
Has anyone caught his act on XM Satellite Radio yet? He's on regularly Wednesdays and Thursdays. They re-run his program, "Theme Time Radio Hour," at hit and miss times on other channels, too, I think. Only Bob Dylan could name his show "Theme Time Radio Hour," and get away with it and be really cool doin' it, eh? I heard his promo for this week's show. It's an hour of tunes all related to the Bible. Hallelujah! Do I hear an amen, bros?
Delmeaux de Gillette du Coffeyville
The times they are a-changin'? For those who happened to miss this little item: LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Bob Dylan reached the top of the U.S. pop albums chart for the first time in 30 years on Wednesday, becoming the oldest living person to launch a new disc at No. 1.
The 65-year-old rock poet's latest album, "Modern Times," sold 192,000 copies
in the week ended September 3, his best sales week since tracking firm Nielsen
SoundScan started using its point-of-sales data to collate the charts in
1991.
Living in New York City back in the 80s, I was lucky enough to be a co-producer of the New York Folk Festival for several years. Such a pleasure to produce Dave in concert: wizard musician, gruff, gracious, gentle, funny. Can't recall the name of the tune, but he did a song composed entirely of names of New Jersey towns: "Pis-ca-taa-way." To die for. And always very kind to young musicians who would ask some of the dumbest questions you ever heard.
How sad to know I'll never run into him again in the streets of Greenwich
Village. I raise a glass to you, old friend.
Beam me up...I'm there.
The Smithsonian National Museum of American History in DC is closing to re-model for 2-4 years, and this was one of the many folk CDs on sale. The guy was an interesting guitar player too. Van Ronk was a mentor to Oklahoma's Tom Paxton and some other guy originally named Zimmerman now known as Bob Dylan.
He was also a frequent guest on "A Prairie Home Companion", and very much a part of the coffee house scene in the 60s.
Thank you, Brother Ruddle, for clueing us in!!
Here's a photo of Ben playing in France last year.
Dr. Daniel H. Wilson, a 27-year-old Tulsa native, has written a book,
How
To Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming
Rebellion. Paramount optioned it, and Mike "Austin Powers" Myers is to
be the star. Here is the Doctor's
blog.
My hometown record dealer had 2 in Downers Grove, IL and Rose Records the biggest store in downtown Chicago had many. When the late EJ Korvette discount chain opened in the Chicago area in the 60's, a clerk would play a song on a console by the cash register for folks if they requested it. Later, another hometown dealer of hobby stuff became a Columbia HiFi dealer with carrels of records. He just gave up on boothes for lack of space but slathered all the radio Top 30 lists in his store. Tape cassettes were coming in, too, and no one was sure if cassettes would totally replace vinyl or not. Then 8 track reared it's head! 15-20 years later even at Honest John's/StarShip in Tulsa - if we had an open album on vinyl - we would play it for a customer if available. HJ often got demo copies to "push" in-store or give to Tulsey stations. Now every big box store and Borders has the CD "audition" stations of selected artists.
Maybe folks were more honest or responsible when "listening" to new 45s before
buying them back in the 50s/60s? Albums on 33 weren't shrink-wrapped then
either...ah, cultural changes!
My late Dad was convinced about 8 years ago to give away all of his 45s, our very old 78s and mono 33 1/3s to a "collector" who had been written up in a Chicago newspaper along with the 1954 vintage WebCor HiFi table top player. I think he paid Dad $35 for all. Dad had paid like $200 for the Webcor when new - but forgot. I was mad that I hadn't been home to cherry-pick out the 78s - though several were stuff we found behind a wall when remodeling the house in 1963. Like Madame Schumann-Heink, ethnic comedy records, and classical stuff that a previous house owner had hidden behind a wall! All of my Gene Autry, Burl Ives and kids songs 45s went too.
That Webcor had something like a 10-watt amp and could blare! We also had
a "Telefunken" HiFi console that he re-gifted later - a neighbor had brought
it back from Germany and an Army PX in the early 60s. Her husband came back
and later died - his widow had given it to us. It actually had a tape input
jack but we never used the record player but the FM was wonderful. Even had
the old police band but it never worked. But to Dad - after a while - it
was "in his way"...both good 50s/60s HiFi gear that I miss.
I've seen (and owned) all of the different vinyls above except for the yellow
pop releases.
On a related note, what's up with the Metro Diner? Isn't the clock about
to run down for them?
The latest Daddy a Go Go CD (with a Gailard Sartain-painted cover) made
Amazon.com's
Best
Children's Music of 2006...So Far list.
"The Best Thing for Me" is also on CD at Amazon, apparently a 1998 original release. He backs Tommy Newsom from the Doc Severinson-era Tonight Show band on "The Feeling of Jazz".
I'm taking a college class by net this fall, and re-learning good study habits has cut down my surfing around here. But I joyously noted Sir Delmeaux's (like the Cajun whose dog was named Fideaux) remarks about 45 RPM EPs. RCA Victor (which introduced the 7" 45) and Columbia (which embraced the 12" 33 1/3 LP) had an Apple-Microsoft thing going on in the 50's and there were all kinds of permutations, like EPs (extended play discs), even extra-long 16 RPM albums (low-fi). But the 45 single and the LP prevailed. Interestingly, I remember buying 45's for 99 cents back in 1961--same price as iTunes today.
But what was RCA's first release on a 45? A console stereo phono from John
F. Lawhon for the winner.
When I was young before they put in HWY. 244 my dad had a old VW bug that he made into a dune buggy and he would take us riding around where 244 is now. My grandmother worked at a really good hamburger joint that was called Bert's. I believe that was located where now a pawn shop is. They had the best burgers around.
Our dad had a VW convertible, too, and we went dirtsurfing in the 244 area (here's a photo in GB 216.)
"MTV Overdrive," a free video website featuring music videos, news and MTV's hit programming, attracts fewer than four million unique visitors a month, a small fraction of MTV's 82 million monthly U.S. television viewers. MTV's websites are also being beat by rivals such as MySpace, the new home of the MTV generation. MySpace gets nearly 55 million unique visitors in the U.S. a month. YouTube, a fast-growing video website, draws 16 million. "If you could argue that they had a lock on the youth market, that lock has now been released to YouTube and other sites," says Dan Nova of Highland Capital Partners. So that means nerdy kids don't watch MTV???
I would love to have launched a Zeb TV site - had we had the technology
then.
In 1954, in Hawaii, we were listening to a Ferguson number on an LP. Admitted to the group that night was a remarkable fellow from Seattle, a sailor, marine architect, and boatbuilder named Ernie Simmerer. Ernie had built and sailed a wooden boat to Honolulu from Seattle with his wife and two small children, one a nine-month old infant. He was about as uncomplicated a man as I have ever met and, because he was a guest at the party, found a pair of shoes which he wore, probably the first time he had put them on in several years. At the conclusion of the Ferguson piece, he was asked his reaction. "Well," he said. "He plays high." Also, June Christy is mentioned as part of the early Kenton entourage. After she left Kenton, she worked as a single and her piano accompanist was a Tulsa Central product named Benny Aronov. Benny was a jazz prodigy and went on to play with Benny Goodman's last group, made records with people like Lee Konitz and others, and put out an album "Introducing Ben Aronov" which is still available on Amazon. Now living in Dobbs Ferry, NY, and having become Ben, not Benny in his later years, he spent more than a decade in the pit orchestra for "Cats," about as regular a gig as a musician could get. Reviewers frequently listed him as a Russian pianist, and for all I know he may have been born there, but he did attend Central and did play in the DAZE there in the 'forties.
It was previously noted that Mr. Aronov played the Club Orchid near the future Rose Bowl site. Lee Woodward had a story about it from his early days in Tulsa.
Gary Chew mentioned Stan Kenton who really started this kind of big band jazz at the close of WW2 or so. I was fortunate enough to see Kenton with his then-band in 1961 at Ravinia in Chicago. Condoli, Pepper, Christy, Connor and many others, including Sir Maynard, got their start with Kenton. What a loss. Let's hope the digital gang is busy finding and remastering a lot of this jazz we're talking about.
Some of the "Dimensions" material is on Verve Jazz Masters 52.
If you want to hear Maynard in full form, check out the old Capitol release titled, "Kenton Presents." It has six tracks on the old 45 RPM EP discs (yes, I've got copies that old). Each track that has a soloist has as its title the name of that performer. The soloist tracks are: "Maynard Ferguson," June Christy," Art Pepper" and "Shelly Manne." The two non-soloist items are "House of Brass" and House of Strings. It's all pretty far out stuff; sort in the baliwick of Third Stream, a la Gunther Schuller, but still very jazzy. The Maynard piece was composed and arranged by flugelman, Shorty Rogers. It's the most engrossing, for me...and Mr. Maynard is ionospheric. My second favorite track from "Kenton Presents" is "Art Pepper." Wow, what an alto! I got to see Pepper play at the Wichita Jazz Festival that was held two weeks before Art died. He looked really gaunt, but played his butt off.
Delmeaux de Gillette du Coffeyville
2. One of the Tulsa events I truly miss nowadays is the jazz festival that
was held down in the Greenwood district from the mid-1980s to the late 1990s
or so. I got to see people I'd only dream of being able to see in my lifetime,
like Cab Calloway, Lionel Hampton, Dave Brubeck, Herbie Hancock, etc. I have
to say, however, that the last few years of the festival's existance strayed
quite a ways away from jazz...Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard were two
later headliners. But still, overall, it was a fun event to attend, the food
served inside the A.M.E. church was well worth the drive itself, and the
chance to intermingle with the same people you knew only from attending the
festival, year after year, sitting in the same area down in front by the
stage, is something I truly miss nowadays.
There's a point where Hines yells at Ford, "What's that?" Just then, a passing
train blew its whistle. Ford said, "I think it's the 9 o'clock to Wichita!"
He got a very big laugh.
Another North Texas State alum: Lee Woodward.
I went with some friends to a MF concert in OKC back in 1984. He was totally awesome. He was the same age as my mom, and the man just screamed. I had the chance to meet him and his band after the show. It was a chance I will never forget. Two years later, a former Stan Kenton alum/L.A. studio musician ....Jay Daversa was Artist In Residence at ECU. I learned more about jazz improv that year than I ever could expect. Jay was full of stories about the Kenton band and his years in the studios. Truly a music history lesson. He soloed with the ECU Jazz Band that year when we played at the OMEA Convention. He did a couple of his old Kenton pieces that he had. I miss that style of music...here in SE Oklahoma we don't have a station that plays Big Band and I really do miss it.
Maynard and his SuperBone will be missed. A True Legend.
Re The Old Lady of Brady - I remember when the TSO cut deals with the Midland
Valley RR to not honk airhorns all night on performance nights. That only
worked a few times when I had season tickets.
The melody line I speak of in the earlier posting about where Stan-The-Man sort of borrowed from for the main part of his "Artistry in Rhythm" comes from Maurice Ravel's "Daphnis et Chloe" Ballet Suite #2. The only difference in the sequence of notes that are recognizable is that, usually, when Ravel harmonizes them, they're in a major key. If my ear-memory serves me now, it seems that Kenton uses the sequence of notes harmonized in a minor key. But the melodies are very much alike. Ravel seats the line in an overarching , pastoral cushion, whereas, Stan's is chugging across the chart in an exciting and at, of course, a very jazzy clip with an obbligato of trumpet stabs on top, a la Maynard.
Delmeaux de Gillette du Coffeyville
Even though he never wrote any music for cartoons, his tune "Powerhouse" was played everytime a sequence with machinery or a mechanical assembly line was introduced. Raymond Scott was a pioneer in electronic music, too. You can hear his work on the new Tic-Tac commercials where the girl juggles the mints on her tongue.
Of course, our own David Bagsby has produced a Raymond Scott tribute: Happy Hour for a Pack of Screaming Monkeys, including "Powerhouse", which you can hear on MP3 at David's site.
I was somewhere else in the audience with you and your friends that night in Tulsa. I remember June Christy having a pretty bad cold that evening which affected her singing some. I think one of the 4 Freshmen made some sort of joke about it to bring the audience up to speed on her malaise. But it was a real night to remember, yes? I think it was about a week later, when that Kenton troupe was at Purdue on the same tour they took the recording that was used for the Capitol double LP release (June Christy still had the cold at Purdue, according to the note near the bottom of this Yahoo shopping site...webmaster). I still have my copies gathering dust in a closet I'm now refusing, these days, to open. Another bit of Kenton trivia is something that I discovered as I've been playing so much classical music on the air for so many years: his theme "Artistry in Rhythm," which he composed, has a melodic lick throughout it that sounds like something he "borrowed" from Maurice Ravel, the great early 20th century French composer. It seems I've read somewhere that Kenton once met Ravel or was a big fan of his music, but I can't lay my hands on that bit of information today. Now, I'm having trouble remembering which Ravel piece contains the melodic strain I speak of. It's either from his "Mother Goose Suite" or his "Daphnis et Chloe" ballet. I'll listen tomorrow, and update my memory for sure on this.
I'm familiar with June Christy's great work with Pete Rugolo around that time on "Something Cool".
Capitol records released a double LP of that tour and you can now find it on a single CD.
Kenton, like Maynard appeared in our state many many times. I am reminded
of when Kenton played a dance at the Oklahoma City Golf & Country Club
in the '70's it was later that night when he was mugged at a motel and hit
on the head. This was a few years before he died, but he never was the same
after that injury.
The beginning of a thread about jazz trumpeter Maynard Ferguson and bandleader Stan Kenton. The former passed away recently. Some of their Tulsa connections were noted. Syndicated TV host Mike Douglas also passed away. He was seen on KOTV in the 60s/70s. His start in OKC was remembered. This was the "YouTube GroupBlog": we saw Ferguson playing "'Round Midnight" 'round 1960, two classic Popeil/Ronco commercials, and an early Gary Shore promo. The webmaster's second cousin, author Lane Smith, was seen interviewed by Harry Smith (no relation - ha, ha) on CBS' site. George Tomek told us where to see a short version of the movie, "Tube Poker". He played an anchorman in this edgy 2004 U.K. indie film.
John Chick's granddaughter checked in. The Meadow Gold sign will be back
better than ever with a working clock.
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