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Posts Archived Under Composers
Quite possibly the biggest fan
of National Cookie Day
(Photo by Peter Taylor)
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The next few days will take on a musical flavor. On Monday, jazz pianist Dave Brubeck turns 90, an event which will be celebrated with a new Clint Eastwood-produced documentary that will premiere on TCM. Brubeck (with saxophonist Paul Desmond) pioneered the cool West Coast jazz of the 1950s with such tunes as "Take Five" and "Blue Rondo à la Turk." He still tours regularly and his playing is as strong as ever. In 2009, he was awarded a Kennedy Center Honor, and this Sunday, the latest batch of those awards will be given to country singer Merle Haggard, Broadway composer Jerry Herman, choreographer Bill T. Jones, rock legend Paul McCartney, and the one and only Oprah Winfrey.
Someone who probably should have received a Kennedy Center Honor, but didn't, was lyricist Ira Gershwin, born December 6, 1896. Ira was the brother of composer George Gershwin, and together they wrote scores of classic tunes (a bare-bones list of which would include "I Got Rhythm" "The Man I Love," "They Can't Take That Away From Me," and "Someone to Watch Over Me") that have become enshrined in the Great American Songbook. The first lyricist to win a Pulitzer Prize (for 1931's "Of Thee I Sing"), he died in 1983.
Friday will mark the 42nd anniversary of Elvis Presley's "'68 Comeback Special." "The King" had been domesticated by his Hollywood career, turning out one bland movie after another, but this TV special brought back the "dangerous" Elvis of the 1950s -- in black leather! -- and led to the Las Vegas appearances and concert tours that continued until his death.
Some historical events of note on Sunday. In 1848, President James K. Polk triggered the Gold Rush of '49 by confirming that gold had been discovered in California, and in 1945, the so-called "Lost Squadron" disappeared when five U.S. Navy Avenger bombers carrying 14 flyers began a training mission from the Ft. Lauderdale Naval Air Station, from which they never returned. Perhaps they were swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle, or perhaps they were just practicing their stealthy ninja training. Given that Sunday is also the Day of the Ninja, we think that one explanation is as likely as the other.
Saturday will bring some birthdays in the world of entertainment. Not only will it be the 49th birthdays of actresses Daryl Hannah and Julianne Moore, it will also be the 80th birthday of legendary French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard. Godard was at the center of the French "New Wave" that took cinema by storm in the 1950s. Its gritty, in-your-face techniques have influenced directors as diverse as Quentin Tarantino, Martin Scorsese, Robert Altman, Steven Soderbergh, Brian De Palma, and Oliver Stone. Like Brubeck, Godard is still working. His latest movie, "Film Socialisme" was released in France in May, and another film (about the Holocaust) is rumored to be on the way.
A filmmaker who couldn't have been more different from Godard was Walt Disney, whose 109th birthday falls on Sunday. Given the distance between Godard's Marxism and Disney's conservatism, one can only wonder what the two of them thought of each other. Perhaps the brainiacs at the Encyclopedia Britannica could tell us, since Sunday is also the 242nd anniversary of the first publication of that know-it-all compendium.
Four holidays to finish out the old week and begin the new. Friday is the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, this year dedicated to "mainstreaming disability in the Millennium."
Sunday is International Volunteer Day, which recognizes volunteers for their efforts and increases public awareness of their contribution to society.
Monday begins Handwashing Awareness Week, something that's always a good idea, (especially after using the bathroom). Handwashing helps prevent the spread of disease, and if you're celebrating National Cookie Day Saturday, you won't get dirt all over your delicious cookies.
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"Here's looking at you, kid." |
On this weekend dedicated to two favorite American pastimes - shopping and food - we ask you to take a moment to think of Sylvan N. Goldman, as Saturday will mark the 26th anniversary of his death. Mr. Goldman was a major stockholder of the Piggly-Wiggly supermarket chain and invented the shopping cart. For various reasons, his customers didn't want to use the carts, so his solution was to hire fake shoppers to wheel them around the stores to show others how useful they could be. Obviously, it worked.
The excitement of Thanksgiving has now passed, and while history tells us that Yahoo! will see search spikes today on both food poisoning and the location of your nearest pizza parlor, many of us will concentrate on the primary events of this season: shopping and not shopping. As consumers head to the disorienting wonderland that is the mall (and we note that Friday is the 145th anniversary of the publication of Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"), both of these pastimes will make big headlines in the media.
For those who are pro-shopping, today is "Black Friday," the day of the year that sees the highest number of sales transactions. Let it be noted, however, that the day the most money changes hands is the Saturday before Christmas (though with Christmas falling on a Saturday this year, it’s anyone’s guess what the biggest day that will actually be). Monday is, of course, "Cyber Monday," when workers will waste a good portion of the day shopping online, rather than doing actual work (like writing The Spark).
On the other hand, Friday is also "Buy Nothing" Day, which reminds us all to not feed the corporate beast that drives this holiday frenzy and to concentrate on either the message of the season or home-made gifts. Consider a cake (since it's also National Cake Day), or even donuts to commemorate the 2002 passing of Verne H. Winchell, who founded the Winchell's Donuts chain in 1948, and was known as "The Donut King." Whatever you eat, be sure to brush afterwards - and celebrate Friday's National Flossing Day.
Someone who’s probably doing all he can to ignore this weekend is Eldrick "Tiger" Woods, since Saturday marks the one-year anniversary of the car crash that sent his whole word spiraling. Perhaps he can use the occasion to get his aura read and see his future. Fortunately for him, Sunday is International Aura Awareness Day. Failing that, he may want to head to New York for the first preview of "Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark." The musical, with a score by Bono and The Edge, has been plagued by budget problems (its estimated cost is $65 million, nearly four times the usual for a big Broadway show) and severe injuries to cast members. "Break a leg!" might not be the best thing to wish this particular cast, but their misfortunes so far might make Tiger feel better.
A number of birthdays fall on this weekend. Saturday sees what would have been the 88th birthday of cartoonist and "Peanuts" creator Charles M. Schulz (who died in 2000 the night before his final strip ran), as well as the 67th "birthday" of the Slinky. The flexible toy was invented by engineer Richard James in 1943, and its initial lot of 400 units sold out in a mere 90 minutes. Despite its limited uses (just how many staircases can it walk down?), the Slinky has remained a perennial toyland favorite.
Saturday would have been the 70th birthday of martial arts superstar Bruce Lee. It's also the 100th anniversary of New York's Pennsylvania Station. Penn Station was a grand and imposing structure that welcomed millions of visitors and immigrants to Manhattan in the days when train travel was king. In 1963, despite a vigorous campaign to save it, the station was torn down to make room for the fourth Madison Square Garden, a mistake many in the city have rued in the decades since.
Monday sees the birthday of movie choreographer supreme Busby Berkeley (1895), and Sunday brings us a trifecta of masters of their craft: "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart turns 48; Randy Newman, the Academy Award-winning composer (and writer of the greatest song ever written about Los Angeles), turns 67 (he's as old as the Slinky!); and Paul Shaffer, David Letterman's longtime bandleader, who's personally played with pretty much every major rock performer of the century, and whose group is the house band for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony turns 61.
For us, though, the most significant anniversary of the weekend is the November 26, 1942 opening of "Casablanca" at New York's Hollywood Theatre. Still considered one of the greatest films ever made, "Casablanca's" mixture of heroism, humor, and self-sacrifice, combined with indelible characters and lines has never been equaled in the many years since. They truly don't make 'em like that anymore.
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Archived under: 1920s, 1940s, 1960s, 1980s, 19th Century, Actors, Alice in Wonderland, American History, Anniversaries, Artists, Athletes, Authors, Baking, Biographies, Birthdays, Books, Broadway, Bruce Lee, Buildings, Business, CIA, Cartoonists, Celebrations, Celebrities, Christmas, Comic Strips, Composers, Dance, David Letterman, Dead Celebrities, Directors, Donuts, Eating, Entertainment, Events, Fiction, Filmmaking, Food and Drink, Golf, Health, History, Holidays, In Character, Internet, Invention, Inventors, Late Night TV, Literature, Martial Arts, Movie History, Movies, Music, Musicals, Musicians, New York, Nostalgia, Paranormal, Performing Arts, Pizza, Restaurants, Rock and Roll, Scandals, Shopping, Spider-Man, Superheroes, Talk Show Hosts, Thanksgiving, The Spark, Trains, U.K. History, United Kingdom, Vintage, Writers, Yahoo!, marriage |
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"Turkey good! Football good!
Lip-synching in Macy's Parade bad!" |
There's lots to say about arts and entertainment over the next few days. Let's start at the top, with Boris Karloff, born November 23, 1887 . The erstwhile William Henry Pratt labored as a truck driver, farmhand, and occasional character actor until 1931, when he landed the role of the monster in "Frankenstein." Even though he went unbilled in the original release of the movie, he became an instant star whose name was linked with horror until his death in 1969. In a nice coincidence, Forrest J. Ackerman, the man who became one of Karloff's best friends and biggest boosters was born a day later (albeit in 1916). Ackerman was the longtime editor of "Famous Monsters of Filmland" magazine, and cultivated a love for monsters and psychological horror in a million youngsters in the 1950s and '60s.
But we've only scratched the surface when it comes to entertainment. For example, in 1889, the first jukebox went into operation at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. (We'll add that "juke" was slang for ... well, a "house of ill repute," and leave it at that.) This distant ancestor to the iPod contained a tinfoil phonograph with four listening tubes and a coin slot for each tube. So popular was it that it took in $1,000 in the first six months - a nickel at a time. Musical entertainment has evolved significantly in the century since. On Wednesday, we'll note the 142nd birthday of composer Scott Joplin. Joplin didn't invent ragtime music, but was one of its foremost composers, his "Maple Leaf Rag" virtually defined the era.
Joplin isn't the only great artist who's an exemplar of his chosen genre. On Wednesday evening, PBS will broadcast an all-star concert celebrating the 80th birthday of Stephen Sondheim, composer and lyricist for some of the best - and most important - musicals in theatre history. And on November 25, 1949, Robert May and Johnny Marks' "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" made its debut/ Gene Autry's recording of the tune eventually sold more than 25 million records.
If those are the heights musical genres can reach, we note what some might consider the nadir, represented by tonight's episodes of "Glee" (featuring Carol Burnett) and the (tainted?) finale of "Dancing with the Stars." (And we mention the 1871 founding of the National Rifle Association purely in passing here - in case someone wants to emulate Steven Cowan.)
Music can have an effect even in the world of science. Wednesday is the 36th anniversary of Donald Johanson and Tom Gray's discovery of the Australopithecus afarensis skeleton that they named "Lucy," after the Beatles song "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds."
The fine arts are also represented this week. Tuesday is the 118th birthday of Romain de Tirtoff, who, under the name Erté (taken from the French pronunciation of his initials) virtually defined the Art Deco style of the early 20th century, and Wednesday is the 146th birthday of French illustrator Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Toulouse-Lautrec captured the lives of the Parisian demimonde of the late 19th century. And while it's not exactly "art," the first issue of "Life" magazine was published in 1936. Over the next 36 years, the photojournalism magazine featured some of the finest photography in the world - though none of its photographers could have used a zoom lens until it was invented this week in 1948.
In performing arts, Agatha Christie's murder-mystery play "The Mousetrap" opened in London's West End in 1952, and has been running ever since, making it the longest continuously-running play in history. (There was even a recent controversy over whether the surprise ending should be revealed on Wikipedia. It was, so if you go over there, consider yourself warned.). Pity movie producer John Woolf, who bought the movie rights to the play, on the condition that he not film it until it closed. Woolf died in 1999, but the play runs on. It sounds like a disaster almost profound enough to be filmed by producer Irwin Allen, king of such disaster movies as "The Poseidon Adventure" and "The Towering Inferno," and whose 94th birthday would have been Wednesday. It could be a disaster, but not a cosmic mystery suitable for solving by Doctor Who, the venerable BBC television series that began broadcasting this week in 1963.
Crime and criminals also figure into this week (like every week, probably). On November 24, 1971, D.B. Cooper skyjacked a Boeing 727, collected $200,000 in ransom, and parachuted out over southern Washington state, never to be seen again.
We mention an odd birthday coincidence in passing. Wednesday is the 122nd birthday of motivational author Dale Carnegie, and Thursday is the 175th birthday of industrialist and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. Dale (whose last name was originally spelled "Carnagey") wrote the book "How to Win Friends and Influence People" (which is still a best-seller on the self-help charts, nearly 75 years after it was published). Andrew made his fortune in the steel business and ended up giving most of it away, endowing libraries, schools, universities, along with numerous charities and foundations. By 1919, he had given away over $350 million (about $4.3 billion in 2010 dollars), with the remaining $30 million distributed after his death that year.
In animal events, President Obama is scheduled to give an executive pardon to a turkey on Wednesday, and Thursday (in addition to everything else) is the National Dog Show in Philadelphia.
Lastly, we mention what is, for many, the most notable event of the week: Thanksgiving, with its attendant gorging, football. T-Day also brings us the Macy's Parade, which gives television viewers across the country the chance to watch b-list actors and singers lip synch to lousy music, and this year will feature such traditional holiday entertainers as Jessica Simpson, Jimmy Fallon and the Roots, and Kanye West. Truly a Thanksgiving smorgasbord!
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Darn right we're thankful for Mister Rogers.
Wanna make somethin' out of it? |
Thanksgiving is, for better or worse, a holiday identified with abundance. It's only appropriate, then, that the week leading up to Turkey Day is chock-a-block with events, anniversaries, and just plain oddities. But what are we waiting for? Let's go!
We begin Monday with a couple of icons of the 1930s. In 1899, composer Hoagy Carmichael was born. Though musically untrained, Carmichael became enamored of ragtime and jazz at an early age, and went on to write such standards as "Stardust," "Georgia On My Mind," "The Nearness of You," and "Heart and Soul." In 1980, Mae West died at the age of 87. West was an actress who specialized in a shocklingly overripe and aggressive sexuality - in fact, she was arrested in 1927 on morals charges for her Broadway play, "Sex." To her dying day, she insisted that she was as sexually alluring as ever, even starring as an octogenarian sex symbol in 1978's "Sextette."
On the opposite end of the sexual spectrum was the gentle and avuncular Fred Rogers, who donated one of his "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" sweaters to the Smithsonian Institution on this date in 1984. There's no report on what happened to his sneakers.
Perhaps they were stolen by one of the host of shady characters we'll note over the next two days. For example, Monday is the anniversary of the 1718 death in battle of Edward Teach - better known as the notorious pirate Blackbeard, who terrified the West Indies. If not Teach, perhaps the culprit was Henry McCarty (aka William Bonney), who terrorized the American West as the thieving Billy the Kid (born November 23, 1859). Or maybe it was William "Boss" Tweed, the uber-corrupt boss of Tammany Hall who ran New York City in the 1850s and '60s, and was arrested and returned to Manhattan in 1876 after fleeing to Europe.
If one were of such a mind, one might see the death of Blackbeard or the jailing of Tweed as evolutionary "thinning of the herds;" an appropriate thought, since Monday is the 141st anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species." Darwin's ideas are pretty deep, and are best contemplated by either a Rhodes Scholar or a comics geek – both of whom are in luck Monday, as not only will the 2010 Rhodes Scholarships be announced, but (following a computer meltdown earlier this month), tickets for next summer's San Diego Comic-Con will go on sale. If history is any indication, they'll sell out within minutes, so you've probably already missed your chance. (Or you could have, if the computers hadn't crashed again.) If that's the case, you may want to salve your hurt feelings with some television, perhaps even sinking to watching tonight's premiere of "Skating with the Stars." (Because there's nothing we need more than another eccentric actress falling on the ice in another phony reality competition.)
On a serious note, for those of us of a certain age, November 22 will always signify the 1963 death of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas. Forty-seven years later, most of us still remember where we were when we heard the news.
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"Give me a minute! I have to finish this
"Stanley and Livingstone" cue! |
Wednesday:
Today's most notable event may be the 41st anniversary of the debut of "Sesame Street" on what was then known as "National Educational Television," but is now called PBS. (We guess the powers that be didn't want their audiences think they might be getting smarter while watching the boob tube.) In the decades since, the show has educated generations of Americans through its use of humor, music, and pop culture references.
Some of those references are calculated to appeal less to kids than to their parents, just like the ones in the Warner Bros. cartoons of the 1930s, '40s, and '50s. And being of a cartoonish disposition, we couldn't help but notice that it's the 119th birthday of Carl Stalling, the man who wrote the scores for all those "Looney Tunes" and "Merrie Melodies." How many did he write? Well, over 22 years, he wrote complete scores for more than 700 animated shorts -- or one every ten days. That's a lot of notes.
More succinct was journalist Henry Morton Stanley, who on this date in 1871 located missing missionary Dr. David Livingstone in what is now Ujiji, Tanzania. After an eight-month, 7,000-mile trip, Stanley allegedly greeted the good doctor with the words, "Dr. Livingstone, I presume?," a phrase familiar to even thos people who have no idea who either Stanley or Livingstone was.
Lucky was the person who lived in ignorance of the alleged curse of the Hope Diamond. Despite little hard evidence, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries all sorts of ill-fortune was attributed to the stone. Supposedly, it was responsible for any number of suicides and deaths among those who had owned it since the 17th century. Its last owner was New York diamond merchant Harry Winston, who donated it to the Smithsonian Institution on this day in 1958 – something that seems to have harmed neither the museum nor Winston's company in the years since.
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Smooth Jazz Fan?
Download what SmoothJazz.com calls “guaranteed listening...
www.charleylanger.net
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