https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6gjzNm6dA0 Yesterday I read an article about Serge Gainsbourg’s long shuttered house in Paris. Apparently the singer’s daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, has decided to let the public in and see the delightfully eclectic, memorabilia-filled digs, which have been preserved–Gitane cluttered ashtrays and all– just as the great French pop icon left
In September of 1965 the newly internationally famous David McCallum (who died earlier this week at age 90) made an appearance on singer Andy Williams network variety program. The above will show you A) that McCullum was low-key, charming and game for anything and B) that Williams, though popular in
The recently deceased actor David McCallum was born into a serious musical family–his father was an accomplished enough violinist to be named first chair (and thus technical leader) of the London Philharmonic. McCallum himself was trained as as Oboe player before stumbling (so it seems) into his career as an
The Marx Brothers were of German Jewish orgin and thus grew up steeped in German culture and language. One of Groucho’s true delights in life (and I don’t think there were many of them) was performing a German novelty song called ‘Schnitzel Bank’ and above we see him do so
There’s nothing really to say about the 20th Century show-biz phenomenon known as Liberace (birth name: ‘Wladziu Valentina Liberace’). Perhaps best to quote the opening of ‘The Song Of Bernadette’: “To those who believe, no explanation is necessary; to those who don’t believe, no explanation is possible.” Below are three
In keeping with this weeks exploration of the easy listening pianists of yore, today I’ve posted three delightful (if you’re in that kind of mood) videos featuring the twin-piano act Ferrante and Teicher, a duo of American pianists known for their clever arrangements of familiar classical pieces, movie soundtracks, and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOtgigQp_nshttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PJ4KUFynlk Yesterday I posted two clips of Roger Williams, the most successful of the so-called ‘easy listening’ pianists of the 1950, 60s and beyond. But before Williams came several other influential and ground-breaking pianists in this highly specialized and often unfairly derided field of music. Chief among them was Carmen
As a jazz pianist–in other words as a decrepit hipster wallowing in a musical genre that few people care about anymore–I should find it easy to mock the ‘easy listening’ pianists of the 1950s and 60s as total squares who sold-out for big money, playing unbelievably sappy and simple arpeggio-ridden
Below is a marvelous short series of clips of Hollywood in the early 1930s as photographed by the then famous (and now forgotten) Burton Holmes, inventor of the ‘travelogue’. Holmes was a moderately successful ‘travel lecturer’ beginning in the late 19th century when this was a particularly exotic profession. He
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBp1wLMCmeohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYspFe9u5RU Apropos of yesterday’s post on the joys of Muzak, above are two TV spots for the Los Angeles FM Muzak station KJOI. My memory is that there were no announcers on the station–it was a solid hour of Muzak-Bed with a canned announcement at the end of the hour