In decades of curating film shows, found myself and audiences fascinated with the 1920's short subjects made by the ingenious artist, filmmaker, photographer, illustrator and American in Paris Man Ray (August 27, 1890 - November 18, 1976).
Can't explain exactly why Man Ray's films are fascinating, why the visuals are so compelling, why after watching Emak Bakia or Le Retour A La Raison, one immediately wants to watch it again.
Whenever, in presenting DIY 16mm film shows, this blogger screened Man Ray's films, whether in 1990 or 2020, the audience was enthralled. Man Ray's photos and paintings enthrall this writer as well.
Tranisitioning less than deftly from the world of Dada and Surrealism to the sonic milieu of saxophones, big bands and swing, the man known as the President and among the greatest innovators in jazz and 20th century music history was saxophonist and clarinetist Lester Willis Young, cornerstone of the mighty Count Basie Orchestra, born on August 27, 1909.
Along with fellow jazz greats Marlowe Morris, Jo Jones, Barney Kessel, Illinois Jacquet and Red Callendar, he's part of the all-star group that starred in Gjon Mili's outstanding 1944 musical short subject Jammin' The Blues.
There are not many film clips of Pres, who passed in 1959, but here are a few in which he is featured with several excellent ensembles jam-packed with virtuosos. He sounds great, as usual.
Here's an enjoyable yin/yang from the Art Ford's Jazz Party TV program featuring Lester Young with fellow tenor saxophonist, King Of Swing and stylistic opposite Coleman "Body & Soul" Hawkins.
Author, jazz historian, bandleader and saxophonist Loren Schoenberg penned one of the very best pieces this music fan has read about Lester Young and has posted Pres clips on his You Tube channel. The following Lester Young albums - studio recordings on Verve volume 1, volume 2 and volume 3 - are musts for the swing and music fan's collection.
Tough to pick just one Pres performance of the many. This 1956 Birdland All-Stars concert of Miles Davis, backed by The René Urtreger Trio and featuring special guests Lester Young and (piano virtuoso) Bud Powell, is particularly amazing listening.
Now, to paraphase an old friend of mine, shifting gears from music to comedy, it is indeed August 27, so that means the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog pays tribute to comedian Al Ritz, born Albert "Al" Joachim on August 27, 1901 and part of a zany trifecta with brothers Harry and Jimmy.
Any mention of Al or his brothers Harry and Jimmy brings to mind the question of just how does a comedy fan or classic movie buff explain The Ritz Brothers.
None other than the great Mel Brooks gives that very explanation a try in this interview with Conan O' Brien.
Gifted physical comedian Soupy Sales agrees.
Here, animated Ritz Brothers tangle with none other than Donald Duck in The Autograph Hound. Excellent work as usual, Disney artists!
Who influenced Sid Caesar and the gang from Your Show Of Shows and Caesar's Hour? The one, the only, the legendary rubber-faced alpha goofball Harry Ritz (in the act, albeit not in the following photo, "the guy in the middle").
While the Ritzes, compared even to the Marx Brothers and The Three Stooges, remain emphatically a characterization-free zone, their genius is in their ultra-wacky dancing, patter and singing.
As is the case with musical comedy stars Ray Bolger and Donald O'Connor, the humor is in how they move.
This production number from the Alice Faye musical On The Avenue presents one answer to the question, "just what did people find funny about The Ritz Brothers?" There's Harry's bravura vocal and indescribably funny dance moves by the trio. LOVE the bit where they mimic penguins!
Besides the He Ain't Got Rhythm number, the best example of Harry, Jimmy and Al Ritz remains the episode of The All Star Revue they hosted on May 17, 1952. The key to the Ritzes is that, as was the case with Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis, they shined as a live act and were emphatically toned down for feature films. Harry is THE ad-lib king and his improvisations are seldom in the team's feature film appearances for Fox and Universal.
This All Star Revue show presents a valuable record of their act, as The Colgate Comedy Hour shows did for many comics (Martin & Lewis and Abbott & Costello as well as the Ritz Brothers, whose Feb. 22, 1953 episode of the series does not exist) - and is also the reason this blogger has been known to utter the phrase "DON'T HOLLA - PLEASE DON'T HOLLA" for no apparent reason. The Ritzes' anarchic spirit and musical comedy mojo reigns supreme throughout.
The gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog sincerely hopes that kinescopes of the Ritz Brothers' second episode of All-Star Revue, which aired on November 22, 1952 as part of the Four Star Revue series, and the aforementioned 2-22-1953 Colgate Comedy Hour show turn up.
That means an all-music post specifically paying tribute to the recording artist and Count Basie Orchestra star known as The President, Lester Young.
Fellow saxophonist Sonny Rollins elaborates:
As the accomplishments of JFK, FDR and Honest Abe a.k.a. Hot Rod Lincoln are all targeted by obnoxious "this channel has no content" YouTube trolls in 2023, might as well spend Presidents' Day listening to the innovative tenor saxophonist and clarinetist.
Lester Young a.k.a. Pres or Prez was a virtuoso among virtuosos at a time when the likes of Mary Lou Williams, Art Tatum, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Django Reinhardt, Chick Webb and Charlie Christian were all still living and at the top of their game.
Here's Pres and an all-star swing ensemble in one of the greatest films about music ever filmed, Life magazine photographer Gjon Mili's Jammin' The Blues (1944).
While few films of Lester Young exist, here's footage shot in October 1950 of what appears to be a Jazz At The Philharmonic (JATP) ensemble: Lester Young (tenor saxophone), Bill Harris (trombone), Hank Jones (piano), Ray Brown (bass), Buddy Rich (drums).
In a longer excerpt from this JATP film, the group is joined by Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. As was often the case, Granz assembled quite a powerhouse lineup.
Raising that, from the superlative YouTube channel of music historian, teacher and saxophonist Loren Schoenberg, here's one of the rare interviews with Lester Young.
After an upbringing playing in the Young family band and other ensembles, Pres became a prominent player on the music scene in the 1930's as part of the dynamic Count Basie Orchestra.
Gotta love Basie, a bandleader with an eye for talent, seen in this shot from the Library Of Congress collection, snapped at NYC's Aquarium Club by gifted photographer William P. Gottlieb.
The power, expressiveness, creativity and eloquence of Lester Young's playing deepened as his career progressed from the early swing era through the 1950's.
Pres' last records, on the Verve label, remain some of his very best.
In closing, the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, realizing that a mere month for Black History during any year is way insufficient, extends a tip of the porkpie hat to the Lester Willis Young.
Pres was a one of a kind artist who could express love, pain, sorrow, wonder and the expansiveness of the universe with one note.
Continuing the topics of musicians and July birthdays, today we pay tribute to one of the lesser-known masters of 20th century music and jazz: guitarist, vocalist and guitar builder Mary Osborne.
Born on July 17, 1921 in Minot, North Dakota, Mary Osborne is a legend of the guitar, an under-recorded but mindblowingly talented musician. Here's Mary, on the 1958 DuMont Television Network program, Art Ford's Jazz Party, backing none other than Billie Holiday.
In his excellent article, Mary Osborne: Queen Of The Jazz Guitar, author David Brent Johnson elaborates:
It’s perhaps too easy to say that Mary Osborne is an unsung heroine of jazz history, though there's certainly a large degree of truth to such a statement.
A disciple of Charlie Christian, she played with her own subtlety and fire, negotiating the swing-to-bop era of the 1940s with deceptive ease, running the gamut from big bands to R and B and the Nat King Cole-influenced jazz-pop stylings of a trio setting. Some of her finest moments came in all-star and all-women small combos playing the modern jazz of 52nd Street in its Forties heyday.
From the 1950s on Osborne would record as a leader on only a handful of occasions, but her playing only gained in luster, especially on a 1959 date with pianist Tommy Flanagan and drummer Jo Jones. Put the whole notion of gender aside; Mary Osborne was, first and foremost, simply a superlative jazz guitarist.
Wikipedia adds:
Osborne was born in Minot, North Dakota, the tenth of eleven children. As early as 3 years of age, she showed an interest in music. Osborne's earliest instruments included piano, ukulele, violin, and banjo. At age nine, she first played the guitar. At ten, she started playing banjo in her father's ragtime band. She also came to be featured on her own radio program, which she would continue to perform on twice weekly until she was fifteen. At twelve she started her own trio of girls to perform in Bismarck, North Dakota. The music she was playing during this time period was largely "hillbilly", or country music, in which the guitar was simply used to accompany her own vocals.
At the age of fifteen, Osborne joined a trio led by pianist Winifred McDonnell, for which she played guitar, double bass, and sang. During this time, she heard Charlie Christian play electric guitar in Al Trent's band at a stop in Bismarck. She was enthralled by his sound, at first mistaking the electric guitar for a saxophone. She said of it, "What impressed everyone most of all was his sense of time. He had a relaxed, even beat that would sound modern even today." Osborne immediately bought her own electric guitar and had a friend build an amplifier.[4] She sat in with Christian, learning his style of guitar.
Later, McDonnell's trio was absorbed into Buddy Rogers's band, after Rogers heard them play in St. Louis. But within a year of the band moving to New York in 1940, the trio broke up and left Rogers's band, having found husbands. She married trumpeter, Ralf Scaffidi in 1942 and had her own radio program on NBC in 1948.
Mary didn't make many records, but those she waxed are incredible.
On the following track, Oops My Lady, she sounds particularly Charlie Christian like; her style reflects the bite and snap in the Benny Goodman Orchestra's guitarist's playing and adapts it into her own sound.
Love Mary's 1960 Warwick Records masterpiece A Girl & Her Guitar. Rocking the 6-string with authority are Mary Osborne (lead) and New Orleans legend Danny Barker (rhythm), backed by Tommy Flanagan (piano), Tommy Potter (bass) and stalwart from Count Basie Orchestra and Lester Young Quintet recordings and tours "Papa Jo" Jones on drums.
Mary played on most of an album by quite the duo of power-packed percussionists: The Mighty Two - Gene Krupa and Louis Bellson.
Ace pianist, bandleader and host of the outstanding NPR radio program Piano Jazz Marian McPartland pays tribute.
Don't know if any recordings exist of Mary Osborne making the jazz guitar sing on The Jack Sterling Show on NBC radio, or of her appearances on the Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts TV show.
The Mary Osborne IMDB page, is wrong regarding the number of Art Ford’s Jazz Party appearances, claims she was on the 1949 Adventures In Jazz series and ABC-TV's late-night program The Joey Bishop Show. Don't know if Mary made any other television appearances. Maybe video footage of these programs does not exist.
While there are not very many instances of Mary Osborne records in the 1960's and 1970's, luckily Ms. McPartland induced her to join an all-star band on one of her albums and record the following tres cool versions of "In A Mellow Tone" and "Now's The Time" live at the Monticello Room in Rochester, NY on June 30, 1977.
Mary and her husband relocated to Bakersfield, CA in the early 1960's and formed a company, first known as Rosac Electronics Company, then Osborne Guitar Company and Osborne Sound Laboratories, that built guitars, electric basses and amplifiers. I'll bet these guitars sound great.
For more info, read, in addition to the aforementioned article by David Brent Johnson (prolific jazz program host of WFIU Public Radio), the following musical career overview and bio penned by Jim Carlton for Vintage Guitar.com.
“Aleman has more swing than any other guitarist on the continent.” Leonard Festher
"I knew Django Reinhardt well. He was my greatest friend in France. We played together many times, just for ourselves. I used to go to his wagon, where he lived. I've slept and eaten there—and also played! He had three or four guitars. Django never asked anyone to go to his wagon, but he made an exception with me. I appreciated him, and I believe the feeling was mutual." Oscar Alemán
Switching focus from silent films and vintage animation - frequent topics of this blog - to the world of music, today the spotlight is on Argentinian guitar virtuoso and entertainer Oscar Alemán, born on this day in 1909.
Have listened to and admired such terrific Alemán records as En Todos Los Ritmos, Alemán '72 and Grabaciones Recuperadas, as well as the Swing Guitar Masterpieces: 1938-1957 compilation mandolinist, bandleader and recording artist David Grisman curated for his Acoustic Disc label.
Still, was entirely unaware of the guitarist's dramatic roller coaster life and international presence in music until viewing Oscar Alemán, Vida Con Swing, a loving, detailed and archival footage-packed 2002 documentary written and directed by Hernán Gaffet.
A singer, dancer and actor as well as multi-instrumentalist, Oscar Marcelo Alemán (February 20, 1909 - October 14, 1980) was a one of a kind talent, born in Machagai, Chaco Province, in northern Argentina.
An entertainer, recording artist and teacher for five decades, Oscar experienced the loftiest of international stardom peaks and devastating no-work-whatsoever valleys. It is such a rich showbiz tale that we can only touch on a few points here, unless the objective is to not actually complete this blog post until February 20, 2023 or 2024.
Oscar's early life entailed so much adversity, grinding poverty and personal tragedy as to make Charlie Chaplin's childhood look like Sunday in the Park (with or without George). Both were child performers, Oscar already singing and dancing onstage with the family band, the Moreira Sextet, at the age of six. He was orphaned suddenly when his mother died and his father subsequently committed suicide. Oscar's siblings scattered and he would find himself homeless and living on the streets in Santos, São Paulo, Brazil. Supporting himself as a dancer, boxer and by playing the cavinhuelo (a four-stringed instrument) and guitar, he began to play music professionally in a duo with Brazilian guitarist Gaston Bueno Lobo. Oscar's first radio show appearance in 1926, rather amazingly, has been preserved
As Les Loups (Los Lobos), the duo played popular tunes in many genres, with Oscar frequently playing Hawaiian guitar, and recorded sides for Victor in 1927-1928, then, with the addition of violinist Elvino Vardaro, Trio Victor. Before he turned 20, Alemán was a prolific recording artist.
In the late 1920's and early 1930's, Oscar would become interested in playing American jazz after hearing the guitar-violin duo of Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti.
In 1931, he became the featured guitarist in Josephine Baker's touring ensemble. Soon, he would lead her band, the Baker Boys, at the Cafe de Paris. Duke Ellington saw Oscar play and was floored. When he asked Josephine if he could hire Oscar Alemán for the Duke Ellington Orchestra's next United States tour, she said no; to paraphrase her response, "where could I find someone who speaks nine languages, can dance, is black, plays guitar, cavaquinho, bass and drums - and is a good person?" Nonetheless, Oscar sat in as a special guest with the Duke Ellington Orchestra and performed with them for individual concerts in Europe.
Alemán later formed his own nine-piece band which would play nightly at the Le Chantilly, just across town from where Django Reinhardt and his partner violinist Stephane Grappelli would be performing at The Hot Club of France with their Quintet. Although these two innovative virtuosos of jazz guitar from outside the United States, unfortunately, never recorded together, they became close friends.
After the Nazis stormed into Paris, banning "degenerate" music and all art in favor of their preferred pastime of murdering people, Oscar relocated to Buenos Aires. Through the 1940's, he performed and waxed some of his best recordings with an excellent swing quintet, featuring jazz violinist Guillermo Oliva, and also performed with a nine-piece orchestra.
He enjoyed playing in Buenos Aires and turned down invitations from bandleaders such as Harry James to join their groups and travel to the United States.
Oscar Alemán appeared periodically in films (Trois Argentines a Montmartre, Buenos Aires Sings) and was quite the dynamic performer, as seen in the following clips. Among the few memorable scenes of the potboiler El idolo del Tango: Oscar's rousing performance as guitarist, dancer, singer and showman.
A comprehensive Oscar Alemán bio and discography by Norwegian jazz critic Jan Evensmo was posted on the excellent Jazz Archeology website. Lots and lots of related material on Oscar Alemán, including transcripts from television appearances and radio interviews, is up on YouTube, among quite a bit of excellent Argentinian jazz. Alemán's appearances on Buenos Aires television are numerous and soundtracks from them turn up on YouTube.
The guitar giant's music is still being played and celebrated. An Oscar Alemán Play-Along Songbook Volume 1 was published in 2019 and the Argentinian version of The Real Book concentrates heavily on the Alemán repertoire. For musicians, these are fitting addendums to Hernán Gaffet's film.
Must tip one of Oscar's stylish hats to the late Hans Koert, who devoted a blog to him and was a key link to guitar enthusiasts and Oscar fans worldwide.
In conclusion, it's good to know that Oscar's granddaughter, vocalist Jorgelina Alemán, is carrying on the family tradition in the 21st century and has organized tributes to him. Here she is, singing one of her grandfather's signature tunes, Hombre Mío.
Two 20th century greats were brought into the world on the 21st of August. One was responsible for a million laughs, the other a million concerts and countless outstanding recordings. We're talking cartoonmeister Isadore "Friz" Freleng and a bandleader with a flair for supple yet subtle piano, William James Basie a.k.a. "The Count" - two powerhouses from Kansas City! Both entertained audiences from Torrance to Toledo to Timbuktu starting in the 1920's.
The name I have seen on the silver screen and orthicon tube the most times is very likely Friz Freleng. Imagine someone whose name is in credits as frequently as William "One Shot" Beaudine whose films are, for the most part, actually good. That would be Friz!
Freleng, a cohort of Walt Disney and his gang of animators (Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Rollin Hamilton) in the 1920's, would work on numerous Harman-Ising productions released by Warner Brothers, including the first Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.
Friz would be among the dream team of directors who cranked out inspired cartoons for Warner Brothers animation: Tex Avery, Frank Tashlin, Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Robert McKimson and Arthur Davis.
We'll start today's post with a documentary about Friz' amazing seven decade career as a producer-animator-director and Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies master.
Friz was also interviewed in 1980 as part of the Animafeastival event curated by Toronto film archivist Reg Hartt.
Freleng made a slew of lesser known but outstanding cartoons in the 1940's and early 1950's.
A favorite of the gang at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog is THE TRIAL OF MR. WOLF, which is riotously funny and preceded Tex Avery's MGM masterpiece RED HOT RIDING HOOD.
Of the WW2 propaganda toons DAFFY THE COMMANDO is among the best of the best.
Not to be outdone, Friz and his ace story writers (Tedd Pierce and Mike Maltese) followed a cartoon in which Daffy Duck takes on Hitler with HERR MEETS HARE, featuring Hermann Goering as a villain (as he and his ilk were emphatically in real life). The Mike Maltese disdain for Richard Wagner which would be a driving force in later Chuck Jones cartoons is a key factor in this Freleng gem. Love the commentary by film historian and animation expert Greg Ford.
Freleng was a master of the western spoof. It was said that Yosemite Sam was based on Friz!
Friz was also a jedi master of the extended chase and featured many variations on the chase within the twisted relationship between Bugs Bunny and ever-moronic Elmer Fudd.
The guy who writes this blog, a kid during the 1960's who watched The Addams Family, The Wild Wild West and Get Smart religiously - and also saw It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World on the big screen at our long-gone local movie palace - knew who Count Basie and Duke Ellington were because, in the halcyon days before the current mirage of many choices but in effect many less choices, jazz bands appeared often on television.
A few years later, this blogger would be among the rock generation kids who listened to rock & roll and progessive rock but also sought out jazz.
The extent to which jazz, even fairly gnarly modern jazz, was seen before 1971 on American television is astounding.
Often, swingin' sounds could actually be found on 1950's and 1960's television, especially on such programs as The Nat King Cole Show, Here's Edie, Art Ford's Jazz Party and The Hollywood Palace (where frequent hosts Bing, Frank, Sammy and Dino were clearly fans of the big band sound).
The early 1960's lineup a.k.a. The Atomic Band, often appeared on television. Here is a concert which remains available on one of the Jazz Icons DVDs.
Bugs Bunny's favorites, The Duke Of Ellington, The Count of Basie, The Satchmo of Armstrong and sometimes even The Earl Of Hines would appear on TV in those days. American jazz would continue to be featured on European television, but seldom were seen anywhere on American TV. Even rock music got phased out once the 1970's ended; the point came when rockers would only be seen as guest stars on Saturday Night Live and SCTV (especially John Candy's glorious The Fishin' Musician sketches).
The BBC sometimes did music lovers a tremendous favor by featuring interviews with and about jazz greats, such as this one with Count Basie by fellow pianist Oscar Peterson. Once in a blue moon, these interviews would be shown on PBS or be used in documentaries.
The earliest appearances of The Count on 78s I've heard would be the 1920's and 1930's recordings of Bennie Moten's band.
While more in the Fats Waller stride school at this juncture, Basie drives the Moten band as surely as he would the powerhouse editions of the Count Basie Orchestra on The Atomic Count Basie and Sinatra At The Sands.
The recording of Lady Be Good by Jones Smith Incorporated was a watershed and featured the casual and smooth (while always soulful) musical genius of saxophonist Lester "Prez" Young.
That said, there are silent film clips, dubbed in with Basie recordings, from the orchestra's famous performance from the 1938 Randall’s Island outdoor concert.
The early 1940's edition of The Count Basie Orchestra appeared in a bunch of Soundies, all prized by 16mm film collectors. There was a fascinating piece on the Hi De Ho blog about how Cab Calloway met Count Basie and that they worked together at one point. Footage of those two bandleaders working together would be even more prized than Cab's killer Soundies and Paramount 1-reelers.
In the following Soundie, vocalist Jimmy Rushing brings blues to the Basie mix in his rendition of TAKE ME BACK, BABY.
Fans of crooners got hip to Basie via his many collaborations with Frank Sinatra.
Sinatra-Basie, followed by It Might As Well Be Swing, are particularly wonderful albums and preceded Frank's memorable appearance with The Count Basie Orchestra on The Hollywood Palace.
Sinatra At The Sands, featuring the Count Basie Ocrhestra and charts by Quincy Jones, remains one of the Chairman Of The Board's most played and celebrated albums.
"Corner Pocket" is one of the cornerstones of the 1960's Count Basie repertoire.
The formidable Joe Williams does the honors on vocals on numerous 1950's and 1960's Basie records.
Closing this post: our all-time favorite photo of The Count. This one's a gem from the Library Of Congress collection, snapped by William P. Gottlieb, celebrated chronicler of mid-20th century music. This was shot at NYC's Aquarium Club and successfully captures both Basie's musical brillance and something essential about who he was.
