Seasonal Decor

Ok, let's get our decorations up.  Has anyone seen the plywood Santa?  

 

It doesn't rate a Sunday post because it's not new, but Open AI's version of Frank Sinatra, crooning a holiday hello, is the sort of Firestone Tires Songs of Christmas we like around here.  I especially dig the arrangements-- Nelson and the boys were really toasted.  A Christmas Song of Childhood Dreams.

 

Open AI: In the Style of Frank Sinatra (3:09) 

 

And for an antidote to all the musical cheer that's about to be inflicted on us, I recommend Les Wilson, who sings, as someone once said, like a tone-deaf person listening to music on headphones.  

 

Les Wilson: Deck the Halls (1:14)

 

We may continue to drop bizarre holiday music in here during the month.  

One Man

 

The problem with the Unitary Executive theory.

Play (2:08) 

Alexander Tsfasman, "The Guy From the South"

 

Here at last is a song about some guy.  

I was listening to a collection of Soviet jazz on Youtube, and found this unexpectedly Hot Jazz, with very little info.  

 

The subject of the song, a "man from the South", who's identified by "a big cigar in his mouth",  was totally irrelevant to the combo, who combined the styles of Raymond Scott, Fletcher Henderson and wild Betty Boop music.  This was Stalin-era Soviet jazz?  

 

play (2:20)

 

 

 

Alexander Tsfasman

 

The notes on the video were in Russian. I got the composer and title from that.

 

Alexander Tsfasman was a Ukrainian composer, one of the giants of Soviet jazz, and creator of the country's first jazz orchestra.  

 

The track is available at Apple Music- who stole a couple of my pieces from an anthology and refused to give me a penny AND I HOPE YOU'RE NOT BUYING MUSIC FROM THOSE CAPITALISTS (kidding of course.  If they had to pay people, maybe they wouldn't play anything.  I know I wouldn't.)  

 

The thing about their version, and maybe all the others except this one, is that it's screwed up-- there's like a half-beat missing from the intro.  See for yourself:

 

original intro

 

fixed

 

My guess is, somewhere along the way, a misguided music producer who didn't understand the time nature of music (fixed beats per measure and all that) heard a glitch on this recording and simply chopped it out.  So now there's a jump in the intro.  Because who notices that kind of thing, huh?  There's so many beats in an average song, you can probably throw out a few of them with no one noticing...

Why people with no rhythm sense end up producing music is a mystery to me.  The same thing happened with "Dr. Jazz" on the Bonzo's "Cornology" collection (EMI Records).  There's a drop-out during the bass clarinet solo, and they just removed that portion of song, and made it 7/8 for a bar.  If you want the track complete, it's on vinyl.  But the official CD version has an obvious glitch, and it's out there now, too.  (And this is from the people who make themselves the "owners" of the music.)  

I hope you enjoy what is perhaps the only restored version of this song.  (Sorry about the low volume levels.  When I made them louder, it got really distorted.  I'm only a simple country sound nut, with my little wind-up deal, here.) 

 

 

Parades

 

The 1999 Thanksgiving Day Parade on CBS, re-articulated for your listening pleasure. 

 

Yes, it is a rerun, and very much an oldie.  I took it off the site when it was included in one of the sets on Bandcamp.  Why is it here today?  Well...
 
One idea I have for this site is soundtracks for annual holiday parades.  The idea is, you folks at home play it while watching the parade, and maybe some crazy synchronicity will occur-- some overwhelmingly appropriate and silly collision of image and sound.  My gift to you.  Ya never know.  
 
So, why is it just this one short little bit?  Because (1) I didn't give myself enough time to mobilize the concept this year, and (2) no one else sounded anywhere as silly as these two.  

 

The potential silliness of parade commentary is actually pretty high, but it depends on the hosts; of course there's the natural reluctance to be a goofball on national TV.  But these two hardy souls were up to the task, and I applaud them.  We know and love and eat!

 

Parades (5:21) 

 

Aack Seasoning

 

New sponsor.

 

Play (1:29) 

Today's unintentional cutup

Yahoo News.

TV's JFK

The Tuscaloosa News

Since it's November and some of us still remember when they killed the President, it seems like a good time to combine that with our monthly focus on Old TV Guys, and look at the best and worst JFKs through the years.

The IMDB has a list of 23, but it's not complete.  And because his wife was a historic character in her own right, John Fitzgerald Kennedy (perhaps our most show-biz president) has a couple dozen+ portrayals popping up here and there.  

 

I can't pretend to have seen most of them.  But I am a lifelong fan, both of Old TV Guys and JFK, so without further ado, here's the ones I have seen.

 

 

Sam Groom, Blood Feud (1983)

20th Century Fox TV

   

Strictly two-dimensional.  In the championship bout between Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa, Groom's sing-songy lightweight won't even enter the ring.  "But Bobby- what will Dad say?"  He'll say, forget it.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Cliff Robertson, PT 109 (1963)

Warner Bros

Robertson's genial Shafty seems off-hand, but he captures Kennedy's essential opacity, hidden as it is beneath the charming veneer.  He really was a detached kind of person.  The interesting thing about this film is the legend that it was shot in the Caribbean while the anti-Castro Cubans were practicing their invasion. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

William Jordan, King (1978) 

Filmways Television

 

They don't give him much to do except sit in his rocking chair and look Presidential.  But Jordan's pretty good at sitting there like a trustworthy authority of some kind, deputy sheriff, president, whatever. 

 

(To put a finer point on this post, he and Gordon Pinsent are the only actors on this page I'd consider in the Old TV Guy group- the rest are just stars.)

  

 

 

 

 

Martin Sheen, Kennedy (1983) 

Alan Landsburg Productions

 

He was President Bartlet, and Bobby in The Missiles of October (mentioned below).    Sheen played the big guy himself in this 3-part epic, hitting all the Cliff's Notes, and throwing in a lot of color- I didn't know J Edgar Hoover made him wiretap Martin Luther King by threatening to expose Kennedy's extramarital affairs.  That's pretty frank. 

 

But the genius casting in this film is Blair Brown's note-perfect Jackie.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Vincent Gardenia as J Edgar Hoover, who goes around with a Sinister Light shining up into his face, in a satisfactorily scary way.  "Both men pursued the Swedish woman...the father and the son!"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Speaking of Jackie, there were two bios of her in 1981, which gives you an idea of the demand for JFK as a supporting character.  The Presidential hubbies (to use a word of the era) were James Franciscus-

ABC Circle Films

(Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, with Jaclyn Smith)

 

 

 

                                                                          

  

 

                                                 

 

Lester Persky Productions

 

 

                                       

                                                      -and Stephen Collins.

 

                  (A Woman Named Jackie, with Roma Downey) 

  

These are two films I have not seen, so I don't know how they were in the role.  But they seem appropriately Kennedyesque; Franciscus was even one of the clean-cut Kennedy-Looking Guys running around Hollywood in the late 50s-early 60s, with Roberts Redford & Culp, Tab Hunter, Doug McClure, etc. 

 

 

 

William Devane, The Missiles of October (1974) 

Maljack/Viacom Productions

 

 

 

Devane's best and strongest feature is his close resemblance to Herblock's JFK.

 

 I have a problem sitting through this one, even though it's loaded with Those Guys- John Dehner as Dean Acheson, James Hong as U Thant, Howard da Silva as Khrushchev, even perennial military-guy Andrew Duggan as General Maxwell Taylor.

   

I should love it.  But Martin Sheen seems to think RFK was perpetually angry, with a hair-trigger temper (when it was actually RFK's calm suggestion that solved the crisis).   He really needs to take a Miltown or something. 

 

 

 

Gordon Pinsent as "The President", Colossus, the Forbin Project (1970)

 

Universal Pictures

My personal favorite, even though he's not exactly JFK- but who is?  

Pinsent's commanding squint, his ability to project a steely (though misinformed) calm, resonates well with memory.  In fact, the eerie resemblance gives this film an alternate-history sort of vibe; what if there'd been no Dallas?  Would Fate have found a more suitable trap for the New Frontier?  

The road not taken, and all that.  Lost but for image, and falling flakes of sound.