'Every note, clear and strong': Tony Trischka thrives at RockyGrass

 

Photo by Bonnie Chaim

Tony Trischka thrives at RockyGrass

By BRAD WEISMANN

It’s always a good time when Tony Trischka comes to town.

The 77-year-old master of the bluegrass banjo is one of the many of the genre’s elite who gather in Lyons, Colorado once a year in late July. They do so for a week of teaching music at Planet Bluegrass’ RockyGrass Academy, followed by three days of continuous bluegrass performances at the annual RockyGrass festival.

A young and enthusiastic attendee at the first Fincastle Bluegrass Festival, the model for the modern bluegrass music festival, in 1965, Trischka moved quickly from group to group as his skill and breadth of knowledge increased. Quickly expert at traditional bluegrass banjo techniques, Trischka was motivated to innovate, and he began to include all sorts of different musics – “jazz, avant-garde, psychedelic, klezmer and various non-Western musical elements” – into his playing. This approach came to be known as “newgrass” or progressive bluegrass, and now, decades later, encompasses the work of numerous prominent individuals and ensembles such as Tony Rice, Leftover Salmon, Hot Rize, and Alison Kraus.

He’s produced nearly two dozen solo albums, made music with Skyline and Psychograss, and has collaborated on a myriad of projects with others. He’s played on Broadway and in film.

But once a year, Trischka loves RockyGrass. “It’s the greatest,” he says. “I have always taught at the Academy here every year. And it’s just the best. This is my favorite year so far. I’m in here so many times I know everybody so it’s like you walk three feet, (you meet) 10 people. It’s a great hang, and the students are great. They had me by the river this time. And the setting, and to see all your friends. Play music. So I just . . . it’s fantastic. It’s just a great vibe here.”

Trischka, surprisingly, received a lot of pushback for his innovations from the traditional bluegrass community. “Yeah, I mean, I was out there in a lot of heavy-duty – I was playing a lot of festivals about that time. In 1973 I was with a group called Breakfast Special in New York City, and we were really weird. We would do Jewish music, Hawaiian music, and Sam Cooke gospel tunes, and some bluegrass. In the evening shows we would hve a saxophone and drums and so we’d do a standard bluegrass sort of thing in the afternoon and then for the motorcycle gangs and the hippies that was the crowd at least in part in the ‘70s because all the rock festivals had shut down. But yeah I would definitely get pushback. And I get it! It was weird stuff, I don’t blame them.”

Trischka persisted, releasing the seminal album Banjoland in 1976, continuing with recordings such as Robot Plane Flies over Arkansas in 1983 leading to the immortal Double Banjo Bluegrass Spectacular in 2007. He contributed music to the soundtrack of Driving Miss Daisy, he played the banjo in Broadway’s The Robber Bridegroom. He is now one of the gray eminences of the genre – but he still keeps busy.

photo by Bonnie Chaim

Currently, he is promoting his second album of famed banjo player Earl Scruggs’ transcriptions, titled Earl Jam 2. Trischka received a thumb drive containing jams Scruggs did with John Hartford in the 1980s and ‘90s. Trischka painstakingly reconstrued these musical passages, and is playing them for an appreciative audience, as evinced by the enthusiastic response to the initial Earl Jam in 2024.

A lot of the tunes on the Earl Jam albums are simple, traditional tunes, a marked contrast to his usual wide-ranging musical explorations. Was this deliberate, or was it dependent on the source material available?

“It’s both I guess you could say. There were a lot of tunes that were traditional, and there were tunes like ‘Chinese Breakdown’ that are really obscure. A lot of it had to do with what did Earl play on that jam. Like I did ‘Bill Cheatham’ because I never knew the right way to play that, and I’ve been playing it for 60 years, I had this real clunky way to play it, and everyone plays it the same way. Then I found out how Earl did it in these jams and I’m like, ‘That’s so cool.’ The main thing is that I want everyone else in the band world to hear what Earl did. I transcribed everything that I could, That particular tune ‘Bill Cheatham’ when people say, ‘So that’s how you play it!’ That’s the cool thing. So a lot of time they were his solos but not always and sometimes you give someone three or four choices of these tunes and they’re going to have cool solos. It varies, Every tune is a little bit different.”

As to future projects – “I’ve been putting music to Emily Dickinson poems. I recorded four tracks already. And this chamber piece -- I wanted to have a soprano in there singing a Emily Dickinson poem. So that’s the next main thing I’m going to do. And if the label wants Earl Jam 3 I guess I will do that. There are over two hundred tunes. So it would be an inexhaustible supply. And every one of those tunes – I’ve never actually counted, but I’ve estimated. You know, there can be three or four solos in each tune, and you could do a whole album with just three or four solos. It’s infinite.”

Trischka is known as a mentor to younger players, especially to that modern whiz of the banjo, Bela Fleck. He described his relationship with him thusly: “He had it, He already had it. He had taken lessons from two other banjo players before he came to me. And he played some Scruggs things and some fiddle tunes, but he wanted to learn some of my weird stuff. It attracted him for some unknown reason. And so he would show up for a lesson and and he would ask me to play some traditional tunes and just jam out for three minutes; he’d record it and then come back the next week playing every single note perfectly. So it was that sort of thing. So we’d worked together for two months, maybe, it was like let’s just hang out together and pick.”

When asked what his favorite area of endeavor is today, he replies: “Besides live performance? I like to go into the studio. I have a friend in the Czech Republic wanted me to do an overdub on something he’s recording, a week ago or something like that. And so it was really fun creating this solo with this tune that he’d come up with. So, yeah, there’s new challenges that keep the brain engaged. As you get older, it’s a good thing to have that avenue.

"I’m not out there every weekend, and I don’t want to be out there every weekend. I play every two weeks, every three weeks. I play enough to keep me really happy. Sometimes I’ll do five dates in a row. So it varies but I’m not like OK, here’s our solid band.”

And in terms of advice for the up and coming banjo player, Trischka says, “Listen to Earl Scruggs a lot. I always like to suggest that people listen to the early bluegrassers, like the Stanley Brothers, check out Ralph Stanley, Jim and Jesse, Bill Monroe. ‘Cause that’s where it started. And there’s a lot of great bands today, but go to the roots.

“And listen to all the banjo players that you can. And work on your timing– timing is everything, as John Hartford once said, and I think everyone would agree with that. Work with a metronome, make sure your timing is really good. And have really good separation of notes which is something that J.D. Crowe said, which means every note you play should be really clear. ‘Cause a lot of times people do a banjo roll and the last note will be kind of quiet, then you’ll lose drive and you’ll lose the syncopation. Every note, really clear and strong.”

The solace of old-time radio

There is something immensely comforting for me about old-time radio. During the heyday of American narrative audio broadcasts (approximately 1930-1960), millions tuned in to a wide variety of programs, hundreds of shows ranging from soap operas to science fiction. At present, the massive influx of podcasts has revived interest in audial work, and even the creation of new narrative radio series. For myself and a few fellow fanatics, the old shows are still something we enjoy on a regular basis.

My dad got me hooked on that great first wave of radio programs. I remember working out in the garage with him one weekend in Denver, when I was around the age of 12. He twisted the dial of a battered old Bakelite radio, searching for the sound of sports. Suddenly, he found something different and turned it up. It was Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy. The 15-minute juvenile adventure serial was cheesy and ludicrous — and I was hooked immediately.

The local old-time radio show was curated, produced, and hosted locally by the affable and relaxed writer John Dunning. I would follow him around the dial from station to station as his program evolved. Once a week, depending on how much time the station gave him — he was usually blessed with two- to three-hour slots, which gave him plenty of time to schedule a nice variety of shows — he would entrance me. He played every important show (as long as the sound quality held up), and many lesser-known gems, and filled in the context for each show with a comprehensive exactitude that is codified in his immense and deeply enjoyable reference work about the period, On the Air.

What’s the appeal? First and foremost is the idea of compelling the listening audience to collaborate by implementing its imagination. With film and television, the visual is codified and defines how we remember and think about the performance. In radio, you are free (in fact required) to flesh out the story in your imagination. This leeway, this necessity to make the brain work, is exhilarating. When one prominent show came on the air, the announcer proclaimed, “Tired of the everyday grind? Ever dream of a life of romantic adventure? We offer you Escape! Designed to free you from the four walls of today . . .” If you give yourself over the process, it’s mighty mind-expanding.

Next, versatility on the cheap. A handful of sound effects, some appropriate music, and solid performances take the listener anywhere you want. You can go to the moon, or sail to a treasure island. You can inhabit the mind of a murderer, or that of a precocious child. It is easier to move into the place of characters via audio than in any other medium.

Then there’s the nostalgia factor. Growing up, I was marinated in the mainstream culture of decades earlier, which turned me into a person of the 1930s. There is something about traveling back in time, into earlier (and, you might say, more primitive) modes of entertainment, which both takes me out of myself and grounds me. Despite the Great Depression and World War II, my parents’ childhood world was a stable one. I identify these old shows with that feeling.

Part of this legacy consists of some very inappropriate racial stereotypes. One of the most popular comedies on the air, Amos ‘n’ Andy, featured white men pretending to be black. The show is well-written, but it leans on and reinforces popular prejudices, rendering it unlistenable today. On the sitcom Fibber McGee and Molly, their Black maid Beulah was played by a white man, Marlin Hurt. Even on the tolerant Jack Benny show, the clever servant Rochester (Eddie Anderson) initially referenced attributes such as a penchant for razors, dice, and gin. There are Asian stereotypes in many shows, most notably Terry and the Pirates and Have Gun, Will Travel. Even Life with Luigi trafficked in obnoxious ethnic types. Replays of these broadcasts require warnings and contextualization. When it came to racial equality in that era, radio was just as behind as everything else.

Finally, the warm glow of sound issuing from the speaker surrounds me and lifts me up. The simple comfort of the human voice, speaking seemingly only to you, confers contentment.

So where do you begin? My list of recommendations follows, grouped by genre. How to find them? It takes a bit of sleuthing to dig up these shows, but the digital revolution has made it much easier. I utilize primarily the Internet Archive’s Old Time Radio pages, as well as the excellent RadioEchoes, which carries classic British as well as American radio. YouTube is also a valuable source.

COMEDY

Vic and Sade

The ultimate use of radio in the comedy format can be found in this series of 15-minute freestanding sketches that took in the “the small house halfway up in the next block” in an anonymous small Midwestern town. For the bulk of the show, it was populated by only three characters: Victor Gook, his wife Sade, and their son Rush. Through their incidental conversations, the listener got to hear about the most bizarre and surreal collection of people (Fred Stembottom, Y.Y. Flirch, et al), places (The Tiny Petite Pheasant Feather Tea Shoppe, the Bright Kentucky Hotel) and events put out in any medium. The show was enormously popular during its run from 1932 to 1945. From simple premises such as “40 Pounds of Golf Clubs” and “Grandpa Snyder’s Christmas Cards” came complicated curlicues of contorted nonsense. Most importantly, the players sounded like regular folks, comfortable in their own skins and absorbed in the minutiae and absurdities of everyday life.

Others: The Jack Benny Program, The Fred Allen Show, Abbott and Costello, Baby Snooks, Bob Hope, Bob and Ray, Burns and Allen, Duffy’s Tavern, Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, Fibber McGee and Molly, The Great Gildersleeve, Lum and Abner, Our Miss Brooks, Phil Harris-Alive Faye Show, The Red Skelton Show

THRILLER

Inner Sanctum Mysteries

The home of the infamous squeaking door, Inner Sanctum (1941-1952) led its listeners down gloomy and improbable corridors. Each week, it delivered completely over-the-top melodrama larded down with gore, it was something you wanted to listen to with the lights on. The creepy organ soundtrack and the show’s sardonic, punning host only made it better. Sometimes the plots were so absurd that you end up laughing — but it was still entertaining.

Others: Lights Out, The Whistler, Murder at Midnight, Dark Fantasy

SOAP OPERA

One Man’s Family

I am not a fan of these daily/weekly weepies, but radio started the soap opera genre (so named because soap companies, trying to reach the housewife, were often sponsors of these shows), and it ran strongly on the airwaves from beginning to end of the era. Some series even successfully transferred to television. The gold standard for the long, involved, and slow-moving intertwined narratives was this show (1932-1959), scripted by the prolific and talented Carlton E. Morse, who also created the excellent serial adventure I Love a Mystery. In Family, four generations of the Barbour family lived, loved, laughed, and lost together in weekly nuggets of conversation and consternation.

DETECTIVE

Richard Diamond Private Detective

Not the first wisecracking detective but certainly one of the best (1949-1953). Former crooner Dick Powell played Diamond (his name a nod to Sam Spade), a cocky, bemused private eye who sometimes burst into song to cap an episode. He good-naturedly jousted with his pal the police lieutenant and solved crimes and other mysteries with one eyebrow cocked.

Others: Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade, Boston Blackie, Dragnet, Gang Busters, The Saint, The Shadow, Yours Truly Johnny Dollar, Candy Matson

ADVENTURE

Escape and Suspense

You can tell from the list of other shows below that most adventure radio was geared toward kids. Escape (1947-1954) and Suspense (1942-1962) were different. They were for grown-up listeners, featured top-notch production values, and rarely proved tedious. Escape stuck mainly to adventure and action; Suspense trafficked in mystery and crime, often featuring big Hollywood names in the cast. These two shows drew talented people into their making, and remain memorable.

Others: Green Hornet, Superman, Buck Rogers, Challenge of the Yukon, Terry and the Pirates, Chandu the Magician, I Love a Mystery, Voyage of the Scarlet Queen

WESTERNS

The Lone Ranger

The Masked Rider of the Plains was created specifically for radio, and remains its most iconic figure. He was a Texas Ranger who was left for dead by outlaws, but who survived and disguised his identity so that he could wreak havoc against badmen everywhere in the Old West. From 1933 to 1956, he fought for justice with his faithful Indian companion, Tonto. This was kid stuff, but later Western series adopted a much more mature approach, especially Gunsmoke. It’s difficult to realize now that, at least until the 1960s, the Western genre was the nation’s most popular.

Others: The Cisco Kid, Fort Laramie, Frontier Gentleman, Gene Autry’s Melody Ranch, Gunsmoke, Have Gun Will Travel, Hopalong Cassidy, The Roy Rogers Show

QUIZ SHOW

Information Please

Most quiz shows were dopey giveaways, but Information Please (1938-1948) was different. In it, listeners sent in questions in an effort to stump four brainy panelists, a team usually anchored by columnist Franklin P. Adams, sportswriter John Kieran, and pianist Oscar Levant. It was a funny, freewheeling show and for a time was wildly popular. It is still fun to listen in and play along. (Its mirror opposite It Pays to Be Ignorant lined up three comics who gloriously biffed on questions such as “Who is buried in Grant’s tomb?”, getting confused, going off on tangents, and generally abusing the show’s long-suffering host Tom Howard. Of course, in You Bet Your Life, the format was given another twist as host Groucho Marx teased the contestants unmercifully.

Others: Doctor I.Q., It Pays to Be Ignorant, You Bet Your Life

SCI-FI

Dimension X

Science fiction was a late comer to radio, and again was thought of primarily as kid stuff. However, many interesting ideas and sardonic observations were unfolded through the genre, and Dimension X (1950-1951) was a strong contender. It was reborn (and scripts were reused) as X Minus One (1955-1958). Both shows took some of the best work of the most skilled sci-fi writers of the day.

Others: X Minus One

DRAMA

Mercury Theatre on the Air

“Straight” drama was a surprisingly weak genre on radio. The need for family-friendly content meant that many topics were off-limits. The first show to demonstrate the amazing power of radio was the infamous Mercury show of Oct. 30, 1938 — Mercury’s adaptation of “The War of the Worlds.” The production was so realistic that the entire nation panicked. The series was the brainchild of Orson Welles and John Houseman, who first made a splash on the air with an epic three-and-a-half hour adaptation of Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” The Mercury had confidence in the listener’s ability to absorb complex material, and its mature and intelligent approach made it the most engaging of dramatic offerings on the air.

Others: Columbia Workshop, Columbia Presents Corwin, Lux Radio Theatre, NBC University Theatre

Just for Halloween: the scariest old-time radio shows

What scares you the most? Is it watching the latest horror film? Reading a Stephen King novel? For me, it’s listening to old-time radio.

I’ve been listening to vintage radio since I was a kid, ever since my dad snapped on the radio one Saturday and ran across the amazing local broadcasts of radio historian John Dunning. I listened faithfully for years, following John from local station to local station as he spoke about and played comedies, dramas, variety shows, band remotes . . . and thrillers.

Radio as a diverse and engaging dramatic medium only lasted about 30 years in the U.S., though it is still strong and innovative in Britain (BBC Radio 4, anyone? I have it bookmarked). The rise of the podcast has reignited interest in narrative audio, and even triggered new attempts to enact stories on the air. And, the ubiquity of the internet now means that all those old shows I had to make appointments to hear can be dialed up instantly; much of my listening day is still spent exploring the Golden Age of the medium.

Radio is robust. I always prefer it because it allows the listener to create pictures in their mind. In fact, the medium demands active participation. This kind of mental work is particularly helpful to mysteries, thrillers, and horror tales. Even silly and overwrought material can sound convincingly scary if you turn out the lights and huddle close to the speakers.

Horror shows abounded on radio. Early efforts such as “The Witch’s Tale” and “The Hermit’s Cave” were joined by such fare as “The Mysterious Traveler,” “The Strange Dr. Weird,” “The Hall of Fantasy,” and “The Weird Circle.” The most familiar to the general public might be “Inner Sanctum Mysteries,” the opening of which featured the famous sound of a creaking door. Its host was sardonic, cracking wise and spilling puns everywhere in the lead-up to the story of the night. (The humorous horror host was later incorporated into horror comics and into television’s horror anthologies.)

Radio during that period was a family medium and did operate under constraints, and many of the horror shows weren’t really that scary. Many of these shows were deliberately tongue-in-cheek. Some had formulas that dictated that whatever supernatural nonsense was conjured up was explained away logically by the end of the episode.

Every once in a while, though, something genuinely terrifying would make its way onto the airwaves. Here follows my list of shows that scared and continue to scare me despite repeated airings.

Inner Sanctum Mysteries

“The Man Who Couldn’t Die,” Feb. 12, 1946

The best-known of all the old-time horror programs. Richard Widmark stars as a man who achieves immortality — at a terrible price.

Dark Fantasy

"Demon Tree,” Dec. 5, 1941

This excellent show originated from, of all places, Oklahoma City, a bizarre place to find top-notch writers and performers. It’s just as good as any East or West Coast show, and this episode proves it.

Mercury Theater on the Air

“Dracula,” July 11, 1938

The amazing dramatic experiment that Orson Welles and company pioneered set the bar high for narrative radio; no one ever really equaled it. All of these hour-long adaptations are worth a listen, and “Dracula” is a claustrophobic and intense gem.

Murder at Midnight

“The House Where Death Lived,” 1946

This show was ludicrously over the top, but it was so convincing in its execution that it got under your skin. It frequently starred the deliciously evil-sounding Berry Kroeger, who gets into all kind of trouble here.

The Mysterious Traveler

“Behind the Locked Door,” Nov. 6, 1951

Two archaeologists are trapped in a cave that also holds the descendants of a wagon train who’ve adapted to life in complete darkness.

Quiet Please

“The Thing on the Fourble Board,” Aug. 9, 1948

When an engineer drills into earth, he unleashes an unholy monster.

Escape

“Escape” was a wonderful show, “designed to free you from the four walls of today for a half-hour of high adventure.” The program covered many different genres and styles, and its horror was superlative.

“Evening Primrose,” Nov. 5, 1947

A poet decides to quit the rat race, and hide himself in and live in a department store. He discovers that he’s not the first with the idea.

“Country of the Blind,” Nov. 26, 1947

Adapted from an H.G. Wells story, it refutes the idea that “in the country of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

“Three Skeleton Key,” March 17, 1950

Starring Vincent Price, it’s the tale of three lighthouse keepers who must fight for their lives when their island is invaded by swarms of rats.

“Bloodbath,” June 30, 1950

Vincent Price is here again as an expedition to recover valuable uranium leads men into a jungle nightmare.

“Poison,” July 28, 1950

One of the greatest exercises in the generation of tension in sound, the attempt of a native doctor to save the life of a prejudiced American is unexpectedly moving.

“Present Tense,” Jan 31, 1950

Vincent Price — again! Here he plays a murderer who gets a second chance at life . . . and then a third . . . and then . . .

Suspense

“Suspense” was billed as “radio’s outstanding theater of thrills,” and it produced episode after solid episode for years.

“The Hitchhiker,” Sept. 9, 1942

Orson Welles stars in the classic tale of a hitchhiker who keeps appearing to a cross-country driver.

“Sorry, Wrong Number,” May 25, 1943

Agnes Moorehead stars in one of radio’s most iconic shows. She’s a bedridden woman who accidentally overhears a plot to murder her.

“Donovan’s Brain,” May 18 & May 25, 1944

Orson Welles again, in a special two-part adaptation of Curt Siodmak’s great novel about a scientist who preserves the brain of a dead tycoon — and finds it taking over his personality. Part One; Part Two

“August Heat,” May 31, 1945

My personal favorite. Ronald Colman is artist who draws a presentiment of his death, and finds a tombstone carved with his name, date of birth — and that day as the day of his death.

“The House in Cypress Canyon,” Dec. 12, 1946

The new house for rent has only one thing wrong with it — werewolves.

“Dead Ernest,” Aug. 8, 1946

The buried-alive story had been done numerous times before, but here a cataleptic man lies in the morgue, waiting to be autopsied, with no way to let anyone know he’s still alive.

“Ghost Hunt,” June 23, 1949

An annoying disc jockey (Ralph Edwards) spends the night in a haunted house as an on-air stunt. Complications ensue.

Lights Out

This was the scariest of all the classic radio horror shows. They WANTED to frighten the living bejeezus out of you, and they frequently succeeded. And yes, they always did tell you, “if you frighten easily, turn off your radio now.” Yikes.

“A Day at the Dentist,” March 10, 1937

Only four minutes of this exists, but it’s a great four minutes.

“The Dark,” Dec. 29, 1937

Again, only an excerpt exits. A horrible black fog turns victims inside out — without killing them.

“Chicken Heart,” Feb. 23, 1938

Bill Cosby’s comedy routine made this famous. A scientist gets a chicken heart to grow . . . and grow and grow and grow.

“Cat Wife,” March 30, 1938

Boris Karloff’s new wife is not what she seems.

“Revolt of the Worms,” Oct. 13, 1942

It’s much the same premise as “Chicken Heart,” but it’s squeam- and scream-inducing.

“Come to the Bank,” Nov. 17, 1942

A man figures out how to penetrate solid matter, but finds himself irrevocably trapped.

“Death Robbery,” July 16, 1947

What happens after death? Boris Karloff plays a scientist who brings his wife back to life, but discovers an essential element is missing — her soul.

Pop-era: modern songs lifted from operas – Part 2, The Interesting and Strange

Why? Why did these white doo-woppers cover four opera arias?

Here’s another project that’s snowballing into multiple parts, proving again that poking into obscure cultural corners is both a waste of one’s time and a provocation of delight.

In the first chapter of this investigation, I looked at hitsadapted from opera – “The Alabama Song,” “Mack the Knife,” “I Can’t HelpFalling in Love with You,” and “Stranger in Paradise.” In the commission of the first story, I found plenty of other examples of this syndrome. Here are 12. Interestingly, the bulk of these adaptations cropped up between the Big Band era and rock ‘n’ roll, when vocalists took center stage and “sweet singing” was the norm.

Some of these songs are sweet and some insufferable, but most, I think, are worth a listen by the curious opera fan.

“Avalon,” sung by Al Jolson, written by Vincent Rose, with additional credit taken by Jolson and Buddy De Sylva, 1920; AKA a transposed version of “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca, Puccini, 1900

Here’s a case in which copping credit leads to downfall. Vincent Rose wrote the song, but it was common at the time for people with leverage to claim co-authorship of the song in order to gain a piece of its royalties. Jolson and De Sylva did. (The practice has stayed with us down the decades, unfortunately.) A year after the song emerged and became a hit, the publisher of composer Giacomo Puccini’s music sued, claiming that the song was based on the famous aria from Tosca, “E lucevan le stelle,” written 20 years before – only transposed from its original minor to a major key! They won the suit, and $25,000, and all future royalties from the song.

“Here,” sung by Tony Martin, written by Harold Grant, Dorcas Cochran, 1954; AKA “Caro nome” from Rigoletto, Verdi, 1851

This decent little ditty rose to #7 on the charts, and was later covered by the Four Belles, the late Jimmy Young, and Robert Goulet.

“Don’t You Know,” sung by Della Reese, composed by Bobby Worth, 1959; AKA “Quando me’n vo’” from La Boheme, Puccini, 1896

The song that made Della Reese’s career. The up-and-coming singer had already charted with “And That Reminds Me” two years previously, but “Don’t You Know” earned her a Grammy nomination and a long contract performing in Las Vegas. (Songwriter Bobby Worth also co-wrote “Tonight We Love,” which borrows a theme from Tchaikovsky.)

“Carmen’s Boogie,” arranged by George Cates, lyrics by Mel Leven, 1952; AKA “L’amour est un oiseau rebelle” from Carmen, Bizet, 1875 – Andrews Sisters, Spade Cooley (both 1952), the Crew Cuts (1955)

The Mambo and You,” composer unknown, year unknown (from 7” “The Crew Cuts Go To the Opera.” 1959); AKA “La donna e mobile” from Rigoletto, Verdi, 1851

“Need (aka The Urge),” composer unknown, year unknown (from 7” “The Crew Cuts Go To the Opera.” 1959); AKA the tenor line from “Bella figlia dell amore” quartet from Act 4 of Rigoletto, Verdi, 1851

“Mostly Martha,” written by Ralph Sterling, Dorcas Cochran, year unknown (from 7” “The Crew Cuts Go To the Opera.” 1959); AKA “M’appari” from von Flotow, Martha, 1847 (who lifted it from an opera he wrote a year earlier)

The Crew Cuts are universally despised by music historians, as part of the huge wave of square white artists and groups who Caucasian-ized the bejeezus out of R & B hits during the 1950s, in a misbegotten effort to “translate” and make safe the transgressive energy of that music for white kids (who all preferred the originals anyway). The Crew Cuts’ biggest hit was a cover of The Chords’ “Sh-Boom” (their cringeworthy version of “Susie Q” bears little comparison to Creedence Clearwater Revival’s definitive 1968 cover.)

Now, here’s the remarkable thing. Their “Carmen’s Boogie” was originally written for the Andrews Sisters, then covered by Spade Cooley, but the Crew Cuts’ version was a hit. Somehow, this microniche of singing pop covers of opera led to their 1959 7-inch, four-song mini-LP, The Crew Cuts Go to the Opera, where they stick it to Verdi and Flotow as well¹. The result is one of the oddest crossover pop-culture artifacts ever.

“Night,” sung by Jackie Wilson, lyrics by Johnny Lehmann, 1960; AKA “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” from Samson et Delila, Saint-Saens, 1877

Could this guy sing anything? It seems so. “Mr. Excitement” had a four-octave range, and killed it performing R&B, doo-wop, and pop. This very mayonnaise-ish take on “Mon coeur s’ouvre a ta voix” is a noble effort, and Wilson sells it hard. There’s enough strain in it, though, to make him an unlikely successor to Mario Lanza.

“Like I Do,” sung by Nancy Sinatra, written by Bob Manning, 1962; AKA The Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda, Ponichelli, 1876: also Maureen Evans, 1962; The Peanuts, as “Lemon No Kiss,” 1962; Theresa Brewer, as “She’ll Never, Never Love You,” 1963

These all predate the most famous reincarnation of the Dance of the Hours melody, listed just below, and probably helped trigger it. Four equally excruciating covers of this terrifyingly vapid adaptation must have crowded the airwaves of the time and inspired Allan Sherman. If you can get through them all, put a warm washcloth on your head and eat some ice cream.

“Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter from Camp),” sung by Allan Sherman, written by Sherman and Lou Busch, 1963; AKA The Dance of the Hours from La Gioconda, Ponichelli, 1876

This song came out in August 1963, and was pretty much the last laugh America had before Kennedy’s assassination. Sherman’s fame was brief, and this was his big hit, but he inspired a few future satirists.

“Please Don’t Go,” sung by Donald Peers, arranged by Les Reed and Jackie Rae, 1969; AKA the Bacarolle from Les contes de Hoffmann, Offenbach, 1881

The trend of harnessing opera melodies to pop songs petered out in the 1960s. The few entries are lugubrious, if not lachrymose.

“And You Smiled,” sung by Matt Munro, composed by Trombey and Taggart, 1973; AKA “Eye Level” by the Simon Park Orchestra, 1972; AKA “Non piu andrai” from Le nozze di Figaro, Mozart, 1786

This is the trifecta, the hat trick of adaptations. “And You Smiled” has lyrics slapped on by Melvin David Taggart; its inspiration, “Eye Level,” was an instrumental hit performed by the Simon Park Orchestra, was the theme for a popular BBC-TV detective series Van der Valk. That theme, written by Jack Trombey, swipes the underpinnings of Mozart’s “Non piu andrai” and puts a new top line on it. A paradise of plagiaries (or, these days, should we say recycling?).

NEXT TIME: Best opera spoofs, audio and video

Note for #1: This was one of the 45-rpm records in my childhood home; we memorized it as kids and sang it constantly. In its own bizarre way, it may have been the gateway drug that led to my love of opera. The lyrics of “Carmen’s Boogie” are worth recounting here.

Hate the opera, it’s too highbrow

But there’s one number I can dig right now

Just like shifting without a clutch,

I ride the boogie with the Carmen touch

You ain’t livin’ if you have missed

The long-hair music with the Crew Cut twist

Don’t love often and don’t love much

But love that boogie with the Carmen touch

It rips up floors, it knocks down walls

They tell me it’s the reason that Niagara Falls

It even made Gibraltar rock

It’s not the kind of thing a mockingbird can mock

The day it hit in old Bombay

A Hindu couldn’t charm a snake away

They say in French, in Greek and Dutch

The boogie wasn’t boogie ‘til it got the Carmen touch!

I can’t reveal

The way I feel

I love so much

The Carmen touch

Knew a fellow, a cat named Red

Played fine piano but they shot him dead

Red deserved it, the such and such

He bluffed off boogie with the Carmen touch

What brings saucers around from Mars?

And what makes Masons keep their Mason jars?

What makes babies cry out so much?

They want their boogie with the Carmen touch

Story of a song: 'My Melancholy Baby'

It was the first torch song. It’s only heard in old movies or TV shows these days. The scene is usually a smoky barroom, at the ass-end of the evening. It’s that peculiar time of night when the soused, haunted by their past, call for this maudlin ballad and begin to sob. It’s a running joke in the 1954 film version of A Star is Born, as poor Judy Garland is harassed with, “Sing ‘Melancholy Baby’!”

This drunkard’s tearjerker took only a little longer than 40 years to become a cliché. It’s one of the one-hit wonders in the Great American Songbook, and the only one to be written in Denver, Colorado. Its 1912 birth in my hometown spurred this investigation. A couple of pretty tales have been spun around this song, but the real story of “My Melancholy Baby” is filled with false starts, warring claims to authorship, a scrambling for royalties, and litigation. Failure is an orphan, success has a hundred fathers.

OK, cute stories first.

One: William Frawley is best remembered for playing Fred Mertz on the “I Love Lucy” TV show, but he started as a song-and-dance man. On the May 3, 1965, episode of the TV game show “I’ve Got a Secret,” he revealed that he was the first to sing “My Melancholy Baby,” at the Mozart Café at 1647 Curtis Street. The noted journalists Gene Fowler and Damon Runyon were there.

Two: The composer Ernie Burnett served in France in World War I, was wounded and lost his memory. In the hospital, he heard someone singing “My Melancholy Baby,” recognized it, remembered who he was, and made a full recovery.

I’m unable to confirm or deny the truth of the second story, but the first story is disputed by almost everyone.

Ernie Burnett

Composer Ernie Burnett (originally Ernesto Bernaditto from Cincinnati) and his then-wife Maybelle Watson, who was the song’s first lyricist, filed for copyright on the song, then called “Melancholy,” on October 31, 1911. Despite their efforts, they couldn’t interest anyone in it. (In those days, songwriters carried their songs from one publisher to another, auditioning them.) Finally, Denver club owner and music publisher Theron C. Bennett bought the tune, but tossed the words. He set an employee, George Norton, to write a new set of lyrics. This jerry-rigged song became an enormous hit.

“Come, sweetheart mine, don’t sit and pine

Tell of the cares that make you feel so blue

What have I done, answer me, hon

Have I ever said an unkind word to you

My love is true, and just for you

I’d do almost anything at any time

Dear, when you sigh, or when you cry

Something seems to grip this very heart of mine

Come to me my melancholy baby

Cuddle up and don’t be blue

All your fears are foolish fancies, maybe

You know, dear, that I’m in love with you

Every cloud must have a silver lining

Wait until the sun shines through

Smile, my honey dear, while I kiss away each tear

Or else I shall be melancholy too”

Why was it written? To whom? Burnett told a story abut waiting for a woman (presumably his wife) for eight hours at the train station; Norton spins a tale about being sweet on a Denver waitress. Despite the desire to getting nailed being the wellspring of most romantic tunes, neither of these anecdotes is likely. "My Melancholy Baby" is an inspired piece of hackwork.

When the sheet music was published, it bore a dedication to “Miss Maybelle Watson of Berkeley, California.” Burnett and Watson were divorced by that time; perhaps the publisher sought to assuage Watson’s ego and prevent her from suing for a piece of the royalties, even though her lyrics were replaced by Norton’s.

 So who sang it first? Bennett, the original publisher, claims he gave the debut performance of it at his club, the Dutch Mill at 811 16th Street, in 1912 -- not Frawley. Two original copies of the sheet music feature two different artists pasted into the cameo center of the cover – “That Singer,” Jack O’Leary, and “winsome June Le Vey.” At this point, the song was still titled “Melancholy.” It was changed to “My Melancholy Baby” in 1914, and a year later Bennett folded, selling the song to Joe Morris Music Company in New York. Burnett claims he convinced Sophie Tucker to sing it, which began its rise to popularity.

The person who arguable made this song a hit was Walter van Brunt, whose 1915 recording may contain some of Watson’s original lyrics, pushed down into the song to make a second introductory set of lines. This set of words is omitted in nearly every recording of it:

“Birds in the trees, whispering breeze

Should not fail to lull you into peaceful dreams

So tell me why, sadly you sigh

Sitting at the window where the pale moon beams

You shouldn’t grieve, try and believe,

Life is always sunshine when the heart beats true

Be of good cheer, smile through your tears,

When you’re sad it makes me feel the same as you”

Gene Austin scored with it again in 1927, and England’s Al Bowlly in 1935. 

Tommy Lyman, a cabaret performer, made “My Melancholy Baby” his theme song during the 1920s, playing and singing it late at night and referring to it as his “torch song,” a reference to the old phrase “carrying a torch for someone,” an unrequited love. Perhaps it’s this specific pathos Lyman imbued it with that gave it its cliché effect on the inebriated.

It started showing up in films – The Roaring Twenties (1939), Birth of the Blues (1941), Johnny Eager (1942), Follow the Band (1943), Minstrel Man (1944). In the 1945 film noir Scarlet Street, director Fritz Lang and composer Hans Salter work the tune into the score and as source music in the film itself, as a theme to which the main characters disintegrate.

In Billy Wilder’s Some Like It Hot (1959), it’s the song that always seduces Marilyn Monroe’s character, especially when essayed on tenor sax. Forty-eight years after its birth, “My Melancholy Baby” ends its effective cultural life as a dick joke.

In the end, Bennett and Burnett reaped the royalties, after legal action against Joe Morris; Norton’s son had to litigate for years to get compensation for his father, who had signed away his rights to Bennett for $20 a week, back in the day. Watson got nothing. Frawley got the credit, and the song may have brought back its composer from the dead. Who knows? If you stick your nose down into the warf and woof of history, it's hard to see more than a tangle of contradictions, unresolvable, unprovable, lost in the past.

In the end, we still have a great song.

SOURCES

Denver’s Old Theater Row

Forrest Hall Johnson

Gem

1970

The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia

Thomas S. Hischak

Greenwood Press

2002

American Popular Song: The Great Innovators 1900-1950

Alec Wilder

Oxford University Press

1972

Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia of the Golden Age of American Song

David A. Jasen

Routledge

2003

A Century of American Popular Music

David A. Jasen

Routledge

2013

Piano Stylings of the Great Standards, Volume 2

Edward Shanapy

Alfred Music

2003

Cladrite Radio: Snapshot in Prose: Ernest Burnett

http://www.cladriteradio.com/snapshot-in-prose-ernest-burnett/

Mark Steyn: Song of the Week #202, Oct. 24, 2011

http://www.siliconinvestor.com/readmsg.aspx?msgid=27723949

“My Melancholy Baby” entry, Chris Tyle at jazzstandards.com

http://www.jazzstandards.com/compositions-1/mymelancholybaby.htm

'Drew Friedman's Heroes of the Comics' tells American pop-culture history in portraits

Drew Friedman’s Heroes of the Comics

Drew Friedman

2014

Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

Seattle

Drew Friedman has always disturbed the hell out of me. His photorealist-seeming grotesques, studies of minor and marginal celebrities in dark and turgid circumstances, were for me like a flamethrower blast from a terrifying alternate universe – one that lurked beneath our all-too-thin floorboards. In mags like Heavy Metal, MAD, National Lampoon, and RAW he fought for – and won away – my attention from such trifles as big-breasted space maidens.

His new book is a gallery of 83 American comic-book greats that combines the virtues of a portrait gallery and a collection of life stories. These individual portraits in words and pictures, when read together, form an entertaining and neatly comprehensible history of the comics in America.

In rough chronological order, Friedman takes us from Maxwell Gaines, the visionary but short-lived progenitor of EC, through list of the usual Golden and Silver Age suspects such as Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Eisner and the lot. But he also lavishes attention on the obscure but well-deserved – Mac Raboy, Gardner Fox, Ramona Fraden – all names for the enthusiast to scribble down and add to his or her research list. (Hell, he even throws in Frederic Wertham, whose infamous “Seduction of the Innocent” witch hunt against comics in the 1950s killed a lot of publications and careers).

Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman. From Friedman's 'Heroes of the Comics.'

Friedman had the enormous good fortune to have a father (writer Bruce Jay Friedman) who kept him awash in comics through his childhood, and who knew seemingly everyone in the New York comics scene of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Friedman’s child’s-eye glimpse of the mechanics and business of the industry gives him unparalleled insights – and some great anecdotes – about this lost world, all to be found in his entertaining introduction.

Fantagraphics’ respect for the image gives Friedman’s work a large format, printed on high-quality paper stock. The artists, writers, and publishers are shown in humble situ – posed at drawing desks, cradling cigarettes, in photo-based illustrations. As Friedman puts it, these pictures are “ . . . neither idealized nor romanticized, but depicting the years of dedication etched into their faces.”

This book succeeds as a reference work, an aesthetic object in itself, and a good time – a trifecta that all good non-fiction storytellers would do well to shoot for. “Drew Friedman’s Heroes of the Comics” is an essential tool for understanding how comics became what they are.

'Do Not Sell at Any Price': A masterful exploration of an arcane musical world

Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78 rpm Records

Amanda Petrusich

2014

Scribner

New York

Balance is the key here, in the best non-fiction I’ve read this year.

“Do Not Sell at Any Price” is an exemplary work that demonstrates that a non-fiction narrative can be just as compelling as any fictional one. By virtue of solid research and investigation, coupled with good writing, author Amanda Petrusich creates, rather than glib feature writing, authentic insights into far more than the specific topic at hand.

“Do Not Sell” delves into the cloistered and idiosyncratic world of music collectors – seekers of vintage music on 78 rpm records. Between 1925 and 1948, these brittle shellac discs were the way music was recorded, vended, and preserved, produced by a profusion of companies large and small. In those days of cultural and communication isolation, vast amounts of marginal, eccentric, and original performers were captured. The savants that collect these sonic rarities are obsessed figures, some possessed with a quasi-messianic sense of mission to rescue these lost voices from oblivion.

Petrusich brings the scene to life with an impeccably balanced approach equal parts research, interviews, profiles, and critical analysis, ensconced in a first-person framework as she goes along on the quest with some of her subjects, sometimes hilariously. She goes so far as to learn how to scuba-dive so that she can search the muddy bottom of the Milwaukee River for some of the fabled lost Paramount recordings. (Save the receipts; I believe those lessons ae tax-deductible.)

Most important of all, Petrusich is wise to herself. She states early on, “I wanted collectors to reveal their desires and methodologies so I could dissect their work and devise grand statements about our cultural moment. In response, collectors sneered, chortled, or told me to fuck off.” From the get-go, Petrusich simultaneously acknowledges and lets go of her preconceptions – then gets on the ground and saturates herself in the details.

Petrusich’s voice is here, but it’s not cloying or cute, pompous or sententious. As one should, she asks good questions, listens well, and pulls her conclusions from the evidence and her experience. She brings to life the characters that inhabit this alternate universe and gives them space to express themselves – and they are quite eloquent.

Remember, these fanatics aren’t academics but hobbyists – living outside the mainstream of cultural dialogue, creating their own canons and alternative histories, sometimes sharing their thoughts with others, sometimes remaining clapt in near-complete isolation, inhabiting what seems to be a self-constructed dream world, addicted to control over their basement-level kingdoms. “. . . collecting had clearly become . . . a functional way of rebelling against mainstream culture. . . . rejecting a society that felt homogenized and unforgiving,” Petrusich writes.

Says collector Ian Nagoski of his ilk, “’ ‘Zwigoff and Crumb and innumerable others, these guys are definitely discontents in a Freud’s Civilization and Its Discontents kind of way. They’re looking at the world and seeing it as untenable. The world is sick. And yet here is this thing that affirms that there’s something about it that’s beautiful. But it’s forgotten, or lost, or separate from day-to-day reality. But if you could just put it back together, then you could reconstruct this gone world, this kind of life that was once worth living, and make that into your own life, and then it would be okay or tolerable for you.’”

One of the most interesting considerations Petrusich brings out is the concept that the historical narrative is always in flux, subjective, squishy – determined by accidents, destruction, bias, prejudice, and the sheer inability to deal. Cultural worth fluctuates like stock prices. The vital expression of the culture lies first here, and then there, and over there where you never expected it to manifest (that my childhood comic-book heroes are now seen as the foundation of a world-beloved secular mythology seems to me ridiculous and awesome, simultaneously).

She quotes another collector, Nathan Salsburg, “’Another danger of the canon being having been engineered – accidentally or on purpose – by collectors is that scads of things were excluded, either because they didn’t conform to a collector’s taste of because there just wasn’t enough time or space for anyone to properly process them.’”

The paradigm of the curator-as-impositioner-of-significance-meaning-and-context is, of course, Harry Everett Smith, the legendary compiler of The Anthology of American Folk Music, quite accurately described by Greil Marcus as “an occult document disguised as an academic treatise on stylistic shifts within an archaic musicology.” This 1952 creation helped spark the folk revival and blues renaissance, both of which folded into rock – and still surfaces in genres as diverse as grunge and Americana. Smith’s achievement was to select and assemble an intuitive masterpiece – a narrative of outcast voices summoning raw feeling and captivating sounds. Since then, supplemental and alternative compilations have emerged. Companies such as Revenant, Dust-to-Disc, and Yazoo and individual efforts such as Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard: Good Time, and End Time Music and People Take Warning! Murder Ballads & Disaster Songs make the case that there is much material to be processed yet.

Petrusich is not an ironic observer. She can hear what the enthusiasts share with her, describing the raw, unmediated sound of the turn of last century, before media surrounded us. “And I understood, for a moment, what collectors meant when they moaned about what was lacking in contemporary music: that pure communion, that unself-consciousness, that sense that art could still save us, absolve us of our sins. We know better than to expect that now.”

There is something to be said about the parallel I pick up here between collecting and the act of creating itself – another lonely occupation populated by shall-we-say-unique-types who dredge for signs of significance, and reveal their insights . . . or don’t. The nature of obsession drives most creative types inward, and the shelter of eccentricity often protects the fragile. What is an artist but one who, unsatisfied with things as they are, crafts their own worlds? What do you call someone who discovers a new set of meanings – a visionary or a nutjob?

But I digress. “Do Not Sell” does more – it makes the reader come to terms with his or her own acquisitive tendencies (confession: I have stacks of 78s, and 45s, and LPs, and cassettes . . . it was difficult for me to throw out my 8-track tapes). Most importantly, it inspires us to seek out the sounds that are the basis of all this fuss. Few of us have the wherewithal to match Petrusich’s subjects, but the digital revolution means that nearly all the musics of the world can be enjoyed, absorbed, passed on. This book ties it all together.