Sarah Vaughan: Sassy And Divine

Sarah Vaughan 1946

The American jazz singer, Sarah Vaughan, known as "Sassy" and "The Divine One," performed for almost fifty years. Twenty-nine years after her passing popular music and jazz fans still wait for a singer who can approach her amazing voice. I must say that Jane Monheit has done a fine job of blending the Vaughan recipe with her own spices to bring us much of the magic we remember so well. Here is Sassy performing the signature song from late in her career, Send In The Clowns:

That is performance in song. It was recorded twenty years before Auto-Tune and other pitch correction and vocal tuning software could turn tone deaf studio metrosexuals and assorted hotties of any sex into so-called stars. We've come down a long way in what passes for both talent and popular music over the past generation. Of course, there are exceptions but for the most part real singing has become subordinate to other aspects of presentation, performance, and spectacle. And once more I ask the question, "Where is jazz, a genre birthed in the United States?" It is alive in many small markets across the country but it remains a small portfolio in the financial departments of our corporate music industry.

So as the Jane Monheits, Diana Kralls and others keep jazz alive let us honor the memory of one of its greatest interpreters, Sarah Vaughan, who was born on March 27, 1924. For another taste of her magic, here she is near the close of her career performing Tenderly, her original signature song:

A three octave vocal range, no Auto-Tune, singular perfection.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

William P. Gottlieb Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

J S. Bach: For The Honor Of God

I was introduced to the music of J.S. Bach as an infant at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in my little hometown in the mountains of Maryland. The church already had been baptizing members of my father's family for over seventy years. We were a large family within the larger church family. One aunt was the principal organist while several aunts, uncles, and cousins held various position in church administration and in the choir. In the summer of my ninth year our family moved leaving behind not only familiar places but also family linkages to Mount Calvary Lutheran Church. I left with a strong faith reinforced in part by Bach's profound music. Although faith faced some challenges in my revolutionary days the awe and appreciation for Bach never waned.

J.S. Bach portrait at age 61     Elias Haussmann, Germany, 1746 

Today marks his birthday - in 1685 - using the Old Style calendar.  Johann Sebastian Bach, gave us some of the most sublime music in western culture and it would be an oversight, especially as a Lutheran, not to honor this master of the Baroque and pillar of Lutheranism. His music was largely forgotten for almost a century following his death, but had been restored by the first quarter of the 19th century. The new-found popularity of Bach was due largely to the composer-performers, Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and the publication of many of Bach's works. 

In this commemorative post Bach's music is his biography. No need for names, dates, places, and details. Let the music speak for him.

The Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, was perhaps the most technically perfect interpreter of Bach's keyboard music in our lifetime. His approach - he was well-known for singing along while he performed - was unique and not to every one's preference but no one could deny that Gould was a magician at the keyboard. Here he is playing several of Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988. The first two minutes are slow and quiet followed by ten minutes of fast, bright, and brilliant music on the part of the composer and the performer.

From the St. Matthew Passion, here is the final recitative and chorus, a lullaby to Jesus as he lies in his tomb:

Here is a familiar piece attributed to Bach, Toccata & Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, performed by young Dutch organist, Gert van Hoef:

Bach's music has been a part of me for so long that I couldn't begin to tell you when I first heard it other than to say it had to be in church at a very early age. The preludes. fugues, harmonies, the shear wonder of his work, it's all in my blood. And I can't play a single note of it. Wouldn't have it any other way. I simply listen and let it flow.

Music’s ultimate end or final goal…should be for the honor of God and the recreation of the soul.

                                                                             Johann Sebastian Bach - Leipzig, 1738

Tonight, A Super Moon And Spring

On March 20, 2019, the plane of our planet will pass through the center of the Sun. It is an equinox day, a day when the length of light and darkness are just about equal anywhere on the planet. It also means the sun is directly overhead on the equator at the middle of the day. This year I don't care to get more technical about the facts. It's the first day of Spring that matters even if the northeastern U.S. could get nailed with another snowstorm and near hurricane winds in the next few days. There's something different about this year's first day of spring. Shortly after sunset tonight we can enjoy the Full Worm Moon casting it's silvery blue light across the planet as the last supermoon of the year.

Wen it comes to calendars and changing seasons, it's hard to beat the French Revolutionary Calendar (1793-1805) teasing us with the warmth and color of Spring. For starters the spring equinox marks the first day of the month of Germinal. Every day has a name appropriate for the season. A revolutionary idea, I'd say. So here are the fecund thirty days of Germinal (March 21 - April 19):

1. Primevere - Primrose

2. Plantane - Plane Tree

3. Asperge - Asparagus

4. Tulipe - Tulip

5. Poule - Hen

6. Bette - Chard Plant

7. Bouleau - Birch Tree

8. Jonquille - Daffodil

9. Aulne - Alder

10. Couvoir - Hatchery

11. Pervenche - Periwinkle

12. Charme - Hornbeam

13. Morille - Morel

14. Hetre - European Beech Tree

15. Abielle - Bee

16. Laitue - Lettuce

17. Meleze - Larch

18. Cigue - Hemlock

19. Radis - Radish

20. Ruche - Hive

21. Gainier - Judas Tree

22. Romaine - Lettuce

23 Marronnier - Horse chestnut

24. Roquette - Arugula or Rocket

25. Pigeon - Pigeon

26. Lilas - Lilac

27. Anemone - Anemone

28. Pensee - Pansy

29. Myrtille - Blueberry

30. Greffor - Knife

Wonderful imagery in those thirty words about the season of renewal. May your first day of spring be the harbinger of warm weather and wind in your sails.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

Allegory of Germinal, public domain, wikipedia.fr, French National Library and Bureau of Measures, Paris

St. Patrick's Day 2019

Happy St. Patrick's Day! This weekend, pleasant surprises abound across the country, some of them in the most unexpected places. Savannah hosted one of those wonderful annual surprises yesterday due to the 17th falling on a Sunday.  At 10:15, in the cool of the late morning and under a partly cloudy sky, the city's 195th Saint Patrick's Day parade stepped  off to be enjoyed by almost 400,000 viewers. The parade never fails to be a family-friendly event. Organizers have worked hard over the past years to keep the "Saint" and sanity in the holiday, confining most of the adult revelry to River Street following the parade. That was fine with me even in my early thirties during my second adolescence. It's only since the arrival of "the book" - Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - and the discovery of Savannah as a significant tourist destination that issues with irreverent activities have become serious. [See my "A Night[and Day] in Old Savannah," August 23, 2008, for details.]

My first St. Patrick's Day parade there was in 1977 when I lived on Jones Street in the historic district. Over the years, I lost count as the events merged one into the other during my tenure in the Coastal Empire. Eventually, my children celebrated their Irish/Celtic heritage as part of the parade. They sat on the folded top of a hot convertible and waved their green, white and orange flags to the crowds. Those wee bairns - now in their 30's - have plenty of ancient Celtic ancestry and thanks to Ancestry.com we know they're about 18% Irish and Scot, but no one keeps score on that day. It was simply great fun. Almost all of those parades we attended were complemented with fine spring weather and thousands of azaleas blooming throughout the city.

Those were the good old days? To be honest, the parade is a fond memory. Life has moved on and left me with a deep love for Savannah and the lowcountry. Haven't been to the parade for several years, but I did watch or listen to it on the Internet yesterday.

If I were you, I'd put this event on the bucket list. The Savannah parade has been around since 1813. It's a wonderful event for your children and grandchildren. It's held in what many consider the nation's most beautiful city. That said, I suggest you make your reservations tomorrow before lodging on March 17, 2020 becomes a "No Vacancy."

Ash Wednesday 2019

This is one of the most solemn and discomforting days in the Christian world for we are marked with ashes and made so very much aware of our sin. This day also marks the beginning of forty days of prayer and abstinence leading us to Christ's death and resurrection.

Although the ashen cross we bear today will fade over the hours we can take hope knowing that God's love for us will never fade.

Psalm 51

Have mercy upon me, O God, after Thy great goodness; According to the multitude of Thy mercies do away mine offences.Wash me throughly from my wickedness: and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my faults: and my sin is ever before me. Against Thee only have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that Thou mightest be justified in Thy saying, and clear when Thou art judged. Behold, I was shapen in wickedness: and in sin hath my mother conceived me. But lo, Thou requirest truth in the inward parts: and shalt make me to understand wisdom secretly.

Thou shalt purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: Thou shalt wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow. Thou shalt make me hear of joy and gladness: that the bones which Thou hast broken may rejoice. Turn Thy face from my sins: and put out all my misdeeds.

Make me a clean heart, O God: and renew a right spirit within me.Cast me not away from Thy presence: and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me.O give me the comfort of Thy help again: and stablish me with Thy free Spirit.

Then shall I teach Thy ways unto the wicked: and sinners shall be converted unto Thee. Deliver me from blood-guiltiness, O God, Thou that art the God of my health: and my tongue shall sing of Thy righteousness. Thou shalt open my lips, O Lord: and my mouth shall shew Thy praise. For Thou desirest no sacrifice, else would I give it Thee: but Thou delightest not in burnt-offerings. The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit: a broken and contrite heart, O God, shalt Thou not despise.

O be favourable and gracious unto Sion: build Thou the walls of Jerusalem.Then shalt Thou be pleased with the sacrifice of righteousness, with the burnt-offerings and oblations: then shall they offer young bullocks upon Thine altar.

                                                        English Book of Common Prayer, 1662



Here is a legendary performance of Gregorio Allegri's Miserere, the Latin setting of Psalm 51 composed around 1638.

Tom Wolfe: A Participant-Observer Writes About The People Of America

This is the first year we remember Wolfe's birthday without him. His death at 88 in May of last year brought to an end a career that blazed with New Journalism and complex, often controversial, novels. Though he may be gone from the American scene, his perceptive window on late 20th century culture is well worth remembering.

Wolfe's earlier works seem written as much for entertainment as for traditional reportorial honesty and often involve not only the writer's observation but also his participation. And there are those long daydream passages of vivid description that end with a quick snap back to reality. As he worked more and more in fiction his style retained muted elements of the "wildness" that made his early "journalism" amazingly popular into the 1990's.

The author is sartorial splendor in his Manhattan apartment 

Today the first wave of Gonzos - a term coined around 1970 by Hunter S. Thompson to describe a wing of New Journalism advocates - is all but gone with Wolfe's passing.  For him it was a long way from The Kandy-Colored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby to tackling the Great American Novel.  He was always quite happy interpreting the American experience as an outsider looking into other worlds and he certainly surpassed Thompson and others in his school with a matured Gonzo style.

These days Wolfe's work - especially the novels - still make news but I believe we should always remember his entertaining journalism, especially the work that chronicled our cultural history in the critical years from early 1960's to the mid-1970's. In those years he wrote the following titles:

The Kandy-Colored Tangerine-Flake Streamline Baby (1965)
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1968)
The Pump House Gang (1968)
Radical Chic & Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers (1970)
The New Journalism (1974) edited with E.W. Johnson
The Painted Word (1975)
Mauve Gloves & Madmen, Clutter & Vine (1976)

He capped the 1970's with, The Right Stuff, his fascinating look at the nation's first astronauts, the Mercury Seven, and program that put most of them into space. Although he had already achieved fame as a writer the publication of The Right Stuff and the film by the same name that followed in 1983 ensured his place in American literature. 

In 2012 Wolfe took on the immigration theme and the Cuban-Americans community dominating the scene in Miami. Back to Blood hit the market with high expectations but performed poorly. This article reprinted from New York Magazine appeared with the release of the novel and remains a pleasing blend of biography and book.  His last major publication was The Freedom of Speech, a non-fiction work appearing in August 2016. 

Wolfe has left us with a huge amount of literature. Let us immerse ourselves in this great wealth of observations of the American experience Tom Wolfe assembled for us. At least, we'll be entertained by a fine writer/reporter. At most, we'll learn much not only about our cultural history but also ourselves. 

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Wolfe, New York Magazine

Text:
wikipedia.org

St. David's Day: The National Day Of Wales 2019

Why is a Welsh national flag flying from our house today?

The Welsh national flag dates from the 15th century

Wales is a small, ancient country located southwest of England between the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea south of the Isle of Man. The nation has a rich cultural heritage beginning with Celtic peoples in the early Iron Age. Its isolation has left them with strong genetic identifiers as the "last of the 'true' Britons." There are only 3 million people living in Wales today. Historically, the population was never large but there was a limited diaspora beginning two centuries ago particularly with the Industrial Revolution and its need for coal.

March 1 is celebrated in much of the Christian world in the west as St. David's Day. David was born in Wales in the 6th century, attained sainthood in the 12th century, and today is recognized as the patron saint of Wales. Dewi San (St. David) died on this day in 569 and was buried in the cathedral bearing his name in Pembrokeshire. The day is also celebrated as the National Day throughout the country.

Although German traditions remain strong in my family, I'm equally proud to say that I have Welsh ancestors thanks to the bloodline introduced by my grandmother's parents who immigrated to the United States from Cardiff, Wales, in the early 1870's. Although I don't remember her - she died before my second birthday - my father always reminded me of her Celtic pride and Welsh ancestry expressed especially in a love for song and singing.  A century ago Welsh male choirs could be found in every mining and quarrying village across the country. Now most of the singing is confined to professional choirs and individuals who emerged from the tradition. Perhaps the best known of those singers today is the bass-baritone, Bryn Terfel:

Only half of one percent of Americans claim Welsh ancestry. I'm pleased to be among them.

Sources:

Photos and Illustrations:
Welsh flag, public domain image, Open Clipart Library

Text:

wales.com
wikipedia.com