For the weekend ....

Two timeless classics, nuff said.

Cleo, Shakespeare & all that jazz

400 years today since Shakespeare died (aged 52 in 1616) - lots of celebrations here in the UK, including an all-star marathon on The Bard on BBC tonight, while the BFI is mounting a two-part retrospective. I am sure my 6 different HAMLETs and 4 MACBETHs will get an airing too, then there's Orson's CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT ...

One Shakespeare artefact which may be overlooked now is this 1964 album by Cleo Laine. I had it at the time when I was just a teenager, so it was great to download the tracks again a while back (the album itself or the CD had not been available for a long time)\. Cleo has always been one of our favourite vocalists - her concerts with husband Johnny Dankworth were always great value as they certainly delivered and exceeded expectations. We saw them several times in the '70s and '80s, and I loved several of her other albums, particularly WOMAN TALK, another '60s classic. 

Cleo wraps her delicious tones and immaculate phrasing around those timeless words from the plays and sonnets - she swings, she hits the high and low notes as only she can. An Amazon review puts it: "A perfect marriage of words set to music, melody and jazz invention. Singing and playing of the very highest calibre. This recording has greatly improved my life". 

This is the track listing: 

1. If Music Be The Food Of Love / 2. O Mistress Mine  / 3. Duet Of Sonnets / 4. Winter / 5. My Love Is As A Fever / 6. It Was A Lover And His Lass / 7. Dunsinane Blues / 8. Take All My Loves / 9. Blow, Blow Thou Winter Wind / 10. Shall I Compare Thee / 11. Witches, Fair And Foul / 12. Fear No More /  13. Sigh No More, Ladies / 14. The Compleat Works. 

In the wake of so many obituaries lately, that first verse of "Fear No More" is so apt:
"Fear no more the heat o' the sun
Nor the furious winter's rages.
Thou thy worldly task hast done,
Home art gone, and ta'en thy wages.
Golden lads and lasses all must,
As chimney sweepers, come to dust."

An album I love: Joni's "Wild Things Run Fast"

The latest issue of MOJO magazine has an interesting feature on Joni Mitchell's foray into jazz in the 1970s, featuring those albums THE HISSING OF SUMMER LAWNS, HEJIRA, DON JUAN'S RECKLESS DAUGHTER (a double album) and MINGUS, followed by her SHADOWS AND LIGHT tour which was also another double gatefold album and is now a concert dvd with some marvellous concert footage of Joni with those great musicians Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny. The albums also featured jazzmen Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock. It was great to be introduced to the work of Jaco and his amazing bass guitar - I had to get his solo album as well. 

These albums are endlessly fascinating and for me have stood the test of time (I simply love that live version of "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat"), following on as they did from Joni's great early '70s string of singer-songwriter albums like LADIES OF THE CANYON, BLUE, FOR THE ROSES, COURT AND SPARK and that first double album, the MILES OF AISLES concerts, with fascinating new versions of her songs. (We had seen Joni in 1970 and 1972 in London (where I also met her then - as per previous reports, see Joni label - no Martin, I won't rehash all that again...) and then saw the new jazzy Joni at the New Victoria theatre in 1974 after rushing back from Milan and Paris by train ....

Her next album then was WILD THINGS RUN FAST in 1982, another vinyl gatefold - this was a new Joni too, perhaps she had gone as far as she could with jazz progressions - some people had not cared for the DON JUAN double, but I loved it - and she had now married, to musician Larry Klein and its a new happy Joni here as she explores love and memory. We love "Chinese Cafe" and those songs "Be Cool" and "Man to Man" appealed to me - a lot. Other great tracks here are "Solid Love" and "Love" and "You're So Square Baby I Don't Care" - happy, upbeat and great. 
Let's quote some stuff from MusicStack:

"Down at the Chinese Cafe, we'd be dreaming on our dimes/We'd be playing 'Oh my love, my darling' one more time," sings Joni Mitchell of the old times. The way Mitchell threads lyrics from the Righteous Brothers' "Unchained Melody" through her own "Chinese Cafe" signifies the passing of time that is central to Wild Things Run Fast. "Caught in the middle, Carol, we're middle-class," she sings in that opening cut. "We're middle-aged/We were wild in the old days."

Joni Mitchell's music has taken dramatic turns over the past fourteen years, and she has produced a classic in each of three styles: folk (Blue), pop-rock (Court and Spark) and pop-jazz (Hejira). Lyrically, love has been Mitchell's main concern–the word gets fifty-seven mentions on this LP–and her shifts have been more subtle: from the arched but intimate innocent to the Hollywood high-lifer and, finally, to the romantic on the run from experience.

It is almost a great record, on a par with For the Roses and Clouds. It alternates rhythmically scratchy rock with cocktail jazz keynoted by Larry Klein's elastic bass and Wayne Shorter's soprano sax. Similarly, it splits lyrical concerns between what happens at people's parties and what goes on in Mitchell's solitary salon."

Joni was less prolific in the '80s and '90s - doing 3 albums each decade (as opposed to 9 in the '70s) - after WILD THINGS came DOG EAT DOG in 1985 and CHALK MARKS IN A RAINSTORM in 1989, each had good tracks on them, and in the '90s: NIGHT RIDE HOME, TAMING THE TIGER and TURBULENT INDIGO, and in 2000 that great album of covers including some of her own: BOTH SIDES NOW, followed by some interesting compilations (SONGS OF A PRAIRIE GIRL, TRAVELOGUE, DREAMLAND and the 4-disk LOVE HAS MANY FACES in 2015) and that new album in 2007 SHINE. One hopes she is recovering well after recent illness.  
Meanwhile Carole King is now - finally, 45 years later - playing her 1971 album TAPESTRY in full at a concert in London's Hyde Park on July 3, while her 'jukebox musical' BEAUTIFUL starts its second year. Lots more royalties for Carole who, according to an interview today, lives quietly in a log cabin in the woods; and Carly Simon is still promoting her tell-all memoir ... 

Marvin, trouble man

Last weekend one of our tv channels ran one of those music programmes, this one on "The Nation's Top Tama Motown Song", a countdown of the 20 most popular Tamla hits - cue all the usual subjects and talking heads and video snippets, as we arrive as Number One: Marvin Gaye's "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" - thats good enough for me, I had imagined it would be one of Diana Ross's epics. 

I loved "Grapevine" at the time,  1969, and remember playing the single over and over, as we all did, but seeing Marvin sing it back then in his prime is something else. He is such a beautiful man and I love those sinuous movements and one can feel the emotion he brings to it:

Its all reminded me how much I loved Marvin and those classic albums. My two favourite Tamla singles back in the mid-'60s, when I was 20, were Marvin's "Aint That Peculiar" and The Supremes' "You Can't Hurry Love". There are lots of Marvin collections, with those hits like "Thats the way love goes", "Too busy thinking about my baby" and the epic "Got To Give It Up" etc where he is Motown's main man up there with Smokey and Stevie and young Michael. 

Those later albums are still astounding too, I particularly love "Distant Lover" on "Lets Get It On" and of course those ground-breaking "Whats Going On", the "Trouble Man" soundtrack, "Here My Dear", and that odd final album "Midnight Love" with the still potent "Sexual Healing". Marvin's story is too well-known to re-hash here, this is just to say how much we love this song and Marvin (1939-1984) singing it, or his other classics like "Inner City Blues".
Atlantic had the troubled Donny Hathaway (1945-1979). and Stax Otis Redding, both soul singers supreme, up there with Marvin; at least I saw Otis on that final soul tour he did in 1967 ... to think he was only 26.


Away from Tamla we have been going back to some classic albums which never date:
Quincy Jones' "Back on the Block" his '80s tribute to that be-bob era, with snippets of Ella, Sarah and others, the title track is a zinger.
Weather Report's "Heavy Weather" from 1977, with those fascinating tracks like "A Remark You Made" and "Teen Town" with musicians like Joe Zawinul, Jaco Pastorius and Wayne Shorter - both of whom I discovered via their work with Joni Mitchell (Jaco's first solo album is still terrific too); 

more 'jazz fusion' with those '70s Santana albums like "Abraxas" and "Caravanserai" and tracks like "Singing winds, crying beasts" and the funky grooves of "Black Magic Woman"; and of course Miles himself, I particularly related to his 1969 "In A Silent Way" and some great moments on "Bitches Brew".... all of course from that great era of the vinyl album, as covered before here, music label. 

All that jazz all night long + a funny lady !

ALL THAT JAZZ floored us back in 1979. I had not seen it since so it was a revelation all over again, from that stunning opening audition sequence timed to George Benson’s “On Broadway” one sits mesmerised as our hero heel says “Its showtime” … and off we go on that rollercoaster with Roy Scheider as the Bob Fosse type director, putting on a show, editing his film about a famous comedian (as Fosse did with LENNY) and then all those women in his life … It is practically a semi-autobiographical, Fellini-esque, account of the life of Fosse himself who writes, choreographs and directs. 

Part tragic, part comic, this “outrageous look at life in the fast lane” is all about Fosse’s excessive life in show-business, starting with him as a dancing kid back in burlesque. Scheider has the role of his life as depicts the perils of pushing himself too hard, imagining Death to be a beautiful blonde (Jessica Lange) who teases and waits … I had forgotten how marvellous that Peter Allen number “Everything Old Is New Again” is, as danced here by sensational Ann Reinking and our hero’s daughter, and that sexy “Take Off With Us” number, we had seen nothing like it then. Cliff Gorman, Ben Vereen and John Lithgow are all terrific too, as it all builds to that stunning climax with "Bye Bye Life". ALL THAT JAZZ and Paul Schrader's  AMERICAN GIGOLO defined movies for me just then. I can’t wait to see it again now. 

FUNNY LADY. I actually enjoyed FUNNY LADY back in 1975 and may have even got the soundtrack album - the one number in the Brice style "Blind Date" is still hilarious, over the credits. We still liked Streisand then, it was not until the next year with her take on A STAR IS BORN (or A STAR IS BORING) that one recoiled in horror. Seeing FUNNY LADY again now on tv, it is an absolute hoot - the preening self-regard of the star, as Herbert Ross’s film delivers every cliche in the book. The only people in it really are Babs and James Caan (at his attractive best here but of course all wrong for Billy Rose), and Roddy McDowell as ‘Bobby’ her gay friend/assistant ("Who's the pansy?" Caan's Billy Rose asks). 
Omar Sharif looks in twice too, like visiting royalty (as Pauline Kael said, if I recall right). Barbra/Fanny berates him for not asking about their daughter, but we never see her with the child either. It has some almost good moments – like "How Lucky Can You Get" (the real Brice presumably never looked as stunning as Barbra in that backless Bob Mackie gown), but that reprise of "Dont Rain On My Parade" - "Lets Hear it for me" here - had me almost falling off the sofa in hysterics, especially when she takes off in that little yellow plane. 

Producer Ray Stark makes more money out of his mother-in-law Fanny Brice, and there are a few snatched moments from the superior FUNNY GIRL. Barbra to her credit didn't want to do the sequel, but Stark had her under contract and insisted. The ending is a scream, set presumably in the 1940s, as Fanny and Billy meet again – both are made up to look old, but it doesn’t quite work – though not as bad as Caan and Midler made up to look ancient in FOR THE BOYS! This of course was wildly out of fashion back in 1975 and is even more so now. Odd that they thought shows about 2 forgotten '30s figures - Brice and Gertrude Lawrence - would be successful in the '60s, well they were on the right track with Fanny! (Julie's STAR! review at Andrews label).

 
I have though relented about Barbra and have got her new cd/concert dvd put aside for the holidays. At least I saw the original FUNNY GIRL on stage in London in 1966 and from the front row, when I was a mere 20!

ALL NIGHT LONG. Patrick McGoohan stars in this hip, cool reworking of OTHELLO, set among the London jazz clubs of the early Sixties. A steamy tale of jealousy, passion and brooding menace, McGoohan gives a strong performance as the manipulative, treacherous Johnny Cousin, a talented drummer who wields music as a weapon in his quest to draw a jazz diva out of retirement. Directed by Basil Dearden, and with strong support from Keith Michell, Betsy Blair and Richard Attenborough, ALL NIGHT LONG showcases premiere jazz musicians of the '50s and '60s including Dave Brubeck, Johnny Dankworth, Tubby Hayes and the legendary Charles Mingus. In London's East End the high, blank walls of warehouses tower on either side, giving the street an anir of menace Bu from one warehouse comes the cool sounds of jazz, the clink of glasses and the buzz of intelligent conversation. Its a party for the first wedding anniversary of jazzman Aurelius Rex and his wife Delia who gave up a highly sucessful singing career - but our demon drummer has plans of his own ... 

  A fascinating movie then on many levels, not only with the jazzmen of the time, and a great cast - McGoohan and Mitchell and Betsy Blair are always never less than compulsive, Marti Stevens is a glamourous addition, and that busy man Basil Dearden directs - in those late '50s/early '60s years he also turned out SAPPHIRE, THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN, VICTIM, LIFE FOR RUTH - as well as those early '50s classics we like here: POOL OF LONDON, THE BLUE LAMP. A PLACE TO GO, and then more international movies like WOMAN OF STRAW and KHARTOUM (where Olivier is terrific as the Madhi). Dearden died in a car crash in 1971, aged 60.  

ALL NIGHT LONG is a fascinating discovery now, and unlike similar jazz movies of the time, such as PARIS BLUES, black and white relationships are treated matter of factly here, just as the '60s began. 

1959 - it gets better ...

1959 is the year that just keeps on giving. I had long considered it - and 1962 - as about the best movie years ever, both with at least 25 essential movies. (1960 isn't too bad either, as per my posts on it, and that whole era 1957 to 1963, which happily co-incided with my teenage years movie-going covering that essential era. (I was first taken to the cinema aged 8 in 1954, and went with my family in '55 and '56 and started my own cinemagoing aged 11 in 1957, so was 13 in 1959 ... (kids could safely go to the movies on their own then in small-town Ireland).

So, 1959 - I have listed before all those major American movies, there were some British too, but that New Wave that hit France and Italy and that new American cinema also went as far as Russia and Brazil ...

I recently discovered those 2 '59 Russian classics BALLAD OF A SOLDIER and THE LETTER THAT WAS NOT SENT as per post below - to add to that Italian discovery: Bolognini's LA NOTTE BRAVA, and Clement's restored PLEIN SOLEIL, fabulous on Blu-ray. Now it is Brazil's ORFEU NEGRO - BLACK ORPHEUS.

I had known about this movie of course but never seen it till now. We are about to be hit with a hurricane here in England, so this is the ideal movie for a wet, windy afternoon - as our clocks are about to go back an hour. 

ORFEU NEGRO is directed by Marcel Camus, shot in 1959 Rio at Carnival - music by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Louis Bonfa, and with lyrics by  Vinicius de Moraes- names we know from the Bossa Nova explosion of the Sixties (and Lelouch's film UN HOMME ET UNE FEMME). I have several Jobim albums, he worked with so many greats including Sinatra - and of course we adore that "Girl from Ipanema" ... the films begins with that classic song "Felicidate".....

Rio looks great here, as Camus re-tells the Orpheus and Eurydice myth ... with so many great characters: Serafina, Eurydice's friend, and the bitchy Mira who Orpheus keeps trying to escape from. He (Breno Mello) is a happy bus conductor who plays guitar (and he looks great in that little gold outfit) and his fans are those two delightful kids who follow him around. 

Rio and that favella looks marvellous here, with the little goat, the doves, the animals and all those happy people .... but there is that dark strain too as Death follows Eurydice (Marpessa Dawn) and stalks her through the carnival .... can our lovers be together at the end, maybe only in death ? Sugar Loaf mountain looks great in the distance with that statute of Christ the Redeemer on top, as our young kids dance on .... ORFEO NEGRO was of course a huge hit on the arthouse circuit like that year's JAZZ ON A SUMMER'S DAY  (jazz label), and will continue to cheer us.

1959 in a nutshell, more at 1959 label: BEN HUR, SOLOMON & SHEBA, SOME LIKE IT HOT, ANATOMY OF A MURDER, ON THE BEACH, SUDDENLY LAST SUMMER, THE NUN'S STORY. NORTH BY NORTHWEST, RIO BRAVO, IMITATION OF LIFE, A SUMMER PLACE, PILLOW TALK, THE BEST OF EVERYTHING, GIDGET, ROOM AT THE TOP, BLIND DATE, EXPRESSO BONGO, I'M ALRIGHT JACK, LOOK BACK IN ANGER, THE 400 BLOWS, LES DRAGUERS, LA LOI, BALLAD OF A SOLDIER, THE LETTER THAT WAS NOT SENT, PLEIN SOLEIL, LA NOTTE BRAVA, PICKPOCKET, LES COUSINS, HIROSHIMA MON AMOUR, BLACK ORPHEUS, and programmers like JET STORM, SOS PACIFIC, SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL, THE JOURNEY, westerns like THESE THOUSAND HILLS, WARLOCK. LAST TRAIN FROM GUNHILL, THE HANGING TREE, YELLOWSTONE KELLY; adventures like THEY CAME TO CORDURA, NORTHWEST FRONTIER, TIGER BAY, THE WRECK OF THE MARY DEARE, THE WIND CANNOT READ, LIBEL and those peplums like HERCULES UNCHAINED. A great time to be movie-going entering one's teens! 
And too in 1959 Antonioni was filming L'AVVENTURA on that island, one of those key movies, like PSYCHO, which ushered in the 60s ....

The French hit Rio in 1964 with De Broca's delightful THAT MAN FROM RIO (L'HOMME DE RIO) with Belmondo and Francoise Dorleac dancing on the beach and having all kinds of adventures - its one of my favourites, as per Belmondo, Dorleac labels ... and the 2009 0SS 117: LOST IN RIO is a screaa, as per my review: 2000s label.

Jazz On A Summer's Day

Totally exhilirating to re-see this classic in a sparking new HD print. Not seen it in years but its still magic - the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 as captured by photographer Bert Stern (who later went on to do Marilyn's Last Session photos). We start with lovely images of reflections on water with those iconic titles and fonts, as Jimmy Giuffre captivates with that tune. Then some shots of Newport Rhode Island and people - young, old, hipsters, that 1958 look (very Paul Newman-Joanne Woodward) and boats and cars. It really captures that time and place.

The concert is terrific as we get Anita O'Day, Mahalia Jackson, Louis Armstrong, Giuffre and others all at the top of their game, including Dinah Washington, Chuck Berry, Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing. A lovely way to spend a summer's day - now or in 1958. Annoyingly maybe for jazz purists its not a straightforward concert film as its as much about the summer's day as about the jazz - but thats what so interesting for me, as we explore Newport RI as well as taking the music. A decade later the documentary MONTEREY POP showed the new breeed of hippie Californians enjoying the outdoors before heading off to WOODSTOCK - and then 40 years flew by!